Veteran’s Day: The Magnificent Infantry of WW II

Self | November 11, 2015 | Self

[Retain Mike]

The Army deployed 65 infantry divisions for the Second World War. Each was a small town with its own equivalents for community services plus eight categories of combat arms. Units such as artillery, engineering, and heavy weapons engaged the enemy directly. Yet of all categories, the foot soldier faced the greatest hazard with the least chance of reward. Except for the Purple Heart and the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge, recognition often eluded them because so few came through to testify to the valor of the many. The infantryman confronted the most dismal fate of all whose duty was uninterrupted by missions completed or a fixed deployment time. They were enveloped within the most chaotic, barbaric, and brittle existence against extraordinary enemies where victory often required actions well beyond prior limits for impossibility.

Omar Bradley said, “Previous combat had taught us that casualties are lumped primarily in the rifle platoons. For here are concentrated the handful of troops who must advance under enemy fire. It is upon them that the burden of war falls with greater risk and with less likelihood of survival than any other of the combat arms. An infantry division of WW II consisted of 81 rifle platoons, each with a combat strength of approximately 40 men. Altogether those 81 assault units comprised but 3,240 men in a division of 14,000…..Prior to invasion we had estimated that the infantry would incur 70 percent of the losses of our combat forces. By August we had boosted that figure to 83 percent on the basis of our experience in the Normandy hedgerows.”

Nearly a third of the 65 divisions in the Pacific and European theaters suffered 100% or more casualties. However, their regimental staffs saw frontline units obliterated three to six times over. To deal with this problem there were never enough infantrymen coming from the states, though large numbers were transferred from Army Service Forces and Army Air Forces to Army Ground Forces. Replacement centers overseas continually reassigned artillerymen, machine gunners, cooks, and clerks to infantry duties. The situation in Europe became so severe that rear area units in France and Great Britain were tasked to supply soldiers for retraining as infantrymen. Those suffering battle fatigue came off the line for a few days for clean uniforms, bathing, hot food, and sleep. However, scarcity compelled their repeated return until crippling wounds, mental breakage, death, or victory brought final relief.

For example the 4th and 29th Infantry landed on D-Day and suffered about 500% battle casualties in their rifle platoons during the eleven months until VE-Day. Added to these numbers were half again as many non-battle human wrecks debilitated by trench foot, frost bite, pneumonia, hernia, heart disease, malaria, arthritis, etc. and most never returned to duty. In the jungles of the Pacific non-combat losses exacted an even greater price. But somehow the infantry crossed Europe and the Pacific and always remained in the forefront of attacks.

Ernie Pyle said of them, “The worst experience of all is just the accumulated blur, and the hurting vagueness of being too long in the lines, the everlasting alertness, the noise and fear, the cell-by-cell exhaustion, the thinning of the surrounding ranks as day follows nameless day. And the constant march into the eternity of one’s own small quota of chances for survival. Those are the things that hurt and destroy. But they went back to them because they were good soldiers and they had a duty they could not define.”

Partial bibliography: A Soldier’s Story by Omar N. Bradley Brave Men by Ernie Pyle (the quote named Tommy Clayton, but was generalized here because Ernie Pyle saw him as an example of the infantrymen he loved.) Crusade in Europe by Dwight D. Eisenhower The U.S. Infantryman in World War II by Robert S. Rush Foot Soldier by Roscoe C. Blunt, Jr. Links for Listings of United States Divisions during WW II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_divisions_during_World_War_II http://www.historyshots.com/usarmy/

Army Battle Casualties and Non-battle Deaths in World War II http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/Casualties/index.html

3rd 'Marne' Infantry Division http://www.custermen.com/ItalyWW2/Units/Division3.htm

National 4th Infantry (IVY) Division Association http://www.4thinfantry.org/content/division-history

45th Infantry Division http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45th_Infantry_Division_(United_States)

Remembering the Thunderbirds – Oklahoma’s 45th Infantry Division http://www.baptistmessenger.com/remembering-the-thunderbirds-oklahomas-45th-infantry-division/ Total casualties of 62,640 When Gen. George S. Patton described the 45th Infantry Division, he said it was “one of the finest, if not the finest infantry division in this history of modern warfare.”

[Retain Mike]

I wrote this essay to be my annual contribution to Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day as my way to remember the many extraordinary men who surrounded me growing up. As a young boy though, they seemed common men who behaved as if they had experienced an ordinary rite of passage.

My most often contact with these men started about age nine when my dad began taking me out golfing on the weekends. There was a man who used the first golf cart I ever saw, because as a brigade commander of the 41th infantry in New Guinea he was debilitated by sickness. I remember one fairly good golfer who had kind of a weird back swing. I found out he was crippled while serving with the Big Red One in Sicily. My Economics professor in college served with one of the first UDT teams clearing barricades and mines in the surf zone before Pacific landings. I often ended up as a dishwasher at Michelbook Country Club and noticed the chef always limped as he moved around the kitchen. He saw my puzzled look, and said he got the limp from a wound received when he was with the Rangers at Pointe De Hoc. Those are just a few of the stories I remember among so many others I could tell or have forgotten.

I remain amazed how certain infantry divisions could be chosen repeatedly for initial assaults where they incurred terrible casualties. The corps and army commanders had favorites and somehow division staffs responded to reconstitute and retrain the rifle platoons every few weeks without losing the quality of the assault forces. It seems other divisions were usually sent to less active sectors, entered combat later in time, or occupied a flank in an attack. Again these were the most ordinary of men, so I keep hearing Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man as I read the narratives for this essay.

[skeeter]

The Germans and British rotated their infantry off of the line. As far as I know, the US and Japan were the only countries who kept their guys in the combat zone until they won, or were killed or wounded.

[Jeff Chandler]

My father was a Combat Engineer in the European theater. His unit was repeatedly tasked with sneaking forward ahead of the front line into enemy territory as commandos. They had to take and hold the beachhead on both sides of a river and construct bridges in time for the advancing troops to use. They were considered suicide missions.

As they crossed the bridges, the infantrymen would disparage the engineers as having it easy while they did the "real" fighting.

Once the troops had crossed to the other side, the engineers had to deconstruct the bridges, sneak forward into enemy territory to the next river, and build the bridges again.

The troops did not know they were crossing the same bridges on different rivers. If things had gone bad and a rapid retreat were necessary, they were screwed.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Mike, you are a perceptive, detail guy. Good job with article!

[yarddog]

Daddy was also in the Combat Engineers in the European Theater.

From reading the history of the battalion and what Daddy told me I think his experience was a little different. Typically the Infantry and Armor cleared an area ahead of the Engineers who came right behind repairing roads and bridges.

He respected and liked the Infantry but especially thought Armor was the most dangerous job. I got the impression that the Infantry etc. also respected the Combat Engineers.

For the most part their casualties came from artillery and clearing mines. In fact at times they were losing so many men and machines that they had to work in the dead of night.

There were a few times when they were the tip of the spear, specifically the assault crossing of the Rohr and Rhine Rivers and being left behind during the battle of the Bulge in order to blow bridges after all allied troops had crossed.

[Retain Mike]

Thank you.

[Retain Mike]

One acquaintance I treasure from VFW meetings was a combat engineer in WW II. His battalion got through most of their assignments in Europe without substantial casualties. This one time a good friend of his, who was to rotate out in a couple days, volunteered for an operation involving several companies. The operation did not seem much different from what they had done before. This time though the Germans were waiting for them and just about everyone was a casualty and his friend was killed. All these years later he could not relate the event without a few tears.

[Cvengr]

Great article. One correction.
The largest percentages of casualties in modern warfare has always bee civilians. Similar to the infantry, they are frequently transported by foot in the war zone. Their casualty rates are so high because they aren’t a coordinated fighting force and become cannon fodder.

Evidence of their casualty rates is manifest by refugees from war zones. Refugees generally don’t leave their homes and homelands unless forced to leave, manifesting their slaughter had they remained.

[Retain Mike]

I think there is good evidence for non-combat always exceeding military casualties in war, but then that was not the focus of the piece. I doubt that towns with 14,000 citizens were repeatedly slaughtered and repopulated, which happened to the infantry divisions. Even the Nazis resettled people out of the urban areas which were being bombed and had some measure of success until they were overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands fleeing the advancing Russians.

In World War II it seems the Japanese should get a prize for forcing its citizens into harm’s way. For the coming invasion they drafted able citizens 17-60 years old into the Peoples Volunteer Corps and Home Defense Units to assume infrastructure duties of army units and to stay behind invaders for suicide missions using light weapons and explosives.

How this actually played out can be seen in the Battle of Okinawa for which Japanese have a reverence similar to that of Texans for the Alamo. Though Okinawa was a prefecture of Japan, people on the home islands looked down on the Okinawa citizens. The battle was a chance to prove themselves, and they did to the extent that 149,000 died during the invasion.

Edward Behr in Hirohito describes a Japan that is hard to imagine. A quote by film director Akira Kurosawa illustrates the transformation of that generation of Japanese people, who before were resigned to the slogan “Honorable Death of a Hundred Million”.

“When I walked the same route back to my home (after the Emperor’s broadcast), the scene was entirely different. The people in the shopping street were bustling about with cheerful faces as if preparing for a festival the next day. If the Emperor had made such a call (to follow the above slogan) those people would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self-sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. We were accustomed to this teaching and had never thought to question it….In wartime we were like deaf-mutes.”

World War One with its static fronts would have been an exception if it were not for the Turks. The total is 10,900,000 military compared to 9,000,000 civilian deaths. However, the Eastern relief commissions estimated that 2,000,000 should be added to the total, for badly underestimating the Turkish massacres.

Hirohito, by Edward Behr

The Great Events of the Great War, Vol VII, Charles F. Horne PhD, editor