The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II

by Glass, Charles

  Woods’s and Robinson’s peregrinations took them in mid-December to the Loire Disciplinary Training Center, where Steve Weiss was detailed to help erect the gallows for the hanging of two men. One had been convicted of murder, the other of raping a Frenchwoman. Both were black. The War Department’s “Procedure for Military Executions” of 12 June 1944 laid down guidelines for every aspect of putting soldiers to death by hanging, as well as “by musketry.” Weiss, who had long conversations with hangman Woods, saw the forty-one-year-old sergeant as a “small framed Texan from San Antonio, the bottom of his overseas cap resting at eye level, wearing a .45 automatic on each hip.” Not only did Woods sport the two .45s in matching holsters like a cowboy, he regaled Weiss with tales of hangings he had done. One of his claims was to have hanged more than three hundred men in fourteen years. This was an unlikely statistic for a man who had become a military executioner only two months before and whose prior record had included self-claimed assistance at only four hangings. When Weiss and the other inmates completed the scaffold at the top of a rise beside the camp, Woods made a show of testing the drop, the trap door and the rest of the equipment. To Woods’s eye, everything was in working order.

  What the army manual called “the ceremony” began when a detail of MPs unlocked the condemned man’s cage and put him in handcuffs. The other Death Row inmates erupted in fury, screaming and banging tin cups against their cages. The rest of the prisoners stood at attention beside their pup tents. The MPs led the condemned man through the camp and out the gate to the gallows. Weiss, who was standing nearby, watched the black soldier mount the steps. The commanding officer, the chaplain and the medical officer, as prescribed in the manual, were waiting for him at the top. With them was Sergeant Woods. The commanding officer read out the sentence and, as the manual required, asked, “Do you have any statement to make before the order directing your execution is carried out?” The convict had nothing to say.

  Sergeant Woods stepped forward holding out a hood that, according to the regulations, was “of black sateen material, split at the open end so that it will come well down on the prisoner’s chest and back. A draw string will be attached to secure the hood snugly around the neck.” Weiss wrote, “Woods placed a black hood over the man’s head, tied a rope around his neck and sprang the trap door.” The convict disappeared, the regulations stipulating that “the lower portion of the scaffold will be covered to conceal the body of the prisoner from the spectators after the trap is sprung.” The medical officer, who was required to certify death, pulled aside the green canvas cloth. Weiss saw that the condemned man was still breathing. The doctor pressed a stethoscope to the writhing chest and shook his head. Weiss realized the man’s neck had not broken, leaving him to writhe at the end of the rope unseen by everyone except Weiss and the medical officer. Fifteen minutes later, the body went still. The doctor listened again. The man had at last strangled to death.

  The regulations stipulated a different procedure. “Every precaution will be taken to prevent the protracted suffering of the prisoner,” Adjutant General A. E. O’Leary had instructed in an order of 8 July 1943. The 27 September 1944 directive from the judge advocate updated the order: “In the event the construction proves to be defective, the rope breaks or the execution is not successful, the procedure will be repeated until the prescribed punishment has been administered.” No precaution had been taken to prevent “protracted suffering,” and the doctor did not suggest cutting the man down to be hanged again.

  As with the French firing squad that shot the milicien in Alboussière, the hanging had been botched. Both experiences left Weiss sick. A few days later, he was ordered to assist at the hanging of the second black convict. Woods was no more efficient than he had been at the previous execution, and the second man also strangled slowly to death. Weiss gave Woods the benefit of the doubt, writing, “Whether it was Woods’ failure to kill quickly or whether the fault lies in hanging as a method, that allowed the condemned to linger inhumanely, may never be known.”

  From D-Day in Normandy to the autumn of 1945, the judge advocate general’s official history noted, seventy soldiers “—all enlisted men—had been executed in the European Theater of Operations.” Of this number, fifteen were white, and fifty-five, nearly 80 percent, were black.

  The bodies of the executed prisoners were sent to a First World War cemetery near Fère-en-Tardenois, where they were interred in unmarked graves. Their families were not informed how they died or where they were buried, another violation of procedure. Some families received a second telegram, following the announcement of death, saying the soldier had died of “willful misconduct.” The War Department officially instructed, “If the next of kin or other relatives of the deceased desire the body, the officer designated to execute the sentence will, if practicable, permit its delivery to them for burial.” In practice, this almost never happened. Weiss, already convinced that the army was unjust to the living, observed that it was unfair to the dead as well.

  Journalists were not permitted to cover executions. Instructions from Brigadier General Ralph B. Lovett, adjutant general for the European Theater of Operations, on 14 December 1944 to “All Officers Exercising General Court-Martial Jurisdiction” were clear: “Appropriate information will be made available to the press after an execution has been carried out. . . . Under no circumstances will any such release include the name of the soldier or identify the organization of which he was a member.” Reporting details of the execution of “our boys” might have harmed morale on the home front.

  • • •

  Steve Weiss spent the winter of 1944–45 doing calisthenics and mulling over his crime. Despite his mental dislocation, the camp psychiatrist did not interview him. The Loire DTC offered the teenage soldier no psychological care, no rehabilitation and no training. Weiss had every reason to believe that he would spend the rest of his life there, because the army had not informed him that two days after his trial the 36th Division’s judge advocate had reviewed his sentence. “The sentence is approved,” Major Harry B. Kelton, the adjutant general in General Dahlquist’s headquarters, wrote on 9 November, “but the period of confinement is reduced to twenty (20) years.”

  After the court-martial, the War Department sent a telegram to William Weiss to inform him his son was alive. “When the telegram came that I was back on duty, there was a big celebration,” Steve Weiss remembered. “All the family, the extended family, got together at the apartment and celebrated.” He was alive, no longer missing in action, no longer presumed dead. He was, however, a deserter. “It didn’t seem to be an issue,” Weiss recalled. The family’s response to his desertion might have been shame, “if I had a different kind of father.” Far from rejecting his son, the First World War veteran wrote to the War Department demanding a fair hearing for him:

  I am writing to you in reference to my son, Pvt. Stephen J. Weiss, #12228033. . . . It will interest you to know what has been done to a boy who enlisted in the Army at the age of 18, who gave his blood to the Red Cross at various times, who saved every penny to buy bonds, who could not wait for his graduation from high school to sign up with the army.

  After five months’ training, he was sent overseas, arrived in Africa, fought at Anzio beachhead. We received two telegrams from the War Dept. that he was missing in action. He was attached to the Seventh Army, 143rd Infantry, and fought his way into the southern part of France.

  While he was lost from his outfit, he attached himself with a paratroop outfit. In Yank magazine of November 12, 1944, the story will tell what 13 guerrillas did as he was one of a band of irregulars, soldiers who were lost from their outfit. They blew up bridges, hampered the German transportation. For days they were living in a hay loft; they finally attached themselves to the French Underground, with the Marquies [sic] of France, who looked after them. One day they came with French Police uniforms and dressed in them and were taken in back of the lines. If they were caught
they would have been shot as spies. My boy reported to his outfit, sick, starved and in a state of psychoneurosis. The medics laughed at him.

  They gave him a General Court Martial because he was away from his outfit and accused him of leaving his outfit in the line of duty under fire with the enemy; his sentence was handed out, life in prison. The reviewing authority reduced the period of confinement to 20 years and suspended the execution of dishonorable discharge until the soldier’s release from confinement, forfeiture of all pay and allowances. He has been confined since Nov. 7, 1944. My desire is that you please take action in this matter as my wife is very sick and my father who is an old man, won’t live much longer if this condition keeps on. If ever a boy of 18 was given a raw deal, my boy received same. He has had frozen feet and a skin infection; every letter we receive from him tells of what he is going through. This is the thanks he received for giving his all for his country. Please investigate this; all that I ask is that my boy be restored to duty and given a square deal. I am a Purple Heart man, having fought in the last war.

  The adjutant general, Norman B. Nusbaum, wrote to the commanding general asking that “this office be furnished information upon which to base a reply, together with a copy of the Staff Judge Advocate’s Review, if available.” Although Weiss’s father had not kept him out of the army in 1943, he was doing all he could to free him from prison in 1945. In his view, the army was treating the common soldier no better in this war than it had when it tried to deny his New York 77th Division the honors of victory in 1919. In the meantime, the military authorities were slowly addressing the case of Private Stephen J. Weiss.

  Treating combat exhaustion through courts-martial was proving to be a failure. Among the consequences for the armed forces was the steady loss of good soldiers to prisons, when psychiatrists might have rendered them fit for further service. Its effect on the men themselves was incalculable. Because the war had damaged their mental health as surely as bullets had their bodies, they needed treatment rather than punishment. Among the senior officers who began to understand this problem was Major General John E. Dahlquist, Weiss’s former commander. Although he had demanded in 1944 that division courts-martial bring in more guilty verdicts and harsher sentences for desertion, he had changed his mind by February 1945. At the time, his division was suffering more desertions than any other. On 27 February, he wrote to Lieutenant General Ben Lear, the deputy theater commander:

  The problem of war weary men in the Infantry of the old divisions which fought in Italy is one of the most serious we have. . . . Medically, these men are alright [sic]; that is, the doctor is not able to find anything wrong with them. They do not qualify as exhaustion cases, therefore they cannot be reclassified for other duty under present regulations. Yet, these men should be removed from the Infantry because they have lost their “zip” and tend to weaken the fighting spirit of the new men.

  . . . For the past month, we have been gradually ridding our ranks of the bad exhaustion (psychoneurotic) cases and the war weary where possible. This must be handled very quietly however, for if any intimation that we were doing such a thing got noised around, our aid stations would be flooded with infantrymen trying to get reclassified.

  Combat infantry commanders, like Dahlquist, were daily confronted with the reality that some men could not help breaking down. Rear echelon officers, however, were not ready to recognize the problem. Major General E. S. Hughes, on reading a copy of Dahlquist’s letter, wrote to General Lear, “I do not agree with General Dahlquist that men who have lost their zip should be removed from the Infantry. I think General Dahlquist over-stresses both physical and mental fatigue.”

  Parts of the army apparatus were changing. The Army Medical Corps sent psychologists to detention training centers in the spring of 1945 to discover from inmates themselves what made them desert. One visiting psychologist at the Loire DTC asked to examine Steve Weiss. Weiss recalled, “I reported to a medium sized, dark-haired, scholarly man wearing glasses, in a small office in one of the camp’s administrative buildings.”

  The army psychologist asked him, “How do you feel?”

  “I don’t know,” Weiss answered. “I don’t feel anything.”

  This initiated a conversation in which, for the first time since he joined the army, Weiss discussed what he had done, what had been done to him and his impressions of both. The full story that he had kept inside, even at his court-martial, came rushing out: his alienation from Captain Simmons, his experiences in combat, his service with the Resistance and the OSS, his sense of abandonment when he returned to the 36th Division, the deaths of his friends, his fears and his breakdown under artillery barrages. The psychologist was more sympathetic than Weiss had expected from someone who was also an officer. The psychologist put the young soldier’s confusion into context, explaining that Weiss had turned his anger at Captain Simmons against himself. What Weiss ought to have done to preserve his sanity, he said, was to confront Simmons rather than run away. He said, “Enduring prolonged combat left you with very little choice, hang tough another day or withdraw. You chose the latter, because it was no longer possible to tolerate that amount of anxiety.” For the first time since Weiss enlisted, someone understood him.

  The psychologist said that Weiss’s desertion did not mean he was a failure. “Rather,” he explained, “it seems that you simply tried to reduce the threat of being overwhelmed emotionally without having accumulated the required coping tools.” The vocabulary of psychological analysis was new to Weiss. The psychologist let Weiss absorb his words before concluding, “Someone has made a horrible mistake.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “You don’t belong here. You belong in a hospital.”

  At this time, officers at disciplinary training centers reported that half the men convicted of desertion and absence without leave were suffering from “combat fatigue.” At the Loire DTC, 90 percent of the convicted deserters were, like Weiss, from infantry rifle companies. The psychologist who examined Weiss recommended that the charges against him be dropped and the young soldier returned to duty.

  Weeks passed during which Weiss heard nothing. He endured the prison routine, slowly losing hope that he would ever leave. In April, President Roosevelt died. In May, the Red Army conquered Berlin, Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered. Some American troops in Europe were being prepared for service in the Pacific, where the war against Japan still raged. History was passing Weiss by. One day in June, a colonel from the Judge Advocate General’s Office arrived at the Loire DTC to interview Weiss. Having studied the psychologist’s report, the colonel had to determine whether the young soldier merited a second chance. On him alone depended Weiss’s future: another twenty years in prison or a return to the United States Army. Weiss waited in front of the colonel’s desk, watching him study the case file. The colonel asked, “Will you fight in the Pacific?”

  Weiss stood at attention and answered, “Yes, sir.”

  It was the right answer. Weiss had not changed his mind about returning to the infantry. General Eisenhower had given an order, which every infantryman knew, that no soldier who had fought in two theaters of operations would be sent to a third. Weiss had fought in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations in Italy and southern France and in the European Theater of Operations in eastern France. He could not be forced to fight in the Pacific theater. The colonel, who was apparently unaware of Eisenhower’s directive, approved Weiss’s release from prison and restoration to the service. Weiss was free, but he was not going to the Pacific. He was on his way to Paris. The last laugh was his.

  THIRTY

  For love there is no substitute. For the pangs of separation there is no perfect cure, except winning the war and getting home to the loved ones again.

  Psychology for the Fighting Man, p. 342

  AL WHITEHEAD WAS ANYTHING but a cooperative patient at the 1st Hospital of the Seine Base Section in Paris. W
hen a nurse attempted to relieve him of his weapons soon after his arrival in early January, he clung to his .45-caliber pistol and kept it under his pillow. He ate little, months of short rations in the field having reduced his appetite. Unable to sleep, even with tranquilizers, he paid someone in the hospital to bring him “calvadose [sic], cognac, or anything else he could get his hands on.” A bottle of calvados arrived. Whitehead took it to the kitchen, mixed it with a can of grapefruit juice and drank it all. As he recalled later, he slept for three days.

  When he woke, an American nurse informed him that, following his recovery from appendicitis, he was shipping out. “That was the best news I’d heard since my arrival, so I didn’t ask where—I assumed it would be back to my division, since the pain in my side had subsided.” The 2nd Division at this time, 11 January 1945, was still holding the Elsenborn Ridge in Belgium. The army dispatched Whitehead to the 94th Reinforcement Battalion, a replacement depot in Fontainebleau, south of Paris.

  Whitehead arrived at the depot at 10:00 on the morning of 12 January, and he did his best from that moment not to fit in. He resented being a replacement, waiting to be sent to a new outfit. The 2nd Division, he wrote, was where he belonged. However, he recognized he was suffering from “combat fatigue and would have been a detriment to myself and others.” When a sergeant upbraided him for filling his cigarette lighter with petrol, as he had done at the front, he threatened to kill him. Most of the officers and noncoms at the depot, like the majority of replacement enlisted men there, had not seen action. Whitehead had been in combat continuously from D-Day through to 30 December 1944, and he had earned the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, Combat Infantry Badge and Distinguished Unit Citation. As far as he was concerned, he did not have to take shit from anyone. And he didn’t. When a young lieutenant issued him a bolt-action, First World War vintage rifle for guard duty, he told him to take the “peashooter” and “shove it up his ass.” Unable or unwilling to accept he was no longer on the front lines, he demanded a Thompson submachine gun and a trench knife.