William Shaw - Fellowship Of Dust: Retracing the WWII Journey of Sergeant Frank Shaw

Copyright 2005 by William P. Shaw

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 review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquires to William P. Shaw, English Dept., North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695.

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

Design and Production: Wildenradt Design Associates - Evanston, IL

Views and opinions of the author are his alone.

Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the images that appear in this book. The publisher would welcome notice of any errors and omissions.

Permission to quote from Norman Macleans A River Runs Through It, granted by the University of Chicago.

ISBN: 9781662919909

CONTENTS

W illiam P. Shaw has written an unusual biography of an unusual American. On page xiv there is a photograph of his subject, Technical Sergeant Francis E. Shaw, at the celebration of his homecoming from World War II in 1945. The author, age three, sits enfolded in his Uncle Franks arm, momentarily close. In the years that followed young Bill Shaw learned little about his Uncles military experiences, for like many other veterans of infantry combat, Frank Shaw never wanted to talk about the war. His reticence formed a gap in Bill Shaws awareness of which he became conscious only when he was mature enough to appreciate the extent of the debt he owed to Frank Shaw and his generation for their courage, their perseverance, and their simple decency. The author has sought to fill that void with this account of his uncles military service, a tapestry of memories: a factual warp of names, places, and dates interwoven with a weft of recollection.

In 1994, prompted by the 50th anniversary celebration of DDay, Bill Shaw began to borrow time from his teaching for what he terms a work of reconstruction. Over the ensuing decade he quizzed family members for their memories of Frank, culled through publications and photographs portraying the campaigns and personalities of Franks regiment (the 26th Infantry of the1st Infantry Division), collected copies of the few military records of Franks service that had not been destroyed, sought out any veteran he could find who had served with Frank, and twice went to Europe to visit Franks battlefields. His objective was to write not a classic military history, but rather to narrate a coherent, personal, human response to the events in which his uncle had participated. Where his sources left him uninformed, he resorted to the the unscientific, best-guess approach. If his account is not definitively descriptive, it is engagingly evocative of the experiences of an average American who expended his youth in the service of his country, and thereby marred forever his declining years.

Frank Shaw was twenty-five years of age when, in 1941, he was drafted into the Army and trained as an infantryman. He was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division, and to the 26th Infantry Regiment, a much decorated Regular Army unit then commanded by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr., a redoubtable leader who had also commanded that regiment at the end of World War I (Roosevelts autobiographical account of the 26th Infantry of 1917-1918 is entitled Average Americans). Over the five years that Frank Shaw served in the ranks of one rifle company (Company E) of the 26th Infantry, his regiment won a Presidential Unit Citation, two awards of the French Croix de Guerre with Palm (Kasserine and Normandy), the French Medaille Militaire (Streamer embroidered FRANCE, and Fourragere), the Belgian Fourragere, and was cited in the Order of the Day of the Belgian Army for action at Mons. Sergeant Shaw himself was awarded the Silver Star and Bronz Star; he also earned the Purple Heart, but his record does not reflect its having been awarded.

Frank Shaws harsh personal experiences stemmed from serious flaws in the U.S. Armys manpower planning that centered on training replacements as individuals and shipping them overseas: that concept for sustaining ground combat units like the 26th Infantry Regiment was manifestly bankrupt by 1945, both in failing to provide infantrymen of required quality and quantities, and in forcing men like Shaw to serve year after year with diminishing probability of surviving. Dwindling numbers of experienced soldiers within a rifle company like Franks Co E, 2/26 Infantry attenuated its combat efficiency, and impaired its ability to absorb increasingly young, ill-prepared replacements; the spiraling decline in effectiveness that eventuated could only be offset by heroic leadership, itself increasingly rare. Fortunately for this nation, the Germans reached the end of their human resources before we did.

At its peak strength in 1945, the Army had over eight million soldiers; of these, some two million were serving in ground combat units. But the infantry regiments had been suffering most of the losses. Of 948,574 Army casualties (KIA, WIA, and POW), infantry units sustained 70% of the total: 66% of those killed and 79 % of those wounded. When Frank Shaw was reclassified from MIA to POW on the U.S. Armys rolls, 47 infantry regiments in 19 of its divisions had suffered between 100 to 200 per cent casualties (killed, wounded, missing). The authors description of Sgt. Shaws actions during the ghastly battle in the Hrtgen Forest underscores the fact that his capture disproportionately depleted the strength of Company E, for he was among the very few experienced leaders remaining in the unit able to teach green replacements how to fight and how to survive.

But Sergeant Frank Shaw was more than an exceptional survivor among the noncommissioned officers of his regiment. The author presents him as representative of leaders of all the infantry regiments that fought in all the theaters of World War II, an American Odysseus the ordinary man on a mission of extraordinary historical significance, redefining himself and changing the course of events through suffering, courage, and perseverance.

Sergeant Shaws story is one that deserved to be told.

General Paul Gorman, USA (Ret.)

Quotes from correspondence with the author.

Adjutant General, Battle Casualties of the Army, 1 July 1946. Weigley, R.F. History of the United States Army. Macmillan Company, New York, 1967. 438.

You like to tell true stories, dont you? [my father] asked, and I answered, Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.

Then he asked, After you have finished your true stories sometime, why dont you make up a story and the people who go with it? Only then will you understand what happened and why. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.