I’ve read the same account in two books, in William Manchester’s memoir “Good Bye Darkness” and in Studs Terkel’s “The Good War” though I’m unsure if that was just an excerpt from William Manchester’s own work. The whole thing just seems way too self-congratulatory as written by himself.
Here’s the full story directly from Manchester himself.
The reason why I cast doubt on it despite being from a memoir is because it runs contrary to every single report I’ve seen from soldiers, wounded, veteran, or not interacting with celebrity guests. In World War 2, Vietnam, or the Iraq Wars anytime a celebrity would show up to a base it was always a major event no matter how D-list or obscure they were. They were all just happy to see somebody to break up the monotony of their normal days. Even hospital visits to badly wounded veterans from other non-celebrities didn’t illicit boos like in this style. Does anyone know of any other incidents like this with other celebrities or if anyone else has reported this?
Manchester also retells the story in a NY Times article and I would hope that the Times did some fact-checking before printing it–though of course given the Jayson Blair scandal in 2003 one never knows
Yahoo answers has some posts on this:
And here’s a blog post on John Wayne being a draft dodger:
He wasn’t a draft dodger. For a brief time men in his age range were eligible to be drafted but by 1942 he was over the age range that was set by executive order. He was also classified 3-A which is a family deferment. He could have volunteered and it seems like he regretted not volunteering but he was by no definition a draft dodger.
And it’s a New York Times Magazine article not a news article. That article is part memoir and part opinion piece. What kind of fact checking could be done?
It’s been some 20 years since I had to read Goodbye Darkness for a history class, but I remember getting to the Author’s Note at the end and discovering that he hadn’t actually been in most of the battles he described (as best I can recall, he described everything in the first person). That he had actually only fought on Okinawa for a couple of months. And at that point, the whole book became kind of pointless to me, since I wasn’t going to go back and try to figure out which parts were really autobiographical and which were just stories he was retelling, and figure out how much of it was BS.
Jim’s Son, you know that political jabs are not allowed in General Questions, since you’ve been warned for it before. Here’s another. Keep it up and your posting privileges will be under discussion.
Going on from running coach’s post, I recall reading (sorry, no cite) that in 1939 a number of British actors were told that they would do more for the British war effort by staying in Hollywood.
That didn’t stop David Niven, for one, from returning to England and re-enlisting. That despite the fact that he’d already served a hitch in the British Amy, and wasn’t obliged to serve again.
Niven claims he once met Winston Churchill, who told him, “Sir, you did a fine thing.” Then he paused and added, “Mind, if you had NOT done so, you would have been despicable.”
I agree that John Wayne likely did more for the war effort as an actor than he would have in the military. I remember reading that after TOP GUN, applicants for Naval Aviation went up 500%.
What mortal threat was the nation facing in 1986 that Tom Cruise saved us from? 11.5 million men were drafted into the US armed forces during WWII; by 1945 and the actual landing on Iwo Jima even the Marines were taking conscripts.
