The unromantic horror of WW2

snafuk35

Since 1998's Saving Private Ryan we have witnessed a deluge of movies, TV series, novels and computer games about WW2.

What all of these barely mention is the grinding boredom of life for most US soldiers the majority of whom never served on the front lines and instead spent their time on labour details. Few if any of these men saw a day of combat and when they returned home were considered heroes no different from the minority who actually were at the tip of the spear.

For the sorry souls who served in front line units, the most unremarked aspect is the filth they lived in. Clothes, equipment, underwear, socks and boots were worn for weeks on end and were often falling to pieces, few shaved or washed and had sores all over their bodes, their food was awful and they suffered from malaria or frostbite or trench foot whether they were in the steaming tropics, blazing deserts or the wet and cold of Europe.

The stench and mud would drive men to insanity just as much as the shelling and the toll of dead and wounded. The stench of unburied rotting corpses, rotting rations and rotting feces and clouds of flies made life a living hell. Often riflemen would witness the gradual decomposition of men they killed or men who were their buddies within feet of their foxholes, unable to move out of their holes during the day because of sniper fire or exploding shells and mortars. Bodies would bloat, explode with maggots and finally turn to skeletons. When possible the dead were often covered with a few spades of muck and explosions would often unearth buried corpses and sprinkle their parts over a wide area.

The constant fear of death and injury drove men to breaking point. Fresh recruits after five minutes on the front line soon forgot about patriotism and tried to stay alive long enough to go home. Veterans had stopped trying to make friends with the new guys because they often got killed soon after they arrived.

The real old sweats had seen most their friends maimed and killed and saw no recognisible faces by the end of a campaign. They often lost hope forgetting about their past lives and forgetting about the future, focusing purely on the next few minutes knowing the chances of avoiding death and injury dwindled the longer they were in combat.

Few if any men continued to have any pity for the enemy after they experienced the fear of death. Japs carried diaries and pictures of children just like they did but finding such momentos among the belongings of rotting Jap corpses made them hate them all the more for separating themselves from home which they often stopped believing they would ever see again.

Hatred for the enemy was another way of keeping alive and they rejoiced when they saw the enemy pounded by artillery and bombs. In the Pacific theatre in particular, American troops rarely took prisoners and many stole the gold teeth of dead Japanese, because it was psychologically comforting to dehumanise the enemy.

When politicians at home spoke lofty words about heroes spilling their blood it made no sense to the men on the frontline who only saw flies feeding on the blood of dead men and maggots growing fat on their rotting remains.

Whether the men fought in France or Italy or on Pacific Islands, placenames eventually meant nothing. They thought in terms of another yard, another ridge line, another forest or jungle, hidden machine guns or sniper positions and just unending terror and lack of sleep, exhaustion, discomfort, crappy food, officers sending them into attack after attack after attack, the enemy who wouldn't give up even when he was beat.

They didn't talk about what they did or where they did it after the war because they wanted to forget. They let Eisenhower and other generals write their memoirs, they let historians write the history of the big campaign, the let novelists write books who had served in rear echelons and never heard a shot fired in anger. They didn't bother telling civilians what it was really like because they could never understand. They let John Wayne play soldier in corny movies that turned WW2 into a game of comboys and indians.

Many took comfort in religion and family values and creating sheltered upbringings for their children growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. Others took comfort in alcohol and drugs and became sad hobos or criminals unable to function in the safe civilian world.

It was not until Vietnam that most Americans truly woke up to the real horror of war on the television screens. The WW2 veterans who had seen it all before were angry when they saw spoiled college kids shirk their duty but also understood too well.

marcsignal

snafuk35 wrote: »

Many took comfort in religion and family values and creating sheltered upbringings for their children growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. Others took comfort in alcohol and drugs and became sad hobos or criminals unable to function in the safe civilian world.

afaik the original Hell Angles sprung out of exactly the men you mention here.

Much of what you have mentioned about movies is evident in some of the 70s WW2 greats too. Kellys Heroes, The Battle of the Bulge, Where Eagles Dare all fit right into the category of nice televisual entertainment on a Sunday afternoon, and where would Christmas be without The Great Escape ??

good post op

EDIT

I guess you could say it was much the same for the Germans. I knew 3 German WW2 vets very well. “Willi” (a relative, sort of, through my sisters marriage) was Waffen SS, who fought all over Russia, “Jacob Neuss” (whos wife was a friend of my sister through work in the 70s) was Wehrmacht, and fought in France and Russia, and finally “Arthur Reichenwallner” who was Wehrmacht, was a Dentists Assistant, and served in Leningrad. He was the partner, of the Mother, of a girl I was living with in Munich in 2007.

Arthur is the only one still alive. Willi died in 2006, and Jacob Neuss died last year. All 3 men spoke openly about the war. In fact once they started they never shut up. I guess they knew they were coming to the end of the road, and they wanted to talk about things they had kept quiet about for so long. Nobody talked about the war in Germany in the 60s and 70s, and kids of that generation never learned anything in school about it either. In all 3 cases there were moments where the conversation would stop, and the old man would just sit there pondering, staring blankly, as if reliving moments of terror, fear, or sadness at the pointlessness of it all.

“Jacob Neuss” allowed me to copy some old matchbox sized private photos he had, of his time on the Russian front, posted here. I remember I enlarged them for him, and brought them back to his apartment the following week. It was as if he had seen old ghosts in the enlarged images of him and his comrades, out on their rest periods in the local town in France in the early years, or sitting on a Half Track somewhere in Russia. It was a poignant moment when he mentioned, looking at this picture (Jacob is on the RHS), that he was the only one still alive, and that most of the men with him had not even survived the war. Jacob also told me he only killed one man he knew about. He shot a Russian soldier in a town during the advance of 1942. He said it sometimes still woke him at night all those years later, and told me he prayed for the man he killed whenever this happened.

One evening in the house in Allach when “Arthur Reichenwallner” was visiting, was another time I remember. It was around Halloween, and the 2 kids of the girl I was living with, were having a Halloween disco in the house with their mates (10-15 year olds). They had UV lights, a Mirror Ball, and were setting off fireworks in the back garden. “Arthur” was going on about the war as usual, and remarked that he was only 5 or 6 years older than the kids, when he was at his first disco. When I asked where ? He replied that Leningrad was his first disco, the darkness, the loud noises and flashes of light. That made me think.....

When I asked him what he learned from his experiences, he said, that as a Dentists Assistant, he learned how to forge signatures.
He used to frequently have access to order / requisition forms etc. So when he was on leave, he would forge his bosses signature on a form authorising him to collect essential supplies (conveniently in Colonge, where his mother and Father lived) This usually got him an extra week or two away from the carnage in the East. Arthur was occasionally prone to protracted silences and blank stares into the fire as well.

Interesting men, all three. I couldn’t even begin to try to understand the hellish things they must have seen as young men.

ejmaztec

I think a lot of alcohol was consumed during any breaks. One of my family members was a Royal Artillery gunner on Atlantic/Mediterranean merchant ships, and on one occasion he bumped into his brother-in-law in Marseille. Naturally they went on a bender, which apparently lasted two weeks.

TerrorFirmer

Excellent post marcsignal. Thank you very much for your contribution. Always amongst the best on this site.

Morlar

Speaking of unromantic horror, these men nearly made it to Ireland before dying in the cold and dark waters of the atlantic. Kind of depressing that the angle for the story is the lucre and not the loss of life.

26 September 2011 Last updated at 15:43 GMT

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15061868

Shipwreck of SS Gairsoppa reveals £150m silver haul

Underwater footage of the shipwreck


A shipwreck containing 200 tonnes of silver worth about £150m has been found in the Atlantic - the largest haul of precious metal ever discovered at sea.

The SS Gairsoppa, a UK cargo ship sunk by a German U-boat in 1941, was found by US exploration firm Odyssey Marine.

The firm will retain 80% of the cargo's value under the terms of a contract with the Department for Transport.

Only one person from the 85-strong crew survived the torpedo attack as the ageing steamer tried to reach Ireland.

The vessel was on its way back to Britain from India when it ran low on fuel in stormy weather, and tried to divert to Galway harbour, but it was spotted and sunk by the German submarine.
'Robotic submarines'

Three members of the crew survived in a lifeboat and reached the Cornish coast two weeks later, but two died trying to get ashore.

The wreck of the 412ft ship was found this summer nearly 4,700m below the North Atlantic, 300 miles off the Irish coast, but it was only confirmed as SS Gairsoppa last week.

Odyssey Marine's senior project manager, Andrew Craig, said: "We've accomplished the first phase of this project - the location and identification of the target shipwreck.
SS Gairsoppa The operation to recover the bullion will begin in the second quarter of 2012, Odyssey says

"Now we're hard at work planning for the recovery phase.

"Given the orientation and condition of the shipwreck, we are extremely confident that our planned salvage operation will be well suited for the recovery of this silver cargo."

SS Gairsoppa settled upright on the seabed with its cargo holds open, which means remote-controlled robotic submarines should be able to retrieve the bullion.

Work would begin in the second quarter of 2012, Odyssey said.

The marine archaeology and exploration company said it was "highly unlikely" any human remains would be found, given the age and depth of the wreck.

Odyssey's chief marine archaeologist Neil Dobson said: "Even though records indicate that the lifeboats were launched before the ship sank, sadly most of her crew did not survive the long journey to shore.

"By finding this shipwreck and telling the story of its loss, we pay tribute to the brave merchant sailors who lost their lives."

The merchant ship belonged to the British India Steam Navigation Company, and was ordered into the merchant navy fleet at the outbreak of World War II.

A Department for Transport spokeswoman said: "The contract for the salvage of the SS Gairsoppa was awarded by competitive tender in accordance with government and departmental procedures.

"While we do not comment on the specifics of such commercial arrangements, Odyssey Marine Exploration were awarded the contract as they offered the best rate of return to HMG."

Tabnabs

I'm sure I've told this account somewhere else on here, but I have an uncle who first went to sea in the early 60s and sailed with some men who had survived the Atlantic convoys.

The one story my uncle remembered best was one guy whose ship was torpedoed and ended up in a lifeboat with other crewmen. They began to die around him from hypothermia, wounds, all sorts of things and those still alive were either too weak or too helpless to dump the bodies overboard. But the worst bit of all was the seagulls came and picked at the dead men, anything loose or fleshy was eaten by the gulls but probably worst of all the eyes were first to go. It effected the old sailor so badly that he could never stand to look at a seagull as it brought back the bitter memories of his time in the lifeboat. A gruesome and horrific story.