The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II (51 page)

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 two-day “battle of guts”
Wiltse,
The Medical Department
, p. 244.

“My fine division”
Fred L. Walker,
From Texas to Rome
, Dallas, TX: Taylor Publishing, 1969, p. 311. See also Bruce Braeger,
The Texas 36th Division: A History
, Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 2002, pp. 158–77, and Eric Morris,
Circles of Hell: The War in Italy, 1943–1945,
London: Hutchinson, 1993, pp. 251–52.

“The 36th had”
Raleigh Trevelyan,
Rome ’
44:
The Battle for the Eternal City,
New York: Viking Press, 1982, p. 310.

“flat and barren”
Mark Clark,
Calculated Risk: The War Memoirs of a Great American General
, London: Harrap, 1951, p. 7.

“Under armed military”
WD/Second Draft, p. 6.

“I turned a corner”
Trevelyan,
Rome ’
44, p. 239.

“Fuck it,” the GI
Packard,
Rome Was My Beat
, p. 133.

Weiss was unaware
Albert J. Glass et al., eds.,
Overseas Theaters: Neuropsychiatry in World War II
, Vol. 2, Medical Department, U.S. Army in World War II: Clinical Studies, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1973, pp. 997–98.

“It is my opinion”
Raymond Sobel, “Anxiety-Depressive Reactions After Prolonged Combat Experience—the ‘Old Sergeant Syndrome,’” Frederick R. Hanson, ed.,
Combat Psychiatry
, Special Supplement,
The Bulletin of the U.S. Army Medical Department
, Vol. 9, November 1949, p. 141. See also, “The Psychiatric Toll of Warfare,”
Fortune
, December 1943, pp. 141–43, 268–70 and 27–83.
Fortune
wrote, “We know for example that about one third of all casualties now being returned to the U.S. from overseas are neuropsychiatric . . . around 10,000 men a month are being discharged from the Army for psychiatric reasons” (p. 143).

“I thought Hal”
WD/Second Draft, p. 7.

A study of
“Who’s Afraid?,”
Time
, 22 November 1943. John Dollard of the Yale Institute of Human Relations conducted the survey.

“In past wars”
General George C. Marshall, “Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, July 1, 1943, to June 30, 1945, to the Secretary of War,”
Yank
magazine, 19 October 1945, p. 7.

EIGHT

“a drench of pure horror”
Scannell,
Kings
, p. 58.

“The NCO advancing”
Ibid., p. 60.

“the bitter, clenched”
Ibid., pp. 64–65.

“Three years penal”
Ibid., p. 66.

“All day long”
Ray Rigby,
The Hill
, London: W. H. Allen, 1965, p. 8. (Sidney Lumet directed the film version of the story in 1965 with Sean Connery.)

A staff sergeant
Ibid., p. 211.

“Each time he”
Joseph Heller,
Catch-22,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1962, p. 130.

Bain wanted to
Scannell,
Kings
, p. 72.

Every night in
Ibid., pp. 74–76.

“When I lie”
Algernon Methuen,
Anthology of Modern Verse
, London: Methuen, 1921, p. 62.

“embarrassed, even a”
Scannell,
Kings
, p. 81.

“I’d use one”
Ibid., p. 83.

“All right, he thought”
Ibid., p. 87.

“You’ll be confined”
Vernon Scannell, “Mourning the Dead,”
Epithets of War
, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1969, p. 27.

“It was outrageous”
Scannell,
Kings
, p. 92.

“Where do you come”
Ibid., pp. 98–99.

“But I’ll get”
Vernon Scannell, “Compulsory Mourning,”
Epithets of War
, p. 31.

“I’d have promised”
Parkinson interview.

“satisfied with the living”
Hansard Debates, 10 October 1944, vol. CDIII, cc 1589-90W, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1944/oct/10/mustapha-detention-barracks-alexandria.

NINE

From Northern Ireland
Second Battalion Staff, “The Second Battalion, 38th Infantry, in World War II,” p. 4.

“As rough as”
Whitehead Diary, p. 45.

“I never knew”
Ibid., p. 44.

“wound up joining”
Ibid., p. 46.

The 116th Regimental
Captain James R. Darden, “Operations of the 1st Division in the Landing and Establishment of the Beachhead on Omaha Beach, 6–10 June 1944,” Staff Department, Advanced Infantry Officers Course, the Infantry School, Fort Benning, GA, 1949–50, p. 8.

The Big Red One
Antony Beevor,
D-Day: The Battle for Normandy
, London: Penguin, 2009, p. 7.

“a raincoat, gas”
“They were issued three K type and three D type rations. Riflemen were issued 96 rounds each and BAR teams 900 rounds; 60 mm crews 20 rounds of mortar ammunition. Every man carried five grenades and in addition each rifleman carried four smoke grenades. Every man wore special assault jackets with large pockets and built-in packs in the back.” Darden, Staff Department, Advanced Infantry Officers Course, p. 13.

“We were instructed”
Whitehead Diary, p. 48.

“Bodies and pieces”
Ibid., p. 50.

“Big naval barrage”
Ibid., p. 53.

“The following afternoon”
Edward O. Ethell and Paul Caldwell,
The Thirty-eighth United States Infantry
, Pilzen: Planografia, Novy Vsetisk and Grafika, June 1945, p. 8.

“I was waiting”
Whitehead Diary, p. 56.

Four of 2nd Division’s
Edwin P. Hoyt,
The GI’s War: American Soldiers in Europe During World War II
, New York: Da Capo Press, 1991, p. 407.

“Only a limited”
Second Battalion Staff, “The Second Battalion, 38th Infantry, in World War II,” p. 5.

“They doggedly defended”
Whitehead Diary, p. 57.

The contest for Trévières
Second Battalion Staff, “The Second Battalion, 38th Infantry, in World War II,” p. 10.

“Then,” Whitehead wrote
Whitehead Diary, pp. 59–60.

TEN

“The machinery had”
Scannell,
Tiger
, p. 92.

At 8:00 the next
Scannell,
Kings
, p. 144. In an account of this event he wrote in 1997, Scannell recalled that Captain Forbes came below (rather than call the men on deck). See Vernon Scannell, “Why I Hate the Celebration of D-Day . . . and What It Was Like to Be There,”
New Reporter
, May 1997, p. 8. See also Wilfrid Miles,
The Life of a Regiment
, Vol. V:
The Gordon Highlanders, 1919–1945
, Aberdeen: University Press, 1961, p. 25.