The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II (50 page)

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.

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.