American Soldiers

MODERN WAR STUDIES

Theodore A. Wilson General Editor

Raymond A. Callahan J. Garry Clifford Jacob W. Kipp Allan R. Millett Carol Reardon

Dennis Showalter David R. Stone Series Editors

American Soldiers Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam

Peter S. Kindsvatter

Foreword by Russell F. Weigley

University Press of Kansas

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kindsvatter, Peter S. American soldiers : ground combat in the World Wars, Korea, and

Vietnam / Peter S. Kindsvatter; foreward by Russell F. Weigley. p. cm. — (Modern war studies)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-7006-1416-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7006-2659-5 (ebook) 1. Combat—History—20th century. 2. United States. Army. Infantry—

History—20th century. 3. United States. Marine Corps—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Series.

UA28 .K55 2003 355′.00973’0904—dc21

2002012957

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in the print publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

Contents

Foreword, Russell F. Weigley

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Rallying to the Flag

2. The Environment of War

3. Immersion in the Environment

4. Coping with the Environment of War

5. For Comrades and Country

6. Failing to Cope with the Environment of War

7. The Joys of War

8. Closing with the Enemy

9. Leadership in Combat

10. Dwellers Beyond the Environment of War

11. Equal Opportunity in the Foxhole

Conclusion: Don’t Expect Too Much from War

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Photo Gallery

Foreword

John Keegan introduced his classic study of the experience of combat, The Face of Battle, with the lament that no military historian had hitherto succeeded in conveying that experience realistically.* Just what it felt like to place yourself in the way of numerous deadly missiles, blade strokes and bayonet thrusts, and clubbing weapons of various kinds and to persist in moving forward into the storm had, he believed, eluded previous historians. Keegan set out to offer a corrective, and he did so impressively, keeping sight of the simple, central point, amid a good deal of complex exposition, that the dominant emotion and experience in battle is to be scared.

Notwithstanding the classic stature of Keegan’s book, there is an element of the self-serving in his introductory remarks about how writers before him had failed to get matters right regarding combat. Disappointed by that apparent attitude, I myself initially put The Face of Battle aside. It required insistent friends to persuade me to pick it up again, conquer my distaste for what proved to be a small part of it, and discover that on the whole it is a great book. Putting aside, however, the self-satisfaction of Keegan’s contrasting his own work with other historians’ accounts of the nature of combat, his position is not without merit. It is exceedingly difficult to capture in writing the chaos of events and emotions that occur in combat. All descriptions of the climactic events of war dilute them.

A great virtue of the present volume by Peter Kindsvatter is that, by reading and passing on to us his findings in an extraordinary number of American soldiers’ narratives of combat during the four major conscript- army wars of the twentieth century, he has identified a surprisingly large

number of writers who have in some measure overcome this difficulty and who actually tell us what it is to be in battle. He presents generous samplings of such writings within his own interpretive analysis to create a major addition to that slim body of literature that does convey a sense of the reality of battle. Kindsvatter’s book is based firmly on the firsthand accounts of combat written by twentieth-century American soldiers and marines of the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Its author acts as a sensitive, skillful mediator between the writers and us.

One of the merits of John Keegan’s The Face of Battle is that Keegan provides so much insight into the social history of the British soldiers with whom he is concerned because he knows that without understanding whence the soldiers came the reader will not be able to comprehend properly how they behaved in combat. Similarly, Peter Kindsvatter leads up to the combat experience with detailed examinations of his writers’ accounts of the entire process of living in the armed forces, from induction through basic and advanced training. Through the soldiers’ writings he sympathetically explores their ambivalent relationships with their families and friends back home to whom they knew they could not adequately communicate what they experienced, and their less ambivalent, more often hostile attitudes toward the rear echelons of men who wore military uniforms but did not share the trials at the cutting edge.

Yet it is experiencing combat and how men could enter and endure it with which Kindsvatter is principally concerned. Similar issues of why men were able to enter the hell of combat and why they stuck to it have been addressed recently for the American Civil War by James M. McPherson in For Cause and Comrades.* As his title implies, McPherson found that the writings of Civil War soldiers indicate that they fought first for ideological reasons—for their cause and country—and secondarily for their comrades—for motives having to do with the bonding of friends and with unit solidarity. Kindsvatter finds the same scale of motivational values among his twentieth-century soldiers, which will cause some of us to rethink accustomed beliefs. We have had a tendency, drawn from impressionistic and insufficient evidence, to believe that the more worldly wise soldiers of the century just ended were more likely than the romantic rustics of the Victorian era to fight simply and cynically just to get an unpleasant job over with. Kindsvatter shows that combat motivation remained rooted in the same kind of ideological, patriotic, and comradeship values in twentieth-century American mass armies as in our first mass army, even if less sentimentally expressed.

Kindsvatter has used more self-consciously literary sources than McPherson; where the latter relied mainly on unpublished letters and diaries, Kindsvatter has drawn from published fiction, memoirs, and histories by combat veterans. Fiction and nonfiction have been of nearly equal value for his purposes, but if there is an edge, fictionalized memories of combat seem to come a bit closer to presenting a cogent version of the experience of battle. Perhaps feeling obliged to adhere to what can be confirmed as the literal truth interferes with capturing a fuller truth, even in memoirs, let alone in the work of historians, thus reaffirming the degree of accuracy within John Keegan’s complaint about military historians who preceded him.

We can hope that by introducing these literary sources—that approach about as closely as words are able toward conveying what it is like to be part of war—Kindsvatter will bring us all to a better appreciation of that uniquely intense experience. We can hope, too, that Kindsvatter will succeed in sending his readers to examine the best of his sources for themselves. Perhaps a better comprehension of the realities of war will help us stay away from warlike policies, but I do not intend this Foreword to convey any such simpleminded antiwar message, nor is that by any means the purpose of Kindsvatter’s book. Through the book, however, we learn that those soldiers who approached combat informed by the best literary descriptions of it, though they could not fully be prepared for what they were entering—nothing could accomplish that—were at least more ready than those who came only with romantic images from the movies. If we are to continue to engage in combat, as we will, even that slight advantage for those new to it might make them better soldiers. More than that, it surely must be of some value for policymakers and for those who vote for policymakers to possess a modicum of understanding of what war is. Peter Kindsvatter gives us more than that modicum.

—Russell F. Weigley

*John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York: Viking Press, 1976), pp. 15–54, 72– 78.

*James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). McPherson deals with similar themes, although with more emphasis on why men enlisted in the first place and somewhat less on why they continued fighting, in What They Fought For, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994).

Acknowledgments

This book, substantial as it is, started out as an even longer dissertation that required considerable refining. The dissertation and resulting book would not have been possible without the help of my devoted and talented wife, Marty. She not only typed the dissertation and the revised manuscript that followed but also applied her editing skills and common sense to make them better. She did these tasks while working full time to support us.

That this dissertation had publication potential in the first place owes much to my committee at Temple University. I was yet another student fortunate enough to have his work receive the thoughtful criticism and close attention of Dr. Russell F. Weigley, who supported and encouraged me during the entire Ph.D. process, right through the job-hunting stage. Dr. Richard H. Immerman, a skillful editor, went beyond the call of duty to carefully read and thoughtfully edit my dissertation. Dr. David Alan Rosenberg added his considerable breadth of knowledge to the process. My outside reader, historian and retired U.S. Army colonel Dr. Henry G. Gole, shared my interest in the study of the soldier in combat, provided thoughtful insights, and shared his personal experiences as a combatant in two wars.

I must also thank Dr. Dennis E. Showalter, who not only read the manuscript I sent to the University Press of Kansas, twice (the long and longer versions), but also provided constructive criticism and comments while remaining steadfastly supportive. Finally, I want to thank Dr. Jack Atwater, the director of the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum, and his staff, Ed Heasley, Alan Killinger, Tim Tidwell, Judy Garrett, and Elmer Wymer. They have assisted me in my official duties as the Ordnance Corps

historian in myriad ways and have also provided moral support while I finished this project.

What it is that makes a man go out into dangerous places and get himself shot at with increasing consistency until finally he dies, is an interesting subject for speculation.

And an interesting study.

—James Jones, WWII: A Chronicle of Soldiering

Introduction

What, indeed, motivated novelist James Jones and his fellow GIs in World War II, or American soldiers in World War I or the Korean and Vietnam Wars, to go out into dangerous places? And once there—in the combat zone—what enabled them to persevere until all too often they did die, or were wounded or emotionally broken? These questions generate more than just interesting speculation. The answers are critically important. Men facing battle or charged with leading troops need to understand the nature of these “dangerous places” to be better prepared to deal with them. Civilian leaders who order American soldiers into harm’s way need to appreciate the potentially devastating effect that combat can have on those soldiers. The American people must realize how vital their unequivocal support is to soldiers trying to endure war’s hardships and dangers. Too often in the twentieth century novice soldiers, leaders, and citizens alike did not comprehend these basic realities.

Gaining an appreciation for the nature of combat involves an examination of why the citizen joined, or at least consented to serve in, the U.S. Army or Marine Corps; the role of training in converting the recruit into a soldier; the physical and emotional hardships and dangers of combat; how soldiers coped, or failed to cope, with the combat environment; what motivated them to carry the fight to the enemy; and the soldiers’ relationships with the home front.

Speculation on James Jones’s “interesting subject” thus encompasses a wide range of topics. The scope of this book, therefore, is necessarily broad but remains manageable because of several constraints. The discussion is limited to the experiences of American soldiers and marines.

This experience certainly invites comparison with soldiers in other armies, but such a comparison would be a book in itself. The focus is on ground combat at the individual and small-unit level. Central to this approach is the American infantryman and, to a lesser extent, other combatants such as tank crewmen, artillerymen, and engineers. The perspectives of noncombatants who were close to the fighting, such as war correspondents, medical personnel, and chaplains, are also included. This book is neither a combat history nor a tactical treatise but an examination of what the combat envronment was like and how soldiers reacted to it.

The American soldier is examined through the course of four wars— the world wars, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The soldiers’ experiences in these wars certainly varied in important ways, but these wars, despite their differences, also encompass a distinct period of American military history. They are the wars of the draft era, fought primarily, though by no means exclusively, by the conscripted citizen- soldier. They are also modern wars, largely fought conventionally, and of sufficient duration and violence to have a serious impact on the physical and emotional well being of those who fought them. These characteristics distinguish them from the wars that preceded or followed.

Where best to learn about the soldier’s experience in the wars of the draft era? From what the veterans themselves have to say. This book draws upon memoirs, novels, and oral histories. A few of these works were written by war correspondents, but most reflect the experiences of enlisted men and junior officers. Works by marines and soldiers have been consulted, and the term “soldiers” in this study includes marines, unless otherwise specified. Each war, and in the case of World War II the Pacific theater and Mediterranean/European theater, is represented by twenty-one to thirty works.

A wide range of secondary sources in military psychiatry, military sociology, literary criticism, and history supplements the direct testimony of the veterans. This secondary literature is invaluable for several reasons. The psychiatrists, psychologists, and sociologists provide useful insights, often based directly on their work with soldiers or veterans, concerning the causes of stress in combat, how men try to cope with that stress, and what motivates them to “stick it out.” The sociological studies and surveys also provide statistical support, at least from World War II on, for many claims made by the soldiers in their memoirs and novels. The literary critics, many of whom are also veterans, provide recommendations as to which memoirs and novels are most significant. More important, some critics go

beyond matters of style and structure to assess the themes, or messages, contained in these works. The historical studies either provide a narrative combat history told from the soldier’s perspective or specifically address soldier behavior.

As for the primary sources, the vast majority are soldiers’ memoirs or firsthand accounts written by war correspondents. Some of these books are based on thoughts and experiences recorded shortly after the fact, as in the case of memoirs based on diaries and letters and the accounts written by the correspondents. Historian William L. Langer explains that such contemporary accounts can be refreshingly straightforward and unaffected, as was his combination memoir and unit history, written immediately after the Armistice in November 1918: “As I reread this simple narrative after a lifetime spent in the teaching and writing of history, I found its immediacy rather appealing. It has nothing of the sophisticated rationalization that invariably creeps into reminiscences recorded long after the event.”1

Soldiers’ diaries and letters may possess this virtue of immediacy, but men in combat did not have much time to record their thoughts and experiences in detail, and they often had little pocket space for more than a small notebook. Not surprisingly, most memoirs were written after war’s end, sometimes many years after, and the authors relied on recollections. Even memoirs based on diaries and letters were often fleshed out with added-on commentary. Critics argue the pros and cons of these after-the- fact recollections. The most obvious problem, as historian Ronald Schaffer points out, is the potential for distortion: “Postwar reconstructions of what happened were subject to distortions of memory and reflected not simply immediate wartime experiences but later thoughts and occurrences as well.”2

Another concern, voiced by James Jones, is that memories fade with time, especially memories of war’s unpleasantries: “Thus we old men can in all good conscience sit over our beers at the American Legion on Friday nights and recall with affection moments of terror thirty years before. Thus we are able to tell the youngsters that it wasn’t all really so bad.”3

Jones’s conventional wisdom aside, however, the reality is that long- term memory of traumatic, unusual, or dramatic events remains vivid and constant. One memoir in this book is unique in doubling as a research device to measure memory. Alice M. Hoffman, an oral historian, interviewed her husband, Howard, an experimental psychologist who had been a mortarman in World War II, about his wartime experiences. A series of interviews, conducted in 1978 and 1982, were checked against

unit histories, photographs, and corroborating testimony from other unit veterans. The Hoffmans discovered that Howard’s memories about “unique happenings” or the “first occurrence of an event” were remarkably clear and accurate: “The forty-year-old memories that Howard retains are extraordinarily resistant to change. They appear to have been protected from decay by rehearsal and reinforced by salience so that they have become fixed in the mind.”4

Put in less clinical terms by Paul Boesch, a veteran of the bitter fighting in the Huertgen Forest in World War II, memories about details may fade, but traumatic events remain indelibly etched in the mind: “It is difficult to recall the sequence in which events occurred. Each episode appears to claim precedence over the others. But though it is hard to recall exactly when a thing happened, it is impossible to erase the events themselves, for the sheer, stark, exhausting terror burned them inextricably in our memory.”5

Given this book’s focus on the soldier’s experience in combat, it is exactly these sharply recalled events, not the details of date, time, and place, that are important. Nevertheless, the nagging suspicion remains, as literature professor and onetime combat pilot Samuel Hynes explains, that veterans’ memoirs contain “failures of observation . . . , the confined vision of witnesses, the infidelities of memories after the events, the inevitable distortions of language.”6 Thus the only sort of truth that can be gained from after-the-fact accounts is collective. Hynes takes this approach in his own excellent study, The Soldiers’ Tale, the plural “soldiers” indicative of his use of multiple experiences to reconstruct memory. This book proceeds in a similar vein, citing numerous examples in the text and notes to support a point.

This book also draws upon war novels in the search for collective truth. The use of fictional works in a historical study is bound to raise eyebrows, but these novels were included for two reasons. First, although some of them are obscure, others are well known, such as the works of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Norman Mailer, and James Jones. In any discussion of the influence of war literature on successive generations, a topic addressed in the conclusion, these popular fictional works cannot be left out. Second, and more important, these fictional works speak directly and eloquently to the soldier’s condition in war. Every author whose fictional work is included is a veteran or seasoned war correspondent, and many of these works are semiautobiographical. In short, they are realistic, or “mimetic” to use a term common to literary

criticism, meaning they accurately imitate or represent human behavior. These novels, to paraphrase the literature professor Stanley Cooperman, dramatize rather than invent historical reality.7 Historian and veteran Henry G. Gole believes that this literature is as important to seeking the truth about man’s condition in wartime as is historical analysis:

The historian’s attempt at detachment stands in sharp contrast to the artist’s passionate personal involvement and raises the question of truth and who comes closer to it—the historian or artist. We are well advised to rely upon both the artist and the historian, one for “essential truth” produced by the creative imagination so the reader has a sense of being there, and one for analysis of known facts available. It should be clear that both artist and historian demand from us a leap of faith as the former invents the plausible, while the latter ultimately uses analysis to take us from what is known to what is probably true.8

Nevertheless, though novels are valuable for their portrayal of soldiers’ responses to war, they should be used with caution concerning matters outside the human experience. For example, war-novel plots tend to be tactically illogical, often involving the physical isolation of a small unit to an unrealistic degree. This technique allows the author to keep his cast of characters within reasonable bounds and free from outside interference. As historian Roger A. Beaumont points out, these plots are not only unrealistic but also leave out many aspects of the military picture: “The fiction writer . . . is faced, as is the historian, with shaping meaning. It is not surprising that the dullness of mass bureaucracy is ignored in favor of colorful if improbable microcosms. . . . Fictional accounts most often fall flat treating the complexities of command, logistics, and organization, and show a vague sense of the administrative realities of military life.”9

While the microcosms established by the novelist may sometimes be improbable, within that microcosm, the reactions of the characters to the stress and hardships of combat usually ring true. But there can be a problem here as well, not in the portrayal of specific incidents, but in cumulative effect. Some novelists have heavily weighted their presentation of events in the direction of brutality, negativity, and immorality to support an antiwar theme. Thus it is possible to have a novel, like Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, that provides powerful and plausible examples of soldier behavior in combat, yet the overall effect is sharply, and unrealistically, skewed to the negative. Literature professor and Vietnam veteran Tobey C. Herzog notes that Mailer’s novel is “devoid of

heroes”: “Values—personal and religious—crumble; positive actions result in failure; integrity, concern for others, noble struggles for survival, and heroic actions are absent; and rare moments of personal insight are quickly dismissed.”10

Mailer’s novel is every bit as negative in overall theme as Herzog’s assessment indicates, yet The Naked and the Dead has provided valuable excerpts, and eloquent ones at that, for this book. The problem of imbalance in any one novel can be avoided by using multiple examples from different sources to illustrate a point and by not relying solely on fiction—in sum, the collective memory approach.

A final issue raised by historians concerning memoirs and novels involves representativeness. Soldier-authors tend to be better educated and from a higher social standing than the average soldier and hence are potentially “unrepresentative.” Though this observation has validity, some of the memoirists in this study are not atypical, in that their education and social backgrounds are modest. Their accounts are not polished, and often someone has assisted in editing their memoirs or diaries. In other cases, authors may have gone on to successful careers in business, journalism, or academia, but they were relatively young and unsophisticated, and hence fairly typical, soldiers when they recorded their experiences. Thus, the memoirs are probably not as unrepresentative as some critics suggest. In any case, twelve oral histories have been included to help ensure representativeness. Veterans who were neither sufficiently educated nor motivated to write down their war experiences were often at least willing to talk about them to oral historians.

The more important, though generally overlooked, issue concerning representativeness is not that these soldier-authors are somehow different from the average soldier but that they represent only the successful soldier. Deserters, soldiers who inflicted wounds on themselves to escape combat, or men who broke down in their first firefight did not write memoirs. Some of the soldier-authors cited in this book were unenthusiastic draftees or only average performers, or they suffered bouts of combat fatigue, but on the whole they acquitted themselves satisfactorily. The secondary sources, especially the sociological and psychiatric studies, are thus essential for providing insight into desertion, self-inflicted wounds, and psychological breakdown.

Ultimately, although the use of memoirs, novels, and oral histories raises legitimate questions about representativeness, accuracy of memory, and objectivity of perspective, the fact remains that this written and oral

testimony is the primary available source for learning about the combat experience. Hynes, after raising typical concerns about distortions in memory that could compromise after-the-fact recollections of battle, concedes that these accounts are essential: “What other route do we have to understanding the human experience of war—how it felt, what it was like—than the witness of the men who were there?”11 Whatever their shortcomings, these eyewitness testimonies, including those recreated in fictional form, reveal a great deal about what prompted men “to go out into dangerous places” and what enabled them to carry on in the face of danger and grievous hardships. This book synthesizes and assesses what those testimonies have to say.

Beyond the issue of the general relevance of memoirs, novels, and oral histories is the question of which specific works to consult from the hundreds available. Certainly the number of sources used in this book is not sufficient to satisfy any scientific criteria for a statistically significant sample. There was some method to the selection process, however. Each war received roughly equal representation. A balance between army and marine memoirs was also sought, one not easily struck in the Pacific theater in World War II because most of the memoirs are by marines, despite the large number of soldiers who also fought there. Availability was thus a factor, as it was in the case of World War I and the Korean War, for which far fewer published primary sources exist than for World War II and Vietnam. Sources are more than adequate, but less selectivity was involved in choosing works. The same is true for accounts by African- American soldiers and, in the days of the segregated army, their white leaders, although again the number of available sources is sufficient.

For those wars where primary sources are plentiful, I chose memoirs and novels deemed significant by literary critics and historians. Noted professor of literature and World War II combat veteran Paul Fussell, for example, praises the memoirs of World War II marine Eugene B. Sledge and Vietnam War marine William D. Ehrhart, and rightly so; hence, these works are included, as is Fussell’s own memoir. Moreover, chance entered in as a factor. For example, I stumbled upon Paul Boesch’s obscure but superb World War II memoir at a used bookstore—a memoir long overdue for reprinting.

While reading and assessing these memoirs, novels, and oral histories, a revelatory process occurred that, in retrospect, should have been obvious. Combat is a human experience, and because individuals react to it in typically human ways, the student of soldier behavior first notices the

remarkable similarities in soldiers’ attitudes and motivations. Historian Peter Karsten, in preparing a book of documents and narrative excerpts on the effects of war on American life, “was struck by the degree to which the experiences and attitudes of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth- century American soldiers were more alike than they were different.”12 Literature professors such as Herzog, who study soldiers’ memoirs and novels, are also struck by the consistencies in human reactions to war: “In spite of obvious differences involving the nature, conduct, and perceptions of the Vietnam War and other modern wars, the best stories from these conflicts suggest a fundamental universality among wars: emotions, combat experiences, battlefield rituals, and changes soldiers undergo.”13

The more that one compares soldiers’ experiences, however, the more obvious it becomes, as the historian Richard H. Kohn points out, that individual reactions to war are as complex and diverse as humans themselves: “The problem, in both scholarship and popular thinking, is our propensity to search for typicality, to think in terms of stereotypes, and to aim for universal generalizations that fit across all of American history. The truth of the matter is that the ‘American soldier’ never existed; the most pernicious myth of all is that there has ever been a prototypical American in uniform.”14

Thus, each soldier experiences his own war, as the psychiatrists Herbert Hendin and Ann Pollinger Haas discovered in talking with Vietnam veterans: “The unique personal and social characteristics that each individual brought to combat played a role in shaping his combat experiences, in influencing his perceptions of traumatic combat events, and in determining the specific meanings that such events had, and continue to have, for him.”15

What complicates the study of the soldier’s experience in war is that both Karsten and Herzog on the one hand, and Kohn, Hendin, and Haas on the other, are correct. Generalizations can be made about soldiers’ attitudes and behavior, but they must allow for any number of individual differences. For example, the closest thing to a truism about soldiers in combat is that they are afraid, and what they fear most is death or mutilation; but even this truism must admit to exceptions, such as the psychotic soldier who knows no fear, or the rare individual who never loses his belief in his own invulnerability and hence does not fear death. This book, therefore, draws conclusions about soldier behavior and motivations while allowing for numerous exceptions and variances.

And what conclusions can be made concerning American soldier

behavior in the wars of the draft era? Chapter 1 examines why men volunteered to serve or honored their draft notices. The common perception is that doughboys marched off to World War I enthusiastically, that the GIs of World War II and the Korean War donned their uniforms reluctantly albeit with a certain grim determination, and that the young men of the Vietnam War era, if they answered the call to serve at all, did so only with thinly veiled resentment. These perceptions are not without validity, but they also oversimplify. The reality is that myriad factors, positive and negative, motivated young men to rally to the flag in each of the wars of the draft era.

New recruits then went through basic training or, for marines, boot camp. They were literally and figuratively stripped of their civilian identities and rebuilt into soldiers. This “soldierization process,” as the U.S. Army calls it, produced a physically fit soldier skilled in basic tasks and confident in his new profession. This process did not produce, its critics notwithstanding, some sort of automaton or amoral killer. Nor did all recruits react the same to the soldierization process. The degree to which they rallied to the flag either enthusiastically or reluctantly influenced the degree to which they responded positively or negatively to their training.

Following training, these newly minted soldiers found themselves en route to the war zone. To appreciate the soldier’s behavior in combat, it is first necessary to understand the environment in which he fought and struggled to survive. Chapter 2 examines the harsh physical and emotional environment of war. The green soldier had learned in training that he needed to be physically fit, but he was unpleasantly surprised to learn just how hard, dirty, and exhausting soldiering could be. When not on the move, and often carrying a staggering load, the soldier prepared defensive positions and maintained vigilance. He did not get enough sleep, often did not get enough to eat or drink, went without a bath or clean clothes for weeks at a time, and suffered the effects of climatic extremes.

While this harsh physical environment was wearing the soldier down, he was simultaneously forced to cope with enormous emotional stresses. Danger and the fear of death were ever present. During air or artillery attack, when the soldier could not retaliate, the feeling of helplessness could be overpowering. Soldiers were dismayed to discover that they were expendable cogs in a huge war machine. Chance more than martial prowess determined a soldier’s fate, and he was alarmed at the prospect that not only might he be killed by the enemy, but he could also die in a

senseless accident, perhaps at the hands of his own comrades. Over time, the soldier found himself immersed deeper and deeper in

this malevolent environment. Chapter 3 describes the immersion process. The soldier first entered combat either as an individual replacement or as part of a green unit, and his experiences varied accordingly. Relief, even elation, replaced anxiety after surviving first combat. The soldier had proven himself. He began functioning effectively, gaining experience and confidence in his martial skills. Sooner or later, however, perhaps following a wound or the death of a comrade, the soldier’s confidence was shattered—it could happen to him. He was not invulnerable. He became increasingly aware of the many dangers around him, and his fears grew accordingly. At the same time, the harsh physical environment wore him down physically. The soldier became shaky. Eventually he could not take it any more—psychological breakdown or even suicidal fatalism ensued.

Immersion in the environment of war was thus an inevitably debilitating process, yet some soldiers endured it for an amazingly long time without losing their sanity or their humanity. Chapter 4 examines the various ways a soldier coped. Perhaps most important was removing him from the malevolent environment as often as the situation permitted. Breaks in the action, be it a rotation into reserve or the granting of leave for rest and relaxation (R and R), afforded the soldier a chance to recover physically and emotionally. He also learned to resist a military environment that he often perceived of as uncaring, unnecessarily hierarchical, and inefficient by rebelling in various ways, from going over the hill to enjoy a drink at an off-limits establishment to carrying out midnight requisitions for needed or desirable supplies.

When soldiers could not physically escape the environment through minor rebellions or a break in the action, they resorted to various mind games that provided mental escape. Soldiers were notorious daydreamers, dwelling on prewar good times and swapping stories about plans for their postwar futures. At the same time, they learned not to dwell on present circumstances, such as yesterday’s costly firefight or tomorrow’s sure-to- be-grueling road march. Soldiers learned to live in the moment and focus on the mundane tasks at hand. Some soldiers found comfort in religious faith; others did not. Some put their faith in good luck charms. Humor, often black, provided relief from stress. Ultimately, soldiers clung to the hope of a departure from the combat zone by way of a non-lifethreatening “million dollar wound” or, in the cases of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, by reaching the end of their tour of duty.

One coping mechanism was so complex and so important that it warrants special consideration. Chapter 5 addresses the role of comradeship, not just as a means of coping but as an essential element in motivating the soldier to fight. The varying bonds of friendship that formed within the soldier’s squad and platoon, his “primary group” to use a sociological term, cannot be viewed in isolation. The group’s relationship to its parent unit (company and higher) and, most significantly, its members’ attitudes toward their country and its war aims must also be considered. Morale and effectiveness declined sharply if the soldier’s belief in cause and country began to fade, as it did during the latter stages of the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Despite the various means of coping with the environment of war, some soldiers just could not bear the strain. They broke down. Chapter 6 examines how, during the wars of the draft era, psychological breakdown became recognized as a serious casualty producer, and means of treatment were devised. Many soldiers were treated successfully and returned to duty. Some never fully recovered. Psychiatrists and sociologists have debated why men “cracked up,” as the soldiers call it. Individual personality traits and characteristics affected a soldier’s susceptibility— indeed, some broke down in their first fight or even before reaching the front. The harsh physical environment and the exhausting nature of combat also contributed to psychological breakdown. The determining factor for most men, however, was the constant fear of death or mutilation and the enormous stress that it produced, although other fears often added to the strain.

Some soldiers who couldn’t take it any more, many of whom were on the verge of cracking up, opted out of combat through self-inflicted wounds or desertion. Their comrades might be expected to take a dim view of such “cowards” who abandoned the group, and often they did, but surprisingly the group sometimes accepted the fact that many of these men had reached the end of their rope after making a sincere effort to do their part.

At the other extreme from the shaky soldier who couldn’t take it anymore was the soldier-adventurer, who seemed to thrive on war. Chapter 7 describes these soldier-adventurers, whose impact on the battlefield far outweighed their numbers. They were neither avid killers nor psychotics, but they did not mind killing as part of their job and excelled at soldierly skills, for which they were recognized and admired. This recognition was a powerful motivator for the soldier-adventurer, but as the term “adventurer”

implies, these soldiers were also thrilled by the excitement. Combat was a fascinating if lethal game. Besting the enemy was a challenge.

Certainly only a minority of soldiers thrived on war, but even the average GI discovered that war was not without some redeeming qualities. Even veterans who denounced the brutality and senselessness of war often noted, with some nostalgia, that the friendships formed were intense and unforgettable. Soldiers also took pride in a job well done. Defeating the enemy was cause for satisfaction. A firefight could be deadly but also an exhilarating experience against which humdrum peacetime activities paled in comparison. On occasion soldiers were tourists, enjoying sights unlike anything in their hometowns. And the spectacle of war itself could be breathtaking. Awestruck soldiers were fascinated by aerial dogfights, off- shore naval battles, artillery barrages, and the sight of massed men and machinery.

That the soldier could take considerable satisfaction in defeating his enemy indicates the extent to which he had accepted his new profession of trained killer. A few students of soldier behavior have claimed, however, that American troops were so fear-ridden or guilty over the prospect of taking human life that they literally failed to pull the trigger. Chapter 8 debunks this theory. There were as many attitudes toward killing as there were individual personalities, and certainly some soldiers were reluctant to kill, but in the kill-or-be-killed catalyst of the battlefield, few hesitated to pull triggers. Some enjoyed it. The degree to which the enemy was dehumanized by propaganda and racial hatred enhanced the soldier’s willingness to kill, as did the extent to which he perceived that his enemy committed atrocities or refused to fight “fair.” Hence the Asian foe, more than the German foe, was considered an enemy to whom quarter was not to be granted.

The extent to which soldiers stayed within the acceptable bounds of conduct in warfare, albeit bounds that varied by war, enemy, and situation, was influenced in no small part by the small-unit leader. Chapter 9 reviews the leadership traits and skills essential for junior officers and noncommissioned officers: possessing tactical and technical competence, ensuring that soldiers are cared for, and sharing in the hardships and dangers. Morale and cohesion in units without such leaders suffered accordingly.

The good junior officer shared the hardships and dangers with his men, and together they resented, and complained about, those soldiers and civilians who did not have to suffer with them. Chapter 10 explores the

combat soldier’s attitude toward the rear echelon that provided his logistics and supporting arms. The frontline soldier believed, sometimes not without reason, that the rear echelons lived in safety and comfort, kept the best supplies for themselves, or even profited at his expense through black- market operations. The soldier likewise resented homefront slackers who made a comfortable living in war-related business and industry or who even, in the case of the Vietnam War, denigrated the fighting soldier while they obtained educational, medical, or occupational draft deferments.

At the same time that the soldier resented the home front, however, he also sought its support and acceptance. The home front represented, in the tangible form of friends, neighbors, and family, the country that had sent him off to war. The memory of loved ones, reinforced by letters from home, helped the soldier cope. He also scanned the hometown newspapers he received for any mention of himself or his unit. He wanted recognition for his efforts and, more important, appreciation for his sacrifices. When that recognition was not forthcoming, the results could be devastating to morale.

One group in particular sought their country’s recognition and acceptance—African-American soldiers. Chapter 11 addresses the black soldier in the wars of the draft era, a period that witnessed a shift from a segregated to an integrated army and Marine Corps. The inherent flaws in the segregated “Jim Crow” army ensured not only relative obscurity for black troops but also inequalities and inefficiencies that forced black units to operate with distinct disadvantages. Integration during the Korean War ensured that blacks and whites would fight side by side in Vietnam, and African-American performance under fire shattered forever the myth that blacks did not make good soldiers. Black grunts also garnered an overdue measure of recognition for African-American contributions in war. Integration did not erase all vestiges of real and perceived discrimination within the military, however.

Despite overwhelming evidence of war’s brutality and how devastating to mind and body sustained combat can be, the phenomenon remains that in all the wars of the draft era, a substantial number of men, especially early on in each of those conflicts, volunteered or accepted their draft notices with enthusiasm. Their positive, even cavalier, approach to wartime service can be explained only by the circumstance that their notions about what combat would be like were wrongheaded. The Conclusion briefly examines how each generation’s roseate notions of combat were propagated by the memorialization process and the popular

media. Conversely, some young men went to war with a more realistic idea of what it would be like, and while the truism remains that no green soldier fully understands what he is in for, those young soldiers fared better than their comrades whose heads were full of romanticized images of glorious combat. Perhaps this book, and certainly the memoirs and novels cited, can provide new generations with a more realistic appraisal of what war is all about.

Rallying to the Flag

Before 1917, America relied primarily on volunteer soldiers in wartime. Upon signing the Selective Draft Act on May 18, 1917, however, President Woodrow Wilson ushered in the draft era.1 The draft, or Selective Service System as it was officially designated, would be the tool for conscripting American manpower in four wars, ending only in 1973 with the adoption of an all-volunteer force. The draft was introduced because, unlike volunteerism, it allowed for the efficient, centralized management of manpower. Men with jobs critical to the war effort, in fields such as agriculture and industry, were exempted from military service, but the rest were subject to call-up based on various categories of age, marital status, and health. What should not be forgotten, however, is that multiple avenues remained for entering military service, despite the draft. For example, though draftees constituted 72 percent of the army by the end of World War I in November 1918, voluntary enlistments outpaced draft inductions throughout 1917. These volunteers were urgently needed to bring regular army and federally activated National Guard units up to strength while the draft apparatus was still being established.2 These volunteers were the first into combat in France.

While the specifics varied, this pattern was repeated in each of the wars of the draft era. Regular army or marine units, consisting solely or mostly of volunteers, often saw action first, usually followed by federalized National Guard units containing a large proportion of volunteers. Units formed primarily from draftees followed, at least during the world wars, and in all the wars individual replacements were most

often draftees. These various paths to service accommodated a wide range of motivational levels, from enthusiastic volunteer to resentful draftee.

COMMON PERCEPTIONS: ENTHUSIASTIC DOUGHBOYS, RESIGNED GIs, AND RESENTFUL GRUNTS

Historians have drawn generalized conclusions about how willingly Americans served in time of war. The perception is that young men rallied to the colors in 1917 with an enthusiasm that reflected contemporary, middle-class, Victorian mores. “The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” notes the historian Michael C. C. Adams, “created a cultural milieu in which war could be seen as an intrinsically valuable human endeavor.”3 War would cleanse and strengthen American society, which had become soft and decadent. Duty to country and wartime selfsacrifice would curb the sordid materialism of a rapidly expanding industrial society. Indeed, nothing less than a moral renaissance would occur, both in America and, thanks to American influence and intervention, in Europe as well.4

War was also considered an exciting, chivalrous pursuit that would provide young men “a liberating release from the stultifying conventions of civilized society,” according to historian David M. Kennedy.5 The Great War would allow an escape from boring, petit-bourgeois work and female-dominated home life while also providing an opportunity for a young adventurer to prove his courage and manhood.6 Many young men volunteered in 1917, or served even earlier with Allied forces, in search of excitement.

The notion that war was an adventurous and intrinsically valuable endeavor was not unique to America. European society displayed a similar attitude when war broke out in 1914.7 The war literature that Americans read from 1914 to 1917, much of it originating in Europe, reinforced the idea that war was chivalrous and uplifting. This literature, overwhelmingly pro-Allied, nurtured the growing belief that America must act to save the culture and democratic heritage of England and France from the evils of Prussianism.8

Perhaps even more influential than the literature was the stance taken by America’s opinion leaders in championing the Allied cause and condemning Teutonic barbarity. These “custodians of culture,” as the historian Henry F. May calls them, included leading men of letters, college presidents, conservative politicians, and editors.9 Kennedy notes the impact of these opinion leaders, coupled with the pro-Allied, romantic literature: “An affirmative and inspiring attitude toward war, preached by guardians of tradition like [Oliver Wendell] Holmes and [Theodore] Roosevelt, nurtured by popular war writers like [Alan] Seeger and [Arthur Guy] Empey, filled men’s imaginations in 1917.”10 The result was enthusiasm for the war and the Allied cause, especially among young idealists from the Ivy League colleges and exclusive prep schools.11

The custodians of culture and the purveyors of popular war literature proved to be wrong, however. The Great War did not cleanse and uplift society, American or European, nor did it prove to be chivalrous. Americans were thoroughly disabused of any notion of war as a positive force. Thus, when the United States was pushed into war in December 1941, the “naive idealism” and “noisy confidence” of the World War I doughboy were no longer in evidence, according to historian Lee Kennett.12 Americans donned their uniforms with “a certain grim determination,” writes literature professor William E. Matsen, “far removed from the innocent idealism displayed in 1917 by the Great War’s doughboys.”13 Romanticized, prowar literature would be notably absent during World War II.14 Marine private Robert Leckie’s farewell to his mother before heading off to the Pacific encapsulates America’s attitude toward World War II: “It was not a heartrending leave-taking, nor was it brave, resolute—any of those words that fail to describe the thing. It was like so much else in this war that was to produce unbounded heroism, yet not a single stirring song: it was resigned.”15

While the resigned GI rejected his doughboy predecessor’s lofty goal of making the world safe for democracy, he nevertheless believed that America’s involvement in World War II was necessary and just. When the specter of a North Korean takeover of South Korea by military force loomed large in 1950, a residual faith in the nation and its leadership left over from World War II came into play. Americans equated Communism with the recently defunct Nazi regime and uncritically assumed that the cause of defending South Korea was just. Robert Lekachman, a World War II veteran, commented on this residual fervor: “I think everybody still

felt good about the war in ’47, ’48, ’49. One wonders: could Truman have unilaterally committed American troops to Korea unless there had been the lingering romance of the Second World War? I rather doubt it.”16

Once the Communist Chinese intervened in the Korean War, however, victory in the World War II sense of totally defeating the enemy became an impossibility. As the war dragged on, disillusionment grew, and American draftees were increasingly reluctant to fight in an unwinnable war. A few historians and journalists warned that a new type of army, a professional, Cold War “legion,” would be needed if America was to fight any more such wars. War correspondent Marguerite Higgins advised as early as 1951 that the “Third World War is on. It began in Korea.” Therefore, in the future, “American leadership is going to have to impress on every potential GI that there are strong odds that he’s going to fight some dirty battles to keep the vanilla-ice-cream kind of world he has been brought up in.”17

Historian and Korean War veteran Theodore R. Fehrenbach argued the case for a new type of army even more vehemently in 1963, pointing out that “Korea was the kind of war that since the dawn of history was fought by professionals, by legions.” America must take to heart a critical lesson from the Korean War: “In Korea, Americans had to fight, not a popular, righteous war, but to send men to die on a bloody checkerboard, with hard heads and without exalted motivations, in the hope of preserving the kind of world order Americans desired.”18

Yet, except for the establishment and expansion of the Special Forces, with their famous green berets, no special legion emerged. Thus when President Lyndon B. Johnson committed major American ground forces to what proved to be the quagmire of Vietnam and failed to call the reserves to active duty, as had occurred in previous wars, manpower requirements could be met only by greatly increased draft calls. The Vietnam-era draftee was not merely resigned, as were his counterparts in World War II and Korea, but downright resentful. The perceived inequities of the Vietnam- era draft were a major source of this resentment. As Lawrence M. Baskir and William A. Strauss, both of whom served on the Presidential Clemency Board established by Gerald R. Ford, observe: “The draft . . . worked as an instrument of Darwinian social policy. The ‘fittest’—those with background, wit, or money—managed to escape. Through an elaborate structure of deferments, exemptions, legal technicalities, and noncombatant military alternatives, the draft rewarded those who manipulated the system.”19 As the war dragged on and the foxholes were

increasingly filled by draftees, the Vietnam War grunt’s level of resentment over having to fight while others avoided serving only increased.

THE REALITIES OF RALLYING TO THE FLAG

This overview of motivations, or lack thereof, for serving in the wars of the draft era certainly contains much truth. It is also simplistic and therefore misleading. In reality, a mix of enthusiasm, resignation, and resentment can be found among those serving in each of the wars in question. David M. Kennedy’s concept of “coercive volunteerism” provides a useful starting point for a more sophisticated examination of wartime motivations. Kennedy rejects the common perception of Victorian, middle-class American men enthusiastic for war in 1917. He concedes that many were eager to join up, but this reservoir of enthusiasts was far from bottomless. Thus, the governing bureaucracy and its elite supporters, while ostensibly championing volunteerism, increasingly resorted to social pressure and stricter regulations to keep the ranks filled. Indeed, if World War I had continued, Kennedy believes that coercive measures would have been even more necessary: “Had the crisis continued to deepen, and the government been forced to sift the population ever more finely for men to send to France, it was altogether likely that ballyhoo would have increasingly given way to bayonets.”20 With variations, this process occurred in all the wars of the draft era. When the supply of prewar regulars and enthusiastic volunteers gave out, the country coerced growing numbers of reluctant, even resentful, draftees into serving.

The first to rally to the wartime colors were the volunteers, and despite the workings of the Selective Service System, various channels remained available for them to enter service. During World War I many volunteers did indeed conform to the generalization about idealistic crusaders. They were Francophiles or Anglophiles who feared that Europe would be crushed under the Prussian boot heel.21 None were more idealistic than the thousands of Americans who volunteered to serve in the Allied armies or in American volunteer ambulance and truck units, even before the United States entered the war. Amos N. Wilder was one such volunteer, joining more illustrious compatriots such as John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway in serving as an ambulance driver. As did many of his

colleagues, he transferred to the American forces following the U.S. entry into the war, serving as a corporal in an AEF artillery battalion. Wilder saw himself and his fellow volunteers as ideological bellwethers: “Thus when it came to motivation of whatever elements and ranks in the armed forces, one should recognize the leavening influence of those with a more grounded perception of the issues at stake and a more enlightened dedication.”22

More than a few Americans volunteered to serve because they believed the stories, actively fed by Allied propaganda, of German atrocities and worried that America might share the Allies’ fate. Private Alphonso Bulz quit high school in Texas to enlist, fearing the war was going so badly for the Allies that they might lose and that the Kaiser’s next target might be America. Then there were “all those awful things the Germans were doing to the Belgians—cutting the fingers off the men so they couldn’t pull the trigger on a gun and raping all those nuns and all that.”23 Corporal Horatio Rogers joined his local National Guard outfit in Massachusetts out of similar concerns: “The papers were full of German atrocities and Allied unsuccess. Each ‘great drive’ the Allies made seemed to accomplish nothing. Then Russia was overthrown, and I had visions of a Prussianized world.”24

The accepted wisdom is that such idealistic concerns did not figure so prominently in later conflicts, given the disillusionment with war as a force for good generated by the Great War, but belief in the cause continued to motivate some volunteers. GIs in World War II considered Nazism more evil than its Prussian predecessor and were proud, as Lieutenants Harold P. Leinbaugh and John D. Campbell put it in their memoir about a World War II rifle company, to be “part of the mighty endeavor, the Great Crusade to free Europe.”25 Or put more prosaically by marine private Robert Stiles, “There was no question who wore the white hats—we did.”26

Korean War soldiers equated Communism with Nazism and believed America was justified, even obligated, to save South Korea. Historian Henry Berry noted the prevalence of this attitude among the Korean War veterans he interviewed. One of his interviewees commented, “The Communists seemed just as bad as the Nazis to us. I think my age group had been bred on the patriotic fervor of World War II. You either went into the service or you were a bad guy.”27

Ideological motivations are rarely discussed as a factor in why the

Vietnamera soldier served, but many who enlisted believed in the cause— a far cry from the perception that most grunts were resentful draftees. A significant minority of soldiers, at least early in the war, believed in stopping the spread of Communism, defending the fledgling Republic of South Vietnam, and heeding their charismatic president John F. Kennedy’s call to serve one’s country.28

Marine corporal and Vietnam veteran William D. Ehrhart believes that “those who went to Vietnam—well into the 1960’s and contrary to popular perception—were largely young volunteers, eager and idealistic.”29 Marine sergeant Ron Kovic was one such volunteer. He and others joined so “that we could serve our country like the young president [Kennedy] had asked us to do.”30 Both Ehrhart and Kovic, like others, eventually became disillusioned with the war, but their beliefs provided a strong incentive for initially volunteering.

While some men volunteered out of a genuine belief in the cause, even more joined up looking for excitement, or at least for a change of pace from their boring civilian lives. Many World War I volunteers conformed to the generalization about middle-class, Victorian-era men seeking adventure in the chivalrous, masculine arena of combat. Corporal William L. Langer spoke for the men in his unit, the all-volunteer First Gas Regiment: “I can hardly remember a single instance of serious discussion of American policy or of larger war issues. We men, most of us young, were simply fascinated by the prospect of adventure and heroism. Most of us, I think, had the feeling that life, if we survived, would run in the familiar, routine channel. Here was our one great chance for excitement and risk. We could not afford to pass it up.”31

Even some of the self-proclaimed idealists like Amos N. Wilder admitted that, beyond their “crusading spirit,” they were animated by “a sense of high adventure.” The “main idea,” he added, “was to be where the action was, and with this was mixed the romance of adventure.”32 Will Judy, a clerk in the Thirty-third Division, noted a similar combination of eagerness and idealism in his called-up National Guard outfit: “The spirit of great adventure is upon us and we compare ourselves not too modestly with the crusaders of other centuries.”33

Of course, these eager crusaders soon discovered that modern warfare was not so much adventurous as deadly and impersonal; hence the perception that American GIs went to war reluctantly in World War II and even less enthusiastically in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In reality,

however, thousands of volunteers went off to those later wars with as much eagerness and naïveté as did their doughboy predecessors. Most of these adventure seekers were young, without family responsibilities, and a war promised more excitement than going to school or getting a job.

Novelist James Jones, a World War II veteran, believes that the lure of adventure drew many to the colors: “There is always that exciting feeling about the beginning of a war. . . . All restraints are off, everyday life and its dull routines, its responsibilities, are scratched and a new set of rules take over.”34 Audie Murphy, who received a battlefield commission in World War II and survived the war as America’s most decorated soldier, was a classic case of a young man attracted to war as an alternative to life’s “dull routines.” One of nine children born into a family of poor sharecroppers, Murphy dreamed about the glories of combat as his “one escape from a grimly realistic world.” On reaching his eighteenth birthday, he wasted no time in joining up, finally being accepted into the infantry after being rejected by the marines and the paratroops because of his small size and weight.35

John L. Munschauer came from a background quite different from Murphy’s. The college-educated son of a comfortably middle-class family, he had by 1944 received a commission in the army’s Medical Service Corps and was safely ensconced as a training company commander in Colorado. Yet he decided to transfer to the infantry and was soon in combat in the Philippines, because sitting the war out in Colorado meant “missing out on the greatest event of the century, and deep down that was the strongest pull. I did not want to miss the show.”36

A sense that they had, indeed, “missed the show” in World War II, usually because they were too young, motivated some men to jump at the chance for action when the Korean War erupted in 1950. John A. Sullivan was too young to serve during World War II, but the war had “left a strong impression” on him: “Our young men were fighting the twin evils of German and Japanese dictatorship, and the entire nation seemed mobilized to support them.”37 In 1950, Sullivan was old enough to seek the adventure he had missed out on a few years earlier: “Boyhood dreams from military school and the Second World War flooded back. Could I now lead troops in combat? Could I ever earn the right to wear the Combat Infantry Badge?”38

By the time that President Lyndon Johnson decided to commit substantial ground forces to Vietnam in 1965, a new generation of young

men, weaned on romanticized accounts of World War II provided by authors, historians, and especially filmmakers, was ready for its share of wartime adventure, or at least escape from a humdrum civilian existence.39 Ron Kovic, who saw in the Vietnam War a chance to meet President Kennedy’s challenge of service to America, also sought to escape a dead-end civilian life: “I didn’t want to be like my Dad, coming home from the A&P every night. . . . I didn’t want to be like that, working in that stinking A&P, six days a week, twelve hours a day. I wanted to be somebody.”40 Lieutenant Alfred S. Bradford and his fellow Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps comrades volunteered with visions of future glory: “Even before we (ROTC officers) had gone to war, we imagined ourselves back, telling our own stories to an awe-stricken audience. After all, Vietnam was our generation’s great adventure and we had volunteered for it; we wanted to go to war.”41

Thus, each new generation sought its “great adventure,” and for the American youth of the twentieth century, that adventure was as often as not a war. Yet each generation also produced, along with its would-be heroes and crusaders, a large contingent of men content to forgo adventure for the security and prosperity of peacetime, no matter how boring. Historian Peter Karsten notes that in an ideal democratic society, “young men, conscious of the freedoms and rights they possess . . . , will freely consent to military service with a sense of political obligation.”42 While some Americans served out of just such a sense of obligation, Karsten adds that many more men “acquiesced,” at best, to serve, leaving their peacetime lives, families, and jobs to heed the call to arms only with great reluctance.43

Certainly not every doughboy conformed to the generalization of the eager volunteer in search of adventure, out to rid the world of Prussianism. Wilder noticed that the draftee replacements arriving to fill up his artillery battalion shared neither his ideals nor his enthusiasm: “The drafted soldiers here in camp as replacements—who have had only a dull experience on top of their first homesickness—really exhibit blueness over the failure of [President Woodrow Wilson’s] peace proposition. They really hope not to go to the front.”44 Many reluctant doughboys undoubtedly shared the sentiments of Tennessee mountain man Sergeant Alvin C. York, who, unlike the Anglophile and Francophile Ivy Leaguers and custodians of culture, “had no time nohow to bother much about a lot of foreigners quarrelling and killing each other over there in Europe.”45 Then there is

the case of Jack Herschowitz, pulled from his thriving dried-food business in New York City by his induction notice. He ended up a rifleman in the AEF, but he was not happy about it for the most sensible reason: “I didn’t feel like going—who wants to get killed?”46

The workings of Kennedy’s coercive volunteerism explain in part why so many Americans were willing, if not exactly eager, to go to war. An important aspect of coercive volunteerism was social and peer pressure, which could be coercive indeed, as when vigilantes tracked down draft dodgers during World War I. More typically, however, it involved young men who could not face the scorn, disappointment, or rejection from schoolmates, girlfriends, relatives, and community leaders that their draft evading would generate. Conversely, volunteering or at least stoically accepting one’s draft notice brought congratulations and sympathetic support.

Ronald Schaffer discusses the various reasons why men served during World War I, noting that they were often “influenced by their connections to others in their hometowns or neighborhoods or schools or colleges or families.”47 Marine private Carl Andrew Brannen was so influenced. He believed his family had to “do their bit in uniform,” so he “joined the exodus from Texas A&M College, as cadets went into different branches of service.”48

The fear of public condemnation coerced a reluctant Charles F. Minder into serving in the AEF, and into not seeking a possible draft deferment as the sole supporter of his mother: “I wish now that I had claimed exemption when they asked me; like a fool I said, ‘No,’ just because I was too much a coward to be a Conscientious Objector. I was afraid of what others would think of me.”49

Peer and social pressure remained a central aspect of coercive volunteerism during World War II. Leon C. Standifer provides an excellent assessment of the multiple pressures working on a young man in a small, conservative, rural community. In Clinton, Mississippi, one did not dodge the draft: “Clinton would not tolerate a man who took a war- essential job just for draft deferment.” The high school football team members set the standard, wanting “to become marines or fighter pilots.” Then there were the girls, whose opinions mattered a great deal to an eighteen-year-old boy: “Girls were fascinated with the whole war. They seemed to want us all to become fighter pilots, marines, or at the very least paratroopers.” This was enough for Standifer: “Personally, I was eager to be in uniform. I wanted to come home on leave, have everyone brag about

me, and be able to date any girl in town.”50

James Jones sees this peer pressure as a critical feature differentiating World War II from the wars that followed: “The only real difference, the main difference, between World War II and later wars was the greater overall social commitment and, therefore, the greater social stigma attached to refusing to go.”51 Jones is no doubt correct in a relative sense, but young men in those later wars continued to serve in part because they feared the condemnation that would ensue if they refused to do so. At least until the later stages of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, when public opinion had turned against those wars, young men who dodged the draft or deserted from the service could not expect the blessings or the support of their communities.52

Vietnam veterans confirm that fear of censure by friends and community was often an important factor in convincing them to comply with their greetings from Uncle Sam. Tim O’Brien was one such draftee who ultimately decided, because of social pressure, to fight in a war he believed was wrong: “Here we are. Mama has been kissed goodbye, we’ve grabbed our rifles, we’re ready for war. All this not because of conviction, not for ideology; rather it’s from fear of society’s censure.”53 Or, to put the problem into sharper perspective, as one of Christian Appy’s interviewees did: “Suppose I had found a way out. How could I face my friends who were drafted or joining up? And how would I feel walking around town, seeing their parents, and knowing that they were over in Nam getting shot at while I’m home partying? I’d feel like a chickenshit.”54

Another aspect of coercive volunteerism that persuaded the reluctant to serve was the threat of punishment. Draft evading or desertion could mean jail or exile, in addition to social censure. Often, as in the case of Korean War private Rudolph W. Stephens, a mix of social pressure and fear of punishment convinced a wavering draftee to serve: “Inside I wanted to run away, assume a strange name, and get lost in this big country of ours, but there was no way I could do such a thing when other boys were leaving to do the part they were called to do. Besides, the military would be looking for me for a long time to come, and I wasn’t raised to be a coward. I also didn’t want to take the chance of going to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to spend time behind bars.”55

In all the wars of the draft era, some men failed to register for the draft or evaded induction when called up, despite the potential punishments.

Draft evasion, for example, reached serious proportions during the later stages of the Vietnam War. Baskir and Strauss describe how the legal system became swamped, to the point of virtual breakdown, by the thousands of potential legal cases generated by this draft evasion. But no matter how dysfunctional the system became, enough draft evaders were convicted in often highly publicized cases that “the choice was made clear for nineteen- and twenty-year-olds who might have had second thoughts about obeying their draft boards: Report for induction, or you’ll go to prison.”56

Many young men thus shared Charles Strong’s rationale for heeding the call during the Vietnam War: “I chose not to evade the draft but to conform to it. I figured it was better to spend two years in the service than five years in prison. And I figured that for nineteen years I had enjoyed a whole lot of fruits of this society. I knew that you don’t get anything free in this world.”57

Once of age and registered for the draft, and if no deferment or exemption was forthcoming, then the potential draftee knew that it was just a matter of time before he received his induction notice. At that point, many men elected to volunteer for duty in the hope of being accepted by a service or for a military specialty that would be the least dangerous. The U.S. Army Research Branch conducted thousands of surveys and studies of American soldiers during World War II, the results of which were consolidated after the war in a four-volume report, commonly referred to as the Stouffer Study (after Samuel A. Stouffer, director of the Research Branch’s professional staff and one of the editors of the report). The Research Branch discovered that except for the adventure seekers, draftees sought safe jobs, and only a small fraction of those who had managed, by whatever means, to land a safe job (defined as “noninfantry”) had any desire to leave it to join the infantry.58

In a similar vein, a survey of Vietnam veterans showed that as many as two-thirds of those who had volunteered were “draft-motivated.” That is, they volunteered in the face of probable induction in the hope of joining a service (the navy or air force) or acquiring a military specialty that would keep them out of Vietnam, or at least out of ground combat.59 Enlistment meant three or four years’ service instead of the usual two for draftees, but most men considered this a reasonable price to pay. John Ketwig was one of those draft-motivated enlistees. After passing his preinduction physical examination, he saw the handwriting on the wall. He considered running away but did not want to dishonor his family and feared that he would

never be able to return home. The waiting list to join the reserves or National Guard was too long—he would probably be called up first. The air force and navy were not accepting any more recruits at that time. Finally, he enlisted to become a mechanic.60 This choice, as it turned out, did not keep him out of Vietnam, but it did keep him out of the infantry.

Similar stories can be found from earlier wars. Howard S. Hoffman, facing imminent induction on reaching his eighteenth birthday during World War II, attempted unsuccessfully to enlist in the navy’s flight training program (not necessarily a safe occupation, but better than a foxhole).61 Robert G. Thobaben, like thousands of other young men during World War II, opted for the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) because it allowed him to stay in college, obtain a commission upon graduation, and then serve in some specialized (as in noncombat) field.62 To the dismay of most ASTP participants, the program was later canceled and many of them found themselves in the infantry, which desperately needed fresh replacements.

In another case, James Brady faced the unwanted prospect of peacetime induction for a two-year tour of duty in the years following World War II. He thought he would beat the system by joining the Marine Corps’s Platoon Leaders’ Class (PLC). It exempted him from the draft and presented him with a Marine Reserve commission upon his graduation from college—which occurred about a week before the Korean War broke out. Brady was soon on his way.63

Coercive volunteerism, with its social pressures backed by the threat of legal consequences, was not the only influence pushing draft-age men toward military service. Many felt a genuine obligation to serve, as their fathers and grandfathers had done. They believed that they owed their country something for educating, raising, and sustaining them. Kennedy acknowledges that this sense of obligation was an important corollary to the coercive aspects of volunteerism: “Few words were so widely bruited in American society in the World War I era as ‘service,’ and it is a matter of some importance that the term was incorporated into the official title of the draft agency. . . . Everywhere Americans agreed that a commitment to ‘service’ was an attribute of the national soul that the war had quickened.”64 Bob Hoffman, whose father had fought in the Spanish- American War and his grandfathers in the Civil War, was one of those who believed “that it was a man’s duty to fight and die for his country,” and he immediately enlisted in April 1917 “in an endeavor to live up to the

tradition of our family.”65

A sense of obligation to family, community, and country was an important motivator in later wars as well. Sergeant Floyd Jones, a World War II artilleryman, had no illusions about war being an adventure, but he went without question when called: “I served because it was my job and I don’t dodge jobs I feel I must do whether I like them or not.”66 Many a man attributed his sense of duty, as World War II paratrooper George William Sefton did, to being “eminently pre-conditioned to volunteer for military service based on his upbringing.”67 These men had relatives who had fought in previous wars (Sefton held his father, a company commander in World War I, in high esteem), and they had a strong sense of community (Sefton was raised in a small, church-going, midwestern town). William Manchester is another case in point. His father, a marine corporal in World War I, had been seriously wounded in the Meuse- Argonne fighting. Manchester grew up in a close, religious New England family of old stock. His ancestors on his mother’s side had fought for the Lost Cause in the Civil War. Thus, “in the spring of 1942, guided by the compass that had been built into me, I hitchhiked to Springfield and presented myself to the Marine Corps recruiting station.”68

Such feelings were not dead with the advent of Vietnam, despite Jones’s earlier comment that soldiers in the wars since World War II lacked “social commitment.” One Vietnam veteran told oral historian Mark Baker that his family’s tradition of service was a key factor in his complying with his induction notice: “One way or another in every generation when there was a war, some male in the family on my father’s side went to it. I had never had it drilled into me, but there was a lot of attention paid to the past, a lot of not-so-subtle ‘This is what a man does with his life’ stuff when I was growing up.”69

John Foote, a draftee who went to Vietnam even though he could have obtained a medical deferment for allergies, was another man driven by a sense of duty. His father had served in World War II and his ancestors in the Civil War. Moreover, Foote said, “Both of my parents, though not particularly warlike, were strong believers in the duty to serve and the honor that was associated with honorable service.”70 Sergeant Bill Morgan, the protagonist in Jack Fuller’s novel Fragments, was the quintessential reluctant warrior driven to accept his draft notice, despite misgivings about the Vietnam War, because he could not do otherwise: “When you come from where I did, when you’d been raised on certain

tales, when you’d learned to respect your father and his friends, not because of what they did in the wars but rather because of what they suffered, then you simply had no alternative when your number came up. You were swept along despite the arguments [against the war]. And it wasn’t the great historic ebbs and flows or even the coercive power of the state that did it. You were moved forward by your own ineradicable past.”71

Most of the soldiers discussed thus far, whether reluctant draftees or eager volunteers, came from the ranks of the citizenry. In discussing the American soldier in the wars of the draft era, historians understandably focus on these citizen-soldiers since they constituted a majority. But a fair number of regular army soldiers and salty leathernecks from the peacetime forces also went to war, and their motives for joining the service often differed from those of the citizen-soldier.

Having joined in time of peace, these soldiers, though patriotic enough, clearly were not motivated by wartime ideology or any immediate desire to experience combat. Some hoped to see something of the world or to do interesting things while in the military, but many were simply in search of a decent job. The service offered security and a chance for advancement.

Schaffer explains that many of those entering the regular army prior to World War I were impelled to enlist because of “lack of opportunity or disappointment in civilian life” or just sought a warm place to sleep.72 Several of Henry Berry’s interviewees joined the National Guard units being called up and deployed to the United States–Mexican border in 1916 because they were bored with civilian life, and going to the “Wild West” sounded exciting.73 Many of these men were still in uniform when America went to war in 1917.

Prior to World War II, hard times during the depression made military service an acceptable option for some men, despite the poor pay and the low esteem in which the army was held by the general populace. Sergeant Henry Giles was one such enlistee: “I was sick and tired of the scrabbling and the shame of the commodity lines and no jobs. . . . Nobody knows what the army meant to me—security and pride and something fine and good . . . putting on that uniform not only meant that for the first time in my life I had clothes I wasn’t ashamed of, but for the first time in my life I was somebody.”74

For Rod Rodriguez, the son of a poor Cuban immigrant, joining the just-federalized Florida National Guard in 1940 was a good idea, despite

the lowly private’s pay of thirty-one dollars a month: “In truth, compared to the poverty I had known in Tampa, the army seemed like a good deal. All my material needs were provided.”75 By 1948 a slump had hit the American steel industry, and John Babyak could not find a job after graduating from high school in Youngstown, Ohio: “So, rather than hang around, I decided to join the [Marine] Corps.” Winter 1950–1951 found Babyak in Korea, “up to my rear end in snow with God knows how many Chinamen trying to kill me,” when to his chagrin he received a letter from home telling him that “there are plenty of jobs available back in Youngstown.”76

With the integration of the armed forces in the 1950s, the army provided a steady job and upward mobility for blacks as well as whites. A 1954 Gallup Poll showed that 92 percent of black veterans—twice as many as white veterans—felt that they were better off for their army service and had found it rewarding.77 Increasingly, blacks made the military a career. By 1965, black reenlistment rates in the armed forces were more than twice those of whites.78 Blacks enlisted for many of the same reasons as whites, citing personal factors, patriotic duty, or draft- motivated enlistment, but blacks mentioned self-advancement almost twice as often as white enlistees did as a reason for joining the military.79

Significantly, even when enlistment in the army during the Vietnam era usually entailed a tour of duty in Southeast Asia, young men from the minorities continued to enlist, seeking socioeconomic benefits.80 Captain Joseph B. Anderson Jr., a platoon leader and company commander in Vietnam, observed that “for many black men, the service, even during a war, was the best of a number of alternatives to staying home and working in the fields or bumming around the streets of Chicago or New York.”81 Albert French, a black marine corporal, certainly felt that way. While he and a hometown buddy from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, were on their way to Vietnam, French told his friend that the Marine Corps was not so bad: “You get used to it—it’s better than the streets. Half the dudes in jail already, ain’t a job nowhere, mills ain’t doing shit.”82

Moreover, a measure of self-esteem came with donning the uniform. Sergeant Emilio P. Milett, a poor Puerto Rican immigrant, had shined shoes in Harlem, but “then he had found the Army, where a life to be proud of lay within a man’s aspirations: even a Puerto Rican’s.”83 A career in the army, or even just a tour of duty, meant for many minority soldiers what it did for Arthur E. Woodley Jr.: “I felt I could escape from

my environment and get ahead in life.”84

Some young men joined the peacetime army to learn a skill useful in the civilian world or, during the period of the GI bill, to earn educational benefits. Many of these men joined up never expecting, or wanting, to experience combat. War came as a rude, unwelcome surprise. The army itself often made matters worse by championing the material benefits of service while downplaying, in its recruiting program, the fact that soldiers exist to fight. Historian Roy E. Appleman notes that this was the case in the peacetime army before the Korean War: “The great majority of the enlisted men were young and not really interested in being soldiers. The recruiting posters that had induced most of these men to enter the Army mentioned all conceivable advantages . . . , but never suggested that the principal business of an army is to fight.”85

A similar situation existed in army and marine reserve units prior to the Korean War. Many men had joined the reserves for the drill pay and the camaraderie. No one had anticipated a war. Thus occurred the ironic phenomenon of soldiers and marines bemoaning the fact that they had not bargained on fighting. The Seventh Marine Regiment, hastily cobbled together for the Inchon landing, contained many unhappy, called-up reservists: “Some had just begun their first civilian jobs; others were college boys. A few were on summer vacation from high school. All of them had been called abruptly from their homes, and none had signed on for reserve duty with expectations of a shooting war.”86

Despite the lesson of Korea—that war could come at any time—men continued to join the peacetime army with thoughts of combat far from their minds. Robert Mason, who loved to fly and held a civilian pilot’s license, joined the army’s helicopter flight program in 1964, earning his wings and becoming a warrant officer. He had not factored a war into his plans, but he soon found himself en route to Vietnam with the First Cavalry Division: “It was a revelation . . . that came too late. I was going. I owed the army three years of service for teaching me to fly helicopters. And there you had it.”87

While some men joined the service as a temporary expedient, hoping to learn a skill, earn educational benefits, or simply tide themselves over until something better turned up “on the outside,” others found that they liked soldiering and made the service a career. Cynical commentators have charged that professional soldiers welcome war because it provides for advancement, and wartime often did lead to expansion of the military and promotions. Most professional soldiers, however, did not wish for a war to

boost their careers. Indeed, because of their training, they had a better appreciation of war’s hardships and dangers than most naive citizen- soldiers. Career soldiers were nevertheless drawn to the fighting once war broke out for the elementary reason that it was what they were trained to do. Historian Richard Holmes, in his study on soldier behavior, is one of the few to appreciate this basic fact: “Regular [army] soldiers . . . share an intense professional curiosity as to how well their weapons, tactics and training will work in a real war. War is—and I mean this in no derogatory sense—the opportunity for them to apply what they have studied.”88

Thus, when a war broke out, most professional soldiers wanted to be in on it. Bill Mauldin, visiting the front in Korea as a correspondent for Collier’s magazine, encountered a rare species—a soldier voluntarily serving a second tour. As the soldier, an engineer, explained, “I’m a career man and this is my business, so it seemed like this is where I ought to be.”89 Corporal Ehrhart’s equally laconic sergeant in Vietnam, a career marine, likewise chose combat duty over a safe job in the rear: “I’d rather be out here where I can keep you boys out of trouble.”90

Career officer Joseph R. Owen, upon hearing of the outbreak of war in Korea, saw a chance to prove himself: “The news about Korea had inflamed my hope for an opportunity to lead troops in combat, to put myself to the test. I was a twenty-four-year-old second lieutenant, a professional marine officer, intensively trained for combat leadership but as yet untried in battle.”91 Marine captain Richard D. Camp, about to take command of a rifle company in Vietnam, shared Owen’s sentiments: “This is it! . . . This is what I had been working up to for all those years. . . . Now, at last, I was really part of it. It was my turn.”92

Some initially reluctant wartime draftees came to adopt a similar attitude. After months of individual and unit training, many citizen- soldiers were as ready as their regular army counterparts, whom they now closely resembled, to try out their new skills. Sergeant Hoffman, to his own surprise, found that he and his comrades were eager to get into action in World War I: “I couldn’t understand how men could desire to go out and fight and die. But it is something that grows on you. You train and expect so long that finally you become anxious to get into it, to get it over with.”93

After two years of training, the citizen-soldiers of K Company, 333d Infantry, Eighty-fourth Infantry Division, felt much the same way on the eve of their first battle in World War II: “After journeying this far and

working so long and hard to become soldiers, we would have felt cheated to miss out on the fighting.”94 Lieutenant Sullivan felt an urge to try out his newly acquired skills during the Korean War: “The education process is over, and I am about to put into practice the accumulated knowledge of two years of training. It actually felt good to be a member of the team that my government had fielded to stem the Marxist hordes.”95

In sum, the generalization of enthusiastic doughboys in World War I, resigned GIs in World War II and Korea, and resentful grunts in Vietnam, though not entirely inaccurate, is too simplistic to encompass the myriad attitudes displayed by those who rallied to the flag. In each war of the draft era, belief in the cause, a quest for adventure, a desire for socioeconomic betterment, military professionalism, social pressure, the threat of legal action, and a sense of obligation affected each individual differently, producing soldiers whose motivations varied from enthusiastically positive to glumly resigned.

Even this list does not exhaust the factors that motivated men to serve. A few soldiers joined seeking revenge, making for a very personal war. One of Audie Murphy’s comrades in World War II was a recently immigrated Pole named Novak, to whom all Germans were “sonsabeeches” for overrunning his beloved homeland in 1939. Novak hated Germans “personally and passionately.”96 George Ahlhausen, one of the men in Lester Atwell’s squad, volunteered for service in World War II after his kid brother was killed in the Pacific. Ahlhausen, who as guardian had signed the papers allowing his seventeen-year-old brother to join the marines, decided he could not remain idle: “I start thinking I should do something, you know, like to make up to him for. . . . Well, I wanted to get into it.”97

Matthew Brennan tells the story of his platoon sergeant, Sergeant Terry, who had been seriously wounded earlier in Vietnam and discharged. When his brother was killed in Vietnam, Terry rejoined the army. Because of his disabilities he could serve only in a noncombat specialty, but by becoming a helicopter mechanic, he landed a tour of duty in Vietnam, after which he finagled his way into an aerorifle platoon in the First Cavalry Division. Earlier, Terry “swore a vendetta with the Communists,” and now he could carry it out.98

Some men served because they believed that the war would be the defining event of their generation, and they did not want to miss it. Walter Rosenblum, a combat photographer in World War II, believed he was

“doing something worthwhile” in capturing on film the demise of fascism: “You felt you were an actor in a tremendous drama that was unfolding. It was the most important moment of my life.”99 Michael Lee Lanning felt an obligation to serve his country during the Vietnam War, but he also did not want to “miss the chance to experience the major significant event of my generation.”100 John Foote felt the same way: “I began to see Vietnam as the preeminent historical experience of my lifetime, certainly of my youth.”101

Other men served for less inspired reasons. Their choice was the army or the penitentiary. As Baskir and Strauss write, “Many judges agreed with [Lewis B.] Hershey [director of the Selective Service System] that military service was a good way to rehabilitate social misfits and petty criminals. They sometimes gave convicted offenders a choice between joining the military or going to jail.”102 The enforced discipline and responsibilities of military service did turn some wayward rowdies around. In most cases, however, hoodlums and misfits did not make good soldiers. Men who could not conform to society’s norms and laws were even less successful at complying with military standards of discipline and behavior.103

At the opposite extreme from the criminal who chose the army over jail was the young volunteer who believed that combat was a proving ground, or rite of passage, from which he would emerge a man. For eighteen-year-old Robert G. Thobaben, even the simple act of registering for the draft in 1942 seemed a step toward manhood: “Suddenly I felt older, more mature. I was a boy who had become a man, courtesy of a small paper [draft] card.”104 If a young man had a reputation as a coward or weakling, he was often especially eager to go to war to prove his detractors wrong. Robert Rasmus, a World War II rifleman and selfadmitted “mama’s boy,” looked forward to going overseas: “I was going to gain my manhood then. I would forever be liberated from the sense of inferiority that I wasn’t rugged. I would prove that I had the guts and the manhood to stand up to these things.”105

Some seekers of manhood, to their horror, found themselves doing “women’s work” while in uniform. Corporal Charles S. Crawford manned a telephone switchboard in Quantico, Virginia, at the height of the Korean War: “Imagine how I felt when people asked me what I did in the Marine Corps.”106 Crawford soon managed a transfer to Korea as an individual replacement, where he took up the more manly pursuit of forward observer.

The macho, war-as-rite-of-passage theme is also evident in Vietnam War memoirs. Marine lieutenant Caputo “needed to prove something—my courage, my toughness, my manhood, call it what you like.” Caputo’s battalion went to Vietnam as a unit, hence his platoon experienced first combat together. Caputo saw this combat, at least in retrospect, as a passage to manhood: “Having received that primary sacrament of war, baptism of fire, their boyhoods were behind them. Neither they nor I thought of it in those terms at the time. . . . We were simply aware, in a way we could not express, that something significant had happened to us.”107 One of Baker’s interviewees felt much as Caputo did: “I wanted to go to war. It was a test that I wanted to pass. It was a manhood test, no question about it.”108

For some, as was the case for Corporal Ehrhart’s fellow marine in Vietnam, the Japanese immigrant Kenokura Amagasu, duty in the military was a shortcut to American citizenship.109 Thousands of immigrants became citizens by serving in the military. Many immigrants, even those already holding citizenship, joined the military and fought because they wanted to show their loyalty and gratitude to their new American homeland. Russian immigrant Morry Morrison, for example, joined up in World War I even though, since he was not yet a citizen, he was exempt from the draft. He wanted to fight for his adopted country, and other immigrants he met in uniform felt the same: “Germans, Irish, Polish—no matter what country the man I talked to had come from, it was always the same. ‘Sure, I went. Why not? It was as much my country as anyone else’s, wasn’t it?’”110

Yet for whatever reason, or more often multiple reasons, that a man decided to rally to the flag, he soon found himself, as a new recruit, in an alien and distinctly unpleasant world—the army or marine training camp.

TRAINING IN THE DRAFT ERA: THE SOLDIERIZATION PROCESS

The training a recruit received before his baptism of fire varied significantly in duration and quality. During the massive mobilizations of World War I and II, the army and marines scrambled to expand their minuscule peacetime training apparatus. Equipment, facilities, and

instructors were initially in short supply. Most soldiers trained as part of the unit they would go to war with, but in both wars camps were also established to train individual replacements.

The recognition, based on the experiences of the two world wars, that soldiers could be more efficiently trained at centralized camps by experienced cadre led to the system common to the Korean and Vietnam Wars of first training individual recruits in basic soldier skills (marching, military courtesy, physical conditioning, rifle marksmanship, and so on) followed by advanced training in a designated special skill such as infantryman, artilleryman, or truck driver. Only then was a trainee assigned to a unit, often one already in combat, but possibly one still preparing to be sent overseas.

Despite these somewhat different approaches, the twin goals of the training, or soldierization process, were understandably consistent: to teach recruits basic tactical, physical, and weapons skills while simultaneously instilling the discipline and behavioral norms necessary to succeed in combat.111 This soldierization process, as sociologists Arthur J. Vidich and Maurice R. Stein explain, entailed the transformation of the “civilian- minded recruit” into a “reliable soldier who will respond according to expectation. The institutional techniques for accomplishing this involve a process of self-dissolution and reconstruction.”112 Or, to put it in less clinical terms, as one of the Vietnam War veterans interviewed by Christian G. Appy did, “they tore you down. They tore everything civilian out of your existence . . . and then they re-built you and made you over.”113

“Tear down” and “build up” imply an extreme, even violent, process. Most of the soldier-authors who comment on their training experience did indeed find it physically demanding and emotionally traumatic. The degree of harassment and stress varied, largely depending on the personality of the recruit’s all-important and seemingly omnipotent cadre noncommissioned officer (NCO), or drill instructor/drill sergeant, as he was commonly called during much of this period. Whatever the variations in individual experiences, most recruits considered their initial training an important preliminary to combat, and most emerged from it just as they were supposed to—feeling like soldiers and proud of it.

Though a proud soldier may have been the end product, the process of getting there was painful, especially during the tearing-down phase, which lasted the first several weeks of a recruit’s army basic training or marine boot camp. Canadian broadcaster Gwynne Dyer, in researching his

television series on war for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, visited the Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, where he learned that the first step in the “conversion process” of turning civilians into marines “is the destruction of an individual’s former beliefs and confidence, and his reduction to a position of helplessness and need.”114 This conversion process was intentionally stressful.115 James R. Ebert, in studying army basic training in the Vietnam era, found that “harassment and regimentation gradually increased over the first four weeks of training” as part of a calculated effort “to expose the men to tolerable levels of stress,” because stress was something they would surely have to deal with in combat.116

The separation from all things civilian began immediately and often dramatically when the new recruits arrived at the induction center (or “reception station,” as it was called in the Vietnam era). The reception process lasted several days, during which the trainees turned in their civilian clothes for uniforms, received haircuts (meaning shaved heads), learned to maintain their bunks and footlockers, and began learning the rudiments of military drill and courtesy.117

Many recruits vividly remember exactly when this process began—the moment the drill instructor stepped aboard their bus after it arrived at the reception station. The process of transporting enlistees to their induction centers or reception stations varied but generally involved a train trip followed by a final bus or truck ride to the center, there to be met by a drill sergeant. Robert Leckie and his fellow marine recruits received a typically ominous greeting from their drill sergeant when they arrived at Parris Island during World War II: “Boys—Ah want to tell yawl something. Give youah hearts to Jesus, boys—cause youah ass belongs to me!”118

William D. Ehrhart has similar memories of his arrival at Parris Island in 1966. The drill instructor who met his bus, whom Ehrhart nicknamed “the Voice of God,” quickly set the ground rules: “You will do everything you’re told instantly, and you will do nothing else. I’ll kill the first cocksucker that fucks it up. You scuzzy shitbirds are mine, ladies! And I do not like you. Now, MOVE!”119 The “Voice of God” revealed, in these few sentences, all the characteristics of verbal abuse that the trainees would learn to endure during the tear-down process: abrasively loud commands, shockingly vulgar language, demeaning references to their lack of masculinity, and no positive encouragement whatsoever—indeed, just the opposite (“I do not like you”).

At the end of their first day in the army or Marine Corps, more than a few recruits wondered, as World War II enlistee Howard S. Hoffman did while lying on his bunk at the induction center, just what they had let themselves in for: “I didn’t cry or break into tears or anything, but I felt very, very much threatened; I felt that I was now in the grip of forces that I couldn’t do anything about; that what was happening to me was largely a matter of chance; that I was at the very bottom of the totem pole.”120 If anything, Ehrhart was even more distraught as he lay on his bunk at the end of his first day: “With all my heart and soul, I did not want to be here. I couldn’t understand how any of this had happened. I lay there for what seemed like hours in a kind of trance, staring at the ceiling, my mind in neutral and somebody flooring the accelerator.”121

Adding to the new recruit’s anxiety was his total separation from his previous, comforting civilian life, except for mail and in recent times limited telephone contact. To make matters worse, many young recruits were away from home for the first time. After only a few days at the induction station, World War II draftee John L. Munschauer noticed that “some of the biggest, toughest-looking bruisers were already showing signs of homesickness. Many of these men had never been out of the state, some hardly out of their neighborhood, and more than one had never slept in a house other than their own.” At the same time that the recruit was separated from his previous life and “torn down,” he was also “leveled off.” The recruits discovered that their previous civilian status and accomplishments meant nothing. All were treated the same—badly, as far as they were concerned. Munschauer learned about the leveling process on his first day at the induction station: “Rich or poor, . . . all of us were rabble.”122

If anything, civilian accomplishments, such as being a “college boy,” could bring scorn and extra harassment. Prate Stack and his brother, both former Yale students, made the tactical error of arriving at Parris Island during World War II in a private Pullman railroad car arranged for by their father. The drill sergeant was not impressed: “I’ve already got what is undoubtedly the dumbest bunch of college bastards who will ever come to Parris Island,” he snarled, “and now I have a couple of big-time clowns like you two. You college guys are a swift pain in the ass.”123

During the reception process, the recruit was relieved of his previous identity. First to go were any physical signs of his civilian past. Leckie and his fellow marine recruits, after turning in their civilian clothes for fatigues and receiving their buzz haircuts, felt “stripped of all vestiges of

personality.”124 The Vietnamera recruit felt as humiliated as his World War II predecessors, as evidenced by a comment by Bill Morgan, the protagonist in Fuller’s novel Fragments: “We were stripped down to the essentials, heads shaven, uniforms all the same, no past and damned little in the way of a future.”125

After the reception process, the recruits were formed into platoons of about forty men for the duration of their training.126 As part of his platoon, the recruit continued the process begun at the reception station of learning to make his bunk, keep his footlocker, and maintain his uniform and equipment to the demanding standards of the drill sergeant. Every waking moment of a long training day was regulated. Uniformity was demanded. The recruits learned to march, talk, and look the same. Recruit Leckie soon realized that it was a “process of surrender” of individual personality and freedom in order to meet group standards of appearance and behavior: “At every turn, at every hour, it seemed, a habit or preference had to be given up, an adjustment had to be made.”127 Many recruits, like Hoffman, found this loss of individuality alarming and demeaning: “You quickly lost your identity in the sense that you became a number very quickly or an item. I was very depressed by the whole situation.”128

The drill sergeant often resorted to group punishments for individual infractions, thereby reinforcing the idea that the recruit was part of a group first and an individual a distant second. Leon Uris provides an example in Battle Cry of one of the most common causes of group punishment—a recruit dropped his rifle (an even more heinous crime than referring to one’s rifle as a gun). The entire platoon paid for this accident by having to balance their rifles on the tops of their fingers with arms extended straight out to the front, palms down.129

Recruits resented being punished as a group for an individual’s mistake, but because they could not change the system, they began to zero in instead on the “screw-ups” who were causing the punishments.130 They might try to help a well-meaning but slow-learning comrade avoid mistakes, but as one World War II study points out, “deviants” who brought on group punishment by angering the drill sergeant were another matter: “When a whole platoon or an entire company is penalized because of a recalcitrant few, the collective wrath turns upon these few.”131 As Ebert explains in his discussion of Vietnam-era basic training, such deviants “were ostracized and verbally humiliated or bullied into conducting themselves properly,” and in a few extreme cases, “group

frustrations toward a recalcitrant ‘screw-up’ resulted in acts of violence, such as ‘blanket parties’ in which the target of the group’s wrath was beaten.”132 In this way the group learned to police itself, and this self- enforcement was exactly what the drill sergeants were out to achieve.

In addition to resorting to group punishments, the drill sergeants went out of their way to harass the trainees verbally and physically. To avoid such harassment, trainees tried to keep a low profile. They learned, according to one World War II study, “to avert attention from themselves by avoiding any erratic behavior.”133 (Many trainees, incidentally, sought to keep a low profile for the remainder of their time in service, perhaps best summed up by the army adage, “never volunteer.”) In 1951, army basic trainee Rudolph W. Stephens struggled to keep a low profile: “You did your job and tried to keep everything in order so the noncoms would stay off your back; these people did everything they could to break you down.”134 This advice remained sound for trainees in the Vietnam era as well, as Ebert learned from one marine veteran: “Marine Corps boots learned early that if they did what was asked and did so quickly, they could make it through training without drawing attention to themselves. Anonymity was the key to avoiding punishment.”135

While trainees, at least some of the time, succeeded in avoiding the attention and hence ire of the drill sergeant, they could not avoid the close physical proximity of the rest of the men in their training platoon. Trainees lived in communal-style barracks. The loss of privacy was yet one more shock the recruit had to adjust to during the tearing-down phase.136 Leckie found the total lack of privacy to be the worst part of the “process of surrender” of his individuality in boot camp: “Everything was done in the open. Rising, waking, writing letters, receiving mail, making beds, washing, shaving, combing one’s hair, emptying one’s bowels—all was done in public and shaped to the style and stricture of the sergeant.”137 This lack of privacy would prove to be a hallmark of military service, and the recruits would find they had even less, if that were possible, when living in the combat zone.

During the tearing-down phase, the recruit, for the life of him, could not see what any of this unpleasantness had to do with preparing him for combat. Learning to shine shoes, march, salute, pull kitchen duty, and make a bunk in a military fashion did not strike him as useful skills. After several weeks of such training, the recruits hit a nadir. They were demeaned, frustrated, and angry. They had worked hard but received little

in the way of positive reinforcement, and they certainly did not feel like soldiers—slaves perhaps.138 David Parks’s attitude only a week into army basic training in 1965 indicates just how fed up the trainees could become: “These drill instructors drive you nuts. They go around hollering the same thing every day. . . . Hour after hour they’re bugging us, how to salute, how to present ourselves to an officer, how to say ‘sir,’ how to obey orders —how to become robots. . . . Drill—drill—drill. March—march—march. I’ve had it.”139

Yet just when trainees’ frustrations hit a high point and their morale a low point, things began to change, albeit almost imperceptibly at first. The tear-down phase ended and the buildup began. Appy summarizes the shift: “Having been broken down to nothing—their identities stripped, their compliance won, and their aggression heightened—recruits were gradually rebuilt into soldiers.”140

The skills the recruits began to learn took on a decidedly more military flavor and hence were more interesting and important in their eyes. Lee Kennett, in his study of the World War II GI, observes: “What the soldiers liked best were those activities that fitted their preconceptions of what a soldier should be doing, and to be precise, they liked those things that had the violence and flavor of combat.”141

The first activity that most trainees recall as being “useful” and interesting was rifle qualification. They had been issued rifles, taught to march with them, disassemble and assemble them, clean them, and memorize their performance characteristics, all of which was tedious and boring—that is, until they went to the rifle range. Leckie remembers the rifle range as a distinct turning point: “If you are undone in Parris Island, taken apart in those first few weeks, it is at the rifle range that they start to put you together again.”142 No matter how naive, the trainee understood that marksmanship was a skill that he was very possibly going to need in the near future. David Parks, for example, paid special attention to the night-firing training: “The word is that they do a lot of night fighting in Vietnam. So it was an important class.”143

The trainees began learning other decidedly martial skills also, such as throwing a hand grenade, using a bayonet, and moving in basic tactical formations. Even the hated forced marches, often to the firing ranges and back, made sense—soldiers had to be in top physical condition. World War II surgeon Klaus H. Heubner, after marching all night with his infantry battalion in Italy, conceded the value of his training marches: “I

guess these are the sort of forced marches we trained for in the States. One needs stamina to keep up.”144 The training marches not only built stamina but also confidence and a sense of accomplishment. Paul Fussell, no eager soldier by his own admission, nevertheless felt “pleasure and pride” on completing the final forced march during basic training, adding that “happiness . . . can be consistent . . . with deprivation and pain, exhaustion and tears—as long as self-respect is intact, and even, as here, augmented.”145

Not only did the soldier find the training more relevant and interesting during the buildup phase, but he also began receiving some recognition, earning a marksmanship badge and perhaps a certificate for good performance on the obstacle course or in bayonet drill.146 Fussell, beginning to feel fit and tan as a result of his training, “attained the grade of Expert Rifleman and won thereby a carton of Chesterfields [cigarettes]. Scared of loud noises as a child, I grew to love them. I enjoyed the bang of the rifle in my ear, as well as the kick against my shoulder.”147 Parks earned the marksmanship rating of Sharpshooter: “It felt good. A lot of guys didn’t even come close.” He was also proud of winning his training company’s bayonet contest.148

Even the drill sergeants seemed less like ogres during the buildup phase. The trainees came to realize, at least in retrospect, that their drill sergeant was deliberately starting to bolster their confidence and group pride.149 Howard Matthias, going through marine officer candidate training at Parris Island in summer 1951, noticed that “the process worked”: “Loyalty and pride started to show itself quickly. We were proud to belong to the finest squad, the best platoon and the greatest battalion in the Marine Corps. We could out drill, outmarch, and outfight any other outfit.”150 World War II marine veteran Roger Tuttrup shared Matthias’s belief in the process. The drill sergeants “really put you in your place. That’s a polite way of sayin’ it. They humiliate ya, they make ya do things that you don’t think are physically possible. At the same time, they’re makin’ you feel you’re something. That you’re part of something. . . . It was the high point of my life.”151

During the buildup phase, the trainee did not feel as humiliated and demeaned as he had during the tear down, not only because the drill sergeants began mixing in some praise with the chewing outs but also because he was getting over his “environmental shock.”152 He was becoming habituated to army life, learning to blow off steam through the

time-honored ritual of griping. Trainees learned to complain about virtually every aspect of basic training—the food, the drill sergeants, the inspections, the harassment, and the lack of freedom and free time. They did not expect anyone in authority to listen, but they could at least voice their displeasure.153

Griping was also a form of social interaction, allowing trainees to commiserate over their fate, making use of their newly acquired military foul mouths in the process.154 Many recruits were shocked at first, as Leckie was, by the stream of four-letter expletives flowing from the mouths of their drill sergeants, but “we would become inured to it, in time, have it even on our own lips.”155 Many recruits were soon equaling, in color and profusion, the language of their veteran sergeants, as Kennett notes: “The younger and more impressionable probably took to obscene expressions the way they took to wearing their overseas caps at a jaunty angle—it fitted their image of a soldier.”156 Swearing was thus one more way, during the buildup phase, that the trainee continued his conversion from civilian, in whose society such language was not acceptable, to soldier, for whom swearing was a virtual art form.

As the trainees’ anxiety lessened, the platoon comics began to get up the nerve to challenge the drill sergeants in small ways, or at least to mimic them behind their backs. Much like griping, the humorous antics of the platoon cutups provided a relief valve for frustrations. John Faris, who paid close attention to the role of the drill sergeants in his study of basic training, noticed that they not only began sprinkling some praise and recognition amid the criticism but also began to allow, within limits, some trainee–drill sergeant banter.157

Uris provides a classic example of a platoon comic, L. Q. Jones, in Battle Cry. During boot camp, Jones mimicked the southern accent and colorful language of the platoon’s drill instructor, Corporal Whitlock. Unfortunately for Jones and his audience, Whitlock entered the barracks and witnessed Jones’s performance. For punishment, Whitlock had the culprits march about camp with buckets on their heads, chanting “I’m a craphead,” much to the amusement of all, trainee and cadre alike.158 The punishment imposed by Corporal Whitlock, though no doubt embarrassing to the marchers, was deliberately mild and provided some comic relief for the entire camp. The value of such antics was not lost on Robert G. Thobaben, going through army basic training in 1943. He praised the comic skills of his platoon’s cutup, “Strap”: “He could duplicate the voice

and actions of anyone. His sense of humor was finely honed, and his quick wit and droll burlesque brightened many a bivouac and march.”159

The trainees also mastered the art of “goldbricking,” to use the term common in World War II, as a way to beat the system. Work details could be dodged, or at least the effort expended on them kept to a bare minimum. The trainee would not goldbrick if by so doing he brought punishment on the group. At other times he was too closely supervised to get away with it. But he goldbricked when he could, and Irving L. Janis believes he did so as an overt, if minor, act of rebellion: “In making the independent decision to goldbrick rather than to carry out his assignment adequately, the recruit asserts his willfulness. He creates for himself the illusion that he is achieving a victory over the superior who required him to perform the menial job.”160 Goldbricking, “slacking,” or “ghosting,” like griping, was a time-honored soldier skill that the recruit would practice, within certain bounds, throughout his military career.

Another factor contributing to the trainee’s improving morale and confidence during the buildup phase was the support he received from his friends. After several weeks of living together, most trainees formed friendships with one or more of their bunkmates. Buddies encouraged and helped each other.161 George William Sefton, after describing the diverse characters in his platoon, went on to praise his “closest buddy,” an older man named Donald Townsend, who took “a big-brother interest” in Sefton’s welfare.162

These personal friendships shifted somewhat as buddies had a falling out or became sick or injured and had to recycle with a different platoon not as far along in the training program, but overall they grew stronger with shared hardships and experiences. The platoon started to bond together, and thanks also to the group recognition and praise that the drill sergeant occasionally provided, the trainees began to consider themselves a unit, and a good one at that. This phenomenon occurred in Thobaben’s World War II training platoon. After more than three months of training together, the platoon had become “a genuine unit. We were bound by a hundred common experiences. We had become friends.”163

During the buildup phase, the trainee began to think of himself not as a lowly recruit but as a budding soldier. Not only did he find marksmanship to be the first interesting subject encountered in his training, but he also noticed that the army considered it a distinctly “soldierly,” as opposed to “trainee,” skill.164 The trainee also began to realize that his job was to kill.

The drill sergeants reinforced this theme by unabashedly emphasizing that where the recruit was heading, kill-or-be-killed was the order of the day. Morgan, in the novel Fragments, came to just such a realization in basic training: “The longer training went on, the more you had to confront just what it was they were training you for. You could grumble about the wet, endless days on the rifle range, but when the target popped up, it had the silhouette of a man. You could bitch about the way they made you crawl up and down the piny dunes, but you had to admit that it made sense to keep your profile low. You did not even try to kid yourself about what you might be facing. You sought it out. You grilled the drill sergeants about their experiences in the jungles across the pond.”165

Stanley Goff and his fellow army trainees adopted a “war mentality” similar to Morgan’s: “We got to feel that these people [the instructors] knew what they were doing. . . . Once we were into the war mentality, . . . psychologically our training got to us. Even though you didn’t want to succumb to it, we couldn’t help it. . . . We were brainwashed. . . . We were ready to go to Vietnam. Nobody was crying about it.”166 Certainly not all soldiers were as “ready” to go to Vietnam as Goff claims, but his basic point about the conversion to a war mentality is valid. Most trainees came to think of themselves as soldiers. This awareness was in itself an important step in the process of converting civilians to soldiers.

By the end of the training process, a transformation had occurred. The angry, fed-up, demoralized trainee had become a physically fit, skilled, confident, even cocky soldier.167 By the end of boot camp during World War II, Eugene B. Sledge and his fellow trainees “were hard physically, had developed endurance, and had learned our lessons. Perhaps more importantly, we were tough mentally.”168 Rudolph W. Stephens, after completing army basic training in 1951, was confident and fit: “Somehow I managed to endure this sixteen weeks and that put me in the best physical condition I have ever been in in my life. I felt I could handle any situation that might come my way.”169 William Ehrhart, who had lain in his bunk the first night of boot camp in a state of shock, graduated eight weeks later with a promotion and a chestful of pride: “I burst into a broad grin, barely able to contain the pride struggling to get out of me in a mighty shout. In a few moments, I would be meritoriously promoted to Private First Class W. D. Ehrhart, United States Marine.”170

The graduating trainees had even developed a grudging admiration for their drill sergeants, although there were a few notable exceptions.171

Indeed, as Dyer had discovered in observing marine boot camp, the drill instructors had become “not just role models and authority figures, but the focus of the recruits’ developing loyalty to the organization.”172 Robert Leckie came to understand that the drill sergeants had been tough for a reason: “On the whole, the sergeants were not cruel. They were not sadists. They believed in making it tough on us, but they believed this for the purpose of making us turn out tough.”173 Stan Goff and his fellow army trainees came to the same conclusion two wars later concerning their drill sergeant: “We found that he was damned serious and very concerned about the men. We could read it in him. Even though he was very, very mean, we could tell he was sincere. He felt that it was his responsibility whether we made it through the Nam or not.”174

In sum, drill sergeants, who worked long, hard hours to implement the training program, were for the most part neither deliberately cruel nor callous. The training had to be tough and stressful to prepare the trainees for the physical and emotional trauma of combat, as observers of the process, including Dyer, came to appreciate: “The men . . . who teach the recruits how to kill and how to die are not cynical in their manipulation of the minds of impressionable teenagers; they believe every word they say. And if you accept the necessity of armed force in the world as it is . . . [then they] are absolutely right.”175

PERSONAL VALUES VERSUS CONDITIONED BEHAVIOR

Once the erstwhile civilian was torn down and rebuilt into a fit, confident, and aggressive soldier, he proceeded to more advanced training, either as part of a tactical unit or as an individual. Those trainees with combat specialties learned to use machine guns, mortars, antitank weapons, tanks, armored personnel carriers, or artillery. Thus the desired product, from the first day at the reception station through completion of advanced training, was a trained killer. Not surprisingly, some observers found this process abhorrent. The pacific, civilizing values had been stripped from the trainee, and a soldier conditioned to kill emerged in his stead. The philosopher and World War II veteran Jesse Glenn Gray saw this emergent soldier as a different breed from his previous civilian self: “Man as warrior

is only partly a man, yet, fatefully enough, this aspect of him is capable of transforming the whole. When given free play, it is able to subordinate other aspects of the personality, repress civilian habits of mind, and make the soldier as fighter a different kind of creature from the former worker, farmer, or clerk.” Gray went so far as to establish a new species for the combat soldier—Homo furens.176

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton was even more alarmed over this conversion process and specifically charged the training system, at least in the Vietnam era, with responsibility for turning mild-mannered civilians into “socialized warriors”: “To reach the desired psychological state, the socialized warrior has always required some kind of initiation process. . . . In that rite (now called basic training), his civil identity, with its built-in restraints, is eradicated, or at least undermined and set aside in favor of the warrior identity and its central focus on killing. Only through such a prescribed process can the warrior become psychically numbed toward killing and dying, shielded from complexity, and totalized in his commitment to the warrior role.”177

Certainly the soldierization process generated “uncivilian” norms of behavior, but some experts question the extent to which a recruit could be programmed by a few months of military training to modify or reject personal values instilled by years of parental, educational, and social influences. Sociologists Morris Janowitz and Roger W. Little are two such skeptics, who point out that recruits are not cultural tabula rasa, nor does the military train in a social vacuum: “It is a fundamental error to assume that the military establishment is some sort of self-contained organism which digests and assimilates foreign bodies.”178 The beliefs and attitudes the recruit brings with him from civilian society must therefore be taken into account when examining the effect of the soldierization process.

Furthermore, as Lee Kennett points out in his study of the World War II GI, the average American citizen-soldier was never fully purged of those civilian beliefs and attitudes. Military training introduced new skills and norms of behavior, but it did not destroy those values a recruit brought with him into the service. The GI was thus “suspended between two ways of life and held in that state of suspension as long as he wore a uniform. Physically he left civilian life, yet mentally he never joined the Army; he was in the service but not of it.”179

A citizen-soldier “suspended” between two worlds is a far cry from a “socialized warrior,” devoid of civilized values. Further complicating the debate is the lack of consensus over exactly what values a recruit brought

with him in the first place. Perhaps, as Dyer suggests, violence is not so much programmed into recruits as it is a carryover from civilian society: “There is aggression in all of us. . . . Armies don’t have to create it, and they can’t even increase it.”180 The philosopher Sam Keen also sees a connection between military and civilian violence: “Sadism in war is hard to explain only if we assume that there is a discontinuity between soldiers who enjoy inflicting pain and normal men and women. The assumption that there is a vast difference between the moral fiber of the man who enjoys killing in battle and you and me is the illusion on which the notion of normality is built.”181

The level of violence in civilian society certainly lends credence to Dyer’s and Keen’s arguments, but if the average recruit entered service with a natural or socialized propensity for aggression, then how does one explain those soldiers who fought, and killed, only reluctantly, gaining no enjoyment from doing what they considered a necessary but distasteful job?

The reality is that recruits did bring deeply ingrained beliefs and attitudes with them into the service but that each individual’s beliefs were unique.182 Too often the experts assumed a degree of cultural homogeneity that simply did not exist.183 Just as individual motives for rallying to the flag varied significantly, so too did the recruit’s reaction to the soldierization process, depending on his attitude and past experiences. “The orientation which the civilian society gives to recruits,” note Janowitz and Little, “will either assist or retard their assimilation of military roles.”184 Thus the enthusiastic volunteer tended to emerge from training as an enthusiastic soldier and the reluctant draftee a reluctant soldier. A study of Vietnam-era trainees found, for example, that their reaction to basic training was positive or negative in about the same ratio as their attitude toward the military upon entering service.185

The World War II trainee Kurt Gabel conducted his own one-man sociological study of those around him at the reception station. He noted a wide range of reactions to army life based on the inductees’ attitudes and backgrounds. There was the young, homesick type; the older, married type who worried and missed the comforts of home; the well-to-do fraternity type, disdainful of his ignorant companions and spartan surroundings; and the Oakie type, who was content with army life because he was used to austerity and hard work.186 Gabel failed to mention his own type—the eager volunteer who enthusiastically took to the training (he became a

paratrooper). Although Gabel is guilty of stereotyping, his point about the diversity

of attitudes among trainees is valid. Based on those attitudes, recruits’ reactions to basic training varied, as Fuller’s trainee Bill Morgan observed: “You saw some men crumble, some men grow. You saw who was selfish, who was scared. . . . Some guys became isolated in adversity; they were afraid of having to carry any more than their own weight. But others bonded together against it, and the worse it got the closer they became.”187

Some recruits found the training process so stressful and the values of military life so alien that they broke down or even committed suicide. An interdisciplinary group of scholars commissioned after World War II to study American military manpower policy during the war examined, among other things, why some recruits failed to complete their initial training and had to be discharged from the army. They found that some trainees broke down because they could not stand the separation from home or had received disturbing news from home about sickness, financial problems, or infidelity. Others did not suffer a mental breakdown, but they lacked any sense of social responsibility or obligation, refusing “to make much of an effort once they had been inducted,” resulting in their discharge as unfit for service.188

Psychiatrists discovered further reasons why recruits broke down during World War II. Robert A. Clark learned that some trainees could not adapt to the aggressive behavior that basic training demanded of them because they suffered from inferiority complexes, excessive dependence on others, and various other emotional instabilities.189 Psychiatrists Meyer H. Maskin and Leon L. Altman cataloged a variety of reasons why some trainees could not cope: unwillingness to submit to authority, fear of assuming responsibility, depression over leaving home and loved ones, inability to make friends or work as part of a group, and resentment over the loss of personal identity.190

To the average recruit, untutored in psychological terminology, compatriots who broke down were labeled “mama’s boys” because they exhibited homesickness, physical weakness, or a milquetoast demeanor.191 John L. Munschauer recalls a mama’s boy who broke down on his second day in the army. The young man had lived at home with his mother all his life, ate only food “fixed the way he liked it,” and had built his social life around this woman, “who was a widow and pretty well managed her son.”192 Such insecure, sheltered young men often fared poorly in the

alien, stressful world of the barracks room. At the other extreme were those recruits, most often volunteers, who

entered service with positive attitudes toward soldiering. For them, training was a challenge, not a stress. A phrase commonly shouted by recruits during training was “WETSU”—“We Eat This Shit Up.” According to Marlowe’s study of army recruits in the 1950s, 10 to 15 percent of the trainees actually meant it: “There are those . . . who experience an absolute minimum of anxiety or dislocation on entering the service and perform and function with ease from the very first day.”193 Not surprisingly, these eager recruits were the ones who most often volunteered for even more challenging training and service with elite units such as the Special Forces, Rangers, or airborne.194

Some recruits, although they completed the training process, were not so much proud and confident, like their fellow trainees, as they were disappointed and unhappy over their training experience. They hated the inconveniences and the loss of freedom and individuality that being a soldier entailed. Disgruntled World War II trainee Carl M. Becker went so far as to claim that the army’s effort to build “obedience to command, subordination of individualism, loyalty to the group, and bonding to one another” had failed completely in the case of his training platoon: “Such desiderata were a will-o’-the-wisp. Our ordinary routines fostered instead an ethos of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.”195

David Parks, whose basic-training experience was not entirely negative, had nothing good to say about the advanced infantry training (AIT) that followed: “Finally finished A.I.T. Eight sickening, boring weeks of pure crap.”196 John Ketwig was equally negative about his advanced training as a mechanic in 1967 at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. He had “expected the humiliation and harassment to end after basic, but it had followed us to Aberdeen.” He had hoped that his army training would parallel his experience playing high school sports, where his coaches had instilled team discipline, but “this was not teamwork. The lifers [training cadre] had stripped us of all dignity and self-respect and seemed to delight in rubbing our noses in our impotence.”197

Like Ketwig, each recruit brought his own set of personal values, expectations, and motivations with him into the army. Some found army training to be all that they expected and more. Others were as disappointed as Ketwig. A few were so traumatized that they broke down before completing basic. The training process did succeed in “conditioning” most

trainees to believe that they were well-trained, fit, and confident soldiers or marines; but as the wide variation in individual reactions to the soldierization process indicates, the trainee was neither purged of all his previous beliefs and attitudes nor turned into some sort of automated killer.

Whatever their attitude on completing training, many of these freshly minted soldiers soon faced the prospect of combat. Their newly acquired skills, stamina, and military discipline would be sorely tested in the environment of war.

The Environment of War

The newly trained soldier, reasonably confident in his fitness and skills, soon found himself en route to war. No matter how well prepared, however, he discovered that combat was more physically demanding and emotionally traumatic than he had expected. Indeed, the environment of war proved to be such a “radical discontinuity” from peacetime existence, to use Eric J. Leed’s term, that it “posed the most severe psychic contradictions.”1 The soldier was shocked to discover just how cruel, dangerous, and unforgiving this new world was: “In no other circumstances than the battlefield does man confront the knowledge that he is present in that place for the purpose of suffering death at the hands of fellow man, and that he must kill if he is not to be killed himself. The battlefield, in short, is a place almost without mercy and utterly without pity, where the emotions which humanity cultivates and admires elsewhere —gentleness, compassion, tolerance, amity—have neither room to operate nor place to exist.”2

Up to a point, the soldier understood from his training that his job was to kill the enemy and that he would in turn be in danger, but few soldiers apprehended the harshness of the environment in which this life-or-death struggle would be played out. The physical and emotional aspects of that environment must be appreciated to understand just how radical the discontinuity was for those soldiers in the combat zone.

THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT OF WAR

One of the first shocking discoveries was that soldiering is hard, menial, dirty work. The work often began as soon as the soldiers disembarked in the war zone. Lieutenant Joseph R. Owen was mortar platoon leader in a marine rifle company that went ashore in the follow-up wave during the Inchon landing in the Korean War. Instead of plunging into the fray, however, the company was put to work in the heat of the Korean summer as stevedores: “Our troops, stripped to their skivvies, sweated, labored, and bitched.”3

Most combat troops, including Owen’s company, certainly found themselves in action soon enough. But to their dismay, they discovered that the hard work did not end even in combat. Indeed, despite their physical conditioning and the resilience of youth, soldiers found that combat could wear them down to a degree that they had never imagined. Lieutenant Michael Lee Lanning arrived in Vietnam with the eagerness typical of a young man off to his first war, but “after less than two weeks in-country, much, if not all, of the glamour had faded. It was simply hard, tiring, dangerous, and usually boring work.”4 Lieutenant Philip Caputo, arriving in Vietnam with his marine battalion in 1965, was even more eager than Lanning. Yet after a few weeks of defending an air base day and night, in the oppressive heat and humidity, filling sandbags, stringing barbed wire, and building bunkers, Caputo could only conclude that “this was not war, it was forced labor.”5

Sustaining and protecting themselves took up much of the soldiers’ time and energy. As Caputo’s mission of guarding an air base illustrates, establishing a defensive position involved many chores. After the leaders selected positions for the men to occupy, soldiers dug one- or two-man foxholes to protect themselves from direct and indirect fire. Digging in often came at the end of an exhausting day of marching, and perhaps fighting, and leaders sometimes had to ride the tired troops to get them to dig.

Digging in at night was a common occurrence for the doughboy in summer and fall 1918, when the fighting was far more fluid than the stereotypical image of static trench warfare would suggest. Marine private Elton E. Mackin describes the miseries of digging in at night in the rain, using bayonets because entrenching tools were in short supply: “Dark figures crouched on knees, their shoulders hunched, helmets hanging low

across their eyes while a driving rain beats ceaselessly across their backs and drains in little rivulets from the exposed napes of their necks, to run down inside their collars in icy streams that cut against the sweaty warmth of their bodies. . . . To see them, hear them growl as they tear away at the earth like burrowing animals reminds you of mad beasts.”6

Perhaps the only condition worse than darkness and rain for digging in was a winter freeze. Lieutenant George William Sefton and his platoon of paratroopers discovered just how difficult digging into a frozen hillside in the Vosges Mountains of France in February 1945 could be: “That seemed like the longest night of my life. We would hit the frozen soil with a full swing of an engineer’s pick, to be rewarded with an icy chip the size of a silver dollar. . . . Within four hours, the blisters on our hands were broken and bleeding.”7

Even when a unit remained in a defensive position for some time, the work did not stop. Positions had to be improved, which involved filling sandbags, building overhead cover using logs and dirt to protect against artillery airbursts, and putting in barbed wire and mines. Most of the material needed for this improvement, plus food, water, and ammunition, had to be brought forward, often by carrying parties when rugged terrain or the danger of enemy fire precluded the use of supply vehicles.

Even refilling canteens could be a far from routine task. When the front lines remained stationary for any length of time, the enemy frequently discovered and targeted the local water holes and springs. The army corporal Ben Judd explains that even though a water hole was only 300 yards from his bunker in Korea, “the Chinese, if they chose, could drop a mortar round directly into it. . . . Many men were injured going to supply their units with water.”8

Hauling water or supplies of any sort up the steep Korean mountains was a challenge, as Lieutenant Owen notes: “Keeping the forward weapons supplied with ammunition was a dangerous job that required exposure to enemy view. Under lethal small arms and mortar fire the bearers lugged heavy boxes of rifle, BAR [Browning Automatic Rifle], and machine gun ammunition, as well as crates of grenades, up steep, uneven grades. It was hard labor.”9 Carrying ammunition forward was equally arduous during the fighting on Okinawa in World War II, as marine private Eugene B. Sledge remembered: “We spent a great deal of time in combat carrying this heavy ammunition on our shoulders to places where it was needed—spots often totally inaccessible to all types of vehicles—and breaking it out of the packages and crates. On Okinawa this

was often done under enemy fire, in driving rain, and through knee-deep mud for hours on end. Such activity drove the infantryman, weary from the mental and physical stress of combat, almost to the brink of physical collapse.”10

The carrying-party traffic was not all one way. The wounded had to be carried to the rear. This task could be especially demanding because time was of the essence if a man’s life was to be saved. Most units had stretcher bearers assigned as part of their medical detachment, but there were never enough of them, and the infantrymen often had to carry their own buddies to safety, using makeshift stretchers. War correspondent John Hersey accompanied a stretcher party on Guadalcanal during World War II. He describes negotiating stretchers up and down slippery gullies, over fallen trees, and across dangerously swift jungle streams.11 Not all of the wounded made it to the aid station alive, and the stretcher bearers were not much better off themselves: “It was hard to tell the difference between the wounded men and the bearers.”12

Establishing and improving defensive positions was hard work for the infantry, but life for the artilleryman was perhaps even more arduous, if less dangerous. Artillery units made frequent displacements during the Allied offensives of summer and fall 1918. Each new position had to be consolidated, and artilleryman Charles MacArthur quickly learned that “consolidate means dig. Dig means work.”13 An artillery battery was a likely candidate for counterbattery fire or aerial attack, so the crews had to dig firing pits for the guns, bunkers to protect the projectiles and powder charges, and foxholes for themselves.

Consolidation also meant downloading heavy projectiles from caissons or supply wagons, laying telephone lines, cleaning the guns, putting up camouflage, and caring for the battery’s horses—the last by all accounts the bane of the artilleryman’s existence. Horses had to be watered, fed, curried, and their tackle and harness cleaned and repaired. For MacArthur and his battery mates, the order to turn in their horses was a cause for celebration exceeding the Armistice: “For the first time since we had enlisted, the war was over. The Armistice had been a joke so long as we had to go on massaging and feeding two hundred lousy horses every day.”14

The horse’s replacement by the truck and artillery tractor eased the artilleryman’s burden in later wars, but establishing a firing position continued to be demanding work. Lieutenant Frederick Downs, an

infantryman, captured the essence of the artilleryman’s exhausting world in his description of a cannoneer pushing at the mired wheel of his howitzer in the heat and mud of a Vietnam firebase: “His body taut, with his shoulder to the wheel and his feet hard in the mud, eyes closed, head lying in the mud on the wheel, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, and his arms dangling down into the mud—that is how I will always remember the artillery man in Vietnam.”15

In addition to performing these burdensome tasks, soldiers had to remain on guard for the enemy. Some of the men had to be alert at all times, manning crewserved weapons, observation posts, and listening posts. Others pulled radio or telephone watch. Marine corporal William D. Ehrhart, for example, after performing his normal duties as an intelligence specialist in his battalion command post in Vietnam, found himself on the perimeter at night guarding against a possible Viet Cong attack. His comment that “sleep was always at a premium” is classic understatement.16

The enemy was well aware that sleep was a precious commodity and did what he could to deprive the American soldier of his sacktime, as the GI called it. Air attacks were especially nerve-racking, and thus the Germans and Japanese during World War II (and to a lesser extent the Chinese during the Korean War) sent bombers, which the GIs dubbed “Washing Machine Charlie” or “Bed Check Charlie,” on night harassment raids over American lines.17 The few bombs scattered about did minimal damage, but as Robert Leckie pointed out, “the drone of Charlie’s circling progress kept everyone awake and uneasy. . . . Charlie did not kill many people, but, like MacBeth, he murdered sleep.”18

Even when Bed Check Charlie was gone and things seemed peaceful, the soldier could not let his guard down, especially if the enemy was adept at infiltration and surprise attack. Knowing that the enemy might appear at any moment made night watch stressful. The soldier on guard, often alone in his foxhole or bunker, began to let his imagination get the best of him. The dim outlines of bushes or rocks took on human form. Stationary objects seemed to be moving. At times an animal would stir the bushes.19 Sometimes the sound of the wind or a pounding rain made detecting an approaching enemy almost impossible. Even a veteran soldier who could keep his imagination in check felt drained after a few hours of maintaining such alertness.

The need for constant vigilance coupled with the many

“housekeeping” chores involved in maintaining a frontline position meant that soldiers were deprived of sleep. Soldiers in combat averaged less than six hours’ sleep a day, often considerably less.20 Sleep deprivation, exposure to the elements, hard work, and stress eventually lowered morale, impaired a soldier’s judgment, and reduced his physical stamina.21

Corporal Amos N. Wilder became aware, during the Soissons counteroffensive in World War I, of the impact that fatigue was having on his artillery battalion: “Strange when one is tired, it not only affects one’s physical force, but one’s powers of addition, memory, the presence and bearing of the person, his greeting and authority, but most strangely, one’s conscience, one’s ethical standard is blurred and one becomes curiously lax.”22 Conditions were no better three wars later. The marine company that Lieutenant Caputo served in had “run nearly two hundred patrols in the month I had been with it, and then there had been all those nights on the line. The men were in a permanent state of exhaustion. They were in a shaft, plunging daily from one level of fatigue to the next.”23

An overly fatigued soldier might even begin to hallucinate. Captain Charles R. Cawthon, suffering “from fatigue long-sustained” after several months of fighting in the European theater in World War II, thought he saw an approaching German patrol one night—not remarkable in itself, except that the patrol was outfitted in World War I uniforms and equipment. Cawthon, not sure to this day if the entire patrol or just their garb was a hallucination, let the ghostly apparition proceed out of his sight.24

When not defending a position, the soldier was on the move, either shifting to a new location or off in search of the enemy. Sometimes this move involved trains or trucks, modes of transport that did not provide as much respite for the weary soldier as might be assumed. Virtually every doughboy rode on the French trains, usually in boxcars called “forty and eights,” referring to their posted capacity of forty men or eight horses. A trip in “those devil’s gift to transportation,” as one doughboy called them, ranged from mildly unpleasant to abjectly miserable.25 There were no seats in the drafty, unheated, wooden cars. On a good ride, the floor was covered with fresh straw. On a bad ride, the car had not been cleaned out after the previous equine passengers had detrained. In either case, the soldiers were packed in so tightly that they barely had room to sit on the floor. Stretching out to sleep was impossible.26

World War II accounts, interestingly, reveal that the French forty and

eights, sans improvements, were as common as they had been in 1918 and just as miserable to ride in.27 Lieutenant George Wilson summed up the World War II GI’s opinion of the “infamous” boxcars in his comment about their capacity: “Forty men or eight horses—and I wouldn’t treat a horse that way.”28

The doughboys rode in trucks almost as often as they did in trains. Truck units, usually French, conveyed them from one sector to another or forward from a railhead. This camion ride, to use the French term, was as uncomfortable and tiring as a trip in the forty and eights. The roads were marginal and usually damaged by heavy military traffic. Solid-rubber tires and rudimentary suspension systems further ensured a bone-jarring ride. The trucks’ open tops, or at best canvas covers, and the wooden seats added to the discomfort, especially on a long ride in the cold and rain. A warm, dry day was better, but that meant clouds of choking dust.

Marine lieutenant John W. Thomason Jr. renders the troops’ assessment of truck convoying while en route to the Soissons counteroffensive in World War I: “‘Lord forgive me, I uster kick about them noble [forty and eight] box cars. . . . They say it was taxicabs an’ motortrucks that won the first battle of the Marne—yeh! If they rushed them Frogs up packed like this, you know they felt like fightin’ when they got out!’”29

Truck transport was even more common in later wars. Balloon tires and better suspension systems improved the ride—but only just. Private Lester Atwell recounts a grueling, nonstop, sixteen-hour truck ride in the dead of winter in France in World War II. The trucks were heavily overloaded with troops. Wind blew through the gaps in the canvas cover. The men could not move about to restore circulation. An empty five-gallon can was passed around to urinate into. Men with dysentery had to hang their backsides over the tailgate while buddies held their arms to prevent them from falling out.30

On top of the physical discomfort, a truck convoy could generate considerable anxiety. Most units did not possess sufficient trucks to move their infantry about routinely. A truck ride, therefore, indicated that something out of the ordinary was up. Lieutenant Paul Boesch recalls a relatively pleasant truck convoy on a mild fall day in France in 1944, but “instead of enjoying the ride, we were justifiably suspicious. We could detect a tough assignment ahead.”31 His suspicions were soon confirmed when his infantry company was committed to an attack.

Despite increasing mechanization during the wars of the draft era, the soldier’s move often involved a foot march. During late summer and fall 1918, the doughboys marched in chilling rain and sticky mud, usually at night to avoid enemy observation. Lieutenant Joseph D. Lawrence describes such a march. The men in his infantry company could not see in the pitch-black, rainy night and frequently slipped off the road into the muddy, water-filled ditches. During halts they shivered in the cold. The mud clung to their boots with every step. Cigarettes or lights of any sort were forbidden. Daybreak brought only a breakfast of cold coffee and bread.32

The artillery batteries found the going even more difficult. Despite their designation as horse drawn, the cannoneers almost always marched beside their guns. In fall 1918, horse losses to enemy fire and exhaustion were so severe that there were barely enough sickly nags to pull the guns. Cannon and caissons frequently mired in the mud or slipped off the road into the ditches, and the crews strained and pushed to keep the battery moving. Limbers and tackle broke and had to be repaired.33

The post–World War I mechanization of the artillery greatly eased the burdens of the march, if not the amount of work awaiting the cannoneers when they got to their next position. For the infantry, however, the exhausting foot march remained a staple. The World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle captured the essence of the infantry foot march near the end of the fighting in Tunisia: “The men were walking. They were fifty feet apart for dispersal. Their walk was slow, for they were dead weary, as a person could tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies spoke their inhuman exhaustion. On their shoulders and backs they carried heavy steel tripods, machine-gun barrels, leaden boxes of ammunition. Their feet seemed to sink into the ground from the overload they were bearing.”34

The grunt in Vietnam was also no stranger to hard marching. Lieutenant Downs discovered early on how grueling the daily routine of searching for the enemy could be: “My first days on combat patrol introduced me to . . . ten-foot-deep punji pits; wait-a-minute vines that collected around the feet and legs until their combined strength stopped you and you had to say ‘wait-a-minute’ while you untangled or cut yourself loose; the hot sun beating down on us as we marched with seventy-pound packs, the sweat pouring off us; bugs so thick around our faces that we sometimes inhaled them; and the physical agony of forcing tired muscles to keep on going.”35

Downs’s catalog of miseries is if anything incomplete. Grunts also had to wade across rice paddies fertilized with human feces or cross areas covered with tall elephant grass sharp enough to cut the skin. Sometimes soldiers had to hack their way through jungle undergrowth with machetes. They had to stop periodically to remove blood-sucking leeches. Sweat and constant chafing caused painful “crotch rot.” And most important, the grunts could not let these nuisances or their growing exhaustion throw them off guard, because the enemy or his booby traps could strike at any time.36

Further, the infantry soldier, as evidenced by Downs’s almost casual mention of a seventy-pound pack, was more often than not weighed down with an onerous load. The historian Samuel L. A. Marshall is one of the few observers of the soldier’s condition to note, and criticize, the army’s tendency, even if wellmeant, grossly to overload the infantry soldier in an effort to ensure that he had everything needed to fight and survive.37 Soldiers regularly carried seventy pounds or more. Radio operators, machine-gun crews, and mortarmen carried an even heavier load.38

And although the army could tell the soldier what he was supposed to carry, what he actually kept once in the combat zone was another matter. The infantryman quickly learned to lighten his load by discarding nonessentials. Doughboy Joseph Lawrence and his Thirtieth Division conducted a forced march into Belgium shortly after arriving in France in 1918. The troops, out of shape after a long sea voyage and sweltering in the July heat, sneaked away from their bivouac sites that evening to hide or bury what they did not want to carry the next day, when the march was to continue. The officers noticed that the local inhabitants were suddenly in possession of all manner of doughboy equipment. They then “made an investigation and found that practically all the men had thrown away everything but their guns, the clothes they wore, and their overcoats— which they used to sleep under.”39

During Operation OVERLORD, the World War II invasion of France, the paratroopers who jumped into Normandy the evening before D-Day were almost as overloaded as the troops who assaulted the beaches the next morning. Like Lawrence and his fellow doughboys, however, they did not remain so for long. Lieutenant Sefton, jumping in with the 101st Airborne Division, was separated from his unit but soon caught up with it by following “the trail of discarded equipment, primarily gas masks” (except during World War I, when gas attack was common, the mask was the first thing to go).40

Leaders learned, as they gained combat experience, to allow the soldier to lighten his load, if not during a march behind the lines then at least when going into combat. Even a relatively light combat load, however, still tipped the scales at thirty to forty pounds, given the weight of a weapon, ammunition, grenades, helmet, canteen, entrenching tool, clothing, first aid packet, and some emergency rations.41

Knowing what to keep and what to discard or leave behind in the supply truck came only with experience, and Marshall has pointed out that it came at a price: “Many will say, I know, looking back to their own experience in battle, that troops learned automatically to discard the things that they did not need, and that therefore there is no problem. That may be true. But they only gained this kind of wisdom by hard experience, and it is invariably in the first battle that the greatest damage is done.”42

Aggravating the problem was the fact that the inexperienced soldier facing his first battle often voluntarily overloaded himself. Marine lieutenant Tony Balsa describes the green soldier’s tendency to load up on ammunition in the Pacific in World War II: “Just the thought of running out of ammunition made you feel uneasy: you’d have an empty rifle. Actually, a problem for some of the new guys was carrying too much. Too many clips, or grenades. You had to balance the needs of fighting with getting overloaded.”43 Then there was the case of “Peewee” Budny in Leon C. Standifer’s rifle platoon in France in World War II, who prior to his first battle “looked like a Mexican bandit,” with bandoliers of rifle ammunition draped across his chest and a grenade stuffed in every pocket. His comrades persuaded him to put most of the extra ammunition back.44 The green soldier in the Vietnam War acted much the same. When the marines in Richard E. Ogden’s rifle platoon, on the day prior to landing at Danang (an amphibious landing that they had been falsely told might be opposed by the Viet Cong), drew their ammunition, he noticed that “many tried to get more than the regular allotment of ammunition and grenades.”45

Thus the soldier, through his own volition or the directives of his superiors, marched with a staggering amount of weight. On reaching his destination, he found little respite, given the work required to establish a defensive position and remain vigilant for the enemy. Surely the exhausted soldier at least got a chance to rest when his unit was in reserve or undergoing training? As a general rule, he did, but he also found himself doing construction work, stevedoring, graves registration, and battlefield salvage when the support troops normally assigned those duties were in

short supply. These chores were not only strenuous but also demoralizing —such work did not befit warriors.

The African-American soldiers of the 369th Infantry Regiment, on arriving in France in January 1918, expected to be rushed to the front. Instead they drained swamps, built railroads, and constructed warehouses as part of the effort to build up the AEF logistics base at the port of St. Nazaire. Major Arthur W. Little, who later commanded a battalion in the 369th, noticed a sharp drop in morale: “This pick and shovel work was most destructive of the morale of men who had enlisted to fight.”46

Even near the front lines, doughboys found themselves detailed to noncombatant duties. Lieutenant Lawrence and his infantry platoon were told that they had to clean up the very battlefield they had just fought on: “Of all jobs that a soldier hates, that of policing—picking up trash—takes first place, and on October 21 [1918], while still in the valley, our pride was much hurt by being ordered to police the battlefield over which we had fought the first day of our heavy fighting.”47

During World War II in the Pacific, especially early in the war, combat troops performed noncombatant jobs because sufficient support troops were unavailable. Leckie and his fellow marines on Guadalcanal were exhausted from working by day at Henderson Airfield, the island’s critical link to the outside, and defending against the Japanese by night: “We hated working parties. We were weak from hunger. We manned the lines at night. By day, they formed us into working parties and took us to the airfield.”48 One of the most common, and hated, jobs that combat soldiers in the Pacific theater performed was unloading supply ships, usually in brutal heat and humidity. Private Arliss Franklin’s attitude was typical: “That kind of work is not why I’d joined the Corps.”49

GIs in the Korean War were not exempt from hard labor, either. During the static warfare common to the last years of the fighting, units rotated from the front line were put to work digging trenches and bunkers for a second or third line of defense. The American soldier has never been known for his enthusiasm for shovel work, and the Korean War GI was no exception. Lieutenant Matthias and his marine rifle platoon discovered that being in reserve “was not . . . any vacation,” because in addition to training and camp chores, they also had to dig a new trench line: “Most Marines would rather be ordered on a dangerous patrol than spend the day digging trench line. It was extremely difficult work. Progress was slow and the work was backbreaking.”50

No work detail was more demoralizing than recovering and burying the dead. Soldiers grew accustomed, in varying degrees, to the carnage of the battlefield, but some men never got used to burying their own comrades. Bob Hoffman certainly did not: “In the beginning we had a fear of the dead. We hated to touch them. Some of the hardest experiences of my life were taking identification tags from my dead friends.”51 Doughboys, especially if veterans, found burying enemy dead, or the many horse carcasses common to World War I, far less traumatic but still distinctly unpleasant and arduous. A dead, bloated horse, Hoffman explains, required a hole ten feet square and six feet deep—somewhat smaller if the animal’s rigid legs were chopped off first.52

In part because of the detrimental effect on the doughboys’ morale of having to bury their own comrades, the army moved more quickly in later wars to establish a graves-registration organization. Sometimes, however, graves-registration personnel were unavailable or were swamped with work, and soldiers again had to recover or bury the bodies of their comrades. Rifleman Robert Kennington volunteered, along with several others, to recover the bodies of five men from their company hastily buried earlier during combat on Guadalcanal. The bodies, wrapped in ponchos, were badly decomposed: “We were puking. It was terrible. After a while we got everyone out. The flesh did not adhere to the bones. We could really only get the bones out. Having in your mind what the guys looked like alive, and then seeing this was horrid.”53

Even when the graves-registration system worked efficiently, the task of recovering friendly dead still befell the frontline troops if the bodies were under enemy observation and fire. Martin Russ recounts a “snatch party” during the Korean War, in which he and several others successfully recovered a dead marine killed in front of the friendly trench line.54 Matthew Brennan and his fellow grunts in the aerorifle platoon of an air cavalry troop in Vietnam frequently drew the mission of recovering bodies from crashed helicopters. This work was not only dangerous, since the enemy who shot down the helicopter was usually still in the area, but also grim. On one mission Brennan found “three smoldering bodies” still strapped into their crashed observation helicopter, “staring straight ahead through hollow sockets. The pilot’s jaws were frozen open in a final prayer or a cry for help.”55

From recovering bodies to digging fortifications, the soldier’s workload was burdensome in the best of conditions, but conditions were seldom ideal. The soldier fought and struggled to survive in appalling

climates and terrain, amid gruesome carnage, while hungry and thirsty. The soldier in Vietnam and in much of the Pacific area during World War II toiled in punishing heat and humidity. Much of the fighting in the Pacific occurred in jungle terrain.56 James Salafia described the jungle on New Georgia in the Solomons: “The mud in the jungle had a distinct and powerful smell. A damp, musty, dank smell. The odor was unpleasant, but we got used to it. You did not grow accustomed to the noise. The sounds were constant. . . . And there were the land crabs. Sometimes we thought they were Japs trying to sneak into us.”57

During the seizure of Cape Gloucester on New Britain Island in the Bismarck Archipelago monsoon rains made life sheer misery. Bob Stiles believed that “they should have given us submarine pay for Cape Gloucester; there was more water there than at Coney Island.”58 Soldiers were soaked to the skin for days on end. Mud brought movement to a virtual standstill in an area of the world where roads, bridges, and rail lines were almost nonexistent.

Conditions were similar on the large island of New Guinea. E. J. Kahn slept on the jungle floor, where the ground “is seldom dry and it harbors a vast menagerie of things that crawl and sting.” He and his comrades lost weight in the “continuous heat and humidity.” The perspiring troops were constantly thirsty, but safe drinking water was at a premium, despite the saturated climate. And Kahn led the relatively comfortable life of a staff soldier. When he saw the combat troops, he realized that he had nothing to complain about: “The men at the front in New Guinea were perhaps among the most wretched-looking soldiers ever to wear the American uniform. They were gaunt and thin, with deep black circles under their sunken eyes. They were covered with tropical sores and had straggly beards. They were clothed in tattered, stained jackets and pants. Few of them wore socks or underwear. Often the soles had been sucked off their shoes by the tenacious, stinking mud.”59

Kahn was describing the early days of the New Guinea fighting, when such basic items as uniforms and boots were in short supply. But even in Vietnam, where supplies were generally adequate and more easily delivered, if only because of the helicopter, conditions remained taxing, to say the least. Lieutenant Caputo describes how the combination of heat and humidity could literally kill: “The mercury level might be 98 degrees one day, 110 the next, 105 the day after that; but these numbers can no more express the intensity of that heat than the reading on a barometer can express the destructive power of a typhoon. The only valid measurement

was what the heat could do to a man, and what it could do to him was simple enough: it could kill him, bake his brains, or wring the sweat out of him until he dropped from exhaustion.”60

Vietnam, like much of the Pacific area, was visited by monsoons. Charles Strong, a machine gunner in the Americal Division, reported that “it rained for 15 days and 15 nights continuously. We started catching cramps and charley horses. And guys’ feet got messed up.”61 Contrary to the popular image of sweltering jungle heat, the arrival of the monsoons, combined with cooler temperatures and brisk winds in the highlands of Vietnam, left soldiers shivering in water-filled foxholes. Marine captain Richard D. Camp was “surprised by how cold it got. My blood had been thinned out by the long months of heat, and then it got cold and windy and wet. I was usually chilled to the marrow and, right off, the docs were treating Marines who had come down with all kinds of colds and winter diseases.”62

Even colder and wetter were the GIs fighting in the rugged mountains of Italy during World War II. The Germans, skillfully defending from prepared positions, made life dangerous, but for Lieutenant Harold L. Bond, a mortar platoon leader, the weather was an even greater enemy: “I knew for certain the worst part of the war was not the shooting or the shelling—although that had been bad enough—but the weather, snow, sleet, and rain, and the prolonged physical misery which accompanied them.”63 Klaus H. Huebner, a surgeon marching with his infantry battalion, could not have agreed more: “Along the higher ridges wind whips up the steady rain and chills you to the bone. The rain has soaked through my coat and all my clothing. I feel miserable. As the column momentarily comes to a halt, I sit down on the trail in a puddle of water six inches deep. I no longer care what happens or what I do. I have never felt lower in my life.”64

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