WHAT A GI’s LIFE WAS LIKE ON AND BEHIND THE FRONT LINES
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GIs inWorld Chapter I • INTO THE SERVICE
5
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Boys Become GIs By Tom Huntington Getting the Boot A surge of patriotism swept a young Midwesterner into a
marine recruiting office. But becoming a real marine took something more… By Nick Cariello
12
Snagged by Uncle Sam Your draft lottery number is up! By Carl Zebrowski 14 Ten-Hut! Hair shorn, run ragged, and treated with no respect, ordinary Joes became war-winning GI Joes at boot camp. By Jim Kushlan
Chapter II • MILITARY LIFE
21 22
Farewell to Freedom By Tom Huntington Uncle Sam’s Winning Teams Meet the WWII army,
army air forces, navy, coast guard, and marine corps. By Brian John Murphy
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Wacky for Khaki Some girls went nuts over GIs. By Carl Zebrowski 30 Pockets and Footlockers Rummage through stuff America’s boys in uniform kept, carried, and called their own.
34 Lingo! A Sampling of 1940s GI Patter. 36 All for the Boys Entertainers and Red Cross volunteers turn out in force to support the GIs.
Chapter III • AT THE FRONT
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War’s Hard Realities By Tom Huntington Facing the Fire Some men would fight hand-to-hand, toss grenades, and
shoot enemies. Most would not. But sooner or later, every GI witnessed war’s violence.
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When You got Wounded... Some guys got through the war without a scratch. For those less lucky, survival and recovery depended on a lot of wild cards— including the military’s shaky medical lifeline. By Eric Ethier
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V-Mail: The GIs’ Lifeline Fast, inexpensive V-mail made it relatively easy to keep the American men and women serving overseas connected to home. By David A. Norris
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Life at the Front Sample soldier life on the ground, sailor life at sea, airman life aloft and on land, and marine island life. By Eric Ethier and Brian John Murphy
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Chow! Homemade meals faded into memory as America’s soldiers and marines learned to eat things Mom would never, ever have served them. By Brian John Murphy
70 (extra)ordinary men Meet some of America’s “common” WWII fighting men. 78 Reports from the Field Artists, journalists, photographers, and cartoonists of war. Chapter IV • HOME AGAIN
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GI Joe Comes Home By Tom Huntington Help with Coming Home For many returning WWII servicemen, settling back in
at home was harder than they expected. Self-help books came to the rescue. By Mark D. Van Ells
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The Medals Tell a Story A World War II veteran’s medals can tell you a lot about the man who received them and what he did in the war. Here’s what they mean.
96
Lasting Image
An army sergeant overseas meets the local kids.
War II
AM E RICA I N
WWII SPECIAL ISSUE
DEPARTMENTS: 4 Publisher’s Welcome 27, 69, 89 Flashbacks COVER SHOT: Tension and fatigue show on the face of this young marine on Saipan in the Mariana Islands. The June–July 1944 fighting there was difficult, with civilian huts near the enemy fortifications. NATIONAL ARCHIVES. THIS SPREAD: Men of the 90th Infantry “Tough ’Ombres” Division pose with a captured swastika flag in front of a bombedout German tank in Fels, France, on August 20, 1944, during operations in the Falaise Gap. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
GIs in World War II
EDITORIAL PUBLISHER
James P. Kushlan EDITOR
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310 PUBLISHING, LLC CEO Heidi T. Kushlan EDITORIAL DIRECTOR James P. Kushlan
Copyright © 2012 by 310 Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission of the publisher. Contains some content previously published in America in WWII magazine, copyright 310 Publishing LLC © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, & 2012, used with permission.
he Men Who Wore the Eagle “GI?” The term comes from military-speak, seemingly as an for “government issue.” Over time, GI came to signify an army enlisted ore broadly, an enlisted man of any branch of the US military. It is in this ader sense that we use “GI” in this issue, in the same sense as the GI Bill, ed to all World War II veterans. TLY IS A
World War II is about the enlisted men who served—whether in the US Army, Air Forces, the US Navy, the US Coast Guard, or the US Marine Corps— hat saved the world from the Axis powers. It’s about every enlisted man who earned the right to wear the encircled eagle that symbolized honorable WWII service, the so-called “Ruptured Duck.” This very special issue from the publishers of America in WWII follows ordinary American boys on their journey to war—from their entry into the armed forces and their transformation into fighting men, on to the front, and back home as veterans (for those who were so fortunate). Throughout, we try to answer the question “What was it like to be there?” Of course, we can never completely understand what it was “Ruptured Duck” like to be there. Nor can we pretend to cram every aspect of lapel button, 1945. GI life, every variety of WWII experience, into one periodicalKUSHLAN FAMILY COLLECTION sized publication. What we have assembled here is a sort of museum exhibit on paper (or on screen for you digital readers!), packed with photos and artifacts, and dedicated to the ordinary American serviceman of World War II. Not every GI fought hand-to-hand in the pitch black of a Pacific jungle at midnight, though many did. Not every GI carried a wounded buddy up a burning ship’s companionway to safety, or single-handedly took out a machine gun nest, though many performed such feats. The truth is, most GIs in World War II never fought face-to-face with the enemy, or stared down death. Many never saw combat at all. They were the enormous support staff behind the men at the war’s bloody leading edge— the mechanics, clerks, cargo pilots, communications experts, medical personnel, etc., who enabled the US armed forces to go overseas and deliver a crushing blow to the enemies of the free world. This issue is about all of them, the heroic and the mundane, the battle-scorched and the men behind them. Each of us on the staff of America in WWII had parents who lived through World War II either as GIs overseas or as kids on the home front. America in WWII is inspired by their stories told around dinner tables, on porches, and in living rooms over many years—stories that became more complete as we grew older and readier to hear the unvarnished truth. It is in the spirit of those stories that we create every issue of America in WWII. And it is in that same spirit that we present GIs in World War II.
GIs in World War II and America in WWII magazine do not endorse and are not responsible for the content of advertisements that appear herein.
www.americainwwii.com Printed in the USA by The Ovid Bell Press Distributed by Curtis Circulation Company
Jim Kushlan Publisher/America in WWII magazine
GIs IN WORLD WAR II
CHAPTER I • INTO THE SERVICE
Boys Become GIs As war approached, America scrambled to grow its armed forces. The boys of the Depression were about to become warriors. by Tom Huntington
A
In 1939 the regular army possessed a mere 137,000 soldiers, yet the conflagrations spreading around the world provoked only a limited sense of alarm. World War I had provided brutal lessons about the consequences of global war, and the United States did not want to learn those lessons again. MERICA WAS NOT PREPARED FOR WAR .
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Yet war was coming and the nation reluctantly began preparing. Bill Mauldin, who later gave the faceless GI a voice through his Willie and Joe cartoons, saw the way things were going and joined the National Guard. “When we get into this mess there’ll be a draft and they’ll catch you anyway,” a buddy advised him. Mauldin’s friend was right. On September 16, 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act into law. It was the country’s first peacetime draft, allowing the army 900,000 men for a year’s service. This limited draft barely survived extension in Congress in 1941, mere months before Pearl Harbor. Still, it was the start of a war effort that would eventually usher 11 million Americans into the armed forces. More than 8 million men would serve in the army alone—7 million of them draftees. It would take a Japanese attack before the United States threw itself into that kind of mobilization. In December 1941 only 20,000 men were scheduled to be called up. A year later the call was for almost half a million men. And what kind of men were they? “The new soldiers were for the most part healthy, unattached, often unemployed young men, and many were not disturbed at the prospect of military service,” wrote Lee Kennett in G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II (1987). The draftee’s journey from civilian life started with a letter that began, “Greeting.” Next came a meeting with the local draft board and a trip to the induction station for a brisk physical examination. “There, for the first time, we met the Army,” said one inductee. “It was sobering.” At first the army had stringent physical standards, but the
demand for manpower relaxed them. Initially the service rejected men with too few teeth; eventually anyone with “sufficient teeth (natural or artificial) to subsist on the Army ration” passed. One prominent American who received a 4-F rating was singer Frank Sinatra, who had a punctured eardrum. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall wanted the situation investigated. “The ears are vital to a musician, vocal or instrumental, therefore if we judge by the salaries paid, Sinatra’s ears are reasonably effective,” Marshall wrote in a memo. But Sinatra remained a civilian. The army also stopped requiring a fourthgrade education and proficiency in English. Still, as Kennett points out, while the average American WWI soldier had a sixth-grade education, the typical WWII soldier had a year of high school. At first fathers were exempt from conscription, but that changed. More than half the men drafted in the spring of 1944 were fathers, up from only 6 percent the previous fall. In 1944 the soldier’s average age was 26. The oldest army sergeant was 74 and the youngest—until he got kicked out—was 15. The navy and marines got to choose their enlistees, and recruited aggressively. “Choose while you can,” the navy told potential draftees. So the army worried about the quality of the men it would get. “Despite the concerns voiced by the Army’s personnel experts, the G.I. Army was neither dregs nor leavings,” wrote Kennett. What the army turned out to be, says Kennett, “was the nation itself, an authentic slice of American society with all its many layers.” A TOM HUNTINGTON, an author and editor based in central Pennsylvania, is a contributing editor to America In WWII.
Above: Personal belongings come out of pockets and bags and go into the trash as enlistees check in at the US Marine Corps’s San Diego training base in California in February 1944. These boys are in for a hard-knocks transformation into men and fighting marines. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 5
Getting the Boot A surge of patriotism swept a young Midwesterner into a marine recruiting office. But becoming a real marine took something more… by Nick Cariello
I
During the swearing-in, I was puzzled when the ceremony’s officer droned “…without reservation or purpose of evasion….” But I thought he said “…without reservation or purpose of invasion.” Invasion? What the hell is he talking about? …I shrugged and l lowered my right hand after the swearing-in was completed. I was now a proud but still puzzled Marine. On the train for the three-day trip to San Diego we Marines were clustered in one car. We were excited. The farthest I had ever been from my home in Racine was Chicago, a mere 60 miles away. The train chugged along and soon a slick-looking Marine pulled out a pair of dice. “Who wants a chance to make some super-easy money?” he teased. About five of us eagerly said yes. I had $30 in my wallet. When the dice came around to me, I rolled the dice for a dollar bet. I got sloppy lucky and rolled two sevens and one eleven. Then I made my point of eight and then nine before I “crapped out.” Just then the conductor came along and broke up the game. He was a fatherly fellow with a friendly smile and said almost apologetically, “Hey, guys, I hate to have to do this but my job may be in jeopardy if some railroad dick is on the train. Sorry.” I didn’t mind too much. After all, I did make $20 which was big money in those days, considering that my wages as a factory forklift operator had been $32.50 a week…. Two days passed slowly as the train cruised along and the clickety-clack lulled us. I was half-asleep when somebody shouted, “Jeez, will you look at that!” I looked out the window in amazement. The train was starting to pass upward through a deep canyon in Wyoming’s Rocky Mountains. The sides of the mountains were shades of red and gray and they towered over the huffing and puffing train as it struggled upward in its ever-so-slow climb. I was captivated by the serrated, stratified accidental arrangement of red, pink, and brown woven into a palette of unforgettable beauty. The mountains were sparsely covered with snow and ice. Some
Above: Japan’s attack on US servicemen at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, infected Americans with a spirit of vengeance. The result was war fever—and novelty items like this “hunting license.” Opposite: A sign offering just such licenses hung in the Wisconsin recruitment center where 19-year-old Nick Cariello was sworn into the US Marine Corps. It would take eight weeks of boot camp to make him a real leatherneck. 6 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
LEFT: AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION. OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF NICK CARIELLO
on a cold and snowy morning in January 1942 that I dashed up the icy steps of a Milwaukee building which housed the Marine Corps Recruitment Center. I slipped and slightly turned my right ankle but I silently laughed it off. Hell, I was about to become a Marine! I limped into the recruiting room for the swearing-in ceremony. A Marine sergeant looked at me coldly without a trace of sympathy and motioned for me to take a chair alongside some 20 other fresh-faced and curious recruits. Disregarding my mild pain, I looked around. As a jaunty and callow youth of 19, I was most impressed with a sign in big bloodred letters posted prominently on a wall: JAP HUNTING LICENSES ISSUED HERE. Other recruits pointed at the sign and sniggered. “Yeah,” said one, “I sure the hell am gonna bag my quota!” I had actually agreed to join the Marine Corps in the recruiting office in Racine, 25 miles away, with the swearing-in to occur in Milwaukee. I vividly remember that a day earlier my mother and I went to a notary public office for my mother to sign a necessary paper. The document probably had something to do with proof of my age or parental consent. Eighteen was the minimum enlistment age. My mother was uneasy about signing the paper, having heard that Marines were “first to fight.” She said, in words to this effect, “Like I said many times, why don’t you just wait for the draft? You may not have to go for a year or two. You’ve got a nice paying job in the tractor factory. You’ve got an old but nice car. You know a few girls. So why don’t you wait?” But I firmly said no, as I’m sure she expected and dreaded. So with a deep sigh and tears spilling over, she reluctantly signed the paper. My mother did so while uttering these words which many mothers throughout the country probably were saying or something comparable, “I just hope I’m not signing your death warrant.” A lieutenant walked smartly into the recruiting office and the attending sergeant barked, “Attention!” We jumped up and stood awkwardly. The officer was there to swear us in. T WAS WITH MUCH ANTICIPATION
GIs IN WORLD WAR II 7
of the enormous pine trees had hundreds of icicles dangling from them, and as the dim sun glistened off the “ornaments” it reminded me of holiday Christmas trees back home…. Then the train wheezed and coughed as it slowly descended to fairly level ground and then picked up speed rapidly. Smiling people on the streets of small towns waved enthusiastically at us and we waved vigorously back. Co-op silos and monstrous wheat storage bins rolled steadily by our now-dirty windows. I especially liked the neat farms with their trim white buildings and red barns with cows grazing in the fields. Those bovines didn’t even look up and chewed their cuds calmly as the train thundered by a few feet away. We smoked and talked and bantered and passed around tattered magazines such as Argosy, Saturday Evening Post and Reader’s Digest while the hours ticked by ever so slowly.
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8 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
TESY COUR
our train finally pulled into the San Diego depot. There we were met by cheerful women in gray uniforms [Red Cross workers] who handed out—with big smiles—steaming coffee and large doughnuts. Then big buses transferred us to the Marine Corps base along the ocean [Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego]. A gruff sergeant led us to a building where we were issued clothing ranging from sturdy shoes to “skivvies” (underwear). Afterwards we were taken to our temporary barracks after eating in a mess hall. The food— mainly steaks, baked potatoes, assorted vegetables, dessert and coffee—was good, hot and abundant and we stuffed our faces in delight. In the barracks we spent part of the night talking, although we were exhausted and still excited. Then it was time for “lights out” and I fell asleep almost as soon as my head met the pillow. Suddenly I was shocked into consciousness by the recorded bugle blare of reveille in the barracks. I sleepily looked at my Mickey Mouse watch and moaned. I just couldn’t believe it was only 5 A.M. I thought, “Are these f - - - ing people crazy or what?” I groggily rolled over and started to go back to sleep. Then a beefy corporal, full of bluster and bile, burst into the room shouting, “Now my fine sleeping beauties, drop your c - - - s and grab your socks! You’ve got 20 minutes to go to the washroom and do your No. 1 and/or No. 2 and shave your ugly faces. Let’s go, let’s go! Chop, chop now!” I stumbled sleepily out of my lower-bunk bed. The equally-sleepy Marine above me jumped down and nearly knocked me flat…. The next afternoon was a shocker. After receiving the required inoculations, we were marched quickly to a large barber shop with six barbers who operated with remarkable efficiency. I was proud of my black wavy hair, rather longish, and I looked around FTER SEEMINGLY ENDLESS TRAVEL
in apprehension as I saw severely clipped and rather unhappy Marines walking out. An elderly bored barber motioned me into a chair and with his clippers sped through my hair with blitzkrieg speed. Presto! My locks were quickly strewn over the floor, which was almost ankle deep in varied colored hair of assorted lengths. I was a little surprised when the barber said: “Good luck where you’re headed out there.” Maybe he said that to everybody but I did appreciate his remark. We looked like forlorn shorn sheep as we came out of the barber shop. Chortling and pointing at each other in derision, we mercilessly rubbed each other’s stubble. We weren’t Marines yet but we were starting to look the part. That night we lounged around the barracks. Several Marines bantered and bitched about our new life or exchanged scuttlebutt while a number were writing letters. Still others were playing poker, while a few slept. I and two other Marines were paging through well-worn comic books such as Flash Gordon, Alley Oop, Superman, and Blondie when a gunnery sergeant we had not seen before sauntered into the room, slapping a swagger stick sharply against his thigh. He was tall with a linebacker’s shoulders and demonstrated a feline grace as he prowled past our bunks. Upon seeing us reading comic books, he feigned dismay and said in a raspy voice, “Jeez, you honor students! Hell, if you want to improve your feeble minds, try reading the great Greek and Roman philosophers like Plato and Lucretius.” I guess we were surprised at the words of such a “learned” non-com. We leaped up and shouted, “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir,” as he disgustedly left the room. A wag said, “He’s right. We should study the great philosophers so we can learn to speak fluent bullshit.” We laughed and went back to improving our feeble minds. The next day, much to our surprise and chagrin, we were told to gather our gear. We were leaving our comfortable barracks for tents. Each tent contained cots for four Marines. Given a blanket each, we were told that the tents would be home until we left boot camp. A witty Louisiana Marine in our tent, whom we called “Cajun Charlie,” gingerly poked the mattress on his cot with his foot. He scrunched up his face and said with a pleasant accent, “Holy shit and double grits, what the hell is all in there, Spanish moss or Nebraska corn husks?” We had another amusing Marine in our tent. His name was Max and he played a wonderful harmonica—jazz, folk tunes, etc. One day he played a touching rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home.” Somebody asked if he came from Kentucky. He answered in a broad eastern accent, “Kentucky? Ain’t that where the Daniel Boone types come from and sip their moonshine rotgut under a spreading chestnut tree? Hell, no, I’m from the Bronx where you had better be a Yankee fan. And not even heaven couldn’t even
INTO THE SERVICE • Getting the Boot help you if you were a Brooklyn Dodger fan!” Before long we learned that San Diego’s January weather was relatively sunny and warm during the day but the nights were cold, especially when the salty wind blew off the nearby Pacific. I guess the lone blanket we were issued was to toughen us up, but I learned to occasionally sleep with my socks on as did others. Soon after moving into our tents and after an especially good breakfast of big steaks and loads of eggs and potatoes, we met our DIs (drill instructors). I recall one’s name as Green. He was tall (maybe 6-2) and slender and turned out to be taciturn. And he was all business. The other, whose name I’ve forgotten (I’ll just call him Black), was much shorter but more muscular and, as we found out—talkative. And he liked to wear his pith helmet at a cocky angle. Before long we were out on the concrete parade ground, starting to learn the fundamentals of being Marines. As the days flowed slowly along, we gradually learned about parade ground marching. Precision, close formation marching is
Kansan was just unable to keep proper time and kept stumbling…. Anyway, one day Green, who was usually patient, gently pulled the Kansan from the ranks and said, “You know, I think you would make an excellent cook. How would you like to be a great cook, one to make your mama proud?” Then Green led him off to the chow hall with his arm around his shoulder as he talked, apparently giving him advice on how make a proper Denver omelet. The Kansan did learn to be a fine cook. We saw him many times in the mess hall and he seemed happy as we joshed with him.
T
HE DIS WERE FACED WITH the most difficult task of shaping their charges into formidable warriors in strict Marine tradition in a very short time. I believe that portrayal of DIs in modern day movies is extremely unfair. All too often these movie DIs are sneeringly sadistic and cynical. Invariably they are in scenes where the DI is standing nose-to-nose with some quaking recruit. He is shouting, almost screaming, and
LEFT, CENTER & RIGHT: COURTESY OF NICK CARIELLO
Opposite: For Cariello, boot camp started gently—with a uniform, a haircut, even a chance to lounge in the barracks reading Superman and other comic books. The next day, the school of hard knocks began. Above, left: At the end of boot camp, Cariello was a proud US marine. Center: Despite his pride, his mother was worried sick. She had wept silently when she signed the papers allowing her son to enlist. When Cariello shipped out to the Pacific theater, his mom’s worries became well founded. He ended up in vicious combat on Tulagi, Guadalcanal, and Tarawa. Right: Cariello and his squad leader, Minnesotan Randy Johnson, horse around in New Zealand in 1943, during a rest after the battle on Guadalacanal.
something I began to like with everybody (most everybody) in proper formation and spacing. I enjoyed the snap of the DI’s voice and our instant reaction when he bellowed such various commands as, “Forward march, to-the-rear-march, oblique left, oblique right, left turn, right turn, and halt!” The repetitious and smooth cadence of the DI’s marching orders—hup, two, three, four—hup, two, three, four—had almost a hypnotic effect. Often I would dream of marching in a somewhat surrealistic setting, such as a parade ground containing ankle-deep dirt in which I could hardly lift my tired feet. There was one quiet, likeable Marine who had come from a Kansas farm. Tall, gangly and slightly bowlegged, he was quickly tagged as a “clodhopper.” No matter how hard he tried, the
using the full range of foul language, especially the “F” word until he is virtually blood-red in his scowling face. Oh sure, there must have been a few DIs who fit the movie description. But most Marines I have talked to believe the same about DIs that I did. At least in my case I thought Green and Black were firm but fair, tough but understanding, serious but not averse to a tension-reducing laugh. I believe Green and Black attempted to mold us into a unique unit with solidarity and loyalty to country, the Marine Corps and to each other. I think they succeeded. And perhaps most important, they instilled in us an instant, unquestioning obedience that in a critical combat situation could save life or limb…. One chilly morning when Black turned up for parade ground exercises it was apparent that he had been up all night. He was GIs IN WORLD WAR II 9
USMC
The scene of Cariello’s transformation into a leatherneck was the sprawling Marine Corps Base in San Diego (today’s Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego). The base prepared hundreds of thousands of marines for the war.
unshaven and his usually crisp khakis were wrinkled and shapeless. (Rumors had been rampant that Black liked to carouse in the more notorious bars of San Diego.) His speech was slurred as he tried to bark out commands. Then Green came up and whispered something as Black looked at him with bleary eyes. Green took him by the arm and steered him toward DI quarters. Green walked with an ever-so-slight stagger but kept his shoulders square….
T
HE OUTDOOR MOVIES ON BASE that we attended weekly were invariably war films that were frankly propagandistic. Whenever the despised, sneering Japanese appeared we would boo loudly and stamp our feet rhythmically. Occasionally a romantic film would be shown and we would also boo and hiss because we didn’t want any kissy-face, mushy, gushy B-movie plots. We wanted war action films! One night close to “Lights Out” I asked the Marine in the next cot: “You ever get homesick?” He replied, “Sure. I get lonely for home when at night I look out the tent and see the lights of houses on the hillsides of San Diego. I wonder who those people are and what they’re doing. And then I wonder what my folks are doing. So what about you? You get homesick too?” I said, “Yeah, many times. Especially when I think about my mother making one of her traditional Italian dinners. I can just visualize her preparing my favorite—pasta, meatballs and Italian sausages. And there would be plenty of cheeses and various fruit and desserts. And the oh-so-strong coffee! Usually the coffee was accompanied by an Italian liqueur or two like Anisette. And man, I can practically taste that scrumptious pasta with its heavy tomato sauce laced with basil and pungent garlic.” He said, “Yum. You’re making me hungry. I can almost taste it too. Would there be wine?” “Plenty,” I said. “And always red with pasta.” Home was never far from my thoughts. Mary, my older sister, wrote faithfully once a week for my parents. My mother and
10 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
father were immigrants from Italy and never were proficient in English. So my sister’s letters were my direct link to them. Her communications were really newsy, filled with details about my parents, friends, my other three siblings and my beloved dog Laddie. Occasionally I would get a letter from one of several girls I casually knew back home but nothing serious developed. I’ll never forget the time that a guy from Indiana, probably two or three years older than I, was next to me in the washroom. Both of us were shaving and I noticed he shaved his face several times. I didn’t have much facial hair and shaved just once. He noticed and said in amusement, “Hey, kid, you wanna hurry up the process of glorious shaving? Back home we tell kids who are in such a rush to shave that they should spread goose shit all over their face. That makes the hair grow three times as fast. Otherwise you just have to wait until you grow up.” I was embarrassed but he slapped me on the back and I felt better. An unusual treat was in store for us one afternoon. Surf was up in the La Jolla area (some 15 miles away) and the DIs obtained permission to take us there. We went in open trucks and whistled and waved and hollered at the girls we saw along the way who merrily waved back while giving the victory sign. Upon arriving at a virtually deserted beach, we tumbled out of the trucks after stripping down to our undershorts. Monstrous waves came frothing in and we rushed out to greet them and dived into their watery embrace. Most of us had never experienced ocean swimming and the salty taste and the utter ease of floating surprised and delighted us. We were as giddy as screaming kids on carnival thrill rides. The anticipated news came that we were to be taken by train for several days’ training at the Army’s Camp Roberts rifle range about 260 miles away. The range was in hilly country near San Luis Obispo. Soon we were introduced to what the gunnery officers told us was our best and only true friend: the ’03 [M1903] Springfield rifle. The reliable weapon, used in the first World War, was bolt-operated and the magazine held five cartridges.
INTO THE SERVICE • Getting the Boot At Camp Gilbert we went under intensified training involving It was on the first day on the range that I discovered my eyesight obstacle courses. An important and dangerous tactic that we learned wasn’t quite 20-20. I did fine at target practice of 100 and 150 yards was how to descend swiftly on swaying simulated cargo nets about with the Springfield but beyond that distance my marksmanship fell 15 feet high and then dropping into imaginary landing boats. This rather drastically. (I remembered the bored Navy corpsman back at was done while carrying a heavy full pack and toting a rifle. the Milwaukee recruiting station. He tested our eyesight by having We also eagerly practiced on the bayonet range and underwent us read a big black chart on the wall. “That’s great, that’s great,” he more combat situations with a live machine-gun aimed just above kept repeating as we were rushed through the procedure….) our helmeted heads. Bullets were buzzing perilously close as we But I did manage to earn a “Marksman” award with the rifle. tried to squiggle into the ground itself while crawling along the Sniper School was not in the offing for me but I was confident I obstacle course. Later we spoke in awe about how scary it was. could pop a Japanese at 150 yards. My results at the range involving the Colt .45-caliber automatic pistol proved rather amusing. I noticed that the instructor, a corpoE REALIZED THAT we had been transformed from a ral probably in his mid-20s, was the nervous type. He paced while bunch of smart-ass know-it-alls into tough, lean, almost continuously puffing on a cigarette and was never still for mean, spunky Marines. And the Marine motto, long. He was small but wiry and I recall he had the most unusual “Semper Fidelis,” was now deeply embedded within our very souls. deep blue eyes that were almost purple. It was obvious we had lost our “baby Leading me up to the firing post the corfat” and we were most proud of our flat poral, apparently trying to distract me, bellies. The muscles in our thighs and asked where I was from. I told him and he calves bulged from the seemingly intersaid, “Look, kid, I’m from rural New minable marching and running. Our Mexico and I know guns large and small appetites were humongous and our and inside and out. So listen to what I say. superbly conditioned bodies were satisfied The key to accurate shooting is to stay calm. by nourishing food in the form of enorJust don’t get nervous and you’ll do well and mous amounts of carbohydrates and promake me proud and improve my record.” tein (meat in all its forms). When it came to my turn, I stepped up The scuttlebutt became intense that we confidently and the jumpy corporal who would soon depart for the Pacific to take now seemed more nervous instructed me on the detested Japanese. Then the official on the proper firing stance. He repeated: announcement came and the 2nd Marine “Now just remember to relax like a sleepRegiment quickly boarded troopships. ing baby in a crib and not get nervous,” in Our vessel, along with several others, his cigarette-scarred voice. left very early one July morning, accompaI was doing great at the various disnied by an imposing array of warships. tances and he said nervously, “Say, man, Several of us stood along the railing at the you are doing just great! If you keep this stern of the vessel, bewitched by the colorup you’ll get the top award of “Expert!” ful fluorescent waves churned up by the During the last phase of firing the corporal gigantic propellers. kept whispering in my ear, “Now don’t get We watched, mostly in silence, as the By the time the March of Time documentary nervous. Keep it up. Take it easy and stay varied lights of San Diego slowly faded. I We Are the Marines hit theaters across calm. Just don’t get nervous.” wondered, as I’m sure the others did, what the United States in 1942, Nick Cariello Well, of course I got nervous and just lay ahead. (Unknown to us, we were headwas one of those marines. missed making “Expert.” But I did receive ed for the Solomon Islands and a tough a “Sharpshooter” award, the next highest rank. As I was leaving, landing on Tulagi. Later would come the horrendous assault the corporal who was drawing furiously on still another cigarette, against Tarawa where about 1,000 Marines were killed and 2,000 patted me on the shoulder and said wistfully, “It’s really too bad, wounded in a three-day battle.) kid, that you got nervous.” But oh, how eager we were! And how unconcerned and Soon after returning to Boot Camp, the long-anticipated “Graduextremely “gung-ho” and excited and elated and enthusiastic, and ation Day” arrived after eight long weeks of arduous work, and cocky and perhaps even arrogant. All of those figures of speech we proudly had our photo taken as a platoon with Green and applied to us as our ship churned ahead. Black standing in mock sternness among us. We knew that some of us would never return and others would There was much jubilation after Green, in a triumphant voice, come back wounded in body or shattered in spirit. But we were declared: “Now listen up: it’s official. You are now Marines!” ready to accept whatever fate dangled before us, because we were Pride was a common passion among us. Marines—first, last and always. A Then we were delighted again when we were told that we would be blended into the soon-to-be-famous 2nd Marine Division base NICK CARIELLO, a wartime member of Company F, 2nd Marine at Camp Gilbert about 15 miles away. We shook hands, cheered Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, was severely wounded on Tarawa and shouted “hurrahs” as we slapped each other on the back. by a Japanese grenade. Today, he lives in Tucson, Arizona. AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION
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GIs IN WORLD WAR II 11
Snagged by Uncle Sam It was a lottery no one really wanted to win: the draft. But from 1940 until the war’s end in 1945, some 10 million American men learned their numbers were up. by Carl Zebrowski
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1940. The United States was not. America had been victorious in its wars leading up to World War II, but now its military barely ranked in the world’s top 20. It had less than 200,000 men in uniform, and some of them were wearing doughboy helmets from World War I and carrying guns that dated back almost to the turn-of-the-century Spanish American War.
As it became clear that it was merely a matter of time, and not much of it, before the United States was forced to enter World War II, something had to change fast. Those “I Want You” posters with the finger-pointing Uncle Sam were pretty persuasive, but there was no way enough volunteers were going to enlist to build a military strong enough to challenge Germany and Japan. So in September 1940 Congress passed the Burke-Wadsworth Act to initiate a military draft, the first peacetime draft in American history. Young men ages 21 through 36 were required to register for the possibility of 12-month terms of service in the Western Hemisphere or in US territories or possessions. Some 20 million men had to register right away. To process the registrations and administer the draft, local draft boards were set up from coast to coast. Each of the 6,443 boards assigned each of the registrants in its district a number, then a national lottery was held to rank the registrants. In Washington, papers with the numbers 1 through 7,836 printed on them were put into capsules, one number to a capsule. The capsules were dumped into a giant fishbowl that had been used for the same purpose in the WWI draft. The capsules were then stirred with a wooden spoon fashioned from part of a beam from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Finally the capsules were drawn from the bowl one by one to establish the draft order. In a predictable photo opportunity staged on lottery day, October 29, 1940, a blindfolded Secretary of War Henry Stimson reached into the bowl and pulled out the first capsule. From a nearby podium, President Franklin Roosevelt announced the number drawn: 158. Across the country, 6,175 young men held that number. All the men holding number 158 were brought in first by their local draft boards to be considered for service. Men holding the numbers that followed in the lottery were brought in until the services had their fill. All the men whose numbers were up received an “order to report for induction” from their local draft board. The
letter named the branch of service the man was being called to and gave the date, time, and place where paperwork would be filled out and examinations given. A man had to be at least five feet tall and no taller than six and a half, be at least 105 pounds, have vision correctable with glasses, have at least half his teeth, not have been convicted of a crime, and be able to read and write. There were several reasons a man might be sent home. Men who didn’t pass the medical examination were classified 4-F, physically unfit for service. Black men were passed over initially due to prejudiced questions about their ability to fight and worries that tensions between black and white servicemen might erupt. Men in certain occupations deemed essential to the war effort were excused so they could continue to do their work. And men with friends on their local draft board sometimes slipped through cracks. The inductees who passed all the scrutiny were taken into the service right away. As the induction letter for 1941 stated, “Bring with you sufficient clothing for three days.” It may have felt like being hauled off to jail without the opportunity for bail. The next stop was a stateside military installation and then, for most, shipping off to Europe, Africa, or the Pacific. Drafting continued through the war, though a lot changed after that first round in 1940. Among the obvious changes were the expansion of the age range to include men from 18 to 37, the elimination of restrictions on where in the world a man could be sent, the growth of the enlistment term to the duration of the war plus six months, and a growing tendency to overlook physical shortcomings. By war’s end some 35 million men had registered and 10 million were drafted. The draft had produced a military that could not only stand up to Germany and Japan, but could decisively defeat them. A LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN AMERICA IN WWII, DECEMBER 2007
ERMANY WAS A MILITARY JUGGERNAUT IN
CARL ZEBROWSKI of Mount Gretna, Pennsylvania, is the editor of America in WWII magazine and www.AmericaInWWII.com.
Above: James Montgomery Flagg’s WWI Uncle Sam went back to work in the 1940s, recruiting for a new war. Opposite, top: Recruitment couldn’t grow the armed forces fast enough, so in 1940 Congress imposed a draft. Here, a conscript reports to a draft board in Washington, DC, in September 1942. Opposite, bottom: The draft became a pop culture theme, as in Bob Hope’s 1941 draft-dodger comedy Caught in the Draft. 12 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
GIs IN WORLD WAR II 13
COURTESY OF WWW.DOCTORMACRO.COM
PHOTO BY JAC K DELA NO. LIBR A RY OF CONG RESS
Ten-
Hut! Hair shorn, run ragged, and treated with no respect, ordinary Joes became war-winning GI Joes at boot camp. by Jim Kushlan
INTO THE SERVICE • Ten-Hut!
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The United States put some 16 million men in uniform during the war. Considering that US military personnel numbered just 356,000 in 1939, this was sudden, exponential growth. Uncle Sam had to put a lot of boys through boot camp all at once. To accomplish this daunting task, training camps opened across the continent. The marines hardened their men at San Diego and at Parris Island, South Carolina. Coast guard recruits trained on Government Island at Alameda, California, at Curtis Bay, Maryland, and in St. Augustine, Florida. The navy sent its boys to San Diego or to Bainbridge, Maryland; Newport, Rhode Island; Great Lakes, Illinois; Norfolk, Virginia; Sampson, New York; or Farragut, Idaho. And the army, the largest service branch of all, operated 118 training camps across the nation. War’s onset instilled panic over the country’s undersize fighting force, and at first some military branches shrank boot camp to just a few weeks. That soon changed. Experience showed that short training meant trouble accomplishing war goals. So, marine training grew from five to eight weeks during the war. The navy set aside six weeks, and the coast guard eight. Late in the war, when the army stopped creating new units and was training only replacements to fill in for casualties and for men whose enlistments had expired, army boot
ALL PHOTOS: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN AMERICA IN WWII, OCTOBER 2011
T STARTED WITH A TRAIN OR BUS RIDE . Then you stepped into a different world. “Check in, stand in line for everything. Get uniforms, see the doctor, get a haircut, and report to my assigned barracks” was how WWII navy veteran R. Fischer of the USS Chenango (CVE-28) described it. From that point, things got a lot harder and moved a lot faster. But just weeks later, you had survived basic training—better known as boot camp—and were a genuine member of America’s armed forces in World War II.
camp expanded to a whopping 15 weeks. The goal was to make sure replacements could fit into battle-hardened units at the front. No matter where it was or how long it took, WWII basic training followed the same pattern. After arriving at camp, the newbies got shots, haircuts, clothes (uniforms, socks, and underwear), gear, and manuals containing information on military courtesy and rules. Assigned to barracks, the shavetails discovered that American manhood was quite an assortment. At the mess hall, they learned camp food wasn’t bad. Then appeared a man sent to break other men and rebuild them as soldiers, marines, or fighting seamen. He was the drill instructor, a non-commissioned officer who oversaw the recruits’ formation in military discipline, their physical conditioning, their combat training, and their emotional breakdown and breakthrough. To some men, the drill instructor was the devil. For most, he was a helpful teacher or at worst a necessary evil. The photos that follow—taken in WWII training camps of every branch, across the country—show how America turned civilian boys into stalwart men capable of saving the free world. A JIM KUSHLAN is the publisher of America in WWII. His dad went to boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi.
It was a rude awakening. Few men arrived at boot camp looking like this US Army Air Forces cadet (previous spread) who had already completed part of his training at a camp for pilot candidates in 1943. But they would end up that way, after some major lifestyle changes. Their transformation began immediately after arriving at a training camp like the army’s Camp Wheeler in Georgia (above, postcard). First came a change of clothes, shedding civilian duds and receiving uniforms, as these flight cadets are doing (top left) at Alabama’s Maxwell Field early in 1942. Just before or after their wardrobe change, recruits met the man who would change their lives: their drill instructor. These marine recruits (top right) at Parris Island, South Carolina, are meeting theirs—a pith-helmeted corporal who will see them through to becoming real marines who follow orders without a fuss. At Randolph Army Air Field, Texas, in 1942, even the barber echoed that hard lesson (opposite). 16 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
INTO THE SERVICE • Ten-Hut!
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4 Bodies got stronger fast. But at first they felt exhausted and sore. Strenuous exercise—like the “rhythmic dances” these 1942 pilot candidates are doing (opposite)—filled part of every day. For guys who were already in shape, boot camp was a time to shine. One such trainee was All-American football player Frankie Sinkwich (photo 1, laying out his marine clothing), who was at Parris Island in the summer of ’43. Athlete or not, however, each trainee was in for a workout. It started with early reveille followed by about 20 minutes to get ready (photo 2), as Ralph Kipp (shaving) and Dupree Weeton (brushing his teeth) are doing at California’s Fort Ord in April 1942. The rest of the day was packed with activities such as running obstacle courses (photo 3, at Florida’s Boca Raton Field in August 1943), learning how to fight (photo 4, at Parris Island in June 1943), doing calisthenics (photo 5, officer candidates at Miami Beach in 1943), learning to use firearms, and combat techniques such as crawling to avoid bullets (photo 6, at Fort Ord). Few men ran an obstacle course as well as Willard Christopher (above, center, at Parris Island in July ’43), an All-American track and field man from Rice Institute, who held the broad jump record of 25 feet. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 19
INTO THE SERVICE • Ten-Hut!
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Finally, it was over. Skills such as marksmanship and weapons-handling, drill, marching, and more had been mastered (photo 1, graduating recruits at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1942, and photo 2, at Barksdale Field, Louisiana, in July 1940). Graduation meant assignment to a unit. But first it meant leave! Here (photo 3), the sea bags of outbound new marines await truck transportation at Parris Island in April 1943. Graduates headed home to family and friends as members of the US armed forces (top, leaving Parris Island on a train in November 1943). They had crisp uniforms to show off, and confidence born of achievement. Everything they had learned and practiced would be put to the ultimate test when they came back from leave and went to war. 20 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
GIs IN WORLD WAR II
CHAPTER II • MILITARY LIFE
Farewell to Freedom Never alone, told what to do and where to go, enlistees found themselves in a pressure cooker that some handled better than others. by Tom Huntington AY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT MILITARY LIFE , at least there was plenty of food. A generation raised in the lean Depression years appreciated it. During World War II the average American soldier gained up to 9 pounds during his opening months in uniform.
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COURTESY OF GEORGE KUSHNER
To get all that grub, a draftee had to pass the physical examination, receive a serial number, and take an oath. After getting his affairs in order, he traveled to a reception center. Early in the war he might have received a send-off, with the local Elks club providing a free breakfast and maybe some smokes or a Bible. As the pace of induction increased, that fell by the wayside. But all the ceremonies in the world couldn’t disguise the fact that life had changed drastically. One new draftee recalled watching a man in the street from his train window. “You are free,” he thought, “but I am in a trap.” While many inductees were anxious about what lay ahead, some felt excitement. James Jones, who used his army experiences in his novel From Here to Eternity, says the initial feeling was like “a sudden, unexpected school holiday. All restraints are off, everyday life and its dull routines, its responsibilities are scratched and a new set of rules takes over. True some people are going to die, but probably it will not be oneself.” Young men from the far corners of the nation received a rude awakening once they streamed into reception centers. They got shots. They got talks and handouts about sexually transmitted diseases. (“Flies carry disease,” said one brochure, “so keep yours buttoned.”) They donned ill-fitting uniforms and footwear and took aptitude tests. They were read the Articles of War. They learned to salute officers, something that did not come easily to individualistic Americans. For swallowing these indignities, new servicemen got meager pay—$21 a month for an army private ($50 after Pearl Harbor). In the barracks, dozens of young men, many away from home for the first time, were packed together with no privacy. “There
were the usual attempts to get laughs,” one new soldier remembered of his first night: “imitation burps, synthetic breaking wind, and the whistle-snore routine.” By war’s end the country had established 242 training centers, places like Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Jackson, South Carolina; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Training was supposed to be realistic; sometimes it was too realistic and trainees were killed by prematurely exploding shells or when parachutes didn’t open. From reveille to lights out, the schedule included marching, drilling, policing the barracks, eating, more marching, hikes with full packs, obstacle courses, classes, lectures—and, at day’s end, usually exhaustion. “It is hard, darling, and I hope that I have guts enough to really take it like I should,” one recruit wrote his sweetheart. There was lots of complaining, something that irritated pre-war Regulars. “Nobody knows what the Army meant to me—security and pride and something good,” remembered one regular army soldier. But then came wave after wave of “selectees,” always “bitching about this and that.” Another army Regular complained that “selectees have been allowed to wise off too much.” Whiners and wise guys came to believe the military way made little sense, but others saw method in the madness. “Everything the civilian soldier learned and was taught from the moment of his induction was one more delicate step along this path of the soldier evolving toward acceptance of his death,” wrote James Jones. The deprivations and humiliations of training, Jones believed, were meant to break down the soldier’s sense of self and reinforce that he was “as disposable as the ships and guns and tanks and ammo he himself serves and dispenses.” A
Above: A postcard from a new GI to a friend back home illustrates the best approach to the mountain of regulations, protocols, and absolute authority that buried new enlistees: humor. “They treat us like a bunch of cattle,” one navy trainee complained on a postcard to a relative. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 21
Uncle Sam’s
WINNING TEAMS Bringing down the Axis powers would take skilled, valiant efforts on land, in the air, and on the seas. So, the United States put large numbers of well-trained young men into action in the army, marine corps, army air forces, navy, and coast guard. by Brian John Murphy Uncle Sam’s boys in uniform turned out in force for Bob Hope’s USO show at Maui, Hawaii, on July 18, 1944. The seemingly endless sea of servicemen includes sailors, coastguardsmen, marines, and soldiers. NATIONAL ARCHIVES
MILITARY LIFE • Uncle Sam’s WINNING TEAMS
ALL PHOTOS THIS STORY: NATIONAL ARCHIVES. ALL PATCHES THIS STORY: RAMKAS COLLECTION
United States Army A US Army Air Forces
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SEPTEMBER 1, 1939, the US Army numbered about 125,000 men (including the US Army Air Corps), fewer than the armies of Poland and Romania. In 1940 the United States commenced its first-ever peacetime draft. With draftees and volunteers, the army swelled to 1,640,000 men and women by December 7, 1941. By war’s end 11,200,000 men and women had enlisted or were drafted. The peak strength (March 1945) was 8,200,000. During the war the army was an infantry-centered ground force, with significant support by tank divisions (mixes of tanks and infantry), paratroop and mountain units, artillery, and special forces. The US Army was the world’s most mechanized. The army confronted the Germans and Italians in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy; and in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. In the war with Japan, army units operated in the China-Burma-India Theater; in Australia, New Guinea, the Aleutians, and the Philippines; and in the Pacific Islands, including Saipan and Okinawa. Casualties were the worst since the Civil War. The final estimate was 234,874 deaths from all causes, of which 189,696 were killed in action. N
THE US ARMY AIR FORCES (USAAF) were nearly non-existent in 1939. By 1944 they comprised 2.4 million men and women and just shy of 80,000 aircraft. The USAAF had three basic missions: transport and supply, tactical support of ground forces, and strategic bombing. By May 1945 the USAAF had 1,600 bases around the world, with some 1,250,000 airmen overseas. The USAAF used a variety of aircraft, including the Boeing B-17 and B-29 and Consolidated B-24 heavy bombers. Major fighter types were the North American P-51 Mustang, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, Lockheed P-38 Lightning, and Curtis P-40 Warhawk. Hauling much of the heavy cargo was the Douglas C-47. In the European theater, the USAAF’s most significant accomplishments were destroying strategic German targets (especially oil and synthetic oil facilities) and vanquishing the Luftwaffe. In the Pacific, the USAAF’s signature accomplishments were fire-bombing Japan’s cities and dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The USAAF destroyed 29,916 Luftwaffe planes and 10,343 Japanese aircraft. Some 21,593 USAAF airmen were killed. Another 1,974 were missing in action. A
Above, photo: Army privates sit on the edges of their bunks as a train hauls them to a training camp in the South. Top patch: Dozens of army divisions served in the war, including the oldest, the First Division, or “Big Red One.” Bottom patch: The 101st Aiborne Division “Screaming Eagles” jumped into Normandy in D-Day’s wee hours. Above, poster: The air forces were part of the army during the war. 24 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
MILITARY LIFE • Uncle Sam’s WINNING TEAMS
United States Navy A United States Coast Guard
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WAR II WAS the US Navy’s first real two-ocean war. In the Atlantic, the primary mission was to escort convoys of materiel and troops from North America to Great Britain and later to North Africa and the Mediterranean. The navy’s Atlantic mission actually began months before Germany’s December 11, 1941, declaration of war, with navy ships escorting convoys bound for Britain as far as the mid-Atlantic. The navy also hunted enemy warships, especially German U-boats. Naval aviation was tasked with a similar role, flying from small escort carriers. The surface navy also added naval artillery support to landings in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and Southern France. The battle for the Central Pacific was very much the navy’s war. Under Admiral Chester Nimitz, the navy went on the offensive early. Naval aviation shifted the balance of power in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. The aircraft carrier became the navy’s new capital ship. Surface ships provided artillery support for invasions across the Pacific and anti-submarine protection. The navy also ran an extraordinarily efficient supply service from the US West Coast.
ALL POSTERS THIS STORY: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
ORLD
Naval aviation scored its biggest victory in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, where Japanese naval aviation was virtually annihilated. Throughout the war navy planes sought out and destroyed Japanese shipping, and provided support for army and marine troops on the ground. Under the seas, US submarines waged a brilliant campaign against Japanese supply ships, cutting off the home islands from the raw oil and rubber they desperately needed. A total of 4,183,466 people served in the wartime navy, nearly 91 percent of whom were enlisted personnel. Peak strength was 3,405,525 on July 31, 1945. In all, 35,579 navy personnel of all ranks were killed or died of wounds in World War II. The missing numbered 4,647 lives; 909 died as POWs. THE US C OAST G UARD , then a division of the Treasury Department, joined with the navy in providing surface escorts for convoys and in anti-submarine patrolling of US coasts. Coastguardsmen were tapped to pilot landing craft in invasions on both oceans. During the war 241,093 served in the coast guard; 574 were killed in action. A
Above, photo: Boot camp graduates at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi wear their whites in October 1942. Poster: The US Coast Guard operated with the navy during the war. Top patch: Navy enlisted men were classified by rating (area of specialty) and rate (pay grade). This insignia indicates the rate of petty officer second class. Bottom patch: Naval Construction Battalions, or Seabees, could build anything anywhere. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 25
MILITARY LIFE • Uncle Sam’s WINNING TEAMS
United States Marine Corps
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ORLD WAR II WAS THE GREAT defining conflict for the US Marine Corps. The marines expanded to six divisions and five air wings, with 485,000 men and women serving. Marines fought almost exclusively in the Central Pacific. Battles fought by the corps were defined by Japanese tenacity and the marines’ courage, which prevailed in the face of harrowing combat. The very names of the corps’ major battles are synonyms for savage combat and extreme hardship: Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. In campaign after campaign, the marines gained valuable expertise in amphibious operations, which remains a key US military asset.
The war’s most famous image was made on Iwo Jima when AP photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped marines raising the second flag atop Mt. Suribachi. The dramatic tableau, recalling the sublime harmony of classic Greek statuary, became an enduring symbol of the marines, World War II, and American fighting men of all wars. Marine aviation played a key role in the island campaign. Armed with the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair fighter-bomber, and operating from land and carriers, marine pilots swept aside Japanese opposition and provided close support for marines on the ground. The marines paid heavily for their victories. Some 19,733 leathernecks lost their lives. Another 67,207 were wounded. A
Above, photo: Marine Private First Class Earl Coleman totes a captured Japanese flamethrower. A flamethrower man himself, he took out three enemy positions during the November 1943 invasion of Tarawa. Patch: The insignia of the 3rd Marine Division. Poster: This 1942 marine recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg (of Uncle Sam fame) features the WWI doughboy helmet that soon gave way to the M-1 “steel pot.” 26 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
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G I s I N WO R L D WA R I I F L A S H B AC K
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BOB GABRICK COLLECTION
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Wacky for Khaki The constant presence of men in uniform was more than some girls could take. And being surrounded by smitten young women was more than some servicemen could resist. by Carl Zebrowski
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the saying goes. Not all girls, maybe, but as more and more American boys put on service duds after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there were enough uniform-crazy bobbysoxers to cause a serious nationwide problem.
“Khaki-wackies” was one of the cleverer names given to hormone-hyped teens who chased GIs; another was Victory-girls, or V-girls. Whatever they were called, tens of thousands of middleand working-class teenage girls donned a sort of uniform of their own—oversize sweaters, bobby sox, and saddle shoes—and strutted into action. In contrast to their cutesy attire, they often caked on makeup to make themselves look older, because some of them were alarmingly young. Cosmopolitan magazine reported in February 1943, for example, that a couple of Oregon girls aged 12 and 13 years “ran away to San Francisco and for three months cut a lurid swath across the city’s night life.” Khaki-wackies typically hung around bus and train stations and drugstore soda fountains, wherever GIs tended to gather. A wartime joke had a sailor talking with his friend: “I’m going to Walgreen’s to meet a girl.” “Who?” “I don’t know yet.” The girls got creative in hunting their willing prey. The National Recreation Association’s 1943 booklet “Teen Trouble: What Recreation Can Do about It” described a strategy used by groups of khaki-wackies on the prowl. “They walk down city streets, six or seven abreast, breaking as they pass civilians, but holding on to each other’s arms as they approach a soldier or a sailor, forming a very flattering net around him,” the booklet read. “As the walk progresses, the line gets shorter, as girl and boy pair off and leave the group. It’s a childish, very effective get-your-man plan used by girls around fourteen and fifteen years old!” Reports of teenage girls chasing GIs came from all over the country. Officials in Tillamook County, Oregon, reported, “There is some concern with regard to the morals of the young girls of the town…. It seems that many girls of the 14, 15, and 16 year old group have become very much interested in the soldiers.” Echoes of that sentiment arose from the Midwest. “In Detroit,” one observer noted, “the Navy had to build a fence around its armory, located in the city, to keep out not the enemy, but the bobbysoxers.” Most GI-crazy teens were nothing more than innocent admirers, like the girls 20 years later who would faint on the tarmac
when the Beatles got off a plane in America for the first time. But there was also a documented increase in promiscuity during the war. Nationally, arrests and citations for girls rose 31 percent in 1942, most of the offenses sexual. A fraction of the girls could be described as amateur prostitutes, sometimes known by the less-than-flattering term patriotutes. They believed they could raise fighting men’s spirits for the good of their country—or they were simply having a good time and maybe collecting a few fringe benefits. “Sure, I knew it was wrong!” a young teen quoted in the “Teen Trouble” booklet said about a liaison with an older GI. “But...he took me to a good hotel, and we had a swell dinner, and some drinks, and we danced, and I never had so much fun in my life!” The Portland Women’s Protective Division confirmed that 13- and 14year-old girls in Oregon “sometimes stay away from home for several nights in a row, some of them at good hotels where they seem to have enough money.” The pros didn’t appreciate the cut-rate kids trespassing on their financial territory. “They say the young chippies who work for a beer and a sandwich are cramping their styles,” Time magazine reported in March 1943. Besides the predictable problem of increased out-of-wedlock pregnancies, another critical consequence of the amateur movement was a rise in venereal disease. Whatever the downside of the pros, they did practice safer sex, where amateurs tended to get carelessly caught up in the moment. In 1943, the navy blamed girlfriends and pickups for 80 percent of the VD cases in the American Southwest. The initial look-the-other-way attitude toward girls chasing uniforms faded fast as the gravity of the problem became obvious. Suggestive early-war songs such as “Whacky for Khaki,” with lines like “…Not tweed, not serge,/it’s khaki by cracky that gives me the urge,” were soon history. V for Victory was fine, American parents had realized, but their daughters weren’t going to be V-girls. A LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
OPPOSITE: PHOTO BY ESTHER BUBLEY. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN AMERICA IN WWII, FEBRUARY 2008
OMEN LOVE A MAN IN A UNIFORM ,
CARL ZEBROWSKI of Mount Gretna, Pennsylvania, is the editor of America in WWII magazine and www.AmericaInWWII.com.
Opposite: Most “khaki-wackies”—girls who went bananas over men in uniform—were young, often teens. Bobby sox and saddle shoes (like these worn by a presumably more stable girl at Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, DC, in October 1943) were part of the khaki-wacky look. Above: Wartime sexual frenzy resulted in out-of-wedlock pregnancies and venereal diseases such as syphilis, the topic of this wartime poster. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 29
POCKETS & FOOTLOCKERS World War II’s US servicemen had their stuff—as much as they could fit in the small space that Uncle Sam allotted to them. And not all of that stuff was government-issue. ARTIFACTS FROM THE CABA AMERICAN HERITAGE COLLECTION, THE WILLIAM S. JACKSON COLLECTION, THE DAVID A. NORRIS COLLECTION, THE GEORGE KUSHNER COLLECTION,
OPPOSITE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
THE DARRELL ENGLISH COLLECTION, THE JAMES P. KUSHLAN FAMILY COLLECTION, THE JAMES L. KING FAMILY COLLECTION, AND THE AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION
Home was where you hung your helmet, so servicemen chose possessions carefully. They had to fit in pockets, pack, or footlocker (like the one this marine recruit is packing at Parris Island, opposite). Many GIs looked to feminine beauty for inspiration, so pinups (like this signed photo of actress Virginia De Luce, above center) were a must. Postcards (bottom left) were popular; boys mailed them home from places like Camp Hood. In perhaps the smokiest era in history, many men carried a pack of “Luckies” (top left) or other smokes, and a lighter (top center, a Dunhill model for servicemen). Churches and religious organizations—worried about GIs facing new dangers and questions—offered helps like the Christian Commission’s Spiritual Almanac for Service Men (top right). On base, a serviceman could get staples like toothpaste, razor blades, candy, and tobacco from the post exchange, if he had a ration card (bottom right, from an airman in Germany on postwar occupation duty). GIs IN WORLD WAR II 31
Was it worth carrying? That was an important question to ask before adding that “one more thing.” Perhaps the answer was yes for a letter-writing kit featuring a curvy lass (above), or one of those slightly racy navy postcards (above, center). Yank, the Army Weekly (left center) was good reading. The handbooks and field manuals the military gave out (top center) were dull but important. Then there were those little odds and ends that gave comfort or pleasure. But one man’s treasure or lucky charm—like this small, painted, cast sailor figurine (top left)—could be another man’s trash. There was always room for money (top right), of course—zinc-coated steel pennies (copper went to war industry), Indianhead nickels, Walking Liberty half-dollars, and, ideally, some bills, too. WWII men in uniform were used to shaving with a safety razor (right center), like their WWI predecessors; straight razors were almost relics. Catholic servicemen had no excuse for not keeping their rosary beads (opposite, left center) handy—no excuse Mom would buy, anyway. The beads took virtually no space. The same was true of the target practice record books (opposite, top) that trainees received at the rifle range. Wise serviceman—like 82nd Airborne paratrooper Sylvester Barbu, to whom these boots, extra socks, and foot powder (opposite) belonged—knew what really mattered in the field or at sea, and prioritized those items. 32 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
Military Life • POCKETS & FOOTLOCKERS
GIs IN WORLD WAR II 33
GIs IN
WWII L ingo! A Sampling of 1940s GI Patter anchor-clanker: more-or-less
fieldstrip your butt: shred that cig
respectful term for a sailor
before chucking it
armored cow: canned milk
first shirt: top noncommissioned officer in a unit
Beans: the guy who slings your hash and beans fish eyes: tapioca pudding staring back at you bird on a ball: the US Marine Corps logo. Say it with respect!
FUJIGMO: Forget you [or worse] Jack, I’ve got my orders!
blue letters: very private notes home go-juice: put it in your jeep’s gas tank butter-bar baby: second lieutenant with a single gold bar
gremlins: mythical beings blamed for airplane malfunctions
cackle-fruit: eggs—pray for fresh, not powdered
ground-pounders: faithful, tramping, slogging foot soldiers
chairborne ranger: office worker; also “desk jockey”
gyrene: US marine, maybe a mix of “GI” and “marine”
chicken sh*t: busy work, red tape, fussy rules
hangfire: gun whose sluggish trigger
corking off: the GI’s only escape—sleeping
makes you swear
dead stick: your plane after the engines die
jack: the guy with two stripes— your corporal
dope: info, or the joker who lacks it jungle juice: GI booze of sugar duck soup: something even easier than pie
and fruit or veggies
eight ball: the guy with
Large Slow Target: the LST
the pet cloud overhead
(Landing Ship, Tank)
feather merchant: a salesman
mitt-flapper: always saluting,
who scams soldiers
he’s the officers’ pet
34 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
moonlight requisition: appropriating another outfit’s supplies
motorized freckles: bugs or lice on one’s skin and scalp
pearl diver: dishwasher on KP (kitchen police) duty
poodle palace: the post commander’s digs
RAMP: freed POW (Recovered Allied Military Personnel) repple-depple: replacement depot for unassigned GIs
roller skate: a tank sawbuck: a $10 bill; Roman numeral X resembles a sawhorse
the skinny: the straight, unadulterated truth SNAFU: “Situation Normal... All Fouled [or worse] Up”
Snow White: a white-uniformed army nurse
toothpick village: no-frills wood-frame barracks
white ticket: honorable discharge windjammer: that herald of the morning, the bugler
zebra: a sergeant loaded with stripes and bars Zippo: a lighter, flamethrower, or the risky M4 tank
Right: Broadcasting from the Paris Stage Door Canteen on opening night in March 1945, T-4 Warren Bryan of the Armed Forces Network lays down a stream of smooth ’40s patter. NATIONAL ARCHIVES
All
For The Boys The whole country got behind its World War II boys in uniform, working hard to keep their morale high with everything from jokes and dance numbers to music, and from basic creature
RIGHT AND OPPOSITE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES. TOP: AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION
comforts to glimpses of shapely female gams.
Laughter was medicine for homesick, tired servicemen. Fortunately, America’s most popular comedians made house calls, traveling far and wide to bring humor to the boys wherever they were. Some, like Private First Class Mickey Rooney, were actually in the service. He traveled across Europe as part of a three-man show. Here (left), he cracks up men of the 44th Infantry Division in Kist, Germany, with his celebrity impressions on April 13, 1945. Bob Hope was civilian through and through, but toured the world to visit GIs with a show featuring comedy, music, and leggy female dancers. At Naval Air Station Coco Solo in the Panama Canal Zone (above), sailors welcome Hope, comic actress Barbara Jo Allen (to the left), and singer Frances Langford (to the right) in March 1944. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 37
All For The Boys
Military Life •
LEFT, RIGHT, AND TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS GEORGE DOLL COLLECTION. COURTESY OF WALKA BOOKS
Donuts helped, too, if they came from “donut dollies,” young women who staffed American Red Cross Clubmobiles like this one in England (top left). The Red Cross had clubs near bases, but Clubmobiles reached servicemen farther afield, offering doughnuts, coffee, smokes, gum, and candy. Men of the 14th Armored Division enjoyed a doughnut dolly visit outside Gemünden, Germany, in 1945 (top right). While some women served in the Red Cross, Hollywood actresses did their part, too—even those of an earlier era. Bebe Daniels (above, in civilian dress), whose film career ended in 1935, visited the boys with her husband, actor Ben Lyon (with trumpet). The couple were BBC radio stars by then. Younger actresses posed for pinups. Betty Grable’s glamour shot (opposite, top left) became a war era icon. Actress Jinx Falkenberg stepped into a department store display to pose with a machine gun (opposite, top center), and star Virginia De Luce saved GIs’ letters after responding to their pinup requests (opposite, top right). Pinups inspired artists such as Private First Class Joseph Ross, whose painting graced a howitzer in New Guinea. 38 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
OF DARREL L ENGLISH
N ECTIO II COLL A IN WW AMERIC
COURTESY
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
ES NATIONAL ARCHIV
GIs IN WORLD WAR II 39
All For The Boys
TOP AND RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES. ARTIFACT: AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION
Military Life •
GIs marched to a swing beat —the whole country did. Composer Irving Berlin was partly responsible for the sound servicemen loved. Here (top), he examines an extremely long short snorter (a taped-together collection of world currency signed by people met during wartime travels) with actress Marlene Dietrich during a USO tour in Germany in May 1945. But it was bandleader Glenn Miller who was the undisputed king of big band swing. He recorded early-war patriotic tunes such as his April 1942 hit “American Patrol” (above, record label). But from October 1942 on, he did his swinging as a US Army Air Forces officer at the head of a band of air force musicians. When a plane carrying Miller went missing over the English Channel in December 1944, his band went on without him. It played its last show in July 1945 near Le Havre, France (above). 40 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
GIs IN WORLD WAR II
CHAPTER III • AT THE FRONT
War’s Hard Realities It was what all the training had been about: the fighting front, with all its violence, injury, death, and terrors. by Tom Huntington
T
POM—Preparation for Overseas Movement, when green trainees moved from their camps to a port of embarkation. This was when it really sank in: they were heading to a combat theater. “Here everybody seems to be going,” said an article in Yank, the Army Weekly. “Everybody’s a transient. Here, literally, everybody is in the same boat.” The oceans that protected the United States from invasion meant uncomfortable journeys for men who had to cross them en route to war. HE ARMY CALLED IT
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Or maybe not. More GIs served behind the lines than on them. Of the three million American soldiers in Europe, only about 750,000 were combat troops. “I don’t know of one soldier out of ten thousand who wants to fight,” noted journalist Ernie Pyle after visiting a front-line company of the 34th Infantry Division. “The old-timers were sick to death of battle and the new replacements were scared to death of it. And yet the company went into battle, and it was a proud company.” For many soldiers, the worst thing was the uncertainty about how they would behave under fire. “Would he do well?” wrote author James Jones about the speculations of the typical soldier. “Would he die? Would he be able to kill another man? Would he not be able to kill another man? Did he really know himself?” An army handbook warned trainees that they would be scared. “Before you go into battle, you’ll be frightened of the uncertainty, at the thought of being killed,” it warned. “If you say you’re not scared, you’ll be a cocky fool.” Most men in combat were scared. Some performed well anyway, others did not. Some were killed, more were wounded. “I think I screamed, myself, when I was hit,” wrote Jones. “As soon as I found I wasn’t dead or dying, I was pleased to get out of there as fast as I could.” Helping your buddies and not looking like a coward were motivating factors for combat soldiers, but the primary one was to finish the war and go home, according to a 1944 poll of infantrymen. Soldier Sandford Africk saw too much death. All his friends in
his unit were killed, including one who was lying next to him. “So many buddies gone and so many wounded!” he wrote to his wife. “Oh, darling, it was hell having my friends falling all around me and all we could do was say goodbye with a salute, and kill more Germans.” By the end of the war the army had suffered some 949,000 casualties, 175,000 of them fatalities. There was a psychological price to pay for this horror, and it was not well understood. William C. Menninger, a consultant for the army, described a typical “dejected, dirty, weary” man who suffered from what was then called combat fatigue. “His facial expression was one of depression, sometimes of tearfulness. Frequently his hands were trembling or jerking. Occasionally he would display varying degrees of confusion, perhaps to the extent of being mute or staring into space. Very occasionally he might present classically hysterical symptoms.” Eventually experts began to accept that every man has his breaking point. And every war has its end. When World War II ended, millions of veterans could do the thing they had dreamed about for so long: go home. The soldier had done his job. “He was part of an army that left its bootprints on three continents, a hundred islands—deep in history,” wrote Sergeant Debs Myers in a Yank article titled “The GI.” “With his allies he saved the world and hoped to God he’d never have to do it again.” Now the American soldier would have to face the challenges of the postwar world. A
Above: In March 1945, after the hellish battle for Iwo Jima—where Japanese foes popped up suddenly from underground tunnels to open fire and disappear—a marine kicks back in his foxhole with a pile of mail from home. Getting home was every GI’s prime objective. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 41
AT THE FRONT • PHOTO ESSAY
FOR
MANY
GIS, service in World War
II ultimately came down to facing an enemy who was trying hard to kill you, and overcoming him with deadly force. It was a terrifying reality, whether you were an army or marine infantryman ducking bullets and shrapnel on the ground,
FACING the FIRE a bomber crewman watching flak rip through your plane high above the earth, or a sailor or coastguardsman dodging torpedoes, aerial bombs, and kamikazes at sea. The experience would haunt veterans for the rest of their lives, and set them apart forever from those who never witnessed battle firsthand.
AT THE FRONT • FACING the FIRE
ALL PHOTOS THIS STORY: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
If you weren’t scared, you were an idiot. There were countless ways to die. That made men alert in battle—like this marine on Peleliu in the Pacific in 1944 (previous spread). Courage meant pressing on, as these 101st Infantry soldiers (top left) are doing in Kronach, Germany, in April 1945. Despite the white flags, a blazing gasoline trailer shows the danger isn’t over. Frontline fighters saw casualties daily— especially in hotspots like Betio in the Tarawa atoll, where marines drag a wounded buddy to shelter behind a seawall in November 1943 (top right). The line between offense and defense often blurred, as it did for 89th Division troops ducking German bullets while crossing the Rhine River (above) on March 22, 1945—or for marines dug in on Tarawa in November 1943 (opposite), hoping a grenade will halt Japanese attackers. 44 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
PHOTO BY PHOTOGRAPHER 2nd CLASS WILLIAM G. ROY. NATIONAL ARCHIVES
AT THE FRONT • FACING the FIRE
The enemy was determined to win—sometimes suicidally. A kamikaze pilot (opposite) tried to crash this Ki-61 fighter into the USS Sangamon (CVE-26) off Okinawa on May 4, 1945, barely missing. Facing enemies who were so willing to die was nerve-wracking. A marine (top left) who fought for two days nonstop on Eniwetok, Marshall Islands, wears what veterans called the “thousand-yard stare.” While soldiers and marines fought to hold ground, sailors defended the deck beneath them. Aboard the USS Yorktown (CV-5), sailors remain at their guns (top right) as smoke gathers, the result of Japanese bombs in the June 1942 Battle of Midway. Torpedoes will force the carrier’s abandonment. This coastguardsman (above) aboard a landing ship battles Japanese bombers during the invasion of Cape Gloucester. Enemy near-misses kick up spray. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 47
AT THE FRONT • FACING the FIRE
It came down to killing or being killed —or endangering your buddies. That choice enabled American boys to fight fiercely and kill. Even in the air, much combat was fought close enough to see people inside the planes, as Don King (opposite) of Texas knew. A B-17 waist gunner in the 8th Air Force, he tried hard to shoot down German fighter planes that threatened his bomber over Europe. No GI escaped the war without losing a buddy. One American soldier’s comrades marked where he died on a Normandy beach on D-Day with a hasty monument (top) while fighting was in progress. For men upset by the loss of friends, an enemy’s death was cause for joy. Private John Jennings of Mississippi wanted his picture taken with the body of a Japanese sniper he killed (above). The man was picking off marines trapped on Betio’s beachhead. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 49
when you got WOUNDED... Some guys got through the war without a scratch. For those less lucky, survival and recovery depended on a lot of wild cards—including the military’s shaky medical lifeline. by Eric Ethier
B
medic or corpsman pinned a tag on you describing your injuries and initial treatment for the doctors who would continue your care. Generally assigned per platoon, the courageous medics and corpsmen were overwhelmed with a bewildering number and variety of casualties. They were forced to prioritize patients with the best odds of survival. Though most carried a rifle or carbine, they were categorized as noncombatants—despite being favorite targets of both German and Japanese soldiers. They dashed from one bloodstained hotspot to the next with little regard for their own
that, when sprinkled on open bullet or shell-fragment wounds, could stave off potentially fatal infections. Officers often instructed their men not to impede action by stopping to help the wounded. Whenever possible, lifesaving was left to the trained combat medics of the US Medical Corps, who entered battle alongside GIs, and to the medical corpsmen of the Navy Hospital Corps, who served with island-hopping marines. A medic or corpsman carried two canvas pouches which, depending on his rank and level of training, could include everything from iodine swabs, dressings for burns and eye wounds, and snakebite kits to field tourniquets, multiple types of gauze, syringes, and morphine. Once your bleeding was stanched and your wound was dressed, a
wellbeing. (In 1944, the army’s refusal to bump up medics’ pay along with that of GIs spurred a flood of nasty letters from outraged troops to military publications such as Yank.) Whether you were a marine picked off by a sniper amid a gnarled Pacific jungle or an army infantryman shredded by shrapnel in the rain-slicked mountains of Italy, after your battlefield treatment you began a journey. Via litter carrier, jeep, or even boat, you visited an assembly line of stopgap stations set up to sustain you en route to a proper hospital in a secure area. It was a tricky process. “Sometimes a wounded man is taken back right away,” wrote war correspondent Ernie Pyle in 1944. “But at other times he may be pinned down by enemy fire so that the aid men can’t get to him, and he will have to
ALL PHOTOS THIS STORY: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Y 1942, SURGEONS ’ TABLES WERE within closer reach of battlefields than in any previous conflict. Still, it was the timely dressing of wounds that remained the key to saving your life when you were hurt in battle. Amid the smoke and crash of combat, the first help you received was often from squad or platoon mates with rudimentary medical knowledge at best. But America’s WWII fighting men carried simple first aid kits that included sulfa powder (made from the antibiotic sulfonamide)—a recently developed medical wonder
Top: The red cross insignia of the army medic and the navy corpsman, who treated wounded men where they lay, then got them extricated from the fight. Above left: On D-Day, June 6, 1944, men of the 16th Infantry Regiment wounded on Omaha beach await evacuation. Above, right: Marines hurt on Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943 are brought aboard a transport ship. They will be taken to a hospital ship or shore hospital. Opposite: A half-mile behind the lines, medic Harvey White administers plasma to a wounded man at an aid station on Sicily. 50 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
lie out there for hours before help comes. Right there is the biggest difficulty and the weakest feature of the army’s medical setup.” For marine units in remote topographical nightmares such as Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville Island, the process was often even tougher. Your journey began at a bustling battalion aid station, then continued on to a collection, or clearing, station—a portable hospital where decently equipped doctors stabilized you (with plasma, etc.) or, if necessary, performed time-sensitive procedures such as amputations before you were evacuated from the immediate front. Your next stop might be a navy-operated (or, after mid-1944, army-run) hospital ship such as the USS Comfort (AH-6) (which could care for 400 patients). Or it might be an advance base hospital, many of which were set up by mid-war in secured areas from Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands to North Africa and Scotland. Your survival on this journey might hinge on the speed of your transport. Fortunately, the prewar years had seen remarkable advances in the development of speedier and more rugged jeeps and ambulances—and the advent of air evacuation. For the navy, treating casualties within the rocking hulls and combustive atmospheres of ships was inherently problematic— whether aboard a submarine with closet-sized operating facilities or a mammoth aircraft carrier with battle dressing stations and
complete operating rooms. Medical care could be impossible during combat. Aboard the USS Yorktown (CV-5), medical personnel found themselves hamstrung after Japanese bombs penetrated the carrier during the June 4–7 Battle of Midway in 1942. An afteraction report recounted: “While those requiring immediate surgery were being transferred to the operating room, word was passed to stand by for torpedo attack. Within a few minutes we were struck by torpedoes and listed heavily to port. All lights and communications were out. The ladder leading up from the vicinity of the sick bay was damaged, hanging loose on one side, making it very difficult to get patients up.” Following Captain Elliott Buckmaster’s order to abandon ship, navy airmen and seamen already bleeding from shrapnel wounds found themselves being dragged desperately across the carrier’s slick, smoke-licked flight deck on litters. From there they were transferred to nearby vessels, where fleet doctors went back to work fixing what—and who—they could. If you made it to a military hospital, you were in for a long stay. You might feel restless, ready to climb the walls. But it beat the alternative. A ERIC ETHIER, a contributing editor of America in WWII magazine, writes from Attleboro, Massacusetts. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 51
THE GI s’ LIFELINE Fast, inexpensive V-mail made it relatively easy to keep the American men and women serving overseas connected to home. by David A. Norris
“
I
I HAD BEEN DOING PRETTY WELL AS FAR AS LETTER-WRITING WENT,” US Army Sergeant Eugene Drucker wrote home from Paris in 1944, “but one of the OSS guards has me beat. He claims to have written 2,827 letters (including Vmails) in his one year away from the States, and he gives no sign of slackening…. I asked him, incidentally, if he didn’t think he was placing an undue strain on the censor and the mails.” THOUGHT
V-mail forms were available free at post offices, and stationery shops and drug stores sold them. The V-mail form was a sheet that folded up so it became its own envelope. There were special illustrated forms for greetings at Christmas, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and other holidays. Senders had to restrict their writing to only one side of the Vmail form, because only one side could be photographed. If a sender needed two pages, the second page had to go as a separate V-mail. The recipient’s address had to appear on the back of the form for initial mailing, and in a box at the top of the letter, for final delivery of the reprinted V-mail. Strict rules helped keep the process moving smoothly. Enclosures such as photographs could not be sent with Vmail; they had to go via standard mail. Nothing could be attached to the V-mail form, either—that might jam the processing equipment. It was OK to draw directly on the form, however, and examples of V-mails filled with caricatures or cartoons abounded. Lipstick, “the scarlet scourge,” was banned, because lip prints were gumming up the machinery—and getting transferred onto other letters. Military postal authorities recommended sending kisses by the traditional method of writing Xs instead. On the receiving end, V-mail printouts tended to appear dim or slightly out of focus, especially if the original was written in pencil or blue ink, so senders had to take care to write clearly. To have NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Hours before dropping into German-occupied France on June 6, 1944, paratroopers take V-mail forms to pen notes home. V-mail was a quick, reliable way for GIs and their loved ones to communicate. Letters might travel on slow ships, but V-mail was microfilmed, flown near its destination, reprinted, and delivered. The catch was that the message had to be short. It went on a form like this one (opposite) from Seaman 1st Class James Busam (which survived because late-war V-mail forms were often sent as standard air mail). The ... — on the form’s logo is V in morse code. 52 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF DAVID A. NORRIS
With millions of GIs off fighting in World War II, there was a heavy strain on the mails. Few in the service wrote as prolifically as Drucker’s friend. Still, millions of letters traveled to and from military personnel overseas and their loved ones back home. And they traveled by the same military transportation system that was burdened with carrying ammunition, medicine, food, and other supplies across the oceans. The British, at war since 1939, had already run into the same problem— and found a solution. In May 1941, they began photographing letters onto film, flying the film reels to stations near the letters’ final destinations, making prints from the film, and delivering them to the servicemen. The process relied on a high-tech system developed by the Eastman Kodak Company, and letters sent via this method were dubbed airgraphs. The US military debuted the same system on June 1, 1942, under the name V-mail, a riff on the popular “V for victory” slogan. Government posters and announcements in the American media urged citizens to use V-mail to communicate with GIs. Air-cargo space was tight and the overflow of air-mail letters clogged warehouses and docks, waiting to be tossed onto ships. Americans on the home front read warnings in newspapers that if more people didn’t use V-mail, all overseas air mail might have to be halted and sent by ship instead, which would take much longer.
GIs IN WORLD WAR II 53
THE GIs’ LIFELINE
a decent chance of reproducing clearly, lettering had to be large and dark, and stationers advertised special V-mail ink. It was possible to type on the forms, but even using a fresh ribbon, the final text on a delivered V-mail would be hard to read. Even with all the attention paid to making V-mail legible, many a GI joked that he needed a microscope to make out the writing. Because the writing had to be large and the space was small, a V-mail letter couldn’t carry much more news than a telegram or postcard. By the time the sender wrote “hello” and got started with some news from home, the page was all but full. Jim Busam, who finished high school in Sandusky, Ohio, in 1945 before enlisting in the navy, says he sent V-mail from home “every once in a while” to his older brother Bill, who was already overseas in the navy. “You had to be concise in what you were going to say,” Busam recalls. Because he and Bill were usually “more long-winded,” he says, they often used standard mail. It cost civilians a three-cent stamp to send V-mail, the same as an ordinary letter mailed within the States. The three cents covered domestic processing and air-mail service overseas. Senders dropped V-mail into ordinary mailboxes. GIs in the States or overseas could send V-mail free of charge. Depending on the destination, V-mail written in the States was funneled through processing stations in either New York City or San Francisco. Another station was later added in Chicago to speed up service in the Midwest. Overseas, the military set up processing stations in Britain, Italy, North Africa, Australia, India, Hawaii, and other countries to handle V-mail heading home from military personnel.
Censors opened and read mail sent by GIs, to make sure no military information was inadvertently divulged. The microfilming process itself added a layer of security; any secret messages written in invisible ink on the original letters would not be accessible when the letters were printed out from the film.
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FTER PASSING THE CENSOR , the original letters zipped through machinery that photographed 2,000 to 2,500 forms per hour. Each original V-mail form was saved until delivery of the final V-mail letter could be verified; then the original could be trashed. When the flying boat Lisbon Clipper crashed in 1943 and its microfilm holding 175,000 V-mail letters was destroyed, the originals were rephotographed and successfully delivered. The V-mail process reduced each letter from 8 1/2 by 11 inches to a microfilm frame about the size of a postage stamp. One reel of microfilm was about the size of a pack of cigarettes and weighed 12 ounces. Each reel carried more than 1,600 letters, which would have weighed 48 pounds as standard mail. A bag of V-mail reels replaced a whopping 65 sacks of conventional mail. That was a lot of saved weight and cargo space The microfilm reels got top priority for space in the first available planes heading overseas. By mid-1944, V-mail took 3 to 5 days to reach Iceland, Britain, and even Australia; 5 to 10 days to reach North Africa; and 12 to 18 days to get to India. Standard mail might wait more than a month to find space on a ship and then would have to make the long, slow voyage to its destination. Because of the space shortage aboard planes, even standard letters with air-mail stamps were sometimes sent by
A completed V-mail form went into the mail looking like this (opposite). For GIs, it was free; civilians paid three cents. It ended up at a processing center like this one in Chicago (above, left), where enlisted technicians used Eastman Kodak equipment to process outbound V-mail. As shown by Sergeant Joseph Donnelly of Philadelphia (above, right), the process put the equivalent of 3,200 standard letters on two 90-foot microfilm rolls, saving a vast amount of air cargo space. When the rolls reached their general destination, V-mail messages were printed out using a machine like the one operated by this US military technician in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1942 (opposite, left). They were then trimmed, folded, placed in window envelopes, and delivered. Once delivery was confirmed, the original V-mail forms were destroyed. Discarded forms were baled and recycled (opposite, right). Supposedly, the New York Post Office saved 332 tons of paper over one six-month period. 54 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
COURTESY OF DAVID A. NORRIS
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN AMERICA IN WWII, DECEMBER 2008
ship. Planes leaving other countries bound for the States generally had less to carry than those heading in the other direction, so regular mail from servicemen usually reached home faster than letters from home made it overseas. Occasionally, V-mail was destined for remote places overseas without facilities to print from microfilm. In those cases, the original V-mail forms were forwarded. The forms at least had the benefit of taking up less space than regular letters. When the microfilm arrived overseas, the reels were taken to the nearest V-mail facility. High-speed equipment enlarged the microfilm images, exposing them onto long rolls of photographic paper that automatically ran through developing and fixing chemicals and a drier. (If the technicians found any microfilm defective at this point, they instructed the station that photographed the original letters to reshoot them, beginning the whole process again.) Each letter emerged at 4 inches wide by 5 1/2 inches tall, about half the original’s size. When dry, the letters were cut apart and folded about one-third of the way down from the top. This left the address, which was written on the top of the letter form, visible through a die-cut window when it was tucked into the post-paid envelope. Wilbur Jones of Wilmington, North Carolina, received V-mail letters during the war. He remembers “how funny they looked.” The small envelopes were almost square, unlike the rectangular standard-mail envelopes. They were plain, with an imprint reading “War and Navy Departments V-mail Service Official Business” along with “Penalty for Private Use to Avoid Payment of Postage $300.” Jones says that because V-mail lacked stamps and decoration, if it were to arrive in the mail today, it might “almost be overlooked as junk mail.”
By war’s end, American GIs and civilians had sent more than a billion V-mail letters. Even some periodicals, such as Time magazine, had joined the effort to lighten the military’s transportation load, publishing special V-mail editions with altered page designs and type sizes that ensured the printed pages GIs received would be legible. Through special arrangement with the military, Time sent film for entire reconfigured issues to scattered printing stations overseas, each of which output a certain number of copies for GIs to pass around. Despite the great V-mail push, the total number of V-mail letters sent turned out to be only a fraction of standard-mail letters. According to the National Postal Museum, for example, the US Navy received 38 million V-mail letters in 1944 compared to 272 million regular letters. After Japan surrendered in August 1945 to end the war, transport planes heading overseas had plenty of room for regular air mail, and the microfilming service ended on November 1. V-mail flowing into the postal system on the old forms was treated as ordinary mail. Many letters among the last round of V-mail that GIs sent home included instructions to their families not to send Christmas packages. Just as V-mail had done its duty and been retired, so had America’s service men and women. This Christmas, they would not need V-mail, or any other mail. They would be home to get their greetings and presents in person. A DAVID A. NORRIS lives in Wilmington, North Carolina. He became interested in the World War II era after hearing stories that his parents, Barbara and the late Charles A. Norris, told him about growing up during those years. Jim Busam is his father-in-law. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 55
LIFE AT THE FRONT Overseas, far from home, GIs settled into a new kind of life—one they prayed was only temporary. There were countless ways to experience life on the front lines, shaped by the diverse climate and geography of Africa, Europe, the Pacific, and the jungles of the China-Burma-India theater. Here are glimpses at four different ways that US servicemen experienced life at the fiery leading edge of the war. by Eric Ethier and Brian John Murphy Above: Clad in camouflage uniforms, Marine Raiders strike a triumphal pose in front of a Japanese dugout they helped capture on Bougainville’s Cape Totokina, in the Solomon Islands, in January 1944. Marines led a sweaty, buggy, disease-prone existence on Pacific jungle islands—all while battling an enemy fanatically bent on killing them. NATIONAL ARCHIVES
SOLDIER LIFE IN THE FIELD
European Theater
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December 1944–May 1945
US ARMY ENLISTED MAN at the front in the latter months of the war in Europe was tired, cold (1945’s early spring was unseasonably chilly), and very ready for the Germans to give up. Service at the front was like going camping—without the comforts or even essentials that a civilian camper might enjoy, and with the possibility of sudden death. When not engaged in combat, the soldier first secured his safety and then his needs. By 1945, he was an expert in these areas. Safety first. If a veteran soldier was going to spend the night within range of German artillery, he needed no prompting to dig a foxhole, preferably with enough room for him and his buddy to stretch out and catch a few winks. If he had to dig it in a hurry, he might cover it with forest debris to blend it into the landscape. If a longer stay was likely, he’d collect limbs from fallen trees or lumber from ruined houses or barns to make sturdier coverings. Such roofing wouldn’t stop a direct hit from German 88mm guns, but it would absorb splinters or shrapnel. The next order of business was food. For days and weeks on end, soldiers subsisted on K Rations, or “K rats.” The rations came in color-coded boxes: brown for breakfast, red for lunch, and blue for supper. Depending on the meal and the luck of the draw, they contained such items as canned chopped ham and eggs, or beef or ham loaf; biscuits; powdered coffee; a canned cheese product; chocolate or other candy; a powdered drink; sugar; salt tablets; chewing gum; and toilet paper. Every K box came with four cigarettes. GIs wasted very little. The wooden cases the K rations came in were broken up for firewood or turned into lining and flooring for foxholes. They also became dinner tables, card tables, writing desks— or washstands, with a trusty M-1 helmet as the wash basin. Soldiers frequently swapped ration items, especially canned goods and chocolate. Cigarettes were used for barter among the troops or with locals. By the war’s outset, it seemed everyone in the United States and Europe had a cigarette habit. Local civilians, even unrepentant Nazis, could be seduced with high-grade American smokes (or chocolate or tinned meats). Barter yielded prizes not on the K rat menu: real rather than powdered eggs, wine, fresh vegetables—anything that represented a change of of pace. Some soldiers carried around large amounts of unspent pay. In England the locals resented how GIs threw money around when dating the girls. Not so on the Continent. The liberators’ freespending ways only added to their charm in the eyes of Italian, French, Belgian, and even German ladies. HE
Soldiers yearned for anything to read. The army publications Stars and Stripes and Yank had plenty of morale-building articles as well as what the men called the “straight dope” about the war, written by GIs. The men enjoyed Sergeant George Baker’s Sad Sack cartoons and the Willie and Joe cartoons of Sergeant Bill Mauldin. One famous Baker cartoon seemed to sum up perfectly the infantryman’s role: Tanks, artillery, and other mechanized engines of war jam a narrow mountain road—all led by solitary Private Sack, on foot with his mine detector. The reading material GIs desired most was letters from family, friends, and sweethearts. Soldiers’ families were reminded how their boys in uniform felt when their names weren’t mentioned at mail call. Soldiers themselves were reminded “Ya gotta write ’em to get ’em.” Combat infantrymen lived in their clothes. After a few days of hard fighting and wet bivouac, a soldier looked and felt dirty, and there was a certain air about him… The availability of showers was exciting news, sometimes tied to the issue of new uniform items. In the cruel winter of 1945, the most prized items were socks, boots, and coats. Keeping feet dry and clean was a terrible problem at the front. When did a man have the time to take off his boots, peel off his filthy socks, clean them, and dry them out? Continuously wet feet were prey to painful ailments, including the sloughing off of layers of sodden flesh. A word or two about “chicken shit”: A soldier’s quality of life depended heavily on how much of it he had to put up with. Coming off the line for a rest was wonderful—unless some chicken-shit second lieutenant fresh from the States kept harassing you about minor uniform infractions or your friendly dice or card game. Making veterans drill was chicken shit. So was the whole “off limits” and “for officers only” system that allocated the nicest taverns, clubs, and other facilities for officers. Canceling passes to pleasant cities and towns in the rear over minor infractions was chicken shit, as was withholding desired clothing, equipment, or food, or sending a disliked GI on dangerous patrols. Many GIs excoriated General George Patton as a chicken-shit martinet. His punishment of soldiers at the front for having untidy uniforms was chicken shit—as was his infamous slapping of a shell-shocked soldier in Sicily. Even if a soldier could avoid chicken shit, get the food and clean clothes he needed, and find a buddy he could depend on, life at the front was still miserable. All the GIs wanted was for it to be over so they could go home. A —BRIAN JOHN MURPHY
Above: Fresh from the Belgian front in January 1945, Sergeant William Rush (in the jeep) gets a late Christmas package—and shares the wealth. Opposite: Near the same time and place, Private First Class Lloyd Taylor takes a break from toting his .30-caliber heavy machine gun. 58 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
SAILOR LIFE AT SEA
Pacific Theater
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May 1942–August 1945
DECEMBER 18, 1944, a western Pacific typhoon that had been stalking the US Third Fleet 300 miles east of the Philippines finally struck. Furious 110-knot wind bursts whipped the warships, sending the steel behemoths careening up and over seething 60-foot swells. The quick-striking storm caught the destroyers of Task Force 38 in the middle of fueling, lashed to clumsy oilers. Aboard the destroyer USS Dewey (DD-349), Chief Warrant Officer Steven F. Yorden, whose broad responsibilities normally included overseeing the work of the ship’s firefighters, ventilation specialists, welders, and other construction and repair men, was in the ship’s wardroom when the Dewey listed roughly 60 degrees. “I felt so sorry for the poor guys down below decks,” Yorden remembered later. “…We had a hatch over the main deck right over the main distribution board. And the hatch sprung a leak and the salt water hit the main board and of course, it blew everything. Now we’re dead in the water, we have no generators, we have no power and we’re rolling 60, 65 degrees…. You’re holding on for dear life and with no lights on and those guys down in them compartments dogged down—they didn’t have a chance.” Somehow, Dewey and her crew survived Mother Nature’s sharpest blow to an American naval force since the days of wooden-hulled ships. But three other destroyers—Hull, Monaghan, and Spence—and nearly 800 luckless seamen did not. Packed into all kinds of warships— everything from city-sized aircraft carriers to armor-belted battleships and cruisers and razor-thin destroyers, to phobiainducing submarines and wooden-sheathed PT boats—American sailors in the Pacific Theater faced challenges familiar to sailors anywhere. There was the monotony of routine (standing watch, enduring daily drills and unvarying meals, and chipping away perpetually at ship maintenance). Sleep, especially for sweat-soaked crews stuck for hours at general quarters (a state of alert, with all hands at battle stations), was a treasured commodity. Sailors grabbed a few winks whenever they could, stringing up makeshift bunks or shoe-horning themselves into tolerably comfortable positions at their duty stations (inside a 16-inch gun turret, for example). And, of course, there was the intermittent shock and terror of battle. But Pacific duty offered hazards and challenges all its own. Few corners of the 65-million-square-mile Pacific Ocean offered refuge from the sun, whose searing rays homed in on topside sailors, scorching skin and inducing sunstroke. Within a ship’s steel sides, men baked in cramped engine rooms, shell decks, and other virtual ovens. Fortunately, the ocean provided a ready-made swimming pool, and crewmen put it to good use, using their ships as diving boards. Danger lurked everywhere. James J. Fahey, a wet-behind-theears seaman aboard the light cruiser USS Montpelier (CL-57), N
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describes an accident in his 1963 memoir Pacific War Diary, The Secret Diary of an American Sailor. On New Year’s Day 1943, Montpelier’s catapult launched the ship’s seaplane (used to scout beyond the horizon and to bomb any enemy submarines it detected). “Instead of going down and then up as the planes usually do, this plane just kept going down. It hit the water at full force and then the bombs that they were carrying exploded. The radioman came out of it all right but the pilot was killed.” Always lurking out of view were the menacing forces of Japan’s Imperial Navy, whose fanatical sailors and fliers went to shocking lengths to spend their lives harming the enemy. Idaho native Robert Coates was a radioman on the cruiser USS San Francisco (CA-38) in November 1942 when the pilot of a shot-up Japanese G4M “Betty” medium attack bomber traded escape for revenge, diving into Coates’s ship. “The impact, which sounded like a high-speed car crash, shook the entire ship,” Coates remembered. “The plane hit directly above my duty station, with only the thin ceiling above my head protecting me from the burning debris. The explosion wiped out Control Aft, killing or injuring almost everyone above us, including the executive officer. I stayed at my post, doing my best to keep the radio equipment and radar working.” This suicide dive on the San Francisco foreshadowed the arrival of a new Pacific terror—the kamikaze. First launched in significant numbers during the October 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf, these bomb-stuffed Japanese suicide planes ultimately damaged some 300 ships and inflicted 15,000 casualties. In a single day during the March–April 1945 US assault on Okinawa, kamikazes struck 26 vessels and sank 6. American radar operators and anti-aircraft gunners, laboring under the highest stress imaginable, mowed down kamikazes in droves, but the kamikazes’ ominous presence could rattle even the steeliest sailors’ nerves—and leave Pacific Fleet veterans with nightmares to last a lifetime. Some sailors fighting in the Pacific were members of America’s other sea force, the US Coast Guard, which became part of the US Navy in wartime. Manning some 350 ships in the Pacific, coastguardsmen there shared the same dangers and miseries as their navy brethren. Amphibious operations were a specialty, and men who served in them earned the questionable distinction of being attacked from sea, air, and land. The coast guard’s only Medal of Honor was bestowed posthumously on Signalman First Class Douglas Munro, who swung his LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) between Japanese machine guns along the beach on Guadalcanal and a group of trapped marines the coast guard had come to rescue. The marines got away safely, but Munro was killed by a Japanese bullet as his LCVP pulled away. A —ERIC ETHIER
Opposite: Sailors aboard a destroyer conduct anti-aircraft gunnery target practice in February 1945. Above: The US Coast Guard made up an important part of America’s sea force. These coastguardsmen fire a 20mm anti-aircraft gun aboard their vessel in the southwest Pacific. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 61
AIRMAN LIFE ALOFT AND ON LAND
European Theater
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US Army Air Forces (USAAF) pilot, navigator, gunner, bombardier, or mechanic? In October 1944, Aircraft Age magazine described him as an unmarried 24year-old high school graduate who “has flown 600 hours of military aircraft and has had about 120 hours of operational flying from an advanced base. He has been on 21 missions, is in good physical condition although he is tired and in need of rest and recreation. He smokes a good many cigarettes and drinks moderately. He takes atabrine [tablets] regularly to prevent development of malaria. He has lost close friends and has accepted the fact. He sleeps well and his morale is excellent. If he is tired and suffering from some combat fatigue, he recognizes his own symptoms.” The subject of the Aircraft Age article was the USAAF’s littleknown rest and recuperation homes, or, as airmen knew them, “flak farms”—comfortable hideaways to which worn-out veterans of “the big league of sky fighting” were sometimes sent to revive their bodies and spirits. For American airmen operating out of advance bases from the British Isles to the Italian boot, life in the air required long hours of preparation, tremendous physical endurance, and (especially for heavy bomber crewmen, who sometimes dealt with hypothermia) tolerance for the cold. All that took its toll. From dozens of bases in southeast England, US Eighth Air Force outfits charged with the strategic bombing of Germany, such as the 466th Bomb Group at Attlebridge, began their daytime missions long before dawn. Ground crews (mechanics, aircraft servicing teams, armorers, etc.) got the ball rolling in the predawn darkness by readying B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators for flight— loading them with ammunition and bombs, cleaning their .50-caliber machine guns, and coating their wings with a de-icing agent. Facing long flights that combined long stretches of tedium with heart-racing minutes of extraordinary danger, flight crews slept a little later before piling into the mess hall for breakfasts devoid of foods likely to cause “distention at high altitudes” due to the natural expansion of the intestinal tract at higher altitudes. Pilots and fellow crewmembers next inspected and strapped on their flight gear before packing a briefing room to go over mission details: intelligence on enemy defenses, flight and target maps, and the weather forecast. They then departed on flights that lasted up to 11 exhausting hours or more, in broad daylight, and with fighter escorts that until late in the war could accompany them only part of the way. On April 14, 1944, the much-anticipated opening of the remarkable four-reel documentary The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress drew eager American moviegoers to more than 500 theaters around the country. Directed by Academy Award winner and USAAF lieutenant colonel William Wyler, it was the HO WAS THE AVERAGE
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July 1942–May 1945 story of the first American bomber crew to return home after completing the required 25 missions (a number that increased to 35 and 40 as the war went on). Audiences came looking for a taste of what combat life was like for Americans overseas. And they got it—beginning with the 45-minute film’s ominously delivered opening lines, “This is a battlefront, a battlefront like no other in the long history of mankind’s wars. This—is an air front.” Shot during Eighth Air Force combat missions in the frigid air high above French and German industrial centers, Wyler’s film wowed audiences with its grim portrayal of life aboard America’s Europe-based bombers. The mid-production loss over Brest of a B-17 from which sound expert Lieutenant Harold Tannenbaum was shooting footage for the film eerily underscored the dangers American airmen faced daily. Not every enlisted ground or air crewman served with heavy, long-range bombers. There were medium, tactical bombers, too, and transport and fighter units. And some 2,600 enlisted men served neither as ground or flight crew, but as pilots. Between missions and non-stop training, airmen eased their tired bones much as the average 20-year-old did back home—on improvised gridirons and basketball courts, playing cards in base clubs, and, when given passes, with thrill-packed trips into London to sample its colorful nightlife. The Americans brought booming business to the pubs of East Anglia. In the lead-up to the Allied invasion of Normandy, France—D-Day, June 6, 1944—American airfields covered East Anglia, which protrudes like a knob into the English Channel near the bottom of Great Britain’s east coast. At the Eagle Pub in Cambridge, American boys burned their names into the wooden ceiling with cigarette lighters, and their graffiti is still visible there today. The USAAF GIs took notice of the young ladies of Great Britain, and countless American airmen returned home from World War II with British brides. “A lot of people I knew didn’t want girls to date Yanks,” remembered Londoner Ellen Bailey, who fell in love with Staff Sergeant Lloyd Kern of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “My father and mother were very open-minded.” Bailey stayed in touch with Kern while he was a POW at Stalag Luft B-XVIIB in Austria after his B-17 crash-landed in Germany, and married him when he returned. For many USAAF airmen in Europe, the end of the war with Germany in May 1945 brought a terrible prospect: redeployment to the Pacific. Countless men who had not yet completed their combat tours of duty found themselves in “repple depples,” or replacement depots, awaiting reassignment and fearing the worst—when news of Japan’s surrender came. A —ERIC ETHIER
Above: Bomber pilots and crewmen hear advice and encouragement from their squadron commander before heading out on a mission. Opposite: In Great Britain in early 1943, a jeep carries the entire crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber back to base after a bomb mission. 62 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
MARINE ISLAND LIFE
Pacific Theater • August 1942–August 1945
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MAGINE SCRAMBLING OFF A BURNING LVT (Landing Vehicle, Tracked—an amphibian tractor better known as an amtrac or “alligator”), lugging 70 pounds of gear and an M-1 rifle. All around you, exploding mortar shells bury your buddies in blood-tinged surf. Then picture yourself hugging the ground on an exposed sliver of beach, waiting anxiously for heavy-weapons support. Knee-high streams of machine gun-bullets zip past—pinging off fast-reversing landing craft and thudding into screaming men behind you. Follow that thought with one of a painful, month-long search for an invisible enemy through energy-sapping rainforests or across barren wastelands of pillboxes and sudden shrapnel bursts. Finally, try to conceive of repeating this grinding process two, three, even four times. For the typical US marine charged with capturing otherworldly, Japanese-occupied atolls in the sizzling Pacific theater, this was the circle of life. Before shipping out to this world of extremes, gung-ho city- and country-bred marine recruits had trained at mettle-testing sites such as the new base (dubbed Camp Lejeune in 1942) at New River, North Carolina—an insect-choked patch of coastal thickets that one hardened corps veteran compared unfavorably to the soaked jungles of Nicaragua. “They had mosquitoes there with snow on the ground,” he snickered. Overseas, leathernecks who expected to find traversable battlefields on the sun-kissed Pacific islands they had seen depicted on movie screens instead found wild, reef-encircled volcanic outcroppings. It was as if the planet’s core had spitefully spat them up to torment would-be visitors. A hellish combination of unprecedented US naval bombardment and the topographical wizardry of Japanese defenders had made these outposts even more hellish. Having successfully carried a beachhead, the marines’ next task was to secure inland objectives amid all the nagging ugliness that nature had to offer. Incessant downpours left a lingering moisture that plagued patrolling riflemen with “jungle rot”—pale, relentlessly itchy, tissue-paper skin easily susceptible to tearing on jagged rocks and razor-sharp vines. Unremitting humidity and insufficient access to drinkable water produced heat exhaustion; fouled rivers and the bites of mosquitoes and six-inch-long caterpillars induced diarrhea, malaria, and dysentery. Perhaps more than any other sickness, marines dreaded contracting filariasis—the parasitic affliction that sometimes produced the hideousness of elephantitis. Nights spent in close proximity to an enemy that excelled in night movement were especially taxing. Whether lying prone in two-man foxholes or squatting in improvised, banana-leaf-topped shelters behind a curtain of barbed wire, marines adhered to a strict no-movement-allowed policy once the sun sank. Relieving oneself in a helmet was a small, if unpleasant, price to pay to avoid being shot by defense-minded platoon mates. Front-line marines slept in shifts, struggling to nod off amid the eerie chirps
of exotic birds, the scratching of crab-like creatures that skidded suddenly into foxholes, and the rustle of who-knew-what-else in the surrounding blackness. Then there was the enemy. Robert Calvin “Cal” Hawthorne, a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) man with the 22nd Marines, formed a quick impression of his Japanese foe during his first campaign, on Guam. It took weeks to force out Japanese diehards secreted within caves and foliage from the island. Concealed in knee-deep palm-frond-topped holes, these holdouts would wait for a marine to pass and then “raise the frond an inch or two and shoot you in the back.” Dubious tactics aside, Japanese infantrymen impressed marines with their bushido-inspired fearlessness, innate toughness, and tenacity. But if their officers went down, Japanese units quickly became rudderless. “We observed a Japanese officer in full-dress uniform come out of a bunker, walk to a small knoll offering no cover, and put binoculars to his eyes,” Hawthorne remembered. “He of course was killed. As soon as he fell another Jap came out, took the binoculars, and put them to his eyes and we repeated the process. We were amazed.” The demanding pace of marine campaigns allowed leathernecks little time to decompress. Before or after a long, tense day on jungle patrol or blasting machine-gun nests, squad mates would chat over a cigarette or a mediocre cup of instant coffee. During division refits on hard-won islands such as Guadalcanal and Guam, they might catch a USO show, play cards over their meager beer allotment, or shoot baskets on coral-floored basketball courts. Having access to communications gear allowed Ray Perry, a radio man with the 21st Marines and an avid baseball fan, to pick up Major League updates tapped out in Morse Code and dispatched from the marine base in San Diego. But for leathernecks, whose next island target was almost always filled with the worst kind of surprises, training—including dress rehearsals for the next operation—never really stopped. Despite enduring two or three assaults against islands packed with unspeakable horrors, marines could still see the positive side of life in the Pacific—especially while they were exercising their mischievous penchant for appropriating canned goods and other provisions from the well-supplied army GIs with whom they increasingly shared space. Marines who survived their bone-wearying travels across the Pacific theater’s extraordinarily painful ground occasionally managed a brief taste of the ocean’s soothing splendor at the end of a campaign. And far-off events such as Germany’s stunning counterattack against poorly equipped and freezing US Army units in the Ardennes during the bitter winter of 1944 reminded them that the army’s “dogfaces” had their share of troubles too. A —ERIC ETHIER
Opposite: On Iwo Jima, men of G Company, 24th Marines, wait for tanks to shatter Japanese pillboxes between the island’s air strips on February 22, 1945. Above: Two marines hone their knives aboard a transport ship bound for Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 65
CHOW!
Homemade meals faded into memory as America’s soldiers and marines learned to eat things Mom would never, ever have served them. by Brian John Murphy
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of the WWII US Army and Marine Corps were kids. They ate what Mom fed them: fresh meats, ice-cold milk by the pitcher, fresh eggs, bacon, ham, vegetables, fruits—often followed by homemade dessert. ¶Fast-forward a few years. Those kids are fighting in North Africa’s deserts, New Guinea’s jungles, and Normandy’s hedgerows. There’s a distinct absence of homemade desserts, fresh anything (especially eggs), and Mom’s home
RIGHT AND OPPOSITE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES. SPAM TIN: COURTESY OF HORMEL FOODS CORPORATION
EFORE THE WAR , THE MEN
cookin’ in general. On the front lines, food came from boxes and cans marked C or, less welcome, K (or D, for the detested chocolate nutrition bar). Ration, Type C, was the brainchild of the Quartermaster Subsistence Research and Development Laboratory. The army rated it one of its best ration systems ever. Soldiers disagreed, but it beat starving. Although C-rations were for emergency use, frontline units—too near combat to set up field kitchens—ate C-rations for days and weeks at a time. C-rations were designed to be easily portable, ready to eat, and tasty. They weren’t tasty but they were utilitarian, designed to give a hungry GI three meals a day. A GI opening his C-rations found three M-unit cans of meat hash, meat stew with vegetables (added in 1945), or meat stew with beans. As the war proceeded, the army added chopped ham, egg, and potato; the hated ham and lima beans (which, inexplicably, remained on the menu through Vietnam); meat and noodles; pork and rice; pork and beans; ham and beans; and chicken and beans. The boys often sought variety by trading their M-units for someone else’s. M-units could be eaten cold right out of the can. Often it had to be eaten cold, because a fire could draw bullets or shells. When cooking was possible, GIs warmed M-units in the can or in an M-1 steel helmet over an open fire. There were six B-units—cans of bread-type or miscellaneous food, two per meal. B-units could include compressed cereal, bis-
cuits, candy-coated peanuts or raisins, a powdered coffee drink, sugar, powdered orange or lemon drink, hard candies, jam, or cocoa beverage powder. Accessories (packaged separately) included a small amount of toilet paper, gum, a P-38 can-opener (of legendary utility and popular today on eBay), water-purifying tablets, table salt and salt tablets, a wooden spoon, and nine “commercial quality” cigarettes with matches. Pocket-sized K-rations were originally designed for paratroopers. The K came into general use in 1942; 105 million were produced in 1944 alone. It came in three varieties—breakfast, dinner, and supper—and was doubledpackaged, with an inner box that helped keep it fresh and dry and could be burned to heat some of the food. Krations usually included canned meat entrees for breakfast and supper (chopped ham and egg, veal loaf, processed cheese, ham, cheese and ham, chicken paté, pork lunchmeat with carrot and apple, beef and pork loaf, or sausages). Other items included hardtack biscuits, Dentyne gum, Waldorf toilet paper, the trusty P38, and a few cigarettes. The monotony of a K-ration diet had to be experienced to be believed. One group of soldiers operating behind Japanese lines in Burma spent weeks subsisting on the easily portable Ks. After being back at base for two months and eating at regular messes, some of the soldiers noticed an officer carrying a K-ration box. Two of them promptly vomited.
Opposite: Hot food and drink were luxuries in foxholes. But this private in Belgium’s icy Ardennes in late January 1945 has captured a solution: a German blowtorch, perfect for heating water in a metal pitcher. Top: A WWII can of Spam, a favorite canned meat product at home and at the front. Above: Snow-dusted men of the 78th “Lightning” Division go through a chow line in Germany’s Hürtgen Forest in December 1944. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 67
AT THE FRONT •
CHOW !
PHOTOS: NATIONAL ARCHIVES. CHOCOLATE BAR: COURTESY OF HERSHEY COMMUNITY ARCHIVES
Top left: There was hot, fresh food—far from the fighting, at places like this field hospital in the Philippines, where Sergeant Edward Good feeds Christmas turkey to Private First Class Lloyd Deming. Top center: There was chocolate too, if you could bite through the non-melting bar. Top right: In Italy in 1945, Sergeant Arnold Boudreau eats an M-unit of hash cold, with a cigarette. Above: A gun crew aboard the destroyer USS Wilkes eats beans on deck on D-day for the Sicilian invasion, July 10, 1943.
GI cartoonist Bill Mauldin griped convincingly about C- and Krations, passing along rumors about German rations: that they were tastier, served hot from field kitchens to even the most exposed troops, and that German soldiers angled to get assigned to combat because frontline food was so superior to rations behind the lines. The truth was that German field kitchens often failed to get hot rations to the front line in a timely manner—or at all. Hungry German soldiers eating captured C- and K-rations marveled at the variety and quality of US rations. US field kitchens tended to serve reheated pre-processed foods (B-rations) which sometimes included (to the men’s disgust) items from the C and K menus. Soldiers lined up anyway to have hot food slopped onto their mess kits and to collect a cup of warm black “coffee.” Farther behind the lines, more or less permanent mess stations, usually under canvas, served combinations of Arations (fresh food) and B items. The army scored a hit in 1944 with its 5-in-1 and 10-in-1 ration kits. The kits could feed 5 or 10 men, respectively, for one day. During the war, 300 million 10-in-1s were manufactured. The sur68 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
plus went to impoverished Europeans in postwar CARE packages. Navy swabbies ate like kings compared to army dogfaces and marine leathernecks. Shipboard mess was usually fresh-cooked, though powdered milk and eggs became inevitable during long cruises. The navy’s biggest problem was wasted food. With a big selection and freedom to help yourself, sailors would pile their trays high, fill up, then drop untouched ham steaks, chops, and desserts in the garbage bin. The rule was therefore instituted, “Take as much as you want, but eat all that you take.” On some ships a petty officer intercepted wasteful sailors en route to the garbage bin, forcing them to finish the food, even if it made them sick. When the GIs came home, they had a renewed appreciation for home-cooked American food. Soon, they were telling their pickyeater kids, “There are little boys and girls in Europe who would love to have the food you won’t eat…” A BRIAN JOHN MURPHY of Fairfield, Connecticut, is a contributing editor of America in WWII.
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G I s I N WO R L D WA R I I F L A S H B AC K
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AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION
L I F E S AV E R S C A N DY
•
1944 GIs IN WORLD WAR II 69
AMERIC TIO OLLEC WII C A IN W N
(extra) ordinary
men
Every GI in World War II said the same thing: “I’m just doing my job.” But America’s common fighting men did their job with uncommon devotion, and that made all the difference in the war’s outcome and aftermath. Here is a gallery of some of those extraordinary ordinary men.
COURTESY OF RICHARD O. BAILEY
The Brothers Bailey Fred, Fonnie, James, John and Dick Bailey, left to right THE BAILEY FAMILY OF GROVE CITY, Pennsylvania, displayed a unique service banner: five blue stars for five warrior sons. Fred was a private in Company C, 11th Tank Battalion, in Europe. Fonnie was a T-3 in the army’s 86th Ordnance HAM (Heavy Automotive Maintenance) Company. James was a seaman second class in the European theater. John and Dick were army air force sergeants—John in North Africa and Europe with the 64th Fighter Squadron, and Dick in the South Pacific with the 344th Service Squadron in the 13th Air Force’s 321st Service Group. Amazingly, all five brothers made it home alive—even Fred, who had been shot in the stomach and was a prisoner of war. They stood for this homecoming photo in 1946. 70
GIs IN WORLD WAR II
Undone by Math James Muro • US Navy • Pacific Theater
COURTESY OF JAMES MURO
THE NAVY SENT JIM MURO of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to officer candidate school, but he failed analytical geometry and landed in boot camp. Muro was in the commissioning crew of light cruiser USS Astoria (CL-90) in May 1944. Aboard her in the Pacific, he faced kamikazes as director–operator of a 40mm quad anti-aircraft gun. Aloft in a revolving chair, he aimed and pulled a trigger that lit a lamp below, where another sailor fired the gun. Astoria claimed 13 kills. Jim weathered the December 1944 typhoon aboard the ship. Astoria brought him to Long Beach, California, in September 1945, and he was discharged in March 1946. He married his wife, Mary Jane, that September.
Left Behind Flavio Chavez • US Army • Pacific Theater
COURTESY OF FLAVIO CHAVEZ
DESPITE THE II ARMORED CORPS patch in this early-war photo, Flavio Chavez of New Mexico went to war in the Americal Division’s 182nd Infantry. Hit by shrapnel in March 1944 on Bougainville, Chavez recovered. But in the Philippines in February 1945, a grenade landed on his back, blowing him into the air and onto a slope. No medics responded to his cries, so he dragged himself to them. “The medics were attending to me when the order to retreat was given,” Chavez remembered. Uncharacteristically, the medics fled. In terrible pain, he stood and hopped to safety. He was evacuated—haunted by thoughts of wounded left behind as he almost was, “at the unmerciful hands of the enemy.”
GIs IN WORLD WAR II 71
AT THE FRONT • (extra) ordinary
men
Twin Bridge-builders JOINING THE ARMY SOUNDED GOOD to 17-year-old Alabama twins Milt (left) and Mel O’Barr. It was 1941. America wasn’t at war. Enlisting got them out of farm chores and school, and offered a chance for travel. Travel they did! US entry into the war sent them to Africa, Italy, France, and Germany with Company A, 85th Engineer Heavy Ponton Battalion. The 85th used heavy boats to bridge rivers in hostile territory. The bridges could support the heaviest tanks. Once, in France, Mel got pinched by a woman who thought he was Milt, who had cancelled a date with her. Despite pinches and more serious dangers, Milt and Mel made it home safely.
COURTESY OF ROD O’BARR
Milt and Mel O’Barr • US Army • European Theater
Ripcord Terror Donald Tuttle • US Army Air Forces • European Theater
COURTESY OF DONALD TUTTLE
72 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
TAIL GUNNER DON TUTTLE knew Lady in the Dark was doomed. The B-24 Liberator was headed home on December 28, 1944, after bombing the Brenner Pass between Italy and Austria. But flak had done its damage. When the engines died, Tuttle bailed out. “I was clear of the ship,” he recounted, “so I pulled the D-ring. Nothing happened! I pulled it again and still nothing happened. I had to get that chute opened, as the ground was coming up pretty fast!” Finally, Tuttle ripped the smaller pilot chute out of the pack. The wind took it, pulling out the main chute and saving his life. With help from friendly Italians and British rescuers, he got back to base.
AT THE FRONT • (extra) ordinary
men
Committed to Memory Melvin Hanberg • US Army • Pacific Theater CHICAGOAN MELVIN HANBERG had relatives in Poland’s Jewish Warsaw ghetto. When he learned what was happening to Europe’s Jews, he volunteered for service in Europe with the US Army Air Forces. Instead, he ended up in the Pacific with the army’s Signal Corps, cracking codes, transmitting encrypted instructions for the liberation of the Philippines and New Guinea, and then serving occupation duty in Tokyo. Only one of Hanberg’s father’s 18 European relatives survived the war. So, Hanberg returned home and made it his task to remember the Holocaust’s victims through genealogical research. After tracing his family back to the late 1600s, in 1979 Hanberg organized the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles.
“Hey, Dog Man!” EVERY GI HAD BUDDIES who helped him get through the war. George E. Diller’s buddies were dogs—specifically, German shepherds. Diller, drafted straight out of high school in Munhall, Pennsylvania, in 1943, went from boot camp in Virginia to dog camp in Nebraska. After his training, Diller was teamed with Duke and Wolf, danger-sniffing scout dogs. The trio shipped out to New Guinea with the army’s 26th Quartermaster Corps War Dog Platoon. Attached to a rifle company, Diller used his dogs to sniff out hidden enemies. Grateful GIs learned to rely on the dogs’ noses. They called to Diller, “Hey, dog man! Over here!” Diller and Wolf survived the war, but Duke went missing on a scout.
COURTESY OF GEORGE E. DILLER
George Diller • US Army • Pacific Theater
GIs IN WORLD WAR II 73
AT THE FRONT • (extra) ordinary
men
The Click Guy Wetherell • US Army • European Theater PRIVATE GUY LIVINE WETHERELL of the 9th Infantry Division was picking his way through the bocage (a mix of woods, pastures, and fields divided by hedgerows) in France’s Normandy region in the summer of 1944. He had been sent to find some men who had gotten separated from his unit. Suddenly, he heard a click behind him. He turned and ran—just as a German machine-gunner opened fire. Bullets kicked up dirt behind his feet. Diving through a hedgerow, he emerged amid a group of surprised GIs, and found himself staring down gun barrels. “I’m an American!” he yelled. The men turned out to be the GIs he had been sent to find. COURTESY OF GUY NASUTI
Fighting Construction Worker BEING A SEABEE—a member of a navy construction battalion (CB)— meant you did heavy work under rough conditions and joined in combat that came your way. Joe Garofalo of the Bronx did his building and fighting with the 121st Seabees in the 4th Marine Division, on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands and on Saipan and Tinian in the Marianas. His entrée to war came while he waited to hit a Kwajalein beach: machine guns shredded seaborne Japanese commandos who tried to blow a hole in his landing ship. Ashore, close calls punctuated Garofalo’s work, but his efforts had historic impact: runways he helped complete on Tinian were used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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COURTESY OF JOHN RATOMSKI
Joseph Garofalo • US Navy • Pacific Theater
AT THE FRONT • (extra) ordinary
men
He Traded His Life Charles W. David • US Coast Guard • North Atlantic Ocean
US COAST GUARD
THE US COAST GUARD’S NOBLEST MISSION is to save lives at sea. Stewardsmate First Class Charles W. David, Jr., of the cutter Commanche (WPG-76), seemed removed from that mission. Discriminatory policies of the day consigned black coastguardsmen to galleys and engine rooms. But on February 3, 1943, a U-boat sank the US Army Transport Dorchester (of Four Chaplains fame), which Commanche was escorting off Greenland. The cutter set all hands to saving Dorchester’s 1,000 men. David was sick, but without hesitation he plunged into the icy sea to lift freezing men to safety. Hypothermia weakened him, and he died of pneumonia a few days later. David received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal posthumously.
Musical POW James E. Seidler • US Army Air Forces • European Theater
COURTESY OF JAMES E. SEIDLER
BOMBARDIER JIM SEIDLER WAS CAPTURED in May 1944 after bailing out of a shot-up B-24 Liberator over Austria. Having snapped his ankle, he was taken to a hospital in Obermassfeld, Germany. There he met POWs missing legs, badly burned, or disfigured. So Seidler formed a POW band to lift spirits. It featured piano, bass, trumpet, trombone, alto sax, tenor sax, and clarinet. “I played sax and clarinet,” said Seidler. “The tenor man, he had his legs off,” he recalled. Seidler ended up at Stalag Luft XIII-D near Nuremburg, and was liberated on April 29, 1945. “If it hadn’t been for the music and the people I was with, it would have been terrible,” he said of his captivity.
GIs IN WORLD WAR II 75
AT THE FRONT • (extra) ordinary
men
The Bullet Wasn’t For Him PRIVATE FIRST CLASS JOHN A. ALBANESE of the 6th Marine Division’s 15th Marines had a scarring encounter on Okinawa in 1945. He surprised a Japanese soldier, who aimed a pistol at him but didn’t fire. The enemy soldier laughed at Albanese’s suggestion that he surrender. Instead, he armed a grenade and blew his own head off. Albanese found a single round in the dead man’s pistol. “I assume that the reason [he] did not shoot me when he had the opportunity was because he was saving his last bullet for himself. As for the grenade, I’ll never know if it went off prematurely or…he elected to commit suicide. I wish he had just surrendered.”
COURTESY OF JOHN A. ALBANESE
John Albanese • US Marine Corps • Pacific Theater
Lucky Wound Sam F. Loeb • US Army • European Theater
COURTESY OF R.W. NORTON ART FOUNDATION
76 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
US FORCES IN BELGIUM’S Ardennes forest were bowled over on December 16, 1944, when the Germans launched a blitzkrieg thrust. The attack created a massive salient in the American line, bringing on the Battle of the Bulge. Countless units were smashed, including Sam Loeb’s platoon of Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 393rd Infantry Regiment, in the 99th Infantry “Checkerboard” Division. Loeb’s foxhole was run over. But luckily for Loeb, he wasn’t in it. Wounded by enemy shrapnel days earlier, he was in a hospital in Liége, Belgium. Of course, missing the beginning of the Bulge didn’t excuse Loeb from the rest of that grueling, freezing battle. But he was alive, thanks to his absence on December 16.
AT THE FRONT • (extra) ordinary
men
Wire Man Paul F. Maykut • US Marine Corps • Pacific Theater
COURTESY OF PAUL MAYKUT
A STRAND OF WIRE NEVER seemed so important as it did amid the chaos and isolation of Pacific island war. A field telephone wire meant you weren’t alone, and it enabled scattered units to act in concert. Making those connections was the job of Private First Class Paul F. Maykut and his fellow marines of the 1st Signal Company. On Okinawa, Maykut helped a sergeant string wire five miles from the 7th Marines’ position to 1st Marine Division headquarters near Shuri. The line came up 100–150 yards short, but wire was stretched out from the switchboard and a splice made the line live—completing a network that linked the 1st, 5th, and 7th Marines to division headquarters.
Jolted Jumper SYLVESTER BARBU OF PENNSYLVANIA became an original member of the 504th Parachute Infantry in the 82nd Airborne Division. He made every jump, fighting at Anzio and Cassino in Italy; at Grave, Holland, during Operation Market Garden; and in the Battle of the Bulge. He was never wounded. But his first combat jump, over Gela, Sicily, in July 1943, was almost his last. “Our plane was hit by our navy’s friendly fire…,” he recalled. “We were smoking and going down fast….” Barbu’s chute popped when he was just feet from the ground, jolting his equipment free: “All I had left was a knife, one grenade, my own pea shooter [pistol], extra socks, and underwear, which I needed to change.”
COURTESY OF THE CABA AMERICAN HERITAGE COLLECTION
Sylvester Eli Barbu • US Army • European Theater
GIs IN WORLD WAR II 77
Photographer Joe Rosenthal (left)
COURTESY OF ED REEP
COURTESY OF JACK STEWART
US MARINE CORPS
Artist Tom Lea
Artist Ed Reep
REPORTS FROM THE FIELD There’s an unmistakable authenticity in the work of the journalists, artists, photographers, and cartoonists who lived alongside the GIs. Sharing the boys’ sorrows, joys, and dangers, they helped Americans back home understand what war was like. by Judy P. Sopronyi
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Ernie Pyle PRINT JOURNALIST ERNIE PYLE BROUGHT the GI experience on the battlefields of World War II—in all its gritty, humdrum, terrifying, and deadly detail—to the American public. Written in a simple, folksy style, his dispatches appeared in more than 300 newspapers and read like letters home. Beloved by the men on the front lines and his stateside readers, he detested the war. “I’m going simply because I’ve got to—and I hate it,” he said before journeying to the Pacific theater. Ten days after he was photographed (second from left) with marines on Okinawa in April 1945, he was killed by machine gun fire on Ie Shima. 78
GIs IN WORLD WAR II
US ARMY CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
Tom Lea ALREADY AN ESTABLISHED ARTIST when Life magazine asked him to take his skills to sea aboard a navy destroyer in 1941, Tom Lea spent four years depicting the war, including That 2,000 Yard Stare (above), one of his most famous works. He created the image after landing on Peleliu under fire on September 15, 1944, with the First Marine Division. “My work there consisted of trying to keep from getting killed and trying to memorize what I saw and felt,” he said of Peleliu. His assignment took him to China, Europe, India, North Africa, the north Atlantic, the Middle East, and the Pacific, and the American public followed vicariously through the pages of Life. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 79
PHOTO BY JOE ROSENTHAL. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Joe Rosenthal POOR EYESIGHT KEPT HIM OUT of the military, but photographer Joe Rosenthal made it into the action through assignments with the US Maritime Service to photograph Atlantic convoys—and then with the Associated Press starting in March 1944, to shoot the invasions of Iwo Jima, New Guinea, Hollandia, Guam, Peleliu, and Angaur. Rosenthal captured the war’s most famous photo as five marines and a navy corpsman raised the American flag atop Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945. Rosenthal would be awarded the Pulitzer Prize that year for the iconic image. Ten years later he said of the photo, “I took it, but the Marines took Iwo Jima.” 80 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
Reports from the Field
COURTESY OF ED REEP
AT THE FRONT •
Ed Reep
PHOTO BY ROBERT CAPA. © 2001 BY CORNELL CAPA/MAGNUM PHOTOS
ED REEP VOLUNTEERED FOR THE ARMY in 1941 and was preparing for a mission to Alaska when he received a telegram in May 1943 from the War Department Art Advisory Committee, naming him as one of 42 official war artists. Overjoyed that his application had been accepted, Reep bought art supplies and headed to Algeria, only to discover when he got there that the program had been cancelled. In December it was back on again, and soldier artist Reep went on to paint many watercolors in the field, like this one—Soldier Bathing—showing a 1st Armored Division GI in Italy, soaking in a purloined tub with an ingenious gasoline-can heater.
Robert Capa HUNGARIAN AND JEWISH, Endre Friedmann left his homeland for opportunities in Germany, then moved to France to escape Nazism. He changed his name to the safer-sounding Robert Capa to help sell his photos. Through five wars, including World War II when he worked for Collier’s and Life, he revolutionized war photography. He insisted that photographers should be in the action to show the violence and danger, as in this image of the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944. “If your picture isn’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” he’d say. Under fire in 1954 during a French advance in the First Indochina War in southeast Asia, he stepped on a landmine and died. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 81
AT THE FRONT •
Reports from the Field
“I feel like a fugitive from th’ law of averages.”
CARTOONS COURTESY OF STARS AND STRIPES
“Able Fox Five to Able Fox. I got a target but ya gotta be patient.”
“Th’ krauts ain’t followin’ ya so good on ‘Lili Marlene’ tonight, Joe. Ya think maybe somethin’ happened to their tenor?”
Bill Mauldin A SCRAWNY KID WHO’D HAD RICKETS, Bill Mauldin figured the military wouldn’t want him. He took some art classes and joined the Arizona National Guard (no physical required), which morphed into the 45th Division, US Army, due to the war. Sent to Italy, he was awarded a Purple Heart at Salerno. He volunteered for his unit’s newspaper, drawing cartoons of humble soldiers Willy and Joe. Stars and Stripes picked up the cartoon, and it was syndicated in the States, too. The two beleaguered GIs captured the hearts of real GIs as well as the home folks. General George Patton thought they were a disgrace, but General Dwight Eisenhower defended them, and Willy and Joe won. JUDY P. SOPRONYI writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 82 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
GIs IN WORLD WAR II
CHAPTER IV • HOME AGAIN
GI Joe Comes Home He had just won the war and helped save the world. Now it was time for him to return to the things he had fought for: home and family. by Tom Huntington
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HE WAR WAS OVER . Veterans were returning home to see what remained of the lives they had left behind. Meanwhile, the people waiting to welcome them had concerns of their own. How had war changed the men who had fought it? Had they become unhinged? Would they be crazed killers? Communists? “A great number of boys who have been educated to kill cannot, immediately upon discharge…readjust themselves to the ways of normal life,” a newspaper editorial warned; “…they will lean toward a life of crime.” Some veterans did have problems readjusting, but in general, they leaned toward life, period.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
With financial help from the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944—the GI Bill—many veterans entered college. Five years after the war, more than two million veterans had used the bill to get a college education. Average weekly take-home pay had increased from $25 before the war to $44 afterward. With rationing gone and industry shifting gears, Americans began buying things the wartime economy had denied them. Automakers resumed building cars for civilians. And among the household devices veterans and their families purchased was a new one: a television. The returning veterans got married—and many divorced; in 1945 the US divorce rate was the highest in the world, 31 percent. They had babies, often raising them with help from Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose 1945 The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care changed the way people looked at child-rearing. In 1948, Alfred Kinsey changed the way we looked at sexuality with Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Postwar couples, with their babies and sex lives, needed places to live. The one-two punch of Depression and war had created tremendous housing shortages. Brothers William and Alfred Levitt capitalized on this, building small, affordable houses in pre-planned communities, the most famous being Levittown on Long Island. Buyers snapped up these houses in droves. By 1951, the Levitts had built 17,000 homes—on average, one every 15 minutes. Some people weren’t allowed to own Levitt houses. The con-
tracts forbade “the premises to be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.” African Americans who had risked their lives on foreign shores discovered that they remained second-class citizens. The postwar era was a time of peace, but also of conflict. America’s former Soviet ally became its Cold War enemy. As Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain warned a year after the war ended in Europe, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” Two years later, Premier Joseph Stalin tried to seal off Berlin from the West. The United States responded with the Berlin Airlift, and for almost a year, allied airplanes supplied West Berlin until Stalin backed down. When the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949, haunting fears of nuclear holocaust were raised. The Cold War led to increased paranoia about Communist subversion within the United States. In 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee began studying Communist influence in Hollywood. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin leapt to prominence in February 1950, claiming to have a list of 205 known Communists working in the State Department. That June, the forces of Communist North Korea rolled across the 38th parallel into South Korea. Once again the United States geared up to fight. This time, the effort was labeled a United Nations “police action.” To the 23,300 Americans who would die on the Korean peninsula, a war by any other name was still a war. A
Above: A wounded veteran watches paper snow down from New York City’s buildings during euphoria over Nazi Germany’s defeat on May 8, 1945—Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day. The August 15 surrender of Japan would signal the longed-for homecoming of America’s GIs. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 83
help with
COMING HOME
For many returning WWII servicemen, settling back in at home was harder than they expected. Self-help books came to the rescue. by Mark D. Van Ells
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IMAGES THIS SPREAD COURTESY OF MARK D. VAN ELLS
MERICA’ S GI J OES AND J ANES HAD DONE IT. They, together with the armed forces of the other Allied nations, had won World War II. Now euphoria set in: they were going home! But they were different people now, changed by the people, experiences, and sobering realities of their war service. And although they couldn’t imagine it, the thrill of their homecoming would come with stress that, for some, would become a crisis.
To help prepare its WWII veterans for this potentially rocky transition, the US military gave each of them…a pamphlet. Going Back to Civilian Life was an important pamphlet, mind you. It provided information about the government’s generous package of educational, employment, and medical benefits. But it offered little help with the potential psychological complications of going home. Where could veterans and their families turn for such guidance? A flood of popular self-help books came to the rescue—books that anticipated problems the returning vets and their loved ones might face, and suggesting strategies for dealing with them. As one of these books, Psychology for the Returning Serviceman, told veterans frankly, “You will need to learn how to fit into civilian life again, just as you learned to fit into the service when you left home.” The authors of the self-help books typically came from the counseling and medical professions, but some veterans got in on the act, too. Humorist and WWII veteran Morton Thompson claimed that he “got damned sick and tired” of getting advice from non-veterans, so he wrote his own book, How to Be a Civilian. Such books were ubiquitous in the immediate postwar period. GI cartoonist Bill Mauldin thought the phenomenon was ridiculous. “Dozens of hungry authors had seen the coming demand,” he complained, “and many had paid off their mortgage on the old
homestead by posing as authorities and writing quick-selling books on the subject.” Advice books covered a wide range of topics, but usually focused on three basic issues: the veterans’ emotional state, fitting back into their families, and the resumption of married life. Authors told veterans that they would face some unexpected emotions once they got home. While at war, GI Joe often imagined the civilian world as a kind of paradise where all his problems would be solved. “Being out of the armed services stood for happiness and peace,” wrote Dorothy W. Baruch and Lee Edward Travis in You’re Out of the Service Now. Having built up high expectations about the postwar years, authors warned, veterans were bound to be disillusioned. Thompson told fellow veterans quite candidly: “Don’t come home thinking that because you’ve taken part in a world battle against two of the biggest diseases that threatened liberty and peace and happiness in the world, that…the world is now perfect.” Veterans were reminded that many of the perks they enjoyed while in uniform were gone. “Hundreds of young men in hundreds of towns stand on street corners expecting to hitchhike as they have in their army days,” wrote Baruch and Travis, “only to find that there aren’t any more free rides. Hundreds more discovered that there are no more free shows, no more free lunches, no more free candy bars or cigarettes.” “Yesterday you were an honored
Opposite: Kisses, hugs—and self-help books—greeted America’s returning fighting men in 1945. Guidebooks like Psychology for the Returning Serviceman, edited by Irvin L. Child and Marjorie Van de Water, proliferated seemingly overnight. Above: Some veterans derided them, but the books did address real problems. And they filled a vacuum. The US military had sent veterans home with generous benefits. But for the challenges of settling down, it provided only a pamphlet—Going Back to Civilian Life, whose title page and an illustration are shown here. GIs IN WORLD WAR II 85
HOME AGAIN • help with COMING HOME hero,” World War I veteran Maxwell Droke told the new generation of veterans in his book Good-by to G.I., but “today you are an ex-soldier. And there are few roles more difficult to accept graciously than that of an ‘ex.’”
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while the GIs were away. Several books warned veterans that the old home town might feel like an alien land. “Try to imagine you’re in some foreign country and trying to get along with the natives,” Thompson advised. But it wasn’t just home that had changed, of course. The young men who went to war had changed, too. In A Psychiatric Primer for the Veteran’s Family and Friends, Alexander G. Dumas and Grace Keen asked their readers to imagine the perspective of a young veteran “from a simple, unpretentious home…who has never been farther afield than his own state capital.” “Will it be surprising,” they asked, “if he returns from three or four years of adventure and action to find things at home dull and monotonous, to find the dance that pleased him before the war now trivial and boring?” ANY COMMUNITIES HAD CHANGED
friends.” Veterans frequently complained that their parents still treated them like children. Families were reminded that the young man who went to war was no longer a boy. “He may have grown ten years in two,” claimed psychiatrist Herbert Kupper in Back to Life. Parents were also warned that after years of military discipline the veteran might have a deep-seated aversion to authority figures. Mothers were urged not to “baby” their sons; Kupper told fathers to treat an ex-GI son “as an equal and a friend.” Talking about the war was another concern. “It is quite natural,” Baruch and Travis informed veterans, “that those who are close will want to know about the experiences that their men have lived through.” But veterans often complained about being peppered with questions, making them feel more like objects of curiosity than men. Others wanted to keep painful memories at bay. Writers urged family members to proceed cautiously in asking about the war. “A man has to talk,” wrote Baruch and Travis, “but he must talk at his own speed, in his own time.” Kupper suggested that family reunions, which would “expose him to the curiosity of everyone,” should be avoided. Veterans might be caught off guard by such
ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY OF MARK D. VAN ELLS
Opposite: A smiling technical sergeant enters the enlisted men’s separation center at Camp Beale, California, on September 11, 1945. GIs had dreamed about freedom from the military, and a happy homecoming. Suddenly, the dream came true. It was hard to foresee that it might require some adjustment. Top: Did the countless self-help books smooth the way home? Bill Mauldin, GI creator of the iconic Willie and Joe cartoons, thought they were junk—as he implied in this cutting postwar cartoon. Above, left to right: Another WWII veteran, Morton Thompson, decided to join the advice writers. His book How to Be a Civilian relied on his war experience and humor to give it credibility. Cartoonist Charles Pearson, whose wartime work appeared in Yank: The Army Weekly, illustrated the book with these and other witty panels.
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feelings, authors claimed. “Be prepared for the shock of the feeling that you are a stranger in your own home,” Psychology for the Returning Serviceman counseled. “There will be days when you will feel very lonely,” Thompson told his readers, but assured them that millions felt the same way. “You got company, brother,” he wrote. The emotional turbulence in the veteran’s life might lead to physical symptoms—headaches, shortness of breath, stomachaches, weight loss, and an inability to concentrate. In some cases, authors claimed, veterans might become verbally or physically abusive. Kupper wrote that “virtually all the men who come back from the war have trigger tempers that are set off at the slightest provocation.”
OPPOSITE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Civilian readers were told that veterans might express bitterness toward those who had not served. “The majority of servicemen have fought the war because it had to be fought,” wrote Dumas and Keen, but “this does not mean that they did not resent deeply the need for doing it.” Thompson asked his fellow veterans to appreciate the sacrifices made by those on the home front. Civilians “can be pretty tough,” he assured his readers. “Don’t forget that every time you lost a buddy they lost a son or a brother or a husband or a wife.” “Your transition to civilian life might…be a good deal easier,” claimed Droke, “if it were not for two things: your family and your
HOME AGAIN • help with COMING HOME of infidelity, though, “confession…may be good for the soul but bad for the wife.” Kitching advised couples that unless a wartime liaison had resulted in emotional attachment, it should be seen as the product of abnormal conditions and treated with “tolerance and understanding.” Advice writers assured veterans that their sexual problems were probably temporary and did not make them any less manly. “When things go wrong in a man’s sex life,” wrote Baruch and Travis, “he needs to know that the major issue is not one of loss in virility…. It is rather a problem in forming a good, solid and loving personal relationship.” Writers had lots of advice for the wives of male veterans, and demanded quite a lot from them. The man’s readjustment would be ANY VETERANS RETURNED to wives and children. greatly aided, they suggested, if the woman assumed a submissive Others would marry soon after coming home. Most role in household affairs. Male veteradvice writers stated that ans “need a period of being undisputafter long periods of separation, coued captains of their own souls,” wrote ples would have to get to know each Dumas and Keen. Kupper suggested other again, especially those who had that the wife use her “intuition” and entered into wartime marriages. “feminine charm” to make the man “With the glamour of the uniform feel in charge. Writers often urged gone,” wrote Dumas and Keen, women who had worked during the “they may find each other less attracwar years to leave their jobs. Dumas tive as life partners than they thought and Keen, for example, reminded any when they were under the unnatural married woman who wanted to keep excitement of war.” But with working that she had “taken on the patience and understanding, claimed job of making a home,” and that her Psychology for the Returning Ser“personal problem must be solved viceman, couples “may find the new with full consideration for this obligahoneymoon as thrilling as the first tion to the comfort and happiness” of one.” her family. As long and difficult as the tempoNotably absent in the self-help litrary separation of war was for adults, erature was advice for America’s for children it could represent a life300,000 women veterans. Thomptime. Advice writers told veterans son had high praise for his female that their sons and daughters might comrades: “A lot of WAC and revert to temper tantrums and bedWAVE and SPAR and lady Marines wetting to protest “the stranger’s” have done plenty to earn respect,” he presence. Mothers were also warned Above: Regardless of the challenges the veterans would wrote. But he also claimed that that newly returned fathers might face in the months ahead, most homecomings were pure “nobody looks for any special largeresent the kids. A veteran’s wife “may scale problems of adjustment so far proudly plant a two-year-old child on joy. Here, Private First Class Lee Harper—arriving in New York City on August 1, 1945, still healing from wounds as the females in the armed forces are [his] lap, fully expecting him to be suffered in the Normandy Campaign—meets his twoconcerned” since “women just natuoverjoyed by the product of his paterand-a-half-year-old sister Janet for the first time. rally adjust better than men.” nity,” warned Dumas and Keen, “to Sometimes the self-help books provided good advice. Somefind instead that he behaves as if his collar were choking him.” times the advice was wretched. Mauldin called the entire genre Veterans received lots of advice about sex. Several books out“trash.” But occasionally the authors put their fingers on real and lined potential problems in the bedroom. One common topic vexing problems that veterans and their familes faced. Sixteen milwas impotence. Howard Kitching, author of Sex Problems of lion veterans meant sixteen million different homecoming experithe Returned Veteran, wrote that “bridegroom’s impotence,” ences. The veterans were reabsorbed back into their families and caused by “fear, embarrassment, and overanxiety,” was comcommunities with little incident, and these books quickly colmon, but “usually passes in a few days or weeks.” However, lected dust on library shelves. A impotence might also be caused by guilty feelings over wartime infidelities. “Many have wandered widely over the face of the globe and have let fancy rest where it would,” lamented Baruch MARK D. VAN ELLS is a history professor at the City University of and Travis. They urged veterans to discuss their feelings with New York and author of To Hear Only Thunder Again: America’s their partners “frankly and openly.” When it came to the issue World War II Veterans Come Home (2001).
Advice writers acknowledged that combat veterans might exhibit deeper emotional wounds. “There will scarcely be one family with a son who returns safely from action that will not have reason to know that the returning soldier or sailor is plagued with nightmarish dreams,” Kupper told his readers. Advice writers assured veterans that these symptoms were normal and conquerable. Baruch and Travis, for example, told veterans that these complaints were not “imaginary,” and that “an emotional problem…does not indicate that a person [is] crazy or feeble-minded.” If a veteran showed no signs of improvement after three to six months, Kupper advised, “we must assume that he requires outside help.”
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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN AMERICA IN WWII, OCTOBER 2010
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TELL A STORY A World War II veteran’s medals can tell you a lot about the man who received them and what he did in the war. Here’s what they mean.
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MEDAL: AUDIE MURPHY MEDALS COLLECTION
Even this was just the beginning. Individual valor documented by a superior officer could qualify a GI for the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Soldier’s Medal, or the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, among others. A total of 464 men (including, a half-century after the war, seven African Americans whose heroism had initially been overlooked) received the Medal of Honor—the highest award available to military personnel. Today, many WWII decorations are relegated to dusty old shoeboxes, attic footlockers, or forgotten desk drawers. With just a basic amount of knowledge, these neglected treasures can reveal clues about a loved one’s WWII travels, deeds, and experiences—perhaps even hinting at stories never told, whether out of humility or a desire to forget. Each medal is easily identifiable by its distinctive design, inscriptions, and ribbon pattern. (In fact, the colorful bands that military personnel wear over the left breast pocket of their service uniforms are simply less cumbersome versions of the ribbons from the medals they have received.) Our concise visual guide is not an exhaustive accounting of all the medals a WWII vet could have received. But it will help you decipher most of the ribbons and medals you’ll find on your loved one’s old WWII uniform, or stored in your family’s attic. Further resources and links are available online at americainwwii.com. A
Above, top: WWII medals signify deeds, sacrifices, and participation. Nobody received more than Audie Murphy (Lieutenant Colonel Matt Urban got more, but fewer kinds). Here, he wears around his neck the Medal of Honor, the highest US military award, after receiving it at Salzburg, Austria, on June 7, 1945. Above: Murphy received this Legion of Merit medal the same day. Ranked below a Silver Star, it honors conduct that stands out as exceptionally meritorious even during outstanding performance of duty. Opposite: The Purple Heart, for wounds received in action. 90 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF THE JAMES L. KING FAMILY COLLECTION
than a flood began, a colorful tide of medals and ribbons flowing out to America’s triumphant WWII veterans, honoring their service, their heroism, and their sacrifice. Two months before Japan’s official surrender on September 2, 1945, the US Congress had authorized the World War II Victory Medal. Government officials approved sculptor Thomas H. Jones’s design, and manufacturers started churning out enough of the bronze medallions for every man and woman who had served in the US armed forces between December 7, 1941, and the official end of hostilities (which President Harry S. Truman eventually set as December 31, 1946). Eventually, some 16 million Victory Medals were cast, placed into neat little blue boxes, and shipped to homes across the United States. The Victory Medal crowned an outpouring of other commendations, presented to the men while still in uniform or bestowed after the fact—including the unmistakable Purple Heart, 671,000 of which went to wounded servicemen or the families of those killed. Additional service awards denoted good conduct, occupation duty in former Axis lands, and deployment in the war’s theaters (divided into Asiatic-Pacific and European–African–Middle Eastern). The government recognized excellent service in combat or non-combat situations with the Distinguished Service Medal. And thousands of female GIs received the Women’s Army Corps Service Medal.
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THE AUDIE MURPHY MEDALS COLLECTION RESIDES AT THE DALLAS SCOTTISH RITE CATHEDRAL MUSEUM
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Medal of Honor
Distinguished Service Cross
Navy Cross
Given for conspicuous and irrefutable gallantry at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty, in direct combat with the enemy. This is a WWII naval version of the medal.
Awarded to any person serving with the US Army whose extraordinary heroism clearly distinguishes him or her from others, though not at the level required for the Medal of Honor.
The US Navy and Marine Corps equivalent of the Distinguished Service Cross. Early-war models were jokingly dubbed “Black Widows” because of an overly dark finish.
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AUDIE MURPHY MEDALS COLLECTION
NAVAL AVIATION MUSEUM
Distinguished Service Medal
Navy Distinguished Service Medal
Silver Star
Awarded to anyone who, while serving with the army, contributes meritorious service to the government while performing duty of great responsibility.
The US Navy and Marine Corps’s elegantly designed equivalent of the army’s Distinguished Service Medal.
The nation’s third-highest award for valor while in action against an enemy. A bronze Oak Leaf Cluster on the ribbon means the wearer—Audie Murphy—won the medal twice.
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AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION
AUDIE MURPHY MEDALS COLLECTION
Distinguished Flying Cross
Soldier’s Medal
Navy and Marine Corps Medal
Given to any member of the armed forces who distinguishes himself or herself with heroism or extraordinary action during aerial flight.
Issued to anyone who, while serving with the US Army, performed an act of heroism outside of direct conflict with the enemy.
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Issued to anyone who, while serving with the US Navy or Marine Corps, performed an act of heroism outside of direct conflict with the enemy. AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION
Bronze Star
Air Medal
Good Conduct Medal
Awarded to ground troops who distinguish themselves in action, at a level below that justifying a Silver Star. V for “valor” shows the action occurred during combat. The bronze Oak Leaf Cluster indicates two awards.
Awarded to any member of the US armed forces who performs meritorious service during aerial flight. This particular medal was given to actor and bomber pilot Jimmy Stewart.
Awarded to soldiers who completed one year of honorable service after December 7, 1941. A separate version was awarded to naval and marine personnel.
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AUDIE MURPHY MEDALS COLLECTION
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Cords and Braids In addition to medals, some American WWII personnel were decorated with colored shoulder cords. Here’s what the cords mean.
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Audie Murphy wears the French Fourragère in the Colors of the Croix de Guerre on his left shoulder.
Orange lanyard: Netherlands Orange Lanyard. Indicates the wearer’s unit received the Military William Order, the Netherlands’ highest martial award. Worn over the left shoulder, one end buttoned to left breast pocket.
Red, white, and blue cord: Insignia of the joint US-Canadian 1st Special Service Force. Made of parachute shroud lines.
Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal
Awarded to naval personnel who landed on foreign territory to engage in operations against the enemy, or who took part in the December 1941 defense of Wake Island.
Awarded to US Marine Corps personnel who landed on foreign territory to engage in operations against the enemy, or who took part in the December 1941 defense of Wake Island.
AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION
AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN AMERICA IN WWII, DECEMBER 2010
Red and green rope, brass tip: French Fourragère aux couleurs de la Croix de Guerre (Fourragère in the colors of the Cross of War). Indicated the wearer or his unit received two French awards in World War I or World War II. Worn over the left shoulder—outside the arm if the wearer was in the unit when it earned the awards.
Navy Expeditionary Medal
Scarlet and green rope, brass tip: Belgian Fourragère. Awarded to distinguished WWII units. Silk for officers, cotton for enlisted. Yellow and green rope, brass tip: French Fourragère aux couleurs de la Médaille Militaire (Fourragère in the colors of the Military Medal). Indicated the wearer or his unit received four or more French awards in World War I or World War II. Worn over the left shoulder—outside the arm if the wearer was in the unit when it earned the awards. 94 GIs IN WORLD WAR II
American Defense Medal
Women’s Army Corps Medal
Awarded to those who served in the armed forces for one year between September 8, 1939, and December 7, 1941, during the lead-up to American involvement in World War II.
Awarded to those who served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps or the subsequent Women’s Army Corps between July 10, 1942, and September 2, 1945.
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American Campaign Medal Awarded to military personnel for service in the “American Theater of Operations”— the continental United States, and outlying territories and waters—between December 7, 1941, and March 2, 1946. AUDIE MURPHY MEDALS COLLECTION
European–African–Middle Eastern Campaign Medal Given for service in the European–African– Middle Eastern Theater of Operations. A bronze star pinned on any campaign medal ribbon indicates participation in specific campaigns inside the theater.
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal For service in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater of Operations. Arrowheads pinned on any campaign medal ribbon signify an airborne (parachute or glider) or amphibious assault. Metal ribbon clasps may name specific battles. US AIR FORCE
AUDIE MURPHY MEDALS COLLECTION
World War II Victory Medal
Army of Occupation Medal
Navy Occupation Service Medal
Awarded to all military personnel who served in the armed forces between December 7, 1941, and December 31, 1946.
Awarded to those who served for at least 30 days in occupied portions of Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan, and Korea during specifically designated time periods after the war.
The navy, coast guard, and marine version of the Army of Occupation Medal.
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LASTING IMAGE
Life Without War
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All eyes are on the American—or, rather, on the treats emerging from his late-arriving Christmas box in Italy in February 1945. Wherever war took GIs, they were famous for sharing with local kids. A piece of chocolate, a cookie, even a stick of gum could create lasting memories of kindness for children who had never known life without war.
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Spend the day in 1944 aboard the World War II Liberty Ship S.S. JOHN W. BROWN
The S.S. JOHN W. BROWN is one of the last operating survivors from the great fleet of over 2,700 war-built Liberty Ships and the last Operational Troopship of World War II. The ship is a maritime museum and a memorial to the shipyard workers who built, merchant mariners who sailed, and the U.S. Navy Armed Guard crews who defended the Liberty ships during World War II. The JOHN W. BROWN is fully restored and maintained as close as possible to her World War II configuration. Visitors must be able to walk up steps to board the ship.
2013 Cruises in Baltimore on the Chesapeake Bay June 15, September 7 and October 5 Tickets are $140 each Group rates available This exciting 6 hour day cruise includes continental breakfast, lunch buffet, music of the 40’s, period entertainment and flybys (conditions permitting) of wartime aircraft. Tour museum spaces, crew quarters, bridge and much more. View the magnificent 140-ton triple-expansion steam engine as it powers the ship through the water. Ticket order forms available on our website at: www.liberty-ship.com To order Cruise tickets call: 410-558-0164 Last day to order tickets is 14 days before the cruise.
Conditions and penalties apply to cancellations Project Liberty Ship is a Baltimore based, all volunteer, nonprofit organization.
