SIX

Guts, Valor, and Extreme Bravery

I’ve just been told that over 3,000 of our American boys died in the first eleven days of the invasion of France.

Who died? I’ll tell you who died.

Not so many years ago, there was a little boy sleeping in his crib. In the night, it thundered and lightninged. He woke and cried out in fear. His mother came and fixed his blankets better and said, “Don’t cry. Nothing will ever hurt you.”

He died . . .

There was another kid with a new bicycle. When he came past your house he rode no-hands while he folded the evening paper in a block and threw it against your door. You used to jump when you heard the bang. You said, “Some day, I’m going to give that kid a good talking-to.” He died.

Then there were two kids. One said to the other, “I’ll do all the talking. I just want you to come along to give me nerve.” They came to your door. The one who had promised to do all the talking said, “Would you like your lawn mowed, Mister?”

They died together. They gave each other nerve . . .

They all died.

And I don’t know how any one of us here at home can sleep peacefully tonight unless we are sure in our hearts that we have done our part all the way along the line.

 

—BETTY SMITH, “WHO DIED?” JULY 9, 1944

 

BY THE END of 1943, the question was not if, but where and when, the Allies would launch an attack on Western Europe. Germany faced a three-front war and a huge territory to defend. The Eastern Front, which ran through Russia, spanned two thousand kilometers. The Mediterranean Front, which spread across Africa and Europe, was nearly three thousand kilometers long. And in Western Europe, German troops faced a six-thousand-kilometer front to protect. As thousands of Americans prepared for this deadly venture, they tucked ASEs into breast and hip pockets.

In the meantime, Hitler prepared for the invasion by directing his propaganda machine at the American servicemen. One of Germany’s greatest weapons came in the form of an American voice. Mildred Gillars, whom servicemen affectionately referred to as Axis Sally or the Berlin Bitch, was a Maine-born expat living in Berlin. When the war broke out, she became an on-air host for Reichsradio and immediately gained popularity among the men; they liked her American accent, her seductive tone, and the popular music she played. But behind her voice and music was a program designed to discourage those who listened. “Hello, Gang. This is Midge, calling the American Expeditionary Forces in the four corners of the world tonight,” one program began. Playing off the name of a popular song, she said: “Well, kids, you know I’d like to say to you ‘Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag,’ but I know that that little old kit bag is much too small to hold all the trouble you kids have got . . . There’s no getting the Germans down.” Although the program was laced with propaganda, it was usually transparent enough for the men to laugh it off. Yet Axis Sally, from time to time, disclosed uncanny intelligence information that disturbed even the most steadfast listeners. One night she said, “Hello to the men of Company E, 506th PIR, 101st A/B in Aldbourne. Hope you boys enjoyed your passes to London last weekend. Oh, by the way, please tell the town officials that the clock on the church is three minutes slow.” Her information was spot-on. As much as Americans enjoyed Sally’s music, they were eager to put an end to her gibes.

The details for the invasion of France were settled by the spring of 1944. The battle would begin at night with an Allied all-out aerial and naval assault to batter the German emplacements along the French coast while creating craters in the beaches that the infantry would later use for protection. American and British paratroopers would land behind the zone of bombardment, and would secure various bridges and landmarks to facilitate the massive land invasion that would occur later that morning. Naval gunfire aimed at the beaches and fortifications would stop five minutes before an armada of LCTs (Landing Craft Tanks) made their way ashore, carrying tanks, all manner of weapons, and infantrymen. Army engineers and light artillery would accompany the first wave of infantry, and would be followed by additional waves of men and supplies. Each segment of the attack was choreographed and timed down to the minute. The elaborate plan required complete cooperation among the Allied nations participating, as well as between the naval, air, and ground forces so that each element was executed in time for the next component to commence.

The likelihood of survival seemed to lessen as the men learned more information about the dangers they would face. One private recalled that when his company was briefed on the invasion, they were told the first wave could expect 30 percent casualties and “we were them!” Considering the dangers that awaited, many believed casualties would run even higher. As one historian explained: “The GI hitting the beach in the first wave at Omaha Beach would have to get through the minefields in the Channel without his LST [Landing Ship Tank] blowing up, then get from ship to shore . . . [while] taking fire from inland batteries, then work his way through an obstacle-studded tidal flat of some 150 meters crisscrossed by machine-gun and rifle fire, with big shells whistling by and mortars all around.” Next, the GI would be “caught in a triple crossfire—machine guns and heavy artillery from the sides, small arms from the front, mortars coming down from above.” Barbed wire and mines (the Germans laid 6.5 million mines in the beaches and bluffs) awaited the GIs who survived the landing and headed across the beach. The men would need nerves of steel and unfathomable courage.

 

Under the leadership of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the plans for D-day were formally set into motion beginning on May 31, 1944, with the expectation that the invasion would occur on June 5. In the final days leading to the boarding of the landing craft, the men readied themselves. They crammed into their packs dozens of pounds of ammunition, provisions, extra weapons, and other necessities. Although the recommendation was that the men not bring more than forty-four pounds of equipment, it was estimated that some men weighed at least three hundred pounds as they waddled under the weight of their packs.

Because the invasion could only occur in clear weather, an exact date was not set until the eve of battle. Knowing some men would have a long wait between arriving in England and the start of the invasion, the Army Special Services Division grew concerned about keeping morale elevated as servicemen bided their time. At least initially, many men remained in good spirits as they waited for action. Even when they learned they would have to rub foul-smelling impregnating grease on their uniforms to be impervious to a possible mustard gas attack, the men took it in stride. A war correspondent for the New Yorker reported that when one sailor noticed he was being watched as he greased his shoes, he jokingly called out, “This is the first time I ever tried to get a pair of shoes pregnant, sir.”

“No doubt you tried it on about everything else,” another sailor retorted as he, too, worked on his shoes. As the invasion neared, moments of levity were fleeting.

General Eisenhower took an especial interest in the morale of his troops. As he noted in his own memoirs, “morale, given rough equality to other things, is supreme on the battlefield.” Eisenhower was known to read western novels to relax and relieve stress, and the men who would be doing the fighting deserved no less. Anticipating the time it would take to assemble all of the men needed for the mission, and the boredom and anxiety associated with the chore of waiting, General Eisenhower’s staff had approved a recommendation from the Special Services Division to distribute ASEs in the marshaling areas—one book per person. When the C- and D-series were shipped to the Army and Navy, approximately eight thousand sets of each were reserved specifically for those who would participate in the D-day invasion. Among the books included in these series were:The Selected Short Stories of Stephen Vincent Benét, Charles Courtney’s Unlocking Adventure, Lloyd C. Douglas’s bestseller The Robe, Esther Forbes’s Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, John P. Marquand’s So Little Time, Joseph Mitchell’s McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s Cross Creek, Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Charles Spalding and Otis Carney’s Love at First Flight, Booth Tarkington’s Penrod, and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Dozens of other titles joined the men on the shore of the English Channel.

Since all details of the D-day assault phase were kept secret, the council had no knowledge of the Special Services’ plan to saturate the marshaling areas with ASEs. In fact, in late May 1944, the council was concerned that ASEs were “pil[ing] up in the warehouses and shipment to the Army and Navy was delayed.” Some council members worried that this buildup of books indicated a lack of interest in the ASEs. It was a great relief when the council later learned that the imminent invasion of Normandy was the explanation, and that the Army had actually considered books so important to morale that they had earmarked almost a million for the men boarding transports.

Prior to the invasion, the Special Services blanketed the shores of Great Britain with some of the soldiers’ favorite items. Packs of cigarettes were shoved into pockets, candy bars were grabbed by the handful, but of all things, the most sought-after item was the ASEs. As one Special Services officer recalled, palpable tension mounted in the staging areas, and books were the only thing available that “provided sorely needed distraction to a great many men.” When the loading process finally began, many men, realizing how much weight they were carrying, stopped to unburden themselves of unnecessary items near the docking area. The ground was littered with a variety of objects, but among the heaps of discarded inessentials, “very few Armed Services Editions were found by the clean-up squads that later went through the areas.” Weighing as little as a couple of ounces each, ASEs were the lightest weapon that the men could bring along.

After all were aboard, the ships had nowhere to go—the troops would await orders from General Eisenhower, who wanted to be certain that the weather, moon, tide, and time of sunrise were aligned in the Allies’ favor before announcing the attack. In the meantime, there was little for the men to do but worry, pray, or read. Silence pervaded. A rosary could be seen in many a hand. According to one man, “Priests were in their heyday. I even saw Jews go and take communion. Everybody [was] scared to death.” It did not help matters when the men caught another Axis Sally broadcast and she assured them, “We are waiting for you.” Almost everyone was anxious to get going.

On the morning of June 4, the first vessels began to move out into the English Channel. Yet the weather soon deteriorated, with drizzle turning into a cold, hard rain. The LCIs (Landing Craft Infantry) and LCTs offered no shelter; the men aboard were thrown this way and that as their uniforms became soaked, and the waters more turbulent. The conditions were perfectly miserable. Things only grew worse for the troops when General Eisenhower was forced to postpone the invasion for a day because of the poor weather. An impenetrable cloud cover made a bombing campaign impossible for the air forces. Holding their positions, the flat-bottomed transports quaked in the churning waters; many men turned greener with seasickness by the minute as they waited. (When they finally made it to France and beheld the dead bodies of those who arrived before them, one man could not help but remark, “Them lucky bastards—they ain’t seasick no more.” ) Others were anchored in harbors or up rivers; no one was allowed to leave their crowded transport. They just cursed, vomited, and waited.

Conditions grew grim aboard the landing craft. Even years later, many men would recall the nauseating combination of the smell of diesel oil, backed-up toilets, and vomit that wafted across the decks. Some men listened to the radio to try to pass the time, but when they caught another Axis Sally broadcast, they soon preferred silence. She had taken the liberty of refashioning the lyrics to the popular song “I Double Dare You” into a chilling threat about the invasion: “I double dare you to come over here. I double dare you to venture too near. Take off your high hat and quit that bragging. Cut out that claptrap and keep your hair on. Can’t you take a dare on?”

Thank God for the ASEs. According to one second lieutenant, “so many [were] insensible to discomfort because of their interest” in what they were reading. A. J. Liebling, a war correspondent for the New Yorker, observed how the ASEs eased boredom and anxiety as the men waited for action. He saw members of the First Division “spread all over the LCIL . . . most of them reading paper-cover, armed-services editions of books.” So calm were the men of the First Division that Liebling commented that they appeared to be going on just another practice run, and not a deadly invasion. As one infantryman told Liebling: “These little books are a great thing. They take you away.”

When word finally came that the invasion would begin during the early-morning hours of June 6, the news was a great relief. As members of the airborne forces suited up for their night mission, Axis Sally issued a final blow before they paid the German army a visit. “Good evening, Eighty-Second Airborne Division,” she personally greeted them. “Tomorrow morning the blood from your guts will grease the bogey wheels of our tanks.” Although some were bothered by Sally’s comments, others just shrugged them off. After all, she had made similar taunts for days. As the Navy and Army Air Forces prepared to bomb the smithereens out of Germany’s pillboxes and coastal fortifications, they took comfort in knowing they were taking a momentous step toward ending Axis Sally’s threats.

 

Meanwhile, back at home, President Roosevelt spent the evening of June 5 delivering an important radio broadcast. He announced that Rome was the first major Axis capital to fall, and branded the event a great achievement toward total conquest of the enemy. Roosevelt was quick to acknowledge that there was “much greater fighting [that] lies ahead before the Axis is defeated.” “We shall have to push through a long period of greater effort and fiercer fighting before we get into Germany itself,” he said. “The victory still lies some distance ahead,” but the president assured Americans that the “distance will be covered in due time—have no fear of that.” After congratulating and thanking all those involved in the Italian operation, President Roosevelt concluded his address, “May God bless them and watch over them and over all of our gallant fighting men.” Although his listeners had no inkling of it, the president knew that as he uttered these words the invasion of France had already begun.

Roosevelt spent the early-morning hours of June 6 drafting and reciting a prayer for an Allied victory in France. With his blackout curtains drawn, the president kept vigil. Detailed invasion reports trickled in to the White House, informing the president of when the first vessels began their trips and, later, when the Allied forces first landed. The next morning, President Roosevelt dispatched a copy of his prayer to Congress, where it was read on the House floor and in the Senate; the prayer was also printed in newspapers across the country so the entire nation could recite the words along with the president during his radio address that night:

 

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, and steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessing. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph . . .

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home—fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them—help us, Almighty God, to rededicate in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice . . .

Give us strength, too—strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be . . .

. . . Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace . . . a peace that will let all men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.

 

The Americans who landed at Utah and Omaha Beaches had vastly different experiences. The American Fourth Division poured ashore at Utah Beach, meeting very little opposition. In fact, some men were a little let down at how anticlimactic the landing was; they described it as seeming like just another practice invasion. The early waves of troops landing at Omaha Beach, by contrast, faced near-certain death. As soon as the transports lowered their ramps, the exiting men were thrust into the line of fire. German machine-gun spray ripped across the boats, instantly killing the hapless Americans on them. For the first wave of LCIs that reached Omaha Beach, the death rate was nearly 100 percent; no one got off the beach. Later waves of troops faced grievous losses on the shore. Shell-shocked, many men simply froze, unable to move toward safety. Others who forded through the barrage of gunfire and mortar blasts and moved to the shelter of the cliffs at the top of the beach suffered injuries along the way. Unable to go farther, their shattered bodies dropped to the sand and stayed there until medics arrived. Many men who climbed the beach later that day would never forget the sight of gravely wounded soldiers propped up against the base of the cliffs, reading.

 

In the first twenty-four hours of the invasion, 1,465 Americans were killed, 3,184 wounded, 1,928 were missing, and 26 captured. These numbers billowed as the battle moved inland. Eleven days into the invasion, 3,283 Americans had died, and 12,600 were wounded.

Throughout the war, media reports of the growing number of GI casualties troubled those who were still fighting to no end. Many men objected to the anonymity the term “GI” conveyed. “When we think of GI we think of items of issue, but we are not issued,” Sergeant Frank Turman explained. “When we walk over our dead buddies we wouldn’t refer to them as dead GIs. And when we get home again, and see our buddies’ loved ones, we just couldn’t say: ‘Your son died a GI’s death.’” “Anybody can be a GI,” Sergeant Turman said, “but it takes a man to be a soldier, sailor or marine.” For those who were fighting on the frontlines, the dead were not nameless or faceless. The war claimed men they knew and loved, and it was torture. The pilot who negotiated his plane through storms of flak knew the crew member who was fatally struck; when the Marines charged a beach in an amphibious landing and enemy snipers opened up on them, they knew which of their friends had fallen; and when Japanese pilots swung their planes into Allied ships, damaging and destroying them, the sailors who survived knew who had perished. For the men at war, death was agonizingly personal. Yet they rarely talked about it.

Over the course of fighting, many things went unspoken. Soldiers knew the savagery of their war experience—it did not need to be discussed. Every man who went through battle felt the terror of it. Mental and emotional baggage accumulated over time, but there were few outlets that enabled the men to deal with the burdens they carried. Men rarely bared their hearts to family. Every letter mailed home was read by a censor to ensure that no sensitive information was divulged, in case the letter fell into enemy hands. Because each letter was read by another soldier, many men resisted the opportunity to tell loved ones how miserable they were; besides, servicemen did not want to concern family members with the truth of their unhappiness and stress. Unable to describe the battles they fought, or share the feelings they felt, most letters were reduced to weather reports and vague pleasantries.

Books, however, did provide a catharsis for many men. This intangible response becomes evident by the reactions of servicemen to certain books. One unlikely author to earn wide appeal was Katherine Anne Porter. Her short stories delicately exposed private, deeply personal experiences and emotions that tended to give readers the impression that she understood their innermost thoughts and feelings. Hundreds of men wrote to her after reading her ASE: some described how they had connected to a certain character; others felt as though a layer of loneliness and isolation had been stripped away as her prose washed over them. By writing to the person who had touched their hearts, servicemen brought to life the relationship they felt through the pages they read. These letters frequently delved into incredibly personal experiences and feelings; in fact, details that often went unexpressed to loved ones were divulged to authors.

One man had treasured Porter’s Selected Short Stories to such a degree that he carried his copy with him throughout the war and kept it for his trip home. “Inching back eastward across the long wastes of the Pacific toward discharge and home, I’ve had an opportunity once more to read some of your stories—in the paperbound Armed Services Edition. We can read better, with leisure and the perspective of long absence, under the conditions; thus I’ve appreciated your writing more than ever before,” he said. What attracted him to Porter’s stories all along was her ability to “put bewildered little things who were you and I back in the world,” and capture “frightening emotions where we all . . . once lived—lost when rejected, content when loved, made into small witch-ridden animals when abused.”

Another man had also found great comfort in Porter’s words and wrote to tell her so. He was delighted to receive a letter back from Porter, who asked if he was hospitalized and disclosed concern for her nephew in the Ninth Field Artillery Regiment. This man immediately wrote back, admitting he was “almost glad that I can say I am a patient” if it might induce Porter to keep a correspondence with him. He had spent the last four months hospitalized with jaundice, and was thankful to have books, such as Porter’s, to read. Porter’s reference to her nephew opened a wellspring of pent-up anxiety this man felt for a friend, who also belonged to the Ninth Field Artillery. “I worry about him more than I do myself; he is a good man, and since the landings in Africa so long ago he has been going through all hell. His buddies have been killed before his eyes again and again; in January the five men of his group—his best friends—were killed and he himself was hit. I think to myself: ‘Dear God! A man can only take so much! And yet he goes on and on.’” This man admitted that he had felt “ashamed to write to [his friend] before I came to the hospital” because as his friend faced death, he himself had toured Italy, taking in concerts, operas, and palaces, and then was stationed thirty miles behind the frontlines—always outside the zone of danger. Compared to his friend, he did not feel like a real soldier. Having cleared his conscience to Porter, he felt much better.

After the war ended, Porter reflected on the role she played in helping some men get through the war. “I had three [servicemen] in my own family, and more than six hundred letters from [soldiers],” she said, “and I hope I may be forgiven if I rather feel, on the evidence of these letters, that that was a very superior army indeed. Not all of them wrote to praise, either. I mention this out of pride and pleasure that at least a few GI’s felt that I understood them very well.”

Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was perhaps the most popular ASE of them all. It provided such a vivid account of childhood that many men felt as though Smith were writing about theirs. When word spread that Smith had published an essay, “Who Died?,” that personalized the thousands of Normandy casualties, servicemen wrote to her begging for a copy. Smith received a steady stream of letters from men around the world, thanking her for the effect her writing had on them.

“When I first picked up your book, I was down in the dumps, a sad sack, as the boys say,” a sergeant said to Smith. But as he read, “my spirits rose until at the end I found myself chuckling over many of the amusing characters.” He needed the lift that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn had given him. He had felt depressed and lonely for months, and nothing had given him any relief from these feelings, until Smith’s book. “I haven’t laughed so heartily since my arrival over here eight months ago,” he said. A man in the Army Air Forces said that Smith’s book “made [him] feel homesick,” and that it was “the first time I’ve ever been homesick in my life.” He was amazed at how capably her words transported him to what life was like back home—a life that he sorely missed and hoped to return to. Yet he did not write to complain. “After being in the Army only a short time and reading all types of novels and classics, I can sincerely say after reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, my cup runneth over.” Many of the letters written to Smith echoed these sentiments. One man in the 716th Bombardment Squadron felt such a strong connection to Smith’s characters that he compared A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to “a good letter from home.”

From a hospital, one man wrote that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was a “source of never-ending enjoyment” to him, as it reminded him of his own childhood in Brooklyn. “To me,” he said, the book was like “living my life over again.” Another man wrote in the hopes that Smith might be “nursing another literary seedling into full treehood.” Smith’s publisher received a note from a serviceman who previously did not care for books: “but for the first time, I found a book I really enjoyed reading, and that’s Betty Smith’s novel named A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” He wanted to know what other titles she had written. Thanks to Smith, “books are one of our rare pleasures,” he said.

As with other books, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn also helped eclipse some of the everyday irritations that could get on a soldier’s nerves. In one spirited letter from R.H., Betty Smith got an earful about an annoying bunkmate. R.H. lived with happy-go-lucky Gus, who one day waved a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn before him and declared: “‘This is a fine book.’” “Gus calls everything fine,” complained R.H. “He doesn’t seem to know any other adjective, and he uses the word indiscriminately. His girl is a fine girl. ‘Dragon Seed’ is a fine movie, his buddy is a fine boy, a B-29 is a fine plane, it’s a fine day—almost every time he opens his damned mouth fine pops out,” R.H. said. “And I grit my teeth and pray.” R.H. joked that one day he might be driven to the point of punching poor Gus, but it would not do any good. “I can see him now, picking himself up from the floor and laughing (not able to believe I’m really angry) and saying, ‘Gee, that was a fine blow you floored me with, friend.’” Getting to the point, R.H. said that he began reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and it made his exasperation with Gus melt away. “I haven’t the power to tell you, as I’d like, how it has affected me,” R.H. disclosed. “But I know this: from now on I won’t be annoyed the least bit when Gus speaks of it and calls it fine.”

Smith once estimated that she received approximately four letters a day from servicemen, or about fifteen hundred a year. She responded to almost all of them. Servicemen were shocked when they received a note from her, sometimes accompanied by an autographed photograph (a common request). Without fail, these mementos became treasured possessions. From a hospital, one man wrote to Smith: “Thanks—thanks—[for] your letter.” It had come at the perfect time, for he had “a tough week coming up. Every doctor in the place wants his cut. I don’t know what they’ll do with what remains of me after the carvings done. Pour gravy on me and put an apple in my mouth, I guess.” Smith’s letter would give him courage through the surgeries he faced.

“When I received [your] letter,” one man wrote to Smith, “I thought, well, Betty has sent a Christmas card like the usual celebrities thinking they were doing something for the boys, but lo and behold, there is Betty Smith herself! I’m still bragging about it. I told the fellows it was my first wife, because they are not as familiar with your picture as I.” After carrying Smith’s photograph with him from Germany to Belgium, the same man, who kept a regular correspondence with Smith, was forced to ask for a new one. “I am going to need another because I’ve carried this one around in snow, rain, mud, and combat, until it looks like it’s been through a war,” he said. Another regular writer to Smith also found great comfort in her photograph. “You helped inspire me during some of my most trying days of battle, and battle fatigue [and] depression. The picture I carried of you—that helped me remember the one I love [referring to his wife] and inspired me to carry on for the better things in life that I was fighting for.” He added: “Your tiny picture helped give me the sincere happiness and joy I needed while I was on what might have been the last limb of life.” Months later, after this man was wounded in battle, he wrote to Smith as he convalesced in a medical unit, again insisting what a difference she had made in his life. He and his wife planned to have a child when he returned home, and if it was a girl, they would name her Betty Smith.

Smith and the council were so inundated with letters about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that the council decided to reprint the book. “I think it’s wonderful that the armed services edition is going into a second edition,” Smith told a friend. “Most of my mail is from servicemen overseas and without exception, they say that everything in [A Tree Grows in Brooklyn] seems so true that it’s not like reading a book—it’s like being home in Brooklyn again.” “Some letters bring tears to one’s eyes,” she admitted. “I am very much touched by the service men away from home thinking so much of the book. I feel that I have done some good in this world.”

Rosemary Taylor’s Chicken Every Sunday was another surprise favorite among the men. The narrator of Chicken Every Sunday is an adolescent girl who gives an amusing account of her mother’s experience running a busy boarding house, appeasing a long list of zany characters and serving mouthwatering dinners each night. Its wholesomeness and wit captured everyday happenings with such feeling that many servicemen could not help but grow sentimental.

A first lieutenant wrote to Taylor to express his “thanks for the joy you have given me and to many other officers and enlisted men out here in New Guinea.” He said that Chicken Every Sunday gave them “the refreshing sense that the way of life which we have temporarily left behind is a rich and delightful heritage that awaits our return.” Another man wrote to Taylor from China, as Chicken Every Sunday was his favorite book and Taylor’s description of her mother’s cooking reminded him of his own mother, “cooking without measuring, the seasoning, the timing.” It brought back such rich memories of his own home that he compared reading the book to taking a leave. “It took me home for a couple of hours. It alleviated my homesickness. I really forgot about the war, and laughed and lived for a little while back in that marvelous house with all those wonderful people.” His only complaint was that Taylor’s “graphic, tantalizing descriptions of [her] mother’s baked potatoes, the slivered green beans, salads, desserts—were almost more than this human flesh can bear. Even the mention of ice water is enough to set us all aquiver over here,” he quipped. He closed by asking Taylor to write more books like Chicken Every Sunday because “we need ’em.”

From the Aleutian Islands, a soldier wrote Taylor that he could not “resist the temptation to write you how thoroughly your book ‘Chicken Every Sunday’ is being read and enjoyed by an audience for whom in all probability it was not intended.” In fact, he said, he was “not speaking for one or two when I said it is a book for soldiers, for I have watched it travel from bunk to bunk in my own particular hut and have listened to bursts of abdominal laughter from the owners of the abdomens, followed by quote-unquote passages for the whole crowd to share.” And there were “reverberations from neighboring huts on at least two sides.” This soldier recalled that, when one man “took ‘Chicken’ to work with him,” he “could barely contain his enthusiasm when he returned that night.” The book was the hottest commodity on the post. Because reading was one of the only forms of recreation available to those stationed in the Aleutians, this soldier said that he and his friends had become pretty discriminating in their reading tastes. He explained that the reason Chicken Every Sunday resonated with him and the men around him was because the characters in that book were “home folks and every GI Joe who reads about them . . . nostalgically recalls their counterparts back home.” “On behalf of the lot of us,” he said, “let me thank you for many hours of swell fun.” “We all hope there’ll be more books by Rosemary Taylor.” And there were. The council printed Taylor’s Ridin’ the Rainbow.

 

As these early testaments demonstrate, books played a special role at war. They soothed troubled minds and hearts, and they achieved these feats where other pastimes failed. Books were the saving grace for many men facing combat, as accounts from all fronts confirm. As one scholar on the role of books in wartime observed, men gratefully turned to books because they “remind[ed] them of home or express[ed] their own moods and thoughts, which had to stay dammed up, for the most part, in the noisy commonplaces and promiscuity of barracks life.” The therapeutic role that books played in allowing men to process their own circumstances by reading stories about others kept them wanting to read more and more. Books of humor made them laugh when there was nothing funny about their circumstances. Tales of life back home transported them to the places they missed and hoped to see again. By reading, the men received the closest thing to a respite from war. As one private wrote from France, “Books are often the sole means of escape for GI’s” and “I have seen many a man who never before had the patience or inclination to read a book, pick up one of the Council’s and become absorbed and ask for more.”

Lieutenant Colonel Trautman tried to explain why books were so popular among servicemen. He observed that the average soldier in World War II was a civilian who had an eleventh-grade education, and whose previous use of books was largely confined to required schoolwork. Most of the soldiers did not go to the library in their home communities, and their reading habits focused on “printed matter equivalent to a three-hundred-page book each week”—ranging anywhere from comics to newspaper and magazine articles. With the war underway, these men were sent to all parts of the world, including many places where there was nothing to read in English; where there were no newspapers, and every magazine and book had to be transported thousands of miles. Next to letters from home, these books and magazines were treasured because they allowed the men to tap into the life they had left behind in America. Some men received such comfort from seeing a book in English or a familiar magazine that they were transformed into readers for life.

If there was any doubt about the value of the ASEs, the summer of 1944 would put them to rest. As Americans trekked across France to Paris and leapfrogged from one Pacific island to the next, they would be surrounded by nothing but the war, and comforted by little apart from their books.