Transcripts For CSPAN3 Understanding Combat And Fallen World War II Soldiers 20171001

Smiling, that was standing in. Ront of the israeli flag it was very tight. Some of the people later on who a lot ofre people made it, but i was the only one that had the angle that put it together and made it work. Announcer you can watch the entire interview sunday night at 7 00 p. M. And 11 00 p. M. Eastern only on American History tv on cspan3. Next, author in u. S. Military history Professor John mcmanus presents an illustrated lecture. The National Park service, Shepherd University, and Eastern National cohosted this 90 minute event as part of a lecture series marking the 150th anniversary of Antietam National cemetery. Professor mcmanus is the author of numerous world war ii books, including the deadly brotherhood the american combat soldier in world war ii. I will now introduce my friend, my colleague, keith snyder, the chief historian at Antietam National battlefield. He was very much the architect behind the series, and hes a phenomenal partner for shepherd and has done wonders things for the civil war center. Without further into, keith. [applause] thank you. We really value this partnership we have with Shepherd University. This is a great venue, great partners to work with. We really enjoy and appreciate it. Thank you for your partnership. I also want to thank our partner, easter national, are cooperating association. They are the folks that have andled certain our speakers they have the store that i hope you visit. Part of ouras ongoing commemoration of the 150th of the Antietam National cemetery will stop the theme for the program is remembering the fallen, the service and sacrifice of the american soldier. The story is much broader than the story of antietam it is broader than maryland and the civil war, it is the story of american servicemen and women who served together, who fought and who died in conflict across the globe for 150 years. There are 5000 veterans buried at antietam from the spanishamerican war, the boxer rebellion, world war i, world war ii, and korea. Our goal is to learn their story and remember all of them. This is the last night of our threepart series, so if i look a little panicked, bear with me because we are one week away. We have had a great couple of ground, andsacred now this evening we are going to look at world war ii. There are 70 world war ii veterans buried in our cemetery. An awardwinning professor, author, and military historian. Even native of st. Louis who attended the university of st. Louis. After a brief stint in advertising and Sports Broadcasting he found his love as a literary and academic career, earning his ma from the university of missouri, his phd from university of tennessee. He is an author of numerous books, i cant read them all but i want to share a few. Deadly sky the american combat men in world war ii. The seventh infantry, combat in the age of terror. The dead and those about to die. In my personal favorite, grunts the american infantry combat experience. This man knows soldiers. He has spent his life dedicated to the study of the american soldier. , we got toal note spend the day on the battlefield today, and we spent the afternoon on one of americas greatest classrooms and to be there with a historian of his caliber to talk about soldiers and combat in leadership was a spectacular day. I am so incredibly pleased he is here to join us this evening, john mcmanus, thank you. [applause] thank you. Thank you so much, keith, i appreciate that incredible introduction. I would like to thank all of you for making time on your saturday night to come out here and hear me. I would like to thank the Shepherd University folks for hosting us, this is a great venue and a beautiful campus. I would like to thank joe stall for hosting me for dinner, he is a distinguished alum of the , and ofty where i teach course a special thank you to my friend and colleague, the day was just a special for me as well and i really appreciate all the leg work you have done to make this series a reality and more so than that i am extraordinarily honored to be part of the series alongside my colleagues. I wanted tell you a little bit about the world war ii side of the equation. Tonight our focus is on the antietam cemetery, and we posit and reflect on those who will pose forever and cemeteries like the one a couple miles from here and so many others not just across the United States but around the globe. By, the fallenle can seem a bit faceless unless you step back and take a look for a moment and say, they are sort of like me. Distant, evenm through pictures, statistics on the page, and although world war ii was obviously the most recent , even so, its 70 some odd years ago and that is a long time in the mists of the past. As the years advance, most of those who served in the war are gone, only about 10 of world war ii veterans remain with us all these years later, and the number of people who personally knew these guys and who experienced world war ii shrinks with each passing year. It is easy to lose sight of their flesh and blood humanity and more so than that, the reverberations caused by their death and what that meant to the people who knew them, the families that loved them. In hopes of closing the distance i want to introduce you tonight to two men in particular. These are medal of honor recipients, the highest military award you can receive. And even so the memory of them has faded after many decades. Both of these men received their medals of honor posthumously at one of americas most hallowed battlefields, omaha beach. These were two men i studied in some depth because they played a major role in having that battle turn out the way it did and yet i think it is fair to say, though this is one of the country possible iconic battlefield, these are recipients that are not necessarily all that well known to most of us. I personally didnt know about them until i embarked upon it. I thought this would be a good place to start. Below that is joe pindar. He was a former professional baseball player from butler, pennsylvania, not too far from here. He was popular, athletic, handsome, the son of a steelworker, and he was the valedictorian of his high school class, someone for whom the future held great things it appeared, and he went into professional baseball after high school. He was in the Minor Leagues from 1935 to 1941, and that piqued my interest immediately. I found that particularly intriguing, that this guy was in pro baseball and was obviously heavily involved in such a battle. He was pretty good. He had a 50 and 50 record, even stephen. Hitter foretty good a picture. Those of you who have ever heard of the negro league have heard of a guy named josh gibson, one of the great power hitters of all time. Joe penn and a retired him twice in an exhibition game against the pittsburgh crawfords. War and joethe plays his last game in august, 1941 before joining the army later that year and he ends up in the first division. Here he is a little bit later so joginder was a radioman, out of a lot five, of leadership responsibility. In the communication six and communication section, one of the most storied infantry regiments. Joe is with them, and in north africa and sicily, he had proven himself to be a very reliable and quite courageous soldier. He had a good reputation in the 16th and the tree, in the communication six and the 16th infantry, in the communication section. He was a good person. On dday you was celebrating his 32nd birthday. June 6, 1944 was his birthday. His group lands in the middle of intense fire at omaha beach. He lands within about an hour of hhour, and i am sure you have heard of the circumstances of omaha beach. A very bad situation, particularly for the first three hours, and especially in the part of the beach where he lands, which is called the easy read sector. So here he comes, there is this intense machine gun fire, small arms fire, border fire, artillery fire. Boss,ss above the Lieutenant Colonel john hubie matthews, a west pointer, was killed like that, as soon as he got off the landing prep. Instantly killed by a bullet to the head. A mortar explodes to joes left, and the fragments shredded the left side of his face. Jsut embedded in the side of his face. As one of his buddies put it, the left side of his face was shot completely away, and he suffered severe shrapnel wounds elsewhere. 284inder was hauling an fcr radio. 284 was a pain in the rear to deal with. As you can imagine him hauling around an air conditioner, it was kind of like that. It away somewhere around 45 pounds, but it was obviously a really important piece of equipment, so here he is with part of his face gone, fragments in his left side, he is still in the water, obviously there is still a tremendous amount of fire. The heavy currents one of the things going on is that the weather is not that good, it is very cloudy. There is highway and, seas are very choppy, it is hard to get ashore. The waves are coming in taking you off your feet, and they are landing in deeper water than they ought to be. So he is dealing with all of this, he hangs on to the radio, he makes it into the shoreline, a narrow neck of beach before you get to these rocks about 50 yards of the tide line. It looks like you want to take cover but it is not that safe. They are trying to drag the communication equipment. His buddies are telling him, we are going to get you a medic, stayed put. Instead, to the astonishment of his comrades, all of whom were really exhausted to even get ashore, he got up, plunged back into the surf. To understand about what that means, you have to understand the dynamics of what was going on at omaha beach that morning. Possibly the most dangerous place you could be for the Morning Hours was at the waterline, in the surf. This was the area that was easiest for the germans to target. Omaha beach was a unique battle, in that when someone gets hurt you want to get them to a safer place, drag them toward the enemy. You hope they will be sheltered under some class, whatever it would be. In this case, he is going back into the water where the fire is heaviest, and plunging back into the water to try to get more heavy radio equipment. In spites back there, of his terrible wounds he somehow manhandled the radio ashore. Hes weakened from pain and loss of blood. He makes at least three trips into the water, according to the records of what he had done. Including getting another one of those accursed fcr 284 radios. One trip, a burst of machine gun fire caught him in both legs. So his legs have got it but he is still able to move. One witness remembered he would not stop for rest or medical attention. Pinder, why is he doing this . He understands the great importance of the radio for communication. One of the things keith and i were talking about a lot today, obviously in a civil war battle, what kind of communication is there . Hardly anything. As fast as i can carry you a message through the maw. What changes the dynamic in world war ii at a place like omaha beach, where you dont have phone lines, you dont have cell phones obviously, is the radio. Thats why hes like, the radios are our life. The radios mean fire support, they mean reinforcement, they mean logistics, they mean coordination, and if colonel taylor, the commander of the regiment, if he doesnt have these radios, we are going to be nowhere and we will be shot to pieces. That is probably what is animating him, as a radio operator. He was imbued with that idea that the radios really matter and you better go and get them. Once all the equipment is a short, he sets to work getting them in working order. They have sand in them, water, they have been beaten around. That is no easy task. This is what he is trying to do. His face is a bloody mess, it looks terrible. You are seeing him at his best here. It would have been disturbing to see him that morning, and it was for his buddies. He could only see out of one eye, his right eye. The other soldiers are bettering him to get medical attention, he wont do it. As you might guess, his luck eventually runs out. A machine gun burst comes in, a fatal burst, and he is killed. Next person, the guy on the left, lieutenant jimmy monck lave, a native of richmond, virginia. Richmond had some role in the civil war, didnt it . I dont know. Jimmy was a native of richmond. He was 26 years old on dday. N, he had earned a reputation for honesty and bravery during the big red one in the sicily campaign. Terrible, terrible battle. He had really acquired a good reputation. Hewas about 62, red hair, was known as jimmy to everybody. He played basketball and football in high school. I tend to think he and his family you see him there with his mother he and his family embodied the kind of whitecollar, educated, middleclass professionals who have risen to prominence in the 20th century industrial america. His father was Vice President of a coal company in southwestern virginia, western virginia, where a lot of their operations were. Jimmy was the youngest of three children. Baby, the beloved baby of the family, the mascot of the family. Funloving, full of mirth, lovable, irrepressible, impossible to dislike him, impossible to stay angry at him for any length of time. You have all known people like that. They have that classic role of the youngest in this tightknit family with three kids, one brother and one sister. A High School Buddy referred to him as an unshakable rat with a great sense of humor. Another said he never knew anyone who didnt like him, he could have sold ice to eskimos. Jimmys family had a tradition of attending Virginia Tech. His grandfather had graduated from Virginia Tech, his father had, his older brother had. So jimmy dutifully attended Virginia Tech to try to become a mechanical engineer, but he wasnt such an involved or absorb student. I know a lot of students like this, more than i would like to. Jimmy, he likes the fun part of college. He went to the blacksburg and he had a good time, and he didnt do so well scholastically, and he ends up being asked to exit the university. So jimmy has to go back home. You can imagine how this went over. Not too well. But its impossible to be angry at him for any length of time. But he always carries that regret. He writes to his mother, he says, i know my educational failure has always been a disappointment to father, and it is one of the things i would change if i had to do it over. Taking this into consideration, my informal education has been good. I have seen a lot of life. What hes talking about is in october, 1941, the peacetime draft got him. He gets drafted, he qualifies for ocf, he makes it through, and now he starts to grow up. He starts to mature. He finds himself as a person. Man, kind of becomes a new and that is what he is trying to tell his mother. I know its not good and it doesnt reflect on the family, but i have learned a lot about life, about leading men. And that is where he finds his true strength. His father unfortunately died in 1942. His mother of course, in the wake of that, is very melancholy, but is consumed with worry about jimmy and his older brother, who was serving as a naval officer. She was, as many mothers are, a great warrior. But she was apparently a world champion, especially good at worrying. Concern, andtly in there was a lot to worry about. He writes to her a few weeks before dday. Mother, i know these are hard times for you. The nerve string must be awful. I am sure the nurses cracking up more people than the war, but please dont let it happen to you. In a nice, roundabout way, dont worry about me, please. But that is easier said than done. She worried about him plenty. By dday, his natural friendliness, his decency as a person, he doesnt have a mean bone in his body, but he is also very brave. You have seen that in sicily. Hes in the 16th infantry as well. And his platoon sergeant said of him, he was a man for whom i had the utmost admiration and respect for. He was 31 years old, and platoon sergeants dont often have nice things to say about their commanding officers, in this case he did and he meant it. So you had a close command team between these two guys. Wonte lieutenant i bore you with all the ins and outs, but hes landed at the extreme eastern flank of omaha beach, and that is the eastern flank of the entire american effort. So its pretty important to make sure that is secured, because the germans could come in, counterattack, and break omaha beach over with nasty fire. The Army Ground Forces on his left shoulder. He leads an attack that gets up the beach, of the bluff, and secures the eastern flank, and he leaves two tanks off the beach, which makes them a perfect target for a lot of the germans who were in a network of pillboxes on the eastern flank overlooking the area. Somehow he survives. Later in the day, the germans, knowing the importance of the position, send in a counterattack. Montez is one of the main reasons the counterattack failed. You never look at one person, there are a lot of people in the battle. That he goes back and forth, according to testimony, constantly throughout the hedgerows. Its a confusing clump of the site, back and forth, destroying german machinegun positions, because the germans were propping their machine guns and submachine guns over the hedge rows, shooting at the americans in the field and all that. Its a mobile battle. Hes doing this, pitching grenades, going back and forth, and eventually when he is out in the middle of the field, a burst of fire catches him and he goes down and dies. We have identified where we think the exact spot was that happened, so if you ever visit omaha beach, it is possible to know that and see that spot. Hed said over the course of the day, this was a long day, one of the things he told his platoon sergeant, this aint our day. Yet he is a guy who will always keep going. Guys who have died performing what we would think of as heroic acts. Pinder and montez. So what happens to them and their remains . As was customary for the world war ii army, the registration units policed up the remains of these men and hundreds of others who were killed, and they buried them in a temporary cemetery at the foot of omaha beach. Later on, they will end up in the permanent cemetery that some of you may have visited. Of course, the job of policing those bodies and burying them was a thankless and unpopular task. This was a quote from private thomas dowling. We stuffed our noses with cotton and wore cloth across our faces. When dowling and his unit were in training in the United States, and they originally found out they were going to be a Graves Registration unit, he remembers there was a collective gasp. Oh, god, really . You are giving that terrible job to us . And yet this was the job they had to do. What was most difficult for him and many others, at least according to his testimony, were the faces. The faces of the dead. Some stared wideeyed, others died in the middle of the screen, their mouths hung open. Others have no faith at all. For dowling and the other soldiers, they identified the bodies anyway they could. By world war ii, you would have had. Tags, but that wasnt always 100 . They might have been ripped off, you might have lost them, things could happen. They might find your wallet, a billfold. You might find other identifiers, but they wanted to be careful to make sure they had who they thought they had. They would rifle through the bodies. Any effects they would find, they would send to the next of kin. It went through a bureau, the quartermaster in kansas city, missouri. The Graves Registration guys go through, identify a body. When they could not identify a body, they took fingerprints if he still had hands. They took fingerprints because when you enter the army in those days they would fingerprint you, so you could match the fingerprints with some of the induction of physical records. You might check dental records, but that was a longer shot, and much more elaborate. Mentioned, inventory of personal effects when you see these individual, deceased personnel files, you will see the almost tedious listing of all these things they find in the guys pockets. Anything innocuous or valuable, its all there. Its supposed to be listed because otherwise its over and. Its pilfering. Ae war ends, and there is massive undertaking, setting about the task of identifying all the world war ii dead. There were about 400,000 of them. Place them in a final resting place. This was a multibilliondollar program, and i believe was fromy the Program Lessons Learned in the civil war, where both sides are learning on the fly how to deal with casualties and bodies, and it is the union side especially that starts documentation in Arlington Cemetery and all this stuff, it really sets a legacy by the time you are in world war ii. So you have learned a lot from this. Interments systematic such as you would not have seen a few miles away in antietam at the time. So in 1947, the families of fallen still doubt what was called quartermaster general form befor345. Basically what that was asking you to do was to choose the final disposition of your loved ones remains. You had two choices. They could remain overseas, in a governmentsponsored and maintain cemetery of the American Battle monuments commission, or you could have the remains sent home to be buried wherever you chose. You could choose arlington if you wanted to, but more likely, you would choose a cemetery close you, that you can visit. What this prompts is a lot of very difficult, rather grief stricken arguments. Sam should stay overseas, where he was killed, and that this is appropriate, the place he helped liberate or whatever, thats the right thing. And you may think just a strongly, no, he should be here, this is his home, where we can visit him. Can you imagine the emotions involved if we disagree . Even if we dont . You have all these stories in an era in which families are not quite torn apart, but certainly there is psychological wounding. The identification teams fanned out all over the globe, because this is a mass global conflict. You have remains all over the place, every quarter of the globe. They recovered 281,000 dead. I give you the number of 400,000, a lot of those were killed and training accidents, here at home, or were lost at sea, lying somewhere, missing in action, and we now know they are dead. The 281,000 was a pretty good chunk of those you could identify as killed in action overseas. There were about 10,000 bodies recovered that remained unidentified by 1947. And of course, tens of thousands of others who were still missing. About 61 of the families chose to bring their Fallen Soldiers home. Wide, they are shipped home, 1947 in 1948 predominantly. When you step back and take a look at this, this is an effort more deadand return unprecedented in human history. They could really only be done by a country that had the wealth to do this, the security to do it, but more than that, a country that believes the individual mattered. And that the government code this to its citizens. I also think that in a way comes out of the civil war. These are not just numbers. This is important, and my constituents are howling at me to make make sure this happens. When the remains are shipped back home in what are often called the ships the death ships, they are shipped to one of about 15 Distribution Centers fanned out throughout the country from new york city to columbus, ohio, san antonio, texas, and many other places. They are shipped there and then , and they are buried with full military honors. Just looking at that, i think you know what his family was elected to do. Hes buried with all honors in the Grandview Cemetery in pennsylvania not far from his home. The government would provide 564 per body for funeral expenses. Again, wherever the ceremony you wanted, thats where it would be. In some cases, it would be a townwide event. In other cases, you would come home to anonymity. There are some places where it was almost like a parade not a happy parade, but a parade in which thousands of people would turn out. Especially if you were a kid at the time, you would never forget having seen it. What you are looking at here is an example of the roughly other 40 who chose for their loved ones to remain on the soils where they had sacrificed their lives. This is the normandy america cemetery. Some of his comrades were killed at omaha beach on dday. The majority were not. They are killed in the battle of normandy that goes on after dday. Beneath crosses and stars of david. If you wonder how many of these cemeteries are there from world war ii, 15 worldwide. Beyond normandy, belgium, sicily, rome, the manila American Cemetery in the philippines. Thousands of americans buried there. , and theire globe graves are attended by the American Battle Monument Commission which had been established after world war i. Dwight eisenhower had once held run it. It still exists and they still help from these cemeteries, but also i should point out some of the graves quite a few are maintained by locals. This is often seen as a great honor to maintain an american war grave, and it is handed down, bequeathed from generation to generation and holland or normandy or wherever we happen to be talking about. It is a piece of america that is still there. In particular, this grave is easy to pick out because it is the golden box grave that you rate as a medal of honor recipient. Thats why you see the gold and you do not see that on the other ones. This is the emblem of him that remains. It is how we tend to remember them decades later. Maybe what is harder for us to appreciate maybe that is a good thing much less understand is the world of combat, the world that ultimately cost them their lives. I wanted to give you a sense of that, too. There is a general sense of the kind of combat they would face, not just the shooting on omaha beach. Combatare one of these soldiers who was killed in action, what your world would have been like. Big part ofways, a your experience is not necessarily shooting it out with the enemy. It is dealing with the. Onditions it is a big part of a soldiers life. This is the european theater. That looks like a lot of fun, doesnt it . This is the 84th Infantry Division in the battle of the bulge. If you served in europe, lets get perspective. Airly temperate climate money, true. Ny, most of the time it is not too bad, but when the extremes are there, they are there. Of 19441945 was one of the worst on record. Coats orng about heavy heavy rains, really quite common , especially in the Italian Campaign in 1943 and the fall of 1944 when the allied armies are pressing desperately eastward trying to get into germany, and you have the vicious fighting all up and down the line. These are the guys who were there, so i think maybe they can help you understand a little better than i can. One guy, ken weaver in the 87th division, a war of rain does not and green, itean makes for mud and slop and cold, wet clothes, and cold, wet clothes make for an unhappy soldier. Rain at night meant general misery. So did snow and cold. Biting cold. I wish i had a dollar for every time it battle of the bulge veterans told me i never wouldve experienced cold weather again. Thats why i moved to florida. Something like that. It is so common. You can understand why. This is a situation where you go chow line and go to a room like this and enjoy your meal. Cold 20 seconds later. Hes not frozen, depending on the temperature. You are trying to eat in it, and here comes the snow, and theres just no way you are going to get warm, and that is what this is like for them. He said the cold was enough of an adversary without the germans. Kind of easy to relate that in this sense. Wait until the dead of winter, the middle of january, at its 10 degrees and snowy, just go outside and try to live that way. Even without anybody shooting at you, that would be kind of a bummer. That is what is going on. This next image is probably less pleasant. Just makes you kind of do that, doesnt it . I wish i had a blanket. The driving just driving. Ind, sheets of snow and sleet snow could be so deep that it was difficult to walk. The last sliver of france still , ande hands of the germans the allies want to liberate it at that point, and they are hipdeepin hit, snow. Im not exaggerating. They may if they are kind of undisciplined and really cold take little pine needles, put it in an empty russian can, like that up for a fire. Why would that be undisciplined . Smoke and fire could alert the germans. You have to be very careful about that. That only adds to the misery. You cannot get warm because you cannot light a fire. Was there any upside to the snow . Yeah, especially if there is a lot of snow around you and you have shells coming in and mortarng, especially shells, they mightve sort some of the fragments. From a medical point of view, cold weather would slow the rate of brief bleeding. If you know about what is most a modern combat situation bleeding out is really the number one cause of death. If you have something to negate that from a medical standpoint, that is good. The downside is you may have hypothermia, and that can kill you, too. Obviously, it is not a pleasant thing, but the cold might have some upside to it. Theother side of the world, Pacific Theater, probably what you are looking at. What you are looking at here is an image from new guinea of guys crossing a water source in new guinea, and i can pretty much guarantee you in that water are leeches almost anywhere. You go anywhere, you are probably going to get some leeches, and you have to deal with that. There could be other parasites in that water. Not a good idea, really, to drink it. Youre talking temperatures probably in the high 90s, maybe 100some of degrees. Again, the way to relate to this is to go out and i hot, humid day, be out and it all day. See how quickly you get dehydrated. See how quickly you get angry and frustrated. The opposite problem you are always hot and theres no way to get cool. You cannot cross the stream and walk into an airconditioned room or even a neutral. Emperature room its not uncommon for fights to 100plus degrees. Teamy and extremely hot difficult to breathe. You cannot imagine just how badly a human body can sweat. This is kind of a gross story, but illustrative nonetheless. Soldier onn was a saipan, and it was very hot. Extremely hot and had not been resupplied with water. Its like salvation. What none of them cared one would about is the fact that floating in the water were just dead rats. Dead rats floating in the water everywhere. They did something you were not supposed to do gastric the water and then take your hell is on tablets. With thirst. Razed think of how thirsty you are when you are dehydrated. They did something you were not supposed to do, drink the water and then take your halazone tablets. Parts of new guinea, youre talking about 200 inches of rain a year. Rough climates, and when the rain comes, it is so torrential that now you are just soaked, edit does not really cool you off that much. Ecause now it is steamy you may be able to relate to that. Where i live, extraordinarily humid place because we were new the mississippi river. You think sometimes in the heat of the summer, the way that storm gets here, it will get so much cooler, then the storm comes, and you are hotter because you look and see the steam waving off the pavement. Just sort of imagine that. That is what is going on. Okinawa would be another example of heavy rain. This is a great quote from one of the great war memoirs of all time by eugene sledge. The rain became so heavy that at times we could barely see our buddies in the neighboring foxhole. Just your general world in the pacific. On the the wounded man Pacific Theater beach. The reason i show this to you is just to give you a sense of another part of the combat world, the sights and smells kind of thing. What you would have taken in. You can just kind of look at that image. There is a lot to absorb in a way. So the combat zone, not just in the pacific, but wherever, is just kind of horror filled. Place with a lot of sites, bad smells. After you are therefore a while, it just seems insane, arbitrary, violent, crude, very disturbing and soul crushing kind of place. A classic story you often hear it appears to be apocryphal, but its not. I documented a number of instances where this actually happened, a soldier looking at a boot thinking it is indie, inside it aside, looking , and theres a foot. One thing that stood out to me is an interview i did. This was a guy who was in the first engineer combat battalion of the first Infantry Division. More thanmembered anything or stayed with him from world war ii, and this is, of course, decades later, he remembered walking by and a frenchtown, just an anonymous frenchtown that is destroyed, and he saw a dead woman in the street, a french woman lying their dead, and hes already seen a lot of that, and it was bad enough, but what he saw alongside it was something that made it unforgettable. She had been a young mother, and she had been nursing her baby when she was killed, and the baby was alive and trying to nurse at the breast of the dead mother. Imagine if you have seen that, how that is never going to leave you. This man became a minister decades later. It was a powerful image of what the war represented. Not the glory, certainly. Was not clean. It was not orderly. Ugly, cruel, tragic, wasteful all those words come to mind, dont they . You could argue that the Pacific Theater battlefields were worse than the europe because the affirmation heat made the smell that much worse and the decomposition that much worse the aforementioned heat made the smell that much worse and the decomposition that much worse. I think your indulgence because i know its not pleasant, but it will give you a sense of what these guys remembered that they saw. The bodies would expand with gases and blow up like the loons, and in they would burst. You could not believe the odor. I know a lot of civil war accounts like that, too. Sam watkins is a classic when in the battle of shiloh. Heres another the air was always putrid. Anyone ever filled his lungs completely with a deep full breath. You did not smell the dead, you tasted them. Throate nose back in the. I can taste it now. You come across little piles of dead marines, six or seven guys piled up turning greenish gray and then black. Tot is what iwo jima meant john lane. Thats what he remembered. The sights and smells, the conditions in a way, that is what stayed with guys as much as anything as the next part will talk about, combat. If we are talking about with the weual fighting was like, could spend our entire evening tonight on that. We can have a whole course on that. You could write volumes on that. I will just give you a few of the highlights. I have chosen this for a purpose. It meant teamwork, combined arms, it meant you needed everybody and their strength in the fight. So that is how the u. S. Army fought. In this kind of combined arms teamwork. What that really meant most of the time the first Philippines Campaign is a good example. There are several of the others the battle of the bulge. Most of the time, thats what it is, having to go forward and take something from somebody who does not want to give it up. Thats usually a geographic objective. The boxes on a beach, a town, crossing a river. What it is, you are constantly advancing. If were talking about a small unit like this when we see right fire andt means movement, very basic thing. We have to take an objective in front of us. Thegroup will lay down fire, right . Fire support. The other group will maneuver around, try to destroy the enemy, take the objective. Whatever it takes, that is how we will operate. One of the greatest myths you hear about americans in world war ii is that hardly any of them fire their rifles. Marshall was a fine combat historian who kind of pioneered the genre of documenting the experience of the ordinary soldier, and the army did an extraordinary job of this in world war ii, but what he had purported to say was that he had collected systematic data in a scientific kind of way and could prove this, but if you look at his records and papers, there is no such animal. If you speak with some of the asking peopleans if they fire their rifles, no, he did not ask that question. Dig around in the records about. He emma the ammo dont you think the quartermaster people would think oft they have a real backlog ammunition because no one is really shooting. You will find units expending hundreds of thousands of rounds. F small arms ammo and when we are they all just shooting at dumps or something above . Advance . Re we going to you are going to be pretty angry if you risk your neck, go forward, and my group has not laid down some fire. What i think happened is that marshall took something certainly that happened people not firing the weapons, not participating, and try to make that larger claim that was supposedly based on data that really was not there. People definitely sometimes did not fire their weapons. I would never argue otherwise, but im saying it is the majority who generally are firing their weapons. They have to, or you would not gain any ground. As one general said, did thehall think we clubbed german student . Thats a very good observation. Did marshall think we clubbed the germans to death . Thats a very good observation. He was new to his unit and it was his first engagement, he is kind of mesmerized by the whole thing as you might be as a rookie, he is kind of watching, and that distinctive ping, and he is kind , so your sergeant might have been interested in if you were firing, too. Like the documentaries you have , im kind of slow, but i started to think that that is not quite add up, so that is how you are doing this. One group working for the enemy with some fire, the other group maneuvering. Very simple scenario, i admit, but thats kind of how they have to fight the war. That is what combat usually meant. Advancing like this, exposing yourself to danger against usually hidden or dug in or maybe entrenched enemy who is quite determined to fight, especially in the Pacific Theater where the japanese often fought to the death. We advanced on foot most of the time. , startks would disperse firing for us. This fire support from the tanks. Whatever repel the enemy, we would jump back on the tank and go again. If you fought, especially like in 1944, 1945, in the european theater, that might speak to your experience. You would skulk around usually at night and figure out where they were or were not and the dreaded combat patrol. So lets go in there, capture a prisoner and interrogate this guy and try to get some info from him. A lot of patrolling in all theaters, but especially italy where the lines were often quite static. When you have static stalemate kind of of fighting, it tends to lend toward patrolling, so you probably would have done a lot of that. If you were a tanker, it usually meant advancing in support of infantry and vincent to gain ground. You would fight much of the day and have to go back maybe at night and resupply your tank. If you were a tanker, it was a great premium on working closely with your group. Working together as one. Your life would depend on it. Much more so than as an infantryman. Of tankers war was kind terrifying in that it was sort of myopic. The infantry needs to be your eyes and ears. The intensity of the fighting i dont have to tell you this was just incredible. Extraordinarily violent. Especially true in the pacific, i think. Could beity astounding. In many cases, the enemy was shot from behind or blown up from behind. You were actually up to save in the safest possible way. No two men had the same experience. You and i could be fighting alongside each other for three years straight and still see the world differently. Thats just the way things are. But just a few scenarios. For some, it can be harrowing, this Pacific Theater. When japanese soldier made it right up to our hole, so quiet i did not even know he was near. That was a guy named glen seers who served in the 77th Infantry Division. I think he was talking about the. Attle of guam for others, it could be here he. I found out somehow, the average soldiers they found that somehow german reconnaissance patrol was going to be probing u. S. Lines that night, and they sent orders down to the rifle company, if you see them, do not shoot these guys because we want what they are after. This guy remembered waking up in the middle of the night lying in. Sleeping bag theres a german soldier as close as i am to keep. This is what he remembered. Look at at a quick silhouette in the snow. That takes a leap of faith, too, to do nothing. You are just looking at the sky. Want him to know youre looking at him. That german patrol moved on. The guy remembered hearing and menacing crunch in the snow. Sort of in the distance, they heard shooting. Then everything silent. They found out the next day, what happened . We killed them all. No big deal. We killed all the skies. It could be here he like that. Very adept at leaving people behind. The germans were better marksman, but still, a sniper is a sniper. Theres a smart way to do this and not so smart way to do it. The smart way is team up with a ork or call and artillery whatever or stay undercover while you hunt the guy. If you have guys who are pinned down behind a wall, Something Like that, you have basically we are going to act as bait. Snipers could be terrifying because of that sort of quick and seeingof thing someone get hit like that, but there was a lot of sniper hunting. It were one of these guys, combat in your world is just monotony, day after day of this. You are in it for the duration. You not getting out of it. If yougoing to happen are there long enough as this you are going to become a casualty. Statistically speaking, this is the likely outcome if you are there long enough, and that might have been the most terrifying thing if you allowed yourself to think about it. Of the 300,000 killed in action, about 2 3 were from Army Ground Forces or Marine Ground forces. Over half the p. O. W. s and over 80 of those who were wounded. Rom war at least 15 of all riflemen were killed and 56 wounded. Those are the numbers you are looking at just that the beginning on average. Some units, like the big red one or the third Infantry Division that fights in north africa always through to take hitlers home at the end of the war, their casualty rates are, like, 400 during the course of the war or higher. Thats the average. If you are there long enough, youre going to get hit or you are going to get captured, or you are going to have an emotional breakdown. Wounded men could get out of combat for a while, but the majority are usually sent back. Need from for manpower, if you were lucky, you got milliondollar ones, which meant you were hurt badly enough to get out permanently but not so badly you would get disabled permanently. Think about that now, he would be like these are horrifying wounds, compat fractures, nerve damage and muscle damage. It happened, but it was not honorable. You hope for a milliondollar wound, the it is unlikely. What is it like to get wounded for these guys . Probably scary, so i will give you if you firsthand accounts. I was shot through the arm, breaking the artery and my wrist. I put attorney can on my arm and put some power over the will to form a clot. Medical care had come a long way from the civil war. A guy named Alton Pearson who served in normative. This is a guy in the battle of the bulge. Heard screams from all around. Several of the men were hit, some calling for in medic, while others would just crying. There case, he lay bleeding until somebody finally got him out, sort of a haphazard thing. T was riding on a tank, and a german soldier shot a disposable rocket designed to punch through the armor of the tank. He related the letter, which i think was remarkable. Im so lucky, so happy. He just lost his left arm and left leg, and hes writing to hes lucky. Hat thats the perspective a lot of these guys have. When someone was killed, it tended to come in swift, pretty ugly fashion. Theyre usually were not compelling last words or anything like that. It was just done. People did not crumble and fall like in those hollywood movies. They were tossed in the air, hit the ground hard, their blood spattered everywhere. A lot of people found themselves covered in the blood and flesh of her friend, and that is tough for anybody to handle. When you were killed in action, your next of kin would get a telegram, kind of a personal, but you have to remember there was a huge number of casualties. There were stories of Western Union people who just simply refused to do the job because the casualties were so terrible, and they were like i just cannot go knock on People Stores anymore as the grim reaper. Within two to, you would get a confirmation letter. What had happened is that the personnel section usually from , Division Level would confirm that you had indeed been killed in action and then they would send that encode to washington, and thats where the telegraph would come from. Your family would be informed about the g. I. Life insurance. You can imagine the sorrow that would generate from that. Can imagine the confusion i just got a letter from him, and it was stated that day sometimes dates were wrong. Of course, there were mistakes made, too. Someone up the street but it was wrong, holding out hope, you have an entire nation kind of grieving in a sense. Fatigue . Combat or what we call ptsd. Probably about 10 of any combat unit is going to be affected by this. It did not mean you were irretrievable. Wound. Ke a it could be fatigue or you are just broken down so much you can no longer continue emotionally. Some had psychosomatic problems like blindness and shaking so badly or crying uncontrollably. Maybe you cannot count on them because he is a medic and we need him to save lives and he is just staring into space every time someone gets wounded, and we got to get this guy off the line. Danger to himself and others. Thats what the army did is they would evacuate you if they could, and you would be sedated. You would be given a concoction which would put you to sleep for 24 to 48 hours, and either they would leave you like that, or they would have therapy while you were under, like simulate battle and try to work out your demons that way, or when you came to, they would give you a hot meal, maybe a shower, new have a pet talk and say how about going back . Really callous from a 2017 point of view, but one of the things the army found out pretty quickly is that those they permanently evacuated, especially back here to the states then their symptoms would become permanent. They would develop the real psycho neuroses and Mental Illness problems because most did not want to leave. Those commanders initially at the beginning of the war, sometimes hard to tell. I could fake these symptoms or whatever, right . Pretty quickly, they are going to find out most of these guys dont want to leave because they feel like they are letting their buddies down, and they dont want that stigma. The army certainly had an interest in sending them back, but that was also the better thing to do patientwise so that the symptoms did not become permanent. We realize, too, projecting after the war a lot of these guys are going to have issues, readjustment issues, what they call ptsd, and at that point, though the army in a combat setting is dealing with those things and really learning a lot, at the v. A. Level and federal government level classic example i will give you one guy i interviewed who had i think he had been in the battle of the bulge, and obviously, he had fought a lot and had some tough times. By the end of 1940, he was really struggling. He went to the v. A. , said he couldnt sleep, had terrible dreams, classic stuff. They told him just have a couple of beers before you go to bed each night. Probably not the best solution, right . Was the state of health care at that point, but they learned. You live and learn. But that is another way that they would face the realities of world war ii and becoming a casualty. I was in them put it, a pretty bad state of mind when i left. I was at a point i did not care if i lived or died. I saw men cry like babies. Really hard to think about that, but that was a big part of the world war ii combat world. The bigger question to confront why in the world with a do this . You see guys like this walking this is a french beach, soldiers just filing along. Why on earth are they doing this . What motivates them to do this . You may know that only one deserter was shot in the entire u. S. Armed forces in world war ii. Eisenhower decides to do that to sort of make an example. They are not going to shoot you. They are really not going to incarcerate you for too long. Or section eight discharge, but the punishment my point is the punishment is nowhere near what it would have been in the Imperial Japanese army, the german army, the red army, right tackle right . There were ways to get out of this if you really want to do, so why did the vast majority hang in there the greatest combat motivation, as i see it, what i have often called a deadly brotherhood. All the politics and all the ideals and all that kind of go out the window. Its just you and me and we know one another, and i know that i can kind of trust you, salon going to be there for you and expect you to do the same for me. Spear pressure it is to pressure. We have this lousy job to do together. None of us like this. Towant to go home, we want get it over with. If you are not part of that and youre going to make things tougher for me and the rest of us, theres a lot of guilt associated with that. If there is one thing that motivates human beings, it is the peer group and peer pressure. People your age and other guys toe you and you do not want have a lower standing in their eyes, so there is kind of a masculinity element to this, too, proving you are a man. The world war ii generation will readily admit theyre scared to death. Everyone is scared. Doing your job means being scared and doing it anyway, so theres that expectation, but sometimes, there is the kind of negative masculinity. Pressure im going to prove im twice the man you are because i did not like the kind of things you said during training and i did not like your posturing and how you said you were better with the ladies then i was, you know, that kind of thing. Is ok, i trustit you. Ive seen you in action, and this is a serious in mission as we have ever faced. Comradeship, fellowship, yes, love, in some instances a lot of instances. Friendship. Bonds really powerful that the rest of us cannot begin to understand in many ways, and thats what a lot of veterans are searching for in the aftermath, the closeness, the trust. Secure said he felt among men with individuals and capabilities he knew as well as his own. They had been welded together by combat and the infantry was convinced his chances of surviving the next firefight were much better with his own squad than they would be in any other. Scientific underpinning to this, too. The army did scientific surveys, and when soldiers were asked what motivated the most when things were toughest, the most commonly given answer was not wanting to let the other guys down, fighting for one another. 87 . More so than the allied cause or i hate the japanese or i hate the germans or god or anything like that. It was the other guy. Blend of her pressure, concept of masculinity, teamwork, fellowship, all those things. The thing that keeps a soldier going in horrendous violence selfrespect and the need for the respect of your fellow soldiers. Everybody was scared of getting killed. The thing that kept us going was the cohesion of being buddies. With new people coming all the time, they would get close very quickly. I think that is one of the prevailing legacies of the american combat soldier. That brotherhood. These people you see here on our screen, they were sons, brothers, husbands, uncles, nephews, grandsons of also its of people. All sorts of people. Nearly all of them were special to somebody. They were the kind of flesh and s ofd, the sin use sinew america, particularly white america. They have, you could argue, bequeathed our world to us. Most are gone now. I think they still remain with us in spirit, in memory. A profound influence over who we are and how we view our world, for onepe personally thing you will take away from this tonight is that we will never forget them. Thank you. It has been a pleasure talking to you. Appreciate it. [applause] prof. Mcmanus i would be glad to take questions if anybody has them. Yes, sir . [inaudible] how do they wind up getting written up for that . Thats a great question. Let me step closer to the microphone so everybody can hear better. The witnesses who survived, especially the commanders who survived at the platoon level, the company level, battalion level they were so impressed by their deeds, they said these guys have got to be written up for the medal of honor, so what they did in the aftermath of this is they collected all these firsthand accounts from people who were there and remembered. Witness accounts, of course, were of paramount importance. In the case of hitter, there was no opposition at all and he got his easily. Tase, it hadof mon to be cleared an improved and there was opposition at army level, and eisenhower personally interceded. Was handlingoever it at the army level, you are wrong. This person was special. He needs to get the medal of honor. For the guys i talked about tonight, this probably two dozen other guys who did something pretty similar that we dont know about. Even Something Like omaha beach. Or there were people who got lesser declarations, silver service, soguished a lot of it is very subjective, and who happens to still be alive to be able to testify. With interested you in those particular guys, and did you get a chance to interview family members to make your prof. Mcmanus i wish i had. Could not find any. What interested me in those two abouten i did a book omaha beach, and theyve really figured into a great extent. What happens in that battle, so i got interested in the personally and was able to poke around and find a lot of information in the archives. Certainly, you can know a lot more about them there. I wish i have been able to interview descendents or whatever. I dont think any of them had any, unfortunately. There was another recipient from the big red one, a guy named carlton barrett, and he survived, so he gets his medal of honor within about three or four months of dday, and he was known as a very strong fighter. Had a rough postwar life, died in the 1980s. About how many world war ii . Ts are still alive i think its 10 , so what would that make it . 16 million American World to veterans . What would that be . 1. 6 thats why i do history. Im not so good at math. Still a pretty good overall number, but not very many as a whole. If you were in world war ii, theres a pretty decent chance almost urgently that you will be in your 90s. [inaudible] as the last to this good war. Why is that . If youll indulge me, i will rebel against the notion of any good war. Maybe the better word is necessary war, but we do tend to idealize world war ii because theres an easy good versus evil contract construct. I think all of us who are sane can agree that not see as a m issee as a naziis horrible. I dont know that theres any ambiguity that this war had to be fought. Certainly in europe and i think you could argue in the pacific as well. So i think we tend to idealize that as we look back at americans now having lived so much more complexity in the cold war era in the postcold war era and having to come facetoface with our own hypocrisy and contradictions. An example is when we fight this good war, we are fighting homicidal fascist racist regimes and doing it with an armed force that is segregated on the basis of you guessed it race, which makes us come facetoface with our own jim crow and segregation, so its no accident at all that the Civil Rights Movement as we think of it really grows out of world war ii. I personally think is one of the reasons why world war ii is some so incredibly important from many perspectives, especially from a social perspective in the u. S. The good war comes from an over idealization of it. If we were to go back 70 some of years and talk to some of those who were having to fight it, i dont know that they would have chosen that word, but i think most of them would have told you that it did have to be far, and i do believe that now. What do they think of top leadership like patton and their division and Army Commanders and macarthur in the far east . I think there is a respect for top leadership to some extent. If we are talking about patent, kind of depends. The army really like patton a lot. The mobile mechanized vehicle. The average infantry soldier were quite cynical. The first Infantry Division detested patent because they had heard you can imagine how rumors were spread that patent had said nasty things decidedem, so they just we dont like this guy, and there was this really awkward moment after the battle of they are aboard ships and they are getting sent they hope home but its really to england for dday, and patent tton is waving to see them off. They have orders, Everybody Needs to be at the rail to greet him, and staff is trying to tell them the flock going to work out well. Hes like i know, just do it. It was really awkward because they thought they were being on the best behavior, and it kind of was Good Behavior for him for them at this point, but they were just kind of staring at him, and it was so awkward. If were talking about macarthur in the pacific, the average infantry soldier had a kind of flickering acquaintance with him of this sort of military god out there somehow. The biggest beef they would have had with him is that he would halt all the stories, communiques, and not mention their division, and i was a common complaint no matter who was in charge, but a lot of them were just sort of distant from macarthur. Those who actually encountered him tended to really look up to him because he would really be impressive in person. The way he spoke to people, he just really came across as empathetic. Eisenhower was generally very wellliked because he so congenial. The classic example of eisenhowers when he meets with the paratroopers on the eve of paratrooperhe 502nd division, and i think that says something about his character in the terms of facing people that he thinks are about to die. He had been told, as youve probably heard, that these guys are going to suffer 100 casualties. Word of that spreads pretty quickly. But talking about the world war ii combat soldier, there is a kind of respect for higher echelons, but soldiers being soldiers being soldiers. And sometimes they are parochial, too. Like general patton is great, but we really like our Division General because he was at the front with me, and that is what to do to impress soldiers, if they were right there at the front. [inaudible] homefront involvement, and it was deep sacrifices made by the home front. Thats a really good point. My personal opinion as an historian, but you can see this throughout a lot of military history, is that wars are really decided by human will. The will of the country to fight the war and when it. Win it. I certainly oppose the idea that once you have it allies in place and the victory, the outcome of the war is inevitable. Think about what we just talked about. Is any of this inevitable . Were asking you to risk your life, and if we do not have people willing to do that and people willing to support them at home in a massive way, as you pointed out that matters. Kind of the same thing in the civil war, although there is a lot of opposition, both north and south. In the end, it comes down to the side or the other, and it is extraordinarily important. You have seen it many times throughout history that the side with more stuff, more firepower, whatever, does not necessarily win. The American Revolution being a good example. What was the weak point . Like you said, is the british homefront really on board with that war . No. And the vietnam war is another example. [inaudible] was sacrificing, but how do they expect to run wars were everybody has got all the butter they need [inaudible] absolutely. S the butter, as you mentioned, and world war ii, that would have been rationing. National speed limit of 35 miles per hour. How far would that take us . America and a lot of its wars, especially subsequent wars, tries to fight while keeping things relatively the same here at home and you have the burden fall on a relative few. If you were to study world war by the sort of cynical view soldiers of civilians, they are er going to understand that is not unique to world war ii, but at the same time, it is , and especially, the danger of having an all volunteer force. As weve seen. That is one downside. Flex [inaudible] [inaudible] you have the soldiers trying to protect themselves from the horrors by coming up with stuff. Coming up with their own language to explain it. Prof. Mcmanus great stuff. They are very creative. The world war ii generation is so good with, like, acronyms and humor. Dry theres a kind of parity kind of humor that you see in world war ii. For instance, one of the things you would have an in as a young guy at that time is the sort of hollywood promotion of film and like marketing and all that. You will find parities of that. Parodies of that. I found a leaflet, and its a it said, tonight is a banzai , it will be thrilling come of this, that, the other thing, and you are just reading this, chuckling. You can imagine these guys back then, that was one way, like you said, just to try and yeah, exactly. And the nose art with aviators. This double entendres. Theres a sort of sexual. Dginess its pretty different than before. I would say what differentiates them from, say, vietnam and postvietnam is by then, there is an almost kind of selfconscious imitation of american pop culture and movies and all that and a much broader, deeper cynicism that comes out in soldier humor and marine what, but that is part of they do. Its part of what makes them most fascinating. [inaudible] he said the sense of humor is really what got him through. They would have a short guy on the other guy, and a number would not come out. It would irritate him, even though they had to stand out there for four hours, they were playing a trick. Different things like that, that they would do little fun things, and that is really what got him through. Something you put over on these guys, all of you shared in that joke. Not reallyoes does hold up that well in terms of accuracy. Rumor schumer [applause] we struck a commemorative coin with the design from the cemetery 150th and we would like to present that to you. Thank you, i appreciate it. [applause] thank you, everybody. Next on lectures in history, a university of virginia professor teaches a class on civil war memory and how people in the north and south have interpreted thnf