“as Commander in Chief” “Appeal to Wilson for Parade of the 77th,” New York Times, 6 April 1919, p. 1.
“The 77th fought” “History of the 77th,” New York Times Magazine, 4 May 1919, p. 80.
“the foreign-born, and especially the Jews” Richard Slotkin, Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality, New York: Henry Holt, 2005, p. 76.
“There are citizens” President Woodrow Wilson, “State of the Union,” 7 December 1915. Full text at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1328. Also quoted in Gary Mead, The Doughboys: America and the First World War, New York: Overlook Press, 2002, p. 365.
“Every building had” “2,000,000 Out to See Veterans Pass By,” New York Times, 7 May 1919, p. 1.
Only the deserters Robert Fantina, Desertion and the American Soldier, 1776–2006, New York: Algora Publishing, 2006, p. 112. See also “Punishing the Army Deserter,” New York Times, 16 June 1918, p. 7.
Britain shot 304 soldiers Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson, Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War, London: Cassell, 2001, pp. 484–503.
“The time has come” “A Million Cheer 77th in Final Hike of War Up 5th Av.,” New York Times, 7 May 1919, pp. 1 and 5.
“The neighborhood was” Steve Weiss, e-mail to the author, 17 April 2010.
“I didn’t know” Steve Weiss, interview with the author, London, 7 October 2009.
“Seems like yesterday” Stephen J. Weiss, “War Dance (1943–1946),” unpublished manuscript, second draft, London, 2009, pp. 24–25. Weiss has written two drafts of his memoir, which are hereafter referred to as WD/First Draft and WD/Second Draft.
TWO
The nineteen-year-old volunteer’s Vernon Scannell, notes for his author’s biography for his novel The Big Time, Scannell papers, University of Reading Archives, Special Collections Service.
“that dark and grey” Vernon Scannell, Argument of Kings, London: Robson Books, 1987, p. 112. [Hereafter, Scannell, Kings.]
“I was supposed” Vernon Scannell, Interview, Imperial War Museum, London, 21 October 1987, Tape No. 10009 (Four reels, 120 minutes), transcribed by the author. [Hereafter, Scannell, IWM Interview.]
“If you did revert” Ibid.
“singularly ignorant of” Ibid.
“Are you over 18” Vernon Scannell, Drums of Morning: Growing Up in the Thirties, London: Robson Books, 1992, p. 200. [Hereafter, Scannell, Drums.]
“The recruiting officer” Ibid.
“The Army was” Ibid.
“disliked the Army” Vernon Scannell, The Tiger and the Rose: An Autobiography, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971, p. 3. [Hereafter, Scannell, Tiger.]
“early days in” Scannell, Kings, p. 17.
“By nature I was” Vernon Scannell, “Coming to Life in Leeds,” The Listener, 22 August 1963, galley proof in Vernon Scannell Collection, Box 4, Vernon Works: The Walking Wounded, A, T and TCCMSS Letters Recip, Miscellaneous, Folder: Scannell Letters [Corris, Eric C], Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.
“not so much” Vernon Scannell, A Proper Gentleman, London: Robson Books, 1977, p. 103.
“working class but” Scannell, Kings, p. 77.
“‘Vernon? What’s that?’” Vernon Scannell, Interview with Michael Parkinson, Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio, 29 November 1987. [Hereafter, Parkinson interview.]
“A lot of the chaps” Scannell, IWM Interview.
“My comrades were” Scannell, “Coming to Life in Leeds.”
“I became ashamed” Scannell, Tiger.
“They had no respect” Scannell, IWM Interview.
“It was defeat” Alan Moorehead, The African Trilogy: The North African Campaign, 1940–43, London: Cassell, 1998 (originally published by Hamish Hamilton, 1944), p. 381.
“a full scale retreat” Ibid., pp 385–86.
Worst of all Artemis Cooper, Cairo in the War, 1939–1945, London: Penguin, 1998, p. 189.
“Every vehicle was” S. F. Crozier, The History of the Corps of Royal Military Police, Aldershot: Gale and Polden, 1951, p. 74.
“that His Majesty’s” General C. J. E. Auchinleck to the Under-Secretary of State, the War Office, 7 April 1942, British National Archives, CAB 66/25/32.
During the First World War Sir Percy James Grigg, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for War, 14 June 1942, British National Archives, CAB 66/25/32.
“With the increase” Crozier, The History of the Corps of Royal Military Police, p. 177.
“a shilling a day” Wilf Swales (968), Interview with the Second World War Experience Centre, Leeds, England, recorded on 21 June 2001.
Two leaders in Donald Thomas, An Underworld at War: Spivs, Deserters, Racketeers and Civilians in the Second World War, London: John Murray, 2003, pp. 187–88.
“The number of” Crozier, The History of the Corps of Royal Military Police, p. 178.
This deserter band Thomas, An Underworld at War, p. 186.
“My military advisers” Sir Percy James Grigg, Secretary of State for War, Memorandum to the War Cabinet, “Death Penalty for Offences Committed on Active Service,” 14 June 1942, British National Archives, CAB 66/25/32.
“If legislation is” Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves, London: Jonathan Cape, 2000, p. 239.
“softness in education” Letter from General Archibald Percival Wavell, former Commander-in-Chief Middle East, to Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Alan Brooke, 31 May 1942. Brooke wrote to Wavell on 5 July 1942, “I agree with you that we are not anything like as tough as we were in the last war. There has been far too much luxury, safety first, red triangle, etc., in this country.” Quoted in David French, Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War Against Germany, 1939–1945, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 1 and 242.
The first units Ibid., p. 140.
“a fairly constant” Edgar Jones and Simon Wesseley, “‘Forward Psychiatry’ in the Military: Its Origins and Effectiveness,” Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 16, August 2003, p. 413 (complete article, pp. 411–19).
“Recent desertions show” Auchinleck to War Office, 19 July 1942, British National Archives, WO 32/15773. See also David French, “Discipline and the Death Penalty in the British Army in the War Against Germany During the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 33, No. 4, October 1998, pp. 531–45.
“The place we see” Vernon Scannell, Soldiering On: Poems of Military Life, London: Robson Books, 1989, p. 29. [Hereafter, Scannell, Soldiering On.]
“I do remember” Scannell, IWM Interview.
Some of the more Cooper, Cairo in the War, 1939–1945, p. 214.
“who for their own” Douglas H. Tobler, Intelligence in the Desert: The Recollections and Reminiscences of a Brigade Intelligence Officer, self-published, Gold Bridge, B.C., 1978, p. 45. See also French, Raising Churchill’s Army, p. 139.
“The 51st Highland” J. B. Salmond, The History of the 51st Highland Division, 1939–1945, Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1953, p. 29.
“An Arab was” Scannell, IWM interview.
THREE
Steve Weiss blackmailed Alfred T. Whitehead, with contributing material by Selma B. Whitehead, Diary of a Soldier, printed privately by Alfred T. Whitehead and Selma B. Whitehead, 1989, p. 3. [Hereafter cited as Whitehead Diary.] My copy is signed, apparently by the author, “My Old Barber, Al, 6/17/91.”
Whitehead asked her The CCC was phased out late in 1942, as young men were needed for the armed forces. At its height, the CCC employed more than 300,000 volunteers. Among CCC enrollees were the actors Robert Mitchum, Walter Matthau and Raymond Burr, as well as the boxer Archie Moore, baseball player Stan Musial and Admiral Hyman Rickover. See “Conservation: Poor Young Men,” Time, 6 February 1939, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,771421,00.html.
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br /> His Social Security Social Security Death Index, Master File, Provo, UT: Social Security Administration, No. 410-28-8395, Tennessee, Issue date: before 1951.
And the U.S. Census U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, District Eleven, Putnam, Tennessee, Roll 2269, p. 8B, Enumeration District 13. NARA, T626, Roll 2,667. The Census does not list any female member of the household old enough to have been Alfred’s mother, but it gives the names and ages of seven girls (four older than Alfred, three younger) between the ages of five months and nineteen years.
“They had me working” Whitehead Diary, p. 2.
“She followed me” Ibid., p. 3.
“After his platoon” York, Alvin C., Citation, Medal of Honor recipients, World War I, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC, June 8, 2009. http://www.history.army.mil/html/moh/worldwari.html.
“At night” Whitehead Diary, p. 12.
Training lasted seventeen John Ellis, The Sharp End: The Fighting Man in World War II, London: Aurum Press, 1990, p. 13. Ellis wrote that, toward the end of the war, “some American infantrymen arriving in north-west Europe had received only six weeks training.”
“I had numerous” Whitehead Diary, p. 19.
FOUR
“the Scottish soldier” Patrick Delaforce, Monty’s Highlanders: 51st Highland Division at War, 1939–1945, Brighton: Tom Donovan, 1991, p. 4.
“I watched my Jocks” Ibid., p. 43.
“the biggest artillery” John Bierman and Colin Smith, Alamein: War Without Hate, London: Penguin, 2003, p. 276.
“And, with the flashes” Vernon Scannell, “Baptism of Fire,” Alan Benson Collection of Vernon Scannell, 1948–2007 (2008-10-07P), Box 4, Folder 4.1, Scannell—Correspondence, 2001, January–May.
“One of the most memorable” Vernon Scannell, IWM Interview.
“And the worst” Scannell, Soldiering On, p. 41.
“When you’re in action” Vernon Scannell, IWM Interview.
“I enlisted in” Keith Douglas, Alamein to Zem Zem, London: Faber & Faber, 2008 (originally published by Editions Poetry, 1946), p. 1.
“I like you, sir” Ibid., p. 15.
The Eighth Army lost Bierman and Smith, Alamein: War Without Hate, p. 334.
“After Alamein they” Scannell, IWM interview.
“And at the gap” Scannell, Soldiering On, p. 42.
“by common consent” Moorehead, The African Trilogy, p. 381.
After the conquest Ibid., pp. 75–76.
“Then leave the dead” Keith Douglas, Complete Poems, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 100.
“The ancient law” Moorehead, The African Trilogy, p. 262.
“a cushy pen pushing” Scannell, Tiger, p. 94.
“We were going” Scannell, IWM Interview.
“I have seen strong” Ellis, The Sharp End, p. 69.
“After the sun” Scannell, Kings, p. 13.
“John felt immense” Ibid., p. 20.
“They [the Seaforths]” Parkinson interview.
“Once daylight came” B. S. Barnes, Operation Scipio: The 8th Army at the Battle of Wadi Akarit, 6th April 1943, Tunisia, New York: Sentinel Press, 2007, p. 233. (This well-researched volume contains the written and oral testimony of many participants in the battle.)
“We then could” Ibid., p. 206.
“an almost trance-like” Scannell, Kings, p. 21.
“We had on this day” Barnes, Operation Scipio, p. 242.
The Seaforths had lost Major G. L. W. Andrews, I/C, 5th Battalion, 5th Seaforth Highlanders, testimony at http://51hd.co.uk/accounts/andrews_wadi-akarit.
“Then he saw” Scannell, Kings, p. 23.
“My own friends” Parkinson interview.
“He sees the shapes” Vernon Scannell, Of Love and War: New and Selected Poems, London: Robson Books, 2002, p. 40.
FIVE
“We learned there” Whitehead Diary, p. 22.
“Both as individuals” Ibid., p. 23.
On 3 October Second Battalion Staff, “The Second Battalion, 38th Infantry, in World War II,” 1945 (edited with permission of Lieutenant Colonel Jack K. Norris by Cleve C. Barkley, 1985), p. 4.
SIX
“Their talk always” Allan Campbell McLean, The Glasshouse, London: Calder and Boyars, 1969, p. 7.
“From now on” Scannell, Kings, p. 50.
“a mixture of snarl and smile” Scannell, Kings, pp. 52–58.
“Are you going back” Parkinson interview.
“All he cared” Scannell, Kings, p. 25.
Along the route Ibid., p. 70.
“as a kind of amulet” Scannell, Drums, p. 4.
James Bain had John Scannell, interview with the author, London, 15 February 2011.
The couple had Parkinson interview.
“one of his little jokes” Scannell, Drums, p. 7.
“I do not recall” Ibid., p. 9.
“What I felt” Ibid., p. 12.
For reasons left Parkinson interview.
“I also remember” Vernon Scannell, IWM Interview.
“tragic and mythopoeic” Scannell, Drums, p. 71.
“the boxing Bain brothers” Ibid., p. 132.
“He enlisted among” Vernon Scannell, “The Unknown War Poet,” Alan Benson Collection of Vernon Scannell, 1948–2007, 2008-10-07P, Box 4, Folder 5.1, Scannell Correspondence—2007, January–March, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.
“Our interview with” Drums, p. 188.
“. . . He could conceal” Vernon Scannell, Of Love and War, p. 50.
SEVEN
“support and defend” Steve Weiss, interview with the author, London, 28 June 2010.
“Today, twenty-five years” “The Psychiatric Toll of Warfare,” Fortune, December 1943, p. 141.
“Although seemingly glamorous” WD/Second Draft, p. 27.
“map reading, aerial” Ibid.
“gave a false impression” Ibid., p. 29.
rigid enforcement of petty rules “Chickenshit. This graphic description, used both as noun and adjective, signifies what is mean, petty and annoying, especially as applied to regulations. Thus, when an infantryman in a rest area finds himself restricted because his dogtags are not worn around his neck, or his shoes are unshined, or he has been detected in the act of robbing the village bank, he complains that there is too damned much chickenshit around.” Joseph W. Bishop, Jr., “U.S. Army Speech in the European Theater,” American Speech, Vol. 21, No. 4, December 1946, p. 248. (Full article, pp. 241–52.)
an army that had expanded Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944, Washington, DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1990, p. 388.
Weiss experienced no Steve Weiss, interview with the author, London, 7 October 2009.
“stomp his ass” WD/Second Draft, p. 28.
“If you don’t change” Ibid.
Time magazine reported “Medicine: In Uniform and Their Right Minds,” Time, 1 June 1942.
“the cold hard facts” Edward A. Strecker, Their Mothers’ Sons: The Psychiatrist Examines an American Problem, Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1946, p. 6. Dr. Strecker added, “In the vast majority of case histories, a ‘mom’ is at fault.” American mothers, he believed, spoiled their sons. Alongside “momism,” he blamed “progressive education” for turning out young men incapable of adapting to the military. No politicians saw votes in condemning American motherhood, and his remained a minority view.
The army adjutant general Major General J. A. Ulio, Adjutant General, U.S. Army, to Commanding Generals, Army Ground Forces, Army Air Services, Services of Supply, commanders of all ports of embarkation et al., 3 February 1943, NARA RG492, Box 2029 (NND 903654), Records of Mediterranean Theater of Operations, U.S. Army, Records of the Special Staff, JAG
Headquarters Records, Decimal Correspondence 250.401 to 251.
secretary of war Letter from Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to Director of the Bureau of the Budget Harold D. Smith, 22 October 1943, and Text of Executive Order 9367, 9 November 1943, Deserter File, George C. Marshall Foundation, 1600 VMI Parade, Lexington, VA.
“in May, 1942” Letter from Brigadier General M. G. White to General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, 9 November 1942, Deserter File, George C. Marshall Foundation, 1600 VMI Parade, Lexington, VA.
“nearly as many” Elliot D. Cooke, All But Thee and Me: Psychiatry at the Foxhole Level, Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press, 1946, p. 8.
“A hundred or more” Ibid., p. 16.
“ungainly, artistic and bright” Steve Weiss, interview with the author, Paris, 17 July 2010.
“When, in 1943” Cooke, All But Thee and Me, p. 71.
“Commanding Generals, Army” War Department, the Adjutant General’s Office, Washington, “Subject: Absence Without Leave and Desertion,” 3 February 1943, pp. 1 and 2, NARA, RG 498, Box 306, General Correspondence, 250–250.1.
“As long as it takes” Cooke, All But Thee and Me, p. 93.
“Yes, sir, I was” Ibid., pp. 149–50.
“If a soldier” Ibid., pp. 153–54.
“Within a few weeks” Reynolds Packard, Rome Was My Beat, Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1975, p. 110. Packard wrote that U.S. military censors would not permit him and other correspondents to file reports on the black market or deserters.
“Complaints are coming” Norman Lewis, Naples ’44, London: Eland Books, 1983 (originally published London: William Collins, 1978), pp. 32–33.
“One soon finds” Ibid., p. 120.
“Unlike the field marshal” WD/Second Draft, pp. 36–37.
German artillery dug Charles M. Wiltse, The Medical Department: Medical Service in the Mediterranean and Minor Theaters, Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1965, p. 227.
The division suffered John Huston made a documentary film in 1945, The Battle of San Pietro, for the War Department. Its realism and the shocking effects of the fighting on the men of the 36th Division led the army to withhold the film from distribution.
The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II Page 36