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HOW THE NAVY MADE FIVE BROTHERS CELEBRITIES IN LIFE AND HEROES IN DEATH
SCOTS ATTACK THE FRENCH—IN SYRIA BATTLE OF THE LA COLISEUM A GI’S WAR IN PEN, PAINT, AND BLOOD
The Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, aboard the USS Juneau, February 14, 1942.
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A recruiting poster-perfect band of RAF pilots and commanders in September 1940; for some badly injured airmen this would be a dream to mourn—and to reattain. IWM CH 1299; COVER: US NAVY
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JUNE 2017 ENDORSED BY THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM, INC.
F E AT U R E S C OV E R S TO RY
30 THE FIGHTING SULLIVANS The navy honored five brothers’ request to serve together, and made much of their story—before and after their shocking deaths BRUCE KUKLICK
40 GUINEA PIG CLUB Where badly injured flyers found healing and brotherhood ROBERT G. DORFMAN, EMILY BERQUIST SOULE, and SUKUMAR P. DESAI
PORTFOLIO
48 PACIFIC WAR DIARY An artist and GI explored the nightmarish realms of war in an illustrated journal PAUL MAGGIONI
WEAPONS MANUAL
54 DEATH FROM ABOVE German paratroopers hit the ground fight-ready with the FG-42 rifle
56 STORM THE COLISEUM Why would anyone build a Pacific atoll in the Los Angeles Coliseum? Good reason, it turns out JOSEPH CONNOR
60 BATTLE OF LITANI RIVER On one hard-fought day in Syria, an untested unit of commandos took on the Vichy French GAVIN MORTIMER
D E PART M E N T S
8 MAIL 10 WORLD WAR II TODAY 18 CONVERSATION
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Fighting fires and saving identities on the USS West Virginia
20 FROM THE FOOTLOCKER 24 FIRE FOR EFFECT 26 TIME TRAVEL The once-bustling shipyard at Bremerton, Washington
68 REVIEWS 74 BATTLE FILMS 79 CHALLENGE 80 PINUP JUNE 2017
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WWII Online Visit us at WorldWarII.com Michael A. Reinstein CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER David Steinhafel ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Alex Neill EDITOR IN CHIEF
VOL. 32, NO. 1 JUNE 2017
EDITOR
KAREN JENSEN Paraag Shukla SENIOR EDITOR Rasheeda Smith ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon Guttman, Jerry Morelock HISTORIANS David Zabecki CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN Paul Wiseman NEWS EDITOR Stephen Kamifuji CREATIVE DIRECTOR Brian Walker GROUP ART DIRECTOR Paul Fisher ART DIRECTOR Guy Aceto PHOTO EDITOR
For more on Britian’s audacious special operations forces— by the author of this issue’s “Baptism of Fire at Litani River,” Gavin Mortimer—check out these great features:
Pirates of the High Desert How a group of gentleman explorers became Britain’s legendary Long Range Desert Group
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CONTR I BUTORS
KUKLICK CONNOR
DESAI
SOULE
MORTIMER
JESSICA WAMBACH BROWN (“Time Travel”) writes for history publications from her home in Carnation, Washington. After years of hearing her adopted grandmother’s stories of growing up across the fence from Navy Yard Puget Sound in Bremerton, Washington, she hopped a ferry from Seattle to explore for herself the legacy of the shipyard that repaired and modernized hundreds of vessels for the wartime fleet.
JOSEPH CONNOR (“Storm the Coliseum) is a former newspaper reporter, editor, and assistant county prosecutor in New Jersey. His story on the over-the-top 1944 pep rally in the Los Angeles Coliseum stems from his long-time fascination with the logistics of the full mobilization that came with World War II and the people who made that mobilization possible.
SUKUMAR P. DESAI (“The Guinea Pig Club”) teaches anesthesia at Harvard Medical School—Brigham and
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BROWN
Women’s Hospital in Boston. His interest in history was piqued by a visit to the Ether Dome at Massachusetts General Hospital, the site of the first successful public demonstration of ether anesthesia.
ROBERT G. DORFMAN (“The Guinea Pig Club”) is a research fellow in the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Northwestern. He holds dual degrees in medicine and history, and was educated at the University of Oxford as well as Northwestern, where he was admitted to medical school at the age of 18.
BRUCE KUKLICK (“A Band of Brothers”) is a professor of American history emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of several books on U.S. history, including Blind Oracles: Intellectuals and War from Kennan to Kissinger (2006), Black Philosopher; White Academy (2008), and most recently, The Fighting Sullivans: How Hollywood and the Military Make Heroes
DORFMAN
(2016). Kuklick became interested in the story of the five Sullivan brothers by watching the 1944 movie again and again on YouTube.
GAVIN MORTIMER (“Baptism of Fire at Litani River”) is a British historian and author who lives in Paris. Mortimer has interviewed more than 150 special forces veterans for his research, including some of the men who served in No. 11 Commando and saw action at the Battle of Litani River. His next book, The Long Range Desert Group in World War II, is due out this spring. EMILY BERQUIST SOULE (“The Guinea Pig Club”) is a history professor at California State University, Long Beach, and author of The Bishop’s Utopia (2014). In 2013, she appeared as a history expert on the Travel Channel’s artifact-hunting show “Digfellas.” She is presently at work on a new book, The Atlantic Slave Trade in the Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire.
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“Kilroy” was a popular doodle during the war; this image appears on the National WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C.
WELCOME PARTY
I
enjoyed Joseph Connor’s “Shore Party” (January/February 2017) on General Douglas MacArthur’s October 20, 1944, performance on Leyte’s Red Beach. At the time, my ship, the USS Hidatsa, was down the beach off the Dulag area, furnishing cover fire against the Japanese Betty bombers. In MacArthur’s January 9, 1945, performance at Lingayen Gulf, we were only there long enough to get straddled by a couple of bombs that made the hull of the Hidatsa ring like a bell. In August 1945, most of our aircraft carriers were off the coast of Japan, bombing military targets in preparation for the scheduled November Kyushu landings. After the Japanese surrender, the bombing was suspended and all our carriers had to do was maintain security patrols over the fleet. When the navy heard that MacArthur was flying to Japan, a young navy fighter pilot on one of the carriers recognized that his assigned security patrol would give him an overview of the general’s arrival. Before taking off on his patrol, he armed himself with a large paint brush and a bucket of paint from the ship’s paint locker. Landing briefly on the airstrip where the
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general was scheduled to arrive, the pilot painted his message in large letters. Some hours later when MacArthur landed, there it was for him to see–KILROY WAS HERE . Frank B. Turberville Jr. Milton, N.C.
MISTAKEN IDENTITY I believe your description of Henriette von Schirach as a secretary to Hitler in your news article, “Two Wrongs Make a Profit” (“WWII Today,” November/December 2016), is not accurate. She was the wife of a convicted war criminal, not a secretary, but she had confrontations with Hitler over his treatment of the Jews and as a result was excluded from his circle—one of few who got away with it. Wikipedia gives a rather accurate biography of her. I cannot comment on her dealing in stolen art and do not wish to justify her purchase of the painting. However, I would like to know the name of the artist. Love your magazine! William Lahl Cuddebackville, N.Y. Editor’s note: The stolen painting, titled “View of a Dutch Square,” is actually a reproduction of seventeenth-century Dutch artist Jan van der Heyden’s painting of the same name. The artist who created the copy is unknown.
KAREN BLEIER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
MAIL
The original work, however, is in Paris currently on exhibit at the Louvre.
GUILT BY ASSOCIATION? Regarding your news item “Recipe for Revenge” (“WWII Today,” January/February 2017), did the Jewish “Avengers” really intend to poison all 60,000 German POWs incarcerated outside the camp near Nuremberg? This seems a bit extreme, especially when one considers that most of those imprisoned were not Nazis, but ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers pressed into service in defense of their country. Look at any photo depicting thousands of German prisoners behind barbed wire and you will largely see your run-of-the-mill soldier, airman, or tanker with a few officers mingled in between, many of whom were not necessarily Nazis. To label these prisoners as Nazis is like saying they were all card-carrying mem-
Investigators discover a hiding place used to stash the arsenic.
LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; RIGHT: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES
bers of the party and is a gross misrepresentation. I would have no problem if these Jewish resistance fighters had had as their target bona fide Nazi anti-Semites and Holocaust perpetrators, but the article unfortunately fails to make this distinction. How could it, when faced with such a vast number of prisoners? Thomas A. Kamla South Abington Township, Pa.
CREDIT WHERE DUE I enjoyed your article on the problem of keeping the Yamamoto mission quiet so as not to tip the Japanese that their code was broken (“Have You Heard?” January/February 2017); but by simply mentioning that there is ongoing controversy between Rex T. Barber and Thomas G. Lanphier Jr. as to who shot Yamamoto down continues to give plausibility that that self-serving, attention-mongering Lanphier killed Yamamoto. American veter-
ans’ groups and fighter associations largely agree there is more than sufficient evidence and Japanese testimony proving that Barber was indeed the pilot who brought down Yamamoto’s plane and that Lanphier downed nothing that day. Thomas Fritz Gold Canyon, Ariz.
TRACKING THE CULPRIT In the article on the ambush of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (“Have You Heard?”), one of the P-38s—flown by Lieutenant Raymond K. Hine—did not return. What happened to him? Did one of the escorting Zeros shoot him down and was his plane or body ever found? The 56th Fighter Group flew P-47 Thunderbolts in the European conflict. Are any still alive, particularly Lieutenant Robert Johnson, who had 28 aerial kills? Sidney J. Sanders Reserve, La. Editor’s note: In his 2005 book, Lightning Strike, author Donald A. Davis writes that there is no accurate determination about the fate of Lieutenant Hine. Two Japanese Zero pilots claimed to have attacked and damaged an American P-38 during the engagement, causing it to “emit a plume of black smoke.” Hine had previously flown P-40s with the 68th Fighter Squadron, and the Yamamoto raid was his only combat mission in a P-38. We have no way of determining how many of these pilots are still alive, but sadly fighter ace Robert S. Johnson passed away in December 1998. He recounted his wartime experiences in his 1958 memoir, Thunderbolt!
FROM THE EDITOR This issue features a notable “last”: our final “Reading List” feature. To bid it farewell, we’re revisiting a noteworthy and unusual contribution from six years ago; see page 12. Look for a replacement coming soon. As always, we welcome your feedback—and are glad for your company. —Karen Jensen
Raymond K. Hine
HUNKY HEROES In your story concerning the sex-starved German fräulein lifestyle (“Unstoppable Force,” January/February 2017), you left out a most-important fact. In most areas of Germany during the war, the only male occupants were young boys and old men. The young German men were serving in some faraway country. Then came into their areas the well-built, handsome Allied conquerors. ‘Nuff said! Joseph Doyon Portland, Ore.
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JUNE 2017
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W W I I TO DAY R EPO RTED AND WRITTEN B Y PAUL WISEMA N
THEY TURN UP AT FLEA MARKETS, antique shops, and more surprising places—Purple Hearts and other medals presented to combat veterans, to the wounded, and the fallen. Zachariah Fike, 36, wants to make sure the medals get back to where they belong: with the families of the men who received them in World War II and other conflicts. Since 2009, Fike, a major in the Vermont Army National Guard, has been collecting Purple Hearts and other lost or stolen medals and returning them—at no cost—to the families of the original recipients. In 2012, Fike started the nonprofit Purple Hearts Reunited (www. purpleheartsreunited.org) and, for his efforts, was named the 2016 Army Times Soldier of the Year. Fike knows Purple Hearts—he received one after being wounded in a rocket attack in Afghanistan on September 11, 2010—but his effort to return the medals started earlier. In 2009, his mother
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SARAH MATTISON (BOTH)
PURPLE HEART INVESTIGATOR
TOP: AF ARCHIVE/ALAMY; BOTTOM: REUTERS
Founder of Purple Hearts Reunited, Zac Fike (opposite) aims to reunite lost Purple Hearts and other medals with the families of the men awarded them, at no cost. His organization has so far returned 300 medals.
bought a Purple Heart for $100 in an antique shop and gave it to him as a present for Christmas. But that didn’t feel right to Fike; someone else had been awarded that Purple Heart. The back inscription read, “Private Corrado A.G. Piccoli.” After discovering that the Italian-born 20-year-old had been killed in northeastern France on October 7, 1944, Fike decided to track down Piccoli’s descendants. Fike’s deployment to Afghanistan interrupted his search, but he resumed the project upon his return. He drove to Piccoli’s old high school in Watertown, New York, and saw the fallen man’s 1942 yearbook photo. Shortly after, he tracked down Piccoli’s sister, Adeline Rockko-Piccoli, 87, in New Jersey. At first, Adeline was skeptical of Fike’s claim, as she hadn’t realized her brother’s Purple Heart had gone missing, but she decided to drive 400 miles to see him. They arranged for Fike to return the Purple Heart—framed along with other military honors—to the Piccolis at a reunion of 40 family members. Fike realized he was onto something: there were lots of stray medals out there and he wanted to help get them home. After news outlets picked up the Piccoli story, people from all over the country started reaching out to him. “We haven’t looked back,” he said. Since then, Purple Hearts Reunited has returned 300 Purple Hearts and other medals to their rightful owners. Fike and his team of volunteers collect the medals—sometimes buying them from shops and collectors—research the stories behind them, frame the decorations, and locate and present them to the recipients’ families. After working all day at the Vermont National Guard, Fike puts his young children to bed and labors into the early morning, collecting information and searching for families. He recently hired a fulltime director for the nonprofit, which helped ease the workload. When the family of Private Joseph Martin Jordan—killed on D-Day as one of the “Band of Brothers” in Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division—reached out to Purple Hearts Reunited, Fike tracked down Jordan’s Purple Heart and returned it to the family. There is a steady stream of work, and the medals turn up in unexpected places, in unexpected ways—a repairman found one in a washing machine; a dog named Smuckers dug up a Korean War Purple Heart in a Denver backyard. Not all are thrilled by Fike’s efforts, and militaria collectors have been a constant source of antagonism. Posthumously awarded Purple Hearts typically fetch $300-$500 and can be worth thousands of dollars if related to a major historical event, such as the Battle of the Bulge. Fike and his team are rapidly taking those medals off the market, cutting into collectors’ incomes. Representative Paul Cook (R-CA) was impressed by Fike’s work and has introduced legislation—the Private Corrado Piccoli Purple Heart Preservation Act—prohibiting sale of the medals. Fike doubts his work will ever be completed: 1.8 million Purple Hearts have been issued, and thousands have gone astray. “We’re just scratching the surface,” he says. But he’ll keep trying.
WORD FOR WORD
“Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.” —Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels in a speech to party members, January 9, 1928
D I S PAT C H E S British correspondent Clare Hollingworth, who reported on Germany’s plan to invade Poland three days before the invasion began, died on January 10, at 105. On August 28, 1939, she was driving near the Polish border when a gust of wind lifted a line of roadside screens, revealing massed German troops and armored vehicles. Her Daily Telegraph story ran the next day; the German Blitzkrieg began on September 1.
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VLADIMIR PUTIN WITH THIS ISSUE, World War II says goodbye to its “Reading List” feature, which has run for the past eight years. For our sendoff, we decided to revisit our most surprising entry. Russian President Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s prime minister, originally contributed to our March/April 2011 issue, with a requirement that his piece run uncut and unedited. The list—which includes praise for a World War II article about the truck drivers who crossed frozen Lake Ladoga to deliver food to the besieged citizens of Leningrad, Putin’s birthplace (now Saint Petersburg)—follows.
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ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE CAPLANIS
W W I I TO DAY T H E R E A D I N G L I S T
Dear Friends, I am glad to describe some of the books about World War II that are especially meaningful to me—all the more so since I learned about the great research and educational work that World War II is doing. I would like to thank the authors and the editorial board of the publication for the serious and thoughtful approach to one of the most difficult pages in the history of civilization. I was deeply touched by the article “Russia’s Ice Road Truckers” (November/ December 2010), dedicated to Leningrad of the blockade period and the immortal feats of the inhabitants of that heroic city. In general, I would like to note the serious, objective, and professional approach that characterizes World War II. Practically every family in Russia had its own casualties in that war. Both the pride in the victory and the pain of the losses are passed from generation to generation. And I think you will understand why we perceive any falsifications, any distortions of the history of World War II, any betrayal of the memory of the victory over Nazism as a personal insult, a sacrilege. For us it is very important that the majority of people all over the world share this principled position—that the voice of scholars and journalists, considering their professional and moral duty, sound loudly to tell the truth about World War II, its sources and lessons, and about the priceless experience of alliance. About the true heroes, in the face of which time does not really matter. And about the criminals who are not subject to rehabilitation. Russian experts and historians are now very productively collaborating with colleagues from Germany, Poland, and other European countries. The veil of secrecy is being lifted from archival collections, and documents are finally being published. Roundtables and joint seminars are being held on World War II and on the seminal, dramatic, and sometimes debatable and not completely unambiguous events of the 1930s and 1940s. We support such a scholarly, nonpoliticized dialogue, and assume that American specialists will join in such efforts. The memory of World War II, its terrible images, and its tragic times will always be imprinted in the reminiscences of its eyewitnesses—in their letters, stories, and memoirs. Turning to them gives us much to ponder.
TOP RIGHT: MUSEUM OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR (INSET, KEYS: DOMINIK JAGODZINSKI); BOTTOM: U-BOAT.NET
And, of course, the creative work of writers who served on the front lines—for example, nobody wrote about the history of World War I or about broken destinies more sincerely or truthfully than Hemingway or Remarque. Russia is by rights proud of its entire constellation of outstanding writers and poets who were at the front and saw death face to face. I would recommend that you read their honest books, as they are devoid of falsification and pathos. Learn about the heroes in the stories and novels of our war correspondents Konstantin Simonov (The Living and the Dead, 1959) or Mikhail Sholokhov (The Fate of a Man, 1957; They Fought for Their Country, 1959). Learn about the self-affirmation and great patience of the ordinary Soviet soldier, who became the theme of the works of officers Boris Vasil’ev (And the Dawns Here Are Quiet, 1969; He Was Not on the List, 1974) and Konstantin Vorob’ev (Killed Near Moscow, 1963; It is We, God! 1943). The book Moment of Truth (1973) by Vladimir Bogomolov, who went as a volunteer to the front, will tell you about the difficult days of military intelligence, filled with danger. Let me add that these and many other works of our writers who served at the front have been translated into foreign languages. They have been adapted for the screen and some have become classics. To conclude, I would like to wish the editors and readers of World War II all the best. Let us together protect and vindicate the truth.
D I S PAT C H E S German researchers say they found the wreck of a U-boat off Pico Island, in the Azores. The Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation reported the discovery on February 2, exactly 75 years after U-581 was scuttled after a confrontation with British destroyer HMS Westcott; 42 of the U-boat’s 46-man crew survived. Researchers Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen used a custom-made submersible to locate the U-boat last September and later released footage showing the wreck covered in coral, the Associated Press reported.
MUSEUM FIGHTS EFFORTS TO SIMPLIFY POLAND’S WAR STORY
HISTORIANS ARE BATTLING Poland’s populist government over an unconventional museum. The independent $110-million Museum of the Second World War, an angular glass tower warehousing 37,000 objects in 65,000 square feet, was supposed to open earlier this year in Gdansk. But a legal dispute with Poland’s governing Law and Justice Party delayed its debut. Under director Pawel Machcewicz, the Museum of the Second World War intended to take a broad look at the war, highlighting the suffering of ordinary people around the globe, including the German program to starve to death three million Soviet prisoners of war. But Poland’s nationalist governing party, which views history as a tool to promote patriotism and loyalty to the state, wants the Museum of the Second World War to focus only on the Polish experience and merge with a planned—but currently unbuilt— smaller museum commemorating the 1939 Battle of Westerplatte, where Polish defenders fought in vain to repel the Nazi invasion. On January 31, a Polish court blocked the government’s attempt to assume control of the Museum of the Second World War— though the respite is expected to be temporary. Writing last year in the New York Review of Books, Yale University historian Timothy Snyder said the museum challenged the Polish government’s binary view of Poles as either wartime victims or heroes. For instance, the museum has in its collection the house keys of Jews from the northeastern town of Jedwabne. Rounded up by their neighbors on July 10, 1941, they were locked into a barn and Poland’s imperiled burned to death. The doomed inhabitants Museum of the Second brought their keys when they were sumWorld War (above) in moned, thinking they’d be going home. Gdansk. Inset: the Without the museum, Snyder wrote, their haunting house keys keys “may never be seen again.” of Jedwabne.
JUNE 2017
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D-DAY VETERAN A tattered flag taken from an American landing craft on D-Day fetched $75,000 at an auction in January. Assigned to deliver tanks to Utah Beach during the Normandy invasion, LCT-595 came under heavy machinegun fire. Commanders allowed Boatswain George Rudisill to keep the bullet-riddled 48-star flag after they ordered him to replace it with a new one. After the war, Rudisill, who died in 2013, kept the flag in a shoebox. Milestone Auctions of Willoughby, Ohio, sold the flag to an undisclosed buyer.
After 14 straight losses to Annapolis’s Midshipmen, West Point’s Army football team tried something different in December for their annual Army-Navy rivalry game: they donned uniforms designed to honor those worn during World War II by the 82nd Airborne Division, which fought in Sicily, Italy, France, Holland, and Germany. The uniforms, which included the “All-American” 82nd’s patch, flag, and regimental logos, may have helped: Army won 21-17.
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An American sub scouts Tokyo Bay before the Doolittle Raid in the 1943 film Destination Tokyo.
A SK W WII Q: Is it true that an American submarine sailed into Tokyo Bay to obtain vital info for Jimmy Doolittle and his flyers prior to their raid on Tokyo and other sites in April 1942? —Eugene Santilli, Riverdale, N.Y.
WHEN THE ALLIES captured Heinrich Steinmeyer (above) in August 1944, they labeled him a Category C prisoner—a potentially dangerous hardline Nazi—and shipped him to Cultybraggan POW camp, near the town of Comrie, in central Scotland. Within a year, the Waffen SS soldier was a different man, struck by the beautiful countryside and transformed by the unexpected kindness of its people. Steinmeyer died in 2014, and after three years of legal wrangling, he posthumously paid them back, leaving Comrie 385,000 British pounds (about $480,000), earmarked to help the town’s elderly. “I would like to express my gratitude to the people of Scotland for the kindness and generosity that I have experienced,” he had written in his will. Steinmeyer grew up poor in Silesia (now
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SEND QUERIES TO: Ask World War II, 1919 Gallows Road, Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182, OR EMAIL:
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part of Poland) and worked as an apprentice butcher before joining the SS at age 17. In August 1944, he was defending a bridge in Caen, France, when he was captured and taken to Cultybraggan. Local schoolchildren befriended Steinmeyer through the POW camp’s fence. Learning that he’d never seen a movie, they organized a temporary getaway. “They smuggled him out of the camp through the chain-link fence and into the cinema,” George Carlson, whose mother was one of the kids who planned the caper, told BBC. “He was absolutely blown away.” In June 1945, Steinmeyer transferred out of Cultybraggan to other Scottish camps before being released in 1948. He remained in Scotland a few years before returning to Germany, eventually settling near Bremen. After he died, his ashes were scattered in the hills overlooking the Scottish POW camp. “The whole place was so beautiful,” he once recalled. “It went straight to my heart, and I thought, ‘Why have I been fighting this bloody war?’”
LEFT: TINA NORRIS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; RIGHT: WARNER BROS.
AN SS MAN’S KIND ACT TO A KIND TOWN
A: Yes. The U.S. Navy had submarines Trout and Thresher patrolling the waters off Japan, and tasked them to track weather conditions and monitor shipping traffic in advance of the raid. Both submarines also seized the opportunity to attack Japanese ships. More important for Jimmy Doolittle’s purposes, however, was information from assistant naval attaché Stephen Jurika Jr. Based in Tokyo before the war, Jurika constructed vital bombing maps, which he ingeniously assembled from Japanese government maps and commercial brochures he picked up on visits to area steel mills and factories. Jurika later briefed Doolittle and his men on board the carrier Hornet en route to Tokyo—and their rightful place in American history. — James M. Scott, author of Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist in History
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FIRE AND MEMORY
JIM DOWNING, 103, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and joined the U.S. Navy in 1932, hoping to see the world outside his hometown. After six months at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, he went aboard USS West Virginia in California. As a gunner’s mate, he manned one of the battleship’s four 16-inch gun turrets, which fired 2,000-pound shells as far as 21 miles.
The U.S. Pacific Fleet moved from the California coast to Hawaii in 1940. How did you feel about the move? None of us felt very good. Pearl Harbor wasn’t equipped to handle that many ships—no logistics. It felt like a sudden decision; we were there on routine maneuvers and then the word came from Washington to stay. We had to move all of our supply ships out there, too. And Honolulu was so crowded— there were about 86,000 military personnel from the navy, army, and Marines. We weren’t very happy about that.
How did you feel about being aboard a battleship? What was that like in those days? The first thing you had to get used to was constantly rubbing elbows with someone. Although a battleship is 624 feet—two football fields long—it has a crew of about 1,500 men. That’s quite a crowd for a small ship, so there’s only about six square feet per person.
Where were you living on December 7? I lived just barely out of the city, away from the navy yard. We had a crummy apartment for which we paid $32.50 a month.
What was your first inkling that something was wrong? I heard the explosions. We heard rumors that British cruisers were chasing a German surface raider in the Pacific. So I thought they had forced the German ship to come to the harbor. Under international law, a belligerent ship could come into a neutral port and stay 24 hours. After that, they had the choice to either surrender or go out and fight. Then we turned on the radio and heard a voice say, “We have been advised by army and navy intelligence that the island of Oahu is under enemy attack.” It was not unusual to see American aircraft flying around on Sunday mornings, and many Japanese planes were painted olive-green, like ours. The first Japanese bomber I saw was slowly flying low toward where I was standing. After it passed by, the machine gunner turned loose, firing bullets right over my head. That was the moment I realized the war was very personal.
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How did you get to your ship? Shore boats that went between Battleship Row and the navy yard were diverted to pick up sailors in the water, so we took a ferry to Ford Island. I went aboard the Tennessee, which was next to the West Virginia, swiveled a 5-inch gun to one side, and slid down the barrel onto my ship.
What was your first action? Everything above the water line was on fire. The battleships had accumulated about 20 years’ worth of paint, and that made good fire material. The fire on the Arizona was so hot that oil burned on top of the water. I could see flames working back from the bow on the West Virginia, and I was afraid the fire would light off our guns’ ammunition and cause secondary explosions. So I got a working firehose off the Tennessee and started dousing the ammunition to cool it off. But I saw several bodies lying around and thought, “their parents will never know what happened.” Every sailor wore a fireproof name tag on a lanyard, so I went around trying to memorize their names with the idea of writing to their parents. That’s what I did until the fires were all out. I wish I could remember how many names I collected. At least a half dozen.
By then, had the ship settled all the way to the water line? Yes. Of the 40 torpedoes the Japanese dropped that morning, nine hit the West Virginia, tearing a 140-foot hole. We lost all electrical power and the ship started to list, but our damage-control people counter-flooded and got the ship level, after which it settled on the bottom.
How long were you aboard the West Virginia after the attack? Before Captain Mervyn S. Bennion was killed, he had given word to abandon ship. But there were several of us that saw no reason to leave, so we stayed to put out the fires, which took about an hour and a half.
“I saw bodies lying around and thought, ‘Their parents will never know what happened.’”
PORTRAIT BY ELYSE BUTLER; INSET, COURTESY OF JAMES W. DOWNING
How did returning affect you?
After we put out the flames, I went to the hospital to see one of my friends who had been burned. I saw all these men in suspension on cots—burned, blind, or with their hair burned off. I took a notebook and told them if they could give me their parents’ address and dictate a short paragraph, I would see to it that their parents got it. I spent the afternoon of December 7 going up and down that line, taking dictation for those guys.
What were your duties in the weeks after the attack? As postmaster for 1,500 people— which is a small town—I had a fulltime job on my hands. Christmas mail had begun to roll in. I had to forward mail to crew who were transferred to
other ships and return mail addressed to sailors that had been killed. It took a year and a half to raise the West Virginia and get it going again. After a few months, we started building up a new crew to take the battleship back to the States. In May 1943, the West Virginia sailed to Bremerton, Washington, and was rebuilt at Puget Sound Navy Yard (see “Time Travel,” page 26).
Have you come back to Pearl Harbor since the war? My ship was located there and I lived there from 1952 to 1955. I’ve attended four annual reunions, including the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and I’ve been coming periodically ever since. Now we’re up to the 75th!
The picture of Pearl Harbor I had when I left was of awful destruction: the Utah sunk, the Arizona on the bottom, flames and smoke everywhere. I had a hard time getting used to returning, mainly because people living there at that time didn’t know anything about the war. And it’s hard to find reminders of the war at Pearl Harbor today. There’s a few bullet holes in buildings at Hickam Field and the Arizona Memorial, but that’s about the only remaining evidence of the war. Life moves on.
After going through such an experience, how often do you think about what happened to you and your friends that day? Somehow, I don’t think about yesterday and I don’t think about tomorrow. Today is so much fun! Why worry about all that? So, I try to be realistic. It happened, it’s history. None of it can be reversed. Why mourn over all that? Instead, just look forward. ★ JUNE 2017
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F RO M T H E F O OT L O C K E R
IN FOR A DOLLAR Curators at The National World War II Museum solve readers’ artifact mysteries
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My wife came across this bill in 1983 when working as a bank teller. I had asked her to keep an eye open for any strange-looking currency and exchange it with her own. For the most part she would come home with two-dollar bills or old stuff. Then she showed me this bill. I have imagined it was signed by servicemen during the war; I hope someone can tell me more. —Arne Larsen, Pleasanton, Calif. Your bill resembles something called a “short snorter”—a banknote, usually a dollar bill, signed (originally) by people who had traveled on the same aircraft or by individuals who
attended the same event. The ritual started in the 1920s with Alaskan bush pilots, became popularized with the growth of aviation, and spread beyond aviation during World War II. Throughout the war, these signed notes appeared everywhere, from major conferences with world leaders to small military units on distant Pacific islands. Once a short snorter had been signed, the signatory could demand that the holder present the bill at any time; if he could not produce it, he owed the signatory a drink—a “short snort,” or slightly less-than a full pour. There were variations of the tradition, and it was all in fun, of course—but the result was a uniquely personal souvenir. This bill differs from the traditional short snorter, as it appears to be an account of places one serviceman traveled. Without additional information it is difficult to ascertain in which branch he served, but it was likely the U.S. Navy. Eighteen cities are listed, from Gibraltar to Anzio—all coastal cities. On the bill’s reverse side are two invasion stars, with “Anzio” and “Southern France”—sites of amphibious invasions. It may well be that this navy serviceman had been aboard some type of landing craft or transport during 1944 in the Mediterranean Theater. —Josh Schick, Curator
TOP LEFT: GETTY IMAGES
Signed dollar bills, or “short snorters,” were a wartime craze; even top commanders, like Major General George S. Patton (top, left), played along. The bill here bears place names instead of signatures.
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My great uncle, Sergeant Jack MacPherson, served with the 28th Infantry Division in Europe. He was wounded during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, returned to duty in March 1945, spent several months on occupation duty, and came back home with this fire helmet. He just turned 97; his memory of the battlefield is amazing but the little things in between are a bit foggy. Does the emblem on the front help identify from which town or village this came? His father was a fire chief in Cape May Court House, New Jersey, so the helmet was likely a gift for him. I appreciate any leads you can provide. —Cliff Danley, Jonesborough, Tenn. I was unable to discover the particular town from which your great uncle may have liberated this item, but I may have narrowed it down
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to a region. The helmet looks like a Prussianstyle fireman’s helmet manufactured in the late nineteenth century—but the insignia on the front definitely appears to be French in origin. I suspect the helmet is also missing a defining characteristic: a protective brass comb designed to reinforce the leather crown of the helmet and protect the wearer more effectively against falling debris. The mix of German and French influence on this piece, along with Sergeant MacPherson’s affiliation with the 28th Infantry Division, leads me to believe he recovered the helmet from somewhere in the Alsace-Lorraine region. The province of Alsace-Lorraine changed hands between France and Germany numerous times, first to Germany in 1871 as a result of France’s loss in the Franco-Prussian War. The Treaty of Versailles returned the province back to French rule in 1919 but, of course, by 1940 it was in German hands once more. The 28th Division operated frequently in or near the Alsatian region from September 1944 until the reduction of the Colmar Pocket and final withdrawal of German forces in February of 1945. —Larry Decuers, Curator Have a World War II artifact you can’t identify? Write to
[email protected] 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.
TOP LEFT: GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES
The fire helmet Jack MacPherson (below) liberated may hail from Alsace-Lorraine, dates to before the war, and lacks the leather flap and metal comb of the 1930s versions at left.
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DEVIL IN THE DETAILS THE GREAT PHILOSOPHER OF WAR, Karl von Clausewitz, coined the term: “Friction,” he wrote, is “the concept that differentiates actual war from war on paper”—those surprising things that happen during wartime that make “even the simplest thing difficult.” With that in mind, let us travel back to a fateful day: July 20, 1944. The noon staff meeting is underway in the Wolf’s Lair, Adolf Hitler’s wartime headquarters in East Prussia. They are all gathered here: Hitler, Luftwaffe chief of staff General Günther Korten, officers of the Armed Forces High Command, and aides and advisors of every stripe. A total of 24 men, most of them standing around the giant oaken map table in the center. As Hitler listens to a situation report on the Eastern Front, a 25th man enters the room. Nothing to see here—officers often come and go during these meetings—but some of the participants notice this one. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is a war hero, with the wounds to match. You can tick off the dues he has paid by looking at him—left eye missing, right hand gone, only two fingers on the left. Stauffenberg stays for a moment, then excuses himself. He leaves his briefcase under the map table and exits. Another aide, Colonel Heinz Brandt, steps up to take his place. And then it happens. A blinding explosion. Smoke and flame everywhere. The table blown sky-high. Blood, body parts, screaming. Stauffenberg has placed an explosive device, a one-kilo block of plastic
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ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN TOMAC
F I R E F O R E F F E C T BY RO BERT M. CITINO
explosive, in his briefcase. A bomb that size going off in an enclosed room will do a great deal of damage, and this one definitely has. Stauffenberg is certain that Hitler is dead. He drives off, bluffs his way past a couple of checkpoints on the way to the airfield, and by 1 p.m. is aboard a Heinkel He-111 flying to Berlin. He doesn’t know it, but in true Clausewitzian style, just enough little things have already gone wrong to unhinge the plan for Operation Valkyrie—the plot to kill Hitler. Staff meetings at the Wolf’s Lair usually take place in a concrete bunker, but the sweltering July heat impelled planners to move this one to the main hall, a much larger room. Stauffenberg’s blast has blown out the wooden walls, windows, and doors, but the damage is nowhere near what it would have been in an enclosed bunker. Furthermore, just after Stauffenberg leaves his briefcase, Colonel Brandt apparently nudges it behind one of the heavy legs of the table, which absorbs the explosion just a bit. Finally, the Valkyrie plan had originally called for two bombs, but setting the complex chemical fuses is tricky work for a man with one hand; Stauffenberg has time to prepare only one. For these reasons, of the 24 men in the room, three died there—none of them named Adolf Hitler. General Korten is dead. As is Colonel Brandt, along with a civilian stenographer. Hitler has burst eardrums and other wounds, but he is alive. Within 12 hours, Stauffenberg himself will be dead, executed just after midnight by an improvised firing squad in the courtyard of an army office building, the grisly deed illuminated by truck headlights. In a global conflict of exploding bombs and shells—tens of millions of them on land, sea, and in the air— setting one off in Hitler’s headquarters might seem like the simplest thing in the world. But Clausewitz was right: in war, “even the simplest thing is difficult.” ★
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Bremerton, Washington, was a bustling wartime town (in 1940, opposite) and the only West Coast facility equipped to repair ships damaged from the attack on Pearl Harbor (like the USS Nevada, opposite, bottom). The shipyard is still active today (above).
T I M E T R AVE L BY J ES S I CA WAMB ACH B ROWN
ESTABLISHED IN 1891, Navy Yard Puget Sound was the only West Coast facility equipped to dry-dock battleships and aircraft carriers when Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor 50 years later. In wake of the attack, five of Battleship Row’s six survivors limped in for repairs, towing a new era for Bremerton, Washington—a quiet navy town located an hour west of Seattle by ferry. In a way, these ghosts of Pearl Harbor still haunt Bremerton. As I perch on a waterfront bench near what is now called the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, the footfalls of boots on concrete, metallic groan of the shipyard gate, and distant pounding of hammers still seem to echo from the time when a small, greasy town burst into a lively city that proudly repaired or modernized more than 350 vessels for the wartime Pacific Fleet. The tree-lined walkways, tightly packed rows of glass storefronts, and flashy theater marquees remain largely as they were during the war. But on this cloudless late-July weekday, Bremerton is lacking the one thing it had in surplus in the early 1940s: people. Bremerton’s shipyard, nestled by the deep-water inlets of Puget Sound, has always been the city’s economic anchor. Weary of sending Pacific ships to Canada for repairs, the navy sought a location for its own maintenance facility and purchased 190 acres of Bremerton’s shoreline the same year the town was platted. By 1940, the shipyard boasted more than 6,000 employees and the unemployment rate in this soundside burg of 15,000 was about 10 percent
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lower than the national average. The at tack on Pea rl Ha rbor destroyed two of the nine battleships in the Pacific Fleet and left six in need of repair. The USS Tennessee was the first to arrive at Navy Yard Puget Sound on December 29, 1941, with simple instructions: mend the badly damaged a ft section and return it to service as quickly as possible. It steamed away an impressive 53 days later thanks to the engineers, shipwrights, machinists, painters, and others from around the country who were joining the shipyard’s payroll at a rate of 60-70 people a day. A tall wrought iron fence separated the shipyard from the city, but the effects of the shipyard’s staggering growth rippled beyond it. As Bremerton’s population climbed rapidly
BRIAN GAUVIN/ALAMY
TO KEEP A FLEET AFLOAT
TOP: J. R. EYERMAN/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: PUGET SOUND NAVY MUSEUM
toward an estimated peak of more than 80,000, building permit sales skyrocketed and new federal housing projects offered rent as low as $17 per month. The Black Ball ferry line made 29 trips a day carrying commuters to and from Seattle. Big businesses like J. C. Penney and Sears, Roebuck & Co. moved in almost overnight. Bremerton High School introduced factory-style shifts to accommodate a student population that more than doubled. In their offhours, most teens had jobs either at the shipyard or the many entertainment venues that popped up all over town. In Victory Gardens & Barrage Balloons: A Collective Memoir, local author Frank Wetzel describes wartime Bremerton through the eyes of high schoolers. “In truth, for teenagers it was a time of newly found inde-
pendence and exuberance,” he writes. “We had jobs and money and freedom from parents who were preoccupied with the war—a war that united America as seldom before, and never since.” One of those teenagers was Nada Willmschen, a dear friend of my family who, at age 14, alternated her evenings between her job taking tickets at movie houses and accompanying sailors to dance halls and skating rinks. “I wasn’t very old,” she told me. “But neither were they.” When the shipyard’s double-bell steam whistle signaled the end of the day shift at 4:45 p.m., downtown Bremerton flooded with yard workers exhausted from regunning battlewagons and scraping barnacles from sea-soaked hulls, and servicemen fresh from the Pacific, brimming with shore leave
revelry. “I think they did more battling on our streets than they did in the big fight,” Nada recalls. The only sign of scuffle now is a poster on Fourth Street calling on the community to rescue the long-shuttered Roxy Theater from potential development. Peering through the glass doors of the old theater—which opened in May 1941 with the premiere of the comedy The Devil and Miss Jones—I imagine Nada dolled up and smiling as she admits throngs of patrons lined up in the afternoon trying to make the cut for an evening show. It is still hard to believe that Fourth Street was once the heart of Bremerton, beating with the swinging radio rhythms of Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. Today it is empty, save the occasional office worker on a midmorning coffee run and vocal seagulls scanning for dropped bagels. Wartime Bremerton wasn’t all roller skates and movie dates. Antiaircraft guns, bunkers, and barrage balloons were installed all over town for defense against a possible Japanese attack on the vital shipyard. Nada recalls ferry trips across Puget Sound with her girlfriends to visit convalescing sailors in Seattle hospitals whom they had met on previous port calls. “It was something that you did JUNE 2017
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WHEN YOU GO
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility Seattle Bremerton M I L E S
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because you knew you had to help them either get back home to their families, or get back out to sea,” she says. Bremerton sent hundreds of its young men to war, and nearly 300 with ties to surrounding Kitsap County did not return. The still-active shipyard is off-limits to visitors, but I spot the occasional matte gray hull of one of the dry docks’ ships visible between rows of tall numbered buildings across the fence still circling the yard. The best peek inside is offered by the Puget Sound Navy Museum, housed within the original administrative office building located a stone’s throw outside the yard’s east gate. Exhibits tell of how the war birthed incredible innovation and patriotism, from shipwrights who freed up steel by pioneering the use of resin and wood laminates, to overall-clad women who made up 15 percent of the yard’s workforce at the height of wartime operations.
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When Japan surrendered, 32,000 people were employed at the shipyard. Operating five dry docks 24 hours a day, they had repaired 26 battleships, 18 carriers, 13 cruisers, 79 destroyers, and built 53 new vessels. After the war, the shipyard converted ships to troop transports that brought servicemen home, and then transitioned to retiring and upgrading war vessels. By the end of 1946, Bremerton saw its population shrink to a fraction of its former might. But the navy’s wartime elbow grease left permanent marks. From colorful murals to the ship-shaped pools and fountains that gurgle throughout Puget Sound Naval Shipyard Memorial Plaza, Bremerton’s pride in its over 125 years of backstage service to the navy is visible all over town. Today, at what remains the largest naval shore facility in the Pacific Northwest, 12,000 workers maintain and recycle nuclear-powered surface ships and subs, while Bremerton’s 38,000 residents enjoy relative prosperity. At the end of the day, I board the Seattle-bound M/V Walla Walla with dozens of off-duty yard workers who exchange their white hard hats for rumpled-coat pillows and nap on the ferry’s benches during our hour-long passage. As we round Puget Sound’s Sinclair Inlet, the shipyard’s iconic hammerhead crane fades from view beneath the jagged backdrop of the Olympic Mountains and the frigid water slaps the hull with syncopation reminiscent of a classic Glenn Miller tune. ★
WHERE TO STAY AND EAT Bremerton has the usual lineup of chain hotels with military discounts. When it’s time to eat, follow the stream of blue-camouflage fatigues to a local hole in the wall, like Sweet and Smokey Diner on Park Avenue, where you can grab some tasty barbecue (sweetandsmokeydiner. com)—or try some delicious Mexican cuisine at El Balcón on Pacific Avenue (facebook.com/Bremelbalcon) and carry out an order to the waterfront, where there is ample outdoor seating.
WHAT ELSE TO SEE AND DO
The Puget Sound Navy Museum (pugetsoundnavymuseum.org) and Kitsap History Museum (kitsapchs.org) paint complementary portraits of wartime Bremerton in and outside the shipyard gates. Tour the USS Turner Joy (ussturnerjoy. org), the destroyer of 1964 Gulf of Tonkin fame docked on Bremerton’s waterfront. Catch a concert or comedy show at the Admiral Theatre (admiraltheatre.org). Take a ferry for a day trip to downtown Seattle or drive to Olympic National Park (nps.gov/olym) on the adjacent peninsula and explore the diversity of Washington’s ecosystems.
STEFANO POLITI MARKOVINA/ALAMY; MAP BY BRIAN WALKER
A statue of a yard worker “passing on tradition” to a young boy highlights Bremerton’s proud wartime service.
Bremerton sits at the heart of Kitsap Peninsula in western Washington. From SeattleTacoma International Airport, drive to Seattle and ferry to Bremerton, or make the one-hour drive around the south side of Puget Sound via the historic Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
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A BAND OF BROTHERS The navy honored the five Sullivans’ request to serve together, and made much of their story—before and after their shocking deaths By Bruce Kuklick
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the holds; many of the ship’s original complement of 697 sailors—which included five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa—were crowded together topside, blistered from the sun. At 11:01 a.m., a Japanese submarine tracking the vessels fired another torpedo into the already off-kilter Juneau. A sudden, furious explosion ripped it apart; underwater blasts followed, likely as its boilers burst. The forward half of Juneau at once disappeared. Then the sea swallowed the stern. The blasts shot an array of material into the air and fragments of the cruiser struck its sister ships. The turret from a huge antiaircraft gun flew from the vanishing vessel to within 100 yards of another. Body parts fell from the sky. The men below deck almost certainly drowned at once. The explosion’s aftereffect might have sucked most of those on deck to the bottom, while the blast blew others to bits. Many of those pitched clear soon died of their injuries, or of poisoning from the black fuel oil, scalding water, or flying metal. They were
Five brothers serving together in the U.S. Navy made for a compelling story— one even more so after their late-1942 deaths. Opposite: from left, Joseph, Francis, Albert, Madison, and George, in a navy recruiting poster released March 22, 1943.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
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n the late evening and early morning of November 12-13, 1942, the United States and Japan engaged in one of the most brutal naval battles of World War II. Minutes into the fight, north of Guadalcanal, a torpedo from Japanese destroyer Amatsukaze ripped into the port side of the American light cruiser USS Juneau, taking out its steering and guns and killing 19 men in the forward engine room. The keel buckled and the propellers jammed. During the 10-15 minutes the crew was engaged in battle, sailors vomited and wept; to hide from the barrage, others tried to claw their way into the steel belly of their vessel. The ship listed to port, with its bow low in the water, and the stink of fuel made it difficult to breathe below deck. The crippled Juneau withdrew from the fighting, later that morning joining a group of five surviving warships from the task force as they crawled toward the comparative safety of the Allied harbor at Espiritu Santo, in the New Hebrides. Fumes continued to foul the air in
burned from the fire of the blowup, covered with thick oil, belching salt water. The dead, the quickly dying, and assorted human carnage floated in a huge oil slick. Almost two months later, in early January 1943, the navy gave fuller details of the eventual American victories at Guadalcanal, but also announced the great cost of the engagements. Among the losses on Juneau were the five brothers from Iowa, the Sullivans: George, 27; Francis, or “Frank,” 26; Joseph, known as “Red,” 24; Madison, or “Matt,” 23; and Albert, or “Al,” 20. It was—and remains—the single greatest wartime sacrifice of any American family. The navy immediately picked up a thread begun before the brothers’ deaths to weave a story about the Sullivan family—one continued by newspapers, filmmakers, and Midwestern and national leaders. It was American mythmaking at its finest, serving to distract a grieving family from its loss, misdirect attention from a series of navy bungles, and help accustom a nation to the idea of sacrifice for the greater good. Varied authorities with mass media pull would convince Americans of the boys’ luster as the brothers and their family became cogs in a propaganda machine that would transform them all into heroes—individuals unrecognizable to their Waterloo, Iowa, hometown. THE FIVE SULLIVAN BROTHERS and their sister Genevieve, or “Gen,” grew up with little parental guidance, according to interviews conducted soon after the disaster and in the years that followed. Locals repeatedly told investigators that their father, Tom, was a physically abusive alcoholic who went on benders whenever he had a couple days off his job as a freight conductor on the Illinois Central railroad. Their mother, Alleta, was often “blue” and, when she had her “spells,” would take to bed for days at a stretch. All five boys had left school at age 16 or so, barely completing junior high, and were often out of work—in part a result of the Great Depression. Without jobs, Tom’s underage sons snitched their dad’s moonshine and shadowed him to the downtown backstreets to pick up drink. In 1937, George and Frank enlisted in the peacetime navy, serving together for four years; when they returned home in May 1941 they found work with their brothers at the local meatpacking plant. Through the 1930s, the family lived a stone’s
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throw north of the black neighborhood. Like most whites, the ethnic working class of Waterloo was not at all friendly to “the colored” and kept its distance. Not the Sullivans, according to town residents. Neighbors spoke of the boys lurking in the African American slum; there they “stirred the shit,” one of its residents recalled, initiating fights so they could beat up blacks. This was too much even for white Waterloo, which saw the Sullivan youth as “mischief-makers,” acting out a malicious streak a few blocks south of their home. By the late 1930s, the brothers were mainstays in an early motorcycle club. The “Harley Club” organized rallies and meetings at a biker bar and sped around Waterloo wearing military-style outfits of Italian Fascist design. The more genteel folks in Waterloo averted their eyes from the scene, intimidated by a large group of men in soldiers’ outfits. One often-repeated story claimed that the boys filched gasoline to fuel their vehicles, and stole and “refurbished” bikes.
COLLECTION OF BRUCE KUKLICK (BOTH)
The United States’ dramatic entry into the war galvanized the five Sullivans.
In their Waterloo, Iowa, hometown, the Sullivans had a reputation as troublemakers—one not helped by membership in a motorcycle club favoring Fascist-style uniforms (opposite). Their enlistment attracted the press, which photographed a reenactment of their physical.
BETTMAN/GETTY IMAGES; INSET: GROUT MUSEUM OF HISTORY & SCIENCE, WATERLOO, IOWA
The motorcycle club to which they belonged only underscored a way of life not particularly admirable in the eyes of their fellow Iowans. By 1940 and 1941, the brothers had grown up to be habitués of saloons and dancehalls, drinking and brawling. THEN CAME THE JAPANESE ATTACK on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The dramatic American entry into World War II galvanized the five Sullivans, giving their lives an object and shape they had not previously had. The brothers immediately decided to join the navy—even the youngest, Al, who had married at 17 and had a 21-month-old son, Jimmy. “We had 5 buddies killed in Hawaii. Help us,” George wrote to the Department of the Navy in late December, asking that the Sullivans and two friends from their motorcycle club be allowed to serve together, as they “would make a team together that can’t be beat.” “That’s where we want to go now, Pearl Harbor,” explained Frank to the Des Moines
Register. When the boys passed their physicals at the Des Moines recruiting headquarters in early January, the Register wrote that “five husky Waterloo brothers” who had lost friends at Pearl Harbor were accepted as recruits. A photo of them reenacting their physical exams ran along with the story. In January 1942, the seven team members— the Sullivans and their Harley Club sidekicks— began their month-long training at Great Lakes Naval Training Center near Chicago. With their prior navy experience, George became a gunner’s mate second class and Frank a coxswain; the three younger boys and two friends who enlisted with them were all seaman second class. The navy acceded to the Sullivans’ wish that they serve on the same ship; the service may not have encouraged family members to serve together, but it did not discourage the
Home on leave in May 1942, youngest son Al—holding his son, Jimmy—and Matt pose with their parents for the local paper. It was their final visit home.
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practice and even emphasized how it might keep families—two, three, four siblings— whole. (See “The Fighting Rogers Brothers,” opposite.) On the day the brothers’ assigned ship, the Juneau, was commissioned—February 14, 1942—a photographer took a shot of the five smiling Sullivans aboard the vessel. The publicity photo would later become a familiar emblem of American sacrifice. The family now regularly made the front pages in Waterloo, and the city knew Tom and Alleta’s children as “the navy’s five Sullivans.” In March 1942, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox asked Mrs. Sullivan to “sponsor” a ship; she agreed to christen a fleet tug, USS Tawasa. Ceremonial duties and honors continued to roll in. The brand-new Juneau spent its first months in service at the periphery of combat against Germany, in the Caribbean and North and South Atlantic before steaming for the southwestern Pacific on August 22, 1942. With its specialized array of antiaircraft guns, the speedy Atlanta-class light cruiser could pro-
tect naval forces from enemy planes. But, with its lightly armored hull and deck, it could be a deathtrap if called upon to attack surface vessels, or if put in their way. The insubstantial armor also made the light cruiser dangerously vulnerable to torpedoes. After the war, many authorities would testify that these antiaircraft cruisers were high-speed ammunition dumps, easily wiped out by ship-to-ship combat—exactly the sort of battle in which the Juneau was engaged in November 1942. AFTER THE JUNEAU sank, the crippled group of ships it had trailed hastened on: Japanese subs were still in the area. “It is certain that all on board perished,” an officer on one of the vessels noted. “Nothing could be seen in the water when the smoke lifted.” Within a half hour of the sinking, however, an American B-17 flying overhead spotted men in the sea. There were 100 to 200 sailors—many of them badly injured—clinging to debris from the cruiser: mattresses, life jackets, tarpaulins, and three oval rafts, 10 by 5 feet, with decks of
LEFT: BETTMAN/GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT: GROUT MUSEUM OF HISTORY & SCIENCE, WATERLOO, IOWA; OPPOSITE: U.S. NAVY
Alleta Sullivan reads a personal letter from Franklin D. Roosevelt for newsmen’s cameras (left). Her public role as a grieving mother helped distract her from the horror of her sons’ deaths and served as a model for stalwart sacrifice on a nationwide speaking tour (right).
wooden slats and attached ropes to accommodate hangers-on. The B-17 radioed the commander of the flotilla, Captain Gilbert Hoover of the light cruiser Helena, who continued onward—perhaps misunderstanding; perhaps not wanting to risk more men. The aircraft circled again to drop supplies, yet for several days the navy did nothing to assist the sailors. As time went by, their numbers thinned as the remnants of Juneau’s crew succumbed to their injuries, dehydration, or shark attack—a common cause of death. When South Pacific Area commander Admiral William F. Halsey learned what had happened, he immediately stripped Captain Hoover of his command. By the time the survivors were collected—a week after the sinking, on November 19-20—only 10 men remained. At least one, maybe two, of the Sullivans survived the initial sinking. Two survivors remembered the death of the eldest Sullivan, George, in particular. He had been aboard one of the small life rafts and, after three or four days, was weak and hallucinating. One night, Gunner’s Mate Second Class Allen Heyn recalled, George declared that he was going to take a bath. He removed his uniform and jumped into the water. A little way from his raft, “a shark came and grabbed him and that was the end of him,” Heyn told a naval interrogator. “I never seen him again.” IN EARLY JANUARY 1943, gossip circulating through Waterloo compelled Alleta to send a poignant letter to the Department of the Navy: “I am writing you in regard to a rumor going around that my five sons have been killed in action in November. A friend from here came and told me she got a letter from her son and he heard my five sons were killed.” She added, “I am to christen the U.S.S. TAWASA Feb. 12th at Portland, Oregon. If anything has happened to my five sons, I will still christen the ship as it was their wish that I do so. I hated to bother you, but it has worried me so that I wanted to know if it was true. So please tell me.” On Monday morning, January 11, she got her answer. “I’m afraid I’m bringing you very bad news,” Lieutenant Commander Truman Jones told Tom and Alleta and Al’s wife, Keena, as they gathered in the family’s living room. Jones read from a prepared script: “The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you that your sons Albert, Francis, George, Joseph, and Madison Sullivan are missing in action in the South Pacific.” The formal announcement made no mention of the foul-
ups that punctuated the final act of this drama. As attention across the United States focused on the family at home, the service reframed the colossal loss as an explicable national misfortune and came forward to sympathize and show solidarity. At the behest of the navy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote Alleta a personal letter of condolence. “As Commander in Chief of the Army and the Navy, I want you to know the entire nation shares your sorrow. I offer you the condolence and gratitude of our country. We, who remain to carry on the fight, must maintain the spirit in the knowledge that such sacrifice is not in vain.” Naval authorities encouraged the parents to come to Washington, where First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Vice President Henry A. Wallace met with the parents. Some of this may have stirred resentment among Waterloo families who had also suffered losses. In a letter, Alleta later told a friend that the navy had urged her to disregard the unkind treatment or talk she had complained of receiving back home, telling her—perversely—“it was just jealousy.” Vice Admiral Clark H. Woodward, head of the navy’s Industrial Incentive Division, arranged a further project for the grieving parents. For four months, beginning in February 1943, the Sullivan couple traveled around the United States with a message for the millions in defense industries on the importance of productivity on the home front. The navy had other goals as well. If citizens, at the urging of Mom and Pop Sullivan, rededicated themselves to winning the war, the nation might
The Fighting Rogers Brothers
The Rogers brothers—from left, Joseph, Patrick, Louis, and James—served aboard USS Juneau with the five Sullivans.
During the Valentine’s Day, 1942, commissioning of USS Juneau, the five Sullivans shared the limelight with another group of siblings: the four Rogers brothers from Connecticut. As they did with the Sullivans, cameras captured the Rogerses smiling from aboard ship: Joseph, 24; Patrick, 22; Louis, 20; and James, 18. A contemporary newsreel hailed the Juneau’s crew as a “family affair.” But after the ship saw serious action in late October at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the Rogerses decided it might be wiser to split up; two of the brothers, Joseph and James, left the Juneau during a layover in Noumea, New Caledonia, in early November. James Rogers later told a filmmaker that the Sullivans had agreed to split up as well, with George and Frank to be the ones to depart. They never got the chance and died later that month, along with the remaining three Sullivan brothers, Louis and Patrick Rogers, and nearly 700 other unfortunate sailors. Joseph and James Rogers survived the war; Joseph died in 1993; James in 1999. —Bruce Kuklick
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The 1944 film The Sullivans—quickly rereleased as The Fighting Sullivans to evoke a war-movie feel—portrayed the brothers as wholesome, cleancut young men (opposite, bottom).
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justify the five deaths. What had happened to the Juneau had also shocked navy officers, who wanted to mourn with the parents. The service would give Alleta and Tom something to do so that they would not focus on what could not be altered or alleviated. Finally, the navy wanted to keep the nation’s attention away from details of the deaths. The Sullivan parents made scores of stops at defense production plants and war bond ral-
lies. “We have no regrets that our boys joined the navy,” Alleta told one audience, in remarks typical of the tour. “I’d want them to do it again; it made men of them. I have a little grandson, Jimmy, who is almost two, and when he gets old enough, I want him to join…. My boys did not die in vain.” The circuit had to have been gruelling— Alleta was reported to have broken down, sobbing, at a stop in San Francisco—but she did
© 20TH CENTURY FOX/EVERETT COLLECTION (ALL)
Every happy moment in the movie presaged what all Americans knew was in store.
see one positive in it: “The trip has kept me from thinking…,” she told a reporter. “It’s bad to think too much.” Manufacturing and military leaders were appreciative as well. Businessmen praised the Sullivan parents in letters to the navy, saying that these “plain common Americans” “stirred…workers deeply.” In an internal memo, Undersecretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal wrote to Navy Secretary Knox that the parents were a “remarkable success” and hoped that the navy could “use them to the maximum degree.” On February 22, 1943, Alleta christened USS Tawasa, as she had agreed to do when the brothers came to the navy’s attention a year earlier. Less than two months later, the service gave her a greater honor, when she christened a destroyer, USS The Sullivans. Then, in the crowning event, in the spring and summer of that year, the navy led an effort to make a feature Hollywood film about the brothers. Admiral Woodward and members of his staff persuaded Tom and Alleta to sign a contract that eventually had 20th Century Fox produce The Sullivans—quickly rereleased as The Fighting Sullivans. The film, which opened in February 1944, told—in the words of its producer—the “wonderful story” of the Sullivans and paid tribute to “an American family and their devotion and loyalty.” Hollywood showed Tom and Alleta, honest and hard-working, raising their children in a typical American community. Kept in line by strict but caring parents and their church, the children grew up, proper and white-picket-fence, their lives defined by little adventures, minor scrapes, and a growing fraternal bond. Nonetheless, every happy moment in the movie foreshadowed what all Americans knew was in store. Critics called it “a distillation of Americanism, of American family life, of American boyhood,” and “deeply touching because of the personal sacrifice it represents.” The Sullivans were “poor in worldly goods but rich in the stuff that really makes for character.” The film industry told exhibitors “you can stand in your lobby with your head up while you are playing this one.” ONE AUDIENCE, however, wasn’t buying it: that in Waterloo, Iowa. The film studio set March 9, 1944, as the date for the local premiere at Waterloo’s 1,800JUNE 2017
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In a scene from a newsreel, Alleta Sullivan stands with daughter Gen and husband Tom before christening a destroyer, USS The Sullivans, in April 1943 (bottom); the newly christened ship slides down the ways (top). Fifty-two years later, greatgranddaughter Kelly Loughren (opposite) christens a new The Sullivans.
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seat Paramount Theatre. The city’s newspaper, the Courier, reported the continuing honors showered on Tom and Alleta. The movie house widely advertised the opening; two regional radio stations featured four to eight spots of advertising for the movie per day. Handouts went to grocery stores, and downtown department stores put placards in their windows. Commemorative festivities supplemented the Waterloo opening. Dignitaries would be present. A 25-member chorus of WAVEs would sing, and an orchestra would perform. The Courier headlined: “Eager Audiences Wait in Waterloo.” The paper talked about “Iowa’s Own Heroic Family” and “The Name that’s on the Lips of the Nation,” urging: “See the Picture that all Waterloo will be proud to be a part of.” Promoters spoke about a “capacity” crowd that might generate something like $3,000 for the evening—far above the $1,000 a day similar-sized theaters elsewhere were pulling in.
They warned that patrons might get turned away if they did not put their money down ahead of time. The day after the premier, Friday, March 10, the news was about who hadn’t shown up. The box office gross for the opening was just $493— one-sixth of what was expected. In a shattering story, the Courier wrote about how the citizens of Waterloo had resoundingly rejected the Sullivan family. “From their cold watery graves of the south pacific,” the story read, the five brothers had come back to their native city. And Waterloo’s thousands disrespected their arrival by sending “fewer than 500 people to welcome them home.” While the rest of the nation could embrace the family as the symbols that they had become, inside Waterloo the Sullivans remained all-tooreal people. An enormous gap existed between what the military, civic leaders, and elected officials wanted and what Waterloo’s residents were willing to give.
FRAMEPOOL INC. (BOTH)
The Sullivan brothers’ story, unlike the brothers themselves, has had a long life span.
U.S. NAVY (BOTH)
THE SULLIVAN BROTHERS’ STORY, unlike the brothers themselves, has had a long life span. In 1952, a stand of trees near the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was planted in their honor. President Ronald Reagan reflected on “the special burden of grief borne by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Sullivan of Waterloo, Iowa,” in a 1987 address. In 1995, Jimmy Sullivan’s daughter, Kelly Sullivan Loughren, christened a new USS The Sullivans. And a song, “Sullivan,” by the group Caroline’s Spine, climbed high on the music charts in 1997. The following year, the film Saving Private Ryan mentioned the deaths in an inspiring scene. Tributes continued into the twenty-first century. None of this relieved the unthinkable hardship of the remaining members of the Sullivan family. “Inconsolable darkness burdened the parents’ last years and reached across generations,” wrote author John R. Satterfield, who interviewed many Sullivan acquaintances, no longer living today, in his 1995 book, We Band of Brothers: The Sullivans in World War II. As an old man, Jimmy Sullivan said of his grandparents, “I don’t know how they stood it, I really don’t.” ★ JUNE 2017
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EAST GRINSTEAD MUSEUM
Surgeon Archibald McIndoe (opposite, at left) pioneered techniques that gave badly burned Royal Air Force airmen—here at a 1949 event—a brighter future.
THE GUINEA PIG CLUB The war damaged them, a surgeon healed them, and their bond lasted a lifetime By Robert G. Dorfman, Emily Berquist Soule, and Sukumar P. Desai
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IN THE PREVIOUS WORLD WAR, such injuries were rare. Early pilots flew without parachutes and rarely survived crashes. For the few who did emerge alive from wrecks, a lack of antibiotics meant their wounds would likely turn fatal. Up until World War II, aviation technology rapidly advanced, but flying remained a dangerous task. The RAF’s early
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frontline fighters—the Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane—suffered from a critical weakness: a fuel tank placed directly in front of the pilot. In the event of a crash, or if bullets or shrapnel pierced the tank, the pilot would take the full brunt of the explosion. Of the 4,500 RAF airmen rescued from their crashed planes, 3,600 of them sustained serious burns to their hands or face. Of these, 200 were so badly burned that they lost most or all of their facial features and became known as the “faceless ones.” These pilots now faced a new and even greater challenge—living with faces so disfigured that they were barely able to convey love, laughter, sadness, or even pain. When Britain’s “boys in blue,” on average just 20 years old, signed up in the wake of Hitler’s rapid advance across Europe, they envisioned tailored jackets, white silk scarves, and plenty of female attention. They did not expect to one day look in the mirror and see a raw, melted, scabbed, and badly swollen face—sometimes three times its normal size— peering back at them. In 1939, Britain was home to just four fulltime plastic surgeons, who spent most of their time reconstructing cleft palates and treating car-crash injuries. One of them, a New Zealander named Archibald McIndoe, had been appointed plastic surgery consultant to the Royal Air Force in 1938. Within two years, his skill at treating burns and reconstructing faces was so renowned that the RAF gave him his own facility—Ward III at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, Sussex. There, he received the most drastically burned and maimed airmen, many wounded during the Battle of Britain. Set about 50 yards away from the main hospital building, Ward III was a long hut with 20 beds on each side. In each bed lay a young man with severely disfiguring injuries: one missing a jaw and mouth lay next to another whose raw, red eyelids were in the process of being reconstructed. Bones protruded from what was left of arms and faces. Some men had charred stumps in place of hands. Others lacked noses; many had bandaged arms attached to their chests. Although McIndoe was immensely busy— typically performing at least four surgeries per day—he spent time with each of his new patients, inquiring about how they were injured, what protective gear they had been wearing, and how long they floated in the
Of the 3,600 RAF airmen who were seriously burned, 200 lost most or all of their facial features.
TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; BOTTOM: THE SHREWSBURY SCHOOL
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n the morning of September 3, 1940, Pilot Officer Richard Hillary climbed into his Supermarine Spitfire and took off with his squadron, ascending to 12,000 feet. The Luftwaffe had brought the war to British soil two months earlier, and the Australianborn Hillary was a proud, 21-year-old Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilot—one of Churchill’s “Few,” defending Britain from German bombers. Squinting through the bright sunlight, he briefly admired the morning clouds that spread out below the formation “like layers of whipped cream.” Moments later, dozens of German Messerschmitt 109s engaged the squadron. Hillary shot one down but another simultaneously attacked him; his cockpit burst into flames. Struggling, he managed to force open his canopy to bail out, but the heat and pain was too much—he blacked out. At around 10,000 feet, Hillary’s limp body slipped out of the inverted aircraft. He regained consciousness to find himself spiraling in midair, falling toward the North Sea. With his body shaking and air roaring in his ears, Hillary managed to pull the ripcord and open his parachute. After he landed in the water, his navy-issue life jacket kept him afloat. Instinctively, he lifted his wrist to check the time; his watch was gone. Then Hillary noticed his hands. “The skin was dead white and hung in shreds,” he later recalled. The smell of his own burnt flesh—grotesquely reminiscent of charred pork, some airmen have said—curdled his stomach. Helplessly, he bobbed up and down on the ocean, his teeth chattering from hypothermia. He shouted for help but none came. When he looked at his hands again, he realized he could no longer see them—he had gone blind. Considering the end was imminent, Hillary fumbled to unfasten his life jacket and hasten his demise; he had heard that drowning was a peaceful death. But the parachute straps wrapped around his limbs kept him afloat. Three hours later, a lifeboat plucked him from the sea.
Pilots greatly feared going down in flames—like this burning, out of control Spitfire (top)—a nightmarish fate that befell RAF flier Richard Hillary (above) during the Battle of Britain. What happened next was unprecedented.
water before being rescued. From behind his horn-rimmed glasses, McIndoe projected a calm air of confidence and practicality. Tom Gleave, who destroyed five German planes in one day before being shot down in August 1940, recalled how McIndoe’s “clear, candid gaze… gave one immediate strength. You had an instinctive feeling that this man was not going to fool you.” For each of the 720 burned airmen treated at East Grinstead during the war—200 of them severely disfigured—McIndoe designed a personalized reconstruction plan. On average, each patient underwent 10-50 operations over the course of three years. During these prolonged periods of treatment, McIndoe insisted that special care also be given to the airmen’s state of mind. He would inform each patient about which surgeries were required, what they would accomplish, and the phases of recovery. This created, he said, “a degree of trust and confidence...between surgeon and patient” that was “absolutely essential for a successful outcome.” In addition to caring for his young patients’ psychological health, McIndoe also had to tackle physical complications that arose from previous treatment the airmen may have received in the field or at emergency hospitals. Throughout much of the war, burned servicemen had been treated with outdated coagulation therapy. This involved covering burned areas with a formula made from tannic acid that hardened, creating a thick black crust that theoretically allowed the burned skin to heal. McIndoe realized that coagulation therapy was not only painful, but destroyed potential skin graft sites and led to gangrene. Worse, when tannic acid was applied to the eye area, it could permanently damage eyelids, leaving them unable to close or, in severe cases, cause blindness. At McIndoe’s suggestion, the RAF adopted a new protocol for treating burns. The injury was to be kept clean, dry, and loosely covered in Vaseline-soaked gauze so it would not stick to wounds. McIndoe also realized that saline baths helped the healing process after he noticed that patients who had floated in the ocean prior to rescue recovered from burns better than those who had crashed on land. He installed a saline bath in his burn ward and patients used it regularly to keep their skin clean and supple. Finally, McIndoe and his team worked with the latest techniques of plastic surgery. Through careful handiwork, he created new eyelids, lips, cheeks, noses, necks, foreheads, eyebrows, and ears. During the reconstruction period, some of these new features were nourished by pedicles—trunk-like flaps of grafted skin that were then “anchored” to blood supply flowing from elsewhere in the body. Although McIndoe was recognized for pioneering the use of pedicle tubes, he never forgot how patients might feel waking up to find what looked like an elephant trunk sprouting from their nose or cheeks. McIndoe realized a bandaged and swollen patient might understandably feel that “the immediate results are often more horrifying than the original condition.” WHILE MCINDOE’S INNOVATIONS in burn treatment and surgical techniques earned him international recognition in the medical community, the community he created for the burned airmen proved equally important to his legacy. Ward III showed signs of the men’s indomitable spirit. Distributed about the room were a radio, a piano, and JUNE 2017
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McIndoe (above) treated badly burned and disfigured airmen like Bill Foxley (opposite, inset). The physician not only advanced plastic surgery techniques—including reconstructing facial features and using skin and soft-tissue “pedicles” (center) to maintain blood flow and encourage healing—but also supported his patients’ state of mind and social reintegration. After dozens of surgeries, Richard Hillary (opposite, far right) was able to return to flight duty.
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On occasion, even their return to the ward could be chaotic. Nurse Mary Rea recounted her first night at Ward III, when one patient arrived home after a night of drinking and tripped while making his way back to his bed. He landed bottom-first in a bucket of Lysol. Rea promptly introduced herself to the airman, stripped him of his trousers, turned him over, and began to treat his new burns—which, fortunately, were only first degree. ON SUNDAY, JULY 9, 1941, after a particularly hard night of drinking, the men of Ward III decided to honor their exploits by incorporating themselves into an official “grogging” society. With the table in front of them crowded with glasses of beer and sherry, they named themselves the “Guinea Pig Club.” After all, their faces and bodies were the sites of McIndoe’s experimental plastic surgeries. One of the members’ wives drew up a club logo—a guinea pig with wings. They printed membership cards, created a dues schedule (two shillings annually), and decided membership would be limited to three groups: the patients of the ward, the East Grinstead medical staff, and the auxiliaries who made up the “Royal Society for the Prevention for Cruelty to Guinea Pigs,” meaning “those friends and benefactors who...make the life of the Guinea Pig a happy one.” Tom Gleave, the senior-most ward patient, would serve as “Chief Guinea Pig.” Peter Weeks was named treasurer, since his badly burned legs were in casts and “he was therefore incapable of running away with the club funds.” The members then invited McIndoe to serve as honorary leader of the club. “Dear Boss,” read the note they sent him. “Will you be our President?” The membership dues helped other Guinea Pigs by covering medical costs or assisting with unemployment. In later years, the Guinea Pigs made substantial contributions to the RAF Benevolent Fund that
QUEEN VICTORIA HOSPITAL NHS FOUNDATION TRUST (BOTH)
an ever-full keg of beer, from which the ward’s members were encouraged to help themselves; McIndoe reasoned that any liquids would aid in the recovery of their dehydrated bodies. The patients talked and argued amongst each other, swearing prodigiously and even telling jokes. When McIndoe told Paul Hart, one of the “faceless” men, that it would be understandable if he occasionally groaned from pain, Hart quipped, “that would never do! You’ve got to keep a stiff upper lip in this ward even if you haven’t got one.” On another occasion, while joking around with a squadron leader, Hart told him: “I’d punch you in the nose...if I didn’t think it was going to fall off anyway.” His superior retorted: “I’d clout you back, if you had a face to hit and I had a hand to hit you with!” McIndoe also encouraged Ward III’s occupants to socialize with members of the East Grinstead community. He led excursions to local pubs, parties, and dances. Ladies visiting from East Grinstead brought flowers and decorations to brighten the men’s spirits. Townspeople welcomed the patients into their homes for tea or beer, but many of the airmen refused these invitations until they were outfitted with zippered—rather than buttoned— trousers: much easier to manage with their wounded hands when the inevitable restroom visit called.
INSET AND MIDDLE: QUEEN VICTORIA HOSPITAL NHS FOUNDATION TRUST; RIGHT: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM HU 1235
had long helped individual members in need. They helped each other find employment when they could. They even published a magazine, The Guinea Pig, which included cartoons and line drawings by Henry Standen, who completed them despite burns to his hands. The Club also hosted holiday dinners, enjoying plum pudding, roasted potatoes, and turkey—which McIndoe himself carved while wearing surgical scrubs—on Christmas 1944. E a c h y e a r, t he y m ou nt e d a “ L o s t Weekend”—a reunion for former Guinea Pigs who had finished their course of surgery. And, of course, they drank. At a 1949 reunion dinner, 225 former Guinea Pigs put away no fewer than 3,000 bottles of beer, 125 bottles of whiskey, and 72 bottles of sherry. During their revelry, they sang their own theme song: We are McIndoe’s Army We are his Guinea Pigs With dermatomes and pedicles Glass eyes, false teeth, and wigs And when we get our discharge We’ll shout with all our might Per ardua ad astra, We’d rather drink than fight! The Club’s rowdy antics exemplified how McIndoe wanted his ward to function. He
knew that fighter pilots were, by nature, aggressive, alpha-male types who did not respond well to the rules and restrictions that governed most hospital wards. McIndoe explained that though “their bodies may be broken...their youthful spirits are still with them.” The surgeon therefore tolerated the “boys will be boys” behavior common among 20-year-olds, much of it in the form of pranks and romantic overtures directed at the nursing staff. To the nurses who complained, McIndoe said: “these men have put up with a hell of a lot, and so you can put up with just a little nonsense.” As a civilian doctor, McIndoe was unafraid to challenge ser vice rules he felt were unsuited to the Guinea Pigs. He did away with hierarchical military rank in his ward; officers and enlisted pilots equally shared facilities. Though patients at military hospitals were normally required to wear “hospital blues,” McIndoe successfully lobbied for the Guinea Pigs’ right to wear their RAF uniforms whenever they chose. “The RAF Uniform,” he wrote to air staff chief Sir Charles Portal in 1944, “is the accepted reason for [the Guinea Pigs’] disfigurement, and to continue wearing it for as long as possible saves the injured man from considerable embarrassment and awkward explanations.”
McIndoe did away with RAF ranks and lobbied for patients to wear their uniforms whenever they chose.
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McIndoe’s most meaningful challenge to the RAF was his questioning of the infamous “90-day rule,” which stipulated that if an injured serviceman was unable to return to duty within three months, he would be declared an invalid and given a modest pension based on the severity of his injuries. Such an arrangement not only discouraged the young pilots who dreamed of returning to active duty, but also meant that once discharged, many would be unable to cover the costs of their continued treatment and surgery. McIndoe declared that even though the Guinea Pigs needed repair, they were not permanently disabled. Along with East Grinstead anesthesiologist Russell Davies, he campaigned to have the rule overlooked for his patients. He and Davies also saw to it that the Guinea Pigs who were unable to return to service were pensioned out at an average of 100 percent of their former pay. MCINDOE’S GREATEST SUCCESSES often came after the Guinea Pigs left his care; by war’s end, 80 percent were sufficiently reha-
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ABOVE AND OPPOSITE: EAST GRINSTEAD MUSEUM; INSET: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM INS 7536
McIndoe’s emotional support for the Guinea Pigs helped forge bonds that lasted well past the war. In 1947, he was a guest of honor at Bill Foxley’s wedding (above). Foxley appeared as a badly burned squadron leader in the 1969 film Battle of Britain.
bilitated to return to military service in some capacity. Godfrey Edmonds, his first wartime patient, successfully underwent 20 operations to reconstruct his burned face. He later returned to flying and even trained paratroopers. Geoffrey Page and Richard Hillary were especially keen to get back in the air, with Page secretly strengthening his injured fingers by squeezing a rubber bouncy ball that he hid under his bedcovers. The two begged McIndoe to clear them for duty, but he was reluctant—they had done enough to serve their country. After several weeks of nagging, McIndoe finally gave in. “If you’re determined to kill yourselves, go ahead,” he told them, signing their medical certificates. “Only don’t blame me.” Page was assigned to noncombat flying duties, with the possibility of returning to active combat in the future. Hillary, whose vision had not yet been fully restored, was initially excluded from flying. In 1942, he again sought certification and was awarded night flying duty. Knowing Hillary’s vision was still recovering, McIndoe wrote privately to RAF medical officials, suggesting “if you could with discretion restrain [Hillary] from further flying, it might save him from a very serious accident.” He received no response. On January 8, 1943, Hillary crashed inexplicably just after takeoff and was killed. He left behind one of the most widely read firsthand accounts of British airmen in the war, The Last Enemy. Despite the sad end to Richard Hillary’s story, many of McIndoe’s boys found success after their injuries. Several married the young women who had been their nurses at Sussex. Some became commercial airline pilots, others worked in factories. Permanently blinded despite 46 operations on his face and 18 on his corneas, Jimmy Wright was unable to continue his prewar work as a cameraman and opened a production studio; in 1981, he received an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Inspired by McIndoe’s service to the airmen, Bertram Owen-Smith became a successful plastic surgeon. Colin Hodgkinson, who lost both his legs in a training accident, was fitted with two metal prostheses and went on to have a successful career as a fighter pilot, even surviving a second crash in 1943. Tom Gleave returned to the RAF in nonflying duties, serving until 1953. Geoffrey Page’s exercises with the rubber ball eventually paid off, and by 1942 he
returned to full-time flying duty, vowing to shoot down at least one German plane for each of the 15 operations he had undergone during his recovery. While landing at Antwerp, German shells struck Page’s aircraft and he crash-landed. He was pulled from the wreckage and soon found himself back in East Grinstead’s Ward III. “I felt I was almost indeed returning home,” he would later say. Page eventually married, had three children, and lived a full life until his death in 2000. Archibald McIndoe maintained lifelong friendships with some of the Guinea Pigs. He managed a successful private practice in plastic surgery and continued to operate on club members who needed assistance after the war. The governments of France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands decorated McIndoe for his wartime service, and he
was knighted in 1947. In 1958, McIndoe was invited to address England’s Royal College of Surgeons regarding his work with burn victims. He celebrated the advances in the field of reconstructive surgery, praising modern medicine’s ability to “create order out of chaos and make a face which does not excite pity or horror. By doing so we can restore a lost soul to normal living.” Two years later, at age 59, McIndoe died in his sleep. His beloved Ward III has since transformed into a medical research center specializing in plastic surgery and wound healing. Thanks to the painstaking efforts of McIndoe and his staff, the support and appreciation of the British public both during and after the war, and the gregariousness of the men themselves, the story of the Guinea Pig Club is one of heroes turned victims who became heroes yet again. ★
McIndoe’s ward still specializes in plastic surgery and wound healing.
McIndoe stayed in touch with the Guinea Pigs, supported their rehabilitation, attended reunions, and even opened The Guinea Pig pub—which McIndoe and members christen here in June 1957. JUNE 2017
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ART EDUCATION In illustrated diaries, a GI in the Pacific explored war’s dark shadows
SOLDIER-IN-TRAINING
Willard Dominick depicted himself and a buddy training with a Browning machine gun (opposite) at Camp Wheeler, Georgia. Dominick (above, at left, in New Caledonia in 1944) proved an awkward fit in the army, and railed against loss of freedom and dictatorial drill sergeants. Nonetheless, he enjoyed weapons training; a November 1942 diary entry reads, “It was fun to fire the rifle again…. I made the highest score in our [platoon], scoring 173 out of 200.” He shipped out a month later for Guadalcanal.
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ALL IMAGES: U.S. ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER, CARLISLE BARRACKS, PENNSYLVANIA
D
rafted into the army just three months shy of completing an art degree, Willard F. Dominick made art part of his war. Inducted in Pennsylvania and assigned to basic training at Camp Wheeler, Georgia, Private First Class Dominick was a devout Catholic with pacifist tendencies and a need to understand the world through words and pictures. As part of Anti-Tank Company, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Division, stationed in Hawaii, Dominick trained with 37mm antitank guns and kept an illustrated daily journal. When the GIs shipped out to combat on Guadalcanal in December 1942, authorities told them to get rid of any diaries; Dominick gave his to a Filipino mess steward onboard ship, who sent it to Dominick’s home in Bolivar, Pennsylvania. After landing at Guadalcanal, Dominick ripped a composition book in two to make writing pads for new journals. He continued these throughout 1943, seeing action again in the Solomon Islands, and sailing to New Zealand for recuperation. His officers knew about the diaries, but turned a blind eye. “I think my sketches show the human aspect of war,” Dominick wrote. He survived the unit’s final campaign on Luzon in 1945, completed his art education upon returning home, and enjoyed a post war career as an artist and art teacher. Willard Dominick died last June at age 96. —Paul Maggioni
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ART EDUCATION
THE LUCKY ONES
MOVING TARGET
The artist’s baptism of fire came on January 11, 1943, when his regiment assaulted the “Galloping Horse” hill complex on northern Guadalcanal. In the entry accompanying a vivid rendering of an explosion (above, right), he wrote, “We could not take our [37mm antitank guns] because the terrain is too steep and there are no tanks to fight—we carried water, food and ammunition to very foremost battle lines. Mortar shells hit all around us! Snipers shot at us all day but they are lousy shots and only a few were casualties from snipers. God, but we were exhausted.”
HARD TO SEE
The reluctant soldier never became acclimated to the sight of death (opposite). After a rainy January 12 spent carrying litters and supplies until dark, Dominick and his fellow GIs of Anti-Tank Company were, he wrote, “totally exhausted, soaked to the skin with mud and water, hungry and thirsty.” The next day, January 13, the regiment gained ground. “They also got many Japs,” Dominick wrote beneath a sketch of bloody Japanese dead. “The slain have never stopped horrifying me,” he continued. “I am numb from horror shock! I really am much too sensitive.” XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Dominick sketched two Japanese prisoners (above) who, unlike most, “looked as though they might live,” he wrote. Unlike many of his fellow soldiers, Dominick never lost sight of the enemy’s humanity. One journal entry from Guadalcanal reads: “Some American boys are such barbaric scavengers that they pull gold teeth out of the mouths of dead Japs…. I saw a marine stoop with pincers in hand and jerk two teeth from a skull still sending up a sickening stench! The vulture—Are these the virtues we fight for. Is our culture such a thin veneer— Dear God—.”
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ART EDUCATION
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DREADFUL STREAM
Death proved a constant in Dominick’s war even after the fighting on Guadalcanal ended. On the night of May 25, 1943, a radioman in his company shot and killed a drunken, abusive sergeant, blasting him in the head, chest, and shoulder with three rounds from an M1903 Springfield. One shot entered Dominick’s tent, wounding a friend sleeping just two feet away. “Lying out front is a dead boy who was alive ten minutes ago,” Dominick wrote beneath a river of red-ink blood (opposite). The army court-martialed the shooter but determined he had been acting in self-defense and acquitted him.
NIGHT TERRORS
On September 14, 1943, on Arundel Island in the Solomons, Dominick’s captain tasked him with leading a litter party of wounded from another outfit to a medical station three miles through the jungle, at night. The moonlit landscape hid unseen terror for Dominick. He did not know his way through the jungle, which held groups of Japanese infiltrators. His party also risked getting shot out of hand by other GIs who assumed anything moving at night was the enemy. After some close calls, Dominick found an American communications line, which he used to guide the party to its destination. “We had a few scares, but no shooting,” he wrote in his entry for the day (above, left). But the incident continued to haunt his dreams, and became the subject of a painting (above, right) completed years after the war. In Night March, a distorted Dominick—a skeletal hand clutching the strap of his rifle—leads a party of ghosts across a dismal landscape. The painting’s nightmarish quality is a counterpoint to a more direct condemnation of war found at the end of his Solomon Islands journal, where Dominick pasted a photograph of a Japanese soldier, almost certainly taken off a Japanese body. In capital letters next to the photo Dominick wrote, “GOD FORGIVE MY PART IN THIS WAR. I HATE NO MAN.”
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W E A P O N S MANUAL I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y J I M L AU R I E R
DEATH FROM ABOVE
Germany’s Fallschirmjägergewehr 42 semi-automatic rifle ON BOTH FEET
HEARD, NOT SEEN GERMAN FG-42 Weight: 10.9 lbs / Length: 38.4 in / Cartridge: 7.92x57mm Mauser / Feed system: 10- or 20-round magazine / Effective range: 600 m / Production: 5,000-7,000 / The FG-42 had both semi- and automatic fire modes.
THE COMPETITION GERMAN G43 Weight: 9.7 lbs / Length: 44.5 in / Cartridge: 7.92x57mm Mauser / Feed system: 10-round magazine / Effective range: 500 m / Production: 402,713 / The G43 suffered from several inherent design flaws and rushed production.
AMERICAN M1 Weight: 9.5-11.6 lbs / Length: 43.5 in / Cartridge: .30-06 Springfield / Feed system: 8-round clip / Effective range: 457 m / Production: 6.25 million / The first standard-issue semi-automatic battle rifle, the M1 is still used for drill and training.
SOVIET SVT-40 Weight: 8.5 lbs / Length: 48.3 in / Cartridge: 7.62x54mmR / Feed system: 10-round magazine / Effective range: 500 m / Production: 1.6 million / The SVT-40 was difficult to manufacture when compared to the favored PPSh submachine gun.
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The distinctive muzzle break was designed to reduce recoil and muzzle flash, but resulted in a louder shot blast.
Designed as both a rifle and a light machine gun, the FG-42 featured a foldable bipod to provide stability. However, the weapon’s heavy recoil when fired on automatic led soldiers to fire on semi-automatic almost exclusively.
SNUG FIT STAGE LEFT
TO THE POINT
PHOTOS: LEFT: BUNDESARCHIV BILD 101I-567-1503A-01 PHOTO SCHNEIDERS; RIGHT: BUNDESARCHIV BILD 101I-578-1926-36A PHOTO WAHNER
Designers eschewed the typical knife-like bayonet for a design that resembled an ice pick. When not in use, it was folded and tucked away.
The unusual sideloading horizontal magazine helped reduce the weapon’s length but could snag on paratroopers’ flowing smocks.
The stock was originally made of stamped steel; designers switched to wood to add stabilizing weight and reduce overheating.
EARLY IN THE WAR, German Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers) jumped armed only with pistols. They simultaneously dropped canisters—containing Kar98k bolt-action rifles and MP-40 submachine guns—and recovered them after landing. During the 1941 Battle of Crete, Allied soldiers inflicted heavy casualties on paratroopers scrambling to recover their scattered canisters. The Luftwaffe subsequently requested a specially designed lightweight and accurate automatic rifle so paratroopers would be ready to fight. It chose an unusual design by gun manufacturer Rheinmetall-Borsig—eventually dubbed Fallschirmjägergewehr 42, or FG-42—and deployed it by late 1943. Paratroopers, many armed with FG-42s, fought pitched battles against Allied forces at Monte Cassino in 1944, and the FG-42 continued to serve in limited numbers for the rest of the war. —Paraag Shukla A paratrooper carries an FG-42 during the 1943 raid to free Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans (far left). The rifle acquitted itself well during fighting in Italy (left) and remained in service until war’s end.
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STORM THE COLISEUM As the war wound down, Washington found an innovative way to boost production By Joseph Connor
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A
s 1944 dawned, the Arsenal of Democracy was in full swing. Production had soared in 1943, giving Allied troops a cornucopia of weapons, ships, planes, and tanks. The Allies had taken Sicily and landed in Italy, the long-awaited invasion of France was imminent, and American forces were steadily advancing toward Japan. Victory was in the air, but that scent brought its own dangers: complacency and overconfidence in industry and the workforce. These insidious foes, officials feared, threatened to prolong the war and put American lives at risk. To counter this, Washington devised an unusual and ingenious plan to give a wakeup jolt to the defense industry with a headlinegrabbing public relations blitz, culminating in the largest and most spectacular pep rallies the nation had ever seen. The goal, Life magazine said, was “to arouse and inspire the people of a critical industrial area to still greater effort in the momentous months of 1944.”
LOS ANGELES TIMES
On the surface, wartime production was above reproach. Aircraft manufacturing had jumped from 19,433 planes in 1941, to 47,836 in 1942, and to 85,898 in 1943. Shipbuilding had leaped from 1,334 naval vessels in 194041, to 8,035 in 1942, and to 18,434 in 1943. Beneath the surface, however, things were not as rosy as they seemed, government officials insisted. Despite seemingly robust production levels, officials claimed the numbers could and should be higher. President Franklin D. Roosevelt defined the problem in his 1944 State of the Union address. “Overconfidence and complacency are among our deadliest enemies….That attitude on the part of anyone—government or management or labor—can lengthen this war. It can kill American boys,” he said. “Last spring—after notable victories at Stalingrad and in Tunisia and against the U-boats on the high seas—overconfidence became so pronounced that war production fell off,” Roosevelt explained. In June and July 1943 alone,
The January 1944 Army-Navy show in the LA Coliseum was a mammoth production that included a mock battle with soldiers, gunfire, and explosions—all to reinvigorate industry workers. By showtime, a quarter-million spectators vied to grab one of the 100,000 seats.
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Film studios provided sets that U.S. Navy Seabees (above) constructed on the field. Soldiers of the 140th Infantry Regiment (opposite, top) dirtied their faces and uniforms before staging a mock battle— an extravaganza that ended with a flag-waving rendition of “God Bless America” (opposite, bottom).
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he said, “more than 1,000 airplanes that could have been made and should have been made were not made. Those who failed to make them were not on strike. They were merely saying, ‘The war’s in the bag, so let’s relax.’” Roosevelt echoed an alarm officials had been sounding since mid-1943, when Donald M. Nelson, chairman of the War Production Board, had warned of overconfidence in the workplace and urged defense workers “to put everything we have into another burst of productive energy.” In July 1943, Vice Admiral Frederick J. Horne, vice chief of naval operations, had thrown cold water on complacency when he predicted that the Pacific War could last until 1949 and called expectations of an imminent German collapse “wishful thinking.” Since the beginning of the war, the government sponsored rallies at defense plants to spur workers on. In early 1943, Tom and Alleta Sullivan, whose five sons were lost at sea in the Pacific, toured shipyards and urged
greater production so that “many more sons will come home to their mothers.” (See “A Band of Brothers,” page 30.) Returning war heroes spoke at other defense plants. Officials chose Los Angeles as the focal point of their special 1944 publicity blitz because the West Coast, especially California, was a booming epicenter of wartime production. West Coast aircraft plants built about 38 percent of the nation’s planes, and its shipyards accounted for about 44 percent of its merchant ships. Twenty-seven billion dollars flowed to the West Coast through production and building contracts, and many companies rode the wave, including a little outfit called HewlettPackard that went from nine employees and $37,000 in sales in 1940 to 100 employees and one million dollars in sales in 1943. California’s workers had never had it so good. Unemployment fell from 15.2 percent in January 1940 to 0.3 percent in October 1943, and the Golden State topped the nation in per
AL HUMPHREYS/LOS ANGELES TIMES
The venue for the spectacle was the Los Angeles Coliseum, site of the 1932 summer Olympics.
TOP, RIGHT: AL HUMPHREYS/LOS ANGELES TIMES; BOTTOM, RIGHT: STAN BOYD/LOS ANGELES TIMES
capita income. So many people came west for work that observers began calling the boom the “second Gold Rush.” John Steinbeck’s Okies had found the promised land. If defense workers, especially in California, could only be spurred to greater effort, officials reasoned, industrial output would meet the government’s lofty goals and help bring the war to an expeditious end. THE PUBLIC RELATIONS offensive began with a two-day meeting, January 8-9, 1944, between government officials and 650 West Coast industrial and labor leaders, public officials, and radio and newspaper executives in Los Angeles. Time magazine called the meeting a “factsof-life” talk with “West Coast bigwigs.” The government’s message was clear: don’t let up because the war was a long way from being over. The surprise guest at the conference was Admiral William F. Halsey, just back from the Pacific, who provided the hellfire and brimstone when he told the audience, “The only good Jap is one that’s been dead six months. The only thing to do is to kill all of them.” Other speakers were more sedate in tone. They acknowledged progress in the war, but, the New York Times said, “expressions of confidence…were tempered with warnings about the tremendous obstacles to be faced.” There were “more jungles, many more islands” to be taken on the road to Tokyo, said Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patterson. The German army still had the will to fight and, in fact, had more than three times as many combat troops as when the war began, said Colonel Curtis H. Nance, an army intelligence officer. As for industrial output, a peak in production had not been reached yet and was not even in sight, said Rear Admiral W. H. P. Blandy, former chief of the navy’s Bureau of Ordnance. Brigadier General Frank Armstrong Jr., who had led some of the earliest bombing raids in Europe, claimed the air force lacked the planes needed to bring Germany to its knees, and army Major General W. D. Styer beseeched union officials to impress on workers that “they aren’t making nuts and bolts, or lumber or sheet metal, but are passing the ammunition to the soldiers.” The heart-to-heart talk was only a warmup for the extravagant centerpiece of the campaign. The site was the LA Coliseum, home of the 1932 summer Olympics and a venue that seated more than 100,000. That capacity was tested when nearly a quarter of a million people jammed the Coliseum on the evenings of January 8 and 9 for the show. Craftsmen had converted the football field into a lifelike Pacific atoll, complete with palm trees and enemy fortifications. One hundred and fifty soldiers from the 140th Infantry Regiment stormed the field with machine guns, grenades, and field pieces in an attack that, Life magazine said, “rocked the stadium with thunders of combat and mottled the vast arena with flakes of fire.” As the troops pressed their attack, Life said, “geysers of earth rose into the air and smoke curled across the field in green, floodlit scarves.” A wind machine, donated by a nearby movie studio, enhanced the special effects. As spectators watched the attack, bright searchlights pierced the nighttime sky as wave after wave of U.S. Army Air Forces planes zoomed over the stadium. The victorious troops advanced, and an army chaplain delivered last rites to the fallen. With ears ringing and heads spinning, the audience stood, reciting en masse a solemn pledge to “devote myself wholeheartedly to the war effort” and “to do all in my power to stay on the job and finish the job.” The show ended with a rousing version of “God Bless America.” For the next week, the government saturated West Coast airwaves
and newspapers with public service announcements imploring industry workers to “stay on the job and finish the job.” Time brought the message nationwide by featuring talks with business and labor leaders in its January 17 edition, and Life carried a photo spread of the Coliseum event in its January 24 issue. “Stay on the job and finish the job” became a rallying cry, appearing on lapel pins worn by war workers and on patriotic posters hung in defense plants. The stay-the-course show went on the road to northern California later that year, playing to more than 350,000 war workers at Seals Stadium in San Francisco and at the University of California’s Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. “So impressive was the War Show,” said the Berkeley Daily Gazette, “that it is believed most of the 210,000 who witnessed it here have renewed their determination to ‘stay on the job and finish the job.’” The Daily Gazette was right; defense workers got the message loud and clear. In 1944, American airplane production rose 12 percent, and naval shipbuilding jumped 58 percent. Combat boot production soared from 605,000 pairs to 12.6 million pairs, and the output of bazookas jumped from 98,284 to 215,177. Thanks to those workers who stayed on the job, America’s soldiers, sailors, and Marines had the tools needed to finish the job and come “home alive in ‘45.” ★ JUNE 2017
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Geoffrey Keyes, scion of an illustrious military family, volunteered for the commandos. Despite a diminutive build and sensitive nature, he would prove himself courageously in battle.
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BAPTISM OF FIRE AT LITANI RIVER In a single stunning day, a Scottish commando unit spearheaded an assault on Vichy French forces in Syria By Gavin Mortimer
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM E4732
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For the eager band of troops, the coastal front in Syria was disarmingly picturesque, but “hell to fight in.”
F
or more than a year, Major Geoffrey Keyes had craved action. He wanted to prove himself—as a soldier and as a son worthy of his illustrious father, Roger Keyes, a First World War hero and one of the greatest sailors of his generation. Young Geoffrey was slight of build, sensitive, and unsuited to war in many respects. Still, in June 1940, he had volunteered for combat and now, 12 months on, he was about to get a taste of it. But as he and his 140-strong landing party waded through the surf onto the sand along the western coast of Syria, there was a problem: they were at the wrong beach. They should have come ashore north of the Litani River—from where they would assault barracks held by Vichy French forces—but they had landed to the south. Keyes took the error in stride. He informed his men and ordered them to drop their heavy haversacks. He would lead them north, ford the Litani, and attack as planned. The commandos struck out toward the river, passing through a company of Australian infantrymen who had come ashore nearby. The Australians had seven collapsible canvas boats, but warned Keyes that enemy forces on the other side of the river had repeatedly prevented them from crossing. Keyes took the boats and pushed on toward the 40-yard ribbon of water. Suddenly, a flare burst in the dark sky. Then all hell broke loose. THE JOURNEY THAT LED the commandos to a Syrian beach began one year earlier, when British prime minister Winston Churchill instructed his chiefs of staff to raise a special service unit of irregular troops to strike at the Germans. By fall 1940, more than 2,000 men had volunteered and were organized into a dozen commando units. Keyes was posted to No. 11 (Scottish) Commando. Commanding officer Colonel Dick Pedder quickly molded the volunteers in Keyes’s unit into a well-drilled troop that considered itself a match for any enemy force. At the end of January 1941, the unit sailed for the Middle East, where Vichy French forces—allied with their German conquerers—had allowed the Luftwaffe the use of Vichy airfields in Syria to
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launch attacks on the British. But for several months, the men of No.11 Commando endured a frustrating series of aborted raids and cancelled operations. When they received a rush order on June 3 to embark from their Cyprus base, the commandos were skeptical they would see action. In fact, their first real test lay ahead—an opportunity to demonstrate that a battalionsize force of elite troops could f ulf ill Churchill’s demand for “a vigorous, enterprising and ceaseless offensive” against the enemy. The commandos first sailed to Egypt’s Port Said, where Colonel Pedder set off for Jerusalem to confer with General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, commanding officer of British forces in Palestine and Trans-Jordan (then a British Protectorate, now Jordan). To square off against a Vichy army of 35,000 men, General Wilson had at his disposal the 7th Australian Infantry Division, part of the 1st Cavalry Division, a brigade of Indian soldiers, a small number of Free French soldiers, and No. 11 Commando. Pedder’s men were to land on Syria’s western coast near the Litani River—“a green fast stream bearing rich banana groves on its banks,” in the words of Australian war correspondent Alan Moorehead. The commandos would eliminate enemy resistance and seize a bridge to enable the 21st Australian Infantry Brigade to advance toward Beirut. The river, however, was much more than a stream—up to 40 yards wide near its mouth—and Wilson cautioned that the bridge had probably been demolished. Scarce intelligence suggested that two Vichy battalions were holding fortified positions facing south. Pedder split his force into three small troops for the operation. Geoffrey Keyes would lead X Troop, which would land just north of Litani River and conduct the main push to Qasmiye Bridge. Pedder would command Y Troop and provide support, while the smaller Z Troop would land two miles north of the river, near the Kafr Badda Bridge, to block enemy reinforcements. For the eager commandos, it was new territory—and disarmingly picturesque. As BBC correspondent Richard Dimbleby wrote, “the coastal front in Syria was attractive to look at.
In addition to shoulder flashes (inset), No. 11 Commando adopted traditional Scottish garb, including tam o’ shanter caps (above).
TOP: NATIONAL MUSEUMS SCOTLAND M.2006.13.4; INSET: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE
There was the warm Mediterranean, incredibly blue, breaking gently on the rocks and inviting you to leap in and swim. There were little beaches and fresh green ground lying behind them, and in the background there were the hills flanking the coastal plain.... It was good to look at. It was hell to fight in.” ON THE WARM AND STILL MORNING of June 9, the commandos’ troopship arrived off the Syrian coast. At 3 a.m., their 11 assault craft approached the beaches—and the plan quickly went haywire. Pedder’s Y Troop was the first to come ashore, and it immediately came under heavy machine-gun, rifle, and mortar fire from 300 yards to the south. “We crawled off the beach and advanced along a dried river bed,” recalled Regimental Sergeant Major Lewis Tevendale. Nearby, Lieutenant Gerald Bryan, a laconic 20-year-old Ulsterman who had volunteered for the commandos from the Royal Engineers, tried to untie the lifebelt attached to his rifle as he advanced along a ditch. The ditch soon narrowed and he had to climb out into the open. “The ground was flat with no cover,” Bryan remembered. “The machine guns were now firing fairly continuously.” As Y Troop continued to move inland, Bryan paused to survey a map with one of his corporals. Suddenly, there was a crack. The corporal fell forward, shot through the eye by a sniper. Vichy French soldiers opened fire from only 20 yards away. After scrambling for cover, the commandos shouted to one another that an enemy 75mm gun emplacement was up ahead; its crew was firing at them from slit
trenches. Bryan barked orders and led his commandos in a low crawl toward the enemy position. When they were within range, they hurled grenades and charged, killing the French soldiers. “It was rather bloody,” Bryan remembered dryly. One of his men, Sergeant Tommy Worrall, was an artilleryman by training and quickly familiarized himself with the French artillery gun. “We seized one of their 75s in the battery,” he recalled, “and with it blew two of the three remaining cannon from the face of creation at a distance of 20 yards.” Worrall then disabled the firing pin of the gun with a rifle butt and dashed across open ground to join the others at Colonel Pedder’s position. Pedder explained that Keyes’s X Troop had come ashore several miles south of their intended location and was behind schedule. So he ordered Bryan to provide fire support while he led Y Troop’s headquarters section toward the enemy barracks and high ground east of a banana plantation known as Aiteniye Farm that comprised several rudimentary buildings encircled by barbed wire entanglements. JUNE 2017
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No. 11 Commando’s leadership reflected a diversity of experience: 36-year-old Colonel Dick Pedder (top, as a young officer) was commissioned in 1924. Lieutenant Tommy Macpherson (above), just 20 years of age, was on his first combat deployment.
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FURTHER NORTH, Captain George More led Z Troop ashore like a malevolent breeze off the sea, moving inland over the main coastal road toward the high ground east of the Kafr Badda Bridge. They encountered four trucks of Vichy French soldiers, some trying to unload two Hotchkiss heavy machine guns. The commandos killed the enemy soldiers and destroyed the trucks. Then Lieutenant Tommy Macpherson, a 20-year-old Scot and an accomplished sportsman, led his section toward the bridge, about three-quarters of a mile away. Given the flat, open terrain, the commandos had no choice but to make a frontal assault. The Lebanese-French troops they faced were well dug-in and had at least two machine guns and mortars, but were, Macpherson recalled, “of somewhat unenthusiastic quality.” When the enemy saw the com-
COMMANDO VETERANS ASSOCIATION (BOTH)
“We took up what positions we could but there wasn’t much cover,” Bryan said. French forces quickly spotted his men and engaged them with heavy small-arms fire. “The whole time bullets spat past my head and sounded very close,” he recalled. Bryan’s luck held, but a sniper shot a fellow officer, Lieutenant Alistair Coode, in the chest. Coode went down, coughing blood. Further inland, Pedder led his men forward, Sergeant Major Tevendale at his side. They moved along a deep gully north of the barracks. There, Tevendale recalled, they captured “several prisoners, who were guarding large quantities of explosives and ammunition stored in two separate quarries.” Pedder left a detachment of men to guard the prisoners and headed northeast, only to come under fire from machine guns and snipers concealed in the trees to their front. “It was hell,” a commando recalled. “French machine guns and snipers were there by the score. Deliberately, they permitted us to advance, and then when we went down on our knees or otherwise sought cover from their machine guns, the snipers perched in trees behind us had a go.” Pedder decided to withdraw south to try and link up with X Troop, but enemy fire intensified. It was then, Tevendale recalled, that a bullet grazed Pedder’s helmet; “he turned around to joke with us, regarding his good luck,” when more bullets struck Pedder in the head and back. He died instantly. Relentless enemy fire forced Bryan’s men to fall back. He ordered them to sprint to scrub about a hundred yards distant. “All the time bullets were fizzing past much too close for comfort and we kept very low,” Bryan recalled. “Sergeant Worrall, who had already been wounded, decided to run for it, to catch us up, but a machine gun got him and he fell with his face covered with blood.” Then Bryan felt a jackhammer pain in his legs. He dragged himself into a hollow and surveyed the damage. “There was a gaping wound in my right leg just above the foot,” he remembered. He fumbled in his pocket for a morphine pill, swallowed it, and tried to stop the bleeding. The section stayed pinned down for the next two hours, after which enemy fire suddenly increased and 25 Vichy soldiers advanced out of the scrub, bristling with bayonets. They captured Bryan and his men. With all the headquarters section’s officers struck down, Tevendale led the men to high ground. They took positions along the road connecting the Vichy barracks to the river, firing on enemy forces who were pulling back from heavy Australian shelling. But, Y troop could not keep the enemy at bay; by late afternoon, Vichy forces had captured Tevendale and his men.
Kafr Badda Bridge
Z Troop
mandos charge and heard their Gaelic yells, Landing they abandoned their positions on an otherwise fiercely fought morning, leaving behind their wounded and heavy weapons. After losing Kafr Badda Bridge, Vichy forces Y Troop counterattacked at noon with eight light Landing armored vehicles. After neither side gained an advantage, six more Vichy armored cars arrived by 4 p.m. At the prospect of facing 10 armored vehicles, the commandos on the TURKEY bridge fell back toward the beach. There, X Troop they linked up with the rest of Z Troop Intended CYPRUS and Captain More, who ordered Landing SYRIA them to withdraw south and cross L E B A N O N MEDITERRANEAN SEA the Litani. He split Z Troop into two DAMASCUS ENLARGED parties: one set off for high ground AREA X Troop PA L E S T I N E to the east and successfully crossed Actual JERUSALEM the river; the other descended toward Landing PORT SAID TRANSthe beach, where enemy forces quickly EGY P T JORDAN pinned them down with heavy machinegun fire. Unable to move, the commando party was forced to surrender.
MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; TOP: AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL; BOTTOM: REUTERS/JAMAL SAIDI/ALAMY
Battle of Litani River
Vichy Artillery
Vichy
Aiteniye Farm
Vichy Artillery Barracks
Vichy Artillery
Vichy Artillery
Qasmiye Bridge
LITANI RIVER M I L E S 0
1/2
TO THE SOUTH, Geoffrey Keyes and X Troop were still sheltered in hastily dug slit trenches, as enemy fire—75mm guns, 81mm mortars, and heavy machine guns—swept the 200 yards of open ground that lay between them and the southern bank of the Litani River. Keyes surveyed the ground and radioed for artillery support to suppress the Vichy forces. As the Australians dropped a heavy barrage on the Litani’s opposite bank, Keyes sent seven commandos across the river in a collapsible boat. They slithered into thick scrub and began throwing grenades toward the enemy positions. By midday, Keyes sent seven more men across, and the 14 commandos on the north bank convinced 35 Vichy soldiers to surrender. They secured a 25mm antitank gun and several heavy machine guns. They also had the presence of mind to grab some rations of French bread. After Keyes forded the river, the commandos ate their first meal of the day and discussed what to do about the last Vichy artillery piece in the area—a 75mm gun that, although 1,000 yards away, continued to shell the Litani’s south bank. The gun was well When the planned landings (top) went wrong, Geoffrey Keyes improvised by leading X Troop across the Litani toward the Qasmiye Bridge (middle). The area (bottom, in 2016) is largely unchanged.
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hidden and Australian artillery had been unable to knock it out. With information from their new prisoners, the commandos turned the newly captured 25mm antitank gun around so it was pointed north. They fired three shells to range the enemy’s 75mm gun and, with a fourth shot, destroyed it. By evening, X Troop took up defensive positions in a well-fortified machine gun emplacement while the Australian brigade pushed on toward Aiteniye Farm. Unknown to Keyes and the Australians, Aiteniye contained 24 recently captured commandos from George More’s Z troop. The Australians attacked at around 9 p.m. and, after an hourlong engagement, drove off the Vichy forces and freed the commandos. Unaware of the Australians’ success, Keyes rose early the next morning, determined to lead a crushing assault on Aiteniye. But as he surveyed the objective, he was stunned to see Captain More walking toward him—with a senior French officer holding a white flag. The Vichy French had decided to surrender rather than risk annihilation. As the Australians accepted the French surrender, the three troops of No. 11 Commando linked up and could finally rest. Keyes received an “awful shock” to learn that Colonel Pedder was one of five commando officers killed, with 123 casualties. But Keyes also learned of his commandos’ courage and acts of bravery during their baptism of fire: a medic had crawled through enemy fire to aid a wounded comrade before being killed himself, two sergeants repeatedly went into enemy-held woods to hunt for snipers, and a Y Troop officer captured 80 Frenchmen. By midday, the 21st Australian Brigade crossed the Litani River to begin advancing toward Damascus, where the Vichy French, with Luftwaffe support, continued to put up stiff resistance. The Syrian capital fell on June 21, and the Allies continued north to Lebanon. On July 10, Vichy commander General Henri Dentz asked for an armistice; it went into effect four days later.
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ALTHOUGH NO. 11 COMMANDO achieved its objectives during the battle, the operation had been rife with setbacks. British leaders reassessing how best to utilize their units of special troops soon decided to disband the commando units in the Middle East; they found too few well-trained troops willing to fill their depleted ranks. The aggressive, thrill-seeking personalities sought action elsewhere. Some returned to their parent units, others volunteered for the Long Range Desert Group, and several dozen volunteered for a new unit that came to be known as the Special Air Service (SAS). In November 1941, former commando David Stirling parachuted into Libya with 55 SAS men—many originally from No. 11 Commando. Stirling sought to prove that small teams of elite soldiers, using the advantage of surprise, could exact greater damage on the enemy than an entire battalion. Over the next 18 months, they raided Axis airfields in the desert, destroying at least 325 enemy aircraft and killing hundreds of enemy soldiers. On the same day that Stirling launched his operation, Geoffrey Keyes led an audacious mission to assassinate German general Erwin Rommel at his headquarters in Libya. But their intelligence was faulty, and Keyes perished during the failed raid. ★
NATIONAL MUSEUMS SCOTLAND M.2006.13.5
Despite setbacks, the commandos achieved their objectives in the battle. Afterward, the unit relocated to Egypt to rest and refit.
Some of the commandos returned to parent units, others joined the Long Range Desert Group or the SAS.
B B u ig tt ge on r s
s o N act r nt Co
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R E V I E W S BO O K S
TWISTED INFERNO
THE BOOK THIEVES The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance By Anders Rydell; translated by Henning Koch. 368 pp. Viking, 2017. $28.
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THE NADIR OF NAZI-ERA DEPRAVITY was the concentrated effort to employ death camps to eliminate from Europe those who did not fit into the perverted notion of Aryanism. But over the past 70 years another aspect of that Hitlerian campaign has gotten little attention: the formal effort to wipe out the cultural imprint of Nazi-targeted people by looting and destroying the records of their histories and deliberations. The Jews were the first targets, but libraries of Freemasons, socialists, communists, and Catholics were also looted. As the Germans conquered Eastern European countries, the Nazis added Slavs to the list. They confiscated millions of books and documents to stock German research institutions, and simply torched hundreds of millions more. Only a small portion of the institutional holdings got back to their homes; now a very few personal volumes are being returned to their owners or their heirs. The Book Thieves, first published in Sweden in 2015 and now available for the first time in English, shines a light on the German campaign against the written word. “It was not solely a war of physical extermination, it was also a battle for memory and history,” Swedish journalist Anders Rydell writes. “The plundering of libraries and archives went to the very core of this battle for control of memory.” For the past decade, a few scholars have been charting this destruction of literature, but The Book Thieves is the first to present these events to the general public. Much of the German military and civilian population was behind the wanton destruction of books. Their confiscation, however, was primarily the effort of two rival powers battling over the spoils: Heinrich Himmler’s SS, which was mostly interested in information that helped the Nazis better
Energized by Nazi ideologies, German students in Berlin burn books deemed “degenerate.”
REV IEW S MOV IES
PRELUDE TO A DOWNFALL
TOP: GAMMA—KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES; OPPOSITE, TOP: STUDIOCANAL; OPPOSITE, BOTTOM: NEWMARKET/PHOTOFEST
Georg Elser’s bold attempt to kill Hitler gets flat treatment in 13 Minutes, by the director of 2004’s tense and acclaimed Downfall (bottom).
understand their enemies, and chief Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg’s special task force, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, or ERR, which sought after useful research materials proving Germanic superiority. Rydell writes well; nonetheless, this is not an easy read. The book is organized city by city following Rydell’s travels throughout Europe, a construction that inevitably leads to repetition. And the author is so intent on providing the historical setting for the book collections in each city—his 15-page chapter on the Grecian city Thessaloniki does not mention the attack on its library until the ninth page—that it often obscures the story’s main thread. But Book Thieves tells an important story and readers interested in understanding the full impact of the inferno Germany unleashed in World War II would do well to read Rydell’s tome. —Daniel B. Moskowitz is a veteran journalist and frequent contributor to World War II.
AFTER EXPLORING THE FINAL, claustrophobic days in Adolf Hitler’s underground bunker in the critically acclaimed 2004 film Downfall, German director Oliver Hirschbiegel revisits Nazi Germany with 13 Minutes, a film about Georg Elser’s attempt to assassinate Hitler in November 1939. Elser’s handmade bomb detonated 13 minutes too late. On the surface, the film has the ingredients of a compelling thriller and starts well. However, it quickly goes flat as it draws too-tidy parallels between the Gestapo’s interrogations and flashbacks to Elser’s hometown. As a result, Hirschbiegel tells what, but not why. That Elser tried to assassinate Hitler does not inherently make him a compelling protagonist. By skirting on the surface of the topic without plumbing any intriguing depths, the film sparks more questions than answers, and fails to humanize Elser as a complex individual. 13 Minutes opens in select theaters in late June. —Paraag Shukla is senior editor of World War II. JUNE 2017
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ISLAND PORT IN A STORM
LAST HOPE ISLAND Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood that Helped Turn the Tide of War By Lynne Olson. 576 pp. Random House, 2017. $30.
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WITH BRITAIN’S EXIT from the European Union looming, the United Kingdom today appears something of a lost hope island for Europhiles on both sides of the Channel. Not so during World War II. In her new book, Last Hope Island, bestselling author Lynne Olson establishes the pivotal role the British Isles played as both a sanctuary for European leaders in flight from the Wehrmacht and a launch pad for ultimately successful efforts to reclaim the continent from Nazi occupation. Olson covers a broad canvas. Early chapters detail German incursions into Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and then France in the spring of 1940. With Panzer divisions bulldozing across borders at lightning speed, European royals were plucked from the jaws of defeat to safety by the same British forces that had, on occasion, failed to honor promises to aid beleaguered allies’ defense. The epic evacuation of troops from the beaches of Dunkirk looked more treacherous than valiant when viewed through French eyes. While camaraderie looms in this depiction
of a transcontinental brotherhood, acts of betrayal and breaches of trust punctuate the narrative. In Britain, Olson’s colorful and cosmopolitan cast of characters elicited mixed reactions from a population that, then as now, frequently regarded foreigners through a veil of suspicion. Polish airmen, whose deathdefying exploits and expert marksmanship in the Battle of Britain Olson lauds, weren’t immune from condescension on the part of their British counterparts. The upper echelons of the RAF sniffily regarded any Polish flier as several rungs down the evolutionary ladder, even as the Poles scaled social heights in English society. Some of Olson’s leading lights, however, are less lovable than others. Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, never lost his glacial hauteur. Even de Gaulle’s own family joked that he had fallen into an icebox as a child. For her part, the author evinces the most warmth toward Holland’s Queen Wilhelmina. The queen’s radio broadcasts, beamed from Britain into the occupied Netherlands, were so earthily expressed that her granddaughters were apparently forbidden to listen in. Tender royal ears couldn’t be exposed to the vulgarities Wilhelmina employed as she excoriated the Nazis. The road to Europe’s liberation was far from smooth. As Last Hope Island shows, early missteps in British attempts to organize resistance and orchestrate sabotage behind enemy lines were often poorly conceived at best, lethally ineffectual at worst. Olson doesn’t hesitate to rebuke those whose acts of cowardice or cavalier bravado needlessly cost lives. Overall, though, this is a buoyant portrayal of the collective endeavor that helped win the war in Europe. Pulling together, Britons and their émigré allies laid the foundation for an extended experience of cross-Channel cooperation. The author’s regret that this venture may now be pulled apart via Brexit is obvious in her recent op-eds for various British newspapers. Readers of her book alone, however, could hardly fail to discern the author’s Euroenthusiasm. —Susan L. Carruthers is a professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark, and the author of The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace (2016).
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Queen Wilhelmina of Holland was among the exiled leaders of six occupied European nations operating out of Britain during the war.
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BLOOD AND FEARS How America’s Bomber Boys of the 8th Air Force Saved World War II By Kevin Wilson. 560 pp. Pegasus Books, 2017. $29.95.
RUN AND GUN HEROES AND GENERALS Reto-Moto, Free-to-Play WORLD WAR II RATING ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
THE BASICS Heroes and Generals is a free online first-person shooter. Players control an infantryman from the United States, Soviet Union, or Germany in World War II. Various combat units, including paratroopers or reconnaissance, can be selected. Players connect with other players to form squads and conduct tactical-level operations. Players have to pay to operate more advanced features, like tanks and aircraft.
THE OBJECTIVE Objectives vary and are largely determined by players with the rank of general, who can direct the group’s actions. Players control a grunt first and gain experience for promotions. Most missions revolve around controlling a key piece of terrain and are designed to create even gameplay for online players operating in teams, rather than to reflect realistic wartime battles. Teamwork is essential for success. HISTORICAL ACCURACY The graphics are fantastic, and contain accurate depictions of uniforms, terrain, vehicles, camouflage, and more. Players can choose from a variety of weapons, vehicles, and aircraft. Aside from that, the game is not especially engaging and can quickly become a bland first-person shooter. While it looks like World War II, gameplay feels as if it could be any war. THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY Heroes and Generals is meant for fast play and action. There is little room for strategy, and not much to do besides destroy opposing players. Players will use cover, move against flanks, and in some cases find good sniper locations. Enemy tanks and aircraft are far too interested in killing a single player than engaging other tanks or covering an attack. PLAYABILITY The game is fast paced, and fighting against other online teams is exciting. Players can return again and again, each time playing something different. THE BOTTOM LINE
If first-person shooter games appeal to you, you will like this one with its distinctive World War II appearance. But if you are looking for a realistic simulation of wartime combat, Heroes and Generals will disappoint. —Chris Ketcherside, a former Marine, is working on a PhD in military history.
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HOMECOMINGS The Belated Return of Japan’s Lost Soldiers By Yoshikuni Igarashi. 320 pp. Columbia University Press, 2016. $35. A fascinating look at the difficult homecoming of Japanese POWs and jungle-hidden holdouts upon finally returning to Japan.
TIN CAN TITANS The Heroic Men and Ships of World War II’s Most Decorated Navy Destroyer Squadron By John Wukovits. 352 pp. Da Capo Press, 2017. $28. This detailed account brings to life the men of battle-scarred Destroyer Squadron 21. Admiral William F. Halsey later chose three of its ships to take the lead into Tokyo Bay to accept the Japanese surrender.
THE MALMEDY MASSACRE The War Crimes Trial Controversy By Steven P. Remy. 352 pp. Harvard, 2017. $29.95. An examination of the controversial war crimes trial of 74 SS men accused of executing 84 American POWs in Malmedy, Belgium. The author shows how false torture allegations kept the convictions from sticking.
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Author of three books on the RAF Bomber Command, Wilson draws from American diaries, letters, and interviews to focus on the B-17 crews who waged the daylight bombing campaign over Germany.
National D-Day Memorial Join us as we commemorate the 73rd Anniversary of the landings at Normandy. June 6, 2017 - Captain Jerry Yellin, who piloted the final combat mission of WWII, will be the keynote speaker.
D-Day and WWII Veterans please RSVP for reserved seating.
Open daily 10am-5pm, Guided tours available For Information about accommodations please see www.visitbedford.com
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MAKE WAR, NOT PEACE ON OCTOBER 8, 1918, Sergeant Alvin York captured 132 German soldiers and killed at least 20. For this feat—perhaps the most dramatic action by a soldier in American history—York received the Medal of Honor and instant fame. Although York committed this deed during the First World War, he is also relevant to the Second World War, thanks to the film Sergeant York, directed by Howard Hawks and released in July
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1941—a few months before Pearl Harbor. The movie was an instant hit. “Sergeant York Proves One of the Season’s Great,” blared the Washington Post. Famed New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther called it “a brave and sincerely wrought biography” and an “honest saga of a plain American who believed in fundamentals and acted with clean simplicity.” The film went on to win two Academy Awards (including the Best Actor award for Gary Cooper in the title role) and became one of the highest-grossing motion pictures, when adjusted for inflation, in the history of American cinema. A 1942 poll of 548 critics placed Sergeant York in second place for “best picture” on a list of films released between November 1, 1940, and October 31, 1941, just behind Gone with the Wind. In another 1942 poll, the movie-going public rated it the “bestliked film” of 1941. The film was beloved because of Cooper’s memorable portrayal of York as a kind of cornpone Everyman who leads a raucous life in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee until a frea k accident—a lightning strike that destroys a rifle he is carrying and nearly kills him—convinces him to join the local hardscrabble church of Pastor Rosier Pile (Walter Brennan). (The lightning bolt incident was one of many liberties the movie took with the actual facts of York’s life.) Pile takes literally the Biblical commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” So York does, too—and when America enters the Great War, is horrified to learn that he must enter the army, having been rejected for conscientious objector status. During basic training at Camp Gordon, Georgia, York earns a reputation as an obedient soldier and a deadeye marksman, effortlessly achieving bullseye upon bullseye. Yet he stubbornly retains his pacifist beliefs. Then two officers attempt to persuade him to fight. Captain Danforth (Harvey Stephens), a committed Christian, trades Bible verses with York, with Danforth quoting verses suggesting the Bible does not forbid participation in war and York one-upping him each time with verses that insist upon on the complete rejection of violence. Then Major Buxton (Stanley Ridges), intently observing this scriptural duel, steps in and hands York a book on Amer-
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The 1941 drama used Sergeant York’s real-life story of his heroics during World War I to uproot isolationist sentiment in the United States.
RMY OU TO SEE DEATH SQUADS HIP FLEET
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The Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, aboard the USS Juneau, February 14, 1942.
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ican history. It’s a book about freedom and the price of freedom, he says, and the creation of a government “whereby all men were pledged to defend the rights of each man, and each man to defend the rights of all men. We call it government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” “You done given me a powerful lot to be
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Few moviegoers failed to grasp that the film was an argument against isolationism.
a-thinking about,” York responds. Buxton gives York a 10-day furlough to go home and think it over. If York returns unpersuaded, Buxton promises, he will see to it that York is discharged. (Historically, York was instead promised a noncombatant slot.) York does go home. Then, high on a mountain ledge, he ponders his dilemma, with the opposed words of Major Buxton and Pastor Pile echoing in his head until they boil down to “God! Country!” A breeze catches the pages of York’s open Bible and flips them to the page containing Jesus’s injunction, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” York interprets this to mean that he must fight and, later, in a blazing 15-minute segment of the film, he does just that, in the process achieving the feat that will result in his award of the Medal of Honor. Few moviegoers failed to grasp that Sergeant York was implicitly an argument to reject isolationism—the precise point that producer Jesse L. Lasky sought to convey. York’s film screen journey from committed pacifist to martial hero eloquently illustrated the shift in policy that Lasky believed the United States must make. Ironically, isolationism had been York’s own position in the run-up to war. But by the time the film was released in July 1941 he had changed his mind, and in a series of public appearances vocally condemned isolationists such as Senator Burton K. Wheeler, a Democrat from Montana, whom York derisively called “Neville” after British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, the architect of appeasement: “The senator ought to know by now that you can’t protect yourself against bullets with an umbrella.” But the film made the point far more effectively. It was, as Time magazine put it, “Hollywood’s first contribution to the national defense.” +
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★ EXPLORE PITTSBURGH, THE NORTH'S WAR FORGE ★
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Answers to the January/ February Challenge
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American fighter pilots Reuben Simon, John Godfrey, and Robert Nelson— with an unnamed four-legged friend—rest at their base in Debden, England. We have altered this image to create one inaccuracy. What is it?
What the…?!? A barrage balloon to defend against enemy aircraft attacks.
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF USAF; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER; ANSWERS, FROM TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES, WARNER BROS., GUY ACETO COLLECTION
Hollywood Howlers The Battle of the Bulge occurred in the snowy Ardennes forest, but the film’s version was set in a desert.
Name That Patch 339th Fighter Squadron
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PLEASE SEND YOUR ANSWER and mailing address to: May/June Challenge, World War II 1919 Gallows Road Suite 400 Vienna, VA 22182 or e-mail: challenge@ historynet.com Three winners, chosen at random from all correct entries submitted by June 15, will receive a Blu-ray/DVD copy of Hacksaw Ridge. Answers will appear in the September/October 2017 issue.
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UNFORGETTABLE
DR. MACRO
Actress Angela Greene resisted being called a pinup and starlet; she viewed those labels as too restrictive. Greene nonetheless modeled for a Saturday Evening Post cover painting by Norman Rockwell in 1941, was the July 14, 1944, pinup in Yank, and wound up as nose art on a B-29, Fast Company, late in the war. She appeared in a string of films and dated a string of famous and soon-to-be-famous men—including a young naval lieutenant named John F. Kennedy— before marrying in 1946. In 1962, Greene crossed paths with Kennedy again, at a party honoring the president in Beverly Hills. “I didn’t think he would remember me,” she said. He did.
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