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The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II Mass Market Paperback – August 26, 2003
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Shooting at the enemy made a man part of the “team,” or “brotherhood.” There were, of course, many times when soldiers did not want to shoot, such
as at night when they did not want to give away a position or on reconnaissance patrols. But, in the main, no combat soldier in his right mind would have deliberately sought to go through the entire ear without ever firing his weapon, because he would have been excluded from the brotherhood but also because it would have been detrimental to his own survival. One of [rifle company commander Harold] Leinbaugh’s NCOs summed it up best when discussing Marshall: “Did the SOB think we
clubbed the Germans to death?”
- Print length432 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPresidio Press
- Publication dateAugust 26, 2003
- Dimensions4.2 x 0.97 x 6.74 inches
- ISBN-100891418237
- ISBN-13978-0891418238
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—FORMER SENATOR BOB DOLE
“A RIVETING AND EXTREMELY WELL-RESEARCHED ANALYSIS OF THE VIOLENT WORLD FACED BY THE AMERICAN GI DURING WORLD WAR II . . . Anyone who wishes to understand the experience of our citizen army of fifty years ago should read this book. Highest recommendation.”
—ERIC BERGERUD
Author of Fire in the Sky: The Air War in the South Pacific
“Do you want to know what the World War II foot soldier felt and how he fought? What he ate and how he liked it? What his life was like during periods he was not in combat? The Deadly Brotherhood goes a long way towards answering such questions. . . . Each chapter contains a wealth of supporting comments. This approach produces an extreme degree of authenticity. . . . This fine book provides a comprehensive understanding of a World War II infantryman’s troubles and travails.”
—Military Review
“An exciting, moving book told in the words of those men who actually fought the enemy face-to-face on the front lines—the infantry, combat engineers, armor, and Marines; those unfortunate souls for whom war was a minute-by-minute struggle against terrifying odds.”
—E. B. SLEDGE
Author of With the Old Breed
Look for these thrilling books of American heroism at war
DARBY’S RANGERS
We Led the Way
by William O. Darby
with William H. Baumer
DEATH TRAPS
The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II
by Belton Y. Cooper
WAR PILOT
True Tales of Combat and Adventure
by Richard C. Kirkland
WOODBINE RED LEADER
A P-51 Mustang Ace in the Mediterranean Theater
by George Loving
From the Inside Flap
Shooting at the enemy made a man part of the team, or brotherhood. There were, of course, many times when soldiers did not want to shoot, such
as at night when they did not want to give away a position or on reconnaissance patrols. But, in the main, no combat soldier in his right mind would have deliberately sought to go through the entire ear without ever firing his weapon, because he would have been excluded from the brotherhood but also because it would have been detrimental to his own survival. One of [rifle company commander Harold] Leinbaugh s NCOs summed it up best when discussing Marshall: Did the SOB think we
clubbed the Germans to death?
From the Back Cover
Shooting at the enemy made a man part of the "team," or "brotherhood." There were, of course, many times when soldiers did not want to shoot, such
as at night when they did not want to give away a position or on reconnaissance patrols. But, in the main, no combat soldier in his right mind would have deliberately sought to go through the entire ear without ever firing his weapon, because he would have been excluded from the brotherhood but also because it would have been detrimental to his own survival. One of [rifle company commander Harold] Leinbaugh's NCOs summed it up best when discussing Marshall: "Did the SOB think we
"clubbed the Germans to death?"
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Somewhere in the Ardennes Forest in a snowy, muddy hole with a small pool of slushy water at the bottom, an American soldier paused and collected his thoughts for a moment. Then he hoisted his weapon, left the dubious comfort and safety of his hole, and advanced toward his enemy while enduring machine-gun, small-arms, mortar, and artillery fire. He moved forward as he had dozens of times before and would dozens of times again if he wasn’t killed or wounded. The reality for him was this: he had little or no hope of rotation out of his surroundings or transfer to a unit in safer circumstances. Combat was his world and he could hope to escape it only through death, wounding, capture, mental breakdown, desertion, or—if he even dared imagine—the end of the war. To make matters worse, the law of averages stated with certainty that sooner or later he would become a casualty. It was not a matter of if, but when. Yet, in spite of his nightmarish existence, he continued, with dogged frequency and regularity, to fight and fight well, grimly moving forward to attack his enemy.
This drama was repeated millions of times, not just in the Ardennes Forest in the winter of 1944–45 but in other parts the world. In fact, at the same moment that the Ardennes GI moved forward, chances were very good that another GI was prowling through the mountainous, rocky terrain of Italy and yet another was doing the same thing in a steamy, forbidding jungle somewhere in the Pacific. What did they have in common? They carried out the same dirty, monotonous, dangerous job day after day and did it successfully. Yet not only did they do it in radically different circumstances against different enemies, but often they themselves came from completely different regional or ethnic backgrounds.
Ultimately the most basic question is why they did it. Why did these World War II American combat soldiers endure what should have been unendurable? What made them perform effectively and cohesively and draw on reserves of courage that they probably thought they did not possess? The answer is surprisingly simple. To a great extent they fought for one another; to an even greater extent they fought because of one another. The bond among American combat soldiers was so tight that it can be accurately termed a “brotherhood.” The GI leaving his foxhole in the Ardennes did it primarily because the next soldier was doing it too. He might not have even liked the soldier next to him, but he would do almost anything to help him. The same was true for his counterpart in Italy and in the Pacific. This bond was the single most important sustaining and motivating force for the American combat soldier in World War II. Although some individual units were more cohesive than others, the brotherhood was not unique to any one unit, sector, or theater. Rather it was pervasive among the troops who fought the war.
It is with those few who actually did the fighting—those at the so-called “Sharp End,” as historian John Ellis has termed it—that this book is exclusively concerned. Surprisingly little has been written on the American ground combat soldier in World War II. Of course there is no shortage of books on Americans in World War II, and often they include some discussion on the combat soldier. Good examples of this are Lee Kennett’s G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II; two books by Stephen Ambrose, D-Day June 6th, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II and Band of Brothers; and Geoffrey Perret’s There’s a War to Be Won: The United States Army in World War II. Roger Fosdick’s A Call to Arms: The American Enlisted Soldier in World War II and Francis Steckel’s Morale and Men: A Study of the American Soldier in World War II are both excellent doctoral dissertations on the American soldier in general; combat soldiers are dealt with only as a part of the whole and, although combat is discussed, it is not the main focus. John Ellis, in his outstanding work On the Front Lines: The Experience of War Through the Eyes of the Allied Soldiers in World War II, focuses primarily on British combat soldiers.
In dealing with the attributes of the American combat soldier, it will also be necessary to take into account the important works of Trevor Dupuy (A Genius for War: The German Army, 1807–1945) and Russell Weigley (The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy).
Richard Holmes in Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle, William D. Henderson in Cohesion: The Human Element in Combat, and, of course, John Keegan in his classic The Face of Battle have done an excellent job of studying the realities of modern combat and its effect on those who fight. But their studies are necessarily general. They do not seek to focus on the combatants of one specific nation in one specific war.
By contrast, this book will concentrate exclusively on one group of combatants—Americans in World War II. Part One, entitled “The World of the Combat Soldier,” seeks to answer the overarching question “What was it actually like?” Chapter 1 explains who did the fighting. Chapter 2 discusses the combat soldier’s equipment and food and how he felt about them. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the conditions in which the American combat soldier fought. Chapter 5 concentrates on how he actually fought. Chapter 6 explains what it was like to become a casualty.
Part Two, entitled “The Soul of the Combat Soldier,” answers another overarching question, “What was the combat soldier actually like?” Chapters 7 and 8 address his attitudes toward his Japanese and German enemies. Chapter 9 covers an element of the military experience that has constituted a near obsession with military historians—leadership. Far too much military history has been written exclusively from the perspective of those at the very top. Now it is the dogfaces’ turn to talk. How did the dogface feel about his officers, and what constituted good and bad leadership in his eyes? Chapter 10 is something of a catchall, relating many commonly held attitudes and motivators of the combat soldiers and touching on the costly effects of total war. Chapter 11 addresses and refutes some commonly held myths about replacements in the U.S. Army without attempting in any way to defend the army’s replacement system. Finally, Chapter 12 demonstrates unequivocally the crucial importance and pervasiveness of the brotherhood. It is the single most important theme of this book. Hopefully the reader will recognize elements of it in every chapter.
The sources used to prepare this work are overwhelmingly primary. Contemporary letters, diaries, and surveys were a gold mine of information. Generated later, but no less important, were the postwar memoirs, questionnaire responses, veterans’ association publications, and oral histories of veterans. Some historians have expressed concern that, over time, memories of the veterans have faded, especially in oral histories. They caution that perhaps the veterans do not remember their experiences as they really were but rather as they wished they would have been. Certainly this view merits consideration and argues for caution. However, it is undeniable that most veterans express the same attitudes, feelings, and descriptions as they did in their wartime letters or diaries. And although memories do fade, the detail and alacrity with which World War II veterans recall their combat service is often startling. Often their memories have dulled regarding the mundane; but, for most of them, World War II was the defining moment of their lives. These men were part of something monumental, although they may not have been fully aware of it at the time. More importantly, they were young, and the fondness for memories of youth rarely diminishes.
The veterans were senior citizens by the mid-1990s. Although earlier in life they may have been reluctant to talk about their experiences, they now realize that if they do not tell their story, no one else will. With retirement or a decline in health, they have had more time to reflect on the past. For some, such as ex-paratrooper Howard Ruppel, writing his war memoir was an emotional but necessary experience. “As I wrote, checked, revised and corrected,” he said, “I relived those harrowing moments, experiencing the agony once more and shed tears thinking what may have been.” So why did he do it? “If I had not written this, I would have taken it all with me . . . and no one would ever know about . . . how I changed from a boy to a man.”
Richard Roush, of the 84th Infantry Division, was motivated to write his experiences in a veterans’ association newsletter because of a desire to communicate the truth. “Out of all the men that were there and the ones that survived there are probably a million stories that will never be told due to the fact that they were so bad, so horrible that nobody would believe them anyway.”
The words of the soldiers, the historical actors themselves, will echo throughout this book. The historian in the 1990s dealing with mid-twentieth-century history has an advantage that scholars of earlier centuries do not. He or she can directly interact with those being studied. For this rare moment in history it is possible for a World War II scholar to talk directly to “GI Joe.” The author has gladly taken advantage of that privilege.
This is not another stolid examination of military doctrine, strategy, or generalship. This work is, more than anything, about flesh-and-blood people and the realities of their lives within the cataclysmic events of the recent past. One soldier writing home in July 1945 put it succinctly: “Confusion is still the god of war. Nobody, least of all the line soldier, understands war. Battles are more decisive to rear echelon generals than to the men whose blood is spilled winning them.” Even if the line soldiers had understood the larger questions, they certainly could not have exerted any degree of control over them.
Without doubt, it is important for historians to study every aspect of America’s involvement in World War II, including the war of the generals and policymakers. But the story of the ordinary man who carried out the policies and did the fighting has not been adequately related or understood. Accordingly, interested readers are left with a somewhat antiseptic and romanticized view of the war. This is often manifested in casualty descriptions. The terms light and only are often used, as in “The hill was taken with light casualties, as the unit lost only four killed and three wounded.” To those seven individuals affected and their families, the cost of taking that hill was heavy indeed.
The main point is this: it is important to remember that the combat soldiers were not faceless robots but rather someone’s son, brother, father, nephew, uncle, or friend. James Simms, in his memoir of his experiences in the 101st Airborne Division, wrote of his fellow paratroopers, “They were not cold statistics in a history book. They were warm human beings who were terribly afraid but who were anchored by their bravery and commitment.”
Walter Slatoff, of the 78th Infantry Division, perhaps communicated it best in a passage he wrote to his son:
My Son: War is a more terrible thing than all the words of man can say; more terrible than a man’s mind can comprehend. It is the corpse of a friend, one moment ago a living human being with thoughts, hopes and a future just exactly like yourself—now nothing. It is the groans and the pain of the wounded, and the expressions on their faces. It is the sound of new soldiers crying before battle; the louder sound of their silence afterwards. It is the filth and itching and hunger; the endless body discomfort; feeling like an animal; the fatigue so deep that to die would be good. It is the evil, snickering knowledge that sooner or later the law of averages will catch up with each soldier, and the horrible hope that it will take the form of a wound, not maiming or death. Remember what we are talking about. Not words, not soldiers, but human beings just exactly like yourself.
Slatoff’s comrades, whether they were trudging through the Ardennes, Italy, or the Pacific, would certainly have agreed wholeheartedly with him and probably would have realized that they could not have said it any better.
Product details
- Publisher : Presidio Press; New edition (August 26, 2003)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 432 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0891418237
- ISBN-13 : 978-0891418238
- Item Weight : 8.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.2 x 0.97 x 6.74 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #594,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,190 in WWII Biographies
- #5,032 in American Military History
- #5,558 in World War II History (Books)
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That is a great value of this book. It gets down into the nitty-gritty that war or battle overviews, even memoirs, don't always discuss in great detail. While anyone who has read anything on the European Theatre probably knows about the deadly German 88, what about the other weapons, and those used by the Japanese? How did they compare to the American weapons? It does a very good job of examining different aspects of being a US soldier and building to a whole.
While it can sometimes seem repetitive, a lot of soldiers saying basically the same thing over and over, that is actually an important point. Whether in Africa, Italy, Europe, the South Pacific, the Central Pacific, GI or Marine, there is a remarkable consistency to the experiences. Some may be unique to the Pacific or Med/Europe, but there are common threads to all the experiences. And while they may not be surprising (war is horrible), it is something to read in the words of the men themselves. You get a true sense of the misery experienced by so many.
There is one big caveat. And it is huge. While the theme of "a soldier fights for his buddies" comes through loud and clear, I think he takes this notion way too far. Reading the words of the veterans, it is obvious that while in the foxhole, there is little on their mind other than survival and his comrades. Not flag or even home. However, he makes the claim that the wars outcome (victory or defeat) "meant little to the men if they didn't survive to see the outcome". That is a hogwash that almost undoes the whole book. It goes against so many other things said by so many other veterans about why they volunteered or why they fought. To me, there is a clear distinction about why they went to war, and then what they thought of when they were in the trenches. Men found the courage to do what they did because of their buddies, but they did what they did because of the values they had as US citizens. This point can not be emphasized enough. That is why it loses a star. That sentence stands out like a huge, hairy mole on an otherwise pretty face. Ignore this, and you have a five star book for someone new to WW2 history. If you have read a lot on WW2 history, you may be able to skip, but found it worth the read.
This, along with Marshall and his Generals and The Admirals would be great places for anyone to begin their WW2 study. As long as you can ignore the mole.
The only downside to the book was I would have liked a little more follow-up of some the men he wrote about in the book. But then again, the scope of the book would have probably changed. McManus is one of the greatest living WW2 historians today and I highly recommend this book to anyone with any interest in WW2.
The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II is divided into two major parts: 1) 'The World of the Combat Soldier' and 2) "The Soul of the Combat Soldier'. In the first part McManus systematically leads the reader through a description of who the 'citizen soldiers' were who formed the US Army in WWII; how they trained, what they ate, and their instruments of trade; what is was like to fight in Europe vs Asia; what the fighting was like; and what it was like becoming a casualty. All of this is done through first-person stories and insightful analysis by McManus. In the second part of the book McManus tries to give the reader a sense of who the American GI was on a human level, how his morals influenced how and why he fought, how his prejudices influenced his fighting, and why the 'brotherhood' of the average infantry grunt is so important to survival and success. It is in this second section of the book that McManus really truly excels and is likely to hook the more studious.
All in all this is a 4.5 star book for content and prose. Highly recommended, especially to serious students of WWII, military history and battle performance.