Stephen Ambrose, author of popular histories including Citizen Soldier, D-Day and Band of Brothers, specialized in telling the history of war by personalizing it at the grunt level – kind of an historian’s version of journalist Ernie Pyle. If, in the words of Von Clausewitz, generals must deal with “the fog of war”, then men at lower levels must endure the pea-soup variety. General Eisenhower had the relatively simple task of defeating the entire German Army in the west. Lieutenant, then Captain, then Major Richard Winters had the much more difficult job of getting a squad of soldiers across a German river in 1945 to capture some prisoners.What follows is a trio of war stories from the worms-eye view. The only thing they have in common is that the stories all involve fighting men related to this blog’s creator – Sean Rife. He mentioned them briefly in a previous post, but I believe that their stories deserve a somewhat broader telling because they say something about war at the level where it most counts – hugging the dirt, dodging the flak and doing the job.

DAVE RIFE

Sean’s paternal grandfather (and my father), Dave Rife, enlisted in the Army in 1943 because he was about to be drafted anyway. After basic training in the States, he was shipped to England as part of the Allied Expeditionary Force preparing to invade the continent of Europe and defeat the Nazis. Dave was of that contingent of Americans who, according to Limy grumblers was “over-sexed, over-paid and over here”. He was temporarily billeted with a very nice Dover family and the (female) mayor of the village even sent a letter to his mother back in Ohio expressing her pleasure at meeting Dave and spending some time with him discussing classical music – a mutual passion.

Dave did not participate in the Normandy invasion of June, 6, 1944, landing in France later that month. Having avoided the horrors of D-Day, he was subjected to the horrors of the “repple-depple”. This was the “Replacement Depot” where fresh troops were thrust into existing combat units to fill out casualty losses. Replacements were in an almost impossible situation. Separated from the buddies with whom they had endured many months of combat training and, in the process, bonded with, they were sent to new units where they attempted to take the place of other men’s buddies who had been killed or wounded in action. Veterans of these units wanted nothing to do with them on a personal level, believing – with great justification – that the newcomers were 1) not “one of us” and 2) destined to be killed in short order. The general theory was that if a replacement survived a week of combat he would be accepted as an integral part of his squad. A large percentage of them never achieved that distinction.

On Dave’s first day of combat, his unit was given the task of capturing a farmhouse which stood atop a hill commanding the surrounding countryside. In his words, “We ran up the hill and chased the Germans out. The next day, the Germans ran back up the hill and chased us out”. This “advance to the rear” forced the Americans to deal again with an obstacle that had hindered their forward advance the previous day. The Germans had dug anti-tank ditches on the hillside and these ditches had filled with mud over the succeeding weeks. As the Americans maneuvered (i.e. “ran like hell”) down the slope, it was necessary to leap over these ditches and one of the unit’s veterans fell in.The dogface was up to his armpits in a sticky, gooey bog and Dave turned to render assistance. Facing the enemy, he sat on the ground with his legs spread for greater surface contact, extended his hands to the man in the ditch and pulled him out. Seconds later, a German in the farmhouse several hundred yards away fired a shot and hit Dave. The bullet struck him in the upper right thigh, nicked the femur bone in transit and was stopped by a New Testament and Psalms tucked in Dave’s hip pocket. The mud-soaked GI whose life he had perhaps saved, certainly saved Dave’s life by assisting him back to an aid station. Dave never remembered the man’s name or ultimate fate.

Dave’s was a “million-dollar” wound. It rendered him forever ineligible for active combat but produced no long-lasting disability other than a certain degree of discomfort when subjected to long strolls in damp weather. While in hospital, Dave added French to the German and Latin he already spoke, spent some time on garrison duty after release, and went home after VE-Day rather than get shipped to the Pacific to invade Japan.

I have often thought about the young German who shot Sean’s grandfather. I have little doubt that his well-placed round saved Dave’s life and I earnestly hope that he survived the war, went home, married, re-built his life and his country and retired surrounded by a loving family and a respectful citizenry. War generates that type of anomaly.

CHANDLER ROZEAR

Sean’s maternal grandfather, Chandler, was the son of a Decatur, Alabama CPA and the only thing he ever wanted to do was fly airplanes. He enlisted in the Army Air Force in 1943 and was trained as a bomber pilot in B-24′s – twin-engined medium bombers. After flight training he was sent to England and assigned to the Eighth Air Force which conducted daylight bombing raids on occupied Europe and Germany.Pilots, co-pilots and bombardier/navigators were all officers and this fact inspired the cartoon above. Chandler and his crew were understandably concerned when, on arriving in England, they were presented with their aircraft – a four-engine B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber. Chandler told the squadron’s Major that he didn’t know how to fly the plane, but this was dismissed as the kind of grousing air crews typically engaged in. Here’s your plane. Fly it. Drop bombs.

And so they did, but not without first making a standard modification to the plane’s cockpit to correct an oversight of Boeing’s engineers. A slab of steel armor was secured from the squadron’s machine shop and riveted to the underside of both cockpit seats. On more than one occasion, Chandler experienced an ominous “thump!” in the posterior from a fragment of flak and all associated with his progeny may be thankful for his foresight.

The B-17, like all bombers of the time until the introduction of the B-29 in the Pacific, was not a pressurized aircraft. Thus, the plane’s altitude was limited by the ability of the crew to withstand brutally cold temperatures. The movie Memphis Belle notes this condition when the pilot, played by Mathew Modine, urges his crew to insure that their oxygen lines are functioning and they are all wearing gloves so their hands will not freeze to the plane’s steel components. One other factor of flying at high altitude in an unpressurized aircraft is not mentioned in the movie – flatulence. Altitude increases and air pressure decreases. Methane gas in the human gut expands under lesser pressure and seeks an outlet. It finds an outlet. A veritable Missa Solemnis of farts accompanied the aerial warriors on their missions aloft and these trombonic emissions were duly categorized by crew members. The most magnificent expressions were dubbed “Midnight Sheet-Rippers”.

Chandler dropped bombs on Germany during the day because American’s utilized formation flying which better-allowed them to defend the groups against German fighter assaults. They also possessed the Norden Bomb sight which, Americans were told, could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel. The Royal Air Force dropped bombs on Germany during the night because they hadn’t the patience to learn formation flying (which was both impossible and useless at night) and preferred “carpet bombing” over the American’s precision bombing. If German civilians got clobbered in the process, it was of minor concern to those whose families had endured the “blitz”. So American tactics minimized civilian casualties.

Ahem. Rubbish. If an American formation consisted of 100 planes, the only bombardier in the lot looking through his Norden for the pickle barrel was the lead plane. Once he released his bombs, the rest of the formation did likewise under the theory that perceptual lag would be balanced by horizontal velocity and all the bombs would descend into the barrel, destroying pickles and sparing cucumbers. Chandler knew better. No pickle barrel is that big. Nor is any tank factory surrounded by schools, homes and hospitals.

Bombing missions consisted of Primary Targets, and Secondary Targets which were attacked if the Primary was concealed by clouds. If the Secondary was also concealed, crews sought out “targets of opportunity”. Chandler and his crew were in agreement that the Reich’s agricultural assets were suitable targets and trained themselves to identify fields of brussel sprouts. They would discharge their bomb load on the loathsome vegetables at every opportunity. Failing even that, the planes were required to drop their bombs in the English Channel because bringing them back to the squadron’s base was malum prohibitum. The nasty buggers had the habit of exploding during rough landings, which constituted 100% of all landings.

At war’s end, Chandler returned to Alabama, married and became a flight instructor for civilians wishing to learn how to fly. He enrolled at the University of Alabama (Roll, Tide!) under the G.I. Bill and earned a degree in aeronautical engineering. You can visit the school in Tuscaloosa today and peruse the list of Top Engineering Students for each year of the school’s existence and find his name on the plaque. Coincidentally, Sean’s second cousin Mark earned a spot on the plaque in the mid-ninety’s.

WESLEY WENDT

Sean’s maternal grandmother believed, for most of her childhood, that a grateful citizenry hung out their flags each June 14^th in honor of her war-hero father’s birthday. Actually, it was Flag Day, a holiday which gradually fell into disuse after World War I. But Wesley Wendt was a genuine war hero and his little joke was not too hard for an impressionable young daughter to believe.

Wesley was typical of the young men about whom it was asked, “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?” He enlisted in the Army shortly after America entered the Great War, his motives being a large degree of patriotism and hatred of the Hun along with an unknown measure of desire to escape a future spent staring at the rear end of a plow mule. He did, in fact, see Paris, but spent most of his time in France in the region of Pouilly on the Meuse River. During his brief sojourn he was awarded our nation’s third-highest award for valor; the Silver Star.

Upon his return to civilian life Wesley taught himself the basics of the burgeoning technology of electronics. He made his living as a researcher for, among others, General Electric and was awarded a patent (owned, sadly, by his employer) for a silent light switch that utilized a drop of mercury to make the electrical connection. It replaced push-button light switches and was the standard silent switch for generations. He and his wife Viola raised two daughters, born thirteen years apart.

Wesley suffered from what would today be diagnosed as clinical depression and took his own life in 1955. In his will (scrupulously brought up-to-date prior to his suicide), he bequeathed the silver star and ribbon to his eldest grandson, Tim. In doing so he passed over, not only his wife of many years, but his daughters as well. It was probably a reflection of his and his era’s belief that war and things military held no interest for womenfolk and a male descendant was a more appropriate receiver. Regardless, as I grew older, I wondered what my grandfather had done to earn this coveted decoration. All the family knew was that it had something to do with laying a telephone line across no-man’s land during an artillery barrage. Details were non-existent and the award lay in my sock drawer for many years.

Over time, as I learned a bit more about military activities, I frankly wondered why this act – which certainly required tremendous bravery – would be considered so distinguished as to merit so high an award. It was an activity which was probably carried out nightly by all armies. Frankly, our nation’s third-highest decoration for valor seemed just a bit high.

In the early ’80′s my aunt called and told me that the Department of the Army was sending her a copy of her father’s award citation and she wanted to frame it along with the award itself. I sent the medal and ribbon to her immediately. When the citation arrived, she called to tell me that the document merely confirmed what we already knew.

About a year later, when Sean was four, we visited my aunt’s home and I asked to see the display she had created. The family went into the living room and I read the citation. The mystery was solved. As my aunt had told me, the citation noted that Wesley had laid a telephone line across no-man’s land under heavy fire. But the citation gave the date as the night of November 10/11, 1918. When he volunteered for the job, Wesley and every other soldier in every army in the world knew that the armistice would go into effect at 11:00 Paris time on November 11, 1918. He didn’t win the Silver Star for laying a telephone cable; he won it because he volunteered to be the last American soldier to die in World War I.

This piece was written over the Memorial Day weekend, 2008. The men of Sean’s family who fought for their country did not have to pay the ultimate price which duty can exact in war, thus, Memorial Day is not for them. But they faced the possibility of death – with a better outcome than those who fell and whose memory we honor in May. Veteran’s day is November 11 and, as older readers will recall, it used to be called Armistice Day until another generation of young Americans came forward to risk death in a good cause.

One American veteran of World War I remains alive and the number of veterans of World War II diminishes daily. A prayer of thanks, for those so inclined, is due those whom we remember in May. And in November, I will call my father, Dave (Chandler passed away in 2002), and thank him for saving the world.