The Last Full Measure

by Michael Stephenson

  Laughlin’s reluctance is entirely understandable. Particularly in battles like Okinawa, where flamethrowers were widely used to kill the Japanese in their cave redoubts, too many men would have witnessed scenes like this:

  Horst von der Goltz, Maine ’43, who would have become a professor of political science, was leading a flamethrower team … when a Nip sniper picked off the operator of the flamethrower. Horst had pinpointed the sniper’s cave. He had never been checked out on flamethrowers, but he insisted on strapping this one to his back and creeping toward the cave. Twenty yards from its maw he stood and did what he had seen others do: gripped the valve in his right hand and the trigger in his left. Then he pulled the trigger vigorously, igniting the charge. He didn’t know that he was supposed to lean forward, countering the flame’s kick. He fell backward, saturated with fuel, and was cremated within seconds.161

  Carrying explosives such as mines, Bangalore torpedoes,† or satchel charges could be highly prejudicial to one’s health. Paul Fussell recalls that Lieutenant Matt Rose had been decapitated not, as first thought, by a German shell, for “the large black stain on the snow told the truth. Matt Rose had accidentally blown himself up with his own antitank mine, as his assistant, ordered prudently to kneel many yards away, confirmed. It was typical of the boy Matt Rose, and admirable, that he chose to do the hazardous work himself. As the winter [of 1944] went on, we gradually learned that the fuse in the American antitank mine, or its explosive, grew extremely unstable in subfreezing weather.”162

  Harley Reynolds of the US First Infantry Division witnessed the heroic sacrifice of a Bangalore torpedo man, betrayed by his weapon, on Omaha Beach: “He pulled the string to the fuse-lighter and pushed himself backward. The first didn’t light. After a few seconds the man calmly crawled forward, exposing himself again. He removed the bad lighter, replaced it with another, and started to repeat his first moves. He turned his head in my direction … when he flinched … and closed his eyes looking into mine. Death was so fast for him. His eyes seemed to have a question or pleading look in them.”163

  In a sad category of extreme risk were the replacements; men shoved into combat units without adequate training. Toward the end of the war, losses were so great for both the winners and losers that men who were woefully unprepared were flung into the furnace. After the battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943 the Germans were forced to commit new recruits and, in so doing, to take ever greater casualties, which in turn fueled the lethal spiral. With Operation Bagration (the massive Soviet counteroffensive of 1944) chewing up huge numbers of men, the German army had, in a dramatic turning of the tables, begun to resemble that of the Soviets in the early years of the war.

  American replacements, for example, could expect only a scant sixty days training and during the bloody endgame of the war, six weeks.164 Life expectancy for a replacement could be, understandably, pretty brief; the first three days were critical—as for all fledglings and the newly hatched. An officer of the US Thirtieth Division in Normandy reckoned that “there must have been at least 75 or 80 percent turnover in the [rifle] platoons.… In order to fill the ranks, the replacements were sent up to their squads without any satisfactory pre-battle orientation.” And taking a sample of four American divisions in Italy, by April 1945 only 34 percent of the men had been there since landing in September 1943. Of the 66 percent replacements, more than half had been thrown into combat only two days after joining their units, and a further 20 percent within a week.165

  The old sweats could be protective (Raymond Gantter remembers that “the old men have been patient with our ignorance, kindly in their tutelage”), but they could also be callous bastards. An American sergeant at Anzio recalls: “One day … we got eight new replacements in my platoon. We were supposed to make a little feeling attack that same day. Well, by next day, all eight of them replacements were dead, buddy. But none of us old guys were. We weren’t going to send our own guys out on point in a damnfool situation like that.… We sent the replacements out ahead.”166 Paratrooper David Kenyon Webster felt sorry for the replacements in his unit who were denied any kind of acclimation and had simply been chucked into the front line. Nevertheless, he admits, when holed up in a house threatened by German artillery, “we immediately cleared out the southeast room, which was most in line with the 88 … and put the replacements in it, keeping the warmer, safer … room for ourselves.”167

  “Them replacements were dead, buddy. But none of us old guys were.” So what did the old guys learn that kept them from being killed? First, the replacements, scared and naive, tended to stick together during action—“It is natural to want to be close to someone else when death reigns,” remembers Donald Burgett—but bunching offers a juicy target. Veterans cited it as the main mistake made by newcomers, and an officer outlined the problem: “In combat we found that green troops would invariably freeze when first coming under fire. They would stop, seek cover, and then try to find the enemy. They could not see any distinct targets. Therefore they did not fire. Their casualties increased.”168

  Under fire, moving forward rather than clumping in reassuring clusters is counterintuitive. Leo Litwak’s captain told his squad, “When you hear the order to attack, stand up and start marching and firing and keep marching and firing and don’t run, don’t hit the ground, don’t take cover, don’t lose your intervals, always stay in line with the advance. It doesn’t matter that you can’t see what you’re shooting at.” This was called marching fire, and was scary to do. “I had to force myself to rise and start marching,” remembers Litwak. “I walked into enemy fire and didn’t hit the ground, didn’t start digging, didn’t wiggle on my belly toward the nearest tree, didn’t hug the ground and hide my face. I walked at a steady, modest pace, buddies strung out to the left and right, utterly exposed. It was against all my inclinations. I was as terrified and resentful as if I had been offered as a sacrifice to a god in whom I had no faith.”169

  A British officer in Italy encouraged inexperienced men a little more pungently: “ ‘Get up!’ he shouts, hitting them on the arse with his swagger [stick]. ‘Get up! They’ll get you in the guts! Blow your arse to bits! If you get up they’ll only get you in the legs!’ ”170

  Exhortation was one thing, but moving into fire was terrifying: “Bullets cracked as they passed close by, at times nipping clothing, at times thudding into a trooper’s body. I always got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I started a running attack into frontal fire, knowing that at any moment an enemy bullet might tear through my body.… But once we started there was no turning back. There was only one option as far as I was concerned: run forward and kill. Once the enemy was dead there was time to rest.”171

  David Kenyon Webster wrote a fascinating primer on survival in a letter to his parents:

  It has been said that old soldiers never die. Although an airburst or a stray shot occasionally kills an old soldier, the casualty rate among the veterans is noticeably lower than among green troops or replacements. There are several reasons for this.

  The longer a man is in action the more cautious he becomes. The old soldier leaves very little to chance. At one village in Holland, our convoy was fired upon and two-thirds of our company had to dig in in an orchard and spend thirty-six hours under continuous shell fire. Every time there would be a letup, we would dig our slit trenches deeper.… When at last we were able to march north to rejoin the undamaged third of our Company … we were appalled to find they hadn’t even dug in. We immediately started digging and didn’t stop until we were four feet down … even though there were no 88s in the vicinity. Old soldiers don’t take chances.

  Old soldiers, too, have learned by bitter experience to be independent and make their own decisions. Once our lieutenant told my squad leader to take his eight men and knock out some antiaircraft guns … nine men with rifles fighting dual-purpose 88s and 40mm! … By using his own judgment he saved our lives in a situation where a new man would have rushed in blindly.…

>   These hard-learned lessons are revealed nowhere better, however, than when a man is wounded. The veteran rushes to the aid man as fast as possible and gets off the battlefield with all the speed left him. He doesn’t wait to be told what to do.…

  Perhaps I have made the veterans sound a little cynical. I have omitted some of the positive facts we have learned as we go along. We have learned not to let the artillery and mortars pin us down so badly that we cannot fire at the attacking enemy. We have learned not to be afraid of the sound of German small-arms fire but to keep our heads up and our rifles ready to pick off their operators. A small-arms fight is fun. Artillery, however, takes the joy out of life! A few of us have acquired a surface calm under fire which is the envy of the replacements. I am not one of those few, but I have learned to look at the noise and confusions a little more objectively.

  Thus the old soldier, unshaven, dirty, quiet, cautious, cool, always prompted by the motive of self-preservation … keeps alive as long as possible. Old soldiers die, but they die hard.172

  It took time for the newbies to learn vital things, little signs, tricks, that gave them a better chance of survival. The old guys had esoteric knowledge. Robert “Doc Joe” Franklin, a combat medic in Europe, remembers: “Before the end of the war, I could smell Germans too. Their diet of sardines and sharp cheese gave them away in warm weather if they weren’t careful to cover their feces.”173 Allied soldiers in the Pacific claimed that Japanese soldiers smelled of fish, while the Japanese said they could smell the “meaty” body odor of the Allies. Russian soldiers advertised their presence with the pungent aroma of makhorka tobacco, the “awful smell of which,” according to Wehrmacht officer Siegfried Knappe, “got into their thick uniforms and could be smelled for quite a distance.”174

  Combat technique and battlefield wisdom quite often needed a supernaturally helping hand, and even (perhaps especially) hard-bitten veterans answered an ancient echo that had sustained warriors down the centuries, for magic also had its place in warding off death. Talismans, charms, amulets, and superstitious tics were another kind of protective armory. John Steinbeck, who was with the US Army in Italy, noted:

  A great many soldiers carry with them some small article, some touchstone or lucky piece or symbol which, if they are lucky in battle means simply not being hurt.… The magic articles are of all kinds. There will be a smooth stone, an odd-shaped piece of metal, small photographs encased in cellophane. Many soldiers consider pictures of their wives or parents to be almost protectors from danger. One soldier had removed the handles from his Colt .45 and had carved new ones out of Plexiglass from a wrecked airplane. Then he had installed photographs of his children under the Plexiglass.…

  Sometimes coins are considered lucky and rings and pins.… One man carries a locket his dead wife wore as a child and another a string of amber beads his mother once made him wear to ward off colds.…

  It is interesting now that, as time in action goes on, these magics not only become more valuable and dear but become more secret also. And many men make up small rituals to cause their amulets to become active. A smooth stone may be rubbed when the tracers are cutting lines about a man’s head. One sergeant holds an Indian-head penny in the palm of his left hand and against the stock of his rifle when he fires. He is just about convinced that he cannot miss if he does this.…

  As time goes on and dangers multiply and perhaps there is a narrow escape or so, the amulet not only takes on an increasing importance but actually achieves a kind of personality. It becomes a thing to talk to and rely on.… There are times in war when the sharpest emotion is not fear, but loneliness and littleness. And it is during these times that the smooth stone or the Indian-head penny or the wooden pig are not only desirable but essential. Whatever atavism may call them up, they appear and they seem to fill a need. The dark world is not far from us—from any of us.175

  Even the resolutely agnostic and the proudly cynical needed all the help they could get. Paul Fussell, “entirely a skeptic,” carried a New Testament in the left breast pocket of his shirt but with a skeptic’s embarrassed caveat: “I conceived that even if it didn’t provide magical, supernatural safety, it at least—it was a half-inch thick—might slow down shell and grenade fragments and deflect a bayonet thrust to my chest.”176 “Men in combat acquire curious superstitions,” recalls Raymond Gantter, “even those who pride themselves on their incredulity. I was ashamed of my own pet charm, but it was no longer private or secret. From a platoon joke it had become a company gag, and whenever we moved out on a push I’d be sure to hear someone yell, ‘Hey, Gantter! Got your battle gum?’ ”177

  For different horses, different courses: Russians had “taboos about sex—a wounded, even an unconscious, man would die if he touched his own genitals—about swearing, and about the advisability of wearing clean linen before battle. There were many predictions based on vagaries of the weather. Some men believed it was unlucky to swear while loading a gun, others that a man should never swear before a battle. It was also unlucky to give anything to a comrade before going into combat, and soldiers all had tales of borrowed greatcoats that brought death.”178

  The soldier-poet Louis Simpson felt that somehow an adoption of the attitudes of the dead would be a magic camouflage that just might fool the Furies:

  The path reeled in

  Another corpse. It came to him boot first:

  A German soldier on his back, spread-eagle,

  A big, fresh-blooded, blond, jack-booted man

  In dusty gray. Stepping around the fingers,

  Around the bucket helmet, Dodd stared down.

  A fly lit on his teeth. He looked away

  And to the front, where other attitudes

  Of death were waiting. He assumed them all,

  One by one, in his imagination,

  In order to prevent them.179

  The Furies, though, all too often scoffed at these precautions and with the manic determination of water or smoke, no matter how tight the seal, found their way in. Men were killed in all kinds of offbeat, half-baked, heartbreaking ways. British rifleman R. L. Crimp, in North Africa in 1942, recorded in his diary his response to a letter from home urging him to “take care of yourself”:

  Good lord, as if I ever do anything but! Of course I always take all the cover that’s going, and keep my swede [head] down as long as possible. But what’s the good? Bill Vole moved heaven and earth to get a job with Rear Echelon but when a stray Jerry strafed his convoy miles back he got his just the same. On the last Jerry push, six weeks ago, there was Johnny Gussett in “A” Company carriers, wireless operator. He’d only just joined us from the base, where … he’d been sitting pretty for nearly a year. Yet in that one night’s skirmishing a Breda shell [from an Italian light machine gun] went through his carrier, through his set and through him. Even Stingo Carstairs … speeding by truck into Cairo on leave, hit a tram, then a tree, and finished up in the military cemetery.

  So using your loaf doesn’t get you far in keeping it safe. You can only wait—and see.… “Do look after yourself.” Rather a problem, eh, chum?180

  It was indeed the damnedest thing how a man could get killed. A “safe” distance behind the lines, a tent had been set up in which to show movies. The men were jolly and relieved to be out of the action for a brief respite. Some enemy planes came over and American antiaircraft batteries opened up. Raymond Gantter remembers:

  We were a little blasé about the fun outside—we’d seen all this so many times before, and stuff.… I was talking to a neighbor when a man sitting a few feet in front of me grunted or coughed and gently, slowly, toppled forward on his face. There was a puzzled hush for a moment, and then, uncertainly, the laughing and talking in the tent resumed. Then someone bent over the fallen man and shouted, “Get a medic!” and our paralysis was broken. We turned him over. His hand and arm were covered with blood and his face was a red mask. Before we could carry him from the tent he was dead. For a long time we could not guess h
ow he’d been hit until someone discovered a two-inch slit in the canvas roof … a piece of falling shrapnel from our own ack-ack had knifed through the canvas and pierced his back as he leaned forward, elbows on knees.181

  The malevolent Fates often conspire to deny the warrior any vestige of the heroic, and what better way to do that than catch him with his pants around his ankles. As Milton Landry of the US Thirty-Sixth Infantry Division commented after being wounded by a grenade while assuming what he delicately calls “the proper position”: “You don’t read much about it in books.” But it was often a surefire way of getting killed. Dick Peterson of the Twenty-Fifth Division remembers: “Dysentery was rampant on Guadalcanal.… The desire to relieve yourself is just tremendous. At night, what do you do? We had passwords, but the Japs were all over and guys were quick to shoot. So do you stay in the hole or go out for a minute and risk getting shot? Those were the alternatives. Most people stayed in the hole, but I’m afraid many of the men shot after dark had their pants down. It was amazing how many ways you could get hurt in World War II.”182

  Meanwhile, thousands of miles away:

  It was a beautiful and grim Christmas Eve. Shorty and I spelled each other on guard throughout the bitter cold night. The cold I could endure, but an additional misery landed on me in the middle of the night. I got the GIs [diarrhea]!‡ That’s always a tragedy, of course—although in normal life, with the luxury of a civilized bathroom at hand, it would seem only an embarrassing annoyance—but this time the tragedy was of major proportions. You see, our dugout is on the crest of a hill, smack in the middle of an open field and with never a bush or tree to provide cover. It’s not modesty that bothers us, you understand, it’s snipers. We peer anxiously in the direction of the German lines, unbutton our pants in the dugout, hold them up with one hand while we clamber out, and get the business over in a hurry. We wipe on the run—our naked and chilled buttocks quivering in anticipation of a bullet.… A half-naked man crouching on a hilltop is a defenseless creature, unnerved by the constant sense of his nakedness framed in the sights of an enemy rifle. I winced and shook each time I dropped my pants, expecting every moment to be caponized by a German sniper who combined marksmanship with a macabre sense of humor.183