Rachel S. Cox - Into Dust and Fire: Five Young Americans Who Went First to Fight the Nazi Army

FIVE YOUNG AMERICANS WHO WENT FIRST
TO FIGHT THE NAZI ARMY

NAL CALIBER

Published by New American Library, a division of

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2,

Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

New Delhi 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632,

New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,

Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published by NAL Caliber, an imprint of New American Library,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, April 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Rachel S. Cox, 2012

Maps by Gene Thorp

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

NAL CALIBER and the C logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Cox, Rachel S.
Into dust and fire: five young Americans who went first to fight the Nazi army / Rachel S. Cox.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-1-101-57997-8

1. Great Britain. Army. Kings Royal Rifle CorpsHistory20th century.
2. World War, 19391945Participation, American. 3. Great Britain. Army.
Kings Royal Rifle CorpsBiography. 4. SoldiersUnited StatesBiography.
5. AmericansEnglandBiography. 6. SoldiersEnglandBiography.
7. Great Britain. ArmyHistoryWorld War, 19391945. 8. World War,
19391945Regimental historiesGreat Britain. 9. Military service,
VoluntaryUnited StatesHistory20th century. 10. Foreign enlistment
EnglandHistory20th century. I. Title.

D760.K68C68 2012

940.541241092313dc23 2011046869

Set in Berkeley Oldstyle Std

Designed by Ginger Legato

Printed in the United States of America

PUBLISHERS NOTE

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For my father, Max Cox, who planted the writing seed, and
for my husband, Glenn Berger, the rainmaker

You may be certain that we shall prove ourselves ready to suffer and sacrifice to the utmost for the Cause, and that we glory in being its champions. The rest we leave with confidence to you and to your people, being sure that ways and means will be found which future generations on both sides of the Atlantic will approve and admire.

Winston Churchill, letter to Franklin Roosevelt upon his election
to a third term as president, November 1940

If you have never yourself had the experience of feeling that you are yoked to the great steam engine of history, then allow me to inform you that the conviction is a very intoxicating one.

Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22

W hen I was growing up in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, strangers occasionally approached my father on the subway and asked him flattering questions, such as Are you Paul Newman? He had the arresting blue eyes and strong, regular features of the actor, but was taller, rangier. Thus, You look like the Marlboro Man. Have you ever been in commercials? His were the iconic sort of good looks that used to be called all-American. His four brothers and two sisters had them too.

But their all-American aura extended beyond looks. They belonged to a distinguished American family of a kind the world has now acknowledged bore little resemblance in reality to America at large, in the same way that movie stars were not representative of actual humans. Or perhaps they were, if we remember that Michael Douglas would bear a quite different surname if his father, another fair-haired boy with strong bone structure, hadnt changed his own name from Issur Danielovitch to Kirk Douglas.

Illusion or no, within my fathers family circle when I was young, we breathed the air of American righteousness, and America was us. No one pretended the American government was always right. Indeed, as the Vietnam War unfurled its bloody battle flags across our television screens, blind allegiance became more and more suspect. But we believed that the foundations were sound. The government went astray when it lost track of its principles. And these principles were exemplified in our family stories.

Consider my great-great-great-great-grandfather Roger Sherman, also known as the great compromiser, who saved the Constitutional Convention by proposing a bicameral legislature with one house apportioned according to state populations, the other fixed in size, and the only American to sign all four of the countrys founding documents. Or his son-in-law Jeremiah Evarts, who led the Christian crusade to stop Indian resettlement and fought against the terrible Indian Removal Act of 1830 until the day he died. His son, the lawyer William M. Evarts, successfully defended President Andrew Johnson when he was impeached, represented Lincolns Republican Party as counsel for Rutherford B. Hayes in the disputed election of 1876, and went on to become secretary of state and then senator of New York.

My favorite was a story of principled heroism and the Civil War. At his Princeton commencement in 1863, my great-grandfather Rowland Cox, a Pennsylvania Quaker, listened to the college president as he contended that all loyal sons of Princeton would go forth and fight for the noble Confederate cause. Afterward, Great-grandfather Cox, as my grandmother told it, went back to his room, packed his bags, and that very night, before leaving, pushed a note under the college presidents door. To hell with you, it said, Im off to join the Union Army.

Their accomplishments seemed to promise, even require, great things from the rest of us, though admittedly from boys more than girls, and to a surprising degree experience bore out expectation. Of my fathers four brothers, the oldest, Archibald, would gain national, even global renown as the Watergate special prosecutor, an icon of moral rectitude, of old-time Yankee honesty and independence. The youngest, Rowland, an Episcopal minister, became headmaster of the high-minded Massachusetts prep school Groton when it was still considered more elite than elitist.