America In WWII 2013-01-02 February

HITLER, ‘MAN OF THE YEAR’ A A B-17 PILOT’S LAST MISSION

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THE MAD GASSER Was a Nut or a Nazi Poisoning Illinoisans?

The Magazine Of A People At War 194

HELL ON

WINGS! Hellcat Pilots Burn Japan’s Elusive Zeros

Errol Flynn on Trial Girls Accuse Hollywood’s Ladies’ Man of Rape February 2013

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WWII February 2013 • Volume Eight • Number Five

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36

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FEATURES

14 HELL ON WINGS A sudden vertical climb was all it took for a Japanese Zero to slip a pursuing American fighter— until the fast, nimble, and nasty Grumman Hellcat came along. By Brian John Murphy

22 THE MAD GASSER Temporary paralysis, tremors, nausea, burning skin... Was some Axis operative or local lunatic attacking little Mattoon, Illinois, with poison gas? By Chuck Lyons

28 D-DAY AT 900 YARDS As GIs splashed ashore under fire at Omaha Beach, artillerymen aboard the Carmick and other US destroyers took out German gun nests to help clear the way. By Michael Edwards

36 SCANDAL IN HOLLYWOOD Movie idol Errol Flynn had a way with the ladies. But when two teenage girls said he had his way with them, the news bumped the war off page one. By John E. Stanchak

2013 ANNUAL WWII TRAVEL PLANNER A Special Advertising Section A Pages 43–48

departments 2 KILROY 4 V-MAIL 6 PINUP: Dale Evans 8 FUNNIES: Superfanboy 10 LANDINGS: Gotham and the Good War 12 WAR STORIES 42 FLASHBACK 49 HOME FRONT: A WWII Who’s Who 50 I WAS THERE: Miss Victory 58 BOOKS AND MEDIA 60 THEATER OF WAR: Mister Roberts 62 78 RPM: “That Old Black Magic” 63 WWII EVENTS 64 GIs: The Final Mission COVER SHOT: At first glance here, Hellcat pilot Alexander Vraciu appears to be giving the No. 1 sign, an appropriate reaction to the turn of events in the Pacific air war since Hellcats arrived. Actually he’s using both hands to represent the six Japanese planes he just shot down in the opening minutes of the Battle of the Philippine Sea. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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WWII January–February 2013 Volume Eight • Number Five www.AmericaInWWII.com PUBLISHER

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Heidi Kushlan 717-564-0161, [email protected] A Publication of 310 PUBLISHING, LLC CEO Heidi Kushlan EDITORIAL DIRECTOR James P. Kushlan AMERICA IN WWII (ISSN 1554-5296) is published bimonthly by 310 Publishing LLC, 4711 Queen Avenue, Suite 202, Harrisburg, PA 17109. Periodicals postage paid at Harrisburg, PA. SUBSCRIPTION RATE: One year (six issues) $29.95; outside the U.S., $41.95 in U.S. funds. Customer service: call toll-free 866-525-1945 (U.S. & Canada), or write AMERICA IN WWII, P.O. Box 421945, Palm Coast, FL 32142, or visit online at www.americainwwii.com. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO AMERICA IN WWII, P.O. BOX 421945, PALM COAST, FL 32142. Copyright 2012 by 310 Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this issue may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission of the publisher. Address letters, War Stories, and GIs correspondence to: Editor, AMERICA IN WWII, 4711 Queen Ave., Suite 202, Harrisburg, PA 17109. Letters to the editor become the property of AMERICA IN WWII and may be edited. Submission of text and images for War Stories and GIs gives AMERICA IN WWII the right to edit, publish, and republish them in any form or medium. No unsolicited article manuscripts, please: query first. AMERICA IN WWII does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of advertisements or letters to the editor that appear herein.

A KILROY WAS HERE

A Thousand Words YOU MAY HAVE HEARD that a picture is worth a thousand words. I thought about that old bromide as I flipped through Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II and glimpsed a blur of what turned out to be page 65. I flipped back to take a closer look. The photo filling the page is mostly empty, with a squat sprawl of buildings plunked down in the middle of barren ground with snow-frosted mountains stretched across the horizon beyond. Someone obviously didn’t want the people here to have contact with the outside world. Many of the other photos have the same empty feel, even the close-ups of the internees mugging for the camera. The background behind their faces is distant. We glimpse beautiful country in the distance, but beautiful in a melancholy way. In fact, melancholy permeates these images. There’s little obvious squalor in the camp. The internees wear decent to fine clothing. They look well fed. But even when they’re smiling or celebrating— like dancing in kimonos on a traditional Japanese holiday or watching a couple of fellow internees sumo wrestle—something is missing. Actually a lot of things were missing: freedom, dignity, security. The list goes on. Most of the people here were American citizens, yet the nation’s fears after Pearl Harbor forced them to leave their homes on the West Coast and move inland to a secluded internment camp. That way, the reasoning went, any of them who might have considered aligning with their ancestral homeland would not be in position to provide intelligence that might, say, aid coastal air raids. Bill Manbo was one of these Americans. He and his family were forced from their home in Hollywood in 1942 and eventually ended up here at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center. He and his 35mm Zeiss Contax camera were responsible for the photos in this book, which he didn’t clutter up by tacking on captions. Kodachrome film, first marketed only seven years earlier, also had a critical role, making possible colors reminiscent of Hollywood’s Technicolor, but muted rather than brighter than life. We know who took these photos, but so many other scenes from the World War II years were saved to film anonymously. GIs trained in photography by the military snapped their shutters on battlefields, in military camps, on ship decks, and in any other corner of the world the war invaded. Manbo, the GI photographers, and others united in the same craft bequeathed to us millions of words’ worth of memories. Unlike Manbo’s colorful preserved moments, most of the images are black and white. You see an assortment of them in every issue of this magazine, telling war stories that can’t be expressed quite the same way in words. Our magazine wouldn’t be the same without them. So here’s to all those photographers. Maybe next issue, I’ll fill this column with one of their photos. If you’re counting words, that would give me 500 more than I have now.

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Carl Zebrowski Editor, America in WWII

A GIVE MY REGARDS TO COHAN IN 78 RPM [“A Holiday Melody that Grew on Us,” December 2012], editor Carl Zebrowski says Irving Berlin wrote “Over There.” Something deep in my cranium says maybe George M. Cohan wrote it. Kindly see the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring James Cagney. Remember at the end of the film everyone is singing it but Cagney—a good scene. NICK NARDELLA

V-MAIL

Chicago, Illinois

Editor’s note: Now that you mention the film, I can remember sitting in front of the TV as a kid watching Cagney sing the title song. Cohan did indeed write “Over There.” WHAT’S A DOOR GUNNER? THIS LETTER IS PROMPTED by “The Biggest Warbird House,” by Susan Zimmerman, in your October 2012 issue. On page 13 is the statement, “One woman talked on her cell phone to her 91-year old father, a door gunner [emphasis added] on a B-17 in the Eighth Air Force….” I have only been through a B-17 twice, and have never flown on one, but I know that the only “door” is the crew entrance on the rear of the fuselage’s starboard side, aft of the right waist-gun position. Also, a tiny quibble [about “The Guns that Won the War,” by Richard Sassaman, in the same issue]: the M-1 rifle uses a clip (no spring); the M-1 carbine uses a magazine (contains a spring to feed cartridges), not a clip. F RED W. DAVIS San Francisco, California

Editor’s note: “Waist gunner” is the proper term. Non-experts in military aviation often say “door gunner,” perhaps because the waist-gun opening on the plane’s starboard side is near the door or because the waistgun opening somewhat resembles a door. SHE GREW UP IN A WAR ZONE I WAS VERY INTERESTED in your story about Wurzburg, Germany, and Verne Baker [I Was There, “Liberating Dachau,” October 2012]. My wife came from Wurzburg in 1958. She was sponsored by the Ventnor 4 AMERICA IN WWII

F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

Foundation, which brought young German doctors to America to do their internships. She worked in the Shire Memorial Hospital, Somers Point, New Jersey, when I met her. We were married in 1961 in the castle pictured in your magazine [on page 52]. She told me that on March 17, 1945, the town was firebombed by the British Royal Air Force, with 100,000 civilians killed. Fortunately she lived with her family outside the center of town, so they survived. She said there was nothing but a chocolate factory there—though Baker said the Americans found an underground machine factory. She obviously was unaware of this. My wife passed away in 2006, but we enjoyed 47 wonderful years, and raised two fine boys. P ETER PARISI Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania

RETREAT TO MIAMI BEACH YOUR ARTICLE “Hitting the Beach” [Home Front] in the October 2012 issue brought back memories of my post-WWII experiences on a different beach. My father, Private First Class William K. Jackson, Company I, 413th Infantry, 104th Infantry Division Timberwolves, was killed February 23, 1945, in the Roer River crossing at the start of Operation Grenade. My mother internalized her grief, but by late 1945 it surfaced in the form of nervousness and a rash. The cure was a complete change of scene from our Clearfield, Pennsylvania, home.

Her father, a wealthy man, made arrangements for her and me to spend the next six months living in the Normandy Plaza Hotel on Miami Beach. I was in the sixth grade and was enrolled in the Dade County elementary school, about a half-mile walk from the hotel. I came home from school every day, put on my bathing suit, and scoured the beach for about a quarter mile in each direction looking for war items that were still washing up, like pieces of packing cases. The vendors who rented beach chairs and umbrellas had air corps surplus. I was able to rent yellow inflatable life rafts and Mae Wests [life jackets] and spent hours in the surf pretending to be a downed pilot. The hotel’s lifeguard and two bellhops were WWII veterans, and they took me and mom under their wing. The lifeguard taught me to swim, and the two bellhops, Jack and Leo, squired my mom, more than 10 years their senior, to dances and other affairs to get her mind off her loss. The cooks at the hotel made my breakfast every morning, packed my lunch for school, and sent me on my way. W ILLIAM S. JACKSON Hummelstown, Pennsylvania

SAME NAME, DIFFERENT FATE YOUR V-MAIL “Who Killed the Sullivans?” [October 2012] interested me. The only book I have found concerning the USS Juneau (CL-52) [the ship the five Sullivan brothers went down with on November 13, 1942] is Left to Die: The Tragedy of the USS Juneau, by Dan Kurzman (1995). The crew list includes the name John Joseph O’Donnell, seaman second class. I served on the second USS Juneau, the CL119. The first John Joseph was killed, but the second John Joseph is still living. J OHN JOSEPH O’DONNELL McLean, Virginia

Editor’s note: We’re glad to hear about the second John Joseph’s fate. And we appreciate him writing to us. Send us your comments and reactions— especially the favorable ones! Mail them to V-Mail, America in WWII, PO Box 4175, Harrisburg, PA 17111-0175, or e-mail them to [email protected].

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WWII PINUP

Dale Evans

Dale Evans is usually remembered as the wife of Roy Rogers, wearing a cowgirl getup, standing next to her favorite singing cowboy. It’s true that she found fame when she met Rogers, but success didn’t come to her overnight. Born Frances Octavia Smith in Texas in 1912, Evans struggled against long odds from early on. Married at 14 and a single mom at 17, she set out to make a living in the music business, a difficult challenge under any circumstances. She sang with some big bands in Chicago until a talent scout noticed and got her a screen test with Paramount. She almost snagged a role beside Bing Crosby in 1942’s Holiday Inn, but instead signed with Twentieth Century– Fox and played bit parts in feature films. A role opposite John Wayne in 1943’s The War of the Wildcats launched her career in westerns. The following year, she met and starred with Roy Rogers in The Cowboy and the Senorita, and a star was born. The couple married in 1947, and the King of Cowboys and his Queen of the West went on to star in radio, movies, and television through the 1980s. It was Evans who wrote their enduring theme song “Happy Trails.” After Rogers died in 1998, Evans kept on working, hosting her own television show and running the Roy Rogers– Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Missouri, until her death in 2001.

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A THE FUNNIES

Superfanboy by Arnold T. Blumberg

H

E READS ’EM.

HE BREATHES ’EM. HE SLEEPS ’EM,” proclaimed the cover of Supersnipe Comics. There were no truer words for 10-year-old Koppy McFad, who had dreamed of becoming a hero like the heroes in the comic books he collected. Superhero comics were widely popular when the United States entered World War II, with young and old alike thrilling to the adventures of Captain America, Superman, Wonder Woman, and others who battled the Axis. The idea of a devoted young male comic book fan was already a stereotype when cartoonist George Marcoux introduced Koppy, a cartoon boy who loved comics so much he decided to don his red flannel long johns, a cape, and a mask to become Supersnipe, the first superhero to rise from the ranks of ordinary comic book readers. Making his neighborhood safe from small-time crooks, Koppy imagined he was an adult adventurer meting out justice to Adolf Hitler, Hideki To¯jo¯, and Benito Mussolini. Dubbed the Man of 1953—a nod to DC Comics’ Man of Tomorrow, Superman—

Koppy’s alter ego first appeared in Street and Smith’s Shadow Comics No. 3 and Army and Navy Comics No. 5 in 1942. Koppy staged a coup and took over the latter title, which became Supersnipe Comics with the very next issue. Writer Ed Gruskin of the Doc Savage comic book helped steer Supersnipe’s later escapades. Supersnipe Comics ran past the end of the war, concluding in late 1949. By that time Street and Smith was looking to get out of the comic book superhero business—and it wasn’t the only publisher trying to flee. The end of the war had brought one of the genre’s only significant declines in sales, as kids like Koppy turned their attention to other heroes. Superheroes were out, and hipshooting cowboys and counter-communist spies were in. A DR. ARNOLD T. BLUMBERG is an educator and the author of books on comic books and other pop culture topics. He resides in Baltimore, Maryland.

Above, right: The dreams of young Koppy McFad came true when he debuted as Supersnipe in 1942, including an appearance in Army and Navy Comics No. 5. Above, left: Soon starring in his own Supersnipe Comics, Koppy tussled with petty crooks while imagining himself a full-grown crusader battling the likes of Hitler. Above, center: Koppy’s alter ego makes a mess of Nazi artillery. 8 AMERICA IN WWII

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A LANDINGS

Gotham and the Good War by Tom Huntington

I

T’S A BRILLIANT October day when I arrive at the New-York Historical Society on Central Park West. On the front steps I come face to face with General Dwight D. Eisenhower—a life-size cutout of Ike sitting in a jeep. On either side of the building entrance, twin kiosks display Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photograph of the sailor and nurse kissing in Times Square on Victory over Japan Day. It’s the iconic image of wartime New York, a definitive moment in time captured on film at the end of a long and difficult struggle. What brings me to New York City’s oldest museum is the exhibit WWII & NYC. Featuring more than 300 artifacts, including posters, models, paintings, sculpture, and uniforms, WWII & NYC tells the story of the wartime Big Apple. It’s a twosided story that covers not only how the war affected the city, but also how the city affected the war. Artifacts that were part of that history are scattered throughout the historic society building, but the main exhibition is on the first floor, which had a role of its own in the war—Red Cross volunteers rolled more than four million surgical sponges here for use mostly in overseas combat zones. Just inside the gallery entrance, snippets of Edward R. Murrow’s radio broadcasts from London during the 1940–1941 German Blitz are playing. Even today the air raid sirens in the background give me a sense of foreboding. I turn a corner and find a long bronze cylinder with a flat, rounded head. It looks like a scale-model of a Jules Verne submarine, but it’s actually a portion of the cyclotron that physicists working on the Manhattan Project at Columbia University built to smash atoms. It was an important

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The iconic kissers photo on this WWII & NYC banner outside the New-York Historical Society was shot two miles away.

step on the road to the atomic bomb. Nearby is a signed copy of a letter that Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt on August 2, 1939, advocating development of nuclear weapons. More than two years after Einstein wrote his letter, war finally came to the United States. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, artist and sometime New York City resident Thomas Hart Benton painted a series of canvases he called Year of Peril, which originally went on exhibit in the city. On display here is Casualty, a stark image that includes a burning ship and the severed head and arm of a combat victim. WWII & NYC seeks to portray “how

central the city was to a war whose battles were fought thousands of miles away,” according to an exhibit press release. But the violence of war did come a bit closer than that. One portion of the exhibit is dedicated to the Battle of the Atlantic and tells the story of U-123, a German U-boat that slipped into the outer New York Harbor in January 1942 and sank Allied ships. One of its victims was the Norwegian freighter Norness. A platter that divers recovered from the wreck in 1993 is on display, near a glass case that contains a German Enigma code machine, which looks like an over-ambitious typewriter. A captured Enigma machine like this one helped turn the tide of war in the Allies’ favor. Some 900,000 New Yorkers served in the armed forces, but residents didn’t need to leave town to help the war effort. Artists employed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s arms and armor section designed armor for soldiers, and a prototype of the classic T21 helmet is on display. A sign on display that hung in front of Katy’s Delicatessen on Houston Street implored passersby to “Send salami to your boy in the army.” When I press buttons on a map in the center of the gallery, lights indicate where various defense-related offices and industries operated. Cases full of models and artifacts show me what they produced, from the PT (patrol torpedo) boats cranked out by the Elco Naval Division of the Electric Boat Company in Bayonne, New Jersey, to the top-secret Norden bombsight manufactured in Manhattan. There’s even a pigeon vest that the women’s underwear maker Maidenform manufactured to hold messenger birds. On Long Island, the Republic Aviation Cor-

ALL PHOTOS BY TOM HUNTINGTON

Above, left: Dwight Eisenhower wears his war face to greet visitors at the New-York Historical Society. Above, top right: An Enigma code machine like this one would have been aboard the German sub that sank the Norwegian freighter Norness just outside New York Harbor. Above, bottom right: Manhattan Project scientists working on the A-bomb at Columbia University built this cyclotron to smash atoms.

poration manufactured the P-47 Thunderbolt (a model hangs overhead), and Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation turned out its cat series of naval airplanes (Wildcat, Hellcat, Bearcat, and others). The pharmaceutical company E.R. Squibb in Brooklyn made syrettes of morphine to ease the pain of wounded soldiers. Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens, was the location of the US Army Signal Corps’s training center, where cameramen learned to photograph the war and where production facilities cranked out films to promote the war effort. As I proceed through the exhibit, I get a sense of how the war changed New Yorkers, especially women and minorities.

A display on Madison Square Garden includes a March 9, 1943, film clip of Jewish actor Edward G. Robinson performing there in We Will Never Die, a pageant put on to focus attention on the plight of European Jews under the Nazis. An exhibit about the navy’s WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) explains how 80,000 women trained at the Bronx’s Hunter College, which became known as USS Hunter. On display is a uniform jacket worn by Harriet Pickens of Harlem, who had to fight for her chance to contribute. She was one of the first three African American women who became WAVES, but joined only over the protests of the director of USS Hunter, who had to

IN A NUTSHELL WHAT WWII & NYC, exhibit running through May 27, 2013 WHERE The New-York Historical Society, New York City WHY A personal look at the role New York City played in the American war effort • More than 300 objects on display, plus films and audio • Insight into how the war changed the city For more information visit the society website at www.nyhistory.org or contact the society at [email protected], (212) 873-3400, or 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (77th Street), New York, NY 10024

be threatened with dismissal before she would accept black women. The exhibit’s final section focuses on the war experiences of a few representative New Yorkers. Some of them are famous— President Franklin Roosevelt, for one, as well as percussionist Tito Puente and filmmaker Sam Fuller. Others are less prominent, such as African American artist Jacob Lawrence, who served in an integrated unit of the coast guard and captured his experiences on canvas. In 1944 the Met exhibited his paintings. It was the first time the museum gave an African American artist his own show. One of his works on display here is No. 2, Main Control Panel, Nerve Center of Ship (1944), which could be classified as abstract realism. By the time I exit into the bright October sun, I have gained a new appreciation for the scope of the war and the vast resources that New York City contributed to help win it. I feel like I should head to Times Square and kiss a nurse. A TOM HUNTINGTON is a contributing editor of America in WWII and writes frequently for the magazine, including Theater of War, which appears in every issue. F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

AMERICA IN WWII 11

A WAR STORIES

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to the basement of their house, listening for the shrill noise of incoming incendiary bombs and exploding parachute mines. Pfingstberg was not a prime target, but Mannheim was, and it became a splintered city with piles of rubble and burning buildings in every direction. Fips often observed long processions of old men, women, and children wandering aimlessly along the country roads carrying, pushing, or pulling what was left of their belongings as they tried to escape the devastation. One dawn, Robert, a young soldier from the US Third Army’s 145th Battalion, began a patrol among the remnants of a train near Pfingstberg. As he approached a ramshackle boxcar, he noticed two girls picking through the rubble of what remained inside. He listened as the girls squealed with excitement upon finding derby hats in various colors and sizes, and for a moment the realities of the war passed with their laughter. They talked about perhaps selling the hats to the townspeople to bring them a few extra deutsche marks for food, even though hats were not a priority in those times. The soldier was stunned by the perplexing scene and addressed the girls. They froze, unsure what their next action should be. Then he smiled, signaling to them and saying “Alles [‘all’] is OK.” As fear left them, they slowly responded to the soldier with grins and bright eyes. And so began what was to be a courtship between Robert and Fips. The ravages of war were evident in every part of her village, and food was extremely difficult to obtain. Robert was aware of the girl’s predicament and occasionally sneaked to her family a NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Y BROTHER Jack N. Husted is the only marine I ever knew who never went to boot camp. He enlisted in St. Louis, Missouri, in January 1943 and passed a typing test. He was then sent to a naval recruiting office to help recruit V-12 program marines and female marines. [The V-12 Navy College Training Program granted bachelor’s degrees to future navy and marine officers.] Immediately he was made sergeant with dress blues, because the lowest rank for a recruiter was sergeant. But in May he was replaced by one of the women marines he’d recruited and was then reduced to the rank of private. From there, Jack was shipped to Linda Vista, California, where he waited for the next clerical school class to open in San Diego. While he was waiting, he went to the rifle range and eventually qualified as a marksman. To keep fit, he exercised daily with hand-to-hand combat training, then would head to a classroom for clerical training. After various assignments, he put in a request for line duty in the 23rd Regiment, 4th Marine Division. This went through, and Jack was assigned to Dawg Company [Dog Company, or Company D] for quartermaster duty. He shipped out immediately for the Marshall Islands (February 1944). Once the islands were secured, Jack was shipped to Maui, home base for the 4th Marine Division. The 4th Division went on to invade Tinian and Saipan in the Mariana Islands, and Jack was with them.

He survived his third invasion when the marines hit the beach at Iwo Jima in February 1945, where 6,000 marines were killed in action. While there, he witnessed the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi. From there Jack served as a quartermaster on Guam. I was there with the 3rd Marines, so Jack and I visited during mop-

ping-up operations. He then went on to Mindanao, in the Philippines, to load supplies aboard three ships bound for Beijing, China. Finally, he was honorably discharged on January 16, 1946, as a corporal. Jack’s only wartime regret? That he never had boot camp training. Yet he survived! Eugene W. Husted wartime marine, Florissant, Missouri

BOMBS, BREAD, AND BETROTHAL

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of the war, Fips (as the young woman was nicknamed), was living with her family in the village of Pfingstberg, near Mannheim, Germany. She was just 19 years old, but she had lived through a lifetime of terror. Many nights her two older sisters and mother scrambled OWARD THE END

Marine Private Jack Husted hit the ground running in World War II. Through an office SNAFU, he skipped boot camp and went straight into clerical and then combat service. He survived battle in hot spots including Iwo Jima, where he witnessed the raising of the US flag. 12 AMERICA IN WWII

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AM E RICA I N

WWII

L ingo! 1940s GI and civilian patter retread: a veteran of World War I who was spiffed up and returned to service like an old tire. one angel: army air corps slang for 1,000 feet closer to heaven than the ground; a pilot might say, for example, “We are flying at five angels” hen fruit: the fruit of a female chicken (requiring peeling to eat), otherwise known as an egg goldfish club: downed aviators rescued from among the fish in the sea

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

sack of flour or sugar, a loaf of bread or a can of coffee, and, on a great day, a small cut of meat. On a furlough he would run to the family’s small house, to be greeted with warmth. Together they would enjoy a meal and a little wine as they sat around the wooden kitchen table singing traditional German songs of happiness and love. The wistful romanticism of the German love song “Lili Marlene” caught the GI’s heartstrings as well as Fips’s. During World War II it became the unofficial anthem of the foot soldiers of every nation. No doubt that was because its verses spoke of a lonely soldier as he recalls the evenings when he would meet his girlfriend under a lamplight. The song transcended the hatreds of war and became dear to the devoted GI and the German girl. Fips and Robert were married in Pfingstberg on a sunny day in September 1948 as church bells chimed to announce their nuptials. The event was embraced by both family and friends, who celebrated by baking and cooking traditional specialties. A year later, Fips and Robert waved goodbye to her family as they boarded the trooptransport ship General Harry Taylor for the States. The pair’s wartime romance

GI Robert Kostenko and his German war bride, “Fips,” came to the States in 1949 aboard the USS General Harry Taylor (AP-145), seen here laden with returning troops in 1945.

continued for 60 years and was forever linked to their song, “Lili Marlene.” Carole Stanley Daughter of Robert Kostenko, wartime soldier in the Third Army, 145th Battalion, stationed at Neuostheim, Sandhofen Air Force Base, and Schlachthof-Mannheim Las Vegas, Nevada

THE BIG SLEEP IN FRANCE

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infantry training at Fort Hood, Texas, in December of 1944. While we were out in the field for a few days on bivouac, several officers came out and told us our training was over. They told us a little about what was happening at the beginning of what would be known as the Battle of the Bulge. The next day, some of our group were flown overseas. I was one of the others who were given enough money to find transportation to the East Coast. I caught a bus part way and eventually spent a short time at Fort Meade, Maryland, and at Camp Shanks, New York. From there I sailed on the Queen Mary to Glasgow, Scotland, and then down to Southampton, England. Before long I was crossing the English Channel to Le Havre, France. It was from Le Havre that I was sent to the front lines in France. Things got rough the second I was there. Here’s one little story about my time there. We were having it very rough. Shells were coming in fast, mostly 88s and mortar rounds. The group I was with were so close to the enemy that we were throwing grenades at them. All at once an officer came by, all hunkered over and hollering HAD MY BASIC

“Retreat and regroup.” We had a lot of casualties, wounded and killed. But we captured several enemy soldiers. The next night I lost my buddy. We were so exhausted we couldn’t dig a foxhole to sleep in, so we raked up leaves around a large oak tree for bedding and cover and fell asleep. The next thing I knew, two soldiers had a hold of me. My buddy was dead, but I was not wounded. Elmus L. Crenshaw wartime private first class, 70th Infantry Division Brookport, Illinois

AN ATHEIST CRIES OUT TO GOD

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O THAT THERE WILL BE no misunderstanding, I will start by stating that I respect all religious beliefs. But while in England, I had a soldier in my company who was a diehard atheist. Our company was deployed from England to northern France, and in one of our first bloody battles with the Germans, we were receiving the worst of the fight. We were forced to dig in. While dug in, I heard a soldier moaning and crying “Please, God, help me. Don’t let me die.” Thinking that one of my men was wounded, I crawled to where the moans came from to find a soldier in a fetal position, cringing and crying and repeating “Please, God, help me. Don’t let me die.” It turned out that the soldier was the atheist. I consoled him, calmed him down, and returned to my position. In time, other units came to reinforce us, and after more bitter fighting, we drove the Germans away. The following day, I called the soldier to our command post and asked him, “How come you were asking God to help you when you are an atheist?” He replied, “Gee, Sarge, for a while I forgot that I was an atheist.”

Harold A. Rodriguez wartime 1st sergeant, Company C, 38th Infantry, 2nd Division Anaheim, California

Send your War Stories submission, with a relevant photo if possible, to WAR STORIES, America in WWII, 4711 Queen Avenue, Suite 202, Harrisburg, PA 17109, or to [email protected]. By sending stories and photos, you give us permission to publish and republish them.

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AMERICA IN WWII 13

HELL ON WINGS A sudden vertical climb was all it took for a Japanese Zero to slip a pursuing American fighter—until the fast, nimble, and nasty Grumman Hellcat came along.

by Brian John Murphy

HELL ON WINGS by Brian John Murphy

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in his Grumman Hellcat, Ensign Robert W. Duncan maneuvered onto the tail of a darting Japanese Zero. His squadron—VF-5 of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown—was fighting to break up an enemy formation as elements of the US Pacific Fleet attacked Japanese-occupied Wake Island early on October 5, 1943. OARING THROUGH A DENSELY CLOUDED SKY

most of it. When the navy subsequently purchased their new FF1 fighter, a biplane with retractable landing gear, Grumman was truly on its way. By 1935 the arrival of faster monoplane fighters such as Britain’s Hawker Hurricane and Germany’s Messerschmitt Bf 109 had rendered biplanes such as Grumman’s F2F and F3F prototypes obsolete. Grumman then lost out on a military contract when the navy picked Brewster Aeronautical Company’s F2B Buffalo over its new monoplane, known as Design 18. In response, Grumman and Swirbul came up with something even better: the F4F-3 Wildcat. This new fighter was powered by a supercharged Pratt and Whitney Double Wasp radial engine and boasted Leroy Grumman’s specially designed folding wings, an innovation that would allow the navy to store more planes in an aircraft carrier’s hangar and fit more on its flight deck. Foreseeing the looming conflict in the Pacific, navy officials ordered 79 F4Fs in 1939 and 759 more in 1940. If the navy knew that war in the Pacific meant dealing with Japan’s vaunted Mitsubishi A6M2 Type Zero (also known to American pilots by its codename, Zeke), it did not discover just how dangerous that fighter was until the United States entered the conflict in December 1941. The Zero could out-turn any American fighter that pursued it, giving it an often decisive edge in combat. Built for attack only, however, it had no self-sealing fuel tanks and no armor to protect its pilot, a weakness that young Wildcat pilots soon learned to exploit by attacking Zeros from high above. Still, US Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers clearly needed help—and help was on the way. Six months before the Pearl Harbor attack, the navy had ordered two prototypes of Grumman’s latest fighter design, the state-of-the-art F6F Hellcat. On June 26, 1942, the first of these made its maiden flight. In September, the first production model—the F6F-3 Hellcat—took off. Grumman workers

Previous Spread: Lieutenant John M. Clarke, a landing signal officer, sends a Hellcat F6F zooming from the flight deck of the USS Lexington (CV-16) with a wave of his flag. Above: Japanese Zeros roar to life atop what is probably the aircraft carrier Shokaku. Light, fast, and maneuverable, the Mitsubishi-built fighters dominated Pacific skies until late 1943. Opposite: By February 1943, F6F-3F Hellcat frames covered the floor of Grumman’s plant on Long Island. By the fall, the first completed models were challenging the Zero. Opposite, insets: Grumman’s speedy rollout of Hellcats earned the Army-Navy Production Award, better known as the E Award (E for excellence). Commenting on his company’s success, Leroy Grumman said simply, “We always tried to do a solid job.” 16 AMERICA IN WWII

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ALL PHOTOS THIS STORY: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Duncan had already downed one Zero, the first ever claimed by a Hellcat. Now, his fresh quarry pulled back on the stick, opened the throttle wide, and began a steep climb—a tried-and-true Japanese tactic. Quick-accelerating Zeros had easily been able to out-climb US Navy fighters, which would often stall amid steep ascents. Then, as a luckless American pursuer struggled to regain control of his plane, a Japanese pilot would turn hunter, gracefully pulling out of his climb to descend on the struggling American warplane that was now in his gunsight. Duncan’s quarry was at the top of his loop, starting to head back down, looking to whip around and destroy what he expected to be a helpless victim. Instead, .50-caliber bullets tore into the Zero and sent it plummeting into Truk Lagoon. Duncan was astonished by the ease of his kill. “All the planes that he had shot down before were Wildcats,” Duncan said of his foe, “and he was used to having those Wildcats pilots pull up and start to stall and he could finish out his loop and shoot them down.” Indeed, Duncan’s brand-new F6F Hellcat closely resembled the F4F Wildcat, the fighter that had to this point in the war stocked the decks of American carriers. But similar silhouettes aside, the Hellcat was a far more dangerous machine, one that would allow navy fighter pilots to quickly rewrite the rules for dogfighting in the Pacific. First unleashed in the Pacific just a month before the Wake Island strike, the Hellcat was, like its predecessor, the product of Grumman Aircraft Company, the Long Island manufacturer led by Leroy R. Grumman and Leon “Jake” Swirbul. The two engineers had begun their venture early in the Great Depression in patchwork fashion, selling rebuilt truck frames and overhauled planes. But when they got a chance to design and build a new float for the navy’s Vought O2U Corsair seaplane, they made the

got busy churning out $1 million worth of airframes and parts each day in a new 2.5-million-square-foot plant assembled from scraps of New York City’s dismantled Second Avenue El (elevated train). US Navy and Royal Navy orders for the new Hellcat, combined with massive contracts for the TBF Avenger torpedo-bomber and other warplanes, produced thousands of new jobs at Grumman Aircraft, whose facilities would eventually bustle with 20,000 employees. Unencumbered by the labor problems that plagued other manufacturers, Grumman turned out 1,100 Hellcats in the first 12 months of production to win the coveted navy E award for excellence. By war’s end the company would make 12,272 Hellcats.

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EANWHILE , THE NEW H ELLCAT ’ S DESIGN and the American war effort both got an indirect boost from an unlikely source. On June 3, 1942, amid Imperial Japanese Navy efforts to divert American warships north prior to challenging Pacific Fleet forces at Midway Atoll, Zeros from

the carriers Junyo and Ryujo were attacking the docks and air facilities at the US Navy base at Dutch Harbor, in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Among the Japanese pilots was Flight Petty Officer Tadayoshi Koga, whose Zeke took a bullet in an engine oil line, forcing him to head for deserted Akutan Island, 25 miles to the east. There, Koga glided in to land on a grassy-looking patch of ground that was actually a bog. His plane halted so quickly in the thick mud that it flipped upside down. Koga’s fellow pilots had standing orders to destroy any of their own downed aircraft to keep them out of enemy hands, but they refused to risk killing their comrade. After a few minutes of deliberation, they headed back to the Ryujo. It turned out that Koga was already dead, and his plane was up for grabs on American ground. On July 20, six weeks after US Pacific forces had crushed the Kido Butai (the main Japanese carrier force) at Midway, a crewman on a navy plane piloted by Lieutenant William Theis spotted the flipped-over aircraft. Excited by the find, Theis got permission F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

AMERICA IN WWII 17

HELL ON WINGS by Brian John Murphy to lead a group of navy men to the site on foot and quickly identified the aircraft as a Zero, which somehow had survived without serious damage. Under a veil of secrecy the plane was crated up and shipped to California, where it was reverse-engineered, repaired, and flown by army and navy pilots who marveled at its light weight, speed, and agility. Equally impressed were Grumman engineers, whose upclose look at the plane inspired one immediate alteration to the specifications of the new Hellcat. Their heavy fighter’s 1,600-horsepower Wright R-2600-16 radial engine was not powerful enough to match the performance of the amazingly trim Zero. They therefore replaced its engine with a Pratt and Whitney R-2800-8 Double Wasp, which offered not only plenty of muscle, but also dependability and ease of maintenance. Even this power plant was soon upgraded with an R-2800-10 and augmented with a water-injection

guns—remained unchanged, the Hellcat’s top speed that ranged from 375 to 410 mph made the fighter faster than the Zero. “The Hellcat gave us not only the speed, range and climb to compete successfully against the Zero, but it could dictate the rules of combat,” recalled the Hellcat pilot Lieutenant Alexander Vraciu.

system that boosted horsepower and speed for short bursts. Knowledge gleaned from the Wildcat’s fighting record and from the design of the captured Zero added up to a formidable new American fighter. The Hellcat featured a cockpit moved forward, with a redesigned, bullet-resistant canopy for better overthe-nose visibility. Bulletproof and deflecting armor shielded the pilot and the plane’s all-important operating systems, earning the aircraft maker the moniker Grumman Iron Works. The Hellcat’s enlarged wing area—an unmatched 334 square feet—gave it better takeoff and landing ability, and wider wheel alignment, a new electric retraction system, and having the gear beneath the wings rather than the nose made carrier landings and takeoffs safer. Though the firepower—six Browning M2 .50-caliber machine

support ground forces as a tactical bomber with racks under its fuselage to mount bombs and under its wings for rockets. Such versatility saved a carrier air unit crucial preparation time when organizing strikes. Plus, the addition of powerful new radar gear made the Hellcat an ideal night fighter. In the weeks following the F6F Hellcat’s combat debut, its pilots whittled away at vital Japanese air resources at Rabaul, New Britain, and came away thrilled with their new fighter’s capabilities. Lieutenant Hamilton MacWhorter, the first Hellcat pilot to reach five kills and thus earn the title ace, suggested the plane’s rare combination of power and speed in describing one of his 12 victories. “We were orbiting at 12,000 feet on combat air patrol, when we were given a vector to intercept four bogies at twenty-thou-

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O TOP IT ALL OFF,

the view from the Hellcat’s cockpit was not easily surpassed. “One advantage our plane has over any I’ve been in is its visibility for gunnery,” declared Grumman’s chief test pilot, Selden A. Converse. “You’ve got to have a steady gun platform to start with, but more important, you’ve got to be able to see something. One thing that always tickles me is that navy pilots come back and say, ‘Boy, what a gunnery plane!’” While the sturdy Hellcat had all the makings of a formidable fighter, it was no one-trick pony. The plane was also well-suited to

Above, left: A pair of Hellcat aces—Lieutenant Charles Stimpson (in the cockpit) and Lieutenant James Swope—take a break from duty aboard the USS Lexington. Above, right: The camera catches a laugh among Hellcat pilots (left to right) Lieutenant E.A. Valencia, Lieutenant W.J. Bonneau, and Lieutenant H. McWhorter of USS Essex (CV-9) Air Group 9 in March 1944. Opposite, left: As fast as it was rugged, the Grumman Hellcat made instant fans of pilots such as Lieutenant Clifford E. Case, who posed atop the escort carrier USS Tulagi (CVE-72) in July 1944. Case flew his F6F in the following month’s Allied invasion of Southern France. Opposite, right: By October 29, 1944, Commander David McCampbell had shot down 30 Japanese planes, each of which is represented in paint beneath his F6F’s cockpit. 18 AMERICA IN WWII

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sand-plus,” he recalled. “We applied full power and started climbing. By the time we got to 20,000, I spotted a single airplane ahead at 24,000, just making a bit of a contrail. I was climbing faster than the others in the division, and hit the water injection to catch up to him. I was right up on him at six o-clock and about one hundred feet below when I opened fire. He never made a move, but the engine went up and then his fuel tank caught. I was so close when he blew up that I had his engine oil all over the canopy. He went straight in as a fireball all the way down.” Among the best-kept secrets of the American war effort, details of the Hellcat’s development remained scarce long after Leroy A. Grumman acknowledged the fighter’s deployment on September 9, 1943. “It is not right to think of the Hellcat as a sort of big brother of the Wildcat,” he said. “It is a new plane, bigger, faster, more maneuverable.” Indeed, what had started out in blueprints as an

improved Wildcat had evolved into something entirely different. But comparisons to the stalwart though far less capable Wildcat were inevitable. “It’s a hundred percent better plane than the Wildcat,” Robert Duncan said later. “I flew it right off the bat without any difficulty. It’s like sitting in the seat of your mother’s lap.”

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LMOST AS FAST AS Grumman assembly lines could produce them, Hellcats were shipped off to Allied forces everywhere. The Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm eventually received 4,182 of the fighters, which equipped 14 frontline squadrons and were used to cover the invasion of southern France in 1944, as escorts for bombing raids against the German battleship Tirpitz, in anti-submarine warfare missions, and in combat in India, Burma, Southeast Asia, and Okinawa. With the Hellcat and the elegant Chance-Vought F4U Corsair (originally a land-based marine corps fighter first distributed to navy carriers in late 1944), US Navy aircrews could soon take on all comers and all missions in the Pacific. During the war’s final two years, the F6F (the bulk of which were F6F-3s and F6F-5s) would destroy 19 Japanese planes for every Hellcat lost. Against Zeros alone, the kill ratio reached 13:1 in the

Hellcat’s favor. In total, Hellcats destroyed 5,156 Japanese planes of all types—76 percent of all US Navy aerial victories—making it the most successful American fighter of World War II. The Hellcat enjoyed its most startling success on June 19, 1944, during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the crushing American naval victory that ended Japanese hopes of disrupting the American invasion of the Mariana Islands. In the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, as the two-day clash’s lopsided opening hours came to be known, Hellcats shot down roughly 275 of Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa’s swarming attackers. Alexander Vraciu, who led a division of USS Lexington Hellcats up into the sky that morning, remembered it vividly. “The full-power climb was too much for some of our tired engines, so I radioed our predicament to the FDO [fighter director

officer] who ordered my group to orbit at 20,000 feet,” he recalled. “A short while later we received a new vector of 265 degrees when the radar screens began to show another large force of enemy planes approaching. Taking that heading led us directly to a rambling mass of over 50 enemy planes 2,000 feet below, portside and closing—a fighter pilot’s dream. In the next eight-minute tail chase, I was able to splash 6 Judy dive-bombers, chasing the last two right into the task force AA fire. [“Judy” was the American codeword for Japanese dive-bombers.] Looking around at that point, only Hellcats seemed to be remaining in the sky.” Imperial Japanese Navy aviators who survived the war later recognized that by as early as mid-1943, they had been fighting against hopeless odds. By then—after less than two full years of battle—hundreds of experienced pilots had been killed and their irreplaceable planes destroyed. Scant new Japanese recruits were receiving only a fraction of the training and pre-combat flight hours afforded to thousands of fresh American airmen armed F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

AMERICA IN WWII 19

HELL ON WINGS by Brian John Murphy

Opposite: Airmen scramble to dispatch the first of several waiting Hellcats from the USS Yorktown (CV-10) in June 1944. Above: Alexander Vraciu celebrates after shooting down six Japanese dive-bombers in the opening minutes of the June 19, 1944, Battle of the Philippine Sea. Six months later, Vraciu was forced to bail out of his Hellcat after being struck by anti-aircraft fire while strafing Luzon in the Philippines. He survived.

from an inexhaustible supply of planes. And superior American resources had produced other less obvious weapons in the Pacific air war, including vastly improved radar and ship-to-air and other types of communication crammed into the combat information centers of aircraft carriers that sped up the tracking of enemy air movements and the dispatch of air assets.

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OST VISIBLE TO J APANESE AIRMEN

was the evolution of the bewildering array of American aircraft that included carrier-based fighters that ranged from the lightpunching Brewster Buffalo and the gutsy Wildcat to Vought’s distinctive Corsair and Grumman’s Hellcat. Featuring the same engine as the Hellcat, the Corsair was perhaps the Zero’s first equal in overall performance. “The Corsair was a nicer flying airplane,” recalled navy Commander Willis Hardy, “but I would rather, if someone was shooting at me, I wanted to be in a Hellcat.

The Hellcat can’t be beat if someone is shooting at you.” Edward Wendorf, who flew both models during the war, also appreciated the Corsair, but “loved everything about the F6F—its speed, stability, firepower, ruggedness and comfort. I actually had no dislikes of that plane ever.” Japanese fliers who thought highly of the Corsair were similarly impressed by the Hellcat, which US Navy pilots dubbed “acemaker” and “Zero killer.” In the revealing postwar book Zero, former Japanese officers Masatake Okumiya and Jiro Horikoshi had high praise for their Grumman nemesis. “Of the many American fighter planes we confronted in the Pacific,” they wrote in their book, “the Hellcat was the only aircraft which could acquit itself with distinction in a fighter-vs.-fighter dogfight.” A BRIAN JOHN MURPHY is a contributing editor of America in WWII and frequently writes articles and reviews books for the magazine. F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

AMERICA IN WWII 21

mad the g asser Temporar y paralysis,

tremors, nausea, burning skin… Was some Axis operative or local lunatic attacking little Mattoon, Illinois, with poison gas?

by Chuck Lyons

the mad gasser

by Chuck Lyons

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MATTOON, ILLINOIS, in 1944. Beginning in the late summer, a number of residents started reporting unusual health complaints. Some were temporarily paralyzed. Others suffered sudden bouts of illness. Still others felt a burning sensation around the mouth and nose. The cause? Poison gas. At least that was the consensus among the townsfolk. The media blamed “the Mad Gasser of Mattoon.” Police investigated the incidents of suspected gassing, but could never identify a Mad Gasser. Some authorities questioned whether there was a gasser. But the local residents had no doubt. Mattoon, one investigator wrote, became “a town on the edge of panic.” Rural families moved in with friends in town, and children weren’t allowed out after dark. Over the years, theorists have proposed various scenarios to explain what happened in Mattoon. In 2003, one local writer went so far as to name a specific resident as the Mad Gasser. Could one of these theories be right? Or was it all just a case of mass hysteria, as some experts insist? Strange Odors, Sickness, and Paralysis MATTOON IS A SMALL TOWN in east-central Illinois. The 1940 census counted 15,827 residents. Four years later, one of those residents became the first to experience a suspected gas attack. During the overnight hours of August 31, 1944, into September 1, Urban Raef, who lived in the northwest part of town, noticed a strange odor in his bedroom. He felt sick to his stomach and vomited. He woke his wife, who thought the problem might be natural gas leaking from a blown-out pilot in the house. When she tried to get out of bed to check the pilot light, however, she was

unable to get up. Later that same night, a young mother who lived close by the Raefs was awakened by the sound of her daughter coughing but, like Mrs. Raef, found herself unable to leave her bed. A third woman reported similar symptoms that night. The following night, another incident occurred. Aline Kearney, a young housewife, was in bed reading the newspaper at 11 P.M. on September 1 when she noticed a strong, sweet odor seeping into the room. “At the time I thought it might be from flowers outside the window,” she said. “But the odor grew stronger, and I began to feel a paralysis of my legs and lower body. I got frightened and screamed.” Kearney’s sister, who was in the house at the time, heard the scream and came to see what was the matter. She, too, noticed the odor. The two women determined it was coming from an open bedroom window. When Kearney’s cab-driver husband returned from work about 12:30 A.M., he spotted a prowler outside the house and gave chase but was unable to catch him. He later described the prowler as a tall man wearing dark clothing and a tight-fitting cap. These incidents made page one of the Mattoon Daily Journal–Gazette’s September 2 edition under the banner headline “Anesthetic Prowler on Loose.” A subhead announced “Mrs. Kearney and Daughter First Victims; Both Recover; Robber Fails to

Previous spread: It was every soldier’s terror in World War I: poison gas! WWII GIs prepared to face it, too, as this gas-masked sergeant is doing at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in 1942. But the people of Mattoon, Illinois, never dreamed they’d witness its horrors—until the Mad Gasser struck. Top: Mattoon was a pleasant town with its own postcard. Above: By September 1944, however, terrifying stories in the town’s Daily Journal–Gazette sparked panic. Opposite: A shadowy miscreant was spraying toxins into local homes, perhaps using a bug-killing flit gun. 24 AMERICA IN WWII

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OPPOSITE: SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

PREVIOUS SPREAD: PHOTO BY JACK DELANO. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. RIGHT & TOP: MATTOON PUBLIC LIBRARY, LOCAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OMETHING STRANGE WAS GOING ON IN

Get into Home.” Upon seeing the coverage of the Kearney incident, the Raefs and the two other women victims also came forward. Hunting for a Gasser— or an Explanation ADDITIONAL ATTACKS followed— two more on September 5, seven on the 6th, one on the 7th, another on the 8th, two on the 9th, three on the 10th, and one, the last reported attack, on September 13. In one of those incidents, an 11-yearold girl was found unconscious in her bedroom. In another, the gasser was spotted and described as being a woman dressed as a man. In yet another, the gasser was seen carrying a flit gun, a hand-pumped sprayer used to dispense pesticide. Police began to receive numerous calls of footprints under bedroom windows (including some women’s prints), of tears in window screens, of mysterious blue vapors and buzzing sounds. The town’s 10-man police force was put on 24hour alert, and the Illinois State Police and even the FBI became involved. The first hard evidence emerged on September 5. That night, Carl and Beulah Cordes returned home around 10 P.M. and found a piece of white cloth slightly larger than a man’s handkerchief on their porch. Mrs. Cordes picked up the cloth and smelled it and became violently ill. She described the effect as being similar to an electric shock. “It was a feeling of paralysis,” she said, “My husband had to help me into the house and soon my lips were swollen and the roof of my mouth and my throat burned. I began to spit blood and my husband called a physician. It was more than two hours before I began to feel normal again.” Police speculated that the cloth might have been left on the porch by the gasser to knock out the family dog. A skeleton key and a large, almost empty tube of lipstick were also found on the sidewalk in front of the house. The cloth was analyzed, but authorities said they found no chemicals on it that could explain Mrs. Cordes’s reaction. Had Mrs. Cordes simply gotten hysterical over the errant piece of cloth, as some suggested? Still, where had the cloth come from? Panic was beginning to set in. “People were just scared pea-green,” Virginia Dodson, who lived in Mattoon in 1944,

later said. “It was strange. If you went to town at the time you saw people putting up their storm windows—and the weather was warm.” What was happening in Mattoon was picked up by newspapers across the country, one of which even suggested that the Nazis might be employing poison gas against US civilians. Other stories proliferated: the gasser was a mental patient, an inventor testing a new discovery, kids pulling off a prank, or even an ape-man, a theory that came from a long history of reported Bigfoot-like sightings in central Illinois. Mattoon police had simpler ideas. In the beginning, they theorized the attacks might have been connected with robbery attempts. The Kearneys, for example, were believed to keep large sums of money in their home. That idea was soon abandoned, however, and police shifted their focus to another possibility: industrial pollution.

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OLICE CHIEF C.E. COLE told a press conference, “We have found that large quantities of carbon tetrachloride are used in war work done at the Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company plant and that it is an odor which can be carried to all parts of the city as the wind shifts.” He added, “It also leaves stains on cloth such as those found on a rag at a Mattoon home.” Atlas quickly responded that the only tetrachloride at the plant was in fire extinguishers. For manufacturing, a spokesman said, the factory used trichloroethylene gas. He claimed that trichloroethylene was odorless and did not produce ill effects in humans. It had been in use for a while, he said, and no one, including workers at the plant, had reported any ill effects before. The police abandoned that theory and moved on.

An Attack of the Past—Connected? IT WAS THEN THAT POLICE MADE a surprising discovery: a strikingly similar series of incidents had occurred in Virginia a decade earlier. In that outbreak, about a dozen incidents were reported by residents of Virginia’s Botetourt County, north of Roanoke. The attacks occurred between December 22, 1933, and February 2, 1934. After at least three of the Virginia attacks, a woman’s footprint was reportF E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

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the mad gasser edly found beneath the window through which the gas was believed to have been sprayed. After the last attack, discolored snow was discovered near the victim’s house. The snow had a sweet odor, and analysis showed it to contain sulfur, arsenic, and mineral oil. Authorities speculated that it might be insecticide residue. In other Virginia incidents, victims reported hearing voices outside the windows that they believed were later used to spray in gas. There were also reports of cars driving back and forth in front of homes that were later attacked. In Virginia, as would happen later in Mattoon, panic infected the community. Families in isolated areas moved in with friends in more settled areas, men began patrolling at night armed with shotguns and rifles, and the local Roanoke Times newspaper pleaded for calm.

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Mattoon outbreak a copycat crime? Again no conclusions were reached. Mass Hysteria and a Vengeful Outcast LOCAL OFFICIALS BEGAN TO FOCUS on the more likely idea of an individual perpetrator coupled with mass hysteria. Thomas V. Wright, local commissioner of public health, announced in 1944 that “there is no doubt that a gas maniac exists and has made a number of attacks. But many of the reported attacks are nothing more than hysteria. Fear of the gas man is entirely out of proportion to the menace of the relatively harmless gas he is spraying. The whole town is sick with hysteria.” After Wright’s statement and after other authorities announced their belief that many of the incidents were based on hysteria, the number of reported gasser incidents dropped substantially. The mass hysteria theory has gained ground through the years and is now generally accepted as the cause of what happened in Mattoon. A 1945 article in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology explored the Mad Gasser of Mattoon as a study in mass hysteria. Several years after the incidents, critics blamed the Mattoon newspaper for most of the incidents, charging that it all but created the Mattoon panic by its inflammatory coverage. But even Commissioner Wright had been unwilling to dismiss all of the Mattoon attacks as hysteria. Picking up on that theme, in 2003 a local man wrote a self-published book about what happened in Mattoon in 1944, suggesting a solution and even naming a possible perpetrator. In his book The Mad Gasser of WOLFGANG SCHARMER

25, 1934, around 9 P.M., a dog at the Virginia home of Chester Snyder began barking. Snyder jumped out of bed and grabbed his shotgun. Darting outside, he ran across the yard and fired a shot at a man he saw creeping along a ditch about 20 feet from the house. The shot missed, and Snyder ran back inside for more ammunition. By the time he returned, the man was gone. In at least two other instances, shots were fired at prowlers. As in Mattoon, the cause of the Virginia attacks was never uncovered. Confronted with such similarities, police wondered if the two outbreaks were connected. Was the same person behind both? Or was the

by Chuck Lyons

gassers and ghosts he Virginia gas attack reports of 1933–34 may not have been the only incidents similar to what happened in Mattoon. Loren Coleman, author of Mysterious America: The Revised Edition (2001), has investigated and written about Mattoon’s Mad Gasser as well as other unexplained phenomena. He discovered what he calls “the Midwest’s precursor to the Mad Gasser of Mattoon”: the Ghost of Paris. The ghost, says Coleman, began appearing shortly after the American Civil War and resurfaced off and on over the next 70 years, terrorizing the small town of Paris, Missouri, northwest of St. Louis. A number of people claimed to have seen the ghost and described him or her as tall, dressed in

26 AMERICA IN WWII

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A smokescreen stands in for poison gas during US Army infantry training at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in September 1942.

black, and carrying some type of wand. Local tradition said the ghost appeared every October and then randomly until spring, when the sightings stopped.

Coleman also mentions two other incidents that may be connected to what happened in Mattoon. In February 1944, he wrote, three people in southeastern Pennsylvania died after coming into contact with what was described as “a sweet-smelling gas.” He also reports that in December 1961 a “sweet-smelling gas” was detected during a Christmas program at a Houston Baptist church. The church’s congregation rushed outside into the fresh air, but not all of them were quick enough. Eight people, mostly children, were admitted to the local hospital. Pennsylvania’s poison perfumer remained at large like the other ghostly gassers. —Chuck Lyons

PHOTO BY JACK DELANO. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Opposite: Could industrial fumes have caused the symptoms Mattoon residents felt? Police said Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company gave off carbon tetrachloride. But the plant’s only tetrachloride was in fire extinguishers like this one. Above: Perhaps an Axis saboteur was to blame. The possibility of gas attacks had crossed the government’s mind; these masks at a Maryland arsenal were for civilian use.

MATTOON PUBLIC LIBRARY, LOCAL HISTORY COLLECTION

suggested that she knew what had caused the whole string of inciMattoon, chemistry and physics teacher Scott Maruna pointed to dents. “My boss (State’s Attorney W.K. Kidwell) said a woman a local man named Farley Llewellyn as the attacker, a man he had gambled away her husband’s paycheck and didn’t want him labeled as “mentally-disturbed.” Llewellyn, wrote Maruna, was to know it,” she said. “So she made up something about being the son of a prominent Mattoon grocer and at the time of the gassed and said the money was stolen. That started the thing attacks was a chemistry student at the University of Illinois. going.” Maxey did not identify the woman. Isolated from the local community because of suspicions that he Today, the mass hysteria theory is the was a homosexual, Llewellyn was “an most widely accepted explanation of outcast and recluse” who never “fit in,” the Mattoon incidents. In fact, psycholMaruna claimed. ogists are widely conversant with what “When I spoke with people who happened in the Illinois town and refer knew him…, the same words would to the Mad Gasser events as a textbook keep coming up over and over again— case of mass hysteria. “The best evi’odd,’ ‘different,’ ‘recluse,’ ‘loner,’” dence for the hysteria hypothesis is the Maruna told the Journal Gazette in nature of the symptoms and the fact 2005. “Although he was highly intellithat those cases seen by physicians— gent and excelled in school, no one ever though there were only four—were really understood him.” diagnosed as hysteria,” writes UniverThe attacks, Maruna said, were sity of Illinois psychologist Donald based on Llewellyn’s desire for revenge A notice in Mattoon’s paper reveals the extent of M. Johnson, who studied the Mattoon against the town that he felt had rejectlocal panic, asking “roving bands of men and boys” incidents. “All symptoms reported are ed him. Maruna points out that many to disband and urging people to put away guns. common in hysteria. The hypothesis acof the attacks were clustered around counts for the rapid recovery of all victims and the lack of afterLlewellyn’s home and that the first victims had actually attended effects.” high school with Llewellyn. Maruna also claims that Llewellyn’s But not everyone would agree. “No one cared what the police two sisters, Florence and Kathryn, were involved (explaining the said,” Beulah Cordes, the woman who had found the cloth on her women’s footprints) and that they had carried out one or more of porch, said in 1958. “We knew it was true about the madman. the attacks in order to draw suspicion away from their brother. The mothers wouldn’t let their children out of the house and nobody went uptown. We weren’t taking any chances.” A Case (Not) Closed A NOTHER, EVEN SIMPLER, EXPLANATION has also been suggested. In 2005 Marge Maxey, a Mattoon resident who was working as CHUCK LYONS writes frequently for America in WWII about odd a secretary in the Coles County State’s Attorney office in 1944 occurrences on the WWII US home front. F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

AMERICA IN WWII 27

D-DAY

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As GIs splashed ashore under fire at Omaha Beach, ar tiller ymen aboard the Carmick and other US destroyers took out German gun nests to help clear the way.

by Michael Edwards

D-DAY AT 900 YARDS

by Michael Edwards

TUNNED A MERICAN INFANTRYMEN were pinned down on Omaha Beach. Booming German coastal guns and lead-spitting machine-gun nests studded the cliffs before them. In the tumbling sea behind them, navy gunships struggled to hit invisible targets with rockets. With few tanks on Omaha’s exposed sands, knots of desperate GIs looked around and wondered how they would ever get off the beach. American destroyer commanders were pondering the same thing. Though lightly armored and modestly armed, their ships, known as “tin cans,” were as tough as the men who crewed them. Their quickness and versatility suited them to all sorts of dangerous assignments, and after 30 months of war, the US Navy had given them plenty. Now, off the shores of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, their naturally aggressive commanding officers would get a chance to add to their fighting reputations with startling new boldness.

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bers soon put them in the paths of bigger and faster enemy ships by the score. Many of them, such as the USS Carmick (DD-493) of the Bristol class, would travel a long and varied path to Normandy. Built by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation, the Carmick was commissioned in December 1942 and joined Destroyer Squadron 18 (Desron 18) of the US Atlantic Fleet the following March. With a length of 348 feet and a width of 36 feet, Commander W.S. Whiteside’s slim new warship boasted four fiveinch guns and an assortment of torpedoes, anti-aircraft guns, and depth charges. She carried 208 officers and sailors and could crank her speed up to 35 knots. From her station at Norfolk, Virginia, Carmick immediately entered the convoy business, escorting supply ships north to Canada and east to North Africa. After striking a submerged object in heavy fog in June 1943, and undergoing four months of repairs, she helped guide a convoy to Ireland before reporting to

The value of destroyers had first been made clear during World War I, amid the Allies’ life-and-death struggle against German Uboats. To protect their vulnerable troop transports and supply ships, British and American naval forces installed a destroyerbased convoy system based on new tactics and technology. A generation later, however, the advent of a two-ocean war—against Germany’s reconstituted Kriegsmarine (“War Navy”) in the Atlantic-Mediterranean area and the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific—had magnified the American destroyer’s importance. In the years immediately preceding World War II, the US Navy had launched several new classes of destroyers. America’s December 1941 entry into the war spurred the development of still more. With dollars scarce, their low price tag and growing num-

the Caribbean Sea. There she served with the escort group screening for the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-12), the impressive new replacement for the carrier of the same name sunk during the October 1942 Battle of Santa Cruz. Late April 1944 found the Carmick, with 34-year-old Commander Robert O. Beer now at its helm, and the balance of Desron 18 at Weymouth, England, sharing berthing space with the British destroyers Melbreak, Talybont, and Tanatside. By now, the launch of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, was just weeks away. Amid airtight secrecy, these ships joined thousands of others preparing for their roles in it. On April 28, a stunning German attack on a training convoy near Slapton Sands, just off England’s southern coast, reinforced

Previous spread: American soldiers pour from LCIs (Landing Crafts, Infantry) into the Omaha Beach killing zone at Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. LCI-553 (center) was struck later by 88mm shells and wound up a wreck. Above: USS Carmick gunners hammered German positions during the D-Day landings and remained intact herself when this photo was taken the following day. Opposite: At Normandy and elsewhere, Allied naval forces leaned heavily on destroyers, whose speed earned them the moniker “greyhounds of the sea.” Here, destroyers escort aircraft carriers bound for the invasion of southern France in August. 30 AMERICA IN WWII

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the need for proven escorts such as the Carmick. During a preinvasion drill called Exercise Tiger, a quick-striking force of nine German E-boats (fast torpedo boats) waded into a group of eight Allied LSTs (Landing Ships, Tank)—transports known by their crews as Long, Slow, Targets—burning LST-507, sinking LST531, and damaging LST-289. More than 700 American sailors and soldiers died, and the disaster sent worries rippling through the Allied command that the Germans had sniffed out the Overlord plan. Still, five days later, American ships were back at Slapton Sands, where Task Group 124 was conducting Operation Fabius, a landing and fire-support exercise. In it, Desron 18 sharpened its skills in patrolling and securing sea lanes and worked with shore firecontrol personnel. After departing to shepherd nine transports to Scotland, the Carmick and her sister ships returned once more to Slapton Sands to train in shore bombardment, practice that would soon come in handy. On May 12 Carmick and the USS Endicott escorted an ammunition ship to Greenock, Scotland. The balance of the squadron soon joined them there for additional training with

joint army-navy shore fire-control parties. The work included training to battle E-boats, firing at towed aerial targets to sharpen anti-aircraft skills, and additional bombardment drills.

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CARMICK AND HER SISTER DESTROYERS were back in Weymouth Bay at 1:00 A.M. on May 28, when Luftwaffe aircraft raided Portland. Shore guns fired on the enemy planes, but the American destroyers remained silent—one of many drastic steps being taken to prevent the Germans from discovering any hints about the coming assault. Already, sailors were sequestered on board their vessels, and army personnel were stuffed into tightly guarded coastal staging areas known as “sausage camps” for their shape when depicted on maps. In Operation Neptune, the naval element of Overlord, Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk’s Western Task Force (Task Force 122) would carry General Omar Bradley’s US First Army. One portion, Task Force 125, would head to Utah Beach as Assault Force U. The other, Task Force 124—or Assault Force O, including Desron 18— HE

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AMERICA IN WWII 31

D-DAY AT 900 YARDS Bay of the Seine

by Michael Edwards

sweepers from enemy shore battery if necessary,” according to the ship log. Despite Western all the precautions, mines claimed the first Pointe de Task Force Barf leur (US S ECTOR) Allied naval casualty of Operation NepOmaha Beach Barfleur Eastern Normandy, France tune, the American minesweeper Osprey, US First Army Task Force ( B RADLEY ) Rear Admiral John L. ( June 6, 1944 B RITISH S ECTOR) Sa i re on the evening of June 5. Pointe de Hall Saire By 3:40 A.M. on June 6, exploding ASSAULT Quettehou British FORCE O bombs and zipping German anti-aircraft Second Army ( D EMPSEY ) Rear Admiral C.F. tracer shells were lighting up the dark sky Force Bryant Augusta U above Normandy. “This display of bombBOMBARDMENT Force Force Force GROUP ing was a great morale factor to the entire G J S O MAHA Texas Ancon ship’s personnel,” the Carmick’s log B EACH GlasgowDesron 18 (Including Carmick) noted. But as crews aboard the 18 ships of G. Leygues Pointe du the Assault Force O bombardment group Ste-Mère-Église e d h es Hoc Montcalm R ocnd camp a Arkansas Gr were about to discover, the predawn air Vierville 0 4 J D L G O U assault would scarcely soften German N St-Laurent O Colleville miles SW defenses at Omaha Beach. Courseulles OR Isigny Aure D Rear Admiral C.F. Bryant’s bombardHoulgate Carentan s e l l Seu ment group packed plenty of punch: the Bayeux Ouistreham Cabourg Dives battleships Texas and Arkansas, a group A M N R D O of British and French cruisers, and a Y u e Ta N rô m Caen Ell D dozen American destroyers, including the e Balleroy Troarn Carmick, McCook, and Thompson. These three were assigned to cover the landings along Omaha’s western was bound for Omaha Beach. Under Rear Admiral John L. Hall, beaches, the Dog beaches—Green, White, and Red. Shortly before Assault Force O would support General L.T. Gerow’s V Army 5:50 A.M., Beer announced over the Carmick’s intercom, “Now Corps, featuring the veteran 1st Infantry Division, the 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions, and the 29th Infantry Division. The Omaha hear this! This is probably going to be the biggest party you boys beachhead stretched roughly five miles from Utah in the west—the will ever go to—so let’s all get out on the floor and dance!” Then, second American landing zone—to Britain’s Gold Beach in Bryant’s poised ships opened fire. Observers on the the east (beyond which lay British-directed Juno and Carmick saw the first wave of troops hitting Omaha Sword beaches). Beach at 6:45 A.M. The Carmick’s log noted that the ship came under fire two minutes later, then “German Shore Battery silenced by Main FTER LINGERING rough weather forced Battery of this ship. No damage resulting a one-day postponement, the invafrom enemy fire.” sion forces sailed south on June 5 At Omaha, a nightmarish combination of into an English Channel littered with an circumstances soon produced a near disasuntold number of floating mines, both Gerter. This nasty corner of Field Marshall man and Allied. That meant delicate work Erwin Rommel’s imposing Atlantic Wall for destroyers such as Carmick, McCook, boasted high bluffs packed with a dizzying and Satterlee, which served as escorts for the array of camouflaged, virtually impregnable British ships of Minesweeping Flotilla 4. The concrete bunkers and pillboxes. Inside them, Carmick’s deck log recorded that “it was felt that German crews manned heavy naval guns, artillery mines constituted the greatest danger to both the pieces, and anti-tank guns. Elsewhere, rocket-launching minesweepers and destroyers.” On the other hand, it consites, mortar pits, and an astounding 85 machine-gun nests sited tinued, the “presence of the mines made the encountering of with interlocking fields of fire dotted the ground commanding German submarines very unlikely.” Omaha’s sands. The defenders included men of Germany’s 352nd As the fleet neared the French coast, Carmick and her sister Infantry Division, a veteran outfit on whose presence senior ships took up escort duty for British Minesweeping Flotilla 167, American commanders had not counted. whose job it was to sweep the near-shore portion of the fire supNeutralizing enough enemy hotspots to help the infantry access port channel for bombarding ships off Omaha Beach. Specifically, the beachhead’s few exit routes inland required heavy firepower, the Carmick was to serve as “anti-E boat escort, and to protect TA S K F O R C E B O U N D A R Y

Naval Bombardment

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32 AMERICA IN WWII

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LEFT & OPPOSITE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Above: Crewmen of the USS Carmick replenish their ship’s ammunition supply on June 10, 1944. Four days earlier, in support of the landings at Omaha Beach, their ship had pounded cement-encased German gun positions with 1,127 five-inch shells from close range. Opposite: During the sort of down time that did not exist on D-Day, members of the crew of Carmick’s five-inch gun No. 1 pose for the camera.

D-DAY AT 900 YARDS

by Michael Edwards

WHAT’S IN THE NAME?

N

34 AMERICA IN WWII

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

AMING A NEW SHIP would seem simple enough. But during World War II, American shipbuilders armed with fat government contracts were churning out hundreds of new vessels, all of which required names. Fortunately, the US Navy had long since established a flexible system for christening its ships based on their types and classifications. Aircraft carriers, for example, were traditionally named for famous battles (Yorktown, Saratoga) or other ships (Hornet). Battleships were named for states, and submarines for fish and other sea creatures (Lionfish, Stingray). Destroyers were named for distinguished US Navy or Marine Corps veterans. The USS Carmick honored Daniel Carmick, a Philadelphia native who became one of the marine corps’s early heroes and highest-ranking officers. Born in Philadelphia in 1792, Carmick made a name for himself during the nation’s undeclared Quasi-War with

Major John Carmick, for whom the destroyer USS Carmick was named, epitomized the spirit of the young US Marine Corps.

France from 1798 to 1801. In May 1800, Carmick led marines from the USS Constitution and the merchant sloop Sally on a daring raid to Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo (then a French colony and now the Dominican Republic), making off with the British ship Sandwich,

held by French privateers, and capturing a local fort before slipping away. A decade later, President James Madison’s authorization of the marine corps’s expansion resulted in Carmick’s promotion to major, a rank second only to that of the corps’s commandant. In 1811 Carmick served in one marine campaign to put down a slave revolt and another against the notorious Louisiana-based smuggler Jean Lafitte. Two years into the War of 1812, General Andrew Jackson dispatched Carmick and a force of volunteers to blunt a British thrust south of New Orleans. At Chalmette on December 28, 1814—less than two weeks before Jackson’s smashing victory in the Battle of New Orleans—Carmick was encouraging his troops when a British rocket struck him in the head. He lingered for nearly two years before dying on November 6, 1816. —Michael Edwards

LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

tently providing the destroyer’s shipboard communications men kind of lengthy pre-assault naval barrage that was, unfortunately, with a play-by-play of the desperate situation on shore. “Their unsuited to a surprise attack. Allied planners had expected precise remarks were quite detailed and to the point,” Beer recalled. air attacks and fast-arriving armor to pulverize many of these “We could also hear the whine of enemy machine-gun sites. But most of the bombs loosed along Omaha’s bullets over their foxhole, which they were rapidly coastline had dropped far inland. And the bulk of digging deeper. Their situation was certainly the army’s specially designed duplex-drive appreciated by the men listening to the SCRSherman tanks, outfitted with canvas skirts and 608 receiver in C.I.C. [combat information propellers to allow navigation across the center], but unfortunately there was nothing water, disappeared in the heavy channel surf. we could do to help them.” Splashing ashore, horrified troops of the The soldiers on Omaha’s chaotic beaches 29th Division’s 116th Infantry (temporarily needed heavy naval gunfire support from in attached to the 1st Division) and the 1st close. Heavy-bottomed battlewagons were Division’s 16th Infantry on their left flank unsuited to that kind of point-blank, preciquickly discovered that the torrent of explodsion blasting. And the nine rocket-shooting ing steel thrown at German defenses had failed LCT(R)s—Landing Crafts, Tank (Rocket)—on to bury them. The ships of Assault Force O now hand to provide such fire proved ineffective. For did their best to make up for that. Beneath ominouslighter but thin-skinned multi-tasking dely gray skies, the Carmick, for instance, fired at sites “over practically the whole of Omaha From a mile off shore, heavy German coastal stroyers, it was possible, but potentially suiguns (like this one, scorched by GIs a week cidal. Still, Bryant implored his charges to beach,” the ship log noted, where drifting after D-Day) were virtually impossible to spot. meet the challenge: “Get on them, men! Get smoke and early morning haze forced landon them! They’re raising hell with the men on the beach, and we ing craft off course to deposit confused troops on the wrong beachcan’t have any more of that! We must stop it!” The McCook crept es. Severed communications between ships and fire-control parties to within 1,300 yards of shore and let loose with her five-inch ashore cost infantryman desperately needed naval gunfire support. guns. Pushing his luck, Beer ordered Carmick to get “as close to The Carmick, which would make contact with her own shore party the beach as safe navigation and traffic would allow”—a scant just twice during the entire day, lost touch with the unit shortly after 900 yards—and did the same. The Doyle, Emmons, and numer8:10 A.M. Eerily, the spotters’ radio switch had jammed, inadver-

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

For several tense hours on D-day, the logjam at Omaha Beach threatened to stall the entire Allied assault. Once it was cleared, however, US Coast Guard–manned transports were free to empty their vast holds of supplies.

ous others followed close behind, targeting German guns wherever they could be discovered. Plagued all day by busted communications, Desron 18 commanders stepped up their improvisation. Cued by tanks firing at cliff-side targets above Exit D-1, the road from Green Beach to the town of Vierville, Carmick opened up on the same sites until they fell silent. The destroyer and tankers subsequently teamed up in a sort of “silent cooperation” to obliterate a series of additional obstacles. Beer’s ship even used the rifle fire of infantry pinned behind a beachside house as a target reference, then neatly deposited shells that cleared a path forward. Meanwhile, his ship’s log recorded, “an enemy medium caliber gun was so placed that it would command the length of Dog Beach and was intermittently firing into the landing craft.” For half an hour Carmick raced to pound every possible location of that gun. The gun eventually stopped firing. With the situation on Omaha Beach still in doubt by late morning, General Omar Bradley began mulling something drastic: closing the Omaha beaches and diverting his second wave of troops, the balance of the 29th Division, to the other four main beaches (Juno, Sword, Utah, Gold). The massive invasion force was balancing on a carefully timed schedule. With thousands more troops and endless amounts of equipment due to come in behind it, any serious delays could turn the cluttered beaches into a virtual maelstrom and buy the Germans time to reinforce. But progress was being made. In the early afternoon, in concert with the USS Frankford under Captain Harry Sanders, commander of Desron 18, the Carmick took aim at a strong point on Fox Green (a beach to the east). The destroyers’ combined blasts silenced the area and allowed relieved American troops to charge ahead and take a number of prisoners. Staying dangerously close to shore, Sanders’s destroyers steamed up and down the Omaha beaches, exposing their thin hulls to sizzling German naval guns and their keels to the obstacle-strewn shoreline. With increasing frequency, five-inch shells

found their marks, cracking open the bluff’s rock-hard encasements and laying waste German guns and their unwitting crews. The uptick in accurate fire boosted the remarkable efforts of infantrymen on the beach. Scrambling in small knots off the death-filled beach flats, they fought their way up Omaha’s rugged heights to challenge German defenders in bunkers and pillboxes. Late-arriving Sherman tanks loudly announced their presence, hammering the cliffs and clearing blocked beach exits through which relieved GIs streamed. And while the ubiquitous destroyers continued to pepper the heights, 12- and 14-inch shells loosed by the hulking Texas and Arkansas slammed into the earth—and into German units—beyond.

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Y 1:00 P. M ., HARD - PRESSED German troops atop the bluffs were beginning to withdraw or surrender. By midafternoon, the immediate danger on Omaha Beach had passed. Bradley’s patience was rewarded as beach traffic cleared and his follow-up waves poured ashore. By day’s end, the Allies had gained a foothold on Nazi-occupied France, the first step in a colossal effort to sweep German forces from occupied Europe. Later, after D-Day’s success was assured, Colonel S.B. Mason, the 1st Division’s chief of staff, wrote to Hall: “I am now firmly convinced that our supporting naval gunfire got us in; that without that gunfire we positively could not have crossed the beaches.” The sharpest, riskiest, and timeliest of that fire was the doorstep blasting done by the Carmick and her sister ships. Best known for their willingness to take on all comers, they set a new standard at Omaha Beach. A

MICHAEL EDWARDS writes from New Orleans, where US Marine Corps Major Daniel Carmick, for whom the destroyer Carmick was named, fought during the War of 1812 and suffered a wound to the head that eventually killed him. F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

AMERICA IN WWII 35

Scandal in Hollywood Movie idol Errol Flynn had a way with the ladies. But when two teenage girls said he had his way with them, the news bumped the war of f page one. by John E. Stanchak

PREVIOUS SPREAD: LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY PHOTO COLLECTION

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T WAS AN AUTUMN NIGHT IN 1942. A pair of Los Angeles police detectives showed up at the Mulholland Drive home of movie star Errol Flynn, and a butler let them in. What followed stuck to the standard outline of a B-movie crime drama. The detectives told Flynn to get his hat; he was going downtown. He had been accused of a sordid crime. Combat action was about to get shoved off the front pages of America’s newspapers. A celebrity was setting off the largest and loudest domestic news bomb of the era and writing himself into the home-front history of WWII America. At that time, everyone knew the name Errol Flynn. He had made the hits Captain Blood (1935) and Robin Hood (1938). Debonair and handsome, charming and athletic, fearless and dashing, a lover and a pal, he was a movie-star paragon and a popular culture idol. For the better part of a decade, working for Warner Brothers Pictures, Flynn had literally carved out a swashbuckling film image playing pirates, soldiers, and Western heroes, slaying bad men with swords or pistols while swinging from a ship’s rigging or riding a galloping horse. Gossip columnists made sure fans knew about his carousing in nightclubs and flirting with other men’s wives. He enjoyed hot cars and was a skilled yachtsman. “I like my whiskey old and my women young,” he famously remarked. Now, Flynn was being accused of liking his women too young. The LA District Attorney’s office claimed he had bedded an underage girl; he was facing charges of statutory rape. The accusations confused Flynn. While still at his home with the detectives, he asked, “What’s it all about?” The officers said it was about statutory rape. “Rape?” he recounted in his 1959 memoir. “I didn’t know what statutory rape meant. I didn’t know the difference between statutory rape and rape. Rape to me meant picking up a chair and hitting some young lady over the head with it and having your wicked way. I hadn’t done any of these things.” He told the police, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” They said, “It concerns a Miss Betty Hansen—and we are holding you…. She’s a teenager and she’s been picked up for vagrancy. Among her possessions we found your phone number, and she has claimed that you had sexual intercourse with her on a certain date.” The police drove Flynn to LA’s juvenile hall. Attorney Robert

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Scandal in Hollywood

by John E. Stanchak

Ford met them there and they all went in to confront Hansen and hear her accusation. Flynn recognized Hansen as a “frowsy little blonde” he had met, and he described her looks as “gruesome.” He had met her at an afternoon party at a house rented by three bachelor friends. Like other women there, she flirted with Flynn, but drank too much and became ill. Flynn said he helped her upstairs to a bed and bathroom and helped her clean up. To the best of his recollection, that was the end of the matter. But the detectives said Hansen described her encounter with Flynn in some detail: “She said she could even describe you. You got undressed, but you kept your socks on.” In front of Flynn and Ford, the officers asked Hansen if the actor before her was the man who had had sex with her. She said yes, but avoided voicing details and kept her gaze fixed on the floor. “Did you put up a fight?” Flynn’s attorney asked. “No, no,” Hansen answered. “Why should I?” The blunt reply took the officers aback. They told Flynn and Ford to go, with the old admonition “Don’t leave town.” On the ride home, attorney and client decided the DA’s office had a weak case and knew it. They speculated this would be the last either of them heard of the matter. But they were mistaken. On Wednesday Flynn was called before a Los Angeles County grand jury. There, an assistant district attorney introduced Hansen and a second minor, Peggy LaRue Satterlee, now age 16, to jury members. The prosecutor charged that Flynn had had inappropriate sexual contact with both girls: with Hansen at the house party and twice with Satterlee aboard Flynn’s yacht Sirocco in the summer of 1941. The assistant DA asked for an indictment on multiple charges of statutory rape. Hansen, an aimless teen from Nebraska, had come to Hollywood with vague hopes of employment in the movie business. She had sometimes worked as a waitress or drugstore clerk. As she confronted Flynn, she was facing four years in the juvenile penal system for vagrancy and a charge of committing an oral sex act. She would go free if she testified. Satterlee, a California native, said Flynn had taken her on a weekend cruise around Southern California’s Catalina Island. One evening aboard the boat, he invited her into his quarters to “look at the moon” from the superior vantage point of the cabin’s porthole. There and then, and again the next day, he took advantage of her, she claimed. When she got back to port, she contacted her

Previous spread: In Los Angeles County Court on January 20, 1943, Peggy Satterlee coyly hides her face as attorney Jerry Geisler shows her a photo of herself in pigtails. Geisler was questioning her about her age as he built a defense for actor Errol Flynn, whom Satterlee and another girl accused of statutory rape. Above: Flynn (at home with his dog in 1943) was known as a playboy. Opposite: Americans loved him as the swashbuckling star of movies such as 1935’s Captain Blood. In 1945, he’d take his plucky style into a WWII setting in Objective, Burma! 38 AMERICA IN WWII

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mother, who took her to a hospital for examination and then filed a complaint with the DA’s office. Satterlee was nobody’s picture of innocence. After her mother filed the complaint against Flynn in 1941, prosecutors discovered Satterlee had already had a “mature” relationship with another man and had undergone an abortion, then a California felony. The DA dropped the investigation. But not long after Flynn and his attorney left their jailhouse interview with Hansen, LA police arrested Satterlee at a nightclub where she was working underage as a chorus girl. The DA’s office decided she should testify alongside Hansen in this new statutory rape accusation; if she didn’t, they would prosecute her for abortion. Before the grand jurors, Hansen repeated her story about Flynn bedding her. Satterlee recounted her testimony about the cruise. Flynn testified, too, denying every charge. Grand jury members considered the case quickly and returned a decision of “not true” or “not proven.” Flynn was free to go. But the matter was not concluded. Under state law, a local prosecutor could ignore a grand jury judgment and push a case to trial. In the smoggy atmosphere of 1940s LA justice, that is what happened, raising questions that have never been settled.

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background story was that studio head Jack Warner had contributed to the campaigns of thrice-elected District Attorney Buron Fitts. But he did not contribute to the war chest of John F. “Honest John” Dockweiler, who unseated Fitts in 1940, running on an anti-corruption and reform platform. When Dockweiler won, Warner lost influence. It was well into October when LA police formally arrested Flynn on four counts of statutory rape and took him to the Los Angeles Hall of Justice for processing. While attorney Ford arranged bail, his suave client, nattily dressed and wearing his trademark pencil-thin mustache, sat on a bench with other detainees, getting advice on which lockup would be the best place to serve his time. Flynn recalled one man saying, “Errol, don’t get down to Lincoln. They don’t give you a break down there. The county jail is the best…. For Christ’s sake, a guy lives well here.” Another said, “Of course the best thing can happen to you, you are sent to the Honor Farm. There it is fine. You are out in the sunshine. All you have to do is try to get a rake, and scratch up something.” Ford realized he was out of his depth. Flynn was going to need a specialist: Jerry Geisler, criminal attorney to the stars. Geisler had successfully defended clients against everything from bribery to vehicular homicide. But he was expensive, so Flynn went to Jack Warner for help. Warner offered a loan at steep interest. Business was business. POSTERS CO URTESY OF WWW.DO CTORMACR O.COM

OCALLY, THE ACCEPTED

Harold Lee “Jerry” Geisler (pronounced “Geezler”) had come to California from Iowa for his health after high school, put down roots, studied law, and worked for a noted local attorney. As a lawyer, he helped successfully defend attorney Clarence Darrow on a charge of jury tampering. Much later, he had defended then–District Attorney Fitts on bribery and perjury charges. By 1942 his reputation in Hollywood and Beverly Hills was such that “Get me Geisler” was slang for big trouble. In North Africa, the British bested German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s troops at El Alamein and US troops went ashore in Morocco. The Soviet army was encircling invading Germans at Stalingrad and, in the Pacific, the Japanese were fiercely resisting US forces on Guadalcanal. And anytime there was a development in the Flynn case, news of these earth-shaking war events was pushed to the bottom of newspapers’ front pages. The proceedings finally began in January 1943. Geisler jammed the jury with nine women and only three men. Flynn’s sex appeal and charm would help more if the jury were largely female, he calculated. The court was called to order on January 9. The judge demanded decorum, but there was loud buzz when Flynn arrived, flanked by Ford and Geisler. At Geisler’s suggestion, the film idol had shaved his famed mustache. He dressed conservatively but sharply. The trial convened in the Los Angeles County Court House, whose courtroom had only a select few seats for the general public. Because of the case’s racy nature, minors— except the two involved—were barred. But the hallways were jammed with fans hoping for a glimpse of Flynn. Geisler encouraged Flynn to talk to the press at the courthouse. The ace defender had noticed the public support flowing Flynn’s way and wanted to encourage it. District Attorney Dockweiler wasn’t feeling well, so prosecution duties fell to Deputy District Attorney Thomas Cochran, a gray-haired, bespectacled veteran of the DA’s office. A few weeks into the proceedings, Dockweiler died. Cochran was as polished in presenting his witnesses as Geisler was in selecting the jury. He had Satterlee show up in flat shoes, bobby socks, and a childlike pinafore, her hair in braided pigtails. Hansen was presented as a shabby, worn-down poor soul, confused by legal sophistication and big-city fuss. Her mother came from Nebraska and told the press her daughter was “a clean little Christian girl.” The prosecutor made plain that he intended to demonstrate these girls were innocents—and Flynn was a wolf. After days of opening statements and preliminary witnesses, Hansen took the stand on January 14. A visibly sympathetic Cochran coaxed her to tell her story. It was intended to depict how a naïve, hopeful girl alone and adrift in the Hollywood shark pool F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

AMERICA IN WWII 39

Scandal in Hollywood

by John E. Stanchak

© BETTMANN /CORBIS

would almost inevitably fall victim to a predator such as Flynn. Under Geisler’s cross-examination, Hansen’s story became a little less woeful. At Geisler’s urging, she repeated that Flynn had placed her on a bed and removed all her clothes. When the narrative came to the point where she said Flynn removed her trousers, Geisler asked if that move had troubled her. “I didn’t have no objections,” replied Hansen. The gallery erupted in laughter. The next day Geisler worked to reveal Hansen’s motives. “Didn’t you testify before the county grand jury that you committed an act of perversion [an oral sex act]?” he asked. When she affirmed this, he added, “Do you know that this constitutes a crime in California?” Hansen answered “Yes.” Geisler asked, “And you hope not to be prosecuted for this act?” She answered “Yes.” Next Geisler asked Hansen if Flynn spoke while “having the act with you.” She replied, “He said I have a nice pair of breasts.” Then Geisler queried, “Anything else?” And Hansen answered, “Yes. And I had a nice fanny.” Geisler pressed forward on one more detail: “Miss Hansen, the act itself lasted how long, please?” “About fifty minutes,” she said. “About fifty minutes?” he repeated, and Hansen said, “Yes, that’s right.” “And during that entire time, he was on top of you?” asked a visibly incredulous Geisler. “That is right,” Hansen answered. Elsewhere in the world, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill were meeting with French leader General Charles de Gaulle in Casablanca, Morocco, discussing the next moves against German forces. But in Hollywood, New York, and all the America in between, for a moment nobody cared. They wanted to know what was happening to Errol Flynn.

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LYNN WAS COPING . Hanging out in courthouse hallways, he gossiped with bailiffs and policemen and flirted with Nora Eddington, the redheaded teen who worked the lobby’s cigar counter. On some evenings Flynn sang and danced in a patriotic studio vehicle, Thank Your Lucky Stars. Before his court crisis, he and his wife, hot-tempered bisexual French actress Lili Damita, known around Hollywood as Tiger Lil, had separated. But rumor had it he was keeping 18-year-old Linda Christian at his home for late-night entertainment. On January 19, it was Satterlee’s turn on the witness stand. She elaborated on her earlier teen years—trying to get cast as a movie extra, picking up small modeling jobs, and working at nightclubs. As a 15-year-old, she took a job with other shapely young women, being photographed in bathing suits with Flynn aboard Sirocco for a Warner Brothers promotion. She caught Flynn’s eye, she said, and he offered to take her on a weekend cruise. She then repeated

Above: Flynn’s trial was a national obsession, as were his teen accusers. Peggy Satterlee (left) was a chorus girl and model with a troubled past. Betty Hansen (right) drew laughs with her blunt answers and sexual descriptions. Opposite: Flynn had charm on his side. But awareness of what a guilty verdict would mean was written on his face as he arrived for arraignment in October 1942 with attorneys Robert Ford (left) and Geisler. 40 AMERICA IN WWII

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LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY PHOTO COLLECTION

her story about being ravished at sea twice by the actor and about being asked to look at the moon through his cabin porthole. She added that Flynn knew she was a minor and had jokingly called her JB—for jail bait—and SQQ—for San Quentin quail. When his turn came, Geisler pounced. He drew on a poster board a freehand representation of the Sirocco, its position on the sea, its direction of travel, and the location of the porthole, and had Satterlee approve each detail. When asked if this was when she looked at the moon through the porthole, she said it was. Geisler then introduced an astronomer who substantiated that the vessel, the porthole, and the people involved were in no position to see the moon while traveling in that direction on that evening. In follow-up questioning, Geisler confirmed Satterlee had had an abortion and feared prosecution if she didn’t cooperate with the DA against Flynn. He then questioned a character witness, a Canadian flyer who was her sometime boyfriend. Under oath, he verified a bizarre story about taking her to a mortuary after hours, where she had frolicked with corpses in an unseemly manner. Spectators gasped and Satterlee broke out in a nervous cackle. Next, Flynn took the stand. Once again he refuted both girls’ stories, stating he had merely helped the ill Hansen to a bed at the party and had taken Satterlee only for an extended boat ride. He also claimed not to have known either girl was underage and said he never called Satterlee Jail Bait or San Quentin quail. All the while, Flynn looked, sounded, smiled, and charmed like only he could, making eye contact with the jurors and embracing the

gallery with his gaze. When court adjourned for the day, he sat in the witness chair for press photographers, making a visual record of what he dearly hoped had been a triumph. It was well into February when Cochran made his closing arguments. It was obvious Flynn was guilty, he told the jurors. It was only up to them to decide if he would serve a year in county jail or 50 in state prison. He concluded, “Send this man to San Quentin where he belongs.” The defense got the last word. “I say to you it’s not the defense that has tried to smear the character of these girls,” Geisler said in closing. “Unfortunately, the girls smeared themselves long before I ever heard of them or they ever heard of me.” On February 5 the jury retired to consider its verdict. It came back 24 hours later. As the foreman prepared to read the result, Geisler squeezed Flynn’s knee hard. Then came the words “Not guilty.” Spectators cheered. Reporters raced for phones. Flynn’s ordeal was over. The actor repaid Warner, divorced Tiger Lil, and late that summer married cigar counter clerk Eddington. Geisler went on to bigger and equally famous court battles. Satterlee disappeared, later married, and became a grandmother. Hansen evaporated from view almost completely. What lasted was a phrase that originated around the time of the trial, and whose possible double-entendre was not lost on lusty young men, GI and civilian alike: “in like Flynn.” A JOHN E. STANCHAK writes from Philadelphia. F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

AMERICA IN WWII 41

A AMERICA IN WWII FLASHBACK

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BOB GABRICK COLLECTION

GREYHOUND LINES 42 AMERICA IN WWII

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A HOME FRONT

A WWII Who’s Who by Carl Zebrowski

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Time magazine were sitting around their New York City offices brainstorming ideas for something to publish over the winter holidays of 1927. It was the time of year when government and business all but shut down as the politicians and executives who normally made the news were busy with yuletide visits and family dinners. Someone in the meeting tossed out the possibility of naming the most important man in the world for the year, putting together a write-up on him, and printing his picture on the cover. It could be an annual tradition. And it would be faithful to the vision that founders Henry Luce and Britt Hadden had for Time: pulling together all the biggest news stories in one place, telling them with emphasis on the people who made them happen, and placing them in the larger context of history. The idea got the OK, and the editors chose their first Man of the Year: Charles Lindbergh. In May of that year, 1927, Lindbergh had flown from New York City to Paris in the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. What the editors couldn’t have known was that a little over a decade later, Lindbergh would grab the national spotlight again, touring the country to rally Americans against US intervention in a war that was fast engulfing Europe. The war that Lindbergh wanted the United States to stay out of had not yet begun in 1938. But Time’s editors recognized that it was coming, and that its catalyst was a quirky, ferocious German nationalist named Adolf Hitler. So it was that Hitler became 1938’s Man of the Year. “He had torn the treaty of Versailles to shreds,” the editors explained, referring to the restrictions and other conditions placed on Germany when it surrendered to end World War I. “He had rearmed Germany HE EDITORS OF

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Time made it clear in 1938 that Man of the Year was not necessarily an honorary title.

to the teeth—or as close as he was able. He had stolen Austria before a horrified and apparently impotent world.” With Great Britain and France neglecting to stamp down Hitler’s imperialist ambitions and actions, the path to war was clear. Time’s selection of Hitler was not popular. Readers perceived Man of the Year as an honor; all previous recipients of the title were chosen for positive reasons. But the logic behind the title was that it went to a person who had a potentially historychanging effect on world events in a given year. No one could argue that Hitler wasn’t such a person. The next Man of the Year was Soviet Premier Josef Stalin. He had made a non-aggression pact with Hitler in August 1939 that included a promise not to intervene if Ger-

many invaded Poland. With that, the last obstacle to German aggression was gone, and Hitler sent in his troops a week later. With Europe at war, there were no such things as slow news periods for Time. But Man of the Year was well established by then and was popular with subscribers and newsstand shoppers. So the tradition continued, and the war provided the editors with a glut of nominees. For the next few years, Man of the Year became rather predictable. The cigarchomping, age-defying bundle of energy Winston Churchill was chosen in 1940, the year he rallied his British countrymen against impending German attack with sobering realism: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” The next year, right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt took the title for the third time, having taken it the year he won his way to the White House and then again for instituting the New Deal. Stalin earned a repeat, too, for his fight against the Germans after Hitler broke their non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The next three were General George Marshall, for the payoff now arriving from his prewar push to build up America’s military; General Dwight D. Eisenhower, for the invasion of Germanoccupied France; and President Harry S. Truman, for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. WWII personages continued to take the title after the fighting ended. Marshall was Man of the year again in 1947 and Truman in 1948. To top it all off, Churchill, one of the first world leaders to understand fully the threat of Hitler, took the honors in 1949—with the title modified to the impressive Man of the Half Century. By the end of the 1940s, Time’s Man of the Year roster read like a Who’s Who of World War II. A F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

AMERICA IN WWII 49

A I WAS THERE

Miss Victory by Ruth Licking with Kayleen Reusser

LIBRARY

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COURTE SY OF RU TH LICK ING

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UTH L ICKING ( NÉE C OOPER ) was born in 1921, so she was old enough to remember the Depression. Her family—mom, dad, five sisters, two brothers, and herself—survived those difficult years by planting a large garden at their home in Marion, North Carolina, near the Blue Ridge Mountains to stretch the pay from her father’s manufacturing job at Drexel Furniture. At a

young age, she learned to do as she was told by her parents, a trait that would be useful to the US Army. As a youth, Licking attended the Presbyterian church in Marion and sang in the choir. She began working at Rose’s 5 and 10 cent store in town at age 15, earning 10 cents an hour. After graduating from Marion High School in 1938, she worked at the

Above, left: Ruth Licking wanted to do her part in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. The small-town girl North Carolina girl had what the WAAC required—though she needed help reaching the minimum weight. Above, right: As a WAAC, Licking ended up at headquarters at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas. After starting there in spring 1943, she wore corporal’s stripes and the sleeve patch of the US Army Air Forces. 50 AMERICA IN WWII

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Belk-Broome department store for three years. By then it was 1941, and men were beginning to leave their jobs to join the military. The exodus increased after Pearl Harbor, opening up many office and factory positions. The federal government encouraged women to fill them, and when several of Licking’s single girlfriends went to Detroit to work in an ammunition plant in 1942, Licking wanted to do the same. But her mother said no. Licking responded by joining the military, specifically the US Army’s newly formed Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, known as the WAAC [pronounced “wack”]. WAACs, as the members were called, were trained by military standards to serve as an auxiliary force with the army in any capacity that did not require the use of arms. They typically filled openings created on military bases, including army air forces airfields, when men left for duty overseas. The army provided the WAACs with food, uniforms, living quarters, pay, and medical care. Their officers served as the equivalents of captains and lieutenants in the army, but they received less pay than their male counterparts, and they were not allowed to command men.

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had ever been in the military. None of my girlfriends had volunteered to enlist. By joining the military, I was on my own. It didn’t terrify me, as it thrilled me. I believed the good Lord intended me to be a soldier. Mother was not thrilled with my decision to join, but she seemed less reluctant to let me become a soldier than a factory worker. I had never traveled much, and she had thought I would not know how to live safely in a big city of strangers. Detroit was much bigger than Marion, which had 5,000 people. As I tried to allay her fears by promising to behave myself while in the army, I realized we were preempting the ordeal. I was not yet a soldier. There were certain requirements to be fulfilled first. The first step was to pass the physical examination. I asked for the day off of work, then traveled by bus to Charlotte, North Carolina, for my scheduled exam. I didn’t foresee a problem. To be accepted in the WAAC, a O ONE IN MY FAMILY

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AMERICA IN WWII 51

A I WAS THERE

with me. Really, it could hardly be called a list, as it only mentioned the clothes on my back and a few personal items. In March 1943 I boarded a bus at Marion. It was loaded with other women who had also passed their military physicals and were joining the army. We didn’t

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woman had to be between the ages of 21 and 45. I was 22 years old. Good! A WAAC had to measure at least 60 inches tall. I was 63 inches tall. Great! A WAAC had to weigh at least 105 pounds. That was a problem. I only weighed 98 pounds. “Eat bananas and drink milk,” advised the military physician, shooing me out of his office. Frustrated, I walked outside. It would be too inconvenient to make a return trip to Charlotte on a later date for another exam. Resolving to retake the physical and pass, I ate a hearty lunch. Then I returned to the doctor’s office that same day for another exam. I must have

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COURTESY OF RUTH LICKING

looked determined, albeit still too thin, because he told me to don my coat and shoes and handed me my purse before instructing me to step on the scale. The big lunch, shoes, purse, and coat must have done the trick, because I made the weight limit. Feeling excited, I prepared to leave. The physician stopped me. “Do you really want to join the army?” he asked. “Yes,” I said firmly. “That’s why I’m here.” And I meant it. I wanted to help my country in any way I could. Some resolve in my face must have convinced him, because he didn’t question me further. A few weeks later, a letter arrived stating I had been accepted in the army. It included the date I should be at the bus depot to go to basic training and the list of items to take

Top left: A postcard shows Fort Oglethorpe, on Georgia’s Tennessee border, where Licking endured training camp. Lower left: The base was a key WAAC training center. Above: Licking sports sergeant stripes at Kelly Field.

know where we were headed for basic training, but wherever it was, we were going together. We ended up at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. I tell you, those six weeks of basic training were a trial. We rose daily at 0600

hours [6 A.M.] to fall out for role call. Then we marched to the field for drill. Later, we participated in physical training and attended courses on map reading, defense against chemical warfare and air attacks, and military customs and courtesy. In the mess hall we ate out of tin trays with little compartments. Sometimes the WAACs were called for KP [kitchen police] duty. One part of KP was cleaning stacks of trays in tub-sized sinks. I especially detested the task of cleaning the grease traps after each meal. You talk about thick. Once, my cleaning job didn’t pass inspection, and I had to do it over. I was thankful to only be called for KP once during basic training. Each WAAC was issued an army blanket, sheets, pillow, footlocker placed at the base of the bed, and a wall locker. We slept in barracks lined with rows of bunks. Each bed was made so a quarter would bounce on it. If your bed was not properly made, you were gigged—punished—and made to do it over. I was careful never to have that happen to me. A big part of the WAACs’ training was in neatness and orderliness. We were taught that everything had a place and nothing lay around. It just wasn’t heard of. Everything was uniform and kept in perfect order, especially on Saturday mornings, when we stood for formal inspection. During inspection, officers walked down the aisles of each barrack, checking each person’s appearance and area. The way you looked and the way your area looked had to pass. You never looked at the officers or questioned them. You stood at attention with your hands at your side and answered whatever they asked you and that’s it. I enjoyed the orderliness and always passed inspection. At home I had played softball and roller skated. During basic training, I had no time for or interest in recreation. After a day of drills and classes, I wasn’t thinking of recreation. I mean, we were tired. Finally, it was over. After basic training, we WAACs were split up. I volunteered to go overseas but was sent to Kelly Field [an army air forces base] in San Antonio. The other WAACs were sent to work on bases around the United States. After traveling overnight by train to

AM E RICA I N

arrive at Kelly, I was assigned to be in charge of rosters at base headquarters. This included keeping track of paperwork for officers’ transfers and for those headed overseas. I already knew how to type and do administrative work from previous jobs. I worked daily from 0800 hours until 1600 hours [8 A.M. to 4 P.M.]. My assignment at HQ earned me the immediate rank of corporal and, later, sergeant. I was proud of the three stripes on my issued uniform. My pay was $78 a month. But just because I was a sergeant didn’t mean I received special treatment. I still had to stand for inspection and observe rules of service like the other WAACs. On August 31, 1943, the WAAC service was disbanded, and all of the 60,000 WAACs were dismissed. On the following day, the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) was formed [as a formal part of the army rather than an auxiliary, as the WAAC had been]. Former WAACs were encouraged to join. Those that reenlisted were sworn in with full military status and benefits. More than 45,000 WAACs reenlisted. Those who had had enough of military life returned home.

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CHOSE TO REENLIST. There was time for fun now that basic training was over. I joined the softball team to play shortstop. The movie theaters, swimming pools, and tennis courts on base were available for recreation. In the base’s day room, the WACs played cards, took judo lessons, and hosted male visitors. On occasion, the WACs were allowed to take leave and shop in San Antonio. One benefit to being a WAC with rank was the opportunity to move from a dorm to a semi-private room. The WAC assigned as my roommate was a brown-haired, fivefoot-four-inch gal from Omaha, Nebraska. Jody Flanders [after marriage, her last name was Rossiter] and I got along fine from day one. Although we never saw each other after the war, our friendship has continued to the present. In December, an event occurred that was a highlight of my life. The other WACs at Kelly Field chose me as their representative for Miss Victory. [As one WAC explained it, a WAC was selected to represent her base as Miss Victory due to her “abilities, back-

WWW.LANDSER.COM :H FDUU\ KLJK TXDOLW\ *HUPDQ 0LOLWDULD IRU 5H-HQDFWRUV &ROOHFWRUV +LVWRULDQV DQG (QWHUWDLQPHQW ,QGXVWU\ IRU WKH SUHVHUYDWLRQ RI KLVWRU\ 2XU LQYHQWRU\ KDV EHHQ XWLOL]HG E\ 79 0RYLH 6WXGLRV DQG 7KHDWHUV $OO LWHPV DUH UHSURGXFWLRQ XQOHVV VWDWHG RULJLQDO 'HDOHU LQTXLUHV ZHOFRPH /DQGVHU 2XWILWWHUV //&  3RUWROD 3DUNZD\ 6XLWH ( )RRWKLOO 5DQFK &$  -- VDOHV#ODQGVHUFRP F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

AMERICA IN WWII 53

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AIR FORCES SALUTE the WAC Day [Sunday, December 12] was wwproclaimed 1/2 hrz: nationally minww 1/ by h zMajor 9/1 General Barney M. Giles [chief of the army RMY

I WAS THERE

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

grounds and personalities” and for “gallant contributions to a free tomorrow.”] Three other WACs—one each from Hondo, Brooks, and Randolph army airfields in the San Antonio area—were voted by the WACs of their bases as their Miss Victory representatives. Miss Victory of Hondo Army Airfield was Corporal Lillian Waldhelm of Long Island, New York. She was a graduate of an army course at the Midland Radio and Television School. At Hondo, Waldhelm, 24, taught radio code to future US Army Air Forces navigation experts. Miss Victory of Randolph Field was Corporal Lois V. White. The 23-yearold from Minnesota performed administrative duties in the post legal assistance office. Helen Yeska of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, was voted Miss Victory by the WACs at Brooks Field. Yeska, 21, worked in the base’s photographic laboratory.

After training camp, WAACs had opportunities, such as this evening class, to train for skilled army jobs. Work experience won Licking a job managing duty rosters.

air forces Air Staff based in Washington, DC]. On Saturday at the four fields, air WAC mess halls were closed for the noon meal while the WACs were dined as honored guests of various male squadrons. 2 0:10 PM age 1 who, like Licking, [Air WACs were WACs were assigned to the army air forces.] That

evening our male counterparts said thanks with full-dress reviews. The observance continued Sunday with enlisted men, cadets and officers planning special fetes for air WACs. On December 13, the other Miss Victorys and I led the grand march with our respective dates at a military ball given by the army air forces. It was held at Municipal Auditorium in San Antonio in honor of the WACs. Thousands of enlisted men and women from fields throughout the San Antonio area joined us in saluting the work of air WACs. During the formal ceremony at the ball, Major General Gerald C. Brant, commanding general of the Army Air Forces Central Flying Training Command [at Randolph Field, Texas], pinned flowers on each of us Miss Victorys. He also presented us with individual bracelets and trophies engraved with our names. My trophy, and I suspect the trophies of the other Miss Victorys, stayed at the base on display. Years later, I gave the bracelet— engraved with my name, the words “Miss

Spend the day in 1944 aboard the World War II Liberty Ship JOHN W. BROWN The six hour day cruise on the Chesapeake Bay features: continental breakfast, buffet lunch, music of the 40’s, period entertainment & flybys of wartime aircraft (weather permitting). Tour museum spaces, crew quarters, bridge & much more. View the magnificent 140-ton tripleexpansion steam engine as it powers the ship through the water.

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F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

A WAAC’s profile parallels Pallas Athena’s in a 1943 poster. That August, Licking reenlisted as the corps became a true army command.

Victory,” and air forces wings—to one of my daughters. The nationally acclaimed aminww 1 Aviation 2 hrz:aminww /2 hrz 9/ San Antonio Cadet Center Skyline Patrol orchestra and the Andrews Sisters

performed musical selections during the evening. It was a lovely night. 45 PM have Page We9 might had1 dates on our arms for the ball, but dating practices at Kelly

Field were fairly stringent. WACs could bring men to the base only by permission. If you went on a date, you told your boyfriend goodbye at the gate.

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AMERICA IN WWII 55

A During my time in the service, I dated several young men, but only one attracted my serious attention. One night in June 1944, while swimming in the base pool with other WACs, I noticed a group of male soldiers at the other end of the pool. One guy was good-looking and acted with decorum. I found out later he was Technical Sergeant Bill Licking from Greensburg, Indiana. He had been stationed in Panama for three years and was now stationed at Kelly Field in an administrative position. Something about him jumped out at me. I looked for him when the girls and I had dressed and walked with the soldiers from the other end of the pool back to quarters. The guy I wanted to meet was not in the group. Another male soldier said he had left to write a letter. When the same soldier asked if I’d like to meet the guy, I said yes. Bill and I met on a blind date a few days later. We ate at a restaurant in San Antonio with a group of six military couples. Bill didn’t talk1/2 much, but I was okay aminww hrz:aminw 1/2 with hrz that. 9/ I enjoyed his company, and he said he got

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I WAS THERE

a charge out of my accent. He also liked my brown eyes and blond hair. During the next several months, we dated almost every night after work, going to movies and dances. Bill was attentive and wellgroomed and had good manners. I really liked all of those things.

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Y D ECEMBER , when Bill went home to Indiana for furlough, I was sure he was the man I wanted to marry. But he had never proposed. While he was home, we wrote letters but never talked on the phone. Unbeknownst to me, he told his parents during his visit that he wanted to propose. He and his mother shopped together for my ring. I met Bill on his return trip at the train station in San Antonio. We had to wait a few hours for the to pick 2 base 10 bus 0 PM Pageus up. Bill picked that time to propose. I said yes!

We were married in the base chapel on February 17, 1945. Because of gas shortages and difficulty in travel, neither of us had family present. But the church was filled with friends from the base and civilians from San Antonio employed by the government at the base. Base Chaplain John K. Roberts performed the ceremony. Lieutenant Colonel Andrew J. Curbo, Jr., gave me away. Jody was my maid of honor, and Bill’s best friend, from Panama, Master Sergeant Joseph Landon, the best man. A fellow WAC loaned me a floor-length white wedding dress, which thankfully fit. Bill purchased my wedding bouquet, which consisted of white camellias and narcissus. His solid gold wedding band cost me $45. It was engraved with our names and wedding date. I wear it proudly today. The church was full, including civilians from the community whom I had never laid eyes on. I found out it was rare for a WAC to get married. I didn’t mind the extra people. Friends and family sent telegrams of well-wishes. The office staff I worked with

gave us a set of linens wrapped in white with the words “Marching Along Together” printed in red cursive on top. After hosting a dinner for our wedding party, we drove to Austin for a three-day honeymoon. Friends loaned us a car. It was a perfect wedding except for one thing: the base photographer didn’t show up to snap photos. We had pictures taken

where we operated a men’s clothing store for 27 years—Licking Menswear. Sadly, after retiring in 1983, Bill died of a brain tumor in 1991. In November 2010 one of my daughters accompanied me as a companion on an Honor Flight to Washington, DC. [Nonprofit groups under the umbrella organization Honor Flight Network arrange and

COURTESY OF RUTH LICKING

COURTESY OF RUTH LICKING

Above, left: Licking in San Antonio with Technical Sergeant Bill Licking, whom she met at Kelly Field. Above, right: Theirs was an army wedding, but the bride wore a gown, not a uniform.

of us in our wedding attire by a photographer in San Antonio. My bridal bouquet had wilted, so it was not part of the photos, but I think we looked happy without them. For a few months we lived in an apartment in San Antonio and commuted to work. When I was discharged from the army in September 1945, I waited until Bill was discharged a month later, then we headed to Greensburg, Indiana. During the next several decades, Bill and I raised four wonderful children and later nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. With a successful marriage, I often thought of a saying someone shared with me at our wedding: ‘Your army life will make a great postwar wife.’ In 1956 we moved to Bluffton, Indiana,

United States Postal Service Form 3526 STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, and CIRCULATION

pay for veterans to visit war memorials as thank-yous for their service.] Seeing the WWII memorial reminded me again of the dedication it took to be a WAC. In the army we were told there were two ways to live: our way and the army way. I was happy as a soldier living the army way. If anybody would ask me to do it again, I would. I might not have done as much for my country as an American soldier stationed overseas, but I filled a gap. As little as it might have been, I helped, and that’s what it was all about. A KAYLEEN REUSSER writes for newspapers and magazines and is the author of children’s books. She worked with Ruth Licking on this article in the summer of 2012.

1. Publication Title: America in WWII. 2. Publication Number: 1554-5296. 3. Filing Date: 10/1/12. 4. Issue Frequency: Bimonthly. 5. Number of Issues Published Annually: Six. 6. Annual Subscription Price: $29.95. 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825. Contact Person: Heidi Kushlan. Telephone: 717-564-0161. 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: 310 Publishing LLC, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825. 9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor: Publisher, James P. Kushlan, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825; Editor, Carl Zebrowski, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825; Managing Editor, none. 10. Owner: 310 Publishing, LLC, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825; Heidi T. & James P. Kushlan, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825; Kathryn & Richard Szarko, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825; Christine & Paul Smith, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825; Concetta R. Futchko, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825; Paul & Donna Miller, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825; M. Suzanne Obetz, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825; Beverly Fowler-Conner, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111-1825; Jaroslaw Dubiansky, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 171111825. 11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mor tgages, or Other Securities: Metro Bank, 3801 Paxton Street, Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA 17111. 13. Publication Title: America in WWII. 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: 9/01/2012. 15. Extent and Nature of Circulation. a. Total Number of Copies (Net press run): Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 24,017; Nearest Single Issue, 24,000. Total Number of Paid Electronic Copies: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 937; Nearest Single Issue, 1,729. b. Paid Circulation (By Mail and Outside the Mail). (1) Mailed Outside-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541 (includes paid distribution above nominal rate, advertiser’s proof copies, and exchange copies): Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 10,385; Nearest Single Issue, 10,358. (3) Paid Distribution Outside the Mails Including Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales and Other Paid Distribution Outside USPS: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 6,742; Nearest Single Issue, 6,662. (4) Paid Distribution by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS (e g. First-Class Mail): Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 188; Nearest Single Issue, 166. c. Total Paid Distribution (includes print and electronic): Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 18,252; Nearest Single Issue, 18,915. d. Free or Nominal Rate Distribution (By Mail and Outside the Mail). (1) Free or Nominal Rate Outside-County Copies included on PS Form 3541: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 38; Nearest Single Issue, 38. (3) Free or Nominal Rate Copies Mailed at Other Classes Through the USPS (e.g. First-Class Mail): Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 252; Nearest Single Issue, 250. (4) Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail (Carriers or other means): Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 447; Nearest Single Issue, 447. e. Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 737; Nearest Single Issue, 735. f. Total Distribution: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 18,989; Nearest Single Issue, 19,651. g. Copies Not Distributed: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 5,965; Nearest Single Issue, 6,079. h. Total: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 24,017; Nearest Single Issue, 24,000. i. Percent Paid: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 96.12%; Nearest Single Issue, 96.25%. 16. Publication of Statement of Ownership: Will be printed in the 1/1/2013 issue of this publication. 17. I certify that all information on this form is true and complete. Signature and Title of Editor, Publisher, Business Manager, or Owner: Heidi Kushlan (signed), CEO, 10/1/2012.

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A BOOKS AND MEDIA

Eyewitness to World War II: Unforgettable Stories and Photographs from History’s Greatest Conflict, by Neil Kagan and Stephen G. Hyslop, National Geographic, 352 Pages, $40.

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will give you a look at a subject. But a book such as Eyewitness to World War II brings a calamitous conflict to all your senses. If the photos of marines trapped on a Pacific beach, random citizens hanged, or frozen soldiers in the snow don’t affect you, it may be that the accompanying text and eyewitness accounts of the war will have you almost tasting cold K rations and warm horse meat, feeling your hands go numb with frostbite, hearing the drone of planes and bombs, and smelling the stench of burning oil from sinking ships, rotting bodies in the jungle, or sweaty GIs. Eyewitness to World War II contains the history, images, maps, artifacts, and memories of the war from start to end and from practically all the corners of the world. Neil Kagan edited this work, as he has other books for National Geographic. Stephen NY BOOK OF PHOTOS

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Hyslop is called not “author” but “narrator,” to give the idea that someone is giving you background information interspersed with veterans’ stories. The National Geographic Society needs no introduction, having been a publisher for decades and a bit of a hero itself during the war—its maps were personally requested by President Franklin Roosevelt to help him locate Pacific islands, Admiral Chester Nimitz loaned his National Geographic map to his airplane’s navigator when he got lost in a storm, and Allied ships in the Pacific found them invaluable in plotting courses. The book’s photos are of the high quality you’d expect from National Geographic. Some are in color, some were found by Allied troops, and some have never seen print before. But it should be noted that some are also disturbing, which means you should use caution in letting younger children see this book. Some photos are sobering, such as the view of mass graves. Others take on more horror when the excellent captions are read, explaining that the screaming woman running down a street in her underwear is a Jewish victim

of a Nazi-instigated pogrom. Photos that might require explanation to novice readers of history include the battlefield scenes of dead bodies and the shocked faces of a German family just bombed out of their Mannheim home. Some images may give even the most battle-hardened reader pause: How could Japanese sailors raise their arms in salute to their emperor while their ship is sinking? What happened to the girl who had just been beaten by a camp guard? Did the person who photographed the Nagasaki mushroom cloud live much longer after the snap of the shutter? It is a mistake to consider this a mere coffee-table book crammed with 525 images. The text tells the hows and whys of the war in an engrossing style. Chapters cover the war from December 7, 1941, to Japan’s surrender in 1945. While that may sound like any other history book, its structure and content make it well worth reading. The eyewitness aspect of this book starts off with a photo section called Through the Lens. These photo essays precede each chapter. The first one—“A World Gone Mad: The Causes of World War II”—con-

tains photos, captions, and segments of text (sidebars) that lead the reader through events in Italy, Spain, China, Poland, Russia, and the Balkans. The first chapter—“Seven Days in December”—explains all that was happening worldwide on the eve of America’s entrance into the conflict. Every chapter contains recurring series of sidebars. The Eyewitness series lets soldiers, sailors, officers, and civilians describe in their own words what they experienced, be it the brutality of the Bataan Death March, what it was like to be on the USS Arizona as it sank, or how a German officer watched dozens of civilians being shot and buried in a mass grave. Another series of sidebars is The Secret War. Here readers learn about spies and code-breakers and ways the Allies spread misinformation. Included is a tale of how the Japanese ambassador to Germany unwittingly told Allies key Nazi secrets. Each chapter also contains a timeline of the events it covers and essays on such topics as home-front posters and Bill Maudlin cartoons. The book concludes with a list of recommended reading and an index. Historian Hugh Ambrose wrote the foreword to Eyewitness to World War II, “Sacrifice and Remembrance.” That is an appropriate description of the book, as it tells the story of a truly worldwide conflict in which approximately 50 million people, both civilian and military, perished. It also serves as a means for eyewitnesses to remember—and teach us about—a war spawned by vengeance, ego, and greed. —Patrice Crowley Camp Hill, Pennsylvania The Liberator: One World War II Soldier’s 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau, by Alex Kershaw, Crown, 448 pages, $28.

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LEX KERSHAW HAS discovered a unique account of the European war in Felix Sparks, a strongwilled army officer who lost an entire unit, reformed it, fought from Italy to Dachau, tussled with the Nazi SS, and found himself and his men tested in ways never covered in boot camp. The Liberator, Kershaw’s book on that account, is a very satisfying

read about imperfect men combating nearperfect evil. For Felix Sparks and the Thunderbirds, the war started with the chaos of the Sicilian landings, a tough schooling in the lands they were conquering and the enemies they were fighting. Then there was the brutal Anzio campaign. Sparks was traumatized by the loss of his entire unit in resisting a German counterattack, leaving him the only survivor. The physical and emotional devastation of this fighting is powerfully told. Contrary to what we might expect, Sparks’s career is not derailed, and by May 1944 he was promoted to major (and lieutenant colonel by the end of the year). It’s only natural that Sparks should have been traumatized by the near-total loss of his first command and that he subsequently took great care to avoid similar situations, even at the risk of his own life. Wars are not won by commanders who avoid bloodshed, however, and Sparks and the Thunderbirds were deeply involved in several drawn-out, drag-down battles, welldescribed by Kershaw. These include the August 1944 landings in southern France (their success eclipsed by Operation Overlord at Normandy in June), fighting into Germany, the push through the Vosges Mountains, and contesting control of the pointlessly stubborn redoubt of Aschaffenberg in March 1945. Unique though each was, Sparks found history repeating itself in January 1945, when one of his battalions was surrounded by SS troops and destroyed in heavy fighting, despite highrisk rescue attempts that Sparks led. Sparks, with his strong, passionate, volatile personality, is the driving force in this book. He is not the only memorable character, however, and we will all recognize many others. Kershaw, an expert on the European war, includes well-known leaders such as Mark Clark, George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and Adolph Hitler, all vividly drawn. One surprising character is Johann Voss, a leader of a machine-gun squad who fought Sparks in January 1945 at Reipertswiller in France and lived to write his own, quite memorable account of the war, Black Edelweiss. Voss recalled seeing Sparks take great personal risk to rescue several wounded men.

In fact, he was so impressed that he and his colleagues could not bear to fire. These men of the SS saw no honor in such easy, callous kills, and let Sparks complete his rescue under their guns. Throughout the book, Kershaw eschews simple generalizations of good versus evil and shows the moral complexities of wartime behavior. His account of the Thunderbirds at Dachau is the final and best example of this. The concentration camps were unknown to the vast majority of GIs until they started stumbling onto them, yet they tend to dominate many histories of the war. Here, too, the latter portion of The Liberator is drawn inexorably to the experiences of Sparks and his men at Dachau. Remarkably for such well-known material, Kershaw finds newness in the familiar tale of dazed, confused initial reactions of the Americans, a publicity-seeking general and his journalist companion turned away at gunpoint, righteous anger that spins out of control, vengeful inmates, and summary executions of camp staff by the GIs. One of The Liberator’s most arresting moments is Sparks’s interview with General George Patton after an investigation of the killings. As Sparks starts to explain, Patton cuts him off, declares the issue of no interest, and tears up the investigation papers. Innumerable details of interest and wartime turns of phrase illuminate almost every page. Kershaw mentions briefly that one-third of all supplies landed at Naples were diverted to the black market (what a great story this would be to research!). R&R becomes “I&I” (intercourse and intoxication), also known as “jogging the haunches.” The Anzio beachhead becomes the “bitch-head.” Helmets are “brain furnaces.” Kershaw emphasizes the decisive importance of artillery for American fighting, and gives examples of the phenomenal German ingenuity in designing and deploying mines. Among Sparks’s lesser distinctions: his men had the “highest VD rate in the division.” Clearly, this is not a book to rush through. Anyone who has enjoyed the proliferation of Easy Company books after the HBO series Band of Brothers will thoroughly enjoy The Liberator. Although it lacks the dazzling ensemble cast of many such books, F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

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A it features strong characterization, memorable battle descriptions, and the unending excitement of front-line involvement in some of WWII’s greatest fighting. Kershaw’s description of Sparks and company at Dachau alone is worth the price. —Thomas Mullen Flemington, New Jersey Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR’s White House Triggered Pearl Harbor, by John Koster, Regnery, 250 pages, $27.95.

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John Koster’s Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR’s White House Triggered Pearl Harbor happens to be the last line of the book: “Harry Dexter White gave us Pearl Harbor.” In the preceding 200-some pages, Koster seeks to make the case that Harry Dexter White, a senior US Treasury DeHE THESIS OF

BOOKS AND MEDIA

partment official and Soviet spy, was given the task of provoking war between the United States and Japan. White, writes Koster, was the “real author of the attack on Pearl Harbor.” According to Koster, White was the person to carry out this task, because he was “the brains behind Henry Morgenthau, Jr., who in turn tried to be the brains behind Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Morgenthau, White’s boss, was Roosevelt’s secretary of the treasury from 1943 to 1945. The book opens with a May 1941 meeting between White and a Soviet handler named Vitalii Pavlov. In preparation for the meeting, Pavlov was instructed to tell White that the Soviets “anticipate a

Hitlerite attack on our country, and, by protecting us from the aggression of Japan in the Far East, he will assist in strengthening the Soviet Union in Europe.” In short, for the Soviet Union to defend against Hitler to its west, “the Japanese threat from the east would have to be neutralized. A war between Japan and the United States would achieve that goal nicely.” Soviet intelligence gave the plan a name that translates into English as “Operation Snow.” Pavlov handed White the task of initiating war between the United States and Japan, and Koster provides roughly three pages of dialog between White and Pavlov from this encounter. According to a note in

A THEATER OF WAR Mister Roberts. Directed by John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy, written by Frank S. Nugent and Joshua Logan, from the play by Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan, based on the book by Thomas Heggen, starring Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, Jack Lemmon, 1955, 123 minutes, color, not rated.

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J.G. Doug Roberts (Henry Fonda) feels like the war has passed him by, just like the task force he watched slip past in the night. It’s April 1945 and Roberts serves as the cargo officer aboard the Reluctant, a navy resupply ship in the Pacific. He repeatedly requests a combat assignment, but tyrannical Captain Morton (James Cagney) refuses to approve it. The captain believes the efficient Roberts makes him look good in the eyes of the navy brass, so Roberts can do little but submit more requests and seek counsel from the ship’s doctor (William Powell). At least Roberts will stand up to the captain. Young Ensign Pulver (Jack Lemmon), despite his big talk, lives in fear of his commander. In fact, the fastIEUTENANT

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talking young officer has been so adept at avoiding the captain, Morton has no idea who he is. Things finally come to a head when the captain refuses to give the crew liberty unless Roberts cooperates with him—and never tells anyone about the deal. Roberts, who has forged a bond with the men on board, agrees. The crewmembers, however, believe their once-revered cargo officer is just sucking up for promotion. They learn the truth just before Roberts finally gets a combat assignment and give him a touching send off. Weeks later, though, Pulver receives the gut-punching news that Roberts was killed in a Japanese attack. Roberts’s death gives Pulver the motivation to finally confront the captain over his treatment of the crew, just as Roberts would have done. That’s the gist of this service comedydrama, based on a Broadway production in which Fonda played Roberts to great acclaim starting in 1948. When legendary director John Ford signed on to helm the movie version, he insisted that Fonda reprise his role despite studio reservations over Fonda’s age.

Things turned nightmarish on location at Midway. Ford took a liking to young Jack Lemmon and began contriving new bits of comedy business for him, to the detriment of the rest of the movie. “He was having me do things I thought were ridiculous,” Lemmon recalled. Fonda was also unhappy about the way Ford was changing things. “It was a part he had created and played to unceasing acclaim for years,” wrote Scott Eyman in Print the Legend, his terrific Ford biography; “he felt he knew the materi-

the back of the book, the quotes are based on Pavlov’s autobiography, published in 1996. A full reference citation for the conversation is not included anywhere in Operation Snow, and Koster takes a risk by quoting a 50-year-old conversation. The next evidence in Koster’s case is three memoranda that he says White penned in an effort to trigger war. The first failed completely. White wrote the second in November 1941 for Morgenthau to sign. He employs what Koster calls “the basest flattery” to Roosevelt in a rambling entreaty for Roosevelt not to abandon China to her enemies. The next day, White wrote the third memo. In it he lists 10 “aggressive demands to be presented to Japan” with a short deadline for acceptance, in an effort to prevent war—supposedly. Then, on November 26, Secretary of State Cordell Hull delivered a note to the Japanese based on White’s last two memos.

al and the characters better than anybody else, up to and including Joshua Logan, the play’s co-author and director, and he might have been right.” Fonda went to talk with Ford, a legendarily irascible man and heavy drinker who didn’t like his authority challenged. Ford took a swing at Fonda. “I don’t know what was on his mind, but I do know he was stricken by what he had done, by hitting me,” Fonda said. After some strained weeks, Ford checked into a hospital and veteran director Mervyn LeRoy took over the directorial chores. Logan also reshot some scenes. Mister Roberts isn’t a perfect movie. Sometimes it meanders, the switches between location and studio filming can be jarring, and at times its theatrical origins become obvious. Still, it has its delights, particularly in the performances of its veteran (and, yes, perhaps too old) cast and the antic energy of up-andcoming Jack Lemmon. Sadly, it proved to be Powell’s final movie and he retired from filmmaking. “Mister Roberts did me in,” he said. —Tom Huntington Camp Hill, Pennsylvania

That note stated that Japan should withdraw from China and abandon its interests in Manchuria. If Japan agreed to this, “the United States would lift the freeze on Japanese assets.” In response, on December 1, 1941, the Japanese government voted unanimously for war. The attack on Pearl Harbor was launched six days later. Koster spends a respectable amount of time setting the stage for White’s mission, providing background histories of Japanese aggression in China and Korea and detailing the building tensions between Russia and Japan over the disputed border territory along the Khalkha River between Mongolia and Manchuria. He makes compelling arguments about the instability and fragility of the Japanese government, which made acquiescing to American demands tantamount to suicide. He also provides quotations from various individuals, as well as excerpts from documents, but he doesn’t cite the sources for them. Koster fails to address White’s personal motivation for crossing the bridge between information courier and warmonger. The closest he gets is “Indeed, White himself may not have been fully conscious of his own treason. To the communist mindset, a communist victory would be a victory for all mankind, and Hitler’s savage treatment of the Jews could only have added to that perception in White’s case.” Eventually White was denounced as a Soviet sympathizer and courier by two other former Soviet couriers, one of whom was Whittaker Chambers. On August 13, 1948, White sat before the House Un-American Activities Committee and answered questions in an effort to clear his name. White died not long after. There is no doubt that Koster is a wellread and knowledgeable historian; his book’s bibliography is extensive. But in Operation Snow, he builds a circumstantial case based on two memoranda and a remembered conversation that occurred 70 years ago. These alone, without the help of fully cited sources anywhere in the book, are not entirely convincing for a thesis that seeks to redefine the events that led to one of the most significant and pivotal military attacks in modern history. —Allyson Patton Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II, by Adam Makos with Larry Alexander, Penguin, 392 pages, $26.95.

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O NOT DELETE! This is a true story!” Many e-mails with this subject line have circulated on the Internet. One such e-mail tells the story of an improbably named American B-17 bomber pilot, Charlie Brown, and the German fighter pilot, Franz Stigler, who saved the lives of Brown and his crew on December 20, 1943. Brown’s B-17 was horrendously damaged by flak and enemy fighter fire when Stigler caught up with it, apparently to finish it off. Instead, Stigler flew alongside, trying to convince Brown to land and eventually escorted him and his crew safely over German flak batteries and out to sea on the way back to England. The story is true, and, almost incredibly, the Internet versions are mostly correct, though the full story comes out only after extensive research and interviews with those involved. Adam Makos did that research and in the process discovered a much deeper story. A Higher Call is only partly about a relatively brief bit of compassion displayed by a German pilot to an American bomber crew. It is also about what it meant to be that pilot and how his act of compassion was both a dereliction of a duty that he took very seriously and the right thing for him to do. In a very personal introduction, Makos explains the roots of this book in his quest to interview as many American WWII veterans as he could and then publish the interviews, first in a newsletter he and some friends worked on in high school and then as a full-fledged magazine he started in college. Makos states that, to him, all German WWII veterans were Nazis and were therefore associated irrevocably with the horrid atrocities committed by the Nazis. When he heard the Charlie Brown story and asked Brown for an interview, however, he got the response “If you really want to learn the whole story, learn about Franz Stigler first…. In this story, I’m just a character—Franz Stigler is the real hero.” A Higher Call is mostly Stigler’s story. It follows Stigler from his first flight in a glidF E B R U A RY 2 0 1 3

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A er as a young boy to his life in Canada after the war, but most of the detail is on the war years. Stigler was raised Roman Catholic and anti-Nazi. He started his career as a pilot flying for Lufthansa airlines after attending flight school paid for by the German government. His job included finding the quickest, safest routes between European cities. Stigler knew that a lot of the work he was doing for Lufthansa was valuable to government efforts to build a new air force, but after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, any form of dissent was very dangerous. During the Spanish Civil War, Stigler flew supplies into Spain at the “request” of the government. He spent time as a civilian instructor before enlisting. After his brother’s death during the Battle of Britain, he became a fighter pilot. Interestingly, Stigler was not just any German fighter pilot when he met Brown

BOOKS AND MEDIA

and his crew in December 1943. He was one of Germany’s top aces, battled-hardened in North Africa and then fighting in Germany to stop the Allied bombers from destroying his homeland. Stigler’s longevity and skill during the war eventually brought him to the same squadron as Adolf Galland and other top pilots who defied the Nazi party and the head of the air force, Hermann Göring, in the so-called Pilot’s Revolt. The latter third of the book becomes their story, too. Charlie Brown may be just a character in this story, but he and his crew are not bit players. Makos gives Brown a lot of room to tell his part and for readers to get to know him and his crew. Makos skillfully

interweaves Brown’s and Stigler’s stories during their encounter. He then follows up with Brown and the crisis of confidence he experienced after getting shot to pieces on his first mission. A Higher Call ends with Brown and Stigler’s reunion in 1990. Their friendship and the time they spent together telling their story from 1990 until their deaths in 2008 are heartwarming. Yet this story is far deeper and more thoughtprovoking than a simple tale of wartime compassion between enemies. It is a story of that sense of duty, honor, and compassion shown by German pilots forced to fly for dishonorable leaders. It is a story showing the humanity of men who were once enemies, and how, as Brown and Stigler put it in later years, they were better off as friends. —Drew Ames Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

A 78 RPM

The Magic That Broke Par

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ARLEN WAS a golf widow. While she worked at home in her Victory Garden, her husband whacked golf balls around lush grassy grounds that were meticulously tended by professional greenskeepers. He woke up mornings and headed to Los Angeles’s Hillcrest Country Club for his lesson. Then he drove a bucket’s worth of balls on the range before playing 36 holes with friends. “The game consumed me,” he admitted. The passion that verged on obsession would seem to have left little time for songwriting. Yet somehow Harold Arlen found time to write the songs for Star Spangled Rhythm, the 1942 movie musical with an all-star cast that included crooner Bing Crosby, comedian Bob Hope, and director Cecil B. De Mille. (At night, after polishing up a few bars on the piano, he’d sit up in bed reading golf books before turning in.) One number that the Tin Pan Alley veteran needed to write for the film was meant to accompany a particular dance. What Arlen came up with was the music for “That Old Black Magic.” He passed the notes on to his word man, Johnny Mercer, and Mercer wrote lyrics with Judy Garland in mind as the singer—lyrics that might appear to have been inspired by their off-and-on affair: “And every time your lips meet mine / Baby down and down I go, NYA

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all around I go / In a spin, loving the spin that I’m in / Under that old black magic called love.” Arlen was pleased with the result. “The words sustain your interest, make sense, contain memorable phrases, and tell a story,” he said, heaping his usual praise on his friend and songwriting partner. “Without the lyric the song would be just another long song.” The long-forgotten Johnnie Johnston sang the song in the movie, and it received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. When the time came to cut a record of the song, Mercer’s muse was first in line, and Garland’s take hit record stores in 1943. The same year, Glenn Miller released a version that spent 14 weeks on the sales charts, topping out at number one. Bing Crosby performed a film reprisal in 1944’s Here Come the Waves, a farce in which he plays a singer drafted into the navy who falls for one the navy’s WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). The song makes lighthearted fun of the Frank Sinatra craze of the time. Ironically, it was Sinatra would make the song famous, and indeed make it his own. He sang it in a radio broadcast on New Year’s Eve 1943. The classic version that has survived the intervening decades appeared on his hit 1961 album Come Swing with Me. The title was not a reference to golf. —Carl Zebrowski editor of America in WWII

A WWII EVENTS

CALIFORNIA • Jan. 18, Alameda Point: USS Hornet History Mystery After-Hours Tour. Three-hour nighttime guided tour of the aircraft carrier demonstrating the red lighting that was used during night operations. 7 P.M. USS Hornet Museum. Reservations required. 510-521-8448, extension 224. uss-hornet.org Jan. 19, Palm Springs: “Empire of the Sun: Japan Triumphant (1931–1942).” Lecture by Ed Gordon on how Japan’s military usurped its civilian government. 1 P.M. Palm Springs Air Museum. 760-778-6262. palmspringsairmuseum.org Feb. 2, Palm Springs: 100th Bomb Group reunion. Annual reunion of the survivors of the Eighth Air Force’s Bloody Hundredth. With director George Ciampa and an airing of his film Remembering the Fallen Heroes of the ‘Mighty 8th.’ Palm Springs Air Museum. 760-778-6262. palmspringsairmuseum.org FLORIDA • Feb. 5, Pensacola: “An Evening of Swing and Elegance” with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Music begins at 7 P.M., cocktails at 5:15. National Naval Aviation Museum. 850-453-2389. navalaviationmuseum.org Through April 30, Pensacola: Exhibit on the French Resistance and its spying on and sabotage against the Nazis. Includes documents and artifacts from the museum’s collection that have not been previously displayed. National Naval Aviation Museum. 850-452-3604. navalaviationmuseum.org LOUISIANA • Feb. 21, New Orleans: Stalag 17. Screening of the 1953 movie about a group of American airmen in a German POW camp, starring William Holden and Peter Graves. National WWII Museum. 504-528-1944, extension 229. nationalww2museum.org Through July 7, New Orleans: “Guests of the Third Reich: American POWs in Europe. Exhibit featuring artifacts, oral histories, and rare prison logs. National WWII Museum. 504-528-1944, extension 229. nationalww2museum.org MASSACHUSETTS • Feb. 18–22, Fall River: Family Fun Week. Board ships, learn to tie knots and fold the flag, and more. Battleship Cove. 800-533-3194. battleshipcove.org PENNSYLVANIA • Jan. 26, Annville: “A World War II–Battle of the Bulge Living History Day.” Reenactment, German field hospital, communications and naval displays. 10 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Fort Indiantown Gap. 724-627-8545. www.wwiifederation.org Feb. 16, Carlisle: Reenactor Recruiting Day. Meet and join up with various living history organizations. 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. US Army Heritage and Education Center. 717-245-3972. www.carlisle.army.mil/ahec TEXAS • Feb. 24, Fredericksburg: Admiral Chester Nimitz birthday celebration. National Museum of the Pacific War. 830-997-8600. pacificwarmuseum.org VIRGINIA • Through Jan. 24, Triangle: “Semper Fly.” Exhibit celebrating 100 years of US Marine Corps aviation with displays of photographs and artifacts, including the engine nose ring of an F4F Wildcat that saw service on Wake Island. National Museum of the Marine Corps. 877-635-1775. usmcmuseum.com Feb. 2, Newport News: “A Salute to the Tuskegee Airmen.” Tuskegee Airmen will discuss artifacts on display. Airing of the 1995 film The Tuskegee Airmen. Noon to 3 P.M. Virginia War Museum. 757-247-8523. www.warmuseum.org Feb. 9, Triangle: Family day. The focus will be on the Montford Point Marines and their part in the invasion of Iwo Jima. 12 P.M. to 3 P.M. National Museum of the Marine Corps. 877-635-1775. usmcmuseum.com

COMING SOON

With no obvious way to escape Stalag Luft III, POWs decided to dig a tunnel.

The Real

GREAT ESCAPE Long before it became a movie, the great escape was 76 POWs tunneling out of Stalag Luft III— and Germans executing 50 of them.

Look for our April 2013 issue on newsstands on February 19, 2013.

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AMERICA IN WWII 63

A GIs

The Final Mission

PHOT OS CO URTESY OF PATRIC E CRO WLEY

Above left: T.J. Crowley (front, second from left) poses with the crew of his B-17, Miss Chief. Above right: A windshield wiper interrupts the photographic view through the cockpit window on Crowley’s side of the bomber.

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PILOT ’ S 32 ND BOMBING MISSION was supposed to be his ticket home from Europe. But the US Army Air Forces changed its policy, and Lieutenant Timothy John “T.J.” Crowley now had to fly his B-17 on three more missions before completing his wartime service with the Eighth Air Force’s famed “Bloody Hundredth” Bomb Group (Heavy). The 23-year-old Penn State grad and Eagle Scout from Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, might have guessed that his final mission would be his toughest. It was August 1944, and Crowley’s bomber, Miss Chief, was the lead plane in a low-flying squadron of B-17 Flying Fortresses headed to Munich from their base at Thorpe Abbotts airfield in England. For 12 minutes, the planes flew in close formation to ensure an effective bombing pattern when they reached their drop point. “Naturally it gave the concentrated flak batteries plenty of time to zero us in,” Crowley recalled of his 35th mission. Flak hit the plane’s nose and badly injured the bombardier. “He figured he was going to die anyway, so he might as well go ahead and drop

his bombs on the target,” Crowley wrote. “He crawled back up and he pickled them right on cue.” The navigator, 18-year-old Rudy Batista, got up to help his wounded crewmate. “He went forward with the first aid kit and about threw up from the horrible mess the bombardier was in,” remembered Crowley, the self-professed “old man” of the crew. “So he said he gave the bombardier one shot of morphine and himself two. What a way to end your last mission. As it turned out, our boy survived….” By the time Crowley left the service, he had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with Five Oak Leaf Clusters, among other honors. He went on to become a lawyer, working in the Sonoma County, California, district attorney’s office before starting his own law practice. He died in 2002. A Submitted by PATRICE CROWLEY, a niece of T.J. Crowley and contributing editor of America in WWII.

Send your GIs photo and story to [email protected] or to: GIs, America in WWII, 4711 Queen Ave., Ste. 202, Harrisburg, PA 17109 64 AMERICA IN WWII

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