Gerald Astor - The Greatest War, Volume I

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WARNER BOOKS EDITION

Copyright 1999 by Gerald Astor

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Cover design by Jerry Pfeifer Flag photo by Philip James CorwinInset photo by Bettman/Corbis

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First eBook Edition: November 2001

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ISBN: 978-0-759-52650-1

MORE ACCLAIM FOR THIS SERIES

If any American doesnt already own a good, comprehensive work on World War II, this is the book he or she should buy.

St. Petersburg Times

Convincing... fascinating.... Astors deep knowledge and the amazing experiences of his subjects come through clearly.

Publishers Weekly

Oral history at its very best.

BookPage

A sweeping, imaginative oral history... succeeds by the thoughtful coupling of a narrative that touches on most of the wars most important engagements with the reminiscences of hundreds of participants.... Astor offers the most salient facts in what otherwise could have been an overwhelming mass of detail. He also turns up some surprises. Invaluable to historians, with much to interest general readers as well.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Will make you feel as though you were there in the midst of the fighting. A moving account... remarkable.

West Orange Times

Strong, effective, absorbing... a genuine tour de force... brilliant text and breathless pace... stimulating and down-to-earth.... My compliments and congratulations go, with great admiration, to Gerald Astor.

Martin Blumenson, author of The Battle of the Generals, from his review in Parameters magazine

Astor succeeds admirably, creating the finest... oral history available of the American soldier in World War II... Well-chosen entries... fast-paced, smoothly flowing narrative.... Astor has written the first oral history to include all of the services and theaters of the war. Highly recommended.

Library Journal (starred review)

A remarkable job of weaving together an extraordinary amount of oral evidence with more traditional narrative, turning out a quite readable seamless treatment of the war... a valuable addition to the literature of the war.

New York Military Affairs Symposium (NYMAS) Newsletter

If you want to buy your grandchildren a gift they will remember, spend the money for this living reference book.

Veterans Voice of Austin

For the late Donald I. Fine

When I told Gen. George Ruhlen that I intended to write a book covering the battles fought by Americans during World War II, he wrote to me, How many pages are you projecting, 5,000 or squeeze it into 3,000? His comment was well taken, for an encyclopedic account of what happened to Americans in World War II would require many volumes and in fact the historian Samuel Eliot Morison produced something on the nature of twenty books covering just the engagements of the Navy and the Marines.

However, my intention was not to cover the war from objective to objective nor was it to describe the details of strategy and tactics. I freely confess that, even in an oversize manuscript, I have omitted many hard-fought battles, units, and individuals who underwent the same hardships, terror, and sorrow, and who, in spite of their ordeals, overcame. Instead I hope to present a sense of what the American fighting man (women in World War II were restricted to clerical and service positions although as the book indicates, some nurses underwent much of what the men did) experienced in terms of what he thought, felt, saw, heard, and tried to do. Words on a page cannot match those moments under fire but by their own voices the soldiers, sailors, and airmen reveal the nature of that war well beyond anything shown in films or TV, except perhaps for Saving Private Ryan. (Even here one might quibble about the premise upon which the story unfolds.)

Having written six books on World War II, I am well aware that eyewitness accounts or oral histories have their weaknesses due to faulty memories, skewed perspectives, and the common human resort to self-service. On the other hand, these same deficiencies also afflict official reports. In his letter to me, George Ruhlen remarked that a friend of his named Brewster commanded a task force whose mission was to regain possession of a crossroads during the Battle of the Bulge. Some 20 accounts were written by historians who were never there, most inaccurate, but only one writer ever contacted Colonel Brewster for his recollection of that action.

I expect there will be some who will dispute an individuals version of some events in this book, but I believe that by relying on as many sources and veterans as I have the essential truth of the experiences is correct. Although many of the sensations and the reactions of those on the scenes seem similarthe most replicated comment was Suddenly, all hell broke loosethere were significant differences from year to year, from campaign to campaign, from area to area.

It was the biggest of all wars and those who fought the battles deserve to be heard.

So many people have shared their memories and experiences with me that I cannot cite them individually. Their words are credited to them in the text and to some extent through Roll Call.

I received special help from Paul Stillwell of the United States Naval Institute in Annapolis; Joseph Caver of the United States Air Force Historical Research Center at Maxwell Field, Alabama; Dr. David Keough at the United States Army History Library at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; the United States Naval Historical Center; Debbie Pogue at the United States Military Academy Library; Jim Altieri; William Cain; Tracy Derks; Len Lomell; Benjamin Mabry; Jason Poston.

Small portions of this book appeared in some of my previous writings on World War II.

This Is Not a Drill!

MARTIN LOW, A TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD FIGHTER PILOT ASsigned to the U.S. Army Air Corps 78th Pursuit Squadron at Wheeler Field on Oahu, recalled, That night, I had too many as usual, woke up about 7:30, and then retrieved the newspaper that had been delivered to my room. I heard the unique sound of a dive bomber. The Navy would often make passes at Wheeler as part of their practice runs but when I looked up and saw the wheels were down I thought, that guy is really in a hurry. Then I saw a 100-pound bomb leave the belly; they used spotting charges to mark their drops and it landed right in the middle of a hangar. I thought, Oh my God, is that guy in trouble. There was a tremendous explosion and at that moment I saw the rising sun insignia on the airplane.

John Alicki, a sergeant with the 53d Antiaircraft Brigade, his enlistment time up and ready to sail to the mainland for civilian life, remembered, On that Sunday morning, they got me up a little early and held me to my promise to go to church. We were entering the church just before 8:00 A.M. when we heard in the distance something like firecrackers. As we went into the church the sound became more audible. When I stepped outside, I saw the red disk emblem on the sides of the planes.