Posted on 05/01/2014 7:23:39 PM PDT by Retain Mike
quiet sectors like Bastogne and the Ardennes
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My father made it through til then with 2 purple hearts for relatively minor wounds,,, in the Ardennes he was hit bad and left for dead for 2 days in the snow with just a hit of morphine... on the 3rd day they evacuated him on a c47 to England where he stayed for 3 months...
If the war had gone into 1946 I suspect that you’d have seen a much larger contribution along the lines of French African Troops in WW1.
Thank you for the information. I said in another response that I wondered how could anyone be aware of the last several centuries of history and still decide the Ardennes would ever be a quiet sector?
This brings to mind the essay and letters I have developed about dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. Here is a portion.
In support of dropping the atomic bombs historians often cite the inevitability of horrifying casualties, if troops had landed on the home islands. They extrapolate from 48,000 American and 230,000 Japanese losses on Okinawa to estimates of 500,000 American and millions of Japanese casualties for mainland invasions. However, these optimistic figures arise from studies preceding the unfolding recognition by planning staffs of the American experiences on Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. These sanguine estimates are also over seven times the dead and wounded suffered by Americans during The Battle of the Bulge; casualties that shocked the American public.
Such estimates could have greatly understated casualties. Kyushu and Honshu at over 100,000 rugged square miles mathematically enable at least 500 defensive redoubts; fortifications comparable to that General Ushijima constructed to inflict most losses at Okinawa. This rapid increase in killing efficiency extended to planned stubborn defenses of their major cities just as the Germans had maintained in Berlin. The American “island hopping” strategy had ended, because the Japanese had determined the few regions within their mountainous country that could accommodate the huge armies and air forces needed. Harry Truman contemplated increasingly dire estimates causing him to reflect on the possibility of “an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other”.
The Greatest Generation and their parents would have been enraged to discover a cabal had ignored the nuclear option for ending the war simply to indulge some personal moral orthodoxy. If there was any alternative, Harry Truman, Henry Stimson, and George Marshall were not about to procure the deaths of countless Americans in protracted ground campaigns following amphibious assaults exceeding D-Day.
Would be great to hear from archy on this...
By all accounts, Tarawa was a meatgrinder. Everyone got hammered, but the second wave, having to wade ashore from landing craft hung up on the surrounding reef, must have been especially horrifying.
One wonders if current generations of American kids could manage something like that, but it seems that our servicemen (and women) are doing great things in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Here is part of an essay I wrote on repeal of DADT and I believe it applies even more to women serving in an MOS likely to engage in combat. The context here is the survey that said 70% of those in the military saw no problem serving with homosexuals
“The entire military exists to serve Marine and Army combat infantrymen and their associates in Special Forces. DOD accomplishes nothing of lasting significance until these people walk the ground formerly held by an enemy, and well over half of those trigger-pullers opposed repeal. Only they understand the unimaginable totalitarian leadership and obedience demanded by their chaotic, barbaric, and brittle environments.
I have heard objections in terms of having to shower with homosexuals, but the problem really begins when showers, hot food, and regular sleep fade into memory to be replaced by exhaustion, brutality, turmoil, and trauma. The leadership and discipline of a sub-culture that enables victory or at least survival in those environments cannot be turned on and off. It must continually penetrate throughout the military services. A mental disorder involving sexuality when thrust into the midst of that totalitarian structure warps the relationships that must be maintained.”
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