John McCain - Thirteen Soldiers: A Personal History of Americans at War

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Also by JOHN McCAIN and MARK SALTER

Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir

Worth the Fighting For: A Memoir

Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life

Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember

Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them

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Copyright 2014 by John McCain and Mark Salter

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2014

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Interior design by Joy OMeara

Interior illustration by Shutterstock

Jacket design by Heads of State

Jacket photographs: First row (left to right): Washington and Lafayette at Valley Forge by John Ward Dunsmore Brown & Bigelow, Inc., Saint Paul, Minnesota; Sam Chamberlain from Massachusetts in the War, 18611865 by James L. Bowen. Published by C.W. Bryan & Co.; Edward Baker United States Army; Lieutenant Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., by Silsbee, Case & Co., 1861, Historical & Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library; Second row: George Roberts, Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society; Tony Waller National Archives; Elton Mackin Elton Mackin Collection, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center; Guy Gabaldon from The Library of Congress; Third row: Chester Pete Salter from the authors collection; Leo Thorsness National Museum of the U.S. Air Force; Mary Rhoads Scott Beveridge, Observer-Reporter; Monica Lin Brown Rafiq Maqbool/AP Wide World of Photos; Michael Monsoor courtesy of the Monsoor family and the U.S. Navy

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCain, John.

Thirteen soldiers : a personal history of Americans at war / John McCain and Mark Salter.

p.cm.

1.SoldiersUnited StatesBiography.2.United States. Army Biography.3.Military biographyUnited States.I.Salter, Mark.II.Title. U52.M392014

355.0092'273dc232014021473

ISBN 978-1-4767-5965-4

ISBN 978-1-4767-5967-8 (ebook)

To the memory of Colonel George Bud Day, USAF;

General James Robinson Risner, USAF;

Admiral Jeremiah A. Denton, USN;

and Captain Edwin A. Schuman, USN.

It was a privilege, gentlemen.

What battles have in common is human: the behaviors of men struggling to reconcile their instinct for self-preservation, their sense of honor and the achievement of some aim over which other men are ready to kill them. The study of battle is therefore always a study of fear and usually of courage; always of leadership, usually of obedience; always of compulsion, sometimes of insubordination; always of anxiety, sometimes of elation or catharsis; always of uncertainty and doubt, misinformation and misapprehension, usually also of faith and sometimes of vision; always of violence, sometimes also of cruelty, self-sacrifice, compassion; above all, it is always a study of solidarity.

John Keegan,

The Face of Battle

EVERY MEMORIAL DAY AT ARLINGTON National Cemetery, soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Brigade place small American flags at the headstones of more than three hundred thousand graves. The headstones bear the names of people of every ethnic origin. They mark the final resting places of professional soldiers and conscripts; of rich and poor; Christian, Jew, and Muslim; believer and nonbeliever; descendants of Mayflower pilgrims and immigrants who had barely arrived in the country before they took up arms to defend her; dark-skinned and white; city dwellers and people from small towns and farms; teachers and machinists; businessmen and day laborers; poets and presidents. People of impeccable character rest here. Scoundrels do too. Most were brave; some may not have been. Some of the dead were celebrated successes in their lifetimes, and some obscure failures. Many here perished in war and never had the opportunity to pursue peaceful ambitions; others died in ripe old age, rich in blessings. Some sacrificed willingly, others resentfully. But all of them sacrificed. And families from every place in America have wept at a graveside here.

War might be a great leveler while it is being experienced, but the millions upon millions of Americans who have gone to war are the most diverse population the country could produce. There is no other profession in all of human endeavor as varied as the profession of arms.

This book recalls the experiences of a single American soldier, sailor, airman, or marine in each of the thirteen major wars our country has fought. We did not attempt to identify the prototypical soldier. No such prototype exists. Not one of the subjects is much like the others. Rather the stories were chosen to represent a particular attribute of their service or condition in their experience of war. Obviously there is some arbitrariness at work here. The conditions illustrated are only a few features in the nature of soldiers and wars. We had only thirteen stories to tell. The intent was to write about things most soldiers in combat will have experienced or witnessed, but even then it is a very incomplete catalogue of commonly shared emotions and experiences.

The subjects hail from different walks of life, though most of them had modest origins, like most soldiers today and in the past. We wanted to represent all four branches of the armed services, as the experience of war can vary from one service to another, though many sensations and situations are common to all.

Many were chosen because they left accounts of their experiences that have survived to the present. Some kept diaries or wrote books or spoke publicly about their wars. A few subjects left little or no record of their service. One subject especially is mostly lost to history; we know where he served and a few incidents from his life and have tried to reconstruct his story informed by the few facts we do know and the experiences of others in the same or very similar circumstances.

We were not looking for thirteen stories of supermen or superwomen. We wanted to write straightforward, honest accounts of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. All thirteen soldiers were brave and sacrificed for our country. There are Medal of Honor recipients among them, and others distinguished by high decorations for valor. Some wore no decoration more proudly than their combat infantry badge. They are not perfectly virtuous. The readers will admire some of our subjects more than others, although all have earned admiration. Soldiers come in all types, from righteous, God-fearing human beings to wantonly cruel scoundrels. None of the stories we elected to recount features a soldier who belongs in the latter category, though one of them identified himself as a rogue and possessed some less than admirable qualities.