{"id":2130,"date":"2014-12-04T18:34:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-05T00:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=2130"},"modified":"2014-12-04T18:34:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-05T00:34:00","slug":"a-perspective-on-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=2130","title":{"rendered":"A Perspective on War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading Rick Atkinson\u2019s account of World War II on the European continent, titled The Guns at Last Light<\/em>, I am struck by how different subsequent wars have been and how public attitudes on warfare have changed.\u00a0 Given that the American people have apparently embraced the notion that sending American troops into battle is okay, so long as no one on our side gets hurt.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost as if John Douglas, the 9th<\/sup> Marques of Queensberry, came back to life and rewrote the rules of war.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that The Korean War, the Vietnam War, and recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have not been sad affairs, with much heartbreak for the mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, and children of those killed or wounded.\u00a0 However, a comparison of the length of World War II and the number killed and wounded in that war, versus the duration of the Korean War and the Vietnam War and the number of Americans killed and wounded in those wars presents a sharp contrast.<\/p>\n

For example, in the 3 years, 9 months, and 11 days of U.S. involvement in World War II, the U.S. suffered 1,078,160 casualties, with 407,320 dead and 670,840 wounded.\u00a0 In the 3 years, 1 month, and 2 days of the Korean War, the U.S. suffered 157,530 casualties, with 54,250 dead and 103,280 wounded.\u00a0 While in the 16 years, 4 months, and 29 days of the protracted Vietnam War, the U.S. suffered 211,450 casualties, with 58,150 dead and 153,300 wounded.\u00a0 The Korean War produced casualties at the rate of 140 per day, the Vietnam War produced casualties at the rate of 35 per day, while World War II produced casualties at the rate of 800 per day.<\/p>\n

World War II was a \u201cmeat grinder\u201d of men and machines.\u00a0 While allied ground forces were still slogging their way through eastern France, approaching the Rhine River, things were not going well in the skies above.\u00a0 During the first three months of 1944, the United States lost nearly 800 heavy bombers to German anti-aircraft fire and fighter-interceptors.\u00a0 During the summer of that year the U.S. Eighth Air Force lost another 900 heavy bombers.\u00a0 During the first six months of 1944, out of every 1,000 bomber crewmen, the U.S. lost 712 killed or missing and 175 wounded\u2026 a casualty rate of 89 percent.<\/p>\n

With the open fuselages necessary to accommodate waist gunners, temperatures inside the planes plunged to -60\u00b0 F.\u00a0 Frostbite was so prevalent that plastic surgeons learned to reconstruct burned-away faces and other body parts, sculpting new lips from grafted skin.\u00a0 After the lips were tattooed red, the surgeons added tiny black dots to simulate mustache whiskers.<\/p>\n

My father-in-law, Charles A. Jones, flew 51 missions over eastern European targets as a waist gunner on a B-17.\u00a0 Of the 70 men of the 10 seven-man flight crews that started the war together, only he and two others survived the war, a 97 percent casualty rate.<\/p>\n

In the spring of 1942, the U.S. bombing command undertook to inflict terror and chaos by burning German cities to the ground\u2026 cities populated by non-combatant men, women, and children.\u00a0 Atkinson tells us that allied bombers would ultimately drop 80 million incendiary sticks: 22 inch hexagonal rods with magnesium-zinc cases, the contents of which burned for eight minutes at a temperature of 2,000\u1d52 F upon striking the ground or penetrating a building.<\/p>\n

According to Atkinson, one German writer characterized the fire-bombing of Hamburg in the summer of 1943\u2026 an air campaign in which 41,000 Germans were killed and the homes of nearly a million residents were destroyed\u2026 as \u201csimulating the atmosphere of another planet\u2026 one incompatible with life.\u201d\u00a0 The massive bombing of Germany and France was an effective military tactic, one that military commanders of 2014 would be loathe to undertake, even when faced by a brutal enemy such as ISIS and the Taliban.<\/p>\n

On the ground, the fighting was intense and unrelenting with staggering losses on both sides.\u00a0 In September 1944 the Germans fired 70,000 tons of mortar rounds and artillery shells at allied forces.\u00a0 In order to maintain an adequate fighting force, Adolph Hitler lowered the draft age to 16 and raised the top draft age to fifty.\u00a0 Yet even that was insufficient to replace the roughly 50,000 Wehrmacht <\/em>soldiers killed each month.\u00a0 Atkinson reports that soldiers confined to hospital beds often tore open their wounds during the night in order to avoid being sent back to the front.<\/p>\n

As the casualty figures mounted, young American men were no less averse to serving in the military.\u00a0 Atkinson writes that, \u201c\u2026 the War Department had predicted that the infantry losses would amount to 64 percent of all casualties.\u201d\u00a0 The forecast was much too conservative.\u00a0 By December 1944, the actual figure was 83 percent\u2026 In January 1944, the Army had estimated a need for 300,000 replacement infantrymen worldwide that year.\u00a0 The actual number was 535,000, nearly double the original estimate.<\/p>\n

Atkinson tells us that, \u201cTo swell the ranks, the Selective Service exemption for fathers was belatedly abolished: one million would be drafted in 1944-45.\u201d\u00a0 The average age of draftees climbed from twenty-two in 1940, to twenty-six in 1944, and many new privates were over age thirty-five.\u00a0 A ban on shipping eighteen-year-olds overseas was rescinded in August 1944, and induction standards for \u201cphysically imperfect men,\u201d already loosened, were further reduced in October.\u00a0 A three-page primer advised examiners how to detect malingering, including feigned epilepsy, bed-wetting, and tachycardia, \u201cinduced by ingestion of drugs such as thyroid extracts.\u201d\u00a0 The primer suggested that would-be draft dodgers \u201cmay shoot or cut off their fingers or toes, usually on the right side, and that some may put their hands under cars for this purpose.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was called to take my pre-draft Army physical at age 18, during the closing months of the Korean War, three of the draftees who took their physicals on the same day held small bars of Ivory soap in their armpits for several hours before being examined.\u00a0 As a result, they all developed low-grade fevers.\u00a0 They were sent home and none were ever called to duty.<\/p>\n

In the ground war in Europe, as Eisenhower\u2019s troops fought their way across Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, they had no idea what was in store for them during the coming winter.<\/p>\n

Atkinson writes that, on the morning of December 16, 1944, as American GIs on the front line dug in deeper using steel helmets and canteen cups as entrenching tools, their commanders thought that it was \u201cjust another day at the office.\u201d\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t \u201cjust like any other day;\u201d the German bombardment with infantry and artillery fire represented the first day of the month-long Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes.\u00a0 As Atkinson reports, \u201chours would elapse before American commanders realized that the opening barrage was more than a feint\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly before 6:00 AM on Sunday, December 16, German panzers rolled into Honsfeld, in Belgium, finding cold and exhausted American GIs asleep inside buildings, their vehicles parked in the road outside.\u00a0 The atrocities began as eight GIs were rousted outside in their bare feet, dressed only in their underwear.\u00a0 As Atkinson described the scene, the Americans shouted, \u201cKamerad<\/em>, I surrender.\u201d\u00a0 Nevertheless, the eight were lined up in a street and gunned down with machine gun fire.\u00a0 Five others emerged from a house with a white flag; four were shot and the fifth, pleading for mercy, was crushed beneath the tracks of a panzer tank.<\/p>\n

At nearby Bullingen, a number of GIs \u201chiding in a cellar, strangled their pet dog to keep her from barking, but two hundred other men were rounded up.\u00a0 Before being marched to prison cages in the rear, GIs were forced to fuel the German panzers with jerricans\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Ten hours later, in the town of Malmedy, ten miles west of Bullingen, 140 men of Baker Battery, 285th<\/sup> Field Artillery Battalion, stopped for lunch.\u00a0 After resuming their ordered retreat, at the crossroads hamlet of Baugnez, Baker Battery was confronted by the panzers of SS Colonel Joachim Peiper.\u00a0 For two minutes, the Germans peppered the GIs with machine gun and tank fire.\u00a0 A few GIs were killed, some ran and hid in the woods, but more than 100 were captured.<\/p>\n

At approximately 2:15 PM, German machine guns fired on the captives as they stood with their hands still in the air.\u00a0 As one survivor, PFC Homer D. Ford, described the massacre, \u201cAt the first outbursts of fire everyone fell to the ground, including myself.\u201d\u00a0 He went on to describe how, for two minutes, gunfire tore into the \u201cwrithing, bleating ranks.\u201d\u00a0 Then SS men stalked through the bloody pile, kicking groins and\u2026 with the fatal verdict, \u201cDa kriegt nach einer Luft!\u201d<\/em> (This one\u2019s still breathing)\u201d\u2026 firing pistol shots into the skulls or hearts of those still alive.<\/p>\n

It was the first day of fighting in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, the bloodiest single month in the history of modern warfare.\u00a0 According to post-Bulge estimates, the number of U.S. battle casualties in the 41 days between December 16, 1944, and January 25, 1945, came to 105,000, with 19,246 dead.\u00a0 Of all of the U.S. casualties in World War II, one in ten casualties were suffered in the Battle of the Bulge.<\/p>\n

Although it is impossible to imagine all of the individual tragedies of World War II, a reading of Atkinson\u2019s, The Guns at Last Light<\/em>, should serve as a stark reminder of how truly horrible all-out war is.\u00a0 Nevertheless, we cannot forget that there have always been, and always will be, men like Adolph Hitler, with dreams of world conquest.\u00a0 The jihadists of radical Islam are such a force.<\/p>\n

Such men cannot be permitted to live, and if we Americans are to fulfill our unique role as the last bastion of freedom on planet Earth, we must not hesitate to confront and destroy the forces of evil, such as the Islamic State in Iraq.\u00a0 Like it or not, we have but two choices: we can either allow ourselves to be the victims of radical Islam, or we can choose to be their executioners.\u00a0 It\u2019s as simple as that.\u00a0 In the present conflict the enemy has set the rule of engagement and they are not pretty.\u00a0 So let us pray that our leaders of today and tomorrow will have the courage to do what must be done and the stomach to see it through.\u00a0 Nothing less will do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Rick Atkinson\u2019s account of World War II on the European continent, titled The Guns at Last Light, I am struck by how different subsequent wars have been and how public attitudes on warfare have changed.\u00a0 Given that the American … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2131,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions\/2131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}