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James Wright - Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of Americas Wars and Those Who Fought Them

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Book:
Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of Americas Wars and Those Who Fought Them
Author:
James Wright
Publisher:
PublicAffairs
Genre:
Books / Politics
Year:
2012
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At the heart of the story of Americas wars are our citizen soldiersthose hometown heroes who fought and sacrificed from Bunker Hill at Charlestown to Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, and beyond, without expectation of recognition or recompense. Americans like to think that the service of its citizen volunteers is, and always has been, of momentous importance in our politics and society. But though this has made for good storytelling, the reality of Americas relationship to its veterans is far more complex. In Those Who Have Borne the Battle, historian and marine veteran James Wright tells the story of the long, often troubled relationship between America and those who have defended herfrom the Revolutionary War to todayshedding new light both on our history and on the issues our country and its armed forces face today. From the beginning, American gratitude to its warriors was not a given. Prior to World War II, the prevailing view was that, as citizen soldiers, the service of its young men was the price of citizenship in a free society. Even Revolutionary War veterans were affectionately, but only temporarily, embraced, as the new nation and its citizens had much else to do. In time, the celebration of the nations heroes became an important part of our culture, building to the response to World War II, where warriors were celebrated and new government programs provided support for veterans. The greater transformation came in the wars after World War II, as the way we mobilize for war, fight our wars, and honor those who serve has changed in drastic and troubling ways. Unclear and changing military objectives have made our actions harder for civilians to stand behind, a situation compounded by the fact that the armed forces have become less representative of American society as a whole. Few citizens join in the sacrifice that war demands. The support systems seem less and less capable of handling the increasing number of wounded warriors returning from our numerous and bewildering conflicts abroad. A masterful work of history, Those Who Have Borne the Battle expertly relates the burdens carried by veterans dating back to the Revolution, as well as those fighting todays wars. And it challenges Americans to do better for those who serve and sacrifice today.

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Table of Contents

This book is dedicated to Susan Wright, with love and thanks.
She encouraged and joined me in this every step of the way
as she has in everything I have done now for nearly thirty years.

I also dedicate this work to all of the veterans who have served,
with a special thanks to those whom I have met in the hospitals.
They bear the burden with grace and courage.
They have inspired me and they have enriched me.

INTRODUCTION

Cannons in the Park

THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT Americas wars, those who fought them, and the publics understanding of those experiences. From the American Revolution to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been a significant change in the nature of warfare and in the ways in which this country has approached its wars. I wish to discuss how, over this period of 235 years, Americans have mobilized for their wars and how they have celebrated and looked after those who have fought the nations battles.

The understandings of wars by participants and contemporaries, the evolving concept of the citizen soldier, the perception of the nature and result of the wars, the abstracting of sacrifice and even heroism: all of these influence the view and the treatment of those who have fought. This is at the core of my interests. In his second inaugural address, coming at the end of the bloody Civil War, Abraham Lincoln stressed the nations obligation to all who have borne the battle. This is a standing obligation. Finally, I am concerned about the ways in which our twenty-first-century wars do not fit easily into the historical narrativeand about the consequences of this for those who are fighting these wars.

This book offers the reflections, the meditations, of an American historian. They have been shaped by my reading of history and influenced by my own experiences. The latter may always be true for those of us who write of matters that we have touched personally; here I would make that possibility explicit. The book is neither an autobiography nor a memoir. It begins, nonetheless, with my personal story and military experiences, for they have led me to this subject, and they have inevitably helped to shape my views.

I grew up in Galena, Illinois, an old Mississippi River town that was settled in the early nineteenth century for its lead mines. While the mining continued, Galena evolved as a commercial port. By the first half of the twentieth century, Galena was surrounded by farms and some viable zinc mines, but its days as a center of commerce were behind it. The Galena River tributary into the Mississippi filled in with so much sediment that steamboats could no longer come up to the warehouses and docks. It was and remains a historic town, remembered as Ulysses Grants home at the beginning of the Civil War.

Within days of my birth in August 1939, World War II began in Europe. Though I am technically considered a member of the Depression generation, I believe there should be a special classification for those of us whose early childhood memories are of wartime mobilization rather than of the Great Depression.

In 1940 my father went to work at the Savanna Army Depot, a weapons proving ground and storage depot located some fifteen miles away. In 1943, thirty years old and the father of two, he was drafted into the army. He reported in January 1944, and by August he was in Europe, serving in the 723rd Railway Operation Battalion in the northern France, Rhineland, and central European theaters. Eventually achieving the rank of sergeant, he received Bronze Battle Stars but was not directly involved in any hostile action.

I strain for a memory of his leavingI do have an image of a train, I think at the Burlington Station in East Dubuque, Illinois. He and my mother were both crying. I clearly remember his return from Germany and his discharge in December 1945. He brought me a souvenir, a German military knife. I still have it, but it has been in the back of a drawer ever since I learned the still-painful symbolism of the swastika shining on the handle.

My mother worked during the war in a defense plant that made batteries. I visited her there, a hot and dark place, heavy with black powder, where women sat at long benches doing things that were unclear to me. She would come home aching tired, literally black with the carbon dust, and would soak in the bathtub.

She and my brother and I saved recyclable goods and used ration books and even participated in air-raid drills, with closed shades and all lights turned off. It was a war, but to a five-year-old, it all became part of normal life. I played with metal soldiers and built model airplanesI was very proud of a P-61 Black Widow that I built and painted. I still have photographs of my brother, Bob, and me in military uniforms, one in which we are saluting, another of us holding toy rifles. I am sure my mother sent copies of these to my dad in Europe.

When she was free, my mother would walk with us across the old Green Street bridge to Grant Park. We would play there on the swings, the slide, and the seesaw. Overlooking this playground was the parks small manicured hill. A bronze statue of General Grant stood in the middle of the field on top, facing to the south, with places like Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Appomattox inscribed on the base. A large obelisk stood nearby, dedicated to all from the county who served in the Civil War. By one count, there were more than 2,900 men from a county with an 1860 population of slightly more than 27,000. Several cannons sat on the edges of the hill, war trophies from World War I, the Spanish-American War, and, of course, the Civil War. These were always magnets to children, and I was no exception. We climbed and played on the cannons as much as on the playground equipment.

Later I would learn more about these weapons. The small cannon, a Blakely Rifle, was the first rifled cannon used in battle in the United States when South Carolina batteries fired it on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. The Confederate army used the cannon until near the end of the war, when it was captured by General William Sherman. A Galena Lead Mine Regiment served with Sherman when he took the weapon at Cheraw, South Carolina. At the initiative of one of these Galena veterans, the Blakely found a home in Galena thirty years later, a trophy in the park honoring General Grant.

When we walked to the park, we had to cross Illinois Central Railroad tracks. A one-armed crossing guard stood there in a little booth and would hold up a sign telling pedestrians to stop or proceed. His name was Jake Gunn. He had lost an arm as a young man in a railroad accident, and it seemed natural to learn that he had once met General Grant. Eight other Galenians served as generals in the Civil War, an impressive contribution from a city that then had some 8,000 people. History seemed to hang around.

I had a sense that all of the fathers in Galena were in the armed forces during World War II. Then it seemed that they all came home at once, with a tremendous sense of energy and enthusiasm. Except for those who didnt return. Of the 798 Galenians who served during the war, 18 died, a substantial sacrifice for a small town then of 4,100 people. The 1940 census recorded that there were only 580 males between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four living in Galena. A number of the men who served and those who were casualties obviously were from nearby farms and rural communities, identified as Galenians but not counted there for census purposes. By any count, of those who had gone to war, many had made the ultimate sacrifice.

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