With no less than 620,000 deaths recorded over four years of intense fighting between Confederate and Union forces, the American Civil War remains the bloodiest conflict in American history.
Playing host to battles such as Shiloh, Antietam, Stones River, and Gettysburg, the Civil War holds tales of unprecedented violence, ferocious bravery, and unparalleled heroism.
Among these many tales is that of Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur Jr. whose bravery at the most critical moment inspired his regiment during the Battle of Missionary Ridge.
MacArthur Jr. was born in the Chicopee Falls area of Springfield, Massachusetts on June 2, 1845. His mother Aurelia was the daughter of Benjamin B. Belcher, a wealthy industrialist. She would die at the age of 45, leaving behind Arthur and his brother, Frank.
MacArthur's father, Arthur MacArthur Sr., was a prominent judge and the fourth governor of Wisconsin. With his father's influence, MacArthur enrolled in the United States Military Academy. Thus began his journey as a Soldier.
MacArthur was in Wisconsin when the Civil War broke out. He promptly received a commission as a first lieutenant and joined the 24th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
He participated in some of the deadliest hostilities of the war such as Stones River, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, the Atlanta Campaign, and Franklin.
The event that brought him into the limelight occurred during the Chattanooga Campaign in the Battle of Missionary Ridge, which took place on November 25, 1863, just after the Battle of Lookout Mountain.
While the battle raged on, the 24th Wisconsin found themselves under intense fire from the Confederates as the former moved up Missionary Ridge.
Despite that, the Union troops kept surging forward behind their roaring guns, yelling "Chickamauga! Chickamauga!" as Confederate General Braxton Bragg's men unleashed their volleys from above, making men fall on all sides.
The top of the ridge was the goal for the 24th Wisconsin, and they raced upwards, determined to knock the Confederates off the top. But with such heavy resistance from Bragg's men, the assault was soon in complete tatters.
At that moment, the flag bearer of the 24th Wisconsin was killed. He hit the ground as the Confederate gunfire struck him and rolled down the ridge in his death fall. His grip on the flag was broken, and it fell from his hands into the dirt.
A comrade charged forth and reached for the flag, but the guns of the enemy were quick to knock him to the ground as well.
Amidst the roars of surging warriors, the voice of the 18-year-old MacArthur tore through the damp air. His weary legs were quickened by the sight of the battle flag lying on the ground beside his fallen comrades, and he dashed on ahead of the others.
The sounds of cannons and rifles did not terrify him. His will was stronger than the fear he felt. He reached for the flag, raised it from the dirt, and waved it passionately in the air.
Like a man chasing his own death, he raced up the ridge with the regimental flag dancing in the winds. His voice rang through the tumultuous atmosphere as he yelled "On, Wisconsin!"
His comrades from the 24th Wisconsin surged after him, fueled by his energy. More Union troops joined in the revitalized onslaught. And by the coming of dusk, the center of the Confederates' line was broken.
The Confederates fled the ridge, and by the end of the battle, the 24th Wisconsin's regimental flag was waving with its pole firmly mounted on the crest of Missionary Ridge.
For such an extraordinary display of bravery, MacArthur received the Medal of Honor.
The following year, only at 19 years old, he became a Brevet Colonel, which is why he was called "The Boy Colonel."
November 30, 1964, was the day of the Battle of Franklin. During this event, the 24th Wisconsin found themselves in a desperate engagement with Confederate forces. MacArthur was severely injured by gunshots to his chest and leg. But, somehow, he survived his wounds - and ultimately, the war.
Following the end of the Civil War, he left the Army and went to study law. But a few months of studying law left him yearning for fulfillment, and it was clear that the only thing that would fill the void for him was the military.
Thus, MacArthur returned to the Army. In 1885, he participated in the campaign against Geronimo. In 1898 he led the 1st Brigade of the 2nd Division, a subset of the Eighth Army Corps, to victory during the Battle of Manila in the Spanish-American War.
He also played a role in the capture of Emilio Aguinaldo, and the effective end of the Philippine-American War.
MacArthur retired from the Army as a Lieutenant General on June 2, 1909, at the mandatory retirement age of sixty-four.
Having married Mary Pinkney Hardy in 1875, he had three children: Arthur MacArthur III, Malcolm MacArthur, and Douglas MacArthur.
On September 5, 1912, during a reunion ceremony of the 24th Wisconsin in Milwaukee, MacArthur collapsed from the dais while trying to give a speech.
He died at the spot, aged 67.
He was first buried in Milwaukee, but in 1926 he was relocated to Section 2, Gravesite 845-A of Arlington National Cemetery.
While MacArthur Jr. lived on in memories, his son Douglas continued where he left off.
Douglas MacArthur Jr. would earn the Medal of Honor during the First World War and would thus make history with his father. They became the first-ever father-son duo to earn America's most prestigious honor.
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In June 1948, the Russians–who wanted Berlin all for themselves–closed all highways, railroads, and canals from western-occupied Germany into western-occupied Berlin. This, they believed, would make it impossible for the people who lived there to get food or any other supplies and would eventually drive Britain, France, and the U.S. out of the city for good.Instead of retreating from West Berlin, however, the U.S. and its allies decided to supply their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the "Berlin Airlift," lasted for more than a year and carried more than 2.3 million tons of cargo into West Berlin.
The Berlin Airlift: The Partitioning of Berlin
As World War II came to an end in 1945, the Allied powers held peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam to determine how they would divide up Germany’s territories. The agreements split the defeated nation into four "allied occupation zones." They gave the eastern part of the country to the Soviet Union and the Western part to the U.S. and Great Britain. In turn, those nations agreed to cede a small part of their territories to France.
Even though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country (it sat about 100 miles from the border between the eastern and western occupation zones), the Yalta and Potsdam agreements likewise split the German capital into Allied sectors: The Soviets took the eastern half, while the other Allies took the western. This occupation of Berlin, governed by a multipower agency called the Kommandatura, began in June 1945.The Soviets were dissatisfied with this arrangement. Twice in recent memory, they had been invaded by Germany, and they had no interest in promoting that country’s reunification–yet it seemed that was exactly what the United States, Great Britain, and France had in mind. For example, in 1946, the Americans and the British combined their two sectors into a single "Bizonia," and the French were preparing to join as well. In 1948, the three western Allies created a single new currency (the Deutsche Mark) for all of their occupation zones - a move that the Soviets feared would fatally devalue the already hyperinflated Reichsmarks that they used in the east. For the Soviets, it was the last straw.
The Berlin Airlift: The Berlin Blockade
The Russians were also concerned about a unified West Berlin: a capitalist city located right in the middle of their occupation zone that would likely be powerfully and aggressively anti-Soviet. They decided that something needed to be done to stop this creeping Unificationism. They withdrew from the Kommandatura and began a blockade of West Berlin, a maneuver that they hoped would effectively starve the western powers out of Berlin. If West Germany was to become its own country, they argued, then Berlin, located more than 100 miles from its border, could no longer be its capital.
On June 15, 1948, the Soviet authorities announced that the Autobahn, the highway connecting western Germany to Berlin, would be closed indefinitely "for repairs." Then, they halted all road traffic from west to east and barred all barge and rail traffic from entering West Berlin. Thus, began the blockade of Berlin.As far as the western Allies were concerned, withdrawal from the city was not an option. "If we withdraw," said the American military commander, "our position in Europe is threatened, and Communism will run rampant." President Harry Truman echoed this sentiment: "We shall stay," he declared, "period." Using military force to strike back against the Soviet blockade seemed equally unwise: The risk of turning the Cold War into an actual war - even worse, a nuclear war - was just too great. Finding another way to re-provision the city seemed to the Allies to be the only reasonable response.
The Berlin Airlift: "Operation VITTLES" Begins
It was quickly settled: The Allies would supply their sectors of Berlin from the air. Allied cargo planes would use open-air corridors over the Soviet occupation zone to deliver food, fuel and other goods to the people who lived in the western part of the city. This project, code-named "Operation VITTLES" by the American military, was known as the "Berlin airlift." (West Berliners called it the "Air Bridge.")
The Berlin airlift was supposed to be a short-term measure, but it settled in for the long haul as the Soviets refused to lift the blockade. For more than a year, hundreds of American, British and French cargo planes ferried provisions from Western Europe to the Tempelhof (in the American sector), Gatow (in the British sector) and Tegel (in the French sector) airfields in West Berlin. At the beginning of the operation, the planes delivered about 5,000 tons of supplies to West Berlin every day; by the end, those loads had increased to about 8,000 tons of supplies per day. The Allies carried about 2.3 million tons of cargo in all over the course of the airlift.Life in West Berlin during the blockade was not easy. Fuel and electricity were rationed, and the black market was the only place to obtain many goods. Still, most West Berliners supported the airlift and their western allies. "It’s cold in Berlin," one airlift-era saying went, "but colder in Siberia."
The Berlin Airlift: The End of the Blockade
By spring 1949, it was clear that the Soviet blockade of West Berlin had failed. It had not persuaded West Berliners to reject their allies in the West, nor had it prevented the creation of a unified West German state. (The Federal Republic of Germany was established in May 1949.)
On May 12, 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade and reopened the roads, canals and railway routes into the western half of the city. The Allies continued the airlift until September, however, because they wanted to stockpile supplies in Berlin just in case the blockade was reinstated.Most historians agree that the blockade was a failure in other ways, too. It amped up Cold War tensions and made the USSR look to the rest of the world like a cruel and capricious enemy. It hastened the creation of West Germany, and, by demonstrating that the U.S. and Western European nations had common interests (and a common foe), it motivated the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance that still exists today.
A massive cold front blew in from Siberia, and with it, the coldest winter in recorded Korean history. For the encircled allies at the Chosin Reservoir, daytime temperatures averaged five degrees below zero, while nights plunged to minus 35 and lower.Jeep batteries froze and split. C-rations ran dangerously low and the cans were frozen solid. Fuel could not be spared to thaw them. If truck engines stopped, their fuel lines froze. Automatic weapons wouldn't cycle. Morphine syrettes had to be thawed in a medical corpsman's mouth before they could be injected. Precious bottles of blood plasma were frozen and useless. Resupply could only come by air, and that was spotty and erratic because of the foul weather.
High Command virtually wrote them off, believing their situation was hopeless. Washington braced for imminent news of slaughter and defeat. Retreat was hardly an option; not through that wall of Chinese troops. If the Marines defended, they would be wiped out. Instead, they formed a 12-mile long column and attacked.
There were 78 miles of narrow, crumbling, steeply-angled road and 100,000 Chinese soldiers between the Marines and the sea at Hungnam. Both sides fought savagely for every inch of it. The march out became one monstrous, moving battle.
The Chinese used the ravines between ridges, protected from rifle fire, to marshal their forces between attacks. The Marines' 60-millimeter mortars, capable of delivering high, arcing fire over the ridgelines, breaking up those human waves, became perhaps the most valuable weapon the Marines had. But their supply of mortar rounds was quickly depleted. Emergency requests for resupply were sent by radio, using code words for specific items. The code for 60mm mortar ammo was "Tootsie Rolls" but the radio operator receiving that urgent request didn't have the Marines' code sheets. All he knew was that the request came from command authority, it was extremely urgent and there were tons of Tootsie Rolls at supply bases in Japan.Tootsie Rolls had been issued with other rations to U.S. troops since World War I, earning preferred status because they held up so well to heat, cold and rough handling compared to other candies.
Tearing through the clouds and fog, parachutes bearing pallet-loads of Tootsie Rolls descended on the Marines. After initial shocked reactions, the freezing, starving troops rejoiced. Frozen Tootsies were thawed in armpits, popped in mouths, and their sugar provided instant energy. For many, Tootsie Rolls were their only nourishment for days. The troops also learned they could use warmed Tootsie Rolls to plug bullet holes in fuel drums, gas tanks, cans, and radiators, where they would freeze solid again, sealing the leaks.
Over two weeks of unspeakable misery, movement, and murderous fighting, the 15,000-man column suffered 3,000 killed in action, 6,000 wounded and thousands of severe frostbite cases. But they reached the sea, demolishing several Chinese divisions in the process. Hundreds credited their very survival to Tootsie Rolls. Surviving Marines called themselves "The Chosin Few," and among themselves, another name: The Tootsie Roll Marines.
And our views about what service and sacrifice are have been skewed by a lack of knowledge.My father was drafted into the Army in the Second World War and was not very pleased about being pulled out of the University of Minnesota just before he finished to go fight in the South Pacific. And yet when he was my age, all he talked about was how proud he was to have served the country. The same thing is true of people of my generation - about 40-45 percent of the people who served in Vietnam were drafted, many of them dragged kicking and screaming into uniform. Go talk to them now that they're 70 or 75 years old: There is nothing that they are prouder of than having served.
That experience of having been young and in uniform is transformative. Which war you served in is irrelevant. It's a bond that is impossible to break, and I think it becomes stronger over time. You're away from home, burdened with large authority and responsibility. You know the mission itself is important, but you're in miserable circumstances - too cold, too hot, too hungry, too thirsty, too tired. I think the experience is generally unpleasant, but the people you go through it with, make it bearable. Different weapons different tactics, different intensity, but the experience of being in combat, being in fear for your life, having to perform missions that were important, taking care of each other, remained the same.
I don't think you can judge valor with any kind of regularity or equitability. It's a subjective evaluation, despite that the services have tried to judge it in absolute or relative terms. Is this worth a Medal of Honor or a Distinguished Service Cross? A Service Cross or a Silver Star? And I think military people have grappled with this for a long time which is why there was originally only the Purple Heart. You either did something valorous or you did not. It makes it more equitable but also more inequitable once you start instituting gradations of valor.
Lots of people received Purple Hearts who are not around to talk about their experience because it killed them. And those of us who are still here, when asked about the circumstances of our award, often give it short shrift, preferring instead to remember a buddy who did not survive, perhaps killed in the same incident. We know that it was originally an award for military merit, but that it was transformed into an award that signifies sacrifice. It's about more than our own sacrifice, it's about those who sacrificed but didn't survive to wear the medal. There's some survivor's guilt there, obviously.
As for my own action, the enemy had spies in the province headquarters. They knew we were coming; they had three days to set up an ambush, and we walked right into it. We lost a large number of killed and wounded in the first seconds of the battle, including me. There were a lot of other soldiers who were out in the open. I was badly wounded too, but I was the only person who was able to do something. I thought it was my obligation to do what I could to get them out of there. So I went out and dragged some of them back. The Viet Cong were coming out of their bunkers with supporting cover, taking the weapons from our dead and shooting the wounded. I did that until I ran out of gas; I sat down to catch my breath and I couldn't get up again because I'd lost too much blood.A citation is like a photograph; it's a snapshot in time and doesn't tell the whole story. Mine doesn't mention how scared I was. But it's interesting about fear. A great calm comes over you in a circumstance in which you not only might not survive but in which you are likely not to survive. And you are much more relaxed about it all. It's not that you aren't scared anymore, but that it doesn't matter anymore. The other thing about fear is that it gets you to do things you otherwise wouldn't do. There's a lot of adrenaline that is attendant to being scared and that gives you the strength you otherwise wouldn't have. I talk to cadets often about fear in combat and I tell them I rarely saw fear immobilize people; fear usually did exactly the opposite: it motivated people to take care of each other and do positive, valiant things they otherwise wouldn't do.
Jack Jacobs Medal of Honor citation:
http://www.pbs.org/weta/americanvalor/stories/jacobs.html
Whether a few thousand miles out to sea, or a few thousand feet up in the air, when you're fighting so far out of your natural element, you risk death not only from your enemy's weaponry but also from the inherent danger of falling from the skies or into the unforgiving ocean.
While we have invented means to mitigate these dangers, such as lifeboats and parachutes if these last resorts fail, death is usually a certainty.Indeed, plummeting to the earth without a parachute from 18,000 feet in the air is pretty much guaranteed to end only one way for the unfortunate person involved - but, as history has often taught us there are always exceptions to the rules, and one man who miraculously survived a parachute-less jump from his burning airplane was World War II RAF airman Nicholas Alkemade.
Nicholas Alkemade was born in 1922 in Norfolk, England, and was a gardener before signing up with the Royal Air Force when WWII broke out. He was trained as an air gunner, and after completing his training, he served as a tail gunner with RAF 115 Squadron.
Alkemade was part of a crew that flew an Avro Lancaster MK II bomber, which was capable of carrying the largest bombs used by the RAF during the Second World War. These bombers often flew night missions, and, as such, the bomber that Alkemade's crew manned was christened Werewolf.
Alkemade flew fourteen successful missions with the crew of Werewolf, and on the night of March 24, 1944, they were part of a bombing raid targeting Berlin. They successfully delivered their payload, but on the return journey, heavy winds took them off course. They ended up flying over the Ruhr region, which had a high concentration of anti-aircraft defenses.Werewolf was attacked from below by a German night-fighter aircraft, and the resulting damage tore up Werewolf's wing and fuselage and set the plane on fire. It was obvious that Werewolf was beyond salvation, and the pilot ordered the crew to grab their parachutes in preparation for an emergency exit from the burning aircraft.
Alkemade, alone in his turret at the back of the plane, was already being scorched by the flames, with his rubber oxygen mask beginning to melt on his face, and his arms seared by the fire. Scrambling for his parachute in a panic, he was hit with a moment of pure dread when he finally located it - for his parachute, like everything else around him, was on fire.
Faced with a terrible choice - that of burning to death or falling to his death, Alkemade chose the latter option. Better to suffer the brief terror of the fall and have a swift, merciful end than suffer through the torment of fire. He jumped from the burning plane without his parachute, and, falling at almost 120mph and looking up at the starry sky and the burning airplane from which he had just jumped, he lost consciousness.
Amazingly he woke up three hours later, lying in deep snow in a pine forest. It seemed that the flexible young pines had slowed his descent enough that the snow was able to cushion his fall. He had not broken any bones but had managed to sprain his knee after his 18,000-foot fall from the sky. In addition, he had suffered burn wounds from the fire and had pieces of perspex from his flak-shattered screen embedded in his skin.While he had survived the fall, surviving the rest of the night was not a guarantee. His knee was in too much pain for him to walk, and the cold was beginning to take its toll.
He began blowing his distress whistle, which eventually attracted the attention of some German civilians. He was taken to Meschede Hospital where his wounds were treated, and when he was well enough to talk, he several by the Gestapo.
He told them his story, but they refused to believe that he could have survived such a fall without a parachute. They insisted that he had buried his parachute somewhere and that he was a spy - but when they sent men to investigate the landing site, as well as the wreckage of Werewolf, they were amazed to find that the remains of Alkemade's parachute were indeed still in the wreckage of the plane.
Alkemade then became something of a celebrity and met a number of Luftwaffe officers who wanted to hear about his miraculous jump. However, this did not earn him any special treatment, and like any other captured Allied airman, he was sent to the notorious prison camp Stalag Luft III.
Alkemade's luck remained with him, though. When the camp's 10,000 inmates were forced to trek hundreds of miles across northern Germany, through a blizzard, with temperatures dropping as low as -22 degrees C, he survived and was eventually liberated.
After the war, Alkemade worked in the chemical industry in the UK and lived to the age of 64. He passed away in June 1987.
Sledge's memoir gives a firsthand and unapologetically honest perspective on the Pacific Theater of World War II. His memoir is a front-line account of infantry combat in the Pacific War. It brings the reader into the island hopping, the jungle heat and rain, the filth and malaise, the fear of potential "banzai attacks," and the hopelessness and loss of humanity that so uniquely characterized the campaign in the Pacific. Sledge wrote starkly of the brutality displayed by Japanese soldiers during the battles and of the hatred that both sides harbored for each other. In Sledge's words, "This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands."
Sledge describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, butchered and with severed genitals stuffed into their mouths. He also describes the behavior of some Marines towards dead Japanese, including the removal of gold teeth from Japanese corpses, as well as other macabre trophy-taking. He details the process and mechanisms that slowly strip away a soldier's humanity and compassion, making the thought process accessible to those who have never served in combat.
Sledge describes in detail the sheer physical struggle of living in a combat zone and the debilitating effects of constant fear, fatigue, and filth. "Fear and filth went hand-in-hand," he wrote. "It has always puzzled me that this important factor in our daily lives has received so little attention from historians and is often omitted from otherwise excellent personal memoirs by infantrymen." Marines had trouble staying dry, finding time to eat their rations, practicing basic field sanitation (it was impossible to dig latrines in the coral rock on Peleliu), and simply moving around on the pulverized coral of Peleliu and in the mud of Okinawa.
One of the themes of "With the Old Breed," regardless of which battle Sledge is recounting, is the near impossibility of communicating the experience of combat to those who have not experienced it.
It's time to move this book to a higher shelf, to that of nonfiction that is outstanding literature.
Readers Reviews
"In all the literature on the Second World War, there is not a more honest, realistic or moving memoir than Eugene Sledge's. This is the real deal, the real war: unvarnished, brutal, without a shred of sentimentality or false patriotism, a profound primer on what it was it like to be in that war. It is a classic that will outlive all the armchair generals' safe accounts of - not the 'good war' - but the worst war ever."
~Ken Burns
"Eugene Sledge became more than a legend with his memoir, 'With The Old Breed.' He became a chronicler, a historian, a storyteller who turns the extremes of the war in the Pacific - the terror, the camaraderie, the banal and the extraordinary - into terms we mortals can grasp."
~Tom Hanks
This is the best first-person book on the Pacific war in World War Two that I have ever read. To be fair, I have many more books on the ETO, but this book stands out as a moving account of the miseries of the common soldier who fought eyeball to eyeball with his Japanese counterparts in the steamy jungles.
Eugene Sledge is an example of American manhood that I fear is lost. A young man from a good family who was anxious to defend his country, he and his fellow Marines willingly suffered for their country in a way I doubt many young people today would. I hope I'm wrong.
I've found the most moving stories of WWII don't come from historians, but from the common fighting man. This is one of the best.
~1History Buff
No doubt, the greatest book I have ever read. Leaving no emotion untouched, Sledge strips away any notion of glory in battle. I understand war is brutal and senseless, but I now have a new outlook that reinforces that opinion. Should be read by students and anyone who wants to join the military. Praise those who were forced to endure battle. No one can fully grasp the experience, without being there. I do know that I would be very reluctant to.
~Mr. Krinkle
About the Author
E. B. "Sledgehammer" Sledge was born and grew up in Mobile. In late 1943 he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. After basic training, he was sent to the Pacific Theater where he fought at Peleliu and Okinawa, two of the fiercest battles of World War II. Following the Japanese surrender, Sledge served in China as part of the occupation force. Upon his return home, he obtained a Ph.D. in biology and joined the faculty of Alabama College (later the University of Montevallo), where he taught until retirement. Sledge initially wrote about his war experiences to explain them to his family, but he was persuaded by his wife to seek publication. Sledge died on March 3, 2001.
Much of what E.B. Sledge wrote in his book was a major part of HBO's "The Pacific."