Maybe because Allied forces had been bombing the shit out of their towns?
I assume they understood that it was necessary, civilian casualties and destruction of their homes. The alternative is more years of German occupation and genocide.
The news from the war was censored and tweaked by the US government. Average Americans, and the Auburn lady, had no idea how horrible World War II really was.
My parents graduated from college in 1944. They got married, and Dad joined the Army. Mom worked in the payroll office of an aircraft plant. Rosie the bookkeeper, I guess. They never told us kids much about the war. Dad talked about his fallen arches, and about Dutch and German families he knew after the war was over. If he saw combat, he never told me about it.
Mom never had to say that; Dad’s Rule was “You Eat What You’re Served, Kid”. But, my Momo and Grampa would evoke the starving Armenians to avert wasted food.
I guess I just took it for granted exactly what you said about the bombing being the price they paid. “We sure liberated the hell out of this place” was the line attributed to some GI looking at a flattened French village.
Well, that and I’m sure that by then(fall 1944), the privations were severe. Given how those towns looked–empty shells of buildings, nobody in sight (and where did the villagers go while their homes were destroyed and their livelihoods ruined?)–where did the people spring from? I know there were in essence diasporas in Europe --so many refugees, but those Dutch and French seem happy, healthy and whole. Quite a disconnect. I imagine it must have been like London after the Blitz: fully intact and functional blocks, utter devastation across the street.
And this isn’t KB’s point or message, but I can’t help but think of Baghdad or the rest of Iraq. Like Europe, their entire infrastructure needs rebuilding (as does ours, but due to other reasons). How can we expect them to self-govern with no way to work?
We were told Armenians or Mongolians. I never did find out where Armenia was (near what used to be Czchekoslavkia, no?)
No. Czechoslovakia borders Germany. Armenia borders Turkey and Iran (and was part of the USSR at the time of WWII).
Since I work as a cashier at an A&P, I thought Al MacIntosh’s article in the third episode (I’m a little behind) about the soldier who had recently been killed in battle was interesting- not just because he worked at an A&P as well, but because it shows how close to home the war hit for some people. These guys didn’t know him as Seargent Such-And-Such- they just knew him as Red, the guy from the A&P. A little bit of their community was gone, never to come back. And he fought helping to save America from one of the greatest threats to the freedom of the world. Rather sad. It’s not like this nowadays.
See? thanks for the info. Ignorance fought!
Another great take on it was in It’s a Wonderful Life.
Burns didn’t really talk about the draft much, which is too bad. There were plenty of young men who didn’t run out and join the Marines; they waited for their number to come up. Wages were skyrocketing, and Army pay was less than they’d been making before, even without thinking about not seeing your loved ones again for years, if ever. Coming out of the Depression, it must have been heartbreaking for, say, a 21-year-old tool and die man with a wife and child to get drafted. his ship has finally come in, and it turns out to be a troop transport.
All this death. It just gets harder to watch (for me). I was thrilled to watch the liberation of that Manila prison camp. The tacked on stuff–while it’s nice to hear these men’s stories, ruin the dramatic arc of the episode.
Wawh lady bugged me again with her story about the Marine train. It was funny, but it just bugged me. I think she just bugs me…
I don’t think many people have come out and said it, but I’ve shed a few tears with every episode. All that death, sorrow and destruction – even though I know this was a necessary war to stop the Axis. It’s hard to watch but I never want to forget that they did what I don’t know if I could ever do.
On a lighter note, The Wawh has made me curious about a lot of details that occurred. I can’t tell you have many times, when the soldiers are trudging throught the elements, etc., I’ve wondered: How often are they able to get clean and dry socks?
I guess I do this because, if it’s one thing that causes me the most discomfort when I have something difficult to concentrate on (not comparing myself at all to the people in the war), it’s wet socks.
Actually, I’m fascinated by the logistics of all of it – from dry socks and other clothing, food, materiels all the way to handling the dead.
5-4 I feel the same. I doubt they had access to clean (or dry) socks. When I heard that one soldier say that they looked for German rabbit coats, all I could think of was the cold and the danger of them being mistaken for Germans…
I had a visceral reaction to the battle of the bulge. All that cold and snow(and I love cold, but only with adequate outerwear). I have Raynaud’s disease, and one thing I fear is to be caught, wet and cold in the cold with no way to get warm. I could feel myself shrinking away from the information. (I did not suffer a spasm of Raynaud’s).
Here is more info on Raynaud’s disease: raynaud’s
sorry to digress. But my point is that it was hard to watch. I also have to admit to feeling righteous re the Japanese and the retaking of Manila. I hope this vengeful streak fades with the next episode. My husband turned to me and said that when the GIs were retaken back into their POW camp that the Japanese probably would have just killed them outright. I had to agree (although we don’t know that for sure).
I would also like to know the logistics of it all. Like how could that one general ensure that all the GIs got a turkey dinner (the dinner that killed many) for Tgiving in 1944? How did they get their blankets or more bullets? I see now that they carried K rations on them, but they must have had hot food at some point. How was all the orchestrated? I care less about military strategy and more about logistics of feeding, housing, and clothing these massive numbers of soldiers.
And how far away were the nurses and doctors–the Army field hospitals? How were they different from the ones used in Korea and Vietnam? And where did those soldiers at the Ghost Front get their baseball bats and balls and gloves from? And their guitars? They surely didn’t carry them.
Black guys driving trucks, and black guys serving as cooks, mostly. Dangerous, but unglamorous jobs.
Couldn’t she have kissed just one Marine? Burns should have interviewed the friend who didn’t run fast enough. 
“Oh, don’t wait for me, Katherine. You run and save yourself. I’ll be along. Maybe tomorrow sometime.”
I gotta say, petty discomforts that used to annoy me – they don’t anymore. I’m not saying I’ll never be annoyed at little things again, but I won’t be annoyed about how the bed cools off after I’ve been up in the middle of the night to hit the john. Cuz that used to annoy me.
I remember a picture in the American Heritage picture book of WW2. It showed a very muddy, grizzled-looking grunt, M1 slung over his shoulder, standing as he ate his dinner near the end of the Battle of the Bulge. The photo caption said it was his first hot meal in three weeks! And this was during extremely cold winter weather.
Brrrrr.
I served as a civilian cook at Quantico Marine Corps Base one summer. One of our jobs was to get hot meals (breakfast and lunch were my shifts) to Officer Candidates in the field. We’d cook the food at the mess, box it up, and take it to the candidates in the field and serve it from trucks. Of course it was my luck to draw the short straw so that I had to go into the field during the remains of a hurricane. Pouring rain, pitch dark (breakfast was served bright and early at 4:30 a.m.) or serving by vehicle headlights, slogging through mud, watching guys get medical treatment for training accidents, etc. etc. etc. It was a messy, difficult job, but everyone was thankful to get the hot meal.
Add bullets and artillery fire to that and I guess the WWII experience was pretty similar. Cook it in one place, haul it to another.
IIRC, the rule of thumb back then was ten soldiers involved in logistics and support for every soldier on the line–sheer gruntwork. An army, after all, travels on its stomach. An advantage we had was that the Allies were primarily mechanized, while the Germans’ transport was primarily horsedrawn, once it was taken off trains.
I assume much of the dismissal of the dowager Miss Mobile is coming from people considerably younger than I who never lived Down South. She seems perfectly normal, for a woman of a certain age and class. And I do not attribute her lack of tears to indifference. A lady doesn’t weep in public. And I find the dismissal of her for her accent to be rather offensive. I’ve known several Southerners who worked to lose their accents when they moved north because of people discrimated against them.
10:1 ? Wow–I wish we heard more about the “support personnel” then. And weren’t military bandsmen (I mean the men who played in the band) cross trained as medics or corpsmen or something? Or was that the Civil War?
IMO, making fun of her accent is a stand in for mildly mocking her station in life. That’s all–it doesn’t translate to the others from Mobile or to the south in general (for me).
AuntiePam–I thought the same thing. What was the harm in staying? Her friend has a story for a lifetime–she can only report on what her friend did. I felt bad for coffee girl-box of doughnuts? Not too heavy. Box of sandwiches? ditto. Enough coffee to match the number of sandwiches and doughnuts? Very heavy indeed. No wonder she couldn’t run!
plnnr-that sounds grim. I’m sure your efforts were much apprciated by those soldiers. When did you sleep?
Okay. The Indianapolis. I can understand not sending rescue until you know the SOS isn’t a trick, but there must be more to the story than that. Wouldn’t someone try to radio the ship right away to see what’s going on? And wouldn’t they figure out something’s wrong if there’s no response?
How long did they wait before they started searching? It couldn’t possibly have been a two or three days!
The final segment had sort of a cumulative effect, on me anyway. I’m surprised that anyone who saw combat was able to readjust.
What happened with Quentin Annenson (sp?) and Barbara? They married, but she has a different last name – Greer. They both sounded quite happy about the marriage, even now, but the different last names have me thinking it didn’t last. Women didn’t keep their own last names much in the 40’s.
I think they presented the women with their maiden names. Auburn Lady (Sid Phillips’ sister) was presented as “Firstname Phillips,” even though she married after the war.
I was really hoping to see Quentin and Barbara interact on camera. It was pretty clear from Quentin’s interviews that she helped him survive the war, and recover afterwards. I wonder what it must have been like for her after he came home…
I guess the thing that I’m marveling at now is how quickly relations between countries were normalized after so many acts of savagery. I can’t even imagine the depths of hatred, anger, and fear that were present in the people who fought in all theaters. And yet, the next generation of Americans was soon comfortably doing business with our former enemies. It’s amazing what a little time and money can do…
I didn’t quite get why some posters found the Mobile lady annoying until tonight, when she made her statement about how people of her generation could never be convinced that the atomic bomb wasn’t just the greatest invention ever (or something of that sort). Of course she was immediately contradicted by the next gentleman who expressed his thoughts on the matter, but it really got to me - such callousness. And yet I think I could see myself being that callous, just thinking “it’s good as long as it gets our boys home.” I would like to think I wouldn’t feel that way, but in her shoes I might have.
Overall, I was impressed with the documentary. Six of my uncles served in WWII, but unfortunately only five made it home. My brother-in-law served. I’ve known lots of local WWII vets besides. The ones still living don’t talk about it. Maybe now I understand more about why.
What was the music that played over the credits? It was beautiful and I would love to find it.
I can’t remember the exact ratio and my google-fu is miserable right now, but the ratio of support troops to combat troops in WW2 was at least 5 to 1, and probably greater IIRC. Most white soldiers were support not combat.
I’m having a hard time figuring out what political point this post is supposed to make, but it has no basis in facts.