What, indeed, motivated novelist James Jones and his fellow GIs in World War II, or American soldiers in World War I or the Korean and Vietnam Wars, to go out into dangerous places? And once there—in the combat zone—what enabled them to persevere until all too often they did die, or were wounded or emotionally broken? These questions generate more than just interesting speculation. The answers are critically important. Men facing battle or charged with leading troops need to understand the nature of these “dangerous places” to be better prepared to deal with them. Civilian leaders who order American soldiers into harm’s way need to appreciate the potentially devastating effect that combat can have on those soldiers. The American people must realize how vital their unequivocal support is to soldiers trying to endure war’s hardships and dangers. Too often in the twentieth century novice soldiers, leaders, and citizens alike did not comprehend these basic realities.
Gaining an appreciation for the nature of combat involves an examination of why the citizen joined, or at least consented to serve in, the U.S. Army or Marine Corps; the role of training in converting the recruit into a soldier; the physical and emotional hardships and dangers of combat; how soldiers coped, or failed to cope, with the combat environment; what motivated them to carry the fight to the enemy; and the soldiers’ relationships with the home front.
Speculation on James Jones’s “interesting subject” thus encompasses a wide range of topics. The scope of this book, therefore, is necessarily broad but remains manageable because of several constraints. The discussion is limited to the experiences of American soldiers and marines. This experience certainly invites comparison with soldiers in other armies, but such a comparison would be a book in itself. The focus is on ground combat at the individual and small-unit level. Central to this approach is the American infantryman and, to a lesser extent, other combatants such as tank crewmen, artillerymen, and engineers. The perspectives of noncombatants who were close to the fighting, such as war correspondents, medical personnel, and chaplains, are also included. This book is neither a combat history nor a tactical treatise but an examination of what the combat envronment was like and how soldiers reacted to it.
The American soldier is examined through the course of four wars—the world wars, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The soldiers’ experiences in these wars certainly varied in important ways, but these wars, despite their differences, also encompass a distinct period of American military history. They are the wars of the draft era, fought primarily, though by no means exclusively, by the conscripted citizen-soldier. They are also modern wars, largely fought conventionally, and of sufficient duration and violence to have a serious impact on the physical and emotional well being of those who fought them. These characteristics distinguish them from the wars that preceded or followed.
Where best to learn about the soldier’s experience in the wars of the draft era? From what the veterans themselves have to say. This book draws upon memoirs, novels, and oral histories. A few of these works were written by war correspondents, but most reflect the experiences of enlisted men and junior officers. Works by marines and soldiers have been consulted, and the term “soldiers” in this study includes marines, unless otherwise specified. Each war, and in the case of World War II the Pacific theater and Mediterranean/European theater, is represented by twenty-one to thirty works.
A wide range of secondary sources in military psychiatry, military sociology, literary criticism, and history supplements the direct testimony of the veterans. This secondary literature is invaluable for several reasons. The psychiatrists, psychologists, and sociologists provide useful insights, often based directly on their work with soldiers or veterans, concerning the causes of stress in combat, how men try to cope with that stress, and what motivates them to “stick it out.” The sociological studies and surveys also provide statistical support, at least from World War II on, for many claims made by the soldiers in their memoirs and novels. The literary critics, many of whom are also veterans, provide recommendations as to which memoirs and novels are most significant. More important, some critics go beyond matters of style and structure to assess the themes, or messages, contained in these works. The historical studies either provide a narrative combat history told from the soldier’s perspective or specifically address soldier behavior.
As for the primary sources, the vast majority are soldiers’ memoirs or firsthand accounts written by war correspondents. Some of these books are based on thoughts and experiences recorded shortly after the fact, as in the case of memoirs based on diaries and letters and the accounts written by the correspondents. Historian William L. Langer explains that such contemporary accounts can be refreshingly straightforward and unaffected, as was his combination memoir and unit history, written immediately after the Armistice in November 1918: “As I reread this simple narrative after a lifetime spent in the teaching and writing of history, I found its immediacy rather appealing. It has nothing of the sophisticated rationalization that invariably creeps into reminiscences recorded long after the event.”1
Soldiers’ diaries and letters may possess this virtue of immediacy, but men in combat did not have much time to record their thoughts and experiences in detail, and they often had little pocket space for more than a small notebook. Not surprisingly, most memoirs were written after war’s end, sometimes many years after, and the authors relied on recollections. Even memoirs based on diaries and letters were often fleshed out with added-on commentary. Critics argue the pros and cons of these after-the-fact recollections. The most obvious problem, as historian Ronald Schaffer points out, is the potential for distortion: “Postwar reconstructions of what happened were subject to distortions of memory and reflected not simply immediate wartime experiences but later thoughts and occurrences as well.”2
Another concern, voiced by James Jones, is that memories fade with time, especially memories of war’s unpleasantries: “Thus we old men can in all good conscience sit over our beers at the American Legion on Friday nights and recall with affection moments of terror thirty years before. Thus we are able to tell the youngsters that it wasn’t all really so bad.”3
Jones’s conventional wisdom aside, however, the reality is that long-term memory of traumatic, unusual, or dramatic events remains vivid and constant. One memoir in this book is unique in doubling as a research device to measure memory. Alice M. Hoffman, an oral historian, interviewed her husband, Howard, an experimental psychologist who had been a mortarman in World War II, about his wartime experiences. A series of interviews, conducted in 1978 and 1982, were checked against unit histories, photographs, and corroborating testimony from other unit veterans. The Hoffmans discovered that Howard’s memories about “unique happenings” or the “first occurrence of an event” were remarkably clear and accurate: “The forty-year-old memories that Howard retains are extraordinarily resistant to change. They appear to have been protected from decay by rehearsal and reinforced by salience so that they have become fixed in the mind.”4
Put in less clinical terms by Paul Boesch, a veteran of the bitter fighting in the Huertgen Forest in World War II, memories about details may fade, but traumatic events remain indelibly etched in the mind: “It is difficult to recall the sequence in which events occurred. Each episode appears to claim precedence over the others. But though it is hard to recall exactly when a thing happened, it is impossible to erase the events themselves, for the sheer, stark, exhausting terror burned them inextricably in our memory.”5
Given this book’s focus on the soldier’s experience in combat, it is exactly these sharply recalled events, not the details of date, time, and place, that are important. Nevertheless, the nagging suspicion remains, as literature professor and onetime combat pilot Samuel Hynes explains, that veterans’ memoirs contain “failures of observation . . . , the confined vision of witnesses, the infidelities of memories after the events, the inevitable distortions of language.”6 Thus the only sort of truth that can be gained from after-the-fact accounts is collective. Hynes takes this approach in his own excellent study, The Soldiers’ Tale, the plural “soldiers” indicative of his use of multiple experiences to reconstruct memory. This book proceeds in a similar vein, citing numerous examples in the text and notes to support a point.
This book also draws upon war novels in the search for collective truth. The use of fictional works in a historical study is bound to raise eyebrows, but these novels were included for two reasons. First, although some of them are obscure, others are well known, such as the works of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Norman Mailer, and James Jones. In any discussion of the influence of war literature on successive generations, a topic addressed in the conclusion, these popular fictional works cannot be left out. Second, and more important, these fictional works speak directly and eloquently to the soldier’s condition in war. Every author whose fictional work is included is a veteran or seasoned war correspondent, and many of these works are semiautobiographical. In short, they are realistic, or “mimetic” to use a term common to literary criticism, meaning they accurately imitate or represent human behavior. These novels, to paraphrase the literature professor Stanley Cooperman, dramatize rather than invent historical reality.7 Historian and veteran Henry G. Gole believes that this literature is as important to seeking the truth about man’s condition in wartime as is historical analysis:
The historian’s attempt at detachment stands in sharp contrast to the artist’s passionate personal involvement and raises the question of truth and who comes closer to it—the historian or artist. We are well advised to rely upon both the artist and the historian, one for “essential truth” produced by the creative imagination so the reader has a sense of being there, and one for analysis of known facts available. It should be clear that both artist and historian demand from us a leap of faith as the former invents the plausible, while the latter ultimately uses analysis to take us from what is known to what is probably true.8
Nevertheless, though novels are valuable for their portrayal of soldiers’ responses to war, they should be used with caution concerning matters outside the human experience. For example, war-novel plots tend to be tactically illogical, often involving the physical isolation of a small unit to an unrealistic degree. This technique allows the author to keep his cast of characters within reasonable bounds and free from outside interference. As historian Roger A. Beaumont points out, these plots are not only unrealistic but also leave out many aspects of the military picture: “The fiction writer . . . is faced, as is the historian, with shaping meaning. It is not surprising that the dullness of mass bureaucracy is ignored in favor of colorful if improbable microcosms. . . . Fictional accounts most often fall flat treating the complexities of command, logistics, and organization, and show a vague sense of the administrative realities of military life.”9
While the microcosms established by the novelist may sometimes be improbable, within that microcosm, the reactions of the characters to the stress and hardships of combat usually ring true. But there can be a problem here as well, not in the portrayal of specific incidents, but in cumulative effect. Some novelists have heavily weighted their presentation of events in the direction of brutality, negativity, and immorality to support an antiwar theme. Thus it is possible to have a novel, like Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, that provides powerful and plausible examples of soldier behavior in combat, yet the overall effect is sharply, and unrealistically, skewed to the negative. Literature professor and Vietnam veteran Tobey C. Herzog notes that Mailer’s novel is “devoid of heroes”: “Values—personal and religious—crumble; positive actions result in failure; integrity, concern for others, noble struggles for survival, and heroic actions are absent; and rare moments of personal insight are quickly dismissed.”10
Mailer’s novel is every bit as negative in overall theme as Herzog’s assessment indicates, yet The Naked and the Dead has provided valuable excerpts, and eloquent ones at that, for this book. The problem of imbalance in any one novel can be avoided by using multiple examples from different sources to illustrate a point and by not relying solely on fiction—in sum, the collective memory approach.
A final issue raised by historians concerning memoirs and novels involves representativeness. Soldier-authors tend to be better educated and from a higher social standing than the average soldier and hence are potentially “unrepresentative.” Though this observation has validity, some of the memoirists in this study are not atypical, in that their education and social backgrounds are modest. Their accounts are not polished, and often someone has assisted in editing their memoirs or diaries. In other cases, authors may have gone on to successful careers in business, journalism, or academia, but they were relatively young and unsophisticated, and hence fairly typical, soldiers when they recorded their experiences. Thus, the memoirs are probably not as unrepresentative as some critics suggest. In any case, twelve oral histories have been included to help ensure representativeness. Veterans who were neither sufficiently educated nor motivated to write down their war experiences were often at least willing to talk about them to oral historians.
The more important, though generally overlooked, issue concerning representativeness is not that these soldier-authors are somehow different from the average soldier but that they represent only the successful soldier. Deserters, soldiers who inflicted wounds on themselves to escape combat, or men who broke down in their first firefight did not write memoirs. Some of the soldier-authors cited in this book were unenthusiastic draftees or only average performers, or they suffered bouts of combat fatigue, but on the whole they acquitted themselves satisfactorily. The secondary sources, especially the sociological and psychiatric studies, are thus essential for providing insight into desertion, self-inflicted wounds, and psychological breakdown.
Ultimately, although the use of memoirs, novels, and oral histories raises legitimate questions about representativeness, accuracy of memory, and objectivity of perspective, the fact remains that this written and oral testimony is the primary available source for learning about the combat experience. Hynes, after raising typical concerns about distortions in memory that could compromise after-the-fact recollections of battle, concedes that these accounts are essential: “What other route do we have to understanding the human experience of war—how it felt, what it was like—than the witness of the men who were there?”11 Whatever their shortcomings, these eyewitness testimonies, including those recreated in fictional form, reveal a great deal about what prompted men “to go out into dangerous places” and what enabled them to carry on in the face of danger and grievous hardships. This book synthesizes and assesses what those testimonies have to say.
Beyond the issue of the general relevance of memoirs, novels, and oral histories is the question of which specific works to consult from the hundreds available. Certainly the number of sources used in this book is not sufficient to satisfy any scientific criteria for a statistically significant sample. There was some method to the selection process, however. Each war received roughly equal representation. A balance between army and marine memoirs was also sought, one not easily struck in the Pacific theater in World War II because most of the memoirs are by marines, despite the large number of soldiers who also fought there. Availability was thus a factor, as it was in the case of World War I and the Korean War, for which far fewer published primary sources exist than for World War II and Vietnam. Sources are more than adequate, but less selectivity was involved in choosing works. The same is true for accounts by African-American soldiers and, in the days of the segregated army, their white leaders, although again the number of available sources is sufficient.
For those wars where primary sources are plentiful, I chose memoirs and novels deemed significant by literary critics and historians. Noted professor of literature and World War II combat veteran Paul Fussell, for example, praises the memoirs of World War II marine Eugene B. Sledge and Vietnam War marine William D. Ehrhart, and rightly so; hence, these works are included, as is Fussell’s own memoir. Moreover, chance entered in as a factor. For example, I stumbled upon Paul Boesch’s obscure but superb World War II memoir at a used bookstore—a memoir long overdue for reprinting.
While reading and assessing these memoirs, novels, and oral histories, a revelatory process occurred that, in retrospect, should have been obvious. Combat is a human experience, and because individuals react to it in typically human ways, the student of soldier behavior first notices the remarkable similarities in soldiers’ attitudes and motivations. Historian Peter Karsten, in preparing a book of documents and narrative excerpts on the effects of war on American life, “was struck by the degree to which the experiences and attitudes of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century American soldiers were more alike than they were different.”12 Literature professors such as Herzog, who study soldiers’ memoirs and novels, are also struck by the consistencies in human reactions to war: “In spite of obvious differences involving the nature, conduct, and perceptions of the Vietnam War and other modern wars, the best stories from these conflicts suggest a fundamental universality among wars: emotions, combat experiences, battlefield rituals, and changes soldiers undergo.”13
The more that one compares soldiers’ experiences, however, the more obvious it becomes, as the historian Richard H. Kohn points out, that individual reactions to war are as complex and diverse as humans themselves: “The problem, in both scholarship and popular thinking, is our propensity to search for typicality, to think in terms of stereotypes, and to aim for universal generalizations that fit across all of American history. The truth of the matter is that the ‘American soldier’ never existed; the most pernicious myth of all is that there has ever been a prototypical American in uniform.”14
Thus, each soldier experiences his own war, as the psychiatrists Herbert Hendin and Ann Pollinger Haas discovered in talking with Vietnam veterans: “The unique personal and social characteristics that each individual brought to combat played a role in shaping his combat experiences, in influencing his perceptions of traumatic combat events, and in determining the specific meanings that such events had, and continue to have, for him.”15
What complicates the study of the soldier’s experience in war is that both Karsten and Herzog on the one hand, and Kohn, Hendin, and Haas on the other, are correct. Generalizations can be made about soldiers’ attitudes and behavior, but they must allow for any number of individual differences. For example, the closest thing to a truism about soldiers in combat is that they are afraid, and what they fear most is death or mutilation; but even this truism must admit to exceptions, such as the psychotic soldier who knows no fear, or the rare individual who never loses his belief in his own invulnerability and hence does not fear death. This book, therefore, draws conclusions about soldier behavior and motivations while allowing for numerous exceptions and variances.
And what conclusions can be made concerning American soldier behavior in the wars of the draft era? Chapter 1 examines why men volunteered to serve or honored their draft notices. The common perception is that doughboys marched off to World War I enthusiastically, that the GIs of World War II and the Korean War donned their uniforms reluctantly albeit with a certain grim determination, and that the young men of the Vietnam War era, if they answered the call to serve at all, did so only with thinly veiled resentment. These perceptions are not without validity, but they also oversimplify. The reality is that myriad factors, positive and negative, motivated young men to rally to the flag in each of the wars of the draft era.
New recruits then went through basic training or, for marines, boot camp. They were literally and figuratively stripped of their civilian identities and rebuilt into soldiers. This “soldierization process,” as the U.S. Army calls it, produced a physically fit soldier skilled in basic tasks and confident in his new profession. This process did not produce, its critics notwithstanding, some sort of automaton or amoral killer. Nor did all recruits react the same to the soldierization process. The degree to which they rallied to the flag either enthusiastically or reluctantly influenced the degree to which they responded positively or negatively to their training.
Following training, these newly minted soldiers found themselves en route to the war zone. To appreciate the soldier’s behavior in combat, it is first necessary to understand the environment in which he fought and struggled to survive. Chapter 2 examines the harsh physical and emotional environment of war. The green soldier had learned in training that he needed to be physically fit, but he was unpleasantly surprised to learn just how hard, dirty, and exhausting soldiering could be. When not on the move, and often carrying a staggering load, the soldier prepared defensive positions and maintained vigilance. He did not get enough sleep, often did not get enough to eat or drink, went without a bath or clean clothes for weeks at a time, and suffered the effects of climatic extremes.
While this harsh physical environment was wearing the soldier down, he was simultaneously forced to cope with enormous emotional stresses. Danger and the fear of death were ever present. During air or artillery attack, when the soldier could not retaliate, the feeling of helplessness could be overpowering. Soldiers were dismayed to discover that they were expendable cogs in a huge war machine. Chance more than martial prowess determined a soldier’s fate, and he was alarmed at the prospect that not only might he be killed by the enemy, but he could also die in a senseless accident, perhaps at the hands of his own comrades.
Over time, the soldier found himself immersed deeper and deeper in this malevolent environment. Chapter 3 describes the immersion process. The soldier first entered combat either as an individual replacement or as part of a green unit, and his experiences varied accordingly. Relief, even elation, replaced anxiety after surviving first combat. The soldier had proven himself. He began functioning effectively, gaining experience and confidence in his martial skills. Sooner or later, however, perhaps following a wound or the death of a comrade, the soldier’s confidence was shattered—it could happen to him. He was not invulnerable. He became increasingly aware of the many dangers around him, and his fears grew accordingly. At the same time, the harsh physical environment wore him down physically. The soldier became shaky. Eventually he could not take it any more—psychological breakdown or even suicidal fatalism ensued.
Immersion in the environment of war was thus an inevitably debilitating process, yet some soldiers endured it for an amazingly long time without losing their sanity or their humanity. Chapter 4 examines the various ways a soldier coped. Perhaps most important was removing him from the malevolent environment as often as the situation permitted. Breaks in the action, be it a rotation into reserve or the granting of leave for rest and relaxation (R and R), afforded the soldier a chance to recover physically and emotionally. He also learned to resist a military environment that he often perceived of as uncaring, unnecessarily hierarchical, and inefficient by rebelling in various ways, from going over the hill to enjoy a drink at an off-limits establishment to carrying out midnight requisitions for needed or desirable supplies.
When soldiers could not physically escape the environment through minor rebellions or a break in the action, they resorted to various mind games that provided mental escape. Soldiers were notorious daydreamers, dwelling on prewar good times and swapping stories about plans for their postwar futures. At the same time, they learned not to dwell on present circumstances, such as yesterday’s costly firefight or tomorrow’s sure-to-be-grueling road march. Soldiers learned to live in the moment and focus on the mundane tasks at hand. Some soldiers found comfort in religious faith; others did not. Some put their faith in good luck charms. Humor, often black, provided relief from stress. Ultimately, soldiers clung to the hope of a departure from the combat zone by way of a non-lifethreatening “million dollar wound” or, in the cases of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, by reaching the end of their tour of duty.
One coping mechanism was so complex and so important that it warrants special consideration. Chapter 5 addresses the role of comradeship, not just as a means of coping but as an essential element in motivating the soldier to fight. The varying bonds of friendship that formed within the soldier’s squad and platoon, his “primary group” to use a sociological term, cannot be viewed in isolation. The group’s relationship to its parent unit (company and higher) and, most significantly, its members’ attitudes toward their country and its war aims must also be considered. Morale and effectiveness declined sharply if the soldier’s belief in cause and country began to fade, as it did during the latter stages of the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Despite the various means of coping with the environment of war, some soldiers just could not bear the strain. They broke down. Chapter 6 examines how, during the wars of the draft era, psychological breakdown became recognized as a serious casualty producer, and means of treatment were devised. Many soldiers were treated successfully and returned to duty. Some never fully recovered. Psychiatrists and sociologists have debated why men “cracked up,” as the soldiers call it. Individual personality traits and characteristics affected a soldier’s susceptibility—indeed, some broke down in their first fight or even before reaching the front. The harsh physical environment and the exhausting nature of combat also contributed to psychological breakdown. The determining factor for most men, however, was the constant fear of death or mutilation and the enormous stress that it produced, although other fears often added to the strain.
Some soldiers who couldn’t take it any more, many of whom were on the verge of cracking up, opted out of combat through self-inflicted wounds or desertion. Their comrades might be expected to take a dim view of such “cowards” who abandoned the group, and often they did, but surprisingly the group sometimes accepted the fact that many of these men had reached the end of their rope after making a sincere effort to do their part.
At the other extreme from the shaky soldier who couldn’t take it anymore was the soldier-adventurer, who seemed to thrive on war. Chapter 7 describes these soldier-adventurers, whose impact on the battlefield far outweighed their numbers. They were neither avid killers nor psychotics, but they did not mind killing as part of their job and excelled at soldierly skills, for which they were recognized and admired. This recognition was a powerful motivator for the soldier-adventurer, but as the term “adventurer” implies, these soldiers were also thrilled by the excitement. Combat was a fascinating if lethal game. Besting the enemy was a challenge.
Certainly only a minority of soldiers thrived on war, but even the average GI discovered that war was not without some redeeming qualities. Even veterans who denounced the brutality and senselessness of war often noted, with some nostalgia, that the friendships formed were intense and unforgettable. Soldiers also took pride in a job well done. Defeating the enemy was cause for satisfaction. A firefight could be deadly but also an exhilarating experience against which humdrum peacetime activities paled in comparison. On occasion soldiers were tourists, enjoying sights unlike anything in their hometowns. And the spectacle of war itself could be breathtaking. Awestruck soldiers were fascinated by aerial dogfights, off-shore naval battles, artillery barrages, and the sight of massed men and machinery.
That the soldier could take considerable satisfaction in defeating his enemy indicates the extent to which he had accepted his new profession of trained killer. A few students of soldier behavior have claimed, however, that American troops were so fear-ridden or guilty over the prospect of taking human life that they literally failed to pull the trigger. Chapter 8 debunks this theory. There were as many attitudes toward killing as there were individual personalities, and certainly some soldiers were reluctant to kill, but in the kill-or-be-killed catalyst of the battlefield, few hesitated to pull triggers. Some enjoyed it. The degree to which the enemy was dehumanized by propaganda and racial hatred enhanced the soldier’s willingness to kill, as did the extent to which he perceived that his enemy committed atrocities or refused to fight “fair.” Hence the Asian foe, more than the German foe, was considered an enemy to whom quarter was not to be granted.
The extent to which soldiers stayed within the acceptable bounds of conduct in warfare, albeit bounds that varied by war, enemy, and situation, was influenced in no small part by the small-unit leader. Chapter 9 reviews the leadership traits and skills essential for junior officers and noncommissioned officers: possessing tactical and technical competence, ensuring that soldiers are cared for, and sharing in the hardships and dangers. Morale and cohesion in units without such leaders suffered accordingly.
The good junior officer shared the hardships and dangers with his men, and together they resented, and complained about, those soldiers and civilians who did not have to suffer with them. Chapter 10 explores the combat soldier’s attitude toward the rear echelon that provided his logistics and supporting arms. The frontline soldier believed, sometimes not without reason, that the rear echelons lived in safety and comfort, kept the best supplies for themselves, or even profited at his expense through black-market operations. The soldier likewise resented homefront slackers who made a comfortable living in war-related business and industry or who even, in the case of the Vietnam War, denigrated the fighting soldier while they obtained educational, medical, or occupational draft deferments.
At the same time that the soldier resented the home front, however, he also sought its support and acceptance. The home front represented, in the tangible form of friends, neighbors, and family, the country that had sent him off to war. The memory of loved ones, reinforced by letters from home, helped the soldier cope. He also scanned the hometown newspapers he received for any mention of himself or his unit. He wanted recognition for his efforts and, more important, appreciation for his sacrifices. When that recognition was not forthcoming, the results could be devastating to morale.
One group in particular sought their country’s recognition and acceptance—African-American soldiers. Chapter 11 addresses the black soldier in the wars of the draft era, a period that witnessed a shift from a segregated to an integrated army and Marine Corps. The inherent flaws in the segregated “Jim Crow” army ensured not only relative obscurity for black troops but also inequalities and inefficiencies that forced black units to operate with distinct disadvantages. Integration during the Korean War ensured that blacks and whites would fight side by side in Vietnam, and African-American performance under fire shattered forever the myth that blacks did not make good soldiers. Black grunts also garnered an overdue measure of recognition for African-American contributions in war. Integration did not erase all vestiges of real and perceived discrimination within the military, however.
Despite overwhelming evidence of war’s brutality and how devastating to mind and body sustained combat can be, the phenomenon remains that in all the wars of the draft era, a substantial number of men, especially early on in each of those conflicts, volunteered or accepted their draft notices with enthusiasm. Their positive, even cavalier, approach to wartime service can be explained only by the circumstance that their notions about what combat would be like were wrongheaded. The Conclusion briefly examines how each generation’s roseate notions of combat were propagated by the memorialization process and the popular media. Conversely, some young men went to war with a more realistic idea of what it would be like, and while the truism remains that no green soldier fully understands what he is in for, those young soldiers fared better than their comrades whose heads were full of romanticized images of glorious combat. Perhaps this book, and certainly the memoirs and novels cited, can provide new generations with a more realistic appraisal of what war is all about.