In this army of democracy, you had to feel that all of your soldiers were readers of Time magazine.
George C. Marshall169 The army never reflected American society, unless a centralized, stratified, cohesive, authoritarian institution that has stressed obedience and sacrifice can reflect a decentralized, heterogeneous, individualistic, democratic, capitalist society.
Richard H. Kohn170
Now that we are on the way to having an image of the distance covered by the future dogface soldiers in the course of their recruitment and training in the U.S., it is time to ask the question: what was the resulting mix? What were the elements that produced this different breed of cat that Hilton Riley perceived?
Two factors that shaped the character of the Army of the United States and conveyed it beyond earlier American armies have already been mentioned at the start of this chapter: education and media. On average, U.S. soldiers were better educated than were their fathers, who fought in the trenches of France in 1917/18. As a result, they were on the one hand more self-critical but above all more critical of the institutions,
168 Mansoor, G.I. Offensive, p. 26 ff.
169 Cited in: Reynolds, Rich Relations, p. 80.
170 Richard H. Kohn, The Social History of the American Soldier: A Review and Prospectus for Research, in: The American Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 3 (1981), p. 563.
71
legitimacy and rituals of their army than their precursors in the uniform of the United States had ever been.
An additional factor determining the consciousness of many prospective dogface soldiers was that in the Army, they came face to face for the first time with the sheer size and cultural diversity of the U.S. Geographical mobility was severely limited for the American populace in the 1930s. Many young men had never left their home county until they made the trip to the reception center. It was often the case that they had to pass through a large expanse of territory on the way, becoming aware for the first time of the size of their country. Arriving at the reception center, many of them were overwhelmed by the cultural diversity they discovered. The first encounter with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) from New England, Californian Hispanics, rednecks and sons of plantation owners from the South, hayshakers from rural regions, Irish Catholics from Boston or Chicago and the inevitable Italian-Americans from New York or New Jersey shocked them into an awareness of all that the term
‘America’ could mean.171
In the next section, we will review more of the external and internal factors that can be used to portray the Army of the United States, vintage 1941/42.
Demography of the Army of the United States
The following demographic breakdown of the Army of the United States is limited to two enlisted rank groups. The data refer only to the Army’s junior enlisted soldiers and NCOs. As was stated at the outset, the dogface phenomenon developed exclusively within these two levels; as a result, any inclusion of officers would distort the picture. Data on the situation of African Americans as a group within the Army of the United States will be separately examined later, and these soldiers are therefore not given specific consideration here.
Viewed by ethnicity, the Army quite closely reflects the overall breakdown of American society in the relevant age group of 18 to 44. Puerto Ricans made up 0.5 percent of the ranks, Native Americans 0.3 percent, Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans each 0.2 percent, and Filipinos 0.1 percent. All other nonwhite
171 Reynolds, Rich Relations, p. 84 ff.
72
groups, predominantly Hawaiians and Mexican Americans, made up 0.3 percent of Army forces.172
It will come as little surprise that the average serviceman in the Army of the United States was young. While 29 percent of the overall male population was under 26 years old in 1940, this age group made up nearly 50 percent of the Army of the United States. In total, 38.2 percent of males in the broader society were between 26 and 37 years old, yet this age group contributed 42.6 percent of the Army ranks. For males aged 38 and older, the difference was similarly wide, with 32.8 percent in the country at large and 7.5 percent in the military.173
In relation to their civilian occupations, urban manual workers were overrepresented in the Army of the United States, professional and managerial workers underrepresented. Because of the importance of their work to the war effort, farmers were greatly underrepresented, while those workers employed in industrial production were slightly overrepresented. Self-employed individuals and members of the service sector were underrepresented, while those not self-employed were overrepresented.174
For obvious reasons, U.S. armies have always given preference to unmarried men.
During World War II, this attitude also formed the basic principle of Selective Service policy. As conscription began in 1940 following the Selective Service Act, married men were exempted to the greatest possible extent. Even so, because of the enormous demand for manpower, it became impossible to maintain this policy for the duration of the war, and it was gradually abandoned. The effects of this earlier preferential treatment of married men are clearly quantifiable in the total picture, however. The three million married men in the Army of the United States made up 25 percent of its overall troop strength. In the comparable age bracket in the population at large, 56.3 percent were married. Besides married soldiers, the Army consisted of 69.6 percent single men, 2.5 percent separated, 2.4 percent divorced
172 Mapheus Smith, Populational Characteristics of American Servicemen in World War II, in: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 56, No. 3 (1947), p. 247.
173 Ibid., p. 247.
174 Ibid., p. 247 ff.
73
and 0.5 percent widowed, in comparison to 38.9 percent singles, 2.9 percent separated, 1.1 percent divorced and 0.8 percent widowers within the relevant age range of the broader population.175
With respect to the geographic distribution of the servicemen by place of residence, the Selective Service System was structured such that each state’s proportional contribution of manpower to the Army of the United States substantially matched its share of the relevant age groups in the overall male population. A few highly populated industrial states like New York, Pennsylvania, California, Massachusetts and New Jersey contributed a disproportionately large number of conscripts in comparison to the figures mandated by the Selective Service System. On the other hand, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia were underrepresented. This is explained in part by a migration to industrial states and as well by the large proportion of farm workers in agrarian states and their higher likelihood to be classified as physically unfit – an effect of the Great Depression, which had a more severe impact on Southern states than it did in the North.176
A final factor of interest is that members of the Army of the United States had, on average, a higher level of education than did males of the same age level in the general population. This schooling gap is seen across all levels, but it becomes more pronounced as older age groups are reviewed.177 A possible explanation of this phenomenon lies in the increasingly advanced utilization of technological warfare techniques in the 1930s and 1940s. Simply put, one could argue that it takes less education for industrial workers to build a tank on a modern mass production line than for soldiers to operate it on the battlefield.
The Great Depression
I like the Army so far. They let you sleep till 5:30.
My shoes hurt my feet because I haven’t been used to wearing shoes.
175 Ibid., p. 249 ff.
176 Ibid., p. 251 ff.
177 Ibid., p. 250 ff.
74
One hayshaker from Maine was delighted with his new outfit and babbled his delight to anyone who would listen to him. He was even delighted with his overcoat, the bottom of which was almost dragging the ground.
Extracts from letters by draftees at reception centers178
In spite of all the challenges, hard work and difficulties of adaptation, the integration of the new recruits into the alien world of the Army was not an entirely negative development. The common bond among most of the new soldiers was their experience as children of the Great Depression of the 1930s. For them, entry into the Armed Forces also signified material and social certainty, something that many in this generation had never known.
In 1930, roughly 60 percent of American families, over 70 thousand people, lived on less than 2000 dollars per year, placing them distinctly below the poverty level at that time. Since this mass poverty was concentrated in the rural areas of the United States, it could be ignored with relative ease in the cities, where American attention was focused. One quarter of the U.S. population lived on farms where income sources dissolved into nothingness as prices of agricultural products went into freefall. Grain and cotton, two of the most widely planted crops, respectively lost one half and two thirds of their value in a short time, and 54 percent of farm families, amounting to 17 million people, earned less than 1000 dollars in 1930. In contrast to Germany, Great Britain or Sweden, the United States had no social security system at all to mitigate the effects of the crisis.179 Caught in spiraling debt, many farmers saw no option other than to abandon their land and wander through the country as homeless itinerant workers. The Joad family in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Dorothea Lange’s stunning photographs for the Farm Security Administration provide unsurpassed literary and photographic images of this period.
For most soldiers serving in World War II, the Depression was the key experience of their lives to that point. Approximately 60 percent of U.S. troops in the war had been born between 1918 and 1927. Those born during this period – those who reached their adulthood in spite of the dreadful circumstances of the times, we should add –
178 Cited in: Kennett, G.I., p. 40.
179 Reynolds, Rich Relations, p. 28.
75
constituted two thirds of American forces in the war. Put another way, a twenty-year-old inducted in 1941 had been eight years twenty-year-old when the Great Depression began. His entire conscious life had been marked by this experience, with no relief in sight for years on end.
In many ways, the Army of the United States was the first stable institution in the life of a typical draftee. Secure accommodation, clothing, regular meals and medical care were in no way taken for granted in 1930s America. In the Army, at least in these respects, the generation of dogface soldiers no longer needed to worry. The spartan infrastructure in camps that had been built under time pressure offered draftees amenities that most of them had not previously experienced. Running water, buildings with central heating, and indoor toilets offer just a few examples.
The Selective Service physicians who conducted the fitness examinations detected in most conscripts the effects of child labor and the signs of chronic malnutrition. The poor diet of the Depression years had left its mark particularly on draftees’ teeth. As a result, the Army of the United States increased the number of its dentists from 250 in 1939 to 25,000 in 1945; during this same period, these dentists extracted 15 million teeth and made 2.5 million dentures. The Army’s optometry service had fitted 2.25 million pairs of eyeglasses by the end of the war.180
Another problem, caused in part by the Great Depression, was illiteracy. Basic reading and writing ability was a fitness requirement for the Army of the United States. Many inductees who had spent their adolescence in the Depression years, as well as those from immigrant families, were illiterate. In the initial phase of the Selective Service System, this condition resulted in their classification as unfit.
Starting in summer 1942, the Army of the United States began to set up ‘special training units’ to teach these basic skills. Through textbooks like Meet Private Pete or Private Pete Eats His Dinner, 800,000 illiterates ultimately achieved basic competence in reading and writing the English language.181
180 Kennett, G.I., p. 17.
181 Ibid., p. 18.
76 Chickenshit
This graphic description, used both as noun and adjective, signifies what is mean, petty and annoying, especially as applied to regulations. Thus, when an infantryman in a rest area finds himself restricted because his dogtags are not worn around his neck, or his shoes are unshined, or he has been detected in the act of robbing the village bank, he complains that there is too damned much chickenshit around. If he puts the gripe in a letter to the B-Bag, or otherwise feels it advisable to watch his language, the word is contracted to chicken. As an adjective it sometimes connotes cowardice, perhaps by confusion with chicken-livered or chicken-hearted I have recently seen a quotation from a soldier newspaper published in 1919 by the then Army of Occupation which employed the word in its modern sense, but this seems to have been exceptional.
Joseph W. Bishop, Jr.182
An important step toward achieving a deeper understanding of the Army of the United States is not only to look at the common traits possibly shared by its individual members but also to perceive the Army itself in light of its constitution as a profoundly diverse entity. A glance at the divisive factors, tensions and conflicts reveals much about its nature that would remain hidden if one focused exclusively on its homogeneity.
The primary source of tension in the Army of the United States during its development phase is to be found in the contrast among its individual components.
The tension-filled and mutually mistrustful relationship between the Regular Army and the National Guard has already been discussed in Chapter 2.1. As hordes of draftees began to swarm into the Army’s branches in 1940/41, a clash of civilizations occurred that made the problems between regulars and guardsmen seem like friendly squabbling. While draftees and guardsmen sprang from essentially comparable socio-cultural backgrounds, the regulars were from another world in this respect.
Prior to the great expansion that took place in 1940/41, the Regular Army faced a serious image problem. Composed of offenders183 and elements of America’s most
182 Bishop, Army Speech, p. 248 ff.
77
socially disadvantaged classes, underfinanced and widely disregarded by the civilian populace, leading a shadowy existence at the proverbial and geographical fringes of the country, it had developed into a cloistered parallel community, disconnected from the broader society, that visibly turned inward and magnified its own cultural traditions into an obsession. The Army offered its members a solid roof over their heads, three meals a day, clothing and a meager but regular income – benefits that were no small matter during the Great Depression, as we have seen. The price of all this was absolute loyalty, conformity and slavish observance of the elaborate regulations and practices of military courtesy, especially toward the officer class.
Many regulars were bachelors, either out of conviction or due to unfortunate external circumstances, and in addition, they were often by no means averse to alcohol, a trait that rightly contributed to their reputation as hard-drinking womanizers.
When mobilization of the Army of the United States began, this close-knit society was flooded with draftees who came from another universe in every respect and who called into question the cornerstones of the regular’s world, when not dismissing them altogether as chickenshit. A sergeant named Henry Giles, who had joined the Regular Army in 1939 after a poverty-stricken adolescence, summed up what many regulars felt:
Nobody knows what the Army meant to me – security and pride and something good … Putting on that uniform not only meant that for the first time in my life I had clothes I wasn’t ashamed of, but also for the first time in my life I was somebody. [Then] …they [the draftees] came in bitching about this and that, regulations, the food, a cot instead of an innerspring mattress, barracks instead of private rooms.184
The draftees, for their part, held a specific opinion about the regulars from the ῾old army’, as they called it. A draftee named Robert Welker observed the following:
183 It was a not uncommon practice in the period prior to the war to give first offenders (unless they were guilty of capital crimes) the choice between a prison sentence and a tour of duty in the Regular Army.
184 Cited in: Kennett, G.I., p. 80.
78
[The regulars] seemed to take a truculent pride out of their own submission to the officer class and the system, and in their minor competences and little claims to caste among their fellow plebeians.185
Yank, the weekly magazine of the Army of the United States, about which we will learn more shortly, defined ῾old army’ in the following way in September 2, 1942:
…a large group of first-three-graders who spent the pre-war years thinking up sentences beginning with ‘By God, it wasn’t like this in the _______.’186
In the pre-war Army, a veritable uniform cult was maintained that was so pronounced that many regulars spent a not insignificant portion of their meager salary to buy specially produced uniform accouterments such as buttons, belts or insignia that were qualitatively or optically superior to those that came with the uniform itself. It was not an uncommon occurrence that company commanders would determine which brand of shoe polish was to be used by their subordinates in order to achieve a uniformly perfect result. The citizen soldiers, on the other hand, appeared to feel most comfortable when dressing their shabbiest. In a 1943 letter to General Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower declared that the manifestly natural tendencies of American soldiers with respect to their uniforms made any group of his troops look like an armed mob.
Obeying a pragmatic and humiliating logic, enlisted men and NCOs in the Regular Army could only marry with permission of their commanding officer.187 Similar severities and injustices inherent in the Regular Army system, such as the unequal division of amenities and privileges between enlisted soldiers and officers, were silently if grudgingly accepted by the regulars of the old army. The number boys, as the draftees were known to the regulars, were unwilling to subordinate themselves without objection to this system, and vented their anger at every opportunity. In the
185 Cited in: ibid., p. 80.
186 Ibid., p. 80.
187 In order not to become another Depression-era welfare institution, the Regular Army required married applicants to certify that they would be able to support their family on their Army salary and any possible supplementary income. For the same reasons, enlisted men and NCOs wishing to marry were required to obtain advance approval from their commanding officers. (Cf. Reynolds, Rich Relations, p. 209.)
79
expanding army of 1940/41, the generally less educated enlisted men of the Regular Army188 now saw themselves promoted to NCOs and instructors of often better educated draftees, a situation that left them in a position to react to this attack on their world with still more chickenshit.
This vicious circle only came to a gradual and partial end at the point when the murderous reality of war forced regulars and draftees to share in a common and traumatizing experience. Like the adage that there are no atheists in foxholes, the
This vicious circle only came to a gradual and partial end at the point when the murderous reality of war forced regulars and draftees to share in a common and traumatizing experience. Like the adage that there are no atheists in foxholes, the