My uncle died yesterday. His health had been poor for some time, but he had always maintained, as much as possible a cheerful demeanor. I will remember him for his charm, his wit, his kindness and his story telling ability. He was quite the raconteur.
One experience he did not discuss much was the story of his service in WWII. He was a member of the 75th Division, the least experienced and youngest unit in the US Army. It was nicknamed the Diaper Division because of his youth. Many of its soldiers were literally 17 and 18 year-old kids straight off the farms of the Midwest. Yet, out of desperation the 75th Division was committed to the Battle of the Bulge to support the flank of the 23rd Armored Division.
My uncle and his fellow companions and friends suffered horrendously in the fighting that followed. In the battle my Uncle’s Company lost nearly all of its original complement of soldiers, killed or wounded, in the first 30 days of fighting. Indeed, after his first day of serious fighting near Werpin, Belgium on Christmas Day 1945, his platoon was down to only about a dozen men, and he as a Private First Class was the highest ranking soldier left.
I know of these horrific experiences of his because of a memoir he wrote late in life and which he gave me permission to use as source material for a book I am writing.
In that memoir he described American soldiers from other units who, in their rage at the German attack and slaughter of their friends, were forcing German prisoners to jump of a bridge to a rocky gorge below or be shot. He described artillery bursts that completely shattered trees creating open spaces where none had existed before and which split his helmet right down the middle. He spoke of soldiers so eager to escape further battle that they either went AWOL or shot themselves (self inflicted wounds) to escape combat. One soldier he knew even shot his foot completely off with his 45 caliber sidearm.
My uncle also described an attack on his infantry regiment by 2nd German Panzer Unit in mid-January 1945. Imagine if you will soldiers freezing to death in their foxholes because they lacked adequate winter gear. Soldiers who were easy targets for Germans in white camouflage because the Americans had been rushed into battle in their regular Green and Khaki uniforms. Soldiers whose anti-tank weapons and machine guns and even rifles had frozen up and who were easy prey for the machine guns on the panzer tanks that attacked them as they ran away in chaos, desperate to escape certain death.
Studs Terkel famously titled his book of interviews of WWII veterans “The Good War.” My uncle’s memoir brought home for me the terrible truth, however, that no war is good, though some may be necessary. And despite Pat Buchanan’s insane ramblings, WWII was a necessary war if only to end the mass slaughter that the Nazis had made their official state policy. The brutal and unjustified military aggression of Nazi Germany ultimately led to the deaths of millions of soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians, often in in the most ghastly and gruesome manner possible. The firebombing of whole cities. The mass execution of Jews, Slavs and other “inferior races” by the Nazis, some by shooting and some in mechanized death camps where poison gas was employed. The “collateral damage” of civilians caught between opposing armies. In all, 50 million or more people died as a result of Hitler’s wars of aggression.
The only good thing about WWII was when the fighting stopped. Today I honor my uncle’s memory by recalling his participation in helping to bring that horrific war to its end. I also honor his courage in writing honestly about the true nature of modern warfare as he experienced it. There was nothing glorious about the war he described. It must have been very painful to dredge up the memories of his many friends and comrades and even enemies whose deaths he witnessed, but I am grateful that he did.
Many people who never witness war up close and personal, including many stay at home Generals and Political Leaders speak with patriotic fervor of the honor and glory and sacrifice of the members of our armed forces, but their words ring hollow to me. All war, even a war of necessity, is the worst activity in which human beings can engage.
War is Death incarnate in all its worst manifestations. It kills and maims everyone in its path, from the youngest to the oldest and leaves no one unmarred who has survived its atrocities. We would do well to remember that when we consider the use of our military forces now and in the future.
I leave you with one passage from his memoir which I believe sums up as best as anyone can the horror of war he survived:
One particular tableau is with me to this day. The morning was bright and sunny, with a slight breeze. As we filed past one group of bodies, we could see that one GI with a head injury was lying on his back, propped against a log, and that a medic bending over him had started to bandage the wound when he too was hit. The ends of the bandage were streaming out in the breeze.