CITIZEN SOLDIER
Finn, James
CITIZEN SOLDIER The how & the why of one man's war James Finn n the course of his fine article, "A Soldier's Legacy" (Commonweal, December 5, 1997) Robert Ostermann, a veteran of World War...
...LJ Commonweal | 6 April 24, 1998...
...Rape, murder, theft, desertion--the seemingly inevitable accompaniments of war--are surely criminal...
...the pilots of bombers, fighters, and Piper Cub spotters...
...Getting out of my foxhole one morning, I stumble and fall in the snow...
...We are unable to walk...
...Ambrose offers snapshot glimpses of soldiers in combat...
...A short time later we are glad we did...
...9 Months later, at the hospital center at Camp Carson, Colorado, I receive my honorable discharge, one line of which reads: "EAME Ribbon, 1 Bronze Service Star Good Conduct Ribbon Combat Inf Badge...
...The roof has been partly destroyed...
...In turning to this book, I was breaking an unformulated rule of not reading or recalling any particulars of World War II...
...It persists for some days...
...I ask the reader to keep the question in mind during the following description of my own personal reaction to reading Citizen Soldiers by Stephen E. Ambrose (Simon and Schuster...
...The tracer bullets make beautiful abstract patterns against the dark sky...
...9 On one of the few, sun-brightened days I am by myself--although I don't know how that could have been--as I enter a small, empty church...
...CITIZEN SOLDIER The how & the why of one man's war James Finn n the course of his fine article, "A Soldier's Legacy" (Commonweal, December 5, 1997) Robert Ostermann, a veteran of World War II, asserts: "Who says war is not criminal...speaks an inexcusable lie...
...various ground troops...
...But after more than fifty years 1 thought I could finally afford to do so, to learn the path I had taken as a member of Regiment 328, 26th (Yankee) I)ivision, Third Army...
...They not only could but they did, each step seeming as unreal as it was unlikely to that soldier in the making...
...Soon an order comes down...
...Almost every soldier who fought agreed that only those who actively engaged in combat could truly understand what it is like, but Ambrose, I believe, comes as close as any writer-historian can to communicating that experience...
...That is, I try to, for the boot scarcely moves and I gradually realize that it still encases a foot that is, in turn, firmly attached to the body that lies in its shallow grave...
...Shafts of sunlight pass through the jagged opening and pick out the gilt edges of the altar and meager ornaments...
...Doc had waked with the morning light and had gotten out of the foxhole to look around...
...I offer some of that skinny kid, memories which return to me with the force and clariComnwnweal | 3 April24, 1998 ty that some vivid dreams have, sharp in detail but slightly surreal...
...He was the boss...
...The importance of this issue is indicated by the high turnover in different units...
...For as a lowly infantry private during that conflict, I was as ignorant of the "big picture" and as unsure of where I was most of the time as any of the bewildered soldiers described by Tolstoy or Stendhal...
...I learn that I have trench foot, a World War I term I had never heard before...
...Drawing upon historical sources, interviews, and oral testimony he weaves together strategic plans, tactics, and actual incidents, the successes and/he failures--.-including massive intelligence failures--the cowardly, the heroic, and the accidental, into a coherent narrative...
...Some of us are driven to a barn where we are told to remove shoes and socks and dry our feet...
...A couple of German planes that seem to have strayed into the area spray down bullets that thud heavily into the ground around us...
...The push through the Hurtgen forest was based on a plan that "was grossly, even criminally stupid...
...As our hospital ship pulls into a New York Harbor, we can hear and see through a porthole the band that greets us...
...9 In a small house in a deserted village perched on a hillside, we find a very large, flat-bottomed, clear green bottle practically filled with wine...
...That assertion is not as clear as it initially appears to be...
...What were the principal motives that guided them...
...We have advanced almost not at all, expected supplies do not Commonweal | 4 April 24, 1998 arrive, we cannot get dry, and we cannot take off our boots because putting still-wet socks and feet back into frozen boots is impossible...
...I notice others performing similar antics...
...My feelings are only compounded when my three cabin mates pounce on them eagerly...
...The massively wrong decisions...
...I got trench foot because General Omar Bradley had decided, in September 1944, that the campaign would be over before December...
...officers and enlisted men, nurses and medics--all of the citizen soldiers of a democracy who had to be welded into the fighting unit whose courage and ability were the object of I Iitler's early contempt...
...It qualifies me, however, to respond personally to the question of why we fought, of what forged us into fighting units, and to the question of the criminality of the war...
...And a return to the question of why we fought is helpful...
...In the bottom of the foxhole we make a small trench to hold the rising pool of water that gathers and, although our feet are already soaking wet, we try to keep them on the ledge each side of the trench...
...Ambrose inquires into why these citizens of a democracy persevered and overcame...
...But the criminally stupid...
...I le has produced an exciting but harrowing story...
...He notes, for example, that once battle lines became relatively stable, officers above the rank of captain rarely visited the front lines...
...Citizen Soldier is the history---chronological, statistical, descriptive, anecdotal--of the American soldiers who fought in Europe from June 7, 1944 (D-Day) to May 7, 1945, when Germany surrendered...
...In what was to ~lrn into a nine-months' passage through a string of hospitals, six months of which I can neither stand nor walk, my own turn into purple, then black, scaly balloon-like appendages that cannot suffer even the weight of a bed sheet...
...Many lost toes, feet, and, if gangrene set in, the entire lower leg...
...But we also had implicit trust, I believe, in the decisions our country was making...
...My then-buddy shares the surname Savage with a pulp-magazine hero and is automatically called "Doc," that character's nickname...
...Was it patriotism...
...I could read it only in short installments...
...Along the way, some soldiers learned additional reasons, like the major who said, when he first saw the inhuman concentration camps, "Now I know why I am here...
...Here, rather than immediate labels, some legal and moral analyses are called for...
...Ambrose himself makes severe judgments of particular decisions and individual soldiers, not excluding the highest-ranking officers, even of Dwight Eisenhower whom Commonweal | 5 April 24, 1998 he much admires...
...Ambrose quotes Paul Fussell: "Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be, petty harassment of the weak by the strong...small-minded and ignoble...
...We have no idea if the planes are ours or theirs...
...9 On guard duty somewhere in France on a bright moonlit night, the shadows black and sharp-edged...
...Eisenhower's first...
...ideways, crabways, 1 approach those same questions...
...And I like to think that if that nineteen-year-old kid could have known more than he did and fully grasped this fact, he would have fought not only because he was called upon to do so, but because it was the right thing to do...
...But an officer standing in a jeep, pistols visible in his holsters, drives around examining the area...
...Along the way he encounters the James Finn, formerly a Commonweal editor, is chairman of the Puebla Institute...
...Alternating and intermingling waves of guilt for not being with them and gratitude that I'm not sweep over me...
...9 In the dark, our company has entered a rather dense forest heavy with rain mixed with snow...
...I am thrown into a frustrated, impotent, and incoherent rage as our smiIing Gray Lady extends to me, and I silently accept, her gift of chocolate and comic books...
...The replacement system, Ambrose writes, was criminally wasteful and could have been easily corrected...
...Ambrose confirms what I previously knew only as rumor...
...9 After a long march, we pause in a relatively open field and are told to dig foxholes...
...Whose fault was this...
...Could they plunk him into infantry training, teach him to take twenty-miIe hikes loaded down with combat equipment, to take apart and reassemble an M1 rifle blindfolded, to cross a swift-flowing river, turn him into a sharpshooter, then into a scout who would take the lead as his platoon advanced into unfamiliar ground, who would go on night patrol behind enemy lines...
...For if war is criminal, who are the criminals, which of the participants...
...General Patton says we had better dig those #@%*$+ holes deep, and right now...
...Instead of needed winter clothing, other supplies were pumped into the pipelines...
...But as if to underline the difference between those on the front line and those in the rear, when the chickenshit officer in charge of our ward comes through for inspection, those of us who cannot stand are ordered to lie at attention in our beds...
...Those who were ill-supplied and not rotated so they could get dry and warm, got trench foot...
...In spite of the fact that we can hear German voices not far from us, our weariness is greater than our fear, and we trust to our guards and the pitch-black night to provide security for us...
...From the rear echelons they ordered soldiers to fight in conditions they knew nothing about...
...Even if it's only to be a few hours we all feel a blessed relief...
...Trench foot put more men out of action than German 88's, mortars, or machine-gun fire....some 45,000 men had to be pulled out of the front lines because of trench foot--the equivalent of three full infantry divisions...
...El y experience in the war was not as prolonged or as intense as many of those of whom Ambrose writes, nor the damage I suffered as severe...
...In late December, casualties from what was to be called the Battle of the Bulge begin to stream through our ward and I learn that my outfit has been thrown into that battle...
...9 Lying flat on the ground in a thinly wooded grove, my ears filled with the noise of bullets and shrapnel passing overhead, my eyes fixed on the bloated dead body in front of me, I begrudge the thin layer of leaves that prevents me from hugging the ground even closer...
...As a consequence, thousands of young American and German soldiers died needlessly...
...I wake to hear gasping moans at the edge of our foxhole...
...Those ties were among the strongest they ever had or would have...
...Learned hostile response...
...And some of us learned later...
...The complacent ignorance of the rear-echelon commanders...
...Since we believe that we are likely to push on in only a few hours, most of us make only half-hearted efforts to dig deep...
...Its criteria was the flow of bodies...
...The brief periods of silence are the most frightening...
...And Bradley's...
...As we drink it we look out over the valley and see planes firing at targets below them...
...9 In the same forest, the snow and cold continue...
...The reader is led through the fighting among the hedgerows of Normandy, the rapid advance across more open ground, the crossing of the Rhine, the deadly, useless, ill-advised push through the Hurtgen forest, the Battle of the Bulge, the surge into Germany, and the stunned entry into concentration camps...
...And yet again...
...We fought for each other...
...I believe the most common judgment to be correct...
...A great silence has fallen on the air and a great feeling of peace comes over me...
...This is what joined us and transformed us into fighting units...
...Here some distinctions are in order...
...And Patton's/' Ambrose adds that it could only be that "they had no conception of life on the front lines...
...Without thought or reflection, soldiers risked their lives for each other...
...Simple necessity...
...I realize that I am not afraid of dying but that I am deathly afraid of being painfully wounded...
...Ambrose is a trustworthy historian, a fine writer, with a remarkable empathy for the men and women about whom he writes, particularly those in the front lines of the battle...
...Doc and I do our best to find a patch of ground where we can dig a foxhole big enough for both of us...
...He dies soon afterward...
...Mutual trust and reciprocity among the soldiers...
...A sniper had shot him in the stomach...
...9 In a hospital in Bournemouth, near the south coast of England, we hear the drone of V-bombs, the silence, and then the explosions...
...But our waxy-white feet begin to swell and turn colors...
...I distract myself by kicking a stray GI boot down the slight slope in front of me...
...As we wait to be taken off the ship, kindly Gray Ladies--so named because of the gray outfits they wear--pass through with their welcome-back gifts...
...9 Home again...
...In combat we depended upon each other...
...My division had a 119-percent turnover, far from the highest...
...As a result, the infantryman's clothing was "criminally inadequate" for Northern Europe's worst winter in forty years...
...Like most other soldiers, I go back to pick up the loose threads of my former life...
...He makes insightful comparisons with the soldiers of the Civil War who invoked ideals of patriotism, honor, the cause, the flag, and with those of World War I during which such ideals were shot down...
...Getting on my feet, I repeat the performance...
...Again, I believe a common judgment to be correct: What Hitler unleashed on the world was monstrously evil and it would have been criminal not to have opposed it...
...Comic books...
...What did the army want with the skinny, nineteen-year-old kid I was when I was inducted...
...The war itself...
Vol. 125 • April 1998 • No. 8
