UNKNOWN SOLDIERS: Reliving WWII in Europe

Especially our beloved Pullman, hospitalized with battle fatigue. In Kansas City thirtyfour years later he and I talked about it.

Jack:
I wore out. Got scared. Took it too personally. I just got weak. I couldn’t stand what was happening to my friends, and couldn’t stand not doing my own job. I’d had it, and my breaking point was less than you guys.

They gave me some pills and put me to sleep for twenty-four hours, then to the 105th Station Hospital for a couple of weeks, then the 300th General in Naples. I was too personalized with you guys. Raised the same way you were, that you’re supposed to do what you have to do in this world, you take care of your own and they’ll take care of you, and that’s not always possible, so you have some conflict when you don’t do it. I feel that I let everybody down, and yet I know that it was an impossible situation. We were all lucky to get out of it alive, or at least not captured.

I think I deliberately got into hazardous situations, trying to prove something to myself, maybe not consciously all the time but maybe the same attitude that attracted me into the Army in the first place. That’s why I say that these things are going to turn out good for everybody that participated in them. I think that you’re looking at yourself also through our mutual experience, reassessing Joe Garland in relation to these things at the same time, because anything that I did affected you, and what you did affected me.

Joe:
I was never promoted, and I had this big thing about not sucking ass for it. In fact I didn’t want the responsibility, because I’d have to stick my neck out, lead and not follow, and it would be riskier. Maybe I presented myself as smart enough, but how reliable? Sort of a cut-up. If I became a squad leader and was given a mission I’d have to try and do it, if on a patrol be up front, if walking into a minefield or ambush the one to go first. I guess I worked things out to follow orders, try to pull my part as a dogface, not do anything to bring attention to myself or get in a situation where it was really put to me.

We looked to you to protect our interests. We’d do our job, but you were the only buffer we had between the legitimate mission and the horseshit one.

Jack:
I worked very hard to avoid horseshit missions, and this is why the Army is set up this way, that you don’t become too personal with your men. And yet if we hadn’t had this relationship we wouldn’t have been as effective as we were. So when I felt I wasn’t doing my job anymore, I temporarily couldn’t handle it.

That’s probably where Griff, when he took over from me, was better, a little older and a little more dispassionate, essentially the difference between us, by temperament not an outgoing person. I imagine he was hurt underneath a lot more than we think. Always a little too uptight and a little too efficient, hasn’t had a way to vent his emotions. But it got to everybody sooner or later, even to him.