Killed in a plane crash on Memorial Day. How fitting.
Posted on 05/25/2015 8:09:28 AM PDT by Retain Mike
My greatest contact with these men started about age nine when my dad began taking me out golfing on the weekends. There was a man who used the first golf cart I ever saw, because as a brigade commander of the 41th infantry in New Guinea he was debilitated by sickness. I remember one fairly good golfer who had kind of a weird back swing, because he was crippled while serving with the Big Red One in Sicily. I often ended up as a dishwasher at Michelbook Country Club. I noticed the chef always limped as he moved around the kitchen. When he saw my puzzled look, he said he got the limp from a wound received when he was with the Rangers at Pointe De Hoc. Those are just a few of the stories I remember among so many I could relate or have forgotten.
My motivation for this subject and what I have a hard time understanding still is the casualty rates in those divisions chosen repeatedly for initial assaults. The corps and army commanders had favorites and somehow division staffs responded to reconstitute and retrain the rifle platoons every thirty to ninety days without losing the quality of the assault forces. It seems other divisions were usually sent to less active sectors, entered combat later in time, or occupied a flank in an attack. These were the most ordinary of men, so I keep hearing Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man as I reread this narrative.
Omar Bradley said, “Previous combat had taught us that casualties are lumped primarily in the rifle platoons. For here are concentrated the handful of troops who must advance under enemy fire. It is upon them that the burden of war falls with greater risk and with less likelihood of survival than any other of the combat arms. An infantry division of WW II consisted of 81 rifle platoons, each with a combat strength of approximately 40 men. Altogether those 81 assault units comprised but 3,240 men in a division of 14,000…..Prior to invasion we had estimated that the infantry would incur 70 percent of the losses of our combat forces. By August we had boosted that figure to 83 percent on the basis of our experience in the Normandy hedgerows.”
Nearly a third of the 65 divisions in the Pacific and European theaters suffered 100% or more casualties. However, their regimental staffs saw frontline units obliterated three to six times over. To deal with this problem there were never enough infantrymen coming from the states. Replacement centers continually reassigned artillerymen, machine gunners, cooks, and clerks to infantry duties. The situation in Europe became so severe that rear area units in France and Great Britain were tasked to supply soldiers for retraining as infantrymen. Those suffering battle fatigue came off the line for a few days for clean uniforms, bathing, hot food, and sleep. However, scarcity compelled their repeated return until crippling wounds, mental breakage, death, or victory brought final relief.
For example the 4th and 29th Infantry landed on D-Day and suffered about 500% battle casualties in their rifle platoons during the eleven months until VE-Day. Added to these numbers were half again as many non-battle human wrecks debilitated by trench foot, frost bite, pneumonia, hernia, heart disease, arthritis, etc. Many never returned to duty. In the jungles of the Pacific, non-combat losses often exacted a greater price. But somehow the infantry crossed Europe and the Pacific and always remained in the forefront of attacks.
Ernie Pyle said of them, “The worst experience of all is just the accumulated blur, and the hurting vagueness of being too long in the lines, the everlasting alertness, the noise and fear, the cell-by-cell exhaustion, the thinning of the surrounding ranks as day follows nameless day. And the constant march into the eternity of one’s own small quota of chances for survival. Those are the things that hurt and destroy. But they went back to them because they were good soldiers and they had a duty they could not define.”
Partial bibliography: A Soldier’s Story by Omar N. Bradley
Brave Men by Ernie Pyle (the quote named Tommy Clayton, but was generalized here because Ernie Pyle saw him as an example of the infantrymen he loved.)
Crusade in Europe by Dwight D. Eisenhower The U.S. Infantryman in World War II by Robert S. Rush Foot Soldier by Roscoe C. Blunt, Jr. Links for Listings of United States Divisions during WW II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_divisions_during_World_War_II http://www.historyshots.com/usarmy/
Army Battle Casualties and Non-battle Deaths in World War II http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/Casualties/index.html
3rd 'Marne' Infantry Division http://www.custermen.com/ItalyWW2/Units/Division3.htm Total casualties greater than 34,000
National 4th Infantry (IVY) Division Association http://www.4thinfantry.org/content/division-history Total casualties of 34,000
29th Infantry Division http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/29th_Infantry_Division_(United_States)
45th Infantry Division http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45th_Infantry_Division_(United_States)
Remembering the Thunderbirds – Oklahoma’s 45th Infantry Division http://www.baptistmessenger.com/remembering-the-thunderbirds-oklahomas-45th-infantry-division/ Total casualties of 62,640 When Gen. George S. Patton described the 45th Infantry Division, he said it was “one of the finest, if not the finest infantry division in this history of modern warfare.”
Killed in a plane crash on Memorial Day. How fitting.
So when he says those ultra-liberal things, I give him a complete pass. Yeah, I think he's earned the right to say whatever he wants.
Excellent read.
Thank you.
My (maternal) Grandfather fought at the Battle of the Bulge. injured, became POW, killed a German guard while escaping and crawled back to friendly lines. he survived the war and fathered 10 more children. When he went to war in 1942 he buried his first after she suffered aneurysm from an automobile train accident on the night of Pearl Harbor. he had to leave behind 4 children while he went to fight. He passed away in 1994.
My brother-in-law’s father served in the German Wehrmacht (Army) fought in Stalingard. Became a POW sent to Siberia, of the 60,000 captured only 5000 survived and was released in 1946. He passed away in 2007 at 96 years of age
what a diverse service of two individuals whom served in the US Army and German Army.
Sometime after the end of World War II and Korea, the Army decided to award a Bronze Star to all infantrymen who had been awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge. This recognition was probably appropriate in view of the attrition mentioned in this thread. However, other branches later jumped on the bandwagon and we later found personnel and supply clerks with Bronze Stars for Meritorious Service for routine duty on a safe and well appointed base. Officers expected a Bronze Star for showing up. That situation has been cleared up to an extent, but infantrymen continue to bear the brunt of combat and frequently are not adequately recognized.
When finished, I was sent to the 42nd Division in the States because I was still 18 and would not be sent overseas as a replacement until you were 19. I was to ship out from NYC to France on my 19th birthday. We got there in time the Battle of the Bulge where we all got the Combat Infantry Badge. We had a lot of causalities but not nearly like units that came up from Africa and D-Day. My worst was pneumonia from living in a hole before advancing into Germany. I was in Schweinfurt, the Nazi ball-bearing production center, when Roosevelt died and in Munich when Hitler killed himself. Occupation in Austria was a paradise.
Thanks for that story. My dad was a Marine pilot during VN as well as my uncle who was a Huey pilot. My two brothers served in Iraq one as an attack helicopter pilot and the other as a weapons officer and my mom was a military brat.
Sir, you made me weep. It’s OK, though, as we all need to weep this day—weep with sadness but also weep with pride. What they did for us must never be forgotten, not for a second. I live in a small town north of Pittsburgh, and I’ve gotten to know two veterans pretty well—Leonard and Howard. Leonard passed in 2014; he is easily the bravest man I’ve ever known. First wave, Omaha Beach (sorry, there’s something in my eye). He always wore a simple pin on his lapel: “Omaha Beach, Normandy, June 6, 1944.” Leonard came here from Brooklyn, where after the war he sold concessions at Ebbet’s Field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now there’s a man whose portrait belongs on the $20.00 bill! Howard lived through Pearl Harbor, having watched many friends die on the Arizona, with whom he had played a band concert the evening of December 6. That was all I could ever get out of him, still alive but quite feeble. They humble me.
Sometimes you see people saying we should have fought the Russians after Germany surrendered. They don’t realize just how desperate the U.S. manpower situation was by 1945.
Great recap....from a 90 year old FReeper!
I've seen that too. But what would the goal have been? To destroy the Red Army? To take Warsaw? To take Moscow?
With limited aims, the Western Allies probably would have won, mainly because of their superior air power. Even then it would have been a bloody mess.
During WWII, 93% of the United States Army was Draftees.
It was a magnificent fighting force, both in Europe and the Pacific, and in all forms of operations, including amphibious, conducting the largest, and the most, amphibious landings, and Airborne operations in Europe and in the Pacific.
The Army continued using Indian Wind-talkers as radio operators, a practice they started in WWI, and in WWII continued in all theaters of the war, the Pacific, Europe, and North Africa.
To push Russia back to their 1938 boundaries, saving Europe and keeping us from facing the massive Russian war machine for generations into the future.
How different would America and the world be today if not for the Russian/Nazi alliance of WWII, and the Russians succeeding in empire building beyond their wildest dreams.
The only argument should be whether it could have been done, not whether it would have paid off.
Odd that international communism gained half the world under our socialist, ‘president for life’ who held the presidency through election after election, after election, and election, until he finally died in office.
He may have earned the right but he’s still an idiot.
38.8% (6,332,000) of U.S. servicemen and all servicewomen were volunteers
61.2% (11,535,000) were draftees
No, the only argument is not whether it could have been done.
There is a moral argument as to whether the cost, in American, Russian and European lives, not to mention immense human suffering among the survivors, would be worth it.
Not everything we are capable of doing is worth the price.
Reasonable people can differ on whether fighting the Russians at the end of WWII would have been worth the price.
What cannot be argued is that the American people simply would not have agreed to do it. Nobody, luckily, in our society or government has the power to make such decisions and force everybody else to obey.
Such a society is an absolute monarchy or dictatorship. Which, BTW, sometimes make wiser long-term decisions than democracies or republics.
Squad leader - Company C, 3rd battalion, 116th infantry regiment, 29th infantry division
Front-line combat from D-Day to V-E Day
My hero
The 29th Infantry Division was one of the most illustrious U.S. Army outfits of World War II. It was in combat almost continuously from D-Day to V-E Day and suffered 20,111 battle casualties in eleven months of combat, 204.2% of its normal manpower complement of approximately 14,000 men. It gained four campaign ribbons for service in the European Theater.
Normandy hedgerows
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