Friends and family . . . probably having run out of small talk
. . . have occasionally asked me how my war experiences affected me. Behind their question is the implied query: How can a peaceful, somewhat cowardly, fairly genial and affectionate man, fresh out of valedictorian graduation at Northwestern and giver (as well as taker) of the Oxford- (pacifist) oath have come through five bloody battles in one piece, mentally and physically? Hasn’t shooting and being shot at, sleeping for weeks in a muddy foxhole, going to the bathroom in an open field, eating weekson- end, C- rations (mainly meat and vegetable hash, occasionally heated for variety) . . . hasn’t all of this changed your values, your character, your personality?
Yes and No. I recall a song from the post- war musical comedy, ‘‘ Call Me Mister, ’’ titled ‘‘ Still a Jerk. ’’ The lyrics describe a young jerk– stupid, insensitive, boring, crude, unlikeable– who’s drafted into the infantry and goes off to War. For three years, he endures the hell of war, the shot and shell, the bravery of comrades, his own courage under fire, and the final victory (as the music crescendoes patriotically). And . . . goes the song . . . he emerges from this traumatic, intense, heart- and- back- breaking experience . . . ‘‘ Still a Jerk. ’’
Yes . . . those war years changed some things . . . just as the passage of any half- decade does something to an individual. I hate picnics. I refused being a Boy Scout leader when my kids joined the Scouts. I detest Spam. I cannot accept waste, including wasted food, having observed starving civilians in Manila lined up along our garbage cans to eat what we threw away. I used to believe there was no such thing as a good war or a bad peace. I now believe WWII was a ‘‘ good’’ war.
And No . . . I am still pacifistic and as far as I’m concerned, WWII was our last ‘‘ good war’’. I think Korea was a marginal affair and Viet Nam was obscene, and I led Businessmen for Peace in Viet Nam very early in that horrible fight and earned being named to Nixon’s Enemies’ list for my upfront, outspoken opposition to Viet Nam.
I have retained my sense of humor, dark humor, perhaps; and as hard as I tried, neither then nor now could I despise the Japanese people or soldiers; their leadership, perhaps, but their soldiers were brave and though outnumbered, outsupplied, and outgunned, they never quit . . . went about doing the job they were ordered to do, just like my men and me.
I recognized that Machiavelli was correct . . . the ends do justify the means . . . and I understand the terrible atrocities committed by both sides because in a war, like in an alley fight, you must win, and you do everything you think will aid the victory, regardless of morals, ethics, honor. The Japanese treatment of our captured soldiers and of the civilians they conquered was, in their eyes, necessary to win. Our bombing of non- military targets climaxed by the use of the A- bomb, twice, was done in an effort to speed up the victory, shorten the war, and, in the end, or so we told ourselves and believed, save the lives which would have been lost if the war dragged on.
I cannot bring myself to feel as objective about the Germans
. . . their leaders, their soldiers, their people. I do not believe the Holocaust was conceived and implemented as a means to win their war. Quite the contrary, the diversion of their soldiers, transportation, construction materials needed as Auschwitz and Belsen and elsewhere actually hurt their war effort. The ironic loss to the Germans of scientists like Einstein, Meitner, Rabi kept them from winning the race for the A- bomb. No . . . these cruelties had no Machiavellian justification . . . they were not necessary; they didn’t do what they had to do to win; they did what they didn’t have to do, and therein lies my inability to forgive Germany . . . ever.
As I wrote in the introduction to this book, I did resort to one trick to alter, just a bit, my own perspective and values. During the war I kept a diary (against army regulations). This diary was in my back pocket throughout the fighting and each night before trying to sleep, I’d make a few entries about the day’s activities. I managed to hide these diaries and brought them home with me in the bottom of my duffle bag. As the years went by, say on June 15, 1953, I came home after a rough day at the office, fighting my boss, yelling at my fellow workers, irritated and aggravated by some business setback. Then I would go directly to my diaries and look up July 15, 1943, exactly ten years back. I would read the entry which often went: ‘‘ Today, my best squad leader, John Pierce, was killed by a sniper; and by the time we returned from patrol, it was too late to heat the hash; and my foxhole had to be dug hastily into coral which made it shallow and hard to sleep on; and tomorrow at dawn we attack entrenched Japanese machine guns on our right flack and we’ll lose more men . . . and maybe, even me. ’’
Reading that entry, all of the petty, trivial problems I had at the office no longer bothered me. From this new perspective I understood what was really important and what was, as the GI’s would say, ‘‘ Chicken Shit. ’’ Then, at dinner, when I recounted to Irene the unpleasant events at the office, she’d shake her head and ask why I seemed so happy and unruffled. This device has remained my secret, until now, for I confess that on those few occasions when Irene and I would squabble over doing the dishes or clearing the table or cleaning the drawers or disciplining the children, I would have those magic diaries to smooth my feathers and remind me that life is too short to get high blood pressure from the insignificant irritants of life at the office or at home.
Do I have bad dreams? Sort of. But my recurring bad dream has to do with going into an exam in college and suddenly realizing I forgot to study for the exam. My worst and most recurring army dream? Not the shot and shell and blood and guts. No . . . I do still have a dream that I have been called back into service and as I begin to sweat over how the hell I can avoid returning to the military, I wake up, and two Tums return me to a more pleasant, dreamless sleep.
All of the above is the effect on me as a person. How about what the Army did to me professionally?
It is true that at age 25 I was a major– a field grade officer ‘‘ managing’’ hundreds of men. Since the war I have been a boss
. . . a manager . . . of varying numbers of men and women; but since I have tried to be a behavioral type manager, given to participatory management, consulting with my underlings, listening to their ideas and permitting them, at times, to talk me out of my original position, I find my army leadership lessons ones I had to unlearn. The army is an example of Classical Management, where the higher one’s rank the more important one is; and when an order is given, it must be carried out, without rhyme or reason. The soldier’s instructions are ‘‘ to do or die; not to reason why. ’’
I must say I understand why orders have to be carried out in the army, without hesitation or equivocation or even thinking about those orders. But that’s not the way to run a corporation and the two management styles are at opposite ends of the management- theory- pole.
The other things the army taught me: close order drill; digging foxholes deep and fast; disassembling and then reassembling and then firing light machine guns and mortars and Browning Automatic rifles; marching stiff and straight ‘‘ hut- two- threefour’’; taking an atabrine pill every morning; dousing a mess kit in boiling water; carrying toilet paper in my left rear pocket; awakening to a bugle call at dawn; saluting and returning salutes; sleeping under a pup tent or in a bomb shelter; and censoring mail– all of these skills, forever after, are useless. Thank God. Often, during the war as I lay in my tent or in my foxhole, I pledged that if I ever got out of my military predicament in one piece and with relative sanity, I would never again complain . . . and I would try to erase all the bad memories.
Maybe this book is the last erasure. Re- reading the letters to Irene, I came across the following paragraphs written in the middle of the war which opened up once again some of my thoughts on fighting in general . . . for whatever this position might be worth.
Dear Irene– Please forgive the rambling tenor of this letter . . . just let me get it out of my system: In my mind war is the worst of all atrocities. There is no such thing as a moral war or a just war or a war with rules. War is for keeps and any means whatsoever which can be used to gain victory must necessarily be employed. Thus, I don’t condemn Japanese atrocities from a moral standpoint. We who are bombing German women and children (incidental to winning the war) have no right to preach ethics of war.
My own condemnation is of the sense which inspires these atrocities. Thus, if such brutality as maiming a man would help the Japanese win the war, then they would be justified in their crimes. So, if for one minute I thought that bayoneting Japanese children, raping their women, and cutting their starving soldiers in half would help us end this war and save American lives, I’d say bravo and let’s get to it. I believe bombing of cities will break the German will to resist. That is a mass atrocity but justified because it will help end the war. I believe that individual atrocities such as rape, murder, starvation of individuals will not help the war effort, but instead will steel the determination of our enemies. So, I say, without one thought to the ethics of the situation, blow off their legs with 1000 pound bombs but do not drive a bayonet through a child’s intestines.
There is no such thing as a moral code in this all- out war. We must win and we must commit every act which will help us win. Actually the Japanese are damn fools for their crimes. The treatment of the prisoners of Corregidor have made us angry and that treatment has also made many of us want to die fighting rather than surrender. Naturally, we have felt that way all along. We take few prisoners; the Japanese take none.
Our own brutality does not make us angels. Many of our boys kill defenseless Japanese . . . starving Japanese . . . diseased Japanese . . . Japanese that they could very easily take prisoner. They kill them under the guise that the Japanese might be feigning sickness (which has been true in some cases.) However, I do not condemn this treatment of prisoners as bad from a moral standpoint. I condemn this brutality because a live Japanese prisoner can give us information which might save American lives. The condemnation, therefore, is strictly one of ignorance rather than of brutality.
Summing it all up, I guess I’m saying that in a war Machiavelli was right. The end justifies the means. There’s only one logical, acceptable end when you are fighting a war. That’s to win. Whatever it takes. Better not to quibble about who is more brutal, more inhuman; better to figure out how to put an end to wars. Once war is on, it’s every man, woman, and child for himself and herself; and let the devil take the hindmost.
Following up the abstract philosophy in my letter to Irene, may I make a few more personal and subjective comments:
The ultimate question all soldiers must ask themselves is how they managed to survive when fellow soldiers all around them were being wounded or killed. That question I put emphatically to myself innumerable times. How had I not only survived but never even been scratched when men to the right of me and the left of me and to the front of me and to the back of me were shot up?
Maybe I was more scared than most, or more prudent, or more adept at digging foxholes faster and deeper. Or maybe my analytical skills were so honed that I could anticipate dangerous situations and avoid them. Maybe somebody up there was looking out for me (which I do not believe for one moment).
More likely the answer was luck . . . blind, dumb luck. How else can I account for what I think of as perhaps my nearest miss? One night early in the battle for Manila the Japanese were shelling our positions, firing at will in the knowledge that we were not firing back with our artillery nor hitting them with our bombers. General MacArthur had ordered no counterbattery fire since so many Filipinos and American prisoners were trapped along with the Japanese troops that our indiscriminate firing would kill as many friends as foes.
Five of us were huddled around a table in the living room of a small house a few miles from the Pasig River studying a map to pinpoint our crossing of the river on a small barge the next day. Explosions had ringed our house every quarter- hour, but nothing had yet been close enough to cause casualties. Suddenly a shell– probably a 60 mm.– came through a shrouded window and hit directly onto our table. We were all knocked back by the force of the explosion.
I thought I was dead, but as I recovered consciousness I began to feel parts of my body to make certain I was intact. My legs, my arms, my face, my nose, my back, my stomach, my groin. I remember crying out in excited surprise: ‘‘ Hey . . . I haven’t been hit! ’’ I did not know that I was calling out to three dead men and to a fourth dying in the hallway. His feet were kicking spasmodically when I ran over to him and saw his intestines splattered all over the floor. He died a few minutes later.
The only other survivor was a Filipino civilian, owner of the house, who had been in the next room and had caught a small shrapnel fragment in the stomach . . . just a flesh wound.
I think that all of us had learned the lesson early in combat that we should never make close friends. Amid all the camaraderie, between- battle poker and volleyball, amid all the laughing and crying and insulting and comforting, always live at arms length– in a cocoon– with a protective shell between you and everyone else.
Yes, you feel badly at the loss of your ‘‘ friends’’, but– and I’m a bit ashamed to confess it– your first reaction when the guy next to you is hit and you are unscathed, is: ‘‘ Thank God, it’s not me. ’’
The heroes whom I’ve cited in this book had the opportunity to act and were capable of transcending selfish instincts by exposing themselves to the shell or the bullet that would have killed or wounded their comrades. That kind of Medal- of- Honor instinct suggests, if nothing else, a kind of divinity. Maybe in each of us there is a tiny bit of Rodger Young or Bob Viale. I don’t think I have it, but I thank God (or anyone else) that I was never put to the test . . . and that my blind luck prevailed.