Understanding World War 2 Combat Infantrymen In the European Theater: Testing the Sufficiency of Army Research Branch Surveys and Infantry Combatant Recollections Against the Insights of Credible War Correspondents, Combat Photographers, Army Cartoonists

By Peter Karsten

Merriam Press World War 2 History. Most scholarship on the American role in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) during World War II has addressed the issues of strategy, campaign outcomes, command leadership, and logistical support. Other research efforts have provided insights into the experiences of the individual combatants. Karsten offers a better grasp of these latter efforts, utilizing evidence that has been underutilized. What he asks in this unique work is whether the media (journalists, broadcasters, combat photographers, cartoonists and artists) in the ETO during WWII significantly improved our understanding of the world of the American infantryman there. 57 illustrations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Merriam Press
• Release date: Nov 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781576385654

Peter Karsten

Peter Karsten, author of numerous books and articles on military, cultural, and legal history, is professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and codirector of the Pittsburgh Center for Social History.

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Understanding World War 2 Combat Infantrymen In the European Theater: Testing the Sufficiency of Army Research Branch Surveys and Infantry Combatant Recollections Against the Insights of Credible War Correspondents, Combat Photographers, Army Cartoonists

Understanding World War 2 Combat Infantrymen In the European Theater: Testing the Sufficiency of Army Research Branch Surveys and Infantry Combatant Recollections Against the Insights of Credible War Correspondents, Combat Photographers, and Army Cartoonists

Peter Karsten

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Bennington, Vermont

2016

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First eBook Edition

Copyright © 2016 by Peter Karsten

Additional material copyright of named contributors.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

The views expressed are solely those of the author.

ISBN 9781576385654

This work was designed, produced, and published in the United States of America by the Merriam Press, 133 Elm Street, Suite 3R, Bennington VT 05201.

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Notice

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

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Dedicated to the memory of Sgt Bill Mauldin.

Acknowledgements

Permission to reproduce tables and graphs from Studies in Social Psychology: The American Soldier, Volume 2 (Princeton University Press, 1948) has been granted by Princeton University Press.

Permission to reproduce cartoons by Bill Mauldin has been granted by the agent of the copyright holder of the Bill Mauldin Estate.

Permission to reproduce photographs of Margaret Bourke-White has been granted by the Scott Meredith Agency.

Every effort, including both Google searches and efforts of the Copyright Clearance Center, has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials of other illustrations in this book, but these efforts have been unsuccessful. The author absolves the publisher of all responsibility in this regard, and both the publisher and the author will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgments in subsequent printings of this book. In the meantime, the author extends his apologies for any omissions.

Introduction: Challenges to Understanding the World of the World War II Infantryman

Most scholarship on the American role in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) during World War II has addressed the large issues of strategy, campaign outcomes, command leadership, and logistical support.[1] Other, generally more recent research efforts have provided insights into the experiences of the individual combatants.[2] In this publication I offer a better grasp of these latter efforts, utilizing evidence that has been underutilized.

In today’s world of combat, with embedded media and virtually instant TV and Twitter reporting, the world of the World War II infantrymen may appear terribly different and distant. And in many ways it was. In World War II the media was not as controlled as in the War in Iraq. Was that better, as Gay Talese has maintained?[3] I leave that for others to ponder. What I ask here is whether the media (journalists, broadcasters, combat photographers, cartoonists and artists) in the ETO during World War II significantly improved our understanding of the world of the American infantryman there.

Unlike those at the Corps, the Division, or even the Battalion level, infantry company commanders, platoon leaders, and their men had a line of sight on the battlefield that was limited, in the best of circumstances, to little more than a few miles (in a valley on a clear day) but was generally less than a thousand yards. And what one saw rarely contained vital information about the enemy. As one signal officer put it, the most striking feature of the battlefield is its emptiness.[4] The objects that killed and wounded — artillery and mortar fragments, bullets — were invisible to the infantryman before he was hit by them, and, as accredited Army war correspondent Andy Rooney put it, a soldier fighting a war knows every intimate detail of the hundred yards around him but that’s about all he does know.

[5]

The infantryman’s grasp of what was happening beyond that line of sight was limited, despite such signals as the battalion HQ provided. But he had a keen appreciation of what was happening within it. Lieutenant Paul Fussell, a platoon leader in the 410th Infantry, 103rd Division, described the difference between those who had served in combat as infantrymen and what he called the feather merchants in the rear echelon: There is the accidental possession of a special empirical knowledge, a feeling of a mysterious shared ironic awareness … about pretension, publicly enunciated truths … and the pomp of authority. Those who fought know a secret about themselves …

[6]

Sources of Answers to the Challenges

How are we to know of the infantrymen’s inner feelings and concerns? How did American infantrymen (dogfaces) experience and comprehend their world in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) during World War II? What did they think of their plight, of enemy’s weapons and their own, of tankers,[7] army air force bombers, medics, officers, rear echelon personnel,[8] replacement depots, combat fatigue and the many civilian refugees the war generated?

These issues were addressed: by combat infantry veterans in their diaries and in letters written from the front; in their recollections later published or recorded in oral interviews. They were also addressed in the reports of journalists covering the warfronts; in the output of combat photographers, artists and cartoonists capturing scenes there; and some of them were addressed in the massive surveys conducted by the Army’s Research Branch (RB) of combatants in the ETO to generate and provide data for the use of division and corps commanders.[9]

The last of these sources of information (the RB surveys) were clearly representative of the Army’s ETO personnel. Many insights into the world of Army combatants can be found in the charts and tables based on those massive surveys,[10] but those creating the questions were not frontline participants privy to the experiences and feelings of the combatants.[11] Hence they did not pose all of what the combatants would have regarded as the relevant questions.[12]

Relying on combatant accounts recollected some time after wartime are useful. Studs Terkel put it this way in his introduction to the memory of the rifleman: This is a memory book, rather than one of hard fact and precise statistic. In recalling an epoch, some forty years ago, my colleagues experienced … a hesitancy at first … followed by a flow of memories … [13] The author has read over sixty such autobiographical accounts and draws upon several of them throughout this essay. But recollections can be at times inaccurate.[14]

Letters written from the front are in this regard more reliable, but censorship precluded open reference to a number of matters that infantrymen either felt they were not to reveal or chose not fully to disclose (such as their opinion of their officers, their opinion of their own and the enemy’s weapons, and of the replacement depots). And the collections of letters accessible in archival holdings may not be representative of the views of the typical dogface. Diaries are a fine source of information, but combatant diaries are uncommon; hence the representative nature of those available would also be in doubt.

What other sources, then, into the mindset of ETO dogfaces are available to us? Only some radio reporters and war correspondents sought out the views of frontline infantrymen; others were after the big picture, and gathered information from those at the highest levels of command.[15] Radio and print reporters, combat photographers, combat artists, and army cartoonists covering those at the Fronts provided on-the-scene insights into the views and experiences of the dogfaces. The best of them were able to communicate their insights to Americans on the home-front in newspaper columns, magazine photos, and cartoons. But these views were initially censored by military officials in the ETO; so some of the more frank statements only appear in the books several of these on-the-spot commentators published in the States during or immediately after the war. Moreover, several of these journalists, artists and cartoonists were clearly less effective or reliable in capturing and communicating the infantrymen’s views of what mattered because they made little or no actual contact with those in the ranks on the Line.

Herein I explore these additional sources of information concerning the infantrymen’s views, compare them to the recollections of the combatants and to the responses to the Research Branch’s questionnaires. I then ask: (1) what the sums of these sources reveal about the dogface’s mindset; (2) which of the on-scene observer sources (journalists, photographers, and cartoonists) were the most consistent with these views and appear to us to have been the most reliable; and (3) what do these observers add to our understanding of the dogface that cannot be found in the Research Branch surveys. I conclude that, while these on-the-scene combatants and observers confirm and reflect a number of the Research Branch survey findings, there are several dimensions of the dogfaces’ mindset that the RB surveys failed to detect, that are only to be found in this on-the-scene historical evidence.

The most commonly noted issues accessible in the recollections and diaries of ETO infantrymen and most of the sources that one can compare them to are the dogfaces’ views: on the enemy’s (and their own) weapons; on tankers, army air force bombers, their