Facing Unpleasant Facts
Found a disturbing fact this week during research on "that book" I hope to complete before I hit 90. Soon after WW II in Germany, our Eucon Communications Center had a direct line to the American Graves Registration Corps based at St. Germain, Paris, and the daily traffic concerned the ongoing search for U.S. servicemen still "missing in action." Don't know how long that operation was active but it wasn't there when Iris and I visited Paris in May 1979.
The baffling search for missing soldiers relied on official Army reports, tips, rumors, and luck. It was not possible nor desirable for me to read any of the constantly flowing info from Paris to the Pentagon, but I do recall a lot of communication. Graves Registration was dealing with a complex situation. When the war ended, there was an estimate of 78,250 total American servicemen officially listed as "missing in action." The percentage of those from just European action, I've yet to learn.
There was a kicker in all these estimates due to two factors we do not hear discussed in public very often: AWOLs and deserters. In the South Pacific there was very little of that. Where could they go? Completely different story in Europe. At the end of WW II, there were serious discussions of what was called "The Lost Division." Wikipedia on the Internet currently gives a number as 19,000 U.S. Army soldiers considered to be AWOL in France alone in 1945. In 1947 we had estimates higher than that. See the problem? Graves Registration often had incomplete info on who was missing in action, who was AWOL, and who had deserted. It was impossible to draw clear lines of distinction in many cases, a massive mystery which will never be solved.
Aiding but not directly associated with Graves Registration were specialized U.S. Army troops whose job was locating AWOLs and deserters in France, as well as all over Europe. They were fairly successful, and I have written here briefly before about those operations, including my accidentally finding a young sailor in Nice, France, who was over two years AWOL. The Army arrested thousands, and I have no idea how the individual cases were eventually handled back here in the United States. We had a couple dozen of those prisoners on the troop ship that brought me home.
The disturbing fact found this week is that of the 78,250 WW II missing in action, only about 4,000 bodies have been found over the years, leaving 74,213 "missing" and still unaccounted for. That figure supposedly comes from the U.S. Defense Department, and I'm trying to verify its accuracy. (German media reported in 2008 that 1,280,000 German soldiers are still unaccounted for.)
As long as I'm on unpleasant subjects, guess I'll throw some startling figures on "desertion." During 3.5 years of U.S. involvement in WW II, slightly more than 21,000 of our military personnel were convicted and sentenced for desertion. Forty nine of those were given the death penalty, but only one was executed. Pfc Eddie Slovik faced a firing squad in Europe. I have covered that strange incident in past columns.
Comparably speaking, America's military had been very forgiving with deserters. That was not the case among Hitler's Wehrmacht and Stalin's Armies. Tens of thousands of soldiers deserted the Nazi military and 15,000 of those executed before the Wehrmacht surrendered to the Allies in May 1945. Even less forgiving was the Russian Army after Joseph Stalin in August 1941 ordered superiors to begin shooting all deserters on the spot. To make this more terrifying, he subjected the deserters' family members to possible arrest. While this cruel order may have slowed down Russian desertions, it certainly didn't stop that desperate practice.
The Soviets executed 158,000 of their own soldiers during WW II. Many of those were shot by "blocking detachments," troops stationed in the rear of combat units with orders to shoot any fleeing "cowards' or panicked military personnel. The few Russian soldiers with whom I had personal contact were a depressing lot, seemingly fearful of their own officers, filled with hatred of the Germans, eager to the point of greed for food and what most thought of as justifiable looting of personal items such as watches.
Well! Hope I haven't made a mess out of your day, but writing "that book" had forced me to recall and deal with sometimes unpleasant facts. Being a person who likes to share fun things and good times with my readers, thankfully, I seldom feel the need to share less entertaining realities … but stuff happens.
We'll do better next week.
G. George Ostrom is a Kalispell resident and a national-award winning Hungry Horse News columnist.