Soldiering For Freedom:
A GI’s Account of World War II
By Herman J. Obermayer
(Texas A&M University Press, 324 pages, $32.95)
That war is terrible is often observed, and a search for “what
it all means” makes its way to the battlefield. Clarity is obscured
not simply because of the bullets flying, but because of a fog of
war attributable to large bureaucracies and lumbering states
seeking out self-interested gains. A long tradition of military
memoirs, from Ulysses S. Grant to General Patton eschew such
vanity, and instead pursue the narrative of battle, valuing
experience over sentiment.
In
Soldiering for Freedom, journalist Herman J. Obermayer
provides letters he wrote to his family during his service in the
European theater of World War II. The task provides a temptation to
expand, over-state, over-glorify, which the older veteran
persistently dodges. In that sense, Obermayer doesn’t glorify the
period. Every chapter is prefaced with an introduction summarizing
the letters showing the war as far murkier than popular portrayals,
the role of the French more insidious, and the Allied effort more
muddled. Indeed, by showing his audience what they were not
permitted to see over 50 years ago, and by tossing aside the
caricature of untouchable, venerable WWII soldiers, the author more
than clearly shows what made the war, and America, distinctive —
duty.
Notes Obermayer in his introduction, “American troops entered
German cities as conquerors, not liberators,” and accordingly, GI’s
were instructed not to believe “there are any good Germans …
people have the governments they want and deserve.” He might as
well add that this is why the Vichy government was acceptable to
the French. He later describes French relations with Allied forces
as troublesome.
That the French under Allied occupation looked straight through
American soldiers is hardly a surprise. French ingratitude to
American intervention has long been a popular anecdote. Yet little
has been made of French detraction during the war itself, something
Obermayer uses as a refrain in early chapters. The Germans had
fitted French farms with new farming technologies and improved
roads. By contrast the Allies provided “liberation” in the form of
bothersome soldiers who took up space in important buildings, and
bombs that destroyed important historical landmarks like the Rouen
Cathedral. The French “admired the authoritarian system that made
them more productive, better farmers. We Americans, on the other
hand, ruined their fields with spilled gasoline.” Freedom in and of
itself was hardly a commodity to the French.
Their dalliance as a frontier of the Third Reich so rudely
interrupted, “Nazi sympathizers and French saboteurs” frequently
disrupted petroleum pipelines feeding the front lines. Assigned as
a medic to a team that patrolled the lines for the express purpose
of preventing such intrusions, Obermayer writes of bearing witness
to the loss of “tens of thousands” of gallons, much of which wound
up peddled on the black market, while manpower was diverted to
repair the damage. Few historians note the importance of fuel
movements during the conflict; even fewer refer to sabotage as a
critical problem in France. “War correspondents considered supply
services stories dull,” the author offers, also admitting that
censorship may have played a role in the overall reluctance of the
American government to have its recently liberated “friend” look
like it wasn’t thankful for the effort.
Such restrictions on what was allowed or not allowed, worthy or
unworthy, to print is perhaps Obermayer’s most important
contribution to the historical record. Whereas such obstacles were
either censored or unworthy of reporting in the early 1940s, today
they are reported with a severity and dramatic flair, told as
though this poorly armored vehicle, this roadside
bomb, or this random shooting, was reason number
one-hundred-and-whatever in a long line of terrible events that
reveal how America is mired in defeat and has yet to realize it.
Today, warfare is waged in the presses, when years ago, America had
the good sense to stop it before it got to the printer.
AN EDITED COLLECTION of letters invites the possibility of two
authors, the younger and the older. No such thing exists here.
Though a well-read and insightful young man, he does not appear as
a man coming to terms with war, the big bad world, sex, love,
seeking, as is popular today, to find the deeper, hidden meaning of
life. This collection depicts an adult who refuses to wallow in the
self-pity and wistful spirit that has seeped into the
Kultursmog as represented in films such as The Thin
Red Line, or Jarhead. Obermayer presents what his
audience has always known: World War II had Americans doing their
duty as they felt they should.
By giving up the more dramatic character development, Obermayer
is able to level straight criticism in the moment on any subject
without discerning it as unimportant. In one letter: “The coffee
really tastes like hell”; In another, “if you take into
consideration the Army’s usual approach to men’s sex relationships,
this punishment was much too severe”; Yet another, “Goerring may be
a dope fiend, but he definitely doesn’t give the impression of
being a fool.” These are not the observations of a highfalutin
memoirist, but a young man thinking on the ground. Sharing his
thoughts with his family, and in turn, with us, he paints a clearer
picture of the life of an American soldier abroad.
That Obermayer is himself a journalist is absolutely clear, not
simply because he tells us, but because his collection is so
meticulously edited, so thoroughly explained, that his letters
anticipate his calling: writing and editing newspapers, and later,
assisting countries emerging from Communism in establishing a
successful press. In those circumstances, such a sense of propriety
would be the best example to follow.
J. Peter Freire is a Journalism Fellow at
The American Spectator under a grant from the Collegiate Network.
