Citizen Soldier.

The how & the why of one man's war

In 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." That assertion is not as clear as it initially appears to be. For if war is criminal, who are the criminals, which of the participants? 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).

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. 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. He has produced an exciting but harrowing story. I could read it only in short installments.

In turning to this book, I was breaking an unformulated rule of not reading or recalling any particulars of World War II. But after more than fifty years I thought I could finally afford to do so, to learn the path I had taken as a member of Regiment 328, 26th (Yankee) Division, Third Army. 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.

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. Drawing upon historical sources, interviews, and oral testimony he weaves together strategic plans, tactics, and actual incidents, the successes and the failures - including massive intelligence failures - the cowardly, the heroic, and the accidental, into a coherent narrative.

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. Along the way he encounters the various ground troops; the pilots of bombers, fighters, and Piper Cub spotters; 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 Hitler's early contempt.

Ambrose inquires into why these citizens of a democracy persevered and overcame. What were the principal motives that guided them? Was it patriotism? Simple necessity? Learned hostile response? Mutual trust and reciprocity among the soldiers? 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.

Sideways, crabways, I approach those same questions. What did the army want with the skinny, nineteen-year-old kid I was when I was inducted? Could they plunk him into infantry training, teach him to take twenty-mile 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? They not only could but they did, each step seeming as unreal as it was unlikely to that soldier in the making. Ambrose offers snapshot glimpses of soldiers in combat. I offer some of that skinny kid, memories which return to me with the force and clarity that some vivid dreams have, sharp in detail but slightly surreal.

* On guard duty somewhere in France on a bright moonlit night, the shadows black and sharp-edged. I distract myself by kicking a stray GI boot down the slight slope in front of me. 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.

* 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. I realize that I am not afraid of dying but that I am deathly afraid of being painfully wounded.

* 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. As we drink it we look out over the valley and see planes firing at targets below them. The tracer bullets make beautiful abstract patterns against the dark sky. We have no idea if the planes are ours or theirs.

* After a long march, we pause in a relatively open field and are told to dig foxholes. 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. But an officer standing in a jeep, pistols visible in his holsters, drives around examining the area. Soon an order comes down. General Patton says we had better dig those #@%*$+ holes deep, and right now. A short time later we are glad we did. A couple of German planes that seem to have strayed into the area spray down bullets that thud heavily into the ground around us.

* 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. The roof has been partly destroyed. Shafts of sunlight pass through the jagged opening and pick out the gilt edges of the altar and meager ornaments. A great silence has fallen on the air and a great feeling of peace comes over me. It persists for some days.

* In the dark, our company has entered a rather dense forest heavy with rain mixed with snow. My then-buddy shares the surname Savage with a pulp-magazine hero and is automatically called "Doc," that character's nickname. Doc and I do our best to find a patch of ground where we can dig a foxhole big enough for both of us. 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. 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. I wake to hear gasping moans at the edge of our foxhole. Doc had waked with the morning light and had gotten out of the foxhole to look around. A sniper had shot him in the stomach. He dies soon afterward.

* In the same forest, the snow and cold continue. We have advanced almost not at all, expected supplies do not 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. Getting out of my foxhole one morning, I stumble and fall in the snow. Getting on my feet, I repeat the performance. And yet again. I notice others performing similar antics. We are unable to walk. Some of us are driven to a barn where we are told to remove shoes and socks and dry our feet. Even if it's only to be a few hours we all feel a blessed relief. But our waxy-white feet begin to swell and turn colors. In what was to turn 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. I learn that I have trench foot, a World War I term I had never heard before.

* In a hospital in Bournemouth, near the south coast of England, we hear the drone of V-bombs, the silence, and then the explosions. The brief periods of silence are the most frightening. 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. Alternating and intermingling waves of guilt for not being with them and gratitude that I'm not sweep over me. 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. (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....)

* Home again. As our hospital ship pulls into a New York Harbor, we can hear and see through a porthole the band that greets us. 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. I am thrown into a frustrated, impotent, and incoherent rage as our smiling Gray Lady extends to me, and I silently accept, her gift of chocolate and comic books. Comic books! My feelings are only compounded when my three cabin mates pounce on them eagerly.

* Months later, at the hospital center at Camp Carson, Colorado, I receive my honorable discharge, one line of which reads: "EAME Ribbon, I Bronze Service Star Good Conduct Ribbon Combat Inf Badge." Like most other soldiers, I go back to pick up the loose threads of my former life.

My 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. 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. Ambrose himself makes severe judgments of particular decisions and individual soldiers, not excluding the highest-ranking officers, even of Dwight Eisenhower whom he much admires. He notes, for example, that once battle lines became relatively stable, officers above the rank of captain rarely visited the front lines. From the rear echelons they ordered soldiers to fight in conditions they knew nothing about. As a consequence, thousands of young American and German soldiers died needlessly. The push through the Hurtgen forest was based on a plan that "was grossly, even criminally stupid."

The replacement system, Ambrose writes, was criminally wasteful and could have been easily corrected. "Its criteria was the flow of bodies. Whose fault was this? Eisenhower's first. He was the boss. And Bradley's. And Patton's." Ambrose adds that it could only be that "they had no conception of life on the front lines." The importance of this issue is indicated by the high turnover in different units. My division had a 119-percent turnover, far from the highest.

Ambrose confirms what I previously knew only as rumor. I got trench foot because General Omar Bradley had decided, in September 1944, that the campaign would be over before December. Instead of needed winter clothing, other supplies were pumped into the pipelines. As a result, the infantryman's clothing was "criminally inadequate" for Northern Europe's worst winter in forty years. Those who were ill-supplied and not rotated so they could get dry and warm, got trench foot. "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." Many lost toes, feet, and, if gangrene set in, the entire lower leg.

Here some distinctions are in order. Rape, murder, theft, desertion - the seemingly inevitable accompaniments of war - are surely criminal. But the criminally stupid? The massively wrong decisions? The complacent ignorance of the rear-echelon commanders? The war itself? Here, rather than immediate labels, some legal and moral analyses are called for. And a return to the question of why we fought is helpful.

I believe the most common judgment to be correct. In combat we depended upon each other. Without thought or reflection, soldiers risked their lives for each other. Those ties were among the strongest they ever had or would have. We fought for each other. This is what joined us and transformed us into fighting units. But we also had implicit trust, I believe, in the decisions our country was making. 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." And some of us learned later. 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. 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.

RELATED ARTICLE: 'Loaded & fired machine gun...'

I was wounded by German artillery fire in the village of San Clemente in northern Italy in 1944. In the three autumn months before I was hit, I had been pulled off the line and assigned as a litter-bearer to carry bloodied Americans, as well as wounded German prisoners, from the battlefield to the nearest aid station or, beyond that, down the long, lonely, narrow mountain paths of the Apennines where, reaching lower ground and a road network, they could be evacuated by jeep or ambulance.

Through a foul-up at regimental headquarters, our small group - eight men, two squads, our names unknown - was unattached and accountable to no one. Nomads, we were left to roam free with our bloodstained stretchers, but were expected to be available night and day to serve where needed, battalion to battalion, company to company, as the front advanced. One afternoon, under a white flag, we went out three times to pick up our wounded among the rocks, face to face with German infantry across a saddle in the mountains, the third time bringing back a German medic who inexplicably walked away from the German line and surrendered to us. Being unattached to any battalion, we drew no rations or clothing; we begged food and stole blankets and lied to save our skins. It was a dirty life doing good.

After I was discharged from the army in 1946, I often felt desperately guilty for having survived. In varying degrees the troubled soul was not an uncommon reaction to such good luck. Even though I had spent more than a year recovering in army hospitals, I was safely home, and others were still in casts or walking crippled. Had I seen too many wounded? Had I seen too many dead? Did I owe something further to my rescuers: medics, doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, pilots, ship's crew?

In the early postwar years I found myself reluctant, or occasionally refusing, to eat full meals or meat meals when Europe was experiencing wrenching hunger (a "clean-your-plate/children-are-starving-in-China" syndrome of remembered Catholic childhood). Even now I have not fully shaken the burden. My oldest daughter recently reminded me in front of my grandchildren how I had insisted that my children clean their plates even unto adulthood.

Within the year after discharge from the army, I traveled to New York City, visited the offices of Catholic Relief Services, and hesitantly asked what I could do. "We need two engineers in Greece," it was suggested. I turned away. Laughably, I had among my baggage a separation record from the army's Fletcher General Hospital in Ohio that credited me with the literal but purposeless job description: "Loaded and fired machine gun at enemy positions. Used hand grenades and bayonet in training."

I remember standing at the site of a collapsed apartment building in the city and commiserating with the people who had lost their homes; I gave to every panhandler who crossed my path; I got sick to my stomach when I saw the nether side of Times square.

Years later, in Boston, I watched as a woman dug through a dumpster for whatever she could find salvageable. Shocked by this poverty, I approached and the words poured out unwarranted and yet sincere, and I heard myself say loudly, "You don't have to do this!" and offered her money.

My time in Italy had taught me how to scavenge for food, how to steal, and how to lie in order to survive. t knew what it felt like. But I couldn't make the woman understand, and she ran away from me screaming. Suddenly brought to my senses, I headed in the opposite direction, stuffing bills into my pocket, lest a policeman find me and I would soon be in a cell trying to explain just what the hell were my bleeding-heart-liberal intentions.

Vincent, a friend of mine who volunteered for a time with the New York Catholic Worker on Christie Street, was later sent for by his parents in Detroit so that he could receive psychiatric treatment. I heard Midwestern, well-intentioned friends ask, "Why would Vinnie do a thing like that? The Catholic Workers are Socialists, aren't they? What was he thinking of?"

But I had some idea of what Vinnie was thinking.

JOHN LYNCH 

John Lynch lives in Framingham, Massachusetts.

James Finn, formerly a Commonweal editor, is chairman of the Puebla Institute.