A Death in San Pietro

by Tim Brady

  Capra had been given time after his enlistment to finish editing his latest film, a quirky comedy adapted from a popular Broadway play called Arsenic and Old Lace. Then he’d crossed the nation from one Union Station in Los Angeles, to another in Washington, D.C., wearing a crisp new uniform just purchased from the Hollywood Army-Navy store and tailored to fit his compact frame. He was spiffed with the leaves of an Army Major and the crossed-flag insignia of U.S. Army Signal Corps, all topped by a slightly oversized cap, which Capra had made the mistake of purchasing just prior to a military haircut.

  Capra was always animated by a sense of challenge and this was a large one. One of his principal motives for enlisting in the army was a need for a new direction in his life. In a career that stretched back to just after World War I, Capra had conquered the world of motion pictures; now he needed new tests. “I’m an uphill man,” he wrote. “When my motor races uphill, my interest rises, when it idles on the flat, I’m bored.”3

  Capra’s successes, however, failed by a long shot to explain exactly why he was outside Marshall’s door that February day. Marshall, after all, was a man whose labors, post December 7, were monumental. From the moment Marshall sat down to read the fourteen-point diplomatic ultimatum from the Japanese that had been placed on his desk after Pearl Harbor, he knew immediately that all had changed. His most immediate concerns at that moment turned toward protecting American shores and military interests from further Japanese attack, particularly in the Philippines. But quick on the heels of the necessary defensive measures at the start of the conflict, came the need to plan and implement a comprehensive strategy for world war.

  So why, in the midst of these trying and dangerous times were precious moments belonging to George Marshall being expended on a discussion of training films with a Hollywood movie director?

  When Capra entered the general’s office, Marshall glanced up from his work, looking like a “sad-eyed Okie,” according to the director.4 George Marshall was not a man people relaxed around. Not simply because of his rank, or because he could be brusque; it was more that Marshall projected such a no-nonsense face to the world that those in his presence felt a need to get to the point as well.

  Marshall began without preamble: Within a short time, he said, the U.S. Army had grown and would continue to grow from the two hundred thousand who were troops when Marshall became Chief of Staff in 1939, to numbers in the millions (around 8 ultimately). These young men would have many fine qualities but they would not be professional soldiers. In fact, the new recruits would outnumber veteran army professionals by a measure of about forty to one.

  What most concerned Marshall, however, was how these young recruits would react when they were on the other side of the world. Marshall believed “A man’s fighting quality, his stamina, his relentless purpose, comes most strongly from the association with his home.” That association didn’t exist in the current situation. The question that troubled him was whether American troops would fight with the necessary resolve and toughness when “they were thousands of miles from home-in the southwest Pacific, and Italy, in Africa, in places that they had hardly ever heard of.”5 When “there was none of that tremendous spirit that comes of defending your own home-your own wife and children . . .”

  Marshall felt this need to inform in a deeply personal way. As General Pershing’s aide-de-camp at the end of World War I, Marshall had been given a curious assignment in the waning days of the Army’s stay in Europe. In the spring of 1919, several months after the Armistice, as American troops were being organized to be sent home, it came to the attention of Pershing’s command that there was a high level of dissatisfaction among the troops. They wanted to get home, and not only were they having a hard time understanding the sort of bureaucratic delays slowing their departure, but they were further grousing about the causes that brought them to France in the first place. Marshall was given the assignment of explaining the war to the men who had just fought it. The backwardness of this after-the-war approach was striking to Marshall and stayed with him until the next world war.

  Obviously, the problems of educating the troops in the causes of the war would not be confined solely to its beginnings. The films that he had in mind were not to answer the question of why we are fighting now. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had helped explain that matter. More importantly, the question would need to be answered as the conflict dragged on for months and even years; when soldiers were not simply enduring the terrors of warfare, but also its monotony, its discomforts, its loneliness; when the soldiers in the American army fully understood that there was no going home until the bitter end.

  The time would come, Marshall knew, when they had to have the answer to the question of “Why We Fight” engrained in their being. They had to know in their hearts what this was about. And these films had to be of the highest quality or else they simply wouldn’t work. That’s why Capra was here. Marshall did not want the sort of training film “presented after lunch” that would put his new recruits to sleep.6 He wanted them inspired by the man who had put Mr. Deeds on the screen, the man who’d invented Mr. Smith and sent him to Washington.

  Marshall finally arrived at the specific charge he was giving Capra: the young men in Allied uniforms were capable of being not only the equal, but superior to the soldiers of the totalitarian powers they were facing, he said, “if—and this is a large if, indeed—they are given answers as to why they are in uniform, and if the answers they get are worth fighting and dying for.

  “And that, Capra, is our job—and your job. To win this war we must win the battle for men’s minds,” Marshall said. What he wanted specifically was for Capra “to make a series of documented, factual–information films—the first in our history—that will explain to our boys in the Army why we are fighting, and the principles for which we are fighting.”7

  GIVEN THIS daunting assignment, Frank Capra headed out to do just that. Capra had never made a documentary film before. As a successful commercial Hollywood filmmaker, he didn’t have much respect for them either. He thought they were primarily the province of “kooks with long hair.” Nonetheless, the director quickly set out to learn how they were made. He went to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where he was able to view a copy of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the famed Nazi propaganda film. He was impressed by the way “it destroyed the will to resist” in a viewer.8

  Also at MOMA, he watched several other German propaganda films of the pre-war era and was likewise impressed with their propagandizing. Slowly the idea began to take shape in his mind that the best way to convey the horrors of fascism was through the actual words and images that were being produced in the Axis nations. “Let their own films kill them,” is how Capra put it to one of his assistants.9

  Back in Washington, he tried to round up as much newsreel footage as he could, looking for film taken in Germany and Japan over the past few years that would help describe, as he put it, “what kind of bastards [our boys] are fighting—and why.”10

  Capra was ultimately given his own special film detachment, the 834th, within the Special Services Division of the Signal Corps. Between April and August 1942, the basic outline for the seven movies that ultimately comprised the Why We Fight documentary series was put together in Washington and Hollywood, where Capra and company moved in July, after the filmmaker became more comfortable with his standing on the project. Soon Capra’s group was made up of a host of accomplished Hollywood filmmakers, including the young director John Huston.11

  By October, the first of the series, Prelude to Victory, was complete and sent to Washington for a viewing. Once again, Capra and Marshall sat down together, this time to watch the fruits of their collaboration.

  Marshall was deeply impressed. When the lights came up after the showing, he fairly gushed—something Marshall was not prone to doing. “How did you do it,” he said to Capra, “that is the most wonderful thing.”

  Marshall was so happy with the outcome of the f
ilm that he made immediate plans to get it out to the troops, thousands of whom were already being prepped, like General Walker’s Texas Division, for shipping to war zones overseas.

  AS SUCCESSFUL as Frank Capra’s movie might have been, the fact of the matter was, like all the training measures furiously conducted by U.S. military leaders in the months prior to the advent of ground fighting in Europe, it was all preparation for what was to come; just another prelude to the moment, as Marshall envisioned, when American troops would be thousands of miles from home, cowering in some hellhole in a distant land, wondering just what they were doing there.

  The deepest doubts about this war would not come in its first few months, when patriotic fervor and gung-ho spirit energized the troops landing on the shores of North Africa and Sicily. Now, almost a full year later, as the war had come to Italy, and the bodies began to stack up on the beaches of Salerno, and soon, on the road to Rome, the young soldiers slogging their way to an uncertain destination would need to know, in the depths of their being, just why they were fighting.

  It was also not enough to show footage of German propaganda reels or fake tank battles staged in the California desert. By the spring of 1943, it was understood at the highest level of the administration—meaning in the offices of FDR, Henry Stimson, and George Marshall—that the enormous and ongoing sacrifices required of the American people in this war demanded a forthright depiction of what the fighting was like.

  Roosevelt himself issued a memorandum to Signal Corps offices that “the public be shown the grimness and hardness of war through still and motion pictures.”12 It was language reiterated in a War Department radiogram of September 3, sent to the Signal Section of the U.S. Fifth Army, even as the troops were preparing to invade Salerno. It gave a direct sense of the FDR’s feelings: “The President is dissatisfied with our photographic coverage. Motion and still photography of combat operations compare unfavorably with that of our Allies. Production of first-rate pictures of this type is essential to give the American people a visual accounting of the accomplishments of our soldiers overseas . . .

  “Thus far, excessive filming of rear area activities instead of front line action has been noticed. In order to relate the dangers and grimness of war, the work of all arms and services in front lines during operations must be covered by both still and motion picture photography. Combat action must be filmed as it happens, so suitably equipped photographic personnel must accompany the front line troops. Fill-in and background shots can be made either after or before an operation . . .”13

  Capra understood the need as well. Under the circumstances, a stitched together documentary like Tunisian Victory was not going to cut it. What was needed and wanted was a film shot in the midst of action with “especially energetic and capable direction in the field.”14

  The War Department assumed that the Fifth Army Signal Corps had the necessary camera teams in the Mediterranean Theater to make a quality documentary. But in going through its own list of personnel, the Fifth Army Signal Corps unit acknowledged that it had no director with motion picture experience “and insufficient competent motion picture cameramen.”15

  Fifth Army Signal Corps headquarters sent a radiogram back to the War Department advising them of the absence of a quality director. They also said a writer would be a good idea. A quick response from the War Department advised the unit that George Stevens, who had directed films in Hollywood for RKO and Universal, before joining the Signal Corps, was available along with a pair of writers.

  Capra had other ideas, however. He contemplated the idea of going to Italy himself, but realized he had responsibilities here in London, and back in D.C. He did have a man that he thought could do justice to the task at hand and when contacted by the War Department about the idea of making a documentary about the campaign in Italy, he made his suggestion.

  Instead of Stevens, director John Huston would be arriving shortly from England.

  On the beach at Paestum. Day 1 at Salerno Bay.

  A 143rd infantry combat team comes ashore at Salerno Bay.

  An aerial view of Paestum Beach with the Saracen Tower and Greek temples inland.

  The tobacco factory. Headquarters at Salerno for the 36th Division.

  Maiori, on the Sorrento Peninsula (foreground), and the road to Fort Schuster.

  Naples, looking south, with Mt. Vesuvius in the background.

  American troops crossing the Volurno River.

  Incessant rains and consequent mud bogged down the American advance north of Naples.

  The German “Winter Lines” were laden with mines.

  Mt. Sammucro, looking east from Mt. Lungo, across the Liri Valley.

  Mt. Lungo, looking north, with Mt. Sammucro looming to the east and the Liri Valley above.

  San Pietro in the immediate aftermath of the battle.

  Members of 163rd Signal Corps enjoy their Christmas meal, Dec. 25, 1943.

  Colonel Martin of the 143rd entering San Pietro on December 17, 1943.

  A collection area for troops brought down from Mt. Sammucro.

  The ruins of San Pietro.

  The body of a soldier brought down off the mountain on the back of a mule.

  A medical detachment heading into San Pietro in the wake of the battle.

  Ernie Pyle (right) with a gun crew in Italy.

  Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, with Lt. Gen. Mark Clark (near right), Maj. Gen. John Lucas (far right), and Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott, in Italy.

  Eisenhower and Mark Clark confer in Italy.

  Ernie Pyle (hatless, with cigarette) soon before his death in Okinawa.

  11

  Pyle and Huston

  ERNIE PYLE KNEW HIS REPORTING struck a chord with vast numbers of readers across the country. But he was unprepared for the sort of attention that rained down on him from the moment he landed at LaGuardia airfield in early September, 1943. Even as he and his friend Lee Miller taxied in from the airport and settled in the Algonquin Hotel, Pyle started fielding requests for interviews, endorsement deals, lecture tours, and meetings with Army brass.1

  In the words of a soon-to-be-published Life profile, Pyle had returned from Sicily “to find that he now occupies a place in American journalistic letters which no other correspondent of this war has achieved. His smooth, friendly prose had succeeded in bridging a gap between soldier and civilian where written words usually fail.” His book about the North African campaign, Here Is Your War, had just come out from Holt publishing company and had been picked up, not only by the Book-of-the-Month Club, but the Council on Books for Wartime, which supplied books for soldiers serving overseas. That meant printing an extra 50,000 copies of Here Is Your War.

  Chesterfield Cigarettes paid him $1,000 for use of his picture in an advertisement and Secretary of War Henry Stimson invited him to lunch in the capitol. Autograph hunters sought him out in hotel lobbies.2

  Not only that, but Hollywood was calling, interested in doing a movie based on the reporting in his book—and these efforts were being encouraged by the U.S. Army’s publicity machine, which had come to see Pyle’s reporting and its real world description of an infantryman’s life as a sort of necessary correlative to the war effort. Besides which, the Army felt that movies thus far coming from Hollywood in the war were overemphasizing the Navy’s role in the action; it was time for a good film about the ground effort in the Mediterranean.3

  Pyle went to Indiana for a quick visit with his father, and then headed back to Jerry and the bungalow in Albuquerque for some rest and relaxation. But the Hollywood production company had hired a young writer named Arthur Miller—the same thick, dark-rimmed glasses-wearing, intense New York intellectual, who would soon emerge as one of the country’s premier playwrights—to write a script based on Ernie’s work. And he was waiting for Pyle in Albuquerque. There was little rest from his labors—and little time for Jerry.

  Pyle and Arthur Miller were mismatched from the outset. As Ernie settled into a planned four-week stay in New Mexic
o, the two began a back-and-forth exchange about the way the movie ought to be written. Miller was respectful of Pyle’s work but thought the script should provide deeper meaning into what the war was all about. As for Ernie, it was precisely the avoidance of abstraction that was at the heart of his work; he was interested in the concrete, in the day-to-day, in reporting on the way his infantrymen lived their lives; not in how they thought about the causes for which they fought. As one Pyle biographer put it, “Miller yearned to say what the war ought to be; Ernie aimed to say what it was.”4

  Meanwhile, Pyle’s life with Jerry quickly resumed old patterns. She had taken a job at a local air base in his absence and it seemed to help her deal with her emotional and psychological issues. This was the first time they had seen each other since their peculiar remarriage-by-proxy, but the visit was hardly a second honeymoon. The fact that he was determined to head back overseas shortly helped matters not at all; and as Ernie prepared to go to Italy at the end of October, Jerry started drinking again and quickly spun out of control. She asked to be returned to the hospital and Pyle agreed.

  On October 28, he headed to Washington on the train where he found himself once again awash in celebrity. His book was getting rave reviews and had sold out a first run of 150,000 copies. Life called about the profile it was running. Despite his differences with Arthur Miller, there was more talk with producers about the movie, which would proceed as he was away in Europe.