The WWII American Army was larger than the nation’s other military services combined
The WWII American Army was larger than the nation’s other military services combined. Unlike the Navy and its Marine Corps, the Army had to rely on the draft to fill its ranks. As a result, the Army was America itself, a cross-section of all of the nation’s geographic, religious, economic and ethnic groups, including Catholics, Protestants and Jews (“The Three Fighting Faiths”). In service of victory, America invented both the atom bomb and the idea of a Judeo-Christian nation.
The Army drafted Americans from the economically backward South to the bustling industrial cities of the Midwest, from the fisheries of Maine to the timber country of the Pacific Northwest, from the Wyoming ranches to the garment factories of New York. The WWII American Army drafted PhDs; the Army drafted immigrants who had to be taught the language of the country they served. It had to be this way, given the manpower needed to fight a world war on two fronts. It was also fitting, given the ideals America said it was fighting for.
The sacrifices of the WWII American Army
Many Americans fought and many died. Many more never fought, just gave up two or three of the best years of their young lives. Black and Japanese-American (Nisei) soldiers fought for the freedoms they are denied in America. At the Battle of the Bulge, many rear-echelon soldiers turned and faced the enemy, including Team SNAFU at Bastogne. They suffered there, all of them, and died there, some of them, in vital and anonymous support of the gallant 101st Airborne Division.
America fielded millions of citizen soldiers in WWII who disliked the goddamned Army, were ambivalent about their officers, and resisted the trappings of military hierarchy, aka, chickenshit. Yet many of them remembered their service as the ennobling experience of their lives. They would have told you they fought not for their country, or lofty ideals, but for each other, for their buddies. To get the job done and get home.
They had interesting — too interesting, some of them — lives in that war. May we never forget their sacrifice. May God continue to bless the America they made.
