The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II Read Free Page A

humanity. His life story should resonate with those who wonder how much they would have endured before collapsing or fleeing. Fortunately for this writer, Bain’s son John provided insights into his father’s character, motives and flaws that fleshed out the many writings and interviews Bain left behind when he died.
    John Bain wrote a poem in which a deserter told his son:
But son, my spirit, underneath,
Survived it all intact;
They thought they’d crushed me like a bug
But I had won in fact.
    The Second World War was not as wonderful as its depiction in some films and adventure tales. It should not be surprising that young men found the experience of it so debilitating that they escaped. John Keegan, who pioneered the writing of war’s history through the eyes of its participants, wrote, “What war can ever be wonderful, least of all one that killed fifty million people, destroyed swathes of Europe’s cultural heritage, depraved its politics, devalued the very moral basis of its civilization?”

BOOK I
    Of Boys to Soldiers

ONE
From the earliest childhood, American boys are taught that it is wrong—the greatest wrong—to kill.
Psychology for the Fighting Man, Prepared for the Fighting Man Himself , Committee of the National Research Council with the Collaboration of Science Service as a Contribution to the War Effort, p. 349
    A T THE END OF THE G REAT W AR OF 1914–18 , Private First Class William Weiss was departing France with a leg scarred by German bullets, lungs choked in poison gas and a plague of memories. While convalescing in a Catholic hospital near Tours, the Jewish-American doughboy fell in love with his French nurse. The romance, which sustained him for four months, ended when his 77th Infantry Division mustered at Brest for the voyage home to New York City. In April 1919, five months after the Armistice, New York held little promise for Weiss. The postwar economic recession was beginning, as weapons factories laid off workers and banks pressed for repayment of war debts. Many 77th Division troops had lost their jobs to civilians when they entered the United States Army. At least 25 per-cent of them had no hope of work and expected nothing more at home than a grateful welcome. As they set sail across the Atlantic, even the welcome was cast into doubt.
    To the surprise of the 77th Division’s commanders, the Department of War declared that it would not accord the men a traditional victory parade. Only one month earlier, the 27th Infantry Division, O’Ryan’s Roughnecks, had marched proudly up Fifth Avenue to the acclaim of ecstatic crowds. The 27th and 77th were both New York divisions, about all they had in common. The all-volunteer, mostly Irish 27th were honest-to-God American Christian fighting men. The 77th was comprised of draftees and recent immigrants from Italy, Greece, Russia, Poland, Armenia, Syria and China. Thirty percent were Jewish. Twelve thousand earned American citizenship while in uniform, making them, to most Washington politicians, not quite Americans.
    When New Yorkers insisted on honoring the 77th anyway, the War Department advanced a series of pretexts to block them. It said the doughboys themselves did not want a parade. The men, once asked, were unanimously in favor. War Secretary Newton Baker then cited objections by Fifth Avenue shopkeepers to the erection of grandstands between 97th and 98th Streets. After the courts rejected the shopkeepers’ injunction, the department claimed the parade would be too expensive—almost a million dollars, a figure soon lowered to $80,000. Finally, it said that disembarking thirty thousand men at the same time would paralyze the docks.
    War Department prevarications infuriated New York City. All of the 77th’s boys came from the metropolis, whereas the 27th’s National Guardsmen hailed from as far as Schenectady and Albany. Meetings assembled throughout Manhattan to lodge protests. The Welcome Committee for the Jewish Boys Returning