DOG FIGHT How four-legged Marines changed the war The Bloody Grind that Saved the Anzio Invasion Red, White and Black Swastikas on Main Street
American Troops Make a Devil’s Bargain in Manila
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WAR II FEATURES
Made in America
C ov e r S t o r y
Homegrown hate intertwined the Stars and Stripes and swastika as war neared
A Few Good Marines In the Pacifc, American warriors learned how to let slip the dogs of war STEvEn TREnT SMiTh
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RonAld h. BAilEy
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We A P oN S MA N UA l
Germany’s Kettenkraftrad one scrappy little mudder
highway to hell
JiM lAURiER
to preserve the Anzio beachhead, Allied troops resorted to a brutal ground game
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AlEx KERShAw
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Portf ol I o
Also Rans the race to equip the motor pool included fabulous failures
Standoff at Santo Tomas As the Allies closed on Manila, a young prisoner of the Japanese witnessed a desperate gambit RUpERT wilKinSon
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world war ii Today Billion-dollar art hoard may have been Nazi swag; huge Japanese sub found; richard frank’s reading list
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Fire for Effect Scorn MacArthur or hail him, but give General Doug his due RoBERT M. ciTino
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Time Travel Pforzheim remembers JAMES UllRich
conversation A daughter preserves her merchant seaman dad’s memories of close calls and long hauls GEnE SAnToRo
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From the Footlocker Curators at the National World War II Museum solve readers’ artifact mysteries
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Reviews Japan’s war on reason; the joker who hunted a Nazi; the Zero’s creator chronicled
O nEw dEpARTMEnT O Battle Films Twelve O’Clock High imparts powerful lessons on ethics MARK GRiMSlEy
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challenge return of the pod people
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pinup
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fires fare near the Pasig river in Manila as American artillery batters Japanese forces in the Philippine capital on february 7, 1945. Cover: An unidentifed Marine (and an unidentifed war dog) on Iwo Jima.
THE SEARCH FOR THE SANDMAN
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Vol. 28, No. 6 Editor
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THE DISAPPEARANCE OF A HISTORIC WW II B-24 BOMBER One of the most incredible stories to come out of the war. You’ll go on a video journey with pilot Robert W. Sternfels and witness a mystery fnally unfold that has baffed war historians and haunted Sternfels for more than 60 years. Told in part by Sternfels, whose determination inspired others halfway around the world to help him bring about an astonishing conclusion. Never before seen footage!
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S MI T H (wI T H D -O-G)
w ILKINSON
Ronald H. Bailey (“Made in America”)
has written four books on World War II, including The Home Front: U.S.A. Arriving in New York City in 1959 to work for Life, he looked at a lovely apartment in the Yorkville neighborhood, once a bastion of the German American Bund. He turned it down because, he recalls, “to this rube from Ohio with our frst child on the way, the rent—$150 a month—seemed a little high for only one bedroom.” Alex Kershaw (“Highway to Hell”) is a
bestselling author known for his works on World War II, such as The Bedford Boys and The Liberator. His oral account of the story of Captain Felix Sparks and the Thunderbirds at Anzio and after, adapted from this issue’s article, provided a compelling close to the International Conference on WWII sponsored by The National WWII Museum in November 2013. Steven Trent Smith (“A Few Good
Marines”), a fve-time Emmy-award winning photojournalist, has authored two books on submarine warfare in the Pacifc:
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The Rescue and Wolf Pack, available for Kindle and Nook. He writes often for this magazine, along with Military History Quarterly and Civil War Times. He lives in Northwest Montana in a household that includes rescue dog D-O-G. James Ullrich (“Time Travel”) is an author
and travel writer whose work has appeared in these pages and The Examiner, Global Aviator, Renaissance Magazine, Writer Abroad, Writers Weekly, Travel Post Monthly, and Military among others. When not wandering Europe, journal in hand, he hangs his rucksack in Seattle. His website is jamesullrichbooks.com. Rupert Wilkinson (“Standoff at Santo
Tomas”) never forgot his boyhood stay in America, which eventually led him to get a PhD at Stanford University. Emeritus Professor of American Studies & History, Sussex University (UK), he has published 10 books. His latest is Surviving a Japanese Internment Camp: Life and Liberation at Santo Tomas, Manila, in World War II, on which his article is based.
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entered Arzew. Arzew was part of the landing at Oran in Algeria and the 1st Infantry Division was then commanded by Major General Terry Allen, under Major General Lloyd Fredendall. Patton was in command of the Western Task Force, which invaded Morocco. Patton did not take command of the 1st Division until after the Kasserine Pass disaster, when Ike fred Fredendall. William Doll Amherst, N.H.
We’ll Always Have Munich A modifed Springfeld rife and a British-made dagger supplemented Rangers’ gear.
Focused on the Photos I would like your help in identifying the rife on page 40 of Phil Stern’s story “Still Focused,” (November/December 2013). A Ranger is taking aim with what appears to be a rife with a Springfeld 1903/1903A3 action and stock, but whose shortened barrel ends in what looks like a compensator from a Thompson submachine gun. Was this a custom-made weapon? Thanks for producing a frst rate magazine! Harry D. West Barryton, Mich. The soldier at right on page 40-41 appears to have a German dagger. Can you identify? You have a great magazine, which I enjoy as a student of history and the son of a World War II vet. Keep up the good work. Richard A. Fultz Wamego, Kans. I am fascinated by Phil Stern’s photo of landing craft and foatplanes on page 45. I think the aircraft could be Latécoère 298s. Who was operating them? I would be interested in any info regarding the aircraft in the photo and/or Free French forces in Sicily. My Dad’s twin was in the frst wave 6
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of the Canadian First in that invasion. Joe Skaptason Overland Park, Kans. That odd-looking rife muzzle extension seems to be an M1 grenade launcher adapter, which allowed a rifeman to fre an M2 grenade and use his M1903 in its normal capacity. The dagger is a British-made Fairbairn-Sykes fghting knife, probably obtained while training in Scotland. Rangers had leeway in weapons choice, and many supplemented assigned gear based on a particular task or personal preference. The patrolling foatplanes are indeed French-built Latécoère 298s, which after Operation Torch were operated by Free French naval forces in conjunction with RAF Coastal Command. A caption on page 40 of “Still Focused” states that Patton’s 1st Infantry Division
The fnal sentence of your November/December “What If” section says it all: “The failure to stand frm at Munich was thus even more calamitous than most students of World War II appreciate.” The article describes Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier fying to Munich to “impose a solution upon the hapless Czech government.” The real “What If” is what would have happened if the Czech leaders had massed their army and some of the world’s best tanks and told Hitler the only way he was getting any Czech territory was to fght for it. Would Hitler have risked war, casualties, and the inevitable delays to his other plans over the Sudetenland? Czech leaders had the sole obligation to defend their country, not France or Britain. What we should take from Munich is that countries are responsible for their own defense. David Husar Arlington, Va.
Sunken Sister In the November/December 2013 issue, John Prados (“Goliath Unleashed”) discusses the Japanese vessel Yamato. Claiming its crew of 2,800 was the largest in the Imperial Japanese Navy, he very briefy alludes to the Musashi, Yamato’s sister ship. However, he does not state that the Musashi was essentially the same size in
Copyright phil StEry/Cpi/FAhEy-KlEiN gAllEry (both); oppoSitE: wEidEr ArChivES (both)
Mail
crew (2,800) and armament as the Yamato. George R. Muller Lambertville, N.J. As the article notes, superbattleships Yamato and Musashi were identical sister ships. However, when the article begins, the Musashi has been sunk, leaving the Yamato as the Imperial Navy’s largest vessel. This damaged Wespe (left) and a marder iii model h used similar chassis but different guns.
Czech Chassis A caption in the story “City of Darkness” (November/December 2013) misidentifes a self-propelled gun as a Wespe. That vehicle actually is a Marder III with a 75 mm Pak 40 antitank gun on a Czech-built Panzerkampfwagen 38(t) chassis. Variants used captured Russian 76.2 mm antitank guns. The Wespe and the Marder are good examples of the German practice of repurposing obsolete tank chassis. I continue to enjoy World War II magazine and read
editor’s error. In the same issue, a photo of the Pentagon on page 39 dates not to 1942 but the late 1940s.
every issue cover to cover. Ken Kirk Dickinson, Tex.
Corrections A sentence in “Time Travel” (November/ December, 2013) should have read, “… proportionately, except for Iwo Jima, no battle of the Pacifc War involved more troops or spilled more blood.” The word “proportionately” was deleted due to an
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“With the pace of a tightly-written novel, Harding writes with the determination of a true crime novelist and thoroughness of a first-rate ÑArmy magazine historian.Ó ÒA tale as compelling as it is unlikely. The Last Battle demonstrates that truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, particularly in war. Well-researched and well-told. ÑRick Atkinson, author of The Day of Battle
ÒPart Where Eagles Dare, part Guns of Navarone, this story is as exciting as it is far-fetched, but unlike in those iconic war movies, every word of The Last Battle is true.Ó ÑAndrew Roberts, The Daily Beast
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mARch/ApRil 2014
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WAR II
Art Stash May Include Nazi Loot
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uring and after the war in Europe the Allies recovered fve million works of art and cultural relics looted by the Nazis. But 1,400 pieces that got away are now upending the art world. A magazine in Germany revealed in November that authorities there have confscated hundreds of works— believed to have a collective value of as much as $1.4 billion—held by the heir of a German art dealer who had close ties to the Nazis. The brouhaha dates to the 1930s, when the Nazis, who scorned modernist art as “degenerate” for its makers’ apparent lack of self-control, passed legislation authorizing confscation of such materials by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Henry Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, and many others from museums and households. To dispose of the stolen hoard, the Reich recruited four art dealers, including Hildebrand Gurlitt, who also acquired art in Paris and claimed later to have been defending avant-garde
an otto Dix selfportrait shown at a press conference and some 1,400 other works make up the art trove.
DISPATCHES
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The Doolittle raiders shared a fnal toast on November 9, 2013, at the National Museum of the U.S. air Force in Dayton, ohio. of four surviving raiders, three (at right) attended. They were among 80 fyers who bombed Tokyo on april 18, 1942. The aging airmen decided that
2013 would be the last of the annual reunions begun by their commander, lieutenant General James Doolittle.
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reported and written by
Paul Wiseman
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From left: Ed Saylor, Dick Cole, and David Thatcher
Entries U.S. army Private Charles “Chick” Bruns wrote in his journal during 1942–45 as he slogged across North africa and Europe with the 3rd infantry Division are appearing online in original form, accompanied by vintage images. “My father is blogging from
Top: Johannes simon/GeTTy imaGes; UsaF phoTo by Desiree n. palacios; opposiTe: Top, american reD cross; below, coUrTesy oF wQeD
W W I I T oda y artists even as he did the Nazis’ bidding. Allied art specialists known as the Monuments Men, the subjects of a recent motion picture, detained Gurlitt in 1945, seizing 163 pieces that he insisted he owned legally. Gurlitt claimed records proving his ownership were destroyed in the bombing of Dresden. Authorities released the dealer and eventually returned the art to him. He died in 1956, leaving the artworks to his son, Cornelius, who kept much of the collection in a Munich fat from which he rarely emerged. Now serious questions have arisen about the Gurlitt collection’s provenance, leading Jewish groups to pressure Germany to ensure that artwork stolen before and during the war is returned to its rightful owners. In 2010, customs offcials questioned 77-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt as he was returning home from Switzerland carrying 9,000 euros—about $12,200—in cash. That fnd triggered a tax investigation, and in 2012 German authorities seized (continued on page 10)
the past,” said John Bruns, who set up 70yearsago.com. “Nov. 22, 1943 Monday—The sun came out today for the frst time,” one entry reads. “Boy was it just like old times today. Jerry planes were over strafng. Each time they came over at least one or two planes were shot down. They soon found out that we are not 4f’s back here. Badali and i’d put up our tent. We have an offcer’s tent to sleep in.”
Do You Know These Soldiers?
Elizabeth Black, in England in 1944 (above), sketched hundreds of americans, including the four below whose names are known but whose families have not yet been located.
T
raveling to European battlegrounds with the American Red Cross, Elizabeth Black at frst gave out candy, smokes, and coffee, but her real skills came to the fore and soon she was sketching GIs in charcoal. Black, who died in 1983, saved copies of about 100 portraits along with her journal of those days and thank-you notes from troops. Her son discovered the collection in a footlocker in 2010. Now WQED, a TV station in Pittsburgh that based a documentary on Black, a native of the city, is trying to fnd veterans who were her subjects, or their families, to give them their portraits. Families can search the portraits at wqed. org/elizabethblack.
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W W I I T oda y Japanese Monster Sub Spotted in the Deep
a
World War II veteran and early Cold War casualty has been found off Oahu: Japan’s I-400, one of the biggest, most advanced submarines of its time. In August, scientists with the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory studied the hulk from aboard a submersible hovering 2,300 feet down. “We were approaching what looked like a large wreck on our sonar,” said lab operations director Terry Kerby. “It was a thrill when the view of a giant submarine appeared out of the darkness.” Researchers, who had expected the sub to be farther out to sea, delayed publicizing the discovery until December, after American and Japanese offcials had reviewed their fndings. The 400-foot, 5,900-ton Sen-Tokuclass boats, more than twice the size of the era’s biggest American subs, had a range of 37,500 miles. The Imperial Navy ordered 18; three were built. The I-400, I-401, and I-402 had 144-man crews trained to transport, launch, and retrieve as many as three Seiran seaplane bombers. Each of the giant subs also had eight forward torpedo tubes, automatic weapons, and naval guns. In mid-1945, strategists were planning to send two of the huge vessels to destroy the Panama Canal’s Gatun Locks—until Okinawa fell. Instead, the I-400 and I-401 would raid Ulithi, where American aircraft carriers were staging to invade the home islands. Before that sortie could take place, Japan surrendered,
(continued from page 9)
about 1,400 works of art from Gurlitt’s residence. The government kept the case secret until November 2013, when the German magazine Focus reported on it. The younger Gurlitt has parted with individual pieces. In 2011, he sold The Lion Tamer by German artist Max Beckmann for $1.17 million and turned 45 percent of the proceeds over to its former owners, a Jewish family, according to The New York Times. German authorities say Cornelius 10
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and the victors seized the leviathans. The Allies had agreed to share recovered Japanese military technology, but rather than let the Soviets examine the super-subs, the Americans scuttled the I-402 off Japan and, in June 1946, after months of intense scrutiny, sank the I-400 and the I-401 off Hawaii. The I-401 was found in 2005. There are no plans to salvage the sub. Researcher Jim Delgado told Reuters that seeing the I-400 in its grave is “like watching a shark at rest.”
Gurlitt legally owns hundreds of the disputed artworks, which they plan to return to him, but experts are examining 970 of the paintings to determine whether the Third Reich stole them. Of 25 pieces identifed publicly so far, curators have fagged four as having been in museum collections before the war. However, the 1938 mandate authorizing seizure of the art remains on the books. No postwar German government has moved to overturn that measure, in part because nullifying the Nazi law
The I-400 (top, at left) dwarfs USS Blower in Tokyo Bay, September 1945. The hulk (inset) has spent decades at the bottom.
would entangle countless transactions involving repatriated artworks.
Gurlitt’s apartment building
Top: Us navy; inseT, hawaii UnDersea research lab; boTTom: lenharT preiss/GeTTy imaGes; oppposiTe: ap phoTo/JacQUeline marTin
W W I I T od ay THE READING LIST
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his list focuses on fve titles among many
richard Frank
Forgotten Ally
worthy examples of outstanding recent
China’s World War ii 1937-1945
scholarship on the vastly neglected asian-
Rana Mitter (2013)
“Reviewed in the November/December 2013 issue, this work is now the best single volume on China’s overall role in World War II. Mitter argues forcefully that China must be placed in the frst rank of Allied nations and stresses the appalling death and destruction the war wrought in China.”
Pacifc War. (The sixth and idiosyncratic pick is just one of my all-time favorites.)
The Battle for China Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 Mark Peattie, Edward drea, Hans van de Ven (2010)
“In a scholarly achievement of the frst rank, Chinese, Japanese, and Western historians contribute essays of exceptional quality that illuminate this pivotal military struggle in a vast new light. Perhaps most important of all, this volume sounds a trumpet call for much more work in this neglected feld.”
Scars of War The impact of Warfare on Modern China diana Lary and Stephen MacKinnon (2001)
“Lary and MacKinnon have both contributed a number of outstanding volumes on the social effects of the Sino-Chinese War from 1937-1945. The essays they gathered here present a searing portrait of what the war did to China’s civilian population and its long-term effects.”
The Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China Jay Taylor (2009)
“Taylor uses new sources, notably Chiang’s amazing diaries, to reveal much of China’s 20th-century history in new light. This is no hagiography, but when Taylor is done, the way you measure Chiang—particularly against Mao Zedong and Joseph Stilwell—will not be the same.” War and Nationalism in China 1925-1945 Hans van de Ven (2003)
“An amazingly wide-ranging account of political, economic, and military
The Wizard War British Scientifc intelligence 1939-1945 illUsTraTion by miKe caplanis
R.V. Jones (1st american edition, 1978)
“An irresistible confection of science and intelligence, including ULTRA and espionage, told in prancing prose like a series of entrancing mystery stories of enormous consequence to the war.” In 1990, richard Frank published his frst book,
aspects of this era, including the key years before 1937. It demands a rebalancing of conventional wisdom about the roles of the Nationalists, the Communists, and the Americans in this period.”
Guadalcanal. His second work, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, appeared in 1999 and has been called one of the six best books in English about World War II. He is working on a narrative historical trilogy chronicling the asian-Pacifc War.
DISPATCHES
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a former U.S. army reporter gave 40 unpublished transcripts of reports on the Nuremberg trials to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Donor Harold Burson covered the 1945–46 trials for the american Forces Network and later founded Pr frm Burson-
Marsteller. in a transcript dated November 30, 1945, Corporal Sy Bernard reports: “For tonight, rudolf Hess, the wax-like balding Hitler deputy who few his Fuhrer’s coop in 1941 for England, stood up in court and defantly declared that he is sane.”
Burson with radio transcripts MarCH/aPril 2014
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SOUND BITE
“Do not imagine that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here. God sleepeth not, and He will visit His Judgment upon you.” —helen Keller, in a may 9, 1933, letter to pro-nazi German students who planned to burn her books along with others labeled “un-German.”
Keller (left) and Ernie Pyle in 1944
Chinese Nationalists’ War Role Reappraised
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uror over neglect of a wartime cemetery near Kunming in southern China suggests Chinese veterans of World War II are beginning to get their historic due. A forested slope is the resting place for hundreds of Nationalist troops who served with the Flying Tigers—American airmen who helped defend China. Volunteers found the burial site strewn with trash in 2007. Kunming offcials promised a cleanup but that did not occur, triggering outrage at the disrespect shown to the wartime dead. “Japanese Class A war criminals are enshrined as
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national heroes in the Yasukuni Shrine,” writer Bei Cun declared. “But Chinese Flying Tigers war heroes are seen as trash to be discarded on a hillside.” The Nationalists, toppled in 1949 by Mao Zedong’s Communists, were the butt of international scorn for decades. Now historians hail them for keeping as many as 500,000 Japanese troops fghting in Asia and not in the Pacifc. Oxford University historian Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II 1937–1945 (see “Who Lost (and Won) China?” November/ December 2013), credits politics in part
Nationalist troops get training on a P-40E Warhawk of the 16th Fighter Squadron, 51st Fighter Group, in october 1942.
for the attitude adjustment. Beijing wants to mend fences, push reunifcation with Taiwan, and stoke hostility toward Japan, Mitter notes. “Anyone who looks at East Asia today will perceive that Chinese anger against Japan has increased compared to three or four decades ago,” he says. “The narrative of a united front between Nationalists and Communists is part of the toolkit for creating that anger.”
Top: alFreD eisensTaeDT/Time & liFe picTUres/GeTTy imaGes; boTTom: naTional archives; opposiTe: leFT, ap phoTo/michael sohn; riGhT, harry s. TrUman presiDenTial library anD mUseUm
W W I I T oda y Do Nazi Bones Lie in a Jewish Cemetery?
ask wwii
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s Soviet forces entered Berlin in May 1945, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller vanished. Over the years, rumors few: Müller, the highest-ranking Nazi to go unaccounted for, was in Czechoslovakia. No, Argentina. No, Panama. Now evidence suggests that the Gestapo head, who helped plan the Holocaust at the 1942 Wannsee Conference, died as the Third Reich unraveled—and lies in a Jewish graveyard. “I can’t think of a worse desecration of a Jewish cemetery than to bury Heinrich Müller there,” Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The New York Times. German paper Bild broke the story. Müller was last seen alive in the Reich Chancellery the night of May 1–2, 1945. Johannes Tuchel, director of Berlin’s German Resistance Memorial Center, says “clear-cut” evidence shows he died in Berlin at war’s end. Müller had “told several people his intention to commit suicide by shooting himself,” says Tuchel. He claims Müller was consigned to a grave near Luftwaffe headquarters. In August 1945, workers found his remains, which they reburied—at the site of a Jewish cemetery the Nazis had destroyed in 1943. A gravedigger who identifed Müller’s body in 1945 reported that sighting in 1963, but offcials did nothing, Tuchel says. Soviet occupation of East Germany kept American and Israeli investigators out of the cemetery’s vicinity until long after the Berlin Wall came down.
Truman’s note, on the back of a secret message, set the A-bombing in motion.
Q.
Did President Harry S. Truman give a written order authorizing the use of atomic bombs on Japan? —Joseph Papalia, Rockville Centre, N.Y.
a.
The president did not directly order the bombing, says curator Tammy Williams
at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. The closest he came was granting a July 31, 1945, request by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that Truman authorize the issuance of a presidential statement drafted in case the United States did drop the bomb. Triggered by a successful A-bomb test (see “I Am Destiny,” March/April 2013) and Truman’s public threat of grave result if Japan did not immediately and unconditionally surrender, Stimson’s request reached Truman en route home from the Potsdam Conference aboard the cruiser USS Augusta. Truman replied that Stimson should release the statement “when ready but not sooner than August 2.” On August 6, 1945, the crew of B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay bombed Hiroshima, and the statement was issued. —Michael Dolan Statues stand outside the former Jewish cemetery where Müller may lie.
n Send queries to: Ask World War II, 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176, or e-mail:
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MARCH/APRIL 2014
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Conversation with william Chambers
Saved From the Depths By Kathryn Chambers Torpey and Gene Santoro
B
ill CHaMBers spent tHe war in
How did you train for the work you
the Merchant Marine, arguably the
did in the Merchant Marine?
least appreciated of the american
I attended the Pennsylvania Nautical School from October 1939 to October 1941. Cadets trained on the school ship Annapolis, a combination sailing and steam vessel built in 1897 and quite cramped; cadets slept in hammocks. After graduating I became a deck offcer. On December 7, 1941, I was at sea on the SS Steel Maker, en route from the East Coast via the Panama Canal to Honolulu.
wartime services: it offered no military benefts and suffered the highest death rate. on his maiden voyage, Chambers reached pearl Harbor only days after the Japanese attack; on his next trip, three ships that he was on sank. But now, at 92 and beset by dementia, he remembers none of this. Fortunately, in 2004 his daughter Kay (above) interviewed him for the library of Congress Veterans History project (loc.gov/vets/). as the world war
what was that trip’s purpose?
ii generation fades, we at World War II
We were on a commercial voyage. One morning the captain came into the offcers’ saloon after receiving a radio message from the navy: Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor a few hours earlier, and we were to follow sealed orders he had
magazine strongly urge readers to help veterans they know participate in this oral history program. otherwise, remarkable tales like Chambers’s, here condensed from the original, will be lost.
14
world war ii
received in Panama. Arriving in Honolulu on December 15, we only heard rumors about what had happened. We were not allowed to see the damage or any other parts of the waterfront. The longshoremen were Japanese, under military guard. We were allowed off the ship, but only on the pier and in the very near vicinity. We were not allowed to go into Honolulu. On December 30, we were shelled by a Japanese submarine in Kahului Harbor, Maui. Then we sailed to San Francisco in a convoy—the frst convoy I experienced. where did your next convoy go?
Across the North Atlantic. The SS Steel Worker departed Philadelphia on March 26, 1942, for Murmansk, Russia, loaded with cargo, including 250 tons of explosives in the number fve hatch at the stern.
Charlie arChambault PhOtOGraPhY; OPPOsite: librarY OF CONGress VeteraNs histOrY PrOJeCt
From May 25 to May 31 we were under continuous air attack. Eight ships were sunk; many were damaged from near hits. Three were hit and made port. The ship was armed with machine guns to be used by the merchant seamen; there was no U.S. Navy Armed Guard on board, as there would be later. Four enemy planes were destroyed, and many were damaged.
‘My frst wristwatch and my seaman’s papers went down with the ship.’
the vessel. We sailed to Cuba, where we loaded sugar, and headed for New York, where we joined a North Atlantic convoy to bring the sugar to Scotland and Wales. The early voyages along the coast were unescorted by navy vessels or airplanes, and were easy prey for U-boats; many ships were sunk. It was better after the U-boats were transferred to the North Atlantic to join wolf packs there.
what happened at Murmansk?
We unloaded the explosives straight away. On June 3, 1942, on our way to discharge the remaining cargo at another berth in the Kola Inlet, a heavy explosion hit the number fve hatch, where the explosives had been. The ship may have struck a mine. It sank in half an hour. We abandoned ship, and a British escort vessel picked us up and took us to the SS Alcoa Cadet. My frst wristwatch, which I got when I was in high school, and my seaman’s papers went down with the ship. Russian divers were able to salvage much of the military cargo, because the ship sank in less than 100 feet of water. then the Alcoa Cadet sank.
On June 21, 1942. It had discharged its cargo and was waiting for orders. I was standing beside my desk in my cabin when the ship blew up. The British said it was a mine; the Russians said it was a torpedo. I was rescued from a life raft along with the ship’s captain by a Russian patrol craft and transferred to a Russian military barracks across the river from Murmansk. six days later, you set off for home.
Those of us who survived transferred to the SS American Press, sailing in a convoy to Hoboken, New Jersey, via Iceland. On July 5 at 9 p.m. off Iceland’s west coast, we were attacked by subs or hit a minefeld, it’s not clear; six ships were sunk. The convoy scattered. One ship was hit but made Reykjavik. We turned and headed for Akureyri, in a fjord on Iceland’s north coast. Eventually we reached Reykjavik and joined a convoy to the United States.
when was your last voyage?
Merchant seaman Bill Chambers
what was your longest voyage?
On December 30, 1942, the SS Robin Sherwood sailed from New York for the Panama Canal and ultimately Iran. We were loaded with supplies to be transshipped overland to southern Russia— the safest way for them to go. We took a circuitous route from the Canal Zone to Freemantle in western Australia; it took 28 days, with no land or any other ship ever sighted. To avoid the Japanese, we sailed an indirect route from Freemantle to the Persian Gulf. We discharged military supplies for Russia in three Iranian ports, then we sailed from the Persian Gulf south on the East Africa coast, stopping to load commercial cargo at Mombasa, Kenya; Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika [now Tanzania]; and Beira, Mozambique. We stopped at Durban and sailed around South Africa before we headed across the South Atlantic toward South America. When we got back to New York on July 23, 1943, we had sailed 36,000 miles. next you sailed on a liberty ship.
The SS Charles J. Folger. The crew was fown in a DC-3 to New Orleans to join
After the war was over in Europe, on the SS Thomas J. Walsh; I was Master of the vessel. We were not in a convoy. We left Charleston, South Carolina, on May 24, 1945; the journey lasted until January 18, 1946. We sailed to Gibraltar, then to ports in Italy and France. In Marseille, we loaded military vehicles and armored cars for the Far East and headed to the Panama Canal. While we were en route, the atomic bomb was dropped. We arrived in Japan in October 1945 and stayed in Yokohama Bay for a month, though we never unloaded our military supplies. Eventually we sailed back through the Panama Canal to Philadelphia, then to Norfolk, where the military supplies were unloaded. did you get any citations?
The Merchant Marine Emblem, the Atlantic War Zone Bar, the Pacifc War Zone Bar, the Mediterranean Middle East War Zone Bar, the Victory Medal, the Combat Bar with two stars, the Honorable Service Button, and the Presidential Testimonial Letter by President Harry Truman. In 1995 I was awarded a Russian commemorative medal called the 50th Anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. after the war, you went to Mit. did the Gi Bill cover that?
No. Merchant Marine seamen were not included in the GI Bill. In 1988 a law was passed that finally gave us official discharge papers and access to Veterans Administration medical care. ✯ MarCH/april 2014
15
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WORLD
WAR II
From the Footlocker
Curators at The National World War II Museum solve readers’ artifact mysteries
1
My late father, Ray Spillenger, served in a unit of the 1st Troop Carrier Squadron and flew transports over the Himalayas from India to China as a pilot with the U.S. Army Air Corps. While caring for him, I found a number of items related to his war experience, including this patch. He died before I could ask him to explain its
symbolism; I’d like to learn its meaning and origin. —Paul Spillenger, Silver Spring, Md.
This is an unoffcial patch for the 1st Troop Carrier Squadron, which was assigned to the 443rd Troop Carrier Group. The squadron’s primary mission was to ferry troops in the China-Burma-India Theater of operations. I asked Asian aviation expert Bob Bergin about the insignia. He points out that by late 1944, when your father’s unit went to China, the term “Flying Tigers” had become generic for any American air group, not just the American Volunteer Group, making the tiger a common symbol. “But I can’t account for the lady part of it,” Bergin adds. “Maybe she’s a lucky lady, somebody’s girlfriend, or just wishful thinking.” While researching the patch, I ran across information about your father. The book
China Airlift—The Hump, published by the Hump Pilots Association, contains a photograph and brief biography of him. The bio quotes him as saying, “Besides unforgettable fying experiences, I remember helping out Fred Swift and Sgt. Hesse put out the squadron newspaper ‘BAKSHEET,’ and admit responsibility for painting ‘Back Breaker’ on Dinjan #197”—the C-46 he adorned with an image of an exuberant nude woman. [Editor’s note: After the war Ray Spillenger became a noted Abstract Expressionist.] —Larry Decuers, Curator
2
1
I am curious about the cloth sewn to the sling on this Japanese Arisaka rifle. The fab-
ric is roughly three inches square. What significance does it have, if any? —John R. Lockridge, Charlestown, Ind.
Pilot Ray Spillenger (above, standing, center) and crew at Sookerating Air Base in India.
2 inset: hump pilots association
Japanese soldiers had a practice of writing their names and units on tags like these, or putting that information directly on the sling itself. This tag, however, doesn’t quite match others I’ve seen, so I consulted historian Edward J. Drea, an expert on the Japanese army in World War II and the author of Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853–1945. Drea says: “The frst two characters—hohei—mean ‘infantry;’ the third character—hou—means ‘gun.’ A freer translation would be ‘infantry rifle.’ My guess is that the gun never saw use, but was found in an armory or factory, tagged to indicate that it was part of a lot intended for infantry use.” —Larry Decuers ➤ MARCH/APRIL 2014
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From the Footlocker
valid only in Austria, was issued to Josef Kailer, an ethnic German born April 17, 1909, in Franzfeld, Yugoslavia—now Kacˇarevo, in northern Serbia. In occupied Europe, the Ethnic German [Volksdeutsche] Liaison Offce—which became an arm of the SS in 1937—resettled tens of thousands of ethnic Germans of foreign citizenship in the conquered lands of the so-called Greater German Reich. —Kimberly Guise, Curator/Content Specialist
3
3
i bought this German identifcation card at an auction, and thought you might be able to shed light on
it. —russell Hawkins, waterford, Conn.
Extensive identity records—including registration for census rolls, person-
nel cards, and residence lists—were cornerstones of the Third Reich’s administrative framework. This is a registration card (no. 95097) from the Ethnic German Liaison Office’s Department for Immigrants in Vienna, a resettling agency. This temporary pass,
Have a World War II artifact you can’t identify? Write to Footlocker@weiderhistorygroup. com with the following: • Your connection to the object and what you know about it • The object’s dimensions, in inches • Several high-resolution digital photos taken close up and from varying angles. Pictures should be in color, and at least 300 dpi. Unfortunately we can’t respond to every query, nor can we appraise value.
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world war ii
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WORLD
WAR II
Fire for Effect
Mac Does a Cartwheel
I’
VE NEVER FOUND it easy to warm up to General Douglas MacArthur, and I know I’m not alone. A haughty aristocrat in a nation that prefers homespun heroes, an aloof fgure with a Messiah complex who couldn’t speak respectfully even to the President of the United States, and a commander whose arrogance led him to underestimate his enemies, often with disastrous effect: MacArthur was a problematic fgure at best, and a threat to civilian control of the military at worst. And yet, for all his maddening faws, the man knew how to operate. If you doubt that, check out the fghting on New Guinea in 1943. A classic example of a “forgotten campaign,” that action deserves better. Consider the scale. New Guinea is almost four times the size of Great Britain. The fighting there was not so much “island warfare” as a continental-scale land campaign, replete with the most difficult weather and terrain imaginable. Indeed, it was the sheer size of islands like New Guinea that led the Joint Chiefs of Staff to organize the Pacific Ocean into two gigantic commands. The Southwest Pacifc Area, which included New Guinea, was an army domain, with MacArthur in command; the Pacific Ocean Area was the navy’s responsibility, with Admiral Chester Nimitz in the chair. It is easy to criticize that split-ticket decision, and a lot of analysts have. It reeks of interservice rivalry—the bane of U.S. military operations—and violates the ancient precept of “unity of command.” But keep an open mind. The Pacific Ocean is no mere “military theater.” It is one-third of the globe’s surface. Operating in the Central Pacific, a vast emptiness dotted with a handful of tiny islands, was different from the Southwest Pacifc, where giant islands abound and heavy ground-pounding was necessary. Putting New Guinea under the navy would have been as senseless as placing carrier operations in the hands of the army.
national archives
By Robert M. Citino
General Douglas MacArthur's faws as a leader—and there were many—shouldn't negate his strengths. One shows in his sprawling, ambitious New Guinea campaign.
The Southwest Pacifc required a commander able to think big, and Operation Cartwheel, launched on June 30, 1943, was Mac at his big-thinking best. The objective was Rabaul, the vast Japanese air-naval base on the island of New Britain, east of New Guinea. Assaulting Rabaul frontally was out of the question, so MacArthur drew up a plan to fank that bastion to the east and west—that is, from the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. He would command one of those two drives, in a classic campaign of airborne and amphibious maneuver in New Guinea’s Huon Peninsula. He began by secretly building an airstrip in the grassy valley at Tsili Tsili, 60 miles west of the main Japanese positions at Lae and Salamaua. Next, he launched a series of carefully sequenced air raids on the Japanese base to the northwest, at Wewak, that gutted the Japanese Fourth Air Army. With the enemy stripped of air cover, he launched amphibious landings near Lae
and an airdrop at Nadzab, just to the west. MacArthur hit the Japanese every which way, in other words, bewildering and eventually paralyzing them. By November Allied forces had overrun the Huon Peninsula. All in all, Cartwheel involved no fewer than 10 landings within eight months. Ringed tightly by Allied bases and subject to unremitting air attack, Rabaul was no longer a safe haven, and the Japanese navy had to evacuate its feet to Truk, 800 miles north. It was a brilliant campaign and a pinnacle in MacArthur’s career—indeed, anyone’s career. You want to run MacArthur down? Fine. December 8, 1941, in the Philippines. Bataan and Corregidor. The Chinese counterattack along the Chongchon in Korea. The blow-up with President Harry S. Truman, a confict generated largely by the general’s own arrogance. The man had a checkered record. I get that. Just be sure to include Cartwheel in your appraisal. ✯ MARCH/APRIL 2014
21
WORLD
WAR II
Time Travel
Darkness on the Edge of Town By James Ullrich
a vestige of wartime destruction looms outside Pforzheim, Germany. Memorial pillars top a hill enlarged with tons of debris left when allied bombers reduced the town to cinders in 1945.
J
uST OFF THE A8, about 30 miles northwest of Stuttgart, sits a bustling German city of 120,000. Located in the Baden-Württemberg region near the French border, Pforzheim perches at the edge of the Black Forest in a valley that pours from thickly wooded hills. Pulling off the motorway, I pass a stocky, unnatural outcropping perhaps 1,400 feet high. From the hill’s crest, tall silvery structures poke at the sky. A course through bland suburbs brings me to a parking building, and I head downtown. The concrete canyon of the commercial district teems. Pierced-lipped university students shuffle among elderly couples holding hands, women in hijabs, and well-dressed businessmen—much like any Continental downtown, except that in other European cities, downtown 22
World War II
often consists of half-timbered buildings set among medieval churches and 18thcentury facades. Pforzheim is different. Once called the “Golden City” for its tradition of jewelry making, Pforzheim, which dates to Roman times, rarely attracts the large buses that haul sightseers to historic cities around Germany. It’s easy to see why. On both sides of me loom Modernist boxes that cast human activity in permanent shadow. Even in sunshine, downtown Pforzheim’s steel and glass surfaces emit a sterile cool. The main square is a lifeless concrete affair. At one corner an oddly affecting statue of a man stares wide-eyed at the sky, hand cupped to ear, as if scanning the heavens for trouble. The statue commemorates the trouble that gave the square its name—Platz des 23. Februar 1945—and had its roots in
centuries past. Starting in the Middle Ages, skilled craftsmen clustered in Pforzheim. Adhering to standards of quality enforced by jewelry and watchmaking guilds, these artisans brought the city prosperity and respect. Fine handiwork did not require enormous workspace, so makers of intricate mechanisms were scattered all over town. Archival photos show elegant 18thand 19th-century buildings lining wide boulevards, conveying an almost Parisian quality. Cosmopolitan stateliness unfurls before a soaring Gothic cathedral. Pforzheim’s state of grace lasted only as long as Adolf Hitler permitted. When the war started, the Nazis militarized the city’s workshops. Instead of making jewelry and watches, artisans were to build precision instruments for use in bombs, planes, and vehicles. “This made us a target,” Pforz-
Time Travel
1
2
Pforzheim rebounded but did not forget: today’s city (1) is a far cry from 1947’s (2). The Wallberg pillars (3) complement a haunted fgure (4) in the Platz des 23. Februar 1945.
4
heim archivist Christian Gohl told me. At first RAF Bomber Command hit Pforzheim with “nuisance” raids that did little damage. But when they realized what Pforzheim’s shops were making, Allied strategists decided the city deserved a major strike. Elsewhere in Germany self-contained industrial nodes occupied urban outskirts, but at Pforzheim the
3
city’s centuries-old heart was the target. In February 1945, the war was going against the Reich. Just a few months more, residents believed, and Pforzheim could resume its peacetime role—until the night of the 23rd, when 367 Avro Lancasters of No. 1, No. 6, and No. 8 RAF Groups roared over and rained incendiaries. The fres, contained by the valley, had nowhere to spread. Within 20 minutes, Pforzheim was ablaze. Flames destroyed 90 to 100
Colouria Media/alaMy (1), Walter SanderS/tiMe life PiCtureS/Getty iMaGeS (2), author (3,4); oPPoSite: WeStend 61 GMbh/alaMy
percent of its center and killed 17,000 to 22,000 people—a third of the population. Smoke pillared nearly 1,000 feet, refecting fames that departing bomber crews could see from 100 miles away. In the morning survivors clambered from cellars and shelters to see that churches, museums, apartments, government buildings, factories, and family after family were gone. The downtown disaster zone was off-limits to civilians until years after the war, as the ruins waited MARCH/APRIL 2014
23
Time Travel
Berlin
GERMANY Frankfurt
Pforzheim Munich
for Germany to develop the energy and fnances to rebuild. In 1952 crews began clearing the rubble, at frst by wheelbarrow. In the late 1950s, Pforzheim invited leading architects to design an urban center. Like many societies at midcentury, they chose a “city of the future” design. For this confdent new Pforzheim to rise, old Pforzheim had to go. Nearly two miles of railroad track was laid from the crushed city center to the Wallberg, a hill outside town named for ancient fortifications that once stood there. For the next decade and a half laborers, mostly Gastarbeitern (“guest workers”) from abroad, methodically moved thousands of tons of debris to the site. The hill rose by nearly 200 feet. A layer of soil was added, allowing vegetation to grow. All across Germany most cities bulldozed into being similar piles, called Trümmerberge or Schuttberge, meaning “mountains of wreckage.” Every February 23 Pforzheimers hold a memorial ceremony, convening in the cemetery, then ascending the Wallberg. In 1983, townspeople scheduling that year’s commemoration invited veterans of the RAF raid. To the Britons’ surprise it was citizens of Pforzheim who apologized and asked forgiveness, both for the war their forebears began and for the lynching 40 years before of fve airmen captured after the bombing. The veterans forgave, and presented a local kindergarten with a rocking horse as a symbol of reconciliation. With the winnowing of the war generation, the town in 2005 decked the 24
World War II
Wallberg with an evocative sculpture: fve stainless steel towers. “The older people still visit the memorial,” Christian Gohl told me. “If they can make it up there.” But Pforzheim is not all sadness. The Information Office provides tips on cultural outposts, such as the Jewelry Museum, which stages exhibits on gemology and other aspects of Pforzheim’s historic industry. The adjoining Technical Museum chronicles the precision mechanical craft that brought the city such renown—and heartbreak. I wander toward the mound through neighborhoods. Those north of the train station are predominantly immigrant districts, home to Middle Eastern, African, and Turkish transplants. Kebab eateries and cheap restaurants in shabby buildings exude spicy aromas, sometimes stinging, sometimes seductive. Dark-skinned children play soccer in alleys. Shop windows feature hookah pipes. Intermingled are bohemian quarters that attract many Pforzheim university students. The area south of the train station is more staid and homogenous, populated by professionals and longtime Pforzheimers. South Pforzheim buzzes with business headquarters, government offices, and schools, its streets and busy intersections alive with students and businesspeople. Weaving through a residential subdivision, I come to a dirt path where a small, unremarkable sign reads “Wallberg.” I start climbing. City and suburb recede, leaving me on an overgrown trail slick from the afternoon’s rain. All is quiet. The incline is much steeper than I expected. My shirt sticks to my back as I huff along. Leg muscles burning, I traverse a steep angle and reach the top, a flat stretch ringed by a low wood fence. Wiping sweat from my face, I see the silver shapes I spotted at a distance as I arrived in Pforzheim. Some of the towers bear plaques. The breeze nips my ears as I scan the hills to the north and Pforzheim to the east. I have the memorial to myself. The wind from the Black Forest brings a chilly, bracing hint of autumn, along with a faint hum from the valley. With its university,
corporate headquarters, and other hallmarks of prosperity—and its Wallberg— Pforzheim embodies Germany’s postwar trajectory: energetic, diverse, and progressive, yet still in shadow. As the setting sun warms the silver blades, I recall sitting with Christian Gohl to examine the jarring before-andafter photos of his hometown. Here those images are again, on the memorial plaques: Pforzheim as it was for centuries, and as it was after the raid, a visceral contrast to the bustle below, and a measure of the meaning of total war. ✯ WHEN YOu GO reach Pforzheim from nearby Stuttgart by heading west on the a8 motorway. the city’s tourist information offce has a knowledgable staff that includes many english speakers (pforzheim.de). City buses frequent the main pedestrian district, a fve-minute walk from the rail station. a public parking facility stands across the road from the trains.
WHERE TO STAY AND EAT accommodations range from four-star hotels to youth hostels and include the centrally located Parkhotel Pforzheim, 120–176 euro/night (parkhotel-pforzheim.
de); hotel residenz, 94–160 euro/night (residenz-pforzheim.de); and City hotel, 60–72 euro/night (city-hotel-pforzheim. de). the pedestrian district offers an array of fne restaurants, classy cafés, and cheap eateries. at hopfenschlingel, on Sedanplatz, i enjoyed a basic but very satisfying meal of salad, enormous baked potato, and tasty craft beer. My fellow diners’ dishes—especially the Zwiebelrostbraten, an austrian sirloin dish served with fried onions—looked amazing. an adherent of the “Slow food” movement that emphasizes locally sourced ingredients, hopfenschlingel, with its great beer garden and traditional menu, is justifably popular (hopfenschlingel-pforzheim.de).
WHAT ELSE TO SEE Pforzheim showcases its brilliant heritage in the Schmuckmuseum (“Jewelry Museum”) at Jahnstrasse 42, where more than 2,000 exhibits trace millennia of craftsmanship (schmuckmuseum.de). the allied technical Museum of the Pforzheim Jewelry and Watch industry offers insights into that craft.
MaP by Kevin JohnSon
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In the PacIfIc, amerIcan warrIors learned
national archives
By Steven Trent Smith
how To leT SlIP The dogS of war
Marine dogs and handlers await orders on Bougainville. War dog Caesar is at far right with his handler, Private First Class Rufus G. Mayo; at left, a tag worn by U.S. military dogs.
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most of the men had never seen combat, and their leader, a science teacher and amateur dog trainer, was so green that military life mystifed him. The seas off Bougainville were rough on the morning of November 1, 1943, and the beaches were cluttered with swamped landing craft. The first and second waves of the 2nd Raider Regiment threaded among the hulks, reached the shore of the largest of the Solomon Islands, and, against heavy Japanese resistance, began to push slowly inland. As the third wave of Raiders climbed into Higgins boats, they had unusual company. Crewmen using cargo booms on the attack transport USS George Clymer were lowering 24 dogs—“Devil Dogs,” the Marines called them, in an apt repurposing of their own nickname—one at a time into landing craft bobbing alongside. The canines, some swaddled in fatigue jackets jury-rigged as harnesses, took it all in stride, as they were trained to do. Marines equipped with carbines, extra canteens, leashes, grooming brushes, and cans of dog food clambered over the Clymer’s side to join their animals,
and at 7:30 the boats began the 5,000-yard run to the beach. The four-legged Marines and their 55 handlers constituted the 1st Marine War Dog Platoon, led by Lieutenant Clyde A. Henderson. Most of the men had never seen combat, and their leader, a science teacher and amateur dog trainer, was so green that all aspects of military life bewildered him. “I hardly knew how to wear a uniform,” the Ohioan recalled. Much was riding on this experimental outft’s performance. It was the frst time an American armed service was deploying a large unit of dog teams in an organized tactical role. The Devil Dogs were treading on new ground.
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he platoon was the result of a November 26, 1942, directive by the Marine Corps commandant, Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, to establish a training program for military dogs at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The
Marines and working dogs descend by cargo net and improvised harness into a higgins boat to make the transit to the beach during the november 1, 1943, invasion of Bougainville’s empress augusta Bay in the northern solomon islands.
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U.S. Army was already training and using dogs, mainly as sentries, and in the course of the war would induct more than 10,000, sending 1,900 overseas. After the army successfully used dogs elsewhere in the Solomons to locate Japanese snipers, the Marines decided to create their own dog program. Instead of serving as guards, Marine dogs would work on the battlefeld, side by side with combat troops. The Corps’ Planning and Policies Division explained the reasoning: “Dogs are weapons,” a division statement read. “They give our men added power of observation through their acute sense of smell and hearing.” Aside from unit mascots, the Marine Corps had no real experience with dogs. To learn handling techniques a Marine team led by Captain Jackson Boyd, a well-known dog trainer and master of foxhounds, visited the army K-9 school at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in late 1942. The group returned with 40 dogs, augmented with 20 animals recruited through the Doberman Pinscher Club of America. At Lejeune instruction started with three objectives: to teach handlers how to train and work with dogs, to teach the dogs basic obedience, and to match each animal to the job it was best suited for. “We had no manual,” war dog handler Robert Forsyth said. “Training was by the seat of our pants.” And so all hands—and all paws—learned both sides of the commands heel, sit, cover, stay, come, crawl, jump, and drop. Training then became specialized, with 14-week sessions on scouting or messengering. Animals chosen as scouts had to be smart, aggressive, and energetic. The syllabus described the scouting role: “The dog is trained to detect and give silent warning of the presence of any foreign individual or group. He will prove especially useful in warning of ambushes or attempts at infltration.” Among the early recruits was Andy, more formally known as Andreas von Wiedehurst, a 66-pound black-and-tan Doberman from Norristown, Pennsylvania. Two-year-old Andy loved a good scrap and had the mangled ears to prove it. His handlers were Privates First Class Robert E. Lansley, a former Marine drill instructor, and John B. “Jack” Mahoney, a teenager whose family raised Irish setters. Scout training began with teaching dogs to work silently; in combat a bark could be fatal to man and beast. Exercises gradually conditioned the animals to respond to the command “watch” by trying to detect hidden enemies. With repetition the dogs came to understand that they were to pinpoint trouble, then back off and let their accompanying Raiders go to work. Messenger dogs would stand in for Marine runners, substituting a speedy, low-profle, single-minded courier for a slower and more easily targeted human. Messengers served two masters, learning to avoid trouble and unerringly carry messages between one man and another in any weather and over any terrain. Messenger animals were prized for the affection and blind loyalty they displayed toward their handlers. Caesar von Steuben, an 81-pound German shepherd, had started out in the army. He was now three years old. In Caesar’s AP Photo/u.s. nAvy
puppy days, the Glaser brothers—Milton, Irving, and Jerome— of the Bronx, New York, had taught him to carry packages from the corner store to their family’s fourth-foor walkup. By the end of 1942 the boys had all enlisted, so they signed up Caesar, too. After obedience and messenger training at Fort Robinson, he was transferred to the Marines in early March 1943. The muscular shepherd was teamed with Privates First Class John J. Kleeman, an 18-year-old Philadelphian, and Rufus G. Mayo, a young Alabamian who before the war had trained hunting dogs. Messenger training frst desensitized the dogs to the chaos of battle. As War Dogs, Technical Manual No. 10-396 noted, the regimen exposed canine trainees to “every known distraction, such as bomb detonations, shell and gunfre, troop and motor traffc.” Handlers acclimated animals to wearing message pouches on their collars. Then, starting about a dozen yards apart, handling teams worked on “report,” the gentle command that would send a dog on its way. Repeated practice at increasing distances and over ever-rougher ground continued until a dog could easily make the transit from one master to the other over a mile of obstacles and hazards. In late April 1943 the Marines ordered Clyde Henderson’s war dog training company relocated to Camp Pendleton, California. There, men and dogs spent six weeks drilling and learning attack techniques under Carl Spitz, a Hollywood trainer who had been prepping hounds for movie roles since the days of silent flm. (He owned Terry, the female Cairn terrier that played Toto in The Wizard of Oz.) “He was a pretty tough guy,” handler Jack Mahoney recalled. Another Marine handler, Kenneth Shepperd, recalled that the domineering Spitz carried a swagger stick. “He hit us if we didn’t do something right,” Shepperd said. Now the platoon’s fate was up to Marine headquarters, which, even then—in June 1943—wasn’t certain what to do with the unorthodox outft. “Everyone looked on us as a curiosity and wondered what we were supposed to do,” Henderson said. “We weren’t too sure ourselves.” The Marines shipped dogs and handlers to New Caledonia—south of Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands in the Coral Sea, where forces were gathering for an assault in the Western Solomons—hoping some unit would adopt them. As the 1st War Dog Platoon was departing, the 2nd and the 3rd began training at Lejeune.
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he three-week voyage was anything but routine. The animals lived on deck in crates shaded by a canvas awning, doing their business in a sandbox latrine dominated by a hydrant-like post. Three or four times a day they ran the deck, watched by sailors so incessantly curious about their four-legged passengers that the Marines placed the kennel under 24-hour guard to assure that the dogs got enough rest. Location is everything, even in war. Arriving in New Caledonia’s capital, Nouméa, late one July night, the dog platoon awoke to fnd that it had been randomly billeted on the doorstep of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion, veterans of March/aPril 2014
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during the march up mission trail, andy alerted the raiders three times—including to a machine gunner about to fre, giving the marines time to take cover. remember that the dogs are the least expendable of all!” the Makin Raid and the “Long March” on Guadalcanal. Two days later—on November 1—the Marines stormed the At frst the Raiders scorned the green Marines and their furry island’s western shore. It was rough going for the dog platoon; friends. They cracked jokes, howled and barked, and griped that a Japanese mortar round nearly capsized Henderson’s Higgins the Corps was going to the dogs. Forsyth thought the tough boat. “We hit the beach and dived for cover,” he said. “All of us, veterans were a little bit afraid of the animals. So did Shepperd, dogs included.” When they reached the regimental command who remembers that when off their leads the dogs would chase post, they asked for orders. They didn’t have long to wait. To slow Raiders who had taunted them. But as the Raiders watched an expected Japanese counterattack, M Company, 3rd Raiders, the dog teams drill, they came to realize that in jungle combat was to advance 1,500 yards east along Mission Trail to establish the critters might be a lifesaving asset. a strategic roadblock at the junction with Piva Trail. These two The Raider most attentive to that prospect was Lieutenant narrow, muddy tracks provided the only overland access to the Colonel Alan Shapley, a no-nonsense Marine who had just island’s interior. Company commander Lieutenant Francis O. replaced the legendary founder of the Raiders, Colonel Evans Cunningham chose two dog teams: Andy’s and Caesar’s. Late Carlson, as commanding officer. One day Shapley asked that morning Cunningham’s 250 Marines stepped off into the Henderson for a demonstration. Especially impressed by the dark forest. Caesar brought up the rear, ready to rush back a messenger dogs, Shapley requested that the platoon be attached message; Andy was on point, leading the column. to his newly formed 2nd Raider Regiment (Provisional), Walking the point is a lonely, dangerous business, especially which combined the 2nd and 3rd Raider Battalions. That put on a rough path winding Henderson and his men on through dense jungle lousy cloud nine. “We thought with enemy snipers and pillwe were pretty hot stuff,” boxes. Andy worked off the Forsyth said. “We were the leash, ranging 20 to 30 yards elite of the elite.” ahead to sniff and listen, Shapley had only a few hopping from one side of weeks to integrate dog teams the trail to the other. When into his regiment, impart he detected something, he Raider culture to them, and would “alert”—freeze, ears teach his Raiders how to erect, facing the sound or work effectively with dogs. scent. During the march up To these ends, he sent dogMission Trail, Andy alerted led patrols to be “ambushed” and carry messages, and put the Raiders to the enemy three times—including to dog teams through amphia machine gunner about to bious landing exercises. This fre, giving the Raiders time sold the Raiders. A messento take cover. As the Marines ger dog could run as fast as continued, their confidence 25 miles an hour, a scout dog grew in Andy’s ability to precould sense a hidden human vent deadly surprises. at a quarter of a mile, and neither was an easy target for hen M Company enemy gunners. reached the Piva On October 30, 1943, the crossroads early 2nd Raider Regiment left that afternoon, the men for Bougainville. Shapley, by began to entrench. Raiders now an ardent convert, told caesar lies still as corpsmen X-ray him to fnd slugs that wounded eagerly volunteered to dig his officers, “I want you to him on december 2, 1943. one was too near his heart to remove.
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Marines on cape torokina, Bougainville, maintain razor’s-edge wariness as they creep through dense jungle. deploying highly trained war dogs in such situations greatly increased the capacity of rifemen on patrol to fnd and foil enemy attempts at ambush.
shelters for the handlers and their dogs, to keep them nearby. “Much of the credit for the feeling of security we enjoyed that frst night goes to the dogs,” one Marine said. Cunningham carried a walkie-talkie, but its signal was too weak to penetrate the thick rain forest. That’s why he’d brought Caesar, and late on the frst day he sent the frst Marine message ever to travel by canine courier in combat. With a quiet “report,” Rufus Mayo sped Caesar toward his other master, John Kleeman, at the command post. Caesar traversed the trail in minutes, far faster than a two-legged Marine could have. Kleeman grabbed the message from the pouch attached to the dog’s collar and sent the shepherd back to Mayo. Early the next morning a field telephone line was run to the Piva roadblock, and Caesar switched to sentry duty at the perimeter—until the enemy cut the wire. Again the messenger dog became Cunningham’s link to Shapley. Caesar made eight circuits that day, with Japanese snipers trying to pick off his dashing black-and-gray form. nAtionAl Archives (both)
Late that night, after Mayo and Caesar had settled into their foxhole, the dog awakened his master—just before an enemy infltrator hurled a grenade their way. Mayo grabbed the grenade and threw it back, killing several Japanese. Near dawn enemy forces tried again to penetrate. Caesar immediately leaped to the attack. Mayo called him back, but as the dog obeyed, enemy rounds caught him in the left shoulder and hip. Mayo moved him out of the line of fre, sprinkled sulfa powder in the wounds, and told Cunningham that Caesar had to be evacuated. The offcer sympathized, but said that he frst needed Caesar to summon reinforcements. The dog went limping on his way and delivered the message calling for help, but by the time Caesar reached the command post, his condition had deteriorated. Raiders quickly stretchered the big shepherd to the feld hospital. A surgeon found a bullet lodged near the dog’s heart. “Too risky to remove,” he said, dressing Caesar’s wounds. It had been a close call, but within three weeks the Raiders’ favorite four-footed Marine had returned to active duty. While Caesar March/aPril 2014
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dobermans and their handlers on a trail near empress augusta Bay pass fellow Marines staffng a .30-caliber machine-gun nest on January 18, 1944. despite training intended to inure the animals to gunfre, many working dogs emerged from combat gun-shy.
was convalescing, Andy continued to patrol. On the morning of November 14 he was leading a column that included four light tanks up Piva Trail. “Suddenly Andy stopped short, and looked to the right and left, the way he always alerted,” handler Bob Lansley said. “I crept up along a little trail behind him and saw two machine gun nests.” To goad their foes, Lansley let off a quick burst with his Thompson submachine gun. The enemy shot back from both sides. During the ferce frefght that ensued, Mahoney provided cover while his partner darted from tree to tree, fring at the Japanese positions. When Lansley drew close enough, he chucked a pair of grenades at the dugouts, eliminating resistance. “It was the most heroic thing I’ve ever seen,” Mahoney said. Andy’s warning had helped save Marine lives. Combat correspondents got wind of Caesar and Andy, and soon they were making headlines at home. “Caesar Is Helping Take Bougainville,” reported the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “Four-Legged ‘Devil Dogs’ Win Marine Corps Praise,” said the Canton, Ohio, Repository. The Omaha World Herald went over the top in a story about Caesar: “Veni … Vidi … Vici. He came, he saw and he is helping to conquer.” Commandant Holcomb wrote letters of commendation to six war dogs’ former owners. His communiqué to the Glasers read, “Caesar made nine offcial runs between the company and the command post, and on at least two of those runs he was under fre.” Andy, too, was 32
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commended, for having “led the advance on the initial day, and warning of scattered Japanese sniper opposition on many occasions.” To honor their outstanding performance, Holcomb promoted all six dogs to the rank of corporal. After 73 days of combat, the Marines and canines of the 1st War Dog Platoon pulled out of Bougainville for Guadalacanal. Nearly all the animals had suffered, physically and mentally. Even the redoubtable Andy had vanished for several hours one day into Bougainville’s dense bush, presumably to escape the noise and confusion of combat. Afterward, in the war dog’s record book, Mahoney observed that Andy “would not be good for further combat due to shell fre.” In his after-action report Shapley lauded his dogs’ performance. “The War Dog Platoon had proven itself to be an unqualified success,” he wrote. “They were constantly employed during the operation, and proved themselves as messengers, scouts, and agents of night security.” Henderson, who returned to Lejeune to pass along lessons learned, told a reporter that the “program will be expanded and will go ahead under full steam.” The 1st War Dog Platoon had earned itself a place as an integral element of the Marine Corps. As the war shifted into its fnal phase, more dog platoons— there were now seven spread among the six Marine divisions— served in the battles for Guam, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and were among the frst American units to occupy Japan.
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fter Japan’s surrender, surviving dogs returned to Camp Lejeune. Nearly half of 1,074 enlisted Marine Corps dogs saw action. Of those, 58 died, 29 in combat—25 on Guam alone. The greater toll was on the dogs’ health. Infections, parasites, malnutrition, and dehydration struck hundreds of dogs. Shellshock and gun-shyness rendered many unreliable. The Corps kept damaged dogs from combat, and euthanized 128. No longer of military value, the rest were in line to get the needle, too. As 3rd War Dog Platoon commander Captain William W. Putney recalled, headquarters believed “there was no time for any other solution.” Putney protested. “Time, now that the war was over, we had plenty of,” he wrote. “There simply was no good reason that most of our dogs could not be rehabilitated. The dogs deserved the chance to respond to a program of detraining aimed at preparing them for a return to civilian life.” The Corps approved, and Putney oversaw a musteringout program, leading to 540 of 559 Devil Dogs being sent home. Handlers, who had forged a battle-tested bond with these animals, were allowed to adopt them. By any standard the Marines’ wartime experience with dogs was a success, saving untold numbers of lives. As Marine combat correspondent Captain Cyril J. O’Brien noted, “the lines were never surprised, and there was never an ambush of Marines where dogs were on watch.” However, Andy and Caesar, those frst two Devil Dog heroes, did not come home. Two months after leaving Bougainville, Andy died on Guadalcanal. Nearly deaf, he failed to hear a speeding truck. A heartbroken Bob Lansley wrote in Andy’s service book that an outstanding point and patrol dog had died in the line of duty. Caesar saw combat at Guam and then in northern Okinawa, where on April 17, 1945, the big shepherd—that slug from Bougainville still close to his heart—was killed in action. Handler Bob Forsyth summed up the loss: “They were good Marines.” ✯ alerted by their dogs, Marines advance on Bougainville to fnd the hidden enemy.
nAtionAl Archives; oPPosite, AP Photo
German troops advance under cover of a railway embankment near Aprilia, a town north of Anzio. The war in Italy had reached a stalemate by February 1944; massive German counterattacks aimed to shift the balance.
To preserve the Anzio beachhead against a massive German counterattack, Allied troops resorted to a brutal ground game
By Alex Kershaw
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here was total silence. No clank of tank tracks, no drone of aircraft engines, no thunder of distant artillery. All across the stalemated Anzio beachhead, stretching some 15 miles from east to west, it was unnervingly quiet in the early hours of February 16, 1944, as if the Germans and the Allies were in their corners, taking a deep breath and steeling themselves before the clang of the bell and the frst round. Dawn broke, a faint light spreading across the battlefeld. With it came the whine of shells, followed by a metallic scream and the crumple of explosions. The air flled with sound and it seemed that immense trains were hurtling overhead, then crashing on top of one another. Men from the 157th Regiment of the 45th “Thunderbird” Infantry Division—holding positions about fve miles inland, along a 2,000-yard front fanking a road connecting Anzio to Rome—were bounced around their foxholes. Dozens died from the concussive effect of nearby blasts that burst soldiers’ lungs and tore away their muddied feld jackets. After an hour, the shelling ceased. A few miles north, across a no-man’s-land of shallow ditches and draws, thousands of German soldiers checked their weapons one last time and stepped forward. Operation Fischfang—“Catch Fish”—aimed at destroying the Allied beachhead, had begun. Not since the blitzkrieg of spring 1940, when the Germans had rolled to Paris in less than six weeks, had so large an attacking force gath-
IMPeRIAL wAR MuseuM MH 6344
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ered to do battle in the west. The path to victory lay along the crucial route to Rome—the Via Anziate— which bisected ugly scrubland, marshes, and woods. If Wehrmacht armor could advance south along that route, the Germans would be able to push the Allies—some 100,000 men—into the Tyrrhenian Sea. A fare soared, bathing the landscape in an eerie green. Another deafening symphony began, this time of machine guns, rifes, and mortars. In his dugout a few yards east of the Via Anziate, E Company’s commander, Captain Felix L. Sparks, picked up his feld glasses and scanned the front. The tall, wiry Arizona native had frst seen action in Sicily before fghting his way up Italy’s jagged spine. Now, at age 25, he was a canny veteran of three amphibious invasions and a superb company commander, much respected by his men. He was also surprisingly calm in combat. But what Sparks saw tested his composure. Several mottled gray Mark IV and Mark V Panther tanks, spewing clouds of exhaust, were about a mile away, trundling down the roadbed toward his company. Behind the lumbering 25-ton behemoths of the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division came hundreds of Men of the 45th Infantry Division ride a troopship bound for sicily (left); by the time they and other Allied troops reached the beachhead at Anzio (below) they initially faced deceptively light resistance.
To the attacking Germans, Captain Felix sparks’s e Company occupied the Schwerpunkt: a crucial point at which to concentrate their energies. gray-uniformed men, some drunk and drugged, screaming guttural orders, blowing whistles, barking encouragement to one another. Some were singing beer hall songs learned in the Hitler Youth. They belonged to the frst wave of assault troops from the experienced 715th Infantry Division. The division was part of the German Fourteenth Army, under the command of the highly capable general Eberhard von Mackensen, who answered to master strategist Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commander of German forces in Italy. As far as the attacking Germans were concerned, Sparks’s company occupied the Schwerpunkt: the crucial point at which to concentrate their energies to break through. Their offcers had correctly told them that the Americans standing in their way were a National Guard outft. The 45th Infantry Division had been formed from the Oklahoma Army National Guard. The offcers also correctly noted that many in the unit were Native Americans. One German report called these GIs “racially inferior people who had no love of the white man and probably wouldn’t fght.” The German troops could taste victory. They didn’t have far to push, either: just fve miles and the Allies would be back in the Mediterranean. Sparks peeked out of his foxhole again. Three Panzer IVs were on his left fank, avoiding the Via Anziate. Their commanders knew that if they took the road American artillery fre would zero in and destroy them. The tanks were coming fast, only 200 yards away. Machine guns blinking streams of bullets, they sliced through one platoon of Thunderbirds like a scalpel. Two M10 tank destroyers were nearby. “Get them!” Sparks called to the crew. The offcer in charge of the tank destroyers hesitated. “Are those British tanks?” he asked. “Hell, no—they’re German tanks!” shouted Sparks. “Shoot them!” The M10s fred. Two of the enemy tanks exploded, their inch-thick armor shredded. The third tank pulled back. One M10 moved 30 yards to the east of the Via Anziate and stopped near Sparks’s foxhole. Sparks fgured its commander wanted to gain a better line of fre. A shell shrieked, exploded, and the M10 erupted, killing its crew and sending flames shooting into the sky. To avoid being burned, Sparks had to jump to another foxhole. He looked north, along the Via Anziate. Hundreds of German soldiers were closing on E Company’s positions. Sparks gave the order to fre. Machine guns snarled. Snipers picked off German offcers. M1 rife fre crackled, interrupted by barely audible pings as soldiers emptied their magazines. Sparks’s machine gunners soon had mowed down most of the frst wave. Germans fell in agony, their bodies piling so thickly courtesy of the author; opposite top: NatioNal archives; bottom, photo by george silk/time life pictures/getty images
in places that American marksmen could not see to shoot. A few Germans survived the hail of fire, including one who got within yards of Sparks’s foxhole. An American sergeant had strapped himself to a tank destroyer’s .50-caliber machine gun mount. The sergeant opened up, killing most of the attackers. But one remaining German, armed with a submachine gun, crawled toward the tank destroyer. There was a brrrrrp sound. Dust flew from the back of the sergeant’s feld jacket as bullets riddled his chest. Another American put the German out of action. Several corpses lay at the edge of Sparks’s hole; the sergeant had saved his life. Again shellfre erupted, hitting another M10, which burst into fames. Explosions ripped through E Company, killing a platoon leader and an entire 12-man rife squad and knocking out the company’s antitank guns. More German tanks closed
Captain Felix L. sparks (at left, with two unidentifed men in Naples) commanded e Company, 2nd Battalion, 157th Regiment. “It’s not hard to get promoted in the infantry if you do your job and stay alive,” sparks wrote. “The problem is staying alive.”
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The path to victory for the Germans lay along a road to rome called the Via anziate; men of the 45th infantry division—including Sparks’s E Company—occupied crucial positions along that road during what became the crisis point of the battle at anzio.
in, blowing Sparks’s troops from their holes at close range. “Medics!” men cried. “Medics!” The situation seemed hopeless. Sparks faced a tough decision. He could stall the German attack by ordering his own artillery to fre on his positions. Some of his men might be killed, but “pulling the chain,” as it was called, was his only option. Even so, it was a desperate move. The 158th Artillery responded, shells exploding with devastating power among the Thunderbirds and forcing German tanks and infantry to withdraw. But elsewhere along the front the enemy advance continued, breaking through Allied lines. To the west, the 179th Infantry Regiment pulled back, unable to hold the rushing waves of Germans. In the east, British forces from the 56th Division also withdrew. Seven enemy divisions were pushing south across the Anzio plain, an area the Italians had grimly called Campo di Carne—“Field of Meat.” The Thunderbirds, who manned a six-mile sector of the front, had borne the brunt of the attack. The three Thunderbird regiments took unprecedented losses—especially along the Via Anziate. At dawn, Sparks had commanded 230 men; now he had fewer than 130.
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n his headquarters 50 miles to the north in Rome, Albert Kesselring studied dispatches and reports from Anzio that evening and noted how fast the battle was consuming
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arms and assault units. He ordered von Mackensen, Operation Fischfang’s commander, to commit his reserves. The Germans had to split the 45th Infantry Division in two. “Smiling Albert” did not want to have to inform the Führer that his forces had failed to break through. An hour before dawn on February 17, German fares suddenly turned the skies above the Anzio beachhead as bright as day. An ominous drone followed, and then Allied troops heard the offbeat throb of bombers’ engines. Jaw-jolting explosions destroyed mortar emplacements and machine-gun nests along the Allied front, hitting the 157th’s command post and demolishing a house occupied by headquarters staff, severing communications with the 2nd Battalion command post. More German planes hit the rear, dropping thousands of antipersonnel butterfy bombs, whose brightly colored fns whirled as they fell. Kesselring was emptying his arsenal at the battered Allied lines. Panzers coughed to life, flling the chill air with black fumes. German soldiers shouldered their weapons, and in the early light set out along the Via Anziate, determined to destroy what was left of the Thunderbirds’ lines. But to Sparks’s astonished relief, the Germans did not try to storm his position. Instead, with tanks in support, the enemy troops moved west, where they broke through the 179th Infantry’s lines. “They didn’t even shell us,” Sparks recalled. “But they were [soon] all MERIDIAN MAPPING
All night dying Germans, surrounded by torn and bullet-riddled comrades, moaned and cried. ‘Kamerad, Kamerad,’ voices called out. ‘Don’t shoot; I’m your friend,’ other Germans cried in English. around us and in back of us. They had already learned that if they did attack, we’d bring in artillery fre. So they gave our position a wide berth.” All that morning, Germans poured past, a seemingly unstoppable fow of force. “It looks like a parade,” one man said. The remnants of E Company were stranded, with only two M4 Sherman tanks left. There was also a lone bazooka. A corporal named George Holt had carried the antitank weapon all the way from Salerno and never had an opportunity to fre it, much to everyone’s amusement. Around noon, Sparks sent a runner to the 2nd Battalion command post, about a mile to the south. The command post was sheltered in an extensive centuries-old warren of caves and manmade tunnels big enough to drive a truck through. (See “Return to the Caves,” page 41.) The caves were also the base for the 158th Artillery’s radio crew. The runner informed the 2nd Battalion’s recently appointed commander, Lieutenant Colonel Laurence C. Brown, that E Company’s current position was untenable. “Withdraw and set up on the battalion right fank on the highway,” Brown responded. On the map Sparks held, he could see a small rise to his rear, roughly 400 yards down the Via Anziate. The two Shermans would attract enemy fre, so he ordered the tank crews to wait until he and his men pulled back before making their break. Just as the withdrawal began, Sparks saw a German Mark IV moving along the road. It turned and headed down a dirt track, directly toward his command post. Then he remembered Holt and his bazooka. Holt was in a foxhole 10 feet away. “Holt, get that tank!” Holt fred and missed. The tank wheeled, its massive tracks clanking, and pulled back. Sparks shouted for Holt to reload. There was no reply. Had Holt heard him? Sparks sprinted to the corporal’s foxhole. Holt had collapsed. He was bleeding from the nose and appeared to be suffering from an exploding shell’s concussion. Sparks ordered Holt and other wounded men evacuated. Then he and the remaining 18 members of E Company set out south along the Via Anziate. They tried to stay low, but the enemy quickly spotted them; 50 Germans attacked from the rear. The Thunderbirds kept moving, kept fring, and were down to their last clips when, once more, the Germans backed off. Exhausted, Sparks and his men stumbled up a small rise to the west of the shell-pocked road and dug in. They had no choice but to leave the badly wounded behind.
Sparks knew every one of those men by name. Dusk settled. One of Sparks’s men spotted about 200 heavily armed German soldiers heading toward the 2nd Battalion command post. Sparks’s communications sergeant, Fortunato Garcia, quick-crawled toward the caves as the last of the daylight faded. He managed to get there in time to issue a warning. Seconds later, German grenades exploded in the caves’ entrances, killing a soldier and destroying a radio. Thunderbirds near the caves replied with M1s, machine guns, and grenades. Men inside also fred back, every rife shot echoing through the underground chambers like cannon fre. But the Germans kept coming. The defenders ran so low on ammunition they resorted to stripping rounds from discarded machine-gun belts to fll M1 clips. The battalion’s liaison offcer for the 158th Artillery, Captain George Hubbert, called artillery fre onto the caves. Several batteries’ gun crews, blackened from cordite powder and almost deaf from incessant firing, loaded more shells into their howitzers’ waist-high breeches and fred, tossing the brass casings onto small hills of spent shells as gingercolored smoke drifted though nearby trees. Allied white phosphorous shells, landing around the caves for 30 minutes, added to the mayhem, stunning those inside but killing most of the attackers. All night dying Germans, surrounded by torn and bulletriddled comrades, moaned and cried. “Kamerad, Kamerad,” voices cried out. “Don’t shoot; I’m your friend,” others cried in English. Near the caves, a Thunderbird machine gunner spotted a wounded German trying to crawl to safety. “There’s a Heinie,” he told a rifeman. “Pick him off.” “I don’t see him. Where is he?” “Gimme your rife and I’ll show you.” The rifleman handed over his M1. The machine gunner aimed and fred. “Now I see him!” said the rifeman. “He just moved.” “Yeah,” the machine gunner said. “I just moved him.”
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t noon on February 18, 3rd Division commander Major General Lucian Truscott arrived in the wine cellar in the village of Nettuno—three miles northeast of Anzio—that served as headquarters for the Allied forces there. A situation map showed the extent of German penetrations in the last 48 hours. Kesselring, spending his reserves at a rapid rate, had pushed only as far as an overpass on the Via Anziate called the Flyover, two miles to Sparks’s rear. Truscott, clad in a leather jacket and tanker’s boots, examMARCH/APRIL 2014
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In one 40-minute spell, an incredible 600 rounds of enemy artillery landed around e Company’s isolated position, shells exploding every four seconds. ined the map. Lines in red showed German advances; the Allied positions were in blue. Redrawn many times, the map was badly smudged. In the center was a blue circle around the caves, where the remnants of the regiment’s 2nd Battalion were surrounded. All afternoon the battle raged across the beachhead’s perimeter. But nowhere was the fghting as savage and critical as it was in the 45th Division’s sector at the center of the Allied line. In one 40-minute spell, an incredible 600 rounds of enemy artillery landed around E Company’s isolated position beside the route to Rome, shells exploding every four seconds. The barrage killed three men, leaving Captain Sparks and 15 others huddled in foxholes, hands over ears, hearts racing. Still, most Thunderbirds held steady into the evening and through the long night. By the next morning, February 19, interlocking American machine-gun fre from a ridgeline near the caves had killed a cluster of Germans by one of the entrances— their bodies falling, macabrely, in the shape of a cross. Allied artillery, which had outfred the enemy by a factor of 10, fnally halted Kesselring’s forces. Shell-shocked Germans began surrendering in droves. In one sector, German offcers ordered machine-gun and mortar units to fre on any fellow soldier trying to give up without a fght. Under interrogation, POWs later confrmed the horror of the Allied shelling. Germans told of making attacks “starting out in battalion strength,” one Among the American casualties were an M10 tank destroyer (left) and M4 sherman, hit near a bridge called the Flyover.
Thunderbird recalled, but then “being whittled down to less than the size of a platoon by our artillery before reaching our forward positions.” In a large map room at Adolf Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair headquarters in East Prussia, the Führer seethed with frustration. Operation Fischfang was not going according to plan. The Allies had not been pushed back into the sea. The abscess below Rome had yet to be lanced. He began to rant about his generals in Italy. They were the problem, not his brave troops. After a 20-minute tirade, his voice grew calmer. Another all-out attack might do the trick. And if his useless generals failed again, he would command the battle himself.
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efore dawn on February 20, Captain Sparks sent a runner to the caves to fnd out what the 2nd Battalion planned to do next. He and his men were out of supplies and low on water, scavenging for ammunition on the ground. Sparks had not eaten for days. When the runner returned, he reported that some 500 men from the British 2nd Battalion of the Queen’s Royal Regiment of the 56th Division were to relieve the 2nd Battalion the night of February 21. Sparks thought that was one of the stupidest things he had ever heard. He and his battalion were surrounded, yet hundreds of British troops were being sent to relieve them. How could relief troops get to the caves, let alone hold out once they arrived? The sensible course was to pull back and reinforce the regiment’s new front line—not waste yet more good men
Return to the Caves
r
ain pours down while my host and i slog through thick
tended by local peasants trying to avoid the artillery barrages
red mud to the Grotte Di Aprillia, as locals call the
that shook the cave ceilings so hard that pieces of pozzolana
caves a thousand yards from the via anziate, the main
fell loose. as we leave, manfredi hands me a green thing half
road between anzio and rome. our frst sight of the
the size of my thumb.
underground complex is three black holes in a 40-foot face of red rock. as we step out of the deluge and into the darkness, the air grows still and cool. our voices echo. the vast labyrinth sits on private farmland belonging to gen-
“it’s a bullet from an american m1 garand rife,” he says. “you can fnd them all around here.” he’s right. the foor is strewn with spent cartridges and the occasional live round, along with rusting pieces of shrapnel.
erations of the scammaca family and remains much as it was
other wartime sites may be safe as houses, but in the caves at
seven decades ago, when the 2nd battalion of the u.s. army’s
anzio history stands ready to cost you a foot or worse.
157th infantry regiment, surrounded by thousands of germans,
—John Snowdon
held the caverns for a week. manfredi scammaca is serving as my guide so i can photograph the tunnels. strip lights that the family installed ficker on, illuminating the immense space with pale green light. our fashlights reveal scars left 2,000 years ago by roman work gangs. those excavators were mining the area’s deep red pozzolana, a volcanic ash that would be ground to powder and mixed with calcium and water to make the cement used to build edifces across the empire, including the pantheon in rome. recesses in the walls held the ancient workers’ candles. i spot a rusty piece of metal on the corridor foor. “a mortar bomb,” manfredi says casually. “it’s german and still live.” further in, he gestures again: “there’s an american mess kit and a sardine tin,” he says. “the germans loved sardines. they captured a fsh factory on the coast, and the caves are littered with their tins.” he picks up the objects. the mess kit seems to have been opened in a hurry with a bayonet. i try to imagine these tunnels in february 1944, when they were crowded with wounded gis, some The caves that housed the 2nd Battalion’s command post still contain war relics, including a mortar round and an American ration tin (center).
johN sNowDoN (all); opposite: NatioNal archives
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what lay ahead would be the greatest test of the men’s lives: crossing more than two miles of enemy territory dotted with machine-gun nests. in the defense of a hopeless position. The runner also told Sparks to prepare to pull back to the caves, now about three-quarters of a mile away. Once the British arrived, he and the surviving Thunderbirds in the 2nd Battalion were to make a break for the regiment’s forward lines, two miles further to the rear. The British set out after dark on February 21, moving anxiously forward, rifes slung, beneath the brilliant green light of seemingly constant enemy chandelier fares. A German plane swooped and dropped butterfy bombs. They made hideous popping sounds as they exploded in blinding orange and white splashes, and left dozens of British troops dead and more wounded. By the time the hundred or so soldiers who survived reached the caves, they were without most of their weapons, armor, and supplies. But to the Thunderbirds’ amazement, the British insisted on taking over the Americans’ positions. Later that night, two British rife squads set out from the caves to relieve Sparks and company; fewer than a dozen men made it to the Americans’ position. Sparks said they could borrow his last machine gun, emphasizing that he would come back for it. To stand a chance of crossing no-man’s-land, he would need all the frepower he could carry. Around dawn on February 22, Sparks and his men departed for the caves, slithering on their stomachs and crawling through icy puddles in the darkness back to the command post, where help awaited. Inside, a veritable Hades greeted them. At every turn, men with terrible wounds, heavily drugged to stop their screams, lay on bloody stretchers; medics and the battalion surgeon, Captain Peter Graffagnino, worked tirelessly, but stocks of morphine spikes, bandages, and water were running low. First Sergeant Harvey E. Vocke and a few others dared to fetch water from a nearby stream that was clogged with dozens of decaying enemy corpses. The Germans opened fre, and machine-gun bullets knocked water cans from Vocke’s hands. Others were more successful. They flled their canteens and returned to the caves, where they boiled the bloody water and shared it with the wounded.
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t was time to move out. Around 1:30 a.m. on February 23, able-bodied survivors from the 2nd Battalion shouldered arms, said last prayers, and formed a line leading to the mouth of the caves. Captain Graffagnino and several medics volunteered to stay behind with the wounded. What lay ahead, the departing men understood only too well, would be the greatest test of their lives: crossing more than two miles of enemy territory dotted with German machine-gun nests. As Sparks prepared to leave the caves, he heard fighting outside and remembered the machine gun he had left with
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the British. He found the 2nd Battalion commander near the entrance and told Colonel Brown he was going to get the gun. The battalion’s planned escape route led across a bridge that spanned a deep draw; “I’ll meet you at the bridge,” Sparks said. Then he slipped out, taking only his .45 sidearm, groping in the dark through draws and gullies 400 yards north to his old position near the Via Anziate. To his shock, no one was there. The rise had been abandoned; his machine gun was gone. Spooked, Sparks worked his way back and eventually rejoined a group of about 50 departing Thunderbirds. Among them was Sergeant Garcia, who days earlier had warned men in the caves of the oncoming Germans. Sparks decided to lead the way. Terrified men, several of them walking wounded, followed him in single fle, stumbling over brambles, discarded equipment, and corpses old and new. Sparks reached the bridge and led some of the men across it. Others lagged, and Sparks returned to make sure the stragglers got across. Then he moved forward once more, down a supply trail. The ravenous Sparks spotted some biscuits and a canteen that a British soldier had dropped; he stuffed his mouth full of dry pastry and washed it down with the clean water. When he came across a rife he grabbed that as well. A cold rain fell, soaking Sparks’s dirty, slicked uniform. Garcia volunteered to scout ahead and took off into the darkness. He did not return. Sparks heard the distinct sound of a German machine gun— like fabric being torn close to his ear. Then the night fell silent. He stood stock-still for a few moments, listening, before crawling forward again. When he caught up with the column, he saw that several men had been cut down. Others had scattered. A few lay nearby, frozen with fear. A machine gun sounded again. Bullets cracked through the cold air. “Fire back! Fire back!” Sparks ordered. Several men did. “Everybody follow me!” he shouted. He crawled forward with a few men behind him. He knew there was a canal nearby where they could take cover. The steep banks were matted with vegetation. Sparks dropped into the foul, shin-deep water. Others scrambled down after him. He took a head count. A few minutes ago, he had been leading about 40 men. Now there were just 12, none of them from E Company. He fgured the rest were dead or captured. Sparks started forward again, moving along the canal toward German lines, which had shifted two miles closer since the enemy counteroffensive began. He sensed danger in one direction, trusted his instinct, and led the survivors down another path. They tried to be as silent as possible, but soon German national archives
voices cried out and grenades exploded nearby, fountains of earth cascading into the sky. But the Germans still could not see them, and no one was hurt. They scrambled through the German lines and into no-man’s-land. In the gloom Sparks could see fgures ahead: British troops. He had no password. If he called out would they open fre? The artillerymen spotted him and, to his astonishment, fed into nearby woods, horrifed by the sight of mud-coated madmen emerging from the murk. Dawn had broken by the time Sparks finally reached his regiment’s headquarters. He could barely stand as he reported to the 157th’s commanding offcer, Colonel John Church, on the battle by the Via Anziate and the subsequent breakout. Sparks was still carrying his pistol and salvaged rife when he fnally lay down in a foxhole. There he slept, undisturbed, for more than 24 hours. The Thunderbirds had saved the Anzio beachhead, but suffered mightily to do so. The division lost half its strength in only 36 hours. The 157th’s 2nd Battalion endured 75 percent
casualties. On February 16, it had numbered 713 enlisted men and 38 offcers; now there were 162 men and 15 offcers. Ninety of these men needed immediate hospitalization. Many had lost their hearing because of the constant din of artillery fre and the echo-chamber effect of the caves. Several had trench foot so severe they could not walk and had to have legs amputated. The British battalion that relieved the Thunderbirds in the caves fought against all odds for three more days before being all but destroyed. Surgeon Peter Graffagnino and the medics who stayed behind with the wounded in the caves spent the rest of the war as POWs in Germany. Felix Sparks awoke believing he was E Company’s sole survivor, until he learned that another E Company man, Platoon Sergeant Leon Siehr, had survived as well—making them only two of 231 men in their unit that February to make it back to Allied lines from what became known as the Battle of the Caves. ✯ In the calm after the battle, German dead lie in a trench in the 45th Division sector. The fght proved costly to both sides.
Hold THAT Tiger t p inventor preston tucker’s combat car, meant to repel strafng aircraft, had two .30-cal. machine guns and a .50-cal. poking through the windshield. the powered turret mounted a 37mm cannon. eight-inch-thick windows were set in a body of welded 9/16-inch plate, angled to deflect blasts. A 200-horsepower V-12 engine pushed the 11,000-pound “antiaircraft tank” beyond 100 mph on level pavement and past 70 on rough terrain. the war Department judged the tiger unsafe—but did buy the turret design for landing craft, pt boats, and bombers. this prototype features a civilian idea of camoufage.
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All imAges courtesy of the Author except lower two, opposite, courtesy of jim bollmAn
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ALSO
rANS the race to equip the motor pool included fabulous failures
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s the United States was gearing up for war, its military needed a vast and varied vehicle feet. Requests for proposals went out, and the Arsenal of Democracy responded by inventing or adapting hundreds of designs and delivering nearly 2.5 million conveyances, including some that became legendary. Other candidates did not make the cut—the work of visionaries whose optimism about their designs’ utility was exceeded only by the contraptions’ utter unsuitability. Several came from inventor Powel Crosley Jr., famed for creating an affordable home radio and a refrigerated bed, introducing night baseball, and selling a $350 miniature car through department stores. The war’s onset interrupted civilian vehicle manufacture, idling 5,000 two-cylinder motors, so Crosley, unbidden, set about priming a market for the engines by dreaming up machines they could power. He did make a bundle making proximity fuzes for artillery and antiaircraft shells—which Crosley himself did not know at the time because he lacked the necessary security clearance—but his and his compatriots’ ventures into vehicles serve as a reminder that not every idea is worth carrying out. —Michael Banks
PArAcHuTAble PuP p u crosley’s jeep lookalike was light enough to manhandle, as happy marines (right) did in 1942. the civilian chassis and 13-hp engine were hot-rodded with four-wheel drive and a six-speed transmission. canvas fenders saved metal. short on muscle and room and, well, just short, the pup enjoyed only limited production: 37 were built; none saw combat.
MidgeT recoN cAr p in 1940 powel crosley jr.’s crosley company, known for making America’s smallest mass-produced cars, refitted one for reconnaissance. four feet wide and barely 10 feet long, the mosquito—shown here with a crosley “covered wagon”—had 12-inch wheels. behind the frewall, the only body components were the rear fenders. the 1,225-pound mosquito weighed half what a jeep did, but evaluators at fort holabird, maryland, found it too small and underpowered.
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off TrAck u crosley’s one-man gun platform sported an automatic weapon fed with belts from a magazine between the operator’s legs, as he used pedals and a joystick to steer and brake. Assessors at camp hale, colorado, disqualifed the unit on grounds of idiocy.
deere HuNTer p maryland’s Aberdeen proving ground took delivery of Deere & co.’s “modifed machine gun unit” in early 1941. this surreal edition of the venerable manufacturer’s model A farm tractor had wider axles and larger tires. Armored compartments were intended to hold gunners operating .30-cal. brownings. the driver had a machine gun as well. top speed was 18 mph, less when towing a trailer. lugged steel wheels for rough terrain were ftted inboard of the rubber-tired main rims, but they tore up paved surfaces. poor visibility and instability skewered Deere’s submission.
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Get BehinD the MUle p The Crosley Mule’s driver sat behind a spotlight, controlling the vehicle with the joysticks and two pedals. On pavement, the 4-by-6-foot Mule could shed its rubber tracks and travel on wheels. The army tested this model; an Air Corps variant had six wheels. Neither went into production.
UnlUcky DUck t Crosley’s amphibian, meant for use in swamps, had a matching trailer. The 45-horsepower engine drove tracks or a propeller. A prototype, shown here exiting the Ohio River in Cincinnati with Crosley at the stern, debuted too late to go to war.
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Homegrown hate intertwined the Stars and Stripes and swastika as war neared by RONALD H. bAILEy
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in Yorkville, a historically German enclave in upper Manhattan, German american Bund members parade on East 86th Street on october 30, 1939.
liBrarY of ConGrESS
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i
n six decades and at three different locations, Manhattan’s storied Madison Square Garden had witnessed diverse spectacles—from circuses and concerts to sports championships—but nothing like this. On the wintry evening of February 20, 1939, less than seven months before Germany launched the war by invading Poland, America’s best-known indoor arena bristled with swastikas and bulged with a capacity crowd of 22,000, its members all too ready to thrust their right arms outward in the Nazi salute. This “Pro-America Rally” staged by the German American Bund ostensibly took place to honor the birthday of George Washington, whom Bundists referred to as “America’s frst Fascist.” But the radical organization’s actual intent was to dramatize the growing strength of the nation’s most prominent example of homegrown Fascism. Hundreds of men belonging to the Bund’s paramilitary wing, the so-called Ordnungsdienst, or Uniformed Service— wearing garrison caps, brown shirts, swastika armbands, and
military-style Sam Browne belts—lined the Garden’s aisles and formed a protective cordon at the front of the stage. Against the striking backdrop of a 30-foot-high portrait of America’s frst president fanked by towering star-and-stripes and swastika banners, speaker after speaker spewed venom at Communists, Jews, and elected offcials. To thunderous applause, Bundists vilifed President Franklin D. Roosevelt as “Rosenfeld,” his New Deal as the “Jew Deal,” and New York City’s district attorney, Thomas E. Dewey, as “Thomas Jewey.” The evening’s climax came when Fritz Julius Kuhn, the group’s 42-year-old leader, strutted to the podium. Large and imposing in a Nazi-style uniform, he wore thick glasses and was “bowlegged” and “bullnecked,” observed John Roy Carlson, a reporter for Fortune magazine there to begin an undercover investigation of the Bund. “The crowd went wild as Der Bundesführer rose to speak,” Carlson wrote. “He acknowledged the applause with the Nazi salute and then spoke with a thick German accent.” “You will have heard of me,” Kuhn began, “through the Jewish-controlled press as a creature with horns, a cloven hoof
and a long tail.” Listeners erupted in laughing approval. Kuhn launched an anti-Semitic litany, blaming Jews for involving the United States in World War I and favorably comparing Adolf Hitler and George Washington as fathers of their nations. Then came an unscripted highlight, as a fgure in a blue suit broke through the line of guards. While onlookers rose to their feet and roared in anger, the young man lunged at Kuhn, shouting “Down with Hitler!” and knocking over a microphone. A dozen startled guards recovered and grabbed the intruder. To cheers, they threw him to the foor, kicked and beat him, and ripped off his trousers. New York policemen on duty inside the Garden rushed to rescue the man. The intruder was Isadore Greenbaum, an unemployed Jewish plumber’s assistant from Brooklyn. “I lost my head, listening to that S.O.B. hollering against the government and publicly kissing Hitler’s behind,” Greenbaum later explained. He was charged with disorderly conduct and fned $25. Briefy fustered, Kuhn resumed his speech. When he was fnished the audience joined him in the Nazi salute and shouting the Bund slogan, “Free America! Free America! Free America!” As the Bundists and their sympathizers fled out of the arena, nearly 2,000 policemen manned a two-block perimeter around the Garden, holding back tens of thousands of New Yorkers angrily protesting people they considered enemies.
Beneath a pall of smoke, a crowd of 22,000 packed Madison square garden in february 1939 to “honor” Washington’s birthday. Bund leader fritz Kuhn, in nazi regalia (inset), was the event’s featured speaker.
fPg/getty IMAges; Inset: AP PHoto
The specTacular rally, which drew international press coverage, marked the zenith of the German American Bund’s dramatic rise. In a nation and an era rife with extreme right-wing organizations, it appeared to signal heightened cause for alarm. By one historian’s count, the U.S. harbored no fewer than 120 quasi-fascist organizations during the politically turbulent 1930s. There were the Ku Klux Klan Knights of the White Camellia based in West Virginia, the Crusader White Knights out of Tennessee, and the Silver Shirts of North Carolina, modeled after Hitler’s SS. And from Royal Oak, Michigan, Father Charles Coughlin broadcast over his private national radio network weekly sermons of hate, around which coalesced his National Union for Social Justice, Christian Front. Most such outfts tended to be motley collections of cranks, con men, and lunatics united by anti-Communism, anti-Semitism, and white supremacy. The Bund stood out in part because it was rooted in enclaves of the nation’s largest ethnic group. Americans of German descent outnumbered even Irish Americans. From early on, German Americans showed a proclivity to gather in cultural and social organizations and tightly knit neighborhoods. When this tendency intensifed during World War I, anti-German hysteria led communities to ban teaching the language in many schools. Bias even erupted about German food: frankfurters became hot dogs and sauerkraut was rechristened “liberty cabbage.” After the war some German Americans resented the harsh peace terms the Allies imposed on their homeland. They banded in small groups sympathetic to Hitler’s nascent National MARCH/APRIL 2014
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Socialists. Moreover, between 1919 and 1933 some 430,000 Germans who had lived through the war or fought in it emigrated to the United States. With the blessing of Hitler’s newly installed government, an organization bringing together these scattered bands of Nazi sympathizers was created in 1933 and dubbed Friends of the New Germany. From this group rose the German American Bund—Bund means an alliance or league— under the vigorous leadership of Fritz Julius Kuhn. Kuhn had shown early signs of militant ambition. One of 12 children born to middle-class parents in Munich, he distinguished himself as a machine gunner during World War I. He served four years, rose to lieutenant, and earned the Iron Cross First Class for bravery. After the war Kuhn, like many veterans, enlisted in a paramilitary Freikorps to fght Communists and Socialists. In 1921 he joined the embryonic Nazi Party and enrolled at the University of Munich, where he earned an advanced degree in chemical engineering. Unable to get a job in that feld amid the chaos of the Weimar Republic, he hired on as a shipping clerk in a clothing factory owned by an acquaintance of his father. Kuhn supplemented his income by stealing and selling fabric until the factory owner, a Jew, learned of the crimes. At the pleading of Kuhn’s father, the owner agreed not to press charges and, in fact, helped raise funds to send young Kuhn and his new wife to Mexico to fnd work. Kuhn worked as an industrial chemist in Mexico City until 1927, when he was allowed into the United States. In Detroit he found an economic and ideological home in the empire of Henry Ford, whose notoriety as an anti-Semite nearly matched his fame as an automotive entrepreneur. For eight years Ford had published a weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, that warned of a “Jewish conspiracy to control the world.” He so earned Hitler’s admiration that the Führer hung Ford’s picture on his office wall. In 1938, on Ford’s 75th birthday, he was awarded at Hitler’s command the German Eagle, Germany’s highest honor for a noncitizen. (Rumors persisted that Ford helped subsidize the German American Bund, but the accusations were never proved.) Kuhn worked at frst as an X-ray technician at Henry Ford Hospital and then as a chemist in Ford’s River Rouge auto plant, and soon involved himself in expatriate politics. He joined Friends of the New Germany. He had impressive organizing skills and wielded them effectively, becoming head of the group’s Detroit branch and then chief of the Midwest region. The Friends in those days struggled with internal squabbling and external pressure from the American and German govern52
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outside Madison Square Garden, police subdue Brooklyn resident isadore Greenbaum, who tried to slug Kuhn onstage. “i lost my head listening to that S.o.B,” Greenbaum said.
ments. The Justice Department indicted one national leader, a native German, for failure to register as a foreign agent. He fed to Germany to avoid prosecution. In December 1935 the Nazi regime, trying to stay on the U.S. government’s good side, banned German nationals from joining the Friends. Since German nationals made up about 60 percent of membership, the edict decimated the Friends’ ranks. That same month, the up-and-coming Kuhn, by now an American citizen, was appointed provisional national leader. He consolidated his power three months later when the national convention in Buffalo offcially elected him leader of the Friends. To rebuild The skeleTal organizaTion, Kuhn immediately renamed it the German American Bund. He stressed the group’s Americanism and portrayed it as a patriotic organization of naturalized citizens loyal to their adopted country. He had no intention of abandoning the Friends’ aim of Joe Petrella/NY DailY News archive via GettY imaGes
establishing National Socialism in the United States, but felt the Bund could do so more readily by emphasizing its independence from Germany. At the same time, he kept much of the structure and philosophy of the Friends, imitating Hitler to the extent of calling himself “Bundesführer” and embracing Hitler’s leadership principle, or Führerprinzip, under which he seized supreme authority over the group’s every aspect. Intelligent, forceful, and decisive, and a charismatic and grandiloquent orator, Kuhn cracked down on the bickering that had riven the Friends. He shaped the organization to his measure, appointing a trusted inner circle and controlling the selection of regional and district leaders across the United States from his headquarters in the historically German Yorkville section of Manhattan. Soon the Bund and Kuhn became synonymous. Kuhn’s primary tool for control was the Uniformed Service. The Friends had patterned this paramilitary wing after Hitler’s storm troopers. But Kuhn made the service his own, outftting the elite corps in new Nazi-style uniforms and using them as his personal bodyguard. The most fanatical of the Bundists, they trained weekly in the martial arts and drilled like soldiers, sang Nazi songs, and learned the principles of National Socialism. Ordnungsdienst members could not carry frearms but often sported nightsticks. During rallies and parades, they served as the color guard, bearing both American and Nazi fags. Convinced many German Americans had been “crippled by Americanization,” Kuhn created a movement modeled after the Hitler Youth, even copying the uniforms with swastika buckles and lightning-bolt insignia symbolizing the power of Nordic youth. Boys and girls had separate organizations that met weekly to study the German language and German history, and be indoctrinated in National Socialist theory. Kuhn had the Bund purchase properties across the country, on which it built 24 summer camps. At these facilities, during stays featuring highly regimented activities, campers sang, attended indoctrination sessions, and endured rugged hikes intended to instill discipline and obedience. Although Kuhn was a rake—a habitué of New York nightlife who left his wife and two children at home while squiring young women to the Stork Club and other expensive nightspots—he professed a belief in the power of well-reared children. “The youth is our great hope,” Kuhn said, labeling youngsters the “future carriers of German racial ideals in America.” Kuhn also launched and presided over a small but proftable corporate empire. A development corporation administered real estate that included bungalows at the summer camps rented or sold to Bundists. Another enterprise marketed uniforms, jewelry, and Nazi regalia. His publishing arm produced weekly newspapers—printed in English and German—along with pamphlets, books, and other propaganda. Annual Bund dues of $9 plus additional fees and mandatory purchases of books and uniforms further fattened the treasury. In only months, and with no help from Germany, the
Bundesführer revived the movement. He found a loophole in the Nazi ban on German national participation by devising a special membership category. His Prospective Citizens League granted membership to German nationals in the process of becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. Like Kuhn, many Bundists were part of the wave of Germans who, after fghting for a losing cause during World War I, had left their homeland. There were a few professionals, but most were blue-collar workers: mechanics, offce clerks, and restaurant help. Strangers in a strange land, frst lost amid the Roaring ’20s and then beset by the Great Depression, they found in the Bund the refuge of common heritage. Members could attend weekly meetings, go to summer camps, take boat trips on the Hudson River, ski in the Catskills, and revel in beer fests galore. Ebling’s Casino, a favorite German American watering hole in the Bronx, provided free beer and sandwiches every Thursday night courtesy of the Bund, along with decks of playing cards and even the occasional movie or lecture on Nazi art and music. having re-energized The bund, Kuhn desperately wanted Hitler’s nod. He saw an opportunity in 1936 when Berlin hosted the Olympic Games. He organized a junket for some 400 Bundists enthralled at the prospect of experiencing the new Germany. Kuhn and some of his party sailed on the SS New York, arriving in Hamburg on August 1, the day the games opened. The following day in Berlin, Kuhn and a contingent of Bundists marched down the grand tree-shaded Boulevard Unter den Linden in the company of Hitler’s own storm troopers. That afternoon, Kuhn and four associates received an invitation to meet the Führer at his headquarters in the old Imperial Chancery. After shaking hands with his idol, Kuhn presented Hitler with gifts. One was a check for more than $2,000 for the Nazi winter relief fund. The other was a luxurious, leather-bound volume, The Golden Book of American Germandom, signed by 6,000 Bundists and documenting in text and photographs more than a decade of pro-Nazi activities in the United States. “In America, the hearts of the German people also beat for the great leader of all Germans,” the fowery introduction began. “Thousands upon thousands have found new hope and faith through him and his work. The German-American Bund is the expression of his National Socialist worldview.” The meeting lasted only about 10 minutes. But during them Hitler uttered words that the awestruck Kuhn wanted to hear: “Go over there and continue the fght.” Kuhn interpreted this as an offcial endorsement of him and the Bund, though Hitler had many such meetings during the Olympics and may well have used that line frequently as a coda for his visitors. Kuhn, however, came home convinced the Bund would “assume the political leadership of the German element in the United States.” With typical bombast, Kuhn magnifed the brief encounter with Hitler to increase his own prestige and infuence. He even resorted to outright fabrication. Two years later he made another MarCH/aPril 2014
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american legion members tend to one another after a 1938 fracas with Bundists at the Yorkville Casino in Manhattan.
trip to Germany and returned boasting—falsely—of contact with Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring, Luftwaffe commander and Hitler’s number-two man. In reality, the German government increasingly was keeping the Bund at arm’s length in an attempt to smooth diplomatic relations with the United States. In November 1937, the German ambassador to the United States, Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff, said of Kuhn and his minions: “Nothing has resulted in so much hostility toward us in the last few months as the stupid and noisy activities of a handful of German Americans.” Soon afterward, the Reich ordered Kuhn to remove all German nationals from his organization’s membership rolls. Nonetheless Kuhn’s exaggerations and deceits paid off. Bund membership swelled—though to nowhere near the 200,000 he claimed. At its peak, Bund members probably numbered no more than 25,000. But Kuhn cared less about data than drama. His meeting with Hitler at the Berlin Olympics had yielded photos of the two bound by a handshake that lit up the front pages of many American papers. The February 1939 Madison Square Garden spectacular spurred global coverage, catching the Bund at its peak—and triggering a backlash that marked the beginning of the end for Kuhn and cohort. opposiTion To The bund had been mounting. The frontpage photographs of Kuhn with Hitler might have impressed potential Bund members, but they also increased the hostility 54
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of many Americans. Some saw in the Bund a kind of fifth column that Germany could use to subvert American democracy. The most strident attacks came from Walter Winchell, a onetime vaudevillian turned popular gossip columnist and radio commentator, with a vocabulary all his own. He dismissed Bundists as “Ratzis.” Two groups in particular not only castigated the Bund but physically disrupted its rallies. One consisted of World War I veterans with a grudge against Germany; the other was built of targets of the Bund’s most vicious verbal attacks—Jews. In Buffalo, New York, and Bergen County, New Jersey, American Legion members broke up Bund meetings. In April 1938 a hundred Legionnaires, mostly Jewish, infiltrated a 3,500person rally in Yorkville celebrating Hitler’s 49th birthday. At a planned signal they donned their blue Legion caps and, though outnumbered 35-to-1, began throwing punches. The Legionnaires took a beating. An array of criminals picked up the cudgel—and baseball bats and lead pipes—on behalf of their fellow Jews. The names read like a who’s who of Jewish organized crime. In New York, gangster Meyer Lansky was enlisted by a top rabbinical scholar and a high-ranking judge. In Los Angeles, Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Siegel dispatched goon squads to attack Bundists. In Chicago, Barnet Rosofsky and Jacob Rubenstein teamed up against the Bund. Rosofsky was better known as Barney Ross, a world boxing champion in three classes; Rubenstein later changed his name to Jack Ruby and moved to Dallas, where he was convicted of killing President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The federal government also was bashing the Bund. The attorney general reported in early 1938 that a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry had found no evidence of Bund wrongdoing, but a new congressional panel began hearings that year. The House Un-American Activities Committee had as its chairman Martin Dies of Texas, later a vociferous anti-Communist. The committee was the brainchild of Representative Samuel Dickstein, a famboyant New York Democrat. A Lithuanian-born Jew, Dickstein had been instrumental in crippling the Bund’s predecessor, Friends of the New Germany, while chairman of the House Committee on Immigration. His goal was extirpating Nazism from American soil. (Six decades later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it would be revealed that Dickstein had been a paid informant of the Soviet spy agency, the NKVD, from 1937 to 1940.) When Kuhn appeared before the Dies-Dickstein com-
mittee in August 1939, the hearing turned turbulent, with the Bundesführer standing defant and roaring denials of accusations shouted by the panel. But it was in New York, home of the Bund, that the most effective opposition emerged. Popular mayor Fiorello La Guardia, whose mother was Jewish, had refused to ban the Madison Square Garden rally on constitutional grounds. “If we are for free speech,” La Guardia said, “we have to be for free speech for everybody and that includes Nazis.” But public revulsion at the event prodded the mayor and Manhattan district attorney Thomas Dewey, a rising Republican political star, to pry into Bund fnances. Emulating the Justice Department’s method in prosecuting Chicago gangster Al Capone for tax evasion eight years earlier, Dewey seized Bund records, hoping to fnd a failure to pay sales taxes on products its business arms sold. Dewey instead found evidence that Kuhn was an embezzler. Some of his thievery helped pay for two of his mistresses. One of them, whose exaggerations rivaled those of her escort, was a blonde Georgia peach who asserted she had been married 10 Kuhn (third from left) enters Sing Sing Prison on december 6, 1939, handcuffed to two other prisoners. the fascist leader drew a two-and-a-half to fve-year term for bilking his followers.
aP Photo/murraY becker; oPPosite: süDDeutscher ZeituNG Photo/alamY
times and falsely identifed herself as the Miss America of 1925. Kuhn insisted that the Führerprinzip allowed him to spend Bund funds as he saw ft. Jurors disagreed, and in December 1939 found him guilty on three counts of larceny and two of forgery. The judge sentenced him to two and a half to fve years in Sing Sing, downplaying the exalted status the press had conferred upon Kuhn during the trial. The sentence, the judge said, refected the crimes of “an ordinary small-time forger and thief” and not “his disseminations of any gospels of hate.” The Bund immediately expelled Kuhn, and without him the movement splintered and shriveled. On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war, remnants of the Bund leadership met to offcially disband the group. The United States stripped Kuhn of his American citizenship in 1943, paroled him to an internment camp, and, after the war, deported him to Germany as an enemy alien. In 1951, he died at age 55 in Munich, the city of his birth. Not until February 2, 1953, did that news reach his former adopted country. An Associated Press story in The New York Times reported: “Fritz Kuhn, once the arrogant, noisy leader of the pro-Hitler GermanAmerican Bund, died here more than a year ago—a poor and obscure chemist, unheralded and unsung.” ✯
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WEAPONS MANUAL by Jim Laurier
Handy Hauler
Germany’s Kettenkraftrad HK 101
The Way, Way Back Riders faced the rear, enduring mud and dust. The machine depicted here bears the markings of the 21st Panzer Division, Afrika Korps.
Built to be delivered by air—though not parachute—Germany’s smallest prime mover, whose name means “tracked motorcycle,” was scaled to squeeze into gliders and Ju 52 transports. A “Kettenkrad,” as soldiers called it, could carry materiel or two men, tow trailers or guns, lay wire or mount weapons, and, late in the war, save jet fuel by tugging Me 262s and Ar 234s on runways. The little mudder’s true medium was muck. “We loved the Kettenkrad,” says Afrika Korps veteran Heinrich Erichsen, whose years stateside as a POW led him to become an American citizen. “In the springtime, Tunisia was a quagmire. We used the Kettenkrad to move our antitank gun into position,” the Houston, Texas, resident says. “And in the evening one of us would drive to the main camp to get our meal and bring back the food while it was still hot.” Mechanical Muscle The payload, driver included, was 717 lbs., with a tow load of 6,600 lbs. on pavement and 1,000 lbs. cross-country. One version featured a remotely detonated 727-lb. explosive charge carried under an armored shell covering the vehicle.
Like the Big Boys The 3,440-lb. unarmored Kettenkraftrad, 10 feet long and a yard wide, used the same wheel array installed on all German tracked fghting vehicles.
On the Eastern Front in August 1942 (left), the vehicle evinces a key talent. A tub hull, high exhaust, and 9-inch clearance let it traverse water or mud 17 inches deep. PHOTOs: BPK/arT resOurce
Six on the Floor The liquid-cooled 1.5-liter 4-cylinder engine, originally for an Opel sedan, was coupled to a six-speed transmission. German frms NSU and Stöwer built 8,000 Kettenkraftrads.
Turn, Turn, Turn Pivoting the handlebars activated tractor-style brakes, giving the vehicles a tight turning radius.
A deft off-road operator (above) could take a 24-degree slope in loose sand and a 60-degree slope on frm, dry surfaces. Twin gas tanks fueled the Kettenkraftrad’s 161-mile road range, at a top speed of 43 mph.
The Competition American M29 Weasel Weight: 5,245 lbs. • Top speed: 36 mph • Production: 15,124 • Widely used to transport troops and supplies.
British Universal Carrier Weight: 7,500 lbs. • Top speed: 30 mph • Production: 113,000 • Often mislabeled a “Bren gun carrier,” this unit ranks as the most-produced armored fghting vehicle.
Soviet T-20 Armored Tractor Weight: 7,000 lbs. • Top speed: 31 mph • Production: 23,000 • Towed feld pieces, carried troops, pulled a trailer able to hold ammunition and gun crews.
French Chenillette Weight: 5,800 lbs. • Top speed: 19 mph • Production: 5,300 • After taking France the Germans repurposed some Chenillettes into self-propelled 37mm guns. Tracks Trumped The fork and front wheel could be removed and the unit operated with only its 40-link tracks.
German Rauppenshlepper Ost Weight: 6,000 lbs. • Top speed: 18 mph • Production: 23,000 • Built for the Eastern Front, sometimes ftted with a 75mm or even an 88mm gun.
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Standoff
at Santo Tomas with the allied noose tightening on Manila, a young prisoner of the Japanese witnessed a last, desperate gambit
AT 5 p.m. on SATurdAy, FebruAry 3, 1945, American dive-bombers roared across the northern reaches of Japanese-occupied Manila and over the old Dominican University of Santo Tomas, north of the Pasig River. The Marine Corps pilots were reconnoitering the campus, where the Japanese had interned nearly 4,000 civilians from Allied nations after taking over the city in 1942. The internees were aware American troops had come ashore nearly a month earlier at Luzon, 120 miles north, but life at camp remained unchanged. Now, as one camera-equipped SBD few by, a Marine gunner whose brother was among those imprisoned below dropped airman’s goggles with a note reading, “Roll out the barrel. Santa Claus is coming Sunday or Monday.” The news zipped through the camp: help really was on the way. I was eight, and knew every inch of Santo Tomas’s 60 acres; I had lived there for more than two years along with my mother, Lorna Wilkinson, and my sister, Mary June, 11. We inhabited a shack on the campus, but every night I slept at the Boys Club, on the third foor of the former Education Building, along with about 200 men and boys. One of them was my best friend, Nick Balfour, whose two siblings stayed with their mother. The two lower foors of the Education Building housed the camp’s 68-man garrison, mostly Chinese nationals drafted as guards and bossed by Imperial Army offcers and NCOs. The rest of the prisoners slept in the massive Main Building, other smaller buildings, or homemade shanties. We had grown accustomed to nighttime gunfre, but the shooting that evening seemed louder and nearer. I tried not to hope too much, but when we heard cheering erupt in other rooms, I and the other boys on the third foor rushed to the windows, joining men shouting, “They’re here!” As we watched, headlights crept onto campus. A fare went up, illuminating American tanks with GIs walking alongside. We saw prisoners streaming out of the Main Building, but the two foors of guards between us and the ground kept us where we were. An American voice yelled through a megaphone for everyone in the building to get down. Machine guns began fring. I told myself I would not die. When the shooting stopped, guards came into our room to peer out windows and grab our mattresses, which they used to a P-38 drops bombs as U.S. troops approach Manila in early 1945; the author (above left before the war with sister Mary June) was one of thousands of civilians detained at a university campus there.
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above: courtesy of the author; right: national archives
By Rupert Wilkinson
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barricade the stairs. They also commandeered our beds, leaving us to sleep on the foor. When Nick opened his eyes at daybreak he was startled to look up and see, dangling from the bed above, a soldier’s hand holding a grenade. What followed in the next few frantic days was among the Pacifc War’s most amazing episodes—one in which we internees played an accidental and unwilling role. Facing the choice between a fight to the death and surrender—the supreme disgrace for any Japanese offcer—the commandant of Santo Tomas, Lieutenant Colonel Toshio Hayashi, found a third way. In effect he held us hostage while trying to negotiate safe conduct for him and his men out of the enemy’s grasp. The dominicAn cAmpuS AT SAnTo TomAS, home to the oldest university in the Philippines, held more American civilians than any other Japanese camp, along with many nationals from other Allied countries. They included my British family, which had lived in Quezon City, a suburb of Manila. My father, Gerald Wilkinson, ran a Manila-based sugar company, Theo H. Davies Far East, while spying on Japanese movements for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. On the eve of the Japanese invasion, Dad joined General Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. Army Forces in the Far East, as British liaison on the fortress island of Corregidor. Like MacArthur, Dad escaped to Australia; the rest of the family had to move into makeshift housing on the grounds at Santo Tomas. At frst, camp life was not that bad. Our daytime shanty home was cozy, if crude. Resembling a one-room Filipino peasant hut on stilts, it had as furnishings a table, a cupboard, and a few chairs. Friends on the outside could send food and other aid. Money circulated; little shops fourished. The Japanese greatly feared tuberculosis; they were willing to issue passes to internees with lung and breathing ailments, allowing them to live off campus in their actual homes. Santo Tomas had two hospitals of its own and access to others for the seriously ill. All that changed as events turned against Japan. In February 1944, the Imperial Army sealed off Santo Tomas, canceling home residence passes and banning private food deliveries. Again and again the Japanese army cut our rations. Guards and soldiers pilfered camp stores. By January 1945, each of us was living on 900 calories or less a day, and every day at least one resident—usually an older man—died. The dead got a quick prayer before burial in a mass grave outside the grounds. Colonel Hayashi ordered the camp’s American head doctor into solitary confnement for refusing to take “malnutrition” off death certifcates he was issuing. Hayashi had run the camp since August 1944. Like his predecessors, he allowed us to govern ourselves. His Chinese-national guards—who hailed from Formosa, now Taiwan—and their Japanese overseers mostly let us be. An exception was their hated commander, Lieutenant Nanakazu Abiko, who enjoyed humiliating us. At roll call Abiko would force residents of a dormitory to practice bowing for half an hour or more. On top of that, the 60
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secret police, the Kempeitai, would raid Santo Tomas to grab and torture internees suspected of contact with Filipino guerrillas and ransack dorms and shanties in search of illicit radios, which they never were able to fnd. In December 1944, the commander of Japanese occupation forces, General Tomayuki Yamashita, started shifting his men in Manila to the mountains north and east of Lingayen Gulf, where he expected the Americans to land. On January 6, Commandant Hayashi told camp leaders that he was going to lead his garrison into the hills as well, to steer violence away from the camp. But before he could do so, his superiors ordered Hayashi to stay put. When soldiers of the U.S. Sixth Army landed on January 9, 1945, they found that Yamashita’s repositioned troops had complicated the approach to Manila. Invasion commander MacArthur wanted to reach the Philippine capital, his former home, by January 26— his birthday. More important, he feared guards at Santo Tomas would treat the internees as the Japanese had treated POWs on Palawan Island in December 1944 when American warships steamed close: burn them alive. But Sixth Army commander Lieutenant General Walter Krueger worried that sending too small a rescue force to Manila could lead Yamashita to counterattack from the hills. Krueger ordered most of his army into the highlands to pursue the main Japanese force. At the end of January, the Japanese still held Manila. Guerrillas were telling the impatient MacArthur that a massacre might be in the works at Santo Tomas. On January 30, he drove to Guimba, 20 miles south of Lingayen, where the lst Cavalry Division had just arrived after intense fghting on Leyte. There he buttonholed its commander, Major General Verne Mudge. “Go to Manila,” MacArthur said, according to Mudge’s subordinate, Brigadier General William Chase, who witnessed the exchange. “Go round the Nips, bounce off the Nips, but go to Manila. Free the internees at Santo Tomas. Take Malacañang Palace [the government headquarters] and the Legislative Building.” Within 36 hours, Mudge had assembled his main rescue force: 1,900 men in two columns, one from the 5th Cavalry Regiment, and the other from the 8th Cavalry. Each would travel in armed jeeps and trucks, accompanied by 16 Sherman tanks, mobile medical units, artillery squads, and engineers with bulldozers. The rescue columns were headed into a sprawling, dense metropolis defended by more than 20,000 Japanese, mainly naval troops trained to fght to the death. Rescuers could expect many blown bridges and enemy strongpoints, requiring that they zig and zag to fnd intact crossings and avoid confrontations that would delay their progress. But the operation had sheer bravado in its favor, along with a distracted enemy plagued by poor communications. The Allies controlled the air: Japanese planes in the Philippines had been shot down or destroyed in kamikaze attacks. Marine dive-bombers and U.S. Army spotter planes would be overhead, guiding the columns by radio. The hundred miles from Guimba to Manila—barely a day’s
Japanese offcers stand outside the Main Building of the University of Santo Tomas, site of the February 1945 standoff.
drive in peacetime—would take the columns nearly 70 hours to cover. The troops set off on dirt roads early on February 1, with detachments departing every 10 minutes. Soon vehicles were strung out for miles. The peppery Mudge seemed to be everywhere, landing by spotter plane at frefghts and leading troops onto a booby-trapped bridge; his soldiers saved the span by throwing the explosive charges into the water. That evening Mudge delegated command to General Chase. With his trim moustache Chase looked the aristocrat, but the cavalryman had a strong democratic streak. “What would Private Kucinich say about this?” he would ask rhetorically, invoking an imaginary GI so often that subordinates nicknamed him “PK.” Like Mudge, Chase prided himself on leading from the front, usually in a radio jeep with the 5th Cavalry column. Those of us at Santo Tomas knew rescue was coming, but not how or when. Some said our boys would be arriving any moment. Others wondered if we could hang on. What if food ran out or the Japanese decided to kill us? Four more old men died. Filipino boys carted their bodies to the cemetery. Again, Hayashi prepared to head for the hills, ordering soldiers to carl mydans/time & life pictures/getty images
butcher the garrison’s livestock—two hogs and two water buffalo. He ordered some soldiers ahead; before leaving they stripped the camp’s meager vegetable garden. Some column uniTS goT Through eASily. For Private George Fisher, gun loader in the Sherman tank Georgia Peach, the main holdup came in Bulacan Province. At the Angat River, trucks and jeeps had to be winched across by tank. Elsewhere, ambushes bloodied two detachments, but reinforcements collected the dead and wounded and found alternate routes. The run from Guimba to Manila cost 30 Americans, and many more Japanese, their lives. At dusk on February 3, the columns entered Manila, the 8th Cavalry leading. After years of island and jungle combat, the men were wary of fghting in a city. As the force swept through the northern precincts and past the ancient Chinese cemetery, snipers fred from behind tombstones. Small convoys of Japanese blundered into the columns, which shot them to pieces. When an 8th Cavalry unit peeled off with fve Shermans to take Malacañang Palace, the Japanese there fled, then counterattacked without success. In his offce on the Education Building’s ground foor, Hayashi could hear the enemy tanks. He summoned camp leaders, along MarCH/aPril 2014
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with two Japanese-speaking internees, Frank Cary and Ernest Stanley. Hayashi told the Westerners he wanted them to persuade the Americans to stay outside the university gate and let his garrison depart. But by the time the emissaries left on that mission, Uncle Sam had already arrived in camp. The frst 200 Americans to reach Santo Tomas were in a cavalry squadron led by Lieutenant Colonel Haskett Conner, who also had six Shermans. The blacked-out campus seemed deserted until the Americans saw a grenade sail from a guardhouse. GIs shot the Japanese who had thrown it, but the grenade’s blast mortally wounded a guerrilla guide and left Conner with a bad leg wound. He ceded command to his number two, Major James Gearhart, as the tanks pushed through Santo Tomas’s arched gateway. The frst Sherman, Battlin’ Basic, scraped the arch, showering the infantrymen alongside with bits of masonry. From inside Georgia Peach, Private Fisher could hear cheers, and then American voices singing “God Bless America.” “I’ve never heard it sung better,” he said. Two Japanese civilians appeared in front of the Main Building and surrendered. From behind them a Japanese offcer emerged, smartly dressed down to a sword in a scabbard. He put a hand Under U.S. army escort, the Japanese garrison—led by its commander, lieutenant Colonel Toshio Hayashi (white helmet)— leaves Santo Tomas with interpreter Ernest Stanley (white shirt).
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into his shoulder bag. Guessing correctly that the Japanese was reaching for a grenade, Gearhart shot from the hip. The offcer, hit in the stomach, fell to the ground. As he did, a group of camp inmates rushed from the Main Building. In the tank’s headlights, they had recognized the fallen Japanese as the hated guard chief, Abiko. They kicked him and spat on him, and two women burned him with cigarettes. Others tried to use Abiko’s own sword to slice off his ear before soldiers muscled him into the Main Building. The camp doctor, recently released from solitary confnement, cared for the dying man while tending wounded GIs. In the dark, with ever more prisoners crowding around, Gearhart hadn’t yet realized how few Japanese soldiers had shown themselves. Then Hayashi’s two Western emissaries appeared. When Cary and Stanley conveyed the camp commander’s message, Gearhart realized Hayashi and his men were holed up only 50 yards away. Apparently unaware that more than 200 civilian prisoners were in the Education Building too, Gearhart wheeled his tanks into fring position. A British woman whose son was among the civilians upstairs raced from the Main Building. “Don’t you know our boys are there?” she yelled at the tankers. An inmate shouted a similar warning from the Education Building’s third foor. Gearhart sent Frank Cary to fnd Hayashi and tell him to give up. The frightened Cary walked into the Education Building, hands outstretched, shouting in Japanese, “Cary coming in as
messenger, unarmed!” He than a dozen men and boys told the commandant that escaped. Two fell; one broke unless he surrendered in 10 both legs. Japanese civilminutes the tankers would ian officials slipped out to open fre. Hayashi refused. surrender. In the corridor Cary relayed that message to where the surviving ChineseGearhart, who sent him back. national and Japanese memThe 10 minutes stretched to bers of the garrison were 12, but still Hayashi balked. hunkering, a soldier who That was when Gearhart refused to fght but did not shouted a warning through want to surrender died of a a megaphone and his men gunshot. Japanese officers blasted the frst foor. By then, claimed an American sniper Hayashi and his troops had had killed him. Chase sent a fed to the second foor. After qualifed apology, admitting another megaphone alert that not all his men might from Gearhart, the tankers have gotten the word to stop raked that foor as well. shooting. Hayashi allowed a Again the Japanese garriwounded hostage to leave; son remained a jump ahead, he also sent out the elderly crowding a third-foor corri- Major General Verne Mudge (center; here on Leyte in December man’s body. dor behind the dorm rooms 1944) headed the mission to free the internees at Santo Tomas. With the arrival that day where Nick and I and the of the 37th Infantry Division, other hostages were huddling. American machine-gun fre killed Chase’s force had grown so large that he decided he had enough one guard and wounded another, and stray slugs and splinters troops to fend off the Japanese, and so could let Hayashi and his struck several of our companions. When one elderly internee’s men go. Chase sent his executive offcer, Lieutenant Colonel Todd bedding caught fre, the man dropped dead, apparently of a Brady, into the Education Building with interpreter Ernest Stanley. heart attack. Hayashi treated the moment theatrically, greeting the negotiators The Japanese soldiers shot back sporadically, killing one GI with his hands on the butts of twin holstered pistols. After that and wounding several others before all fring stopped. Cary and fourish Hayashi and Brady came to terms: early the next morning Stanley shuttled messages between the American commander and the men of the Santo Tomas garrison would set down their grehis Japanese foe. Cary feared that Hayashi’s stubbornness was sennades and machine guns and, keeping their swords, pistols, and tencing the guards to death and pleaded with the camp commanrifes, accept an escort by 1st Cavalry soldiers out of the camp. dant to relent. Hayashi refused to give up, but said he would not Just before 7 a.m. on Monday, February 5, the 60-plus Japanese harm the internees he was holding. and Taiwanese camp garrison descended the Education Building During the overnight stalemate, General Chase arrived. At 9 stairs. One man carried a wounded comrade. Outside, armed GIs a.m., he received a note from Hayashi proposing to accept “safe lined up on both sides of the departing enemy. Accompanied by conduct” for the garrison in return for releasing the civilians Stanley, they all marched to the gate. Some Santo Tomas residents he was holding prisoner. Chase bristled but saw no alternajeered, but GIs shushed them. Our old jailers maintained order for tive: his frst duty was to save civilians. But he did not want a few blocks, but once their American escorts turned back toward Japanese outside the camp learning how small and vulnerable the campus the former guards broke ranks and scattered, as a his force was. Playing for time, he told Hayashi his superiors mortifed Hayashi angrily tried to rein them in. had to approve the deal. By the time most of most of us on the third floor of the Education Building awoke, our captors had left, but we could not We aWoke on February 4 to an informal truce. do so until GIs checked the foors below for booby-traps. While There was nothing for breakfast, but at least the machine gunthat search went on, an American lieutenant came upstairs—a ners were standing down, and we could lean out windows to big, friendly god who quickly found himself surrounded by talk with friends and family below. When Nick saw his mother, excited boys. We were fascinated by his deep, German-looking he burst into tears. That afternoon, GIs sent in canisters of hot helmet, his shiny yellow face (due, we later learned, to an corned beef and soybean stew, which were divided among capanti-malaria drug), and, above all, his immense pistol. In the tives and captors. Another meal came that evening. Boys’ Club we had sketched guns over and over, and here was Security upstairs was lax. Using ropes and knotted sheets, more the real thing. Finally word came that the building was safe, and national archives; opposite: carl mydans/time & life pictures/Getty imaGes
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a Sherman tank attracts curious young visitors shortly after american troops fnally liberated hostages at Santo Tomas.
we were free. Nick and I and our companions raced downstairs, laughing and yelling, to join our families. But the war was not done with Santo Tomas. The Battle of Manila had already begun. Within days, Japanese artillerymen were shelling the university campus; the Americans had used the Main Building tower as an observation post. Counterfre stilled the enemy guns, but not before they killed more than 20 people and hideously wounded many others. From then on, with so many American troops on campus, Santo Tomas became one of the safest places in a city that was dying around it. The block-by-block fghting and shelling that devastated Manila killed 1,000 Americans and more than 100,000 Filipinos—many in Japanese massacres. More than 16,000 Japanese died, most of the escaped garrison likely 64
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included. Hayashi’s body was later discovered in the hills. GIs did capture eight or so of our former guards and return them as POWs to Santo Tomas. The Marine gunner who had dropped the goggles that let us know the cavalry was on the way was able to fnd his brother, and another brother held at a second camp. The outcome was not so happy for Nick and his family. News came that husband and father Stephen Balfour, a British colonial offcial interned by the Japanese in Hong Kong, had been killed by a stray American bomb just after his liberation. After two months of waiting for berths on ships, my family and Nick’s joined an exodus across the Pacifc. Like the Balfours, we stayed with friends in the United States before sailing to England, where home was our grandparents’ big house in Hampshire. During my postwar years in English boarding schools—another sort of imprisonment—America meant glamour and liberation. It still does, an association that began with those columns of GIs, who drove and fought for three days to set us free. ✯ us army signal corps
EXPERIENCE WWII HISTORY FIRSTHAND
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Normandy Academy June 21–30, 2014 Examining the impactful decisions that WWII officers and soldiers faced during the D-Day invasion, this program starts in the exhibits and archives at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans and ends in the historic American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach.
Summer Residential Program–Student Leadership Academy July 13–19, 2014 Experience the history of New Orleans and its unique contributions to WWII. This program immerses students in the Museum’s wealth of exhibits and artifacts, with educational city-wide tours along the way.
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An Unstoppable Drive to War
JAPAN 1941 Countdown to Infamy By Eri Hotta. 320 pp. Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. $27.95.
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hy did Japan start a war its top leaders knew it had slim to no chance of winning? Japan 1941 shows us not only why but how, ushering us much farther inside Japanese decision-making than prior accounts. Eri Hotta injects vivid life into the hugely complicated process, so bound up in the Japanese cultural imperative of consensus and warped by profoundly dysfunctional political and military power structures. We watch the senior leaders as they ratify successive blurred policy agreements that create an ever-increasing inertia toward war. All the while, fanatical junior offcers maneuver their supposed superiors via rose-colored projections and staff work that channel discussions toward ever more bellicose military and diplo-
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matic options. Most importantly, the author, born in Tokyo and educated in Japan and the U.S., shows us a cohort of the country’s powerful upper leadership willing to let narrow personal and institutional interests trump their own valid fears that war will destroy the old Japanese order that they personify. The result: Pearl Harbor. Matsuoka Yosuke, one of the most infuential Japanese foreign ministers in history, exemplifes how Japan’s leaders could ignore the responsibility for their decisions. Hotta describes Yosuke aptly as a Technicolor fgure with the fair of a Kabuki actor, “overstating his every move and line to thrill the audience.” This hardliner, obsessed with his own starring role, steered Japan toward a disastrous alliance with Germany, then
Prime Minister Hideki Tojo (above) was not alone in having doubts about taking on the United States.
created a careless momentum toward war by playing a reckless game of bluff with the United States. In 1941 Yosuke performed not one but two astonishing aboutfaces. In January, he casually dismissed the prospect of a strong American response to a Japanese advance into Southern Indochina, and followed this in April by signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. In June and July, Yosuke reversed himself by urging that Japan join the German attack on the Soviets, then he belatedly warned that the advance into Southern Indochina would trigger a fateful American retaliation. Hotta sets the stage for her large,
Keystone France/Gamma Keystone via Getty imaGes; opposite: copyriGht 2013 nibariKi; inset: national archives
REVIEWS [ diverse, and revealing cast of characters with familiar but sturdy furniture: the obsession with Japan’s supposed destiny to lead Asia and overcome European imperialism and colonial attitudes; the frustrations of an endless war in China that relentlessly sapped Japan’s military power and economy; and the tempestuous relationship with Nazi Germany. She details the insistent clamor for war from the middle and lower echelons of Japanese leadership. But above all, Hotta has unearthed evidence that by 1941, almost all toptier leaders, who outwardly professed
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. 2 hours, 6 minutes. Animation. Opens February 21.
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accord with their juniors, feared that tackling the United States would bring catastrophic defeat. Even prototypical hawks like Admiral Nagano Osami privately expressed deep reservations about taking on the West. In Hotta’s intriguing portrait, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo emerges as a limited but more complex and insightful leader than usually described. Nevertheless, only Yosuke’s successor as foreign minister, Togo Shigenori—in Hotta’s crisp summary, a “sixty year old dandy with copious graying hair”—emerges as a truly tragic fgure, courageously
[ THE WIND RISES
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the A6M Zero, one of the war’s deadliest weapons. And Caproni spent most of his career designing bombers; his forays into passenger planes were disastrous. This fnal “adult” flm from Hayao Miyazaki, 73-year-old master of contemporary animation whose acclaimed “children’s” movies include Princess Mononoke, is a parable that subtly probes the ironies between dreams and reality. Dreamers, after all, can create nightmares. Scientists and engineers formulate technologies that can be used for good or ill, whatever
n airplane is a dream,” says dashing Giovanni Caproni to bespectacled Jiro Horikoshi, setting out this remarkable animated feature’s central theme. The Japanese boy, who has been studying the famed Italian airplane designer’s writings in English with a dictionary’s help, is on a roof with his sister, staring at the stars; he hopes this will strengthen his nearsighted eyes so he can become a pilot. The muted night sky, streaked with shooting stars his sister can see but he can’t, magically becomes brilliantly glowing day when Caproni appears. As he speaks, looming sixengine planes with primitive bomb racks morph into fantastic passenger airliners. “Planes are not about war, or making money,” he declares. “I am an aeronautical engineer! I don’t even know how to fy!” (From right) Zero Young Jiro’s myopic eyes creator Jiro Horikoshi, shine with aspiration. Caproni, an A6M. Jiro, of course, designed
prepared to raise a lonely voice against war in leadership councils. Buttressed by diligent research, keen analysis, and fne writing, Hotta drives home her succinctly stated central thesis: “The root problem in the Japanese government remained consistent throughout 1941: None of the top leaders, their occasional protestations notwithstanding, had suffcient will, desire, or courage to stop the momentum for war.” The gravest fault of Japan’s leaders was not fanaticism or blindness, but lack of moral courage. —Richard Frank
their intentions. Creativity’s consuming drive can subordinate everything, including morality and consequences, to its goals: Doctor Frankenstein, meet Werner von Braun. But even though dreams can carry horrifc price tags, what would we be without them? The Wind Rises naturally showcases Miyazaki’s technical invention, dazzling palette, and shifting perspectives. His depiction of the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, which Jiro experiences as a student, is a typical tour de force: the ground buckles
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REVIEWS and heaves and cracks; fres light the sky, afar at frst, then ever nearer; buildings sway and totter and fracture; people trudging on traditional wooden sandals through daily rounds panic; bits of faming debris drift down like hypnotic infernal snow. Against the unpredictable landscape, the engaging fctionalized characters refect how human aspirations, contradictions, and foibles also constantly fex and collide. For Miyazaki, the dream of fight, a recurrent motif in his movies, is the perfect metaphor: imagination battles human nature’s dark sides, which act like gravity’s pull. Jiro’s dreams, portrayed as meetings with the mustachioed Caproni and interludes with his tuberculosis-doomed sweetheart, power the movie’s dominant lyricism. His eccentric deductions from a mackerel bone about better wing design, and his careful innovations about engineering details like struts demonstrate how open-minded creativity and rigorous work combine to perfect his planes—his overriding focus in life. But larger realities intrude regularly, if elliptically. Teams of oxen pull Japanese wood-and-canvas prototypes to grassy felds for fight trials. When Jiro goes to Nazi Germany on a technology-transfer mission, he sees four-engine metal planes in huge hangars abutting concrete runways and wonders why a poor country like Japan tries to keep up. His friend replies that the military wants to fght the Russians, British, Chinese, and Americans. Jiro blinks: “Then Japan will blow up.” Eventually it does, symbolically: destroyed Zeros stretch to the horizon while a dejected Jiro tells Caproni, “Not one came back.” Miyazaki is no stranger to controversy. He has been vilifed for criticizing Japan’s re-militarization, and didn’t come to the United States to accept an Oscar (for his 2003 movie Spirited Away) because he opposed the bombing of Iraq. Talk about ironies: in Japan, The Wind Rises was ferociously attacked for antithetical reasons by the political left and right, but became a box-offce smash. See why for yourself—and even better, bring a kid. —Gene Santoro 68
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HANNS AND RUDOLF The True Story of the German Jew who Tracked down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz By Thomas Harding. 348 pp. Simon & Schuster, 2013. $26.
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he ironic trajectories of lives displaced and entangled by World War II Hanns Alexander Rudolf Höss (right) can create what writers call “natural” stories, whose plot lines arise organically from the arc of investigators in substantial numbers were historical events. In Hanns and Rudolf, deployed only in late 1946. the author pairs his great-uncle Hanns Rudolf, a farm-boy loner meant to Alexander, a Jew whose middle-class be a priest, enlisted in the Kaiser’s army family barely escaped Berlin when he was at 14, became its youngest NCO at 16, a teen, with Rudolf Höss, who joined then fought with the Freikorps in Latvia. the Nazi Party in 1922 and rose to run He spent his frst six years as a Nazi in Auschwitz. Why? Thanks to a wartime prison for “executing” a Freikorps traitor. concatenation of chance, ambition, and Later, thanks to friendships with Martin talents, the practical joker Hanns was Bormann and Heinrich Himmler, he was transformed by his duties as a British chosen to design and build Auschwitz’s army offcer at Bergen-Belsen concencamp and mass-extermination factories, tration camp, volunteered to hunt Nazis, in which he took obsessive technocratic and in 1946 nailed Rudolf, then working pride. He refurbished a huge house as a farmer with fake identifcation. With nearby for his wife Hedwig and family, poetic justice, the Nazi chieftain was who lived sumptuously. After the war, hanged at Auschwitz a year later. she betrayed him; Hanns, who had An adept storyteller, Harding makes the found Rudolf’s family but not his quarry, most of this twist of history. Alternating threatened to turn their son over to the chapters illuminate each man’s Russians unless Hedwig snitched life in detail and context. Hanns on her husband. was the son of a doctor, a decRudolf Höss’s testimony at orated World War I veteran Nuremburg about the mechanwho refused to believe his fellow ics of Nazi extermination gave Germans would embrace Nazi the frst detailed look at how anti-Semitism until it was almost millions died, undercutting too late. After making it to defendants’ claims at the trials England, Hanns and his twin, that they knew nothing about Paul, drew on ingenuity and perit. Famously, even the psycholsistence to overcome the hurdles facing ogists who interviewed Rudolf found no German Jewish immigrants who wanted trace of remorse; the word “psychosis” to join the fght against Nazi Germany; was used in their reports. knowing fve languages, Hanns became Based on Rudolf’s memoir, Hanns’s an interpreter. A handsome young dandy, papers, family documents and memohe sowed his oats while his fancée (and ries, and his own solid research, Harding eventual wife) tried to rein him in. Along evokes two men whose paths would the way comes enriching background, never have crossed had history not bent like how belated the English efforts to their lives onto a collision course. round up Nazis at large were: trained —Gene Santoro courtesy of simon & schuster (both)
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REVIEWS [ NAZI HUNTERS Time: 60 minutes each. 8 episodes. National Geographic Channel.
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his interesting, well-wrought new series doesn’t limit its notion of Nazi hunters to postwar pursuers of fugitives. Of course, it includes episodes on infamous escaped Nazis. Among them: Adolf Eichmann, the nuts-and-bolts organizer of the Holocaust who ignored Heinrich Himmler’s orders and continued slaughtering tens of thousands of Jews until the Reich’s last weeks, then vanished from the postwar wreckage without a trace for years; Josef Mengele, the infamous human experimenter who evaded the Israeli Mossad team that seized Eichmann in Argentina by moving to Nazi-friendly Paraguay, then Brazil, where he died unmolested; and John “Ivan the Terrible”
on thE tubE
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Demjanjuk, one of hundreds of Ukrainian concentration camp guards who, after distinguishing himself from his brutal peers by his grotesque levels of inhumanity, managed to live undetected in America for decades. Other episodes, however, tackle more offbeat topics. One showcases the postwar Jewish Avengers, a band of Holocaust survivors who scoured the world searching for unpunished Nazis. In 1946 the group attempted to poison 3,000 Nazi prisoners by lacing their bread with arsenic, only to have their victims saved by swift U.S. Army ambulances and stomach pumps. Another recreates how the British SOE and Czech resistance plotted to assassinate
Reinhard Heydrich, the SS golden boy who spearheaded the Holocaust and ruthlessly oppressed Czechoslovakia. Exemplifying the series’ attention to detail, we see Heydrich’s car coming around the fateful bend at Prague’s suburban edge, then watch him order his driver to stop so he can return fre after one assassin shoots at his car and misses; that characteristic bravado lets the second assassin toss a grenade into the vehicle, mortally wounding the Nazi icon with pieces of shrapnel and bits of auto metal and upholstery; septicemia would kill him eight days later. Stellar footage, good commentary, solid recreated scenes. —Gene Santoro
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REVIEWS [ WE BAND OF ANgELS The Untold Story of american women Trapped on Bataan By Elizabeth M. Norman. 384 pp. Random House, 2013. $16. An eye-opening and engrossing saga of 77 American military nurses, all volunteers, whose lives of peacetime ease crashed to a halt when Japan invaded the Philippines. Through the siege they worked tirelessly in emergency feld hospitals with ebbing supplies and food, then were imprisoned for three years—the largest group of female POWs in U.S. history—in harrowing circumstances. Newly expanded and reissued.
“A” FORcE The origins of British deception during the Second world war By Whitney T. Bendeck. 272 pp. Naval Institute, 2013. $45.95. By mid-1940, the British were on the ropes. When the Italians came to North Africa for a seeming coup de grâce, British forces there were puny, ill-armed, and isolated. In response, General Archibald Wavell, the Middle East commander in chief, championed massive deception operations that foreshadowed later successes like D-Day.
book brIEfs
WARSAW 1944 Hitler, Himmler, and the warsaw Uprising By Alexandra Richie. 752 pp. Farrar Straus, 2013. $40. The author of Faust’s Metropolis, a mammoth tome on the history of Berlin, takes a similar epic approach here, recapitulating in cinematic style the fresh research that powered several recent notable books on this knotty subject.
A DEATH IN SAN PIETRO The Untold Story of Ernie Pyle, John Huston, and the Fight for Purple Heart Valley By Tim Brady. 304 pp. Da Capo, 2013. $25.99. The colorful, moving tale starts slowly but builds momentum as it relates how Captain Henry Waskow’s company of the 36th “Texas” Division struggled to survive the brutal fghting and conditions of Italy’s Apennine Mountains, until 80 percent of its men were lost in action. Pyle’s syndicated column about Waskow became a classic; Huston’s award-winning documentary produced shock in America when audiences for the frst time confronted the war’s raw carnage on the big screen.
[ LITTLE JOE: A NOVEL By Michael E. Glasscock III. 256 pp. Greenleaf, 2013. $18.95.
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n fall 1942, a nine-year-old boy comes to after a car crash to fnd his mother and father, a U.S. Navy lieutenant, were killed on impact. Now the Texas city kid has to live with his maternal grandparents in rural Tennessee, and the shocks keep coming. He learns to eat heavy, greasy farm food; feed the chickens and deal with chores; face down a young bully from the town’s
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kId stuff
THE SEcRET WAR FOR THE MIDDLE EAST The Infuence of axis and allied Intelligence operations during world war II By Youssef Aboul-Enein and Basil Aboul-Enein. 288 pp. Naval Institute, 2013. $49.95. A comprehensive, often-startling exploration of how the Axis used anti-Semitism, nationalism, Fascism, and Marxism to fan and exploit anti-British Arab passions, and how that shaped today’s Middle East conficts. Derived from lectures aimed primarily at military and intelligence specialists, it is dryly academic but also thought-provoking and revealing.
SPEcIAL OPERATIONS IN WORLD WAR II British and american Irregular warfare By Andrew L. Hargreaves. 432 pp. University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. $36.95. A serious analysis for serious readers without much derring-do, this study focuses on how and whether and why irregular warfare actually worked, right down to cost-beneft analyses. —Gene Santoro
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Deliverance-style family, the Colemans; and make friends with a cute girl down the road named Sugar. The war enters his daily life via his grandmother: part-Cherokee, educated, shrewd, opinionated, and forceful, she has a map in her kitchen to track the troop movements she gleans from newspapers and the radio, which is always on. She is empathetic and tough as well as smart: she stands off the Colemans when they attack a Chinese man driving to see his son, who is about to ship off with the navy. As the sheriff arrives with
his shotgun to disperse the lynch mob, Little Joe discovers racism. When his handyman grandfather’s black helper shows up with his son Bobby, Little Joe becomes Bobby’s playmate and learns about Jim Crow. A smoothly written if somewhat contrived story for tweens, Little Joe nicely evokes growing up country during wartime. —Gene Santoro
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How Jesus became the most infuential fgure of all time! Who he was What he taught Where he walked How he became...
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hether we believe he was the Son of God or simply a sage country rabbi, Jesus—a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth born some 2,000 years ago— became the most infuential single individual in history. In this special issue from Weider History, scholars, historians and theologians trace the life, times and teachings of Jesus, and explore the history of this dynamic personality and the lasting imprint he has lef on humankind for the past 20 centuries.
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The Moral World of Twelve O' Clock High By Mark Grimsley
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WELVE O'CLOCK HIGH, a justly celebrated flm about the air war over Europe, shows barely any high-altitude violence. Even so, director Henry King and his actors expertly illuminate the complex burden of commanding personnel engaged in the brutal grind of repeatedly fying into combat as the odds of survival shorten. The portrait they render of men under pressure achieves a timeless, unblinking clarity. This is why, more than 60 years after its 1949 premiere, military educators still employ Twelve O’Clock High to talk about leadership. These conversations usually address such practicalities as command style, but the flm offers insights on many other levels. During my two years as a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College, I showed my students—mostly colonels fresh from Afghanistan and Iraq—a key scene from the flm in order to make them think and talk about how the ethical reasoning in its imaginary world informs real-world offcership. Twelve O’Clock High begins with the fictional 918th Bomb Group returning from a disastrous raid against German submarine pens in St. Nazaire, only to have Bomber Command order a lowaltitude run at the pens the very next day. Group commander Colonel Keith Davenport (Gary Merrill) protests to Brigadier General Frank Savage (Gregory Peck). “Those boys are fesh and blood. They’ll die for you but they gotta know they have a chance and they know they haven’t got one,” Davenport says. “They weider archives
an air-war story, the flm depicts ethical reasoning systems in harsh opposition.
know a man’s chances run out in 15 missions. Somebody’s gotta give them a limit. A goal, some hope of living.” Savage reluctantly conveys Davenport’s misgivings to their superior, Major General Pritchard (Millard Mitchell), who with Savage confronts Davenport, an otherwise unimpeachable offcer. Here is where the film’s moral world comes into focus. The three officers, in the company of other men of the 918th, discuss the deadly raid, whose heavy losses they trace to a navigational error. Davenport tries to shield the man who made that mistake, the mission’s navigator, Lieutenant Zimmerman (Lee MacGregor). But Zimmerman steps forward. He forthrightly explains how his errors brought the 918th late to the target and into German antiaircraft gunners’ sights. As soon as Zimmerman is out of earshot, Pritchard pressures Davenport to relieve him. Davenport refuses. Pritchard relieves Davenport, ultimately replacing him
with Savage. Within hours, Zimmerman, off-camera, commits suicide. This brief sequence, I explained to my students, puts three ethical reasoning systems into opposition. Davenport reasons deontologically; in his world certain actions are absolutely impermissible. To push his aircrews too far is to break faith with them. Anyone could have made the error Zimmerman did; Davenport will not sacrifce a man for that—though he can’t stop Zimmerman from literally sacrifcing himself. Pritchard and Savage personify consequentialist reasoning; for them, ends justify means. If they must sacrifice entire aircrews to achieve a mission’s goal, so be it. As Savage will brutally tell the 918th, “Consider yourselves already dead.” The vocabulary may be unfamiliar, but we all know these lines of logic. My students overwhelmingly declared themselves consequentialists, but I find more grist for the discussion mill in Zimmerman’s reasoning. Refusing Davenport’s protection, the doomed navigator takes ownership of his awful mistake, based upon his character-based sense of right and wrong—what ethicists call aretaic reasoning. You may not recognize this arcane term, but you do know aretaic reasoning: it is the selfless logic of leading by example. In 2009, General Carter Ham, a no-nonsense offcer then commanding all U.S. Army forces in Europe, made public the fact that he was undergoing treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder arising march/april 2014
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from combat in Iraq. The army had been encouraging personnel with PTSD to seek treatment, but that campaign had run straight into a wall in the form of offcers’ historic culture of stoicism. To break this cycle of denial, a high-ranking offcer had to say out loud that he needed help and that he was getting it. Some attempted to dissuade Ham, but he would not—could not—remain silent. In making a personal stand, he helped shift the army’s culture. When it comes to changing an organization, it is seldom enough to announce a new policy; for that policy to take practical hold, senior leadership must act on it and personally model the behavior implicit in that policy. In Twelve O’Clock High, Lieutenant Zimmerman’s display of moral courage quickly passes out of frame. But, as General Ham dramatically showed, we should not only recognize how much an example of such courage matters in a flm but understand its
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For policy to take practical hold, senior leadership must model the behavior implicit in that policy. importance in everyday life. Zimmerman’s stand resonates with me. In the same way that General Ham chose to go public with having PTSD, I have for many years felt morally obligated to be public about my having bipolar disorder. I want “normal” people to see that most of us with mental illnesses are not broken, but can and do lead productive, fulflling lives. This has not come without cost: an unscrupulous person once ruthlessly tried to exploit my candor. And like General Ham, I heard discouraging words from individuals who feared I placed myself
at risk of exactly such exploitation. In contrast, my students at the Army War College accorded me respect and support. Among some faculty, the affirmative response to my openness went even further. About 30 percent of offcers returning from combat were expected to have symptoms of combat stress reaction, which if untreated could become PTSD. The hope was that these personnel would take advantage of the many forms of assistance available on campus. True, combat stress reaction is a type of wound, while bipolar disorder is an illness, but both conditions carry a stigma that needs dispelling. So in some quarters I was seen as something of a role model. In Twelve O’Clock High, the tragic arc of Lieutenant Zimmerman’s moral courage functions within the plot as a sideshow. But, as in the case of General Ham—and, I hope, myself—sometimes a sideshow can exert the power of a main event. ✯
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Pinup
Wide Awake auburn-haired actress Martha Vickers appeared as a Yank magazine pinup three times. Her body of flm work began with the role of a body—playing dead in 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. She had a bigger part a year later in Marine Raiders, but her most memorable turn came just after the war. in 1946’s The Big Sleep, playing lauren Bacall’s wild sister, the still-innocent teenager wowed fellow actors and later audiences with an inspired “bad girl” performance. as Humphrey Bogart’s Philip Marlowe says about their characters’ frst meeting, “She tried to sit on my
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As long as man has gone into battle, man has studied war
An extraordinary anthology of work from the foremost writers on military history today, all recipients of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library’s annual Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing
James M. McPherson Pulitzer Prizewinning author of more than a dozen books on the Civil War and its legacy
Allan R. Millett award-winning military historian concentrating on the Marine Corps, World War II, and the Korean War
Gerhard L. Weinberg World War II veteran and author of A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II and other books on that confict
Rick Atkinson three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, author of the Liberation Trilogy, a narrative history of the U.S. military in Europe, 1942–1945
Carlo D’Este acclaimed author of World War II battle histories and biographies of the war’s major leaders
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