The Magnificent Infantry of WW II

The Army deployed 65 infantry divisions for the Second World War. Each was a small town with its own equivalents for community services within 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.

These civilians become warriors confronted the most dismal fate of all whose duty was uninterrupted by missions completed or a fixed deployment time. The infantryman was enveloped within a most deranged, barbaric, and brittle existence against a resolute enemy where victory often required actions pushing beyond prior limits for impossibility. Except for the Purple Heart and the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge, recognition often eluded these common men become citizen soldiers because, so few came through to testify to the valor of the many.

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, arthritis, etc. Many never returned to duty. In the jungles of the Pacific, non-combat losses often exacted a 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.”

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.)

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 Total casualties greater than 34,000

National 4th Infantry (IVY) Division Association http://www.4thinfantry.org/content/division-history Total casualties of 34,000

29th Infantry Division http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/29th_Infantry_Division_(United_States)

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.”

Churchill, Ike, & The "Epic Human Tragedy" Of The First Wave At Omaha https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-06/churchill-ike-epic-human-tragedy-first-wave-omaha

This is a post I put up every year about my neighbor, Bob.

On observance of Veterans Day...

This is Robert “Bob” Waddell. He is 89 years old. Bob is a good friend, neighbor, and a military veteran of WWII and Korea. Bob is one of the most unassuming and cheerful people you will ever meet, if you ever have the good fortune to do so. Here is his story.

Bob was born in Redlands, CA on 15 September, 1928. He grew up as a child during the midst of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl period of that time. Like so many then, his parents fell victim to the harsh economic situation and the family travelled extensively between California across the Southwest and Midwest earning a living as migrant farm workers ( a whole other chapter worth its its own story). His family remained in California as WWII broke out in late 1941. Bob’s older brother Hal, joined the US Army Air Corps at 18 in early 1944, trained and served as a P-51 fighter pilot in Europe (and later as an F-86 pilot in Korea).

Bob was determined to follow after his big brother and join the military. In October 1944 at the ripe old age of 16 he made his way to the local recruiting station, lied about his age and signed up for the Army Air Corps for flight training. During in-processing, it was discovered that Bob was color blind disqualifying him for training as a pilot. He suddenly found himself attending basic infantry and airborne training at Ft Bragg, NC instead. The situation in Europe and the Pacific was changing rapidly by the time Bob finished his initial training. The Army sent him and some of his fellow trainees to Ft Knox, Ky to train as a replacement tank crewman. Within a few weeks they were pulled out of that training and immediately sent by troop ship for replacement assignment with the Adjutant Generals “school” in London. The war in Europe was rapidly coming to a close as Bob arrived in England.

Spring, 1945. Bob’s first duty assignment on mainland Europe was helping to, as he describes it, “clean up Dachau”. He was part of the post war effort to help bury bodies of dead prisoners left behind by fleeing German SS guards and assisted in repatriating camp survivors. Newly promoted Corporal Waddell then moved from Dachau for a brief stay at Strasbourg, Germany guarding bodies of American soldiers awaiting final burial. He spent the remainder of his time in western France assigned to a Graves Registration detachment with the mission of disinterring hastily buried German war dead for re-burial. His detachment also established designated areas as temporary burial sites for American Dead. This gruesome task came with routinely provided rations of Old Crow and Four Roses whiskey (5 fifths a week) along with the purchase of cheap cognac to gargle the taste of death away. This is also when Bob took up smoking (up to 4 packs a day) to block the smells. Everyone in his detachment sprayed themselves down with DDT at night to mask help the stench of rotting corpses.

As bad as it was to endure such an assignment, Bob did enjoy the occasional pass to Paris and the gourmet meals prepared by the French chef surreptitiously “assigned” to their small group. Soldiers will always somehow find a way for creature comforts.

By January, 1946 Bob was on his way home via troopship. He was discharged from active duty as a Tech-Sergeant in February,1946 and began working in a series of construction jobs in California. He met his first wife, Nancy, and they were married in 1950. Shortly thereafter he received a telegram notifying him of his recall to active duty as a result of war erupting in Korea. Bob reported to his initial duty station and was told he was being assigned to Graves Registration based on his previous military experience. Bob stated emphatically that he would do no such thing (again) and as Bob tells it, “they threatened to throw me in the stockade”. Bob told them, “go ahead, because living in the stockade is far better than digging up bodies”. So, he was assigned to a rifle platoon instead.

After a troopship cruise to mainland Japan, Bob found himself in charge of a 52 man rifle platoon undergoing training for action in Korea. He was subsequently promoted to Master Sergeant and led the platoon without a commissioned officer for the duration of the war. Bob and his platoon went ashore at Inchon, Korea on 15 September, 1950. It was Bob’s 22nd birthday. As American forces moved inland and north up the Korean Peninsula, Bob and a few of his platoon members were temporarily assigned to perform long range reconnaissance patrols to determine Chinese troop movements, unit strengths and activities. His patrol reported numerous large Chinese assembly areas of troops. This indicated a buildup for a future offensive operation to the south into American and U.N. Forces lines.

The Chinese initiated their mass attacks beginning in late October, 1950 through the winter of 1951. Bob’s platoon was a small part of the American and U.N. force that fought against these 300,000 strong Chinese Army human wave attacks. Weather conditions during this time were dismal. Many fell victim to severe frostbite injuries. Bob and his soldiers stacked frozen Chinese and North Korean dead as wind breaks and to provide some cover from small arms fire. Ammunition, food and adequate clothing were in short supply.

He and his platoon fought in numerous fierce small unit infantry engagements on the harsh, mountainous Korean terrain. This included hand to hand combat, artillery barrages and small arms fire. He received, as he described, “minor wounds” several times- once in the leg from rifle fire, several times from artillery shrapnel, and a bayonet wound to his upper shoulder. In one operation, he was blown off a tank he was riding on that hit a mine. He sustained back injuries from that incident that still affect him to this day. On one occasion he single handedly destroyed an enemy machine gun position that had his platoon pinned down. Bob crawled around into a ditch, flanking and shooting the enemy crew in the back. He still has nightmares about that one.

Bob remained with his platoon engaged in combat operations throughout the rest of the war and was finally relieved to be sent home just prior to cessation of hostilities in July, 1953. Of the 52 men originally assigned in Bob’s platoon, only 14 remained by the end of their time there. There rest were either KIA/WIA or became cold weather casualties.

Bob finally returned home to California and picked up where he left off, performing various jobs in construction, sales and factory work. He later attended college and earned a bachelors and masters degree, taught high school for a decade, owned and operated a liquor store, obtained a stockbrokers license and bought/sold investments, worked as a travel agent traveling the world and dealt in commercial real estate. He lost his first wife Nancy to cancer after 48 years of marriage. He married his second wife, Carol, several years later and she too died of cancer here at his current home in Georgetown, Texas. Bob is still quite active, enjoys country and western dancing, belongs to a bowling league, enjoys a good book and still travels from time to time.

Bob says he’s no one special, but he’s pretty special to me and Kathy. The thing is that a lot of us know a “Bob”- a quiet soul, unassuming and of great spirit. A veteran, a good citizen, and a kind, gentle human being that just may have endured hell and lived to tell about it. So, today - remember our veterans, living and dead. Remember our men and women who wore and are still wearing a uniform on our behalf. Remember our “Bobs” and be thankful for them- just ordinary Americans who endured extraordinary circumstances; who pass by you quietly on the street without you knowing the depth of their personal story.

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