The Color of War Episode 7 Why We Fight
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00:00During the Second World War, an entire generation recorded their personal experiences for posterity.
00:07Combat cameramen braved enemy fire to send home moving images, many of them in color.
00:14They captured history, and in the process they captured ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events,
00:21bearing witness to the color of war.
00:30World War II
00:48After all of their training and discipline, the fighting soldiers of World War II were not simply cogs in a huge war machine.
00:56They were men, whose thoughts and actions revealed their true attitudes about their experience in the armed forces.
01:06Some fought with the passion of personal conviction, certain that winning the war was essential to maintaining their way of life.
01:20Others were motivated by the threat of punishment in the form of military law.
01:27Still others were inspired by a camaraderie brought on by intense shared experience.
01:34Whatever their reasons, most men fought on, sometimes against their better instincts, always against a tenacious enemy.
01:51World War II
01:54For those in the United States government, the reason for fighting World War II was simple and clear-cut, to defeat the forces of fascism.
02:03As they saw it, the conflict was a monumental life-and-death struggle between good and evil.
02:10World War II
02:15But for many, even this rationale was not compelling enough to risk their lives in combat.
02:24Indeed, throughout the war, 67% of American servicemen were not volunteers, but draftees.
02:34As a result, one of the primary objectives for commanders was to train not only the soldiers' bodies, but to mold their hearts and minds as well.
02:46The task was monumental.
02:52At Fort Meade, I was called on to deliver a series of lectures on why there was a war to a thousand troops at a time.
03:00It staggered me to find that there was very little enthusiasm for the war and practically no understanding as to why we were in it.
03:08The soldiers had, generally speaking, a great admiration for the Germans.
03:13I don't believe the lectures helped a whit.
03:18To help foment more passionate anti-Axis sentiment, a full-scale propaganda campaign barraged the enlisted men at every turn.
03:28Among the most effective of the films used in this effort was the Why We Fight series, produced by famed Hollywood director Frank Capra.
03:38In these movies, which were aimed directly at the soldiers, Germans, Italians and especially Japanese were presented as inhuman demons bent on death and destruction.
03:54Take a good close look at this trio. Remember these faces. Remember them well.
04:04Stop thinking and follow me, cried Hitler. I will make you masters of the world.
04:09And the people answered, I am.
04:15Stop thinking and believe in me, bellowed Mussolini.
04:19And I will restore the glory that was wrong.
04:21And the people answered, Duce, Duce.
04:26Stop thinking and follow your god emperor, cried the Japanese warlords.
04:31And Japan will rule the world.
04:33And the people answered, Banzai, Banzai.
04:38Among soldiers, the propaganda campaign had decidedly mixed results.
04:45A young naval trainee from Texas, who had recently graduated from Yale, wrote about it in a letter to his parents.
04:52They hand out so much crude propaganda here. It is really sickening.
04:57Stuff like, kill the Japs, hate, murder.
05:01And a lot of stuff like, you are the cream of American youth.
05:05Some fellows swallow it all.
05:07These are the fellows whom are below average intelligence.
05:10Two of my roommates, for example, get a big kick out of hearing it.
05:13Maybe it is good.
05:15All the well-educated fellows know what they are fighting for, why they are here, and don't need to be brainwashed into anything.
05:22The efforts at indoctrination didn't end with films and posters.
05:26A young marine named Stanley Rich recorded a pep talk given to his unit by an officer in basic training.
05:35You joined this outfit to fight, and I have every confidence in you that you will.
05:41Forget about this dying business. You can't live forever.
05:45Think instead about killing.
05:48Concentrate on squeezing off those shots.
05:52Make every round land in one of those little yellow bastards.
05:55They kill easy.
05:57Sure, we'll get bombed.
05:59Sure, we'll get shelled.
06:01Sure, it's tough to take it, but I want every goddamn son of a bitch in this outfit to stay in his position and keep thinking.
06:08Let them come, brother. Let them come.
06:12While these efforts may have made an impact on G.I.s in training, they quickly melted away once the soldiers tasted combat.
06:22Army researchers asked thousands of American servicemen to answer the question,
06:27What are we fighting for?
06:29The following answer was typical.
06:32Ask any dogface in the line.
06:34You're fighting for your skin on the line.
06:36When I enlisted, I was patriotic as hell.
06:39There's no patriotism on the line.
06:41A boy up there 60 days in the line is in danger every minute.
06:45He ain't fighting for patriotism.
06:48Ironically and totally unknown to most American G.I.s, many of their Japanese and German counterparts felt exactly the same way,
06:56despite the heavy doses of propaganda Axis leaders used to mold their hearts and minds.
07:03It is an incomprehensible era in which a phrase by the emperor becomes a slogan,
07:09in which culture withers with war and art surrenders to the army.
07:14Humanity still strays from the right path when people are treated harshly without rest.
07:21People can never become good.
07:23This is my fear for this country that comes from my hard experiences.
07:28Japan is never going to go on to the right direction now.
07:34Does war have any meaning?
07:36Yes, it has a meaning.
07:38No, it can have no meaning. I really don't know. I'm all mixed up.
07:42War is the father of all things.
07:46So wrote the great German Karl von Glashwitz.
07:50It is really the father?
07:52Is it not the basic evil of all things?
07:55Is it not the basic evil of all things?
07:58Peace on earth and goodwill toward men who have goodwill.
08:04Burn these words deep into your hearts, you men of all nations.
08:08Never again war.
08:10But I have German blood in my veins.
08:14I am only doing what I believe to be my duty.
08:20Allied soldiers also did what they believed was their duty.
08:24Some did it with relish, but others did what was asked of them without taking any joy in their accomplishments.
08:33I have now three notches in my gunstock.
08:36But you needn't worry, as I'm not a killer at heart.
08:39I'm just doing my duty as an American doggie.
08:42Doing my duty and not batting an eye.
08:44To knock off a kraut, it's just doing a job.
08:49Despite the armed forces' best efforts, most men did not turn into killing machines.
08:56Most questioned what they were doing and approached their adversaries not with hatred, but with a do-or-die mentality.
09:06Before encountering the enemy, however, there was another battle for soldiers to face.
09:12It was a battle between men who were on the same side,
09:15but whose ignorance and fear sometimes turned allies into adversaries.
09:23We will crush the German nation.
09:25And boy, mother, we better really crush her.
09:28At times, I would like to see her surrender.
09:31But that's only because I don't like this fighting business much.
09:35Yet, I realize there's only one answer.
09:38Kill her.
09:40Though the average soldier sometimes questioned the cause that he was fighting for,
09:45he did not question who the enemy was.
09:49Recognizing his allies was sometimes a different story.
09:56Pride, loyalty, sacrifice, even love were all a part of the battle.
10:02But there were also some very real divisions between different groups of men.
10:08It started in basic training, where vastly disparate types of people were forced to endure
10:13grueling conditions in extremely close quarters.
10:18Differences in their upbringing or geographical origin made it difficult for them to understand
10:23what they were fighting for.
10:25I was under the impression that the Civil War had ended in 1865,
10:29but the all-too-numerous Texans in our group seemed to think otherwise.
10:33Continual bickering about it went on between them and us Yankees.
10:37That, and their insufferable bragging about Texas,
10:41left me with an aversion for that state that I have never seen again.
10:47I was a young man.
10:49That, and their insufferable bragging about Texas,
10:52left me with an aversion for that state that I have never overcome.
10:59At best, petty differences generated irritation and resentment.
11:04At its worst, ignorance and fear spawned deep-rooted racism,
11:09hatred that had the potential to be as lethal as the enemy.
11:14After nearly two centuries of English colonial rule over India,
11:18some British troops discriminated against their Indian brothers-in-arms.
11:25Our bigotry was expressed in jocular, even quite affectionate terms,
11:29but the fact remains that it was deep-rooted and ubiquitous,
11:33and behind it lay an unquestioning assumption of natural superiority.
11:38I feel awful at times.
11:40I feel awful at times.
11:42Recently the British opened a canteen of sorts,
11:44where one can get a drink and a few eats.
11:46Even this canteen is unapproachable to us.
11:49I did not expect this color bar.
11:52Many British officers treat Indians in a contemptuous manner.
11:59There were similar problems in the American army,
12:01though overt conflict was minimized by an almost complete lack of contact
12:06between white and black troops, especially at the front.
12:11In 1945, African Americans made up less than 3% of the combat forces in the U.S. Army.
12:2375% of all black inductees were assigned to the service force branches
12:28for general labor and driving duties.
12:34Those that did see combat generally fought in segregated units.
12:41Nevertheless, attempts were made to commend the work being done by African American troops.
12:47Among them was a radio broadcast called New World's a Coming.
12:52We're winning this war because men of all races and creeds
12:55who wear the American uniform are doing their part to the utmost limits of their ability.
13:01My job will be to plan, lay out, and supervise the construction of airdromes,
13:06fields, roads, bridges, and all structures.
13:09I have to be able to read blueprints.
13:12I have to be able to read surveying instruments.
13:15I have to be able to pitch in for somebody who might fall out, no matter what his job is.
13:21That sounds like a big order.
13:23I'm not worried. I know I can count on our men.
13:27Efforts such as this sound condescending to modern ears,
13:31but at the time, they were an honest attempt to inform the American public
13:35that African Americans could perform any job that was assigned to them.
13:43Japanese American servicemen also faced strong resentments.
13:48The most blatant racism on the home front occurred when 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans
13:55were evacuated from their homes and interned within various military camps in the western United States.
14:06Ironically, more than 50,000 Nisei, or Japanese of American descent,
14:12ended up serving in the armed forces.
14:16Some were assigned to the Pacific Theater,
14:19where they were used as interpreters to interrogate captured Japanese troops.
14:25Others saw combat in Italy.
14:28In all their roles, Japanese Americans were among the most honored allied soldiers of the entire war.
14:36Though factors such as race served to divide enlisted men,
14:39there was one attitude that almost all of them shared, a strong resentment of officers.
14:46Hostility towards the brass stemmed from a wide range of issues,
14:50including officers' better uniforms, higher pay, and more comfortable quarters.
14:58Making matters worse, career enlisted men had to defer to new young officers,
15:03some of them with only 90 days of training.
15:07The average GI often bristled at what he perceived to be an arcane and unfair caste system,
15:13with the officer at the top and the enlisted man at the bottom.
15:17This caused bitter complaints throughout the war.
15:23This officer went out of his way to be a bastard.
15:26He'd get up two or three times during the night and awaken everyone who had as much as a shoelace in the passageway.
15:33He made a lot of enemies that way.
15:38On the ship one day, I was sitting on a corner of my life preserver reading a book.
15:44An officer told me that sitting on a life preserver was against the rules since we boarded the ship.
15:50I informed him this was new to me.
15:53He said that was no excuse and promptly reduced my rank from private first class to private.
15:59I believe I received a raw deal.
16:01Out of the hundreds of guys that sat on their life preservers every day, he picked on me.
16:09Once those destined for combat made it to the front lines,
16:12a different world enveloped them and new concerns arose.
16:16The divisions between officers and men were mitigated by the shared dangers of combat.
16:23However, the disparity of the living conditions between combat troops of all ranks
16:28and the millions of men who operated in the rear was profound.
16:33Not only were the combat troops in far greater danger,
16:36but because of the difficulties of supplying men in the field,
16:39they were forced to make do with much less.
16:44Some guys have enough pull to get themselves a soft job where they won't be in any danger.
16:48After the war is over, they'll be yelling the loudest for bonuses and soldiers' benefits.
16:53They're some of the smart ones.
16:55They'll get all the benefits of being in the army with no risks.
17:00Oh well. Takes all kinds of people to make an army.
17:06I'll tell you what hurts most of all. They call themselves soldiers.
17:10They talk about their long service, whine about going home.
17:14Service? Why god damn me? It's one long picnic for them.
17:18And when you talk to them, they don't look you in the eye.
17:20But you know what they're thinking.
17:22Here's another of those fools that wasn't clever enough to get a soft job like me.
17:27That's what those pimps think.
17:29That's what those base boys think of you.
17:33Even at the front itself, there were divisions between the troops.
17:37Ones that could be life-threatening.
17:39Replacement troops sometimes arrived in a unit only a few days or even hours before being thrown into combat.
17:47These green troops had little time to get to know the veteran soldiers in their platoons and squads.
17:53This lack of a personal bond, as well as the rookie's ignorance about the realities of combat,
17:59sometimes led the veterans to employ them with little regard for their own lives.
18:03One day, we got eight new replacements into my platoon.
18:06We were supposed to make a little feeling attack that same day.
18:09Well, by the next day, all eight of the replacements were dead.
18:14But none of us old guys were.
18:16We weren't going to send our own guys out on point in a damn fool's situation like that.
18:21We'd been together through Africa, the Middle East, the Middle East.
18:25We'd been through the Middle East.
18:27We'd been through the Middle East.
18:29In a fool's situation like that, we'd been together through Africa, Sicily, and Salerno.
18:36We sent the replacements out ahead.
18:41Most of the replacements were scared stiff.
18:44A lot of them looked as if they should have gone home.
18:47This was part of a division that had spent two years in training.
18:51The next day, a platoon from this company went out on patrol and were wiped out.
18:56They walked right in front of a pillbox.
18:59Not a man lived to tell about it.
19:01When we saw them, they were laid out side by side along the road.
19:06Two years in training didn't do them half the good one month of combat did.
19:11Everything can't be done by the book.
19:15The emotional conditioning drilled into these soldiers prior to their arrival at the front was now gone.
19:23In its place was a raw survival instinct.
19:28As the pressure to stay alive built, some soldiers broke the boundaries of military conduct.
19:40The widespread looting of private property went on not only in enemy Germany but in friendly France.
19:46How was the looting was the first question by a newcomer to a town that our troops had just occupied.
19:53Although looting was officially frowned upon, it had powerful group sanction.
20:00Approximately 80% of my company engaged in it in one form or another.
20:16Just as in society, a system of laws and regulations was needed to keep the military functioning smoothly.
20:24In the same way soldiers were expected to absorb the indoctrination of training,
20:28they were also required to follow these regulations to the letter.
20:34But the grim realities of war put pressures on servicemen that weren't found in their daily lives back home.
20:41In a system which rewarded soldiers for killing,
20:44many found it incredible that they would be punished for taking a few spoils of war,
20:50particularly after being shelled and shot at for several months.
20:55Looting was so common and so overlooked that these soldiers had no concern
21:00when they were filmed in the act by Signal Corps cameramen.
21:05Many fighting men in both theaters engaged in some form of looting
21:10whether it was taking a bottle of wine from a French farmhouse in Europe
21:15or collecting Japanese equipment as souvenirs from the Pacific.
21:20We went off on a scavenger hunt this afternoon to see what kind of carpenter equipment the Japs could offer us
21:26and came back with a few things that the Neanderthal man must have used.
21:31Some of the more eager fellows, they brought back souvenirs,
21:34postcards and sun helmets, gas masks and a few other sundry and uninviting items.
21:42Hitler's mountaintop retreat in Berchtesgaden was also a target for souvenir hunters.
21:49Dear mother and daddy, the captain let us take trucks up to Hitler's home to see it.
21:55That is where I got this map that I am enclosing.
21:58It must have been a nice place.
22:01All the buildings there have been bombed.
22:03I got to stand and look out of his window, the window from which he made many decisions.
22:10I had seen pictures of the room so I knew he had a grand piano there.
22:14I looked and there was the steel piece that held the strings.
22:19I broke off some of his piano wires and I also got a piece of glass from his famous window.
22:25The kitchen floor was covered with broken dishes.
22:28He even had potatoes in the pot ready to cook.
22:32I am enclosing a piece of Hitler's piano wire and window.
22:35Love, Bob.
22:44Though hardly anyone was ever prosecuted for it,
22:47even small-scale looting was technically a crime in the Allied Armed Forces.
22:54This was only one of the hundreds of offenses spelled out in the Code of Military Justice.
23:00In many ways, this body of laws was very different from the one that regulated the civilian world.
23:08Instead of a trial before a judge and jury of one's peers,
23:12the more serious offenses by servicemen would bring them before a court-martial.
23:17Here, a panel of officers, none of whom might have any legal knowledge or experience, tried the accused.
23:25The enforcement arm of this system was the military police.
23:29This cadre of personnel was charged with directing military traffic in recently taken areas
23:35and imposing the myriad rules and regulations of military justice for their brothers-in-arms.
23:42A list of military police activities in the U.S. 21st Army Group
23:46gives some idea of the most common offenses they encountered.
23:50In all, 36,366 charges were made.
24:00Absent without leave, 10,636.
24:04Offenses involving military vehicles, 6,409.
24:09Improper dress, 2,792.
24:13Theft, 1,249.
24:17Drunkenness, 1,092.
24:21Looting, 72.
24:26The crime of absent without leave, or AWOL, was a particularly difficult problem.
24:32Novelist James Jones wrote about it.
24:36When elements of the First and Third Armies crossed the Seine above and below Paris
24:41and bypassed it in the chase after the Germans,
24:4410,000 men went over the hill and descended on the newly liberated Playtime City.
24:50Most of them showed up back at their outfits in a week or two.
24:54But the number was so alarming that Eisenhower declared Paris off-limits to American troops.
25:02Technically, desertion from one's unit was punishable by death.
25:06But American authorities were extremely reluctant to brand as deserters
25:10men who had simply gone over the hill from units in the rear for a little fun and relaxation.
25:17So they applied the term absent without leave to thousands of men
25:21who otherwise would have been deemed guilty of the more serious offense.
25:25In some cases, sympathetic officers actually helped enlisted men circumvent these regulations.
25:32In late February, Mother arrived for a visit.
25:36I could not see her because of our being restricted to base.
25:40The corporal in charge heard of the situation.
25:42He said,
25:43I know you'd like to see your mother, but you know that I can't give you a pass.
25:48However, I keep the passes on that ledge by my bunk.
25:53If you want to take me while I'm asleep, there should be no problem.
25:58Just be sure you're back in time to make the four o'clock formation.
26:03In the unlikely event that you get caught, just remember that I did not give you the pass.
26:12At the front, however, the mood was different.
26:15Units here sometimes took drastic measures to prevent desertion.
26:21At Monte Cassino in Italy, an American officer met a young lieutenant with a drawn pistol
26:26who had been posted on the only trail leading away from a forthcoming attack.
26:32Too many men had come down the trail complaining of sickness or minor wounds,
26:37so he was to stop everyone except the seriously wounded.
26:41I did not think I would ever see one of our officers use a gun on one of our own men.
26:46So far as I know, he never did.
26:49But he threatened to.
26:54Besides going AWOL, another common offense among servicemen was vehicle theft.
27:00This was probably due to their frustration at never being able to obtain personal transport
27:06despite being surrounded by thousands of trucks and jeeps.
27:12In big cities, the scale of this abuse was remarkable.
27:16In Brussels in 1944, an average of 70 jeeps a day were reported stolen.
27:23Another extremely common and often overlooked offense was drinking.
27:29As long as they didn't affect a soldier's ability to do his job,
27:33occasional drunken binges were usually tolerated.
27:39Like looting, drinking was so common that these soldiers had no reservation
27:43about boozing it up in front of the cameras.
27:48By far the rarest of all the military offenses was outright mutiny.
27:53As opposed to spontaneous panic while under attack,
27:56cold-blooded refusals to obey orders, by front-line troops at least, were extremely rare.
28:04Only a handful of examples exist in World War II, and all of these barely merit the term mutiny.
28:12Usually they involved the erosion of the troops' confidence in their officers,
28:16which made the men less willing to follow orders.
28:21Many of these cases were from the later stages of the war
28:24when officers and men alike failed to see any real point in maintaining battle-ready discipline.
28:32In my mind, the battle was over.
28:36There was only the formality of mopping up to be endured.
28:40Having survived a period of survival was subordinate to the immediate task of duty.
28:46And when exhilaration and the accomplishment had been supplanted by something near to drudgery,
28:52I could find no enthusiasm or sense a purpose in a tomorrow in which death seemed to have become causeless.
29:03But while criminal activity of all kinds was relatively uncommon among Allied servicemen,
29:08the relentless strain of combat was not.
29:14This strain contributed to the most disturbing conduct to take place during the entire war,
29:20when soldiers sometimes exceeded the bounds of normal morality.
29:30Our communications section picked up a radio message sent by one of the pilots.
29:35The pilot said,
29:36''Jap just parachuted from his ship.''
29:39Another pilot said,
29:40''Are you sure it was a Jap?''
29:42''Answer, yes.''
29:44He then replied,
29:45''Then why don't you get a little target practice?''
29:50He did.
30:01On both sides during the war,
30:03the military's main objective was transforming its men from normal human beings into ruthless fighting machines.
30:11There was no way to determine how successfully that objective had been accomplished
30:15until the troops actually hit the front lines and engaged the enemy.
30:22In his first taste of combat,
30:24a young soldier's hands have to be pried loose from a pole to which he has grabbed on.
30:29He is too scared to even whimper.
30:32We loosen his fingers one by one.
30:36As we loosen each finger,
30:37somebody has to hold it to make sure he won't use it to grab back on.
30:42But within a week, that soldier is fighting bravely,
30:45killing with as much nobility as one can kill.
30:50Even so, a soldier's fear never completely disappeared.
30:54In response to U.S. Army questionnaires,
30:5786% of enlisted men in Italy and 65% in the Pacific said that combat never became less frightening.
31:04Those men who did not surrender to their fear
31:07somehow managed to find ways to function in the harsh environment of combat.
31:14In this atmosphere,
31:15the boundaries of peacetime morality were blurred,
31:18if not obliterated,
31:19replaced by the elemental equation of kill or be killed.
31:27The question of killing does not present itself as a problem.
31:31The question of killing does not present itself as a moral problem anymore,
31:36or as a problem at all.
31:38For in such total war,
31:40death and life are so dovetailed into each other
31:43that they don't seem separate or distinct as states of being and non-being.
31:51Mother, Daddy,
31:53in my short time in combat,
31:55my heart has hardened and my soul grown bitter.
32:00I have killed and I shall continue to do so without flinching.
32:06This callous and perfunctory attitude towards killing was common among soldiers on both sides.
32:12It was also expressed in their treatment of prisoners.
32:15Once soldiers were caught up in the savage tempo of the fighting,
32:19they frequently found it difficult to suddenly switch out of the role of trained killer.
32:25German snipers would pick off two, three or four men of an advancing platoon.
32:30Then as they came to close quarters, stand up and surrender.
32:34The men whose friends had just been shot
32:36did not always feel inclined to let the killing stop at that point.
32:40When the Jerries came in with their hands up shouting,
32:43Commodite!
32:46We'd just bowl them over with bursts of machine gun fire.
32:50We were in Bavaria walking along the edge of a wood
32:53when we were suddenly under intense small arms fire.
32:57We finally routed the Germans out of the wood.
33:00There was one SS trooper and 14 or so Hitler youths,
33:04ranging in age from 13 to 15,
33:07all of them with arms.
33:09Our captain, a graduate of the Citadel,
33:12was so infuriated that so many of our men were killed by this group of kids
33:17that he had the SS trooper strung up by his wrists.
33:21Then he clubbed him to death with his carbine.
33:24That left a lasting impression on me.
33:27Both sides were also guilty of committing atrocities.
33:31An American soldier was lucky enough to survive one of these terrifying incidents.
33:36Perhaps they had no time to take prisoners
33:39and violated all rules of warfare by shooting what prisoners they had,
33:44hoping that there'd be none left to tell the story.
33:47I don't think that that's right,
33:49because we threw down our arms and put up our hands and gave up.
33:53One of our boys was wounded. I was right close to him.
33:56He was wounded in the arm,
33:58and as three or four medics were working on him,
34:01they fired on the medics too.
34:03They killed the medics and the wounded men?
34:05Yes.
34:08Such behavior could be attributed to the ferocity of prolonged combat.
34:12Rather than to a generalized hatred of the enemy.
34:17In America's war against Japan, however,
34:19there was a real loathing for the Japanese.
34:24In part, this was due to the Japanese's harsh treatment of U.S. prisoners and wounded,
34:29who were often found tortured to death by their comrades.
34:34But beyond this, there was an intense and prevalent racism
34:37that was fomented and encouraged by American soldiers.
34:42And American propaganda.
34:44Japan committed to 100 years of war and sacrifice, if necessary.
34:49We are prepared to lose 10 million lives in our war with America.
34:59As a result, many U.S. fighting men didn't even perceive the Japanese as human beings.
35:06I was acting first scout out on patrol
35:09when I seen about 30 of them come over a mountain.
35:12And without thinking, I opened up with a VAR, emptied a magazine,
35:18and about 15 of them got away.
35:23Yes, Japanese is very funny people.
35:26You might not call them human beings.
35:28They're more like animals.
35:30More like coons.
35:31I used to hunt coons down in Arkansas.
35:35And the better estimation of them is more like field rats.
35:39Back home, when we start gathering our corn in the fall,
35:43you can turn over a shock of corn, and they'll run from one shock to another.
35:47And that's the way the Japs does here.
35:49You can run them out of one hole, and they'll go right back to another.
35:55In response to a survey taken by the U.S. Army during the war,
35:597% of the men in one regiment said they would really like to kill a German soldier.
36:07When the same question was asked with Japanese substituted for German,
36:11the response jumped up to 44%.
36:17About 20 men in front of me passed what looked like a dead nip.
36:21As I looked closer, I could see that his hand was all that was injured.
36:25I guess he couldn't hold his breath any longer,
36:28because just then I could see his chest rise and fall just a fraction.
36:32It was quite a few thousand yards back to the regimental command post.
36:36I couldn't see going all that distance with a wounded nip,
36:39and then coming back at night alone.
36:42I pulled out my .45, aimed between his eyes, and pulled the trigger.
36:47These types of killings seldom garnered any disciplinary action.
36:51But the emotional toll they took, however repressed, was heavy.
36:55It was another weight added to the already overwhelming load
36:59that each soldier was forced to shoulder.
37:02The struggle to deal with that weight
37:04drove men to the frightening depths and inspiring heights of the human experience.
37:13Why do I fight?
37:15I don't know, unless it's because I feel I must.
37:18Because I'm expected to.
37:20If I should fail to do what is asked of me,
37:23I will betray the trust of the men fighting with me.
37:26And if I betrayed this trust, in my own eyes,
37:30I believe I would become so despicable
37:33that no longer would I feel worthy of the comradeship of man.
37:45For the average fighting men of World War II,
37:48considerations such as ideology, patriotism, and politics
37:52were remarkably remote from their real concerns.
37:57The realities of the front line forced them to look
38:00only to those immediately around them for support and understanding.
38:05Some G.I.s struggled to remove themselves from the harsh realities of combat.
38:11A British soldier named Michelangelo
38:14wrote a poem that evocatively captured his feelings of detachment.
38:20Though I walk in the heat of the day
38:23And rest through the dark hours of night
38:26I am not here
38:28Though I breathe and eat and sleep
38:31And see and act and speak
38:34There is no cheer
38:36I am not here
38:38A disassociated self
38:41The ether spans
38:43And lives a life the body bans
38:45Though I am, I am not
38:48It is clear
38:50I am not here
38:56Those soldiers who managed to look beyond the next moment
38:59and preserve some sense of their individuality
39:02did so with the help of a variety of aids.
39:05For many, the desperate faith in their right to survive
39:08took form in the shape of good luck charms
39:11like rabbit's feet and other talismans
39:13that were supposed to give them special protection.
39:17A camera crew shot these airmen as they hunted for four-leaf clovers
39:21before taking off on a combat mission.
39:25The number of men who carried such items
39:27struck American war correspondent John Steinbeck.
39:32The practice is by no means limited to ignorant or superstitious men.
39:38It would seem in times of great danger and emotional tumult
39:42a man has to reach outside himself for help and comfort
39:46and has to have some personal symbol to hold on to.
39:50It can be anything at all, an old umbrella handle or a religious symbol.
39:54But he has to have it.
39:57When we finally did get on our bomb run, we got flak.
40:00And I mean flak.
40:02I could see it, hear it, and smell it.
40:06We got a hit in the left wing, and that really shook us.
40:09The shell that hit us went through the wing and burst above us.
40:12I thought our goose was cooked,
40:14but my miraculous metal pulled us out of it.
40:17That I am sure of.
40:21One source of comfort was made readily available by the armed forces
40:24for all of its troops in the field.
40:27The saying, there are no atheists in foxholes,
40:30originated during World War II.
40:34And though it wasn't entirely true,
40:36there was no dearth of believers available at a moment's notice to worship.
40:41Sometimes the services were performed under the very guns of the enemy,
40:45as this original combat recording reveals.
40:49There is a feeling among me that religion has failed.
40:54I have tried to find some trace of that feeling
40:58among the men here in the front lines of Germany.
41:01I have not been very successful.
41:04Therefore, I have tried to believe
41:07that religion has definitely not failed.
41:10If there is any question in the minds of people
41:13as to whether or not there is a God above us,
41:16I can definitely ascertain that that question is not a part
41:20of the average American soldier's mind.
41:23Here a man has found God.
41:26Here there is a definite knowledge and a belief and a faith
41:31that there is a God above us who guides us and who takes us by the hand
41:36and leads us through the valley of the shadow of death
41:39where we will fear no evil.
41:42Let us pray.
41:46American research teams conducted one of their surveys
41:49on the subject of religion.
41:52In the Pacific Theater, when asked whether prayer helped when the going was tough,
41:5770% of soldiers said that it helped a great deal.
42:02In the Mediterranean Theater, the response to the same question was 83%.
42:10The strongest motivations for the fighting men of World War II
42:14were forged from the best aspects of human nature,
42:18respect, compassion, and brotherhood.
42:22The pride in one's battalion,
42:24the friendships formed among soldiers,
42:26and the fierce determination to see the war through together
42:30combined to nourish the spirits of hundreds of thousands of G.I.s.
42:37War binds men more tightly together than almost any other branch of human activity.
42:43To share your last crumb of bread with another,
42:47to warm your enfeebled body against another's
42:51in the bleak and barren mystery of the night?
42:55To undergo shame, fear, and death
42:58with scores of others of your age and mental coloring?
43:02Who indeed would trade these comrades of the battlefield
43:05for friends made in time of peace?
43:10It was an act of love.
43:14Those men on the line were my family, my home.
43:18They were closer to me than I can say,
43:21closer than any friends had ever been, or ever would be.
43:26They had never let me down, and I couldn't do it to them.
43:30I had to be with them,
43:32rather than let them die and me live with the knowledge that I might have saved them.
43:37Men I now knew did not fight for the Marine Corps,
43:41or glory, or any other abstraction.
43:45They fight for one another.
44:15¶¶
44:44¶¶