American Girls, Beer, and Glenn Miller: GI Morale in World War II
232
American Girls, Beer, and Glenn Miller: GI Morale in World War II
232eBook
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Overview
As World War II dawned in Europe, General George C. Marshall, the new Army Chief of Staff, had to acknowledge that American society—and the citizens who would soon become soldiers—had drastically changed in the previous few decades. Almost every home had a radio, movies could talk, and driving in an automobile to the neighborhood soda fountain was part of everyday life. A product of newly created mass consumerism, the soldier of 1940 had expectations of material comfort, even while at war. Historian James J. Cooke presents the first comprehensive look at how Marshall’s efforts to cheer soldiers far from home resulted in the enduring morale services that the Army provides still today.
Marshall understood that civilian soldiers provided particular challenges and wanted to improve the subpar morale services that had been provided to Great War doughboys. Frederick Osborn, a civilian intellectual, was called to head the newly formed morale branch, which quickly became the Special Services Division. Hundreds of on-post movie theaters showing first-run movies at reduced prices, service clubs where GIs could relax, and inexpensive cafeterias were constructed. The Army Exchange System took direction under Brigadier General Joseph Byron, offering comfort items at low prices; the PX sold everything from cigarettes and razor blades to low-alcohol beer in very popular beer halls.
The great civic organizations—the YMCA, the Salvation Army, the Jewish Welfare Board, and others—were brought together to form the United Service Organizations (USO). At USO Camp Shows, admired entertainers like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Frances Langford brought home-style entertainment to soldiers within the war zones. As the war heightened in intensity, the Special Service Companies grew to over forty in number, each containing more than one hundred enlisted men. Trained in infantry skills, soldiers in the companies at times would have to stop showing movies, pick up their rifles, and fight.
The Special Services Division, PX, and USO were crucial elements in maintaining GI morale, and Cooke’s work makes clear the lasting legacy of these efforts to boost the average soldier’s spirits almost a century ago. The idea that as American soldiers serve abroad, they should have access to at least some of the comforts of home has become a cultural standard.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780826272843 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Missouri Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2012 |
| Series: | American Military Experience , #1 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 232 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
James J. Cooke is a Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of many books, including Chewing Gum, Candy Bars, and Beer: The Army PX in World War II (University of Missouri Press). He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
The American Military Experience Series, edited by John C. McManus.
Read an Excerpt
American Girls, Beer, and Glenn Miller
GI Morale in World War IIBy James J. Cooke
University of Missouri Press
Copyright © 2012 The Curators of the University of MissouriAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8262-1984-8
Chapter One
The Abnormal Communities
Corporal Elmer W. Sherwood had been in France for almost six months. His unit, the 150th Field Artillery Regiment, formally of the Indiana National Guard, was a part of the artillery brigade that served under the 42nd "Rainbow" Division. His unit, being trained by the French, was near the front to learn the ways of mortal combat on the western front. Like most of his Hoosier comrades, he was hungry and out of cigarettes, and Sherwood decided to find a source for food and tobacco. After a two-mile walk, he found a YMCA hut where he got a meager, but hot, meal and found the smokes he needed. In his diary, for March 3, 1918, he wrote, "The Y.M.C.A. [representative] said he didn't like the language the Huns were using but he was sticking to his post, tho shells were landing in his backyard." Sherwood knew, as did so many of General John J. Pershing's Doughboys, that the army provided little hot food and no small comforts like cigarettes or a candy bar. To a soldier like Sherwood, such things as a hot meal or tobacco were important to the morale that all combat troops had to maintain.
The United States Army's attention to morale issues had been a problem for as long as there was an army. The old observation that war was a few moments of sheer terror and days of mind-numbing boredom was quite true. Up to World War I, little attention was paid to the morale of the soldier in the ranks. The men played cards, rolled dice, and had ball games if balls were available. When left for long periods in camp, soldiers tended to look for something to drink, and when they got into towns, too many were inclined "to take a ride" on local prostitutes. Commanders were inclined to try to ban alcoholic beverages, and venereal disease was viewed with great dismay as cases increased. The twin vices of strong drink and prostitution became a continual area of concern for all army commanders, but until the entry of America into the Great War, little was done to offer alternative diversions for the troops.
When President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for seventy-five thousand volunteers in the spring of 1861, the situation changed as far as the public perception of soldiers, because those were hometown regiments, filled with men who were well known. The first camps took on an atmosphere of a weekend in the woods. Some regiments even hired cooks from their hometowns to prepare meals, and rations were plentiful. Regiments were attired in colorful uniforms, such as the gray of New York regiments, red shirts for some, and recreations of Revolutionary garb. War was snapping banners, stirring bands, and little drill, as it would all be over in six months, with the Union restored. Then they met the equally untrained and garishly uniformed Confederates along a meandering creek in northern Virginia called Bull Run. In June 1861, the United States Sanitary Commission was created to supply kitchens in the ever-growing Union camps, distribute supplies to the always filled hospitals, and provide rests for disabled soldiers. Collaborating with the Sanitary Commission was the United States Christian Commission, which was formed in 1861 to provide spiritual comfort for the troops. This commission began with the efforts of the YMCA National Committee, and it had the duty of working with Protestant army chaplains who would preach in the camps and follow their regiments into battle. Later in the war, the Ladies Auxiliary was formed to raise funds to support the growing spiritual needs of soldiers. In a time when faith was a vital part of American life, the Christian Commission performed an important, morale-raising role. It also provided an opportunity for those back home to contribute or actually work for the well-being of the troops. It would come as no surprise that the YMCA would be in the forefront of providing for the troops in both world wars in the next century.
The volunteers in both armies, and later the conscripts, looked for those small comforts that made life in the camps and on the march better. By 1861 most regiments, Union and Confederate, had added a civilian merchant called a sutler. The idea, as far as soldier morale was concerned, started out as a good one, but as the war went on, the regimental sutler became known as a "dog robber," a miserable profiteer who fleeced the soldiers. Sutlers often sold rancid meat pies, three-cent stamps for five cents, cheap and shoddy goods at high prices, and worse-cheap rot-gut whiskey disguised as canned peaches. Liquor for enlisted men was banned in the camps, but allowed for the officers. As long as there have been soldiers, there has been a thirst for the alcoholic beverage, and that was certainly true of the soldiers in blue and gray.
As the first year of the war ended, the sutler all but disappeared from the Confederate camps because of the Union blockade of Southern ports and a general shortage of salable goods. There were times when Union soldiers raided the sutlers' tents, stealing what merchandise they had, and happy were the Confederates when they caught sutlers' wagons. Generals U. S. Grant and William T. Sherman detested the sutlers and regarded them as no better than disloyal thieves. They tried to rid the camps of them, but there was not any group that could replace them as far as comfort items were concerned. After the war, the institution of soldiers' canteens, later named the Post Exchange, would grow out of the chaotic situation experienced during the Civil War.
The public became war weary as combat dragged on for four years, and although there were continual fairs and fund-raisers for the troops of the Civil War, attention focused on the "boom times" that the war produced. Noted Civil War historian Bruce Catton asserts that by 1862, many viewed it as a chance to make great sums of money. What Catton cites in his works on the great American conflict of the 1860s sounds very much like the bitter words of Private David Kenyon Webster of E Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, in 1944, when he wrote to his parents, "I wonder if the civilians at home realize, for instance, what an airborne operation in Germany will mean? It means trench foot and frostbite.... I can see no glamour or glory in such an affair, but that's all the newspapers in the States will feature, that and heroes." Maintaining morale for the soldier and the civilian would be a tricky matter when millions of men and women served in uniform during a great war that lasted almost five years for some.
The end of the war in 1865 meant a massive demobilization of men and new missions for the United States Army. After the war, the nation returned to peaceful pursuits, and the army shrank as Congress reduced military budgets. The army had to maintain the peace on the frontier and had too many missions for the number of cavalry and infantry regiments stationed in the West.
There were few units in the East, usually posted near large cities. Life on the western frontier was quite boring unless there was a campaign against Native Americans, and few operations garnered the interest of the civilian population unless it was something on the scale of General George A. Custer's fatal encounter on the Little Big Horn River in 1876. Slowly, the army began a system of instruction for officers at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, but for the rest of the army, pay remained low and promotions took years to obtain. Unless an officer came from an affluent family, social contact with the nonmilitary population was difficult to maintain. For the enlisted men, the situation on the frontier and on the eastern posts was worse. Their pay was dismal, and their associations beyond the post were few unless they were in the tenderloin districts, where cheap whiskey could be bought for five cents a glass and a cheap, often diseased, prostitute could be had for twenty-five cents. Many of the posts had a soldiers' canteen where a soldier could go, but, as was typical of the post–Civil War army, there was a distressing lack of form and structure for the canteens. To remedy this, in 1895 the Office of the Chief of Staff issued a general order that permitted commanders to establish a Post Exchange that would purchase items at a low cost and sell them to soldiers at a small profit. Those profits would then be used for the benefit of the enlisted ranks.
The Office of the Quartermaster General in Washington did not like the order, arguing that they, not commanders in the field, should purchase the supplies. The officers who had to oversee their troops heartily approved, positing that they knew best what their soldiers wanted. The PX remained in the hands of the post commanders. The exchange was a place where only enlisted men could gather to smoke, play cards, drink some beer, have checkers matches, and simply relax away from the routine of military life and the watchful eyes of their officers.
Sergeants would oversee the conduct of the men in the exchange. Some town merchants saw their profits decline, especially after the monthly payday when a private's twenty dollars a month could be wasted on watered-down rot-gut rye whiskey or paid to painted women of the street (as they were called). Officers were excluded from the exchange for good reasons. A soldier, perhaps with a bit more beer than was wise, might say something or do something that could result in a court-martial. Prudence dictated that the exchange remain the domain of the enlisted soldiers and their noncommissioned officers. This was a good step forward in organizing an institution that would support individual and unit morale, but what would happen when the troops deployed to the field for extended periods of campaigning?
The Spanish-American War added nothing to the maintenance of army morale. In fact, that "Splendid Little War" showed that the army was not prepared to care for the troops in the field. Superior officers did not understand what had happened, from the chaotic conditions at the Tampa port of embarkation to the deteriorating sanitation situation in the camps. Food, so vital to soldier morale, was very poor, and soldiers complained about what they called embalmed beef and army hard crackers that were so old and weevil infested they could not be eaten. The story goes that boxes of stale, wormy crackers were issued to the troops, and marked on the sides of the boxes was "BC," which stood for "Brigade Commissary" The soldiers immediately claimed that "BC" stood for "Before Christ." The rising venereal disease rate troubled the War Department, which knew that the situation was due to boredom in the camps. The subsequent occupation of the Philippines meant that troops would be sent overseas for long periods of time. The exchange followed simply because it had become an army institution.
The question of morale did not surface again until President Woodrow Wilson dispatched General John J. Pershing to the American-Mexican border in 1916 following a raid on Columbus, New Mexico, by Mexican insurgents led by the legendary Poncho Villa. In addition to the Regular Army, units of the National Guard were also sent to the area of operations. Now citizen-soldiers were involved in a lengthy campaign.
In 1916 President Wilson nominated Cleveland, Ohio, lawyer Newton D. Baker to be the secretary of war, and there was shock in the halls of the War Department. Baker was a well-known pacifist with no experience with the American military. The pipe-smoking lawyer, however, tapped into the best military minds in the army, and it was Baker's decision to name John J. Pershing to command the expedition into Mexico and to send National Guard regiments to the border. In the summer of 1916, reports began to circulate about the conditions on the border, with stories from observers and journalists that the venereal disease rates were rising and bored troops were often drunk. Jerome D. Greene of the Rockefeller Foundation became so concerned about the continuing tide of firsthand reports that he sought out an appointment with Baker. There had to be an official inspection and report about the accusations of rampant prostitution and cheap whiskey causing public intoxication among the troops. During the meeting, Greene suggested that Raymond B. Fosdick, a noted investigator who had spent a year in Paris studying police techniques, be sent to investigate. Fosdick, a political progressive, was no stranger to the seamy side of life, having observed it in New York and in Paris.
Fosdick found two problems when he arrived. The first was that the reports did not fully represent the extent of prostitution or the widespread overindulgence in cheap whiskey. The number of hastily constructed brothels had expanded tremendously, with prostitutes pouring into Texas and other border states from cities like New Orleans and New York. The second problem was that Fosdick was distrusted by the officers he was sent to assist.
Many officers were educating their soldiers in sexual matters and the new procedures of prophylaxis to combat, as best as possible, venereal disease, and they feared that this official sent by a pacifist secretary of war might very well declare that such classes and efforts were in reality an affront to morality because such a treatment could encourage the troops to engage in illicit sex. Fosdick was no prude, nor was he an agent of the many religious and reformist groups who opposed prophylaxis as an invitation to patronize prostitutes. Driving around camp areas, he saw a massive number of troops walking toward the red-light districts.
Fosdick recalled that the problems arose from the fact that troops had nothing to do with their time off. Boredom became an enemy of army morale and the accepted morals to which the majority of Americans adhered. Of great interest to Fosdick was the observation that when the YMCA set up buildings where soldiers could visit, play games, read, and have a cup of coffee or a doughnut, the incidence of soldiers going off toward the beckoning red lights of the tenderloin districts lessened. This was a lesson that was learned and would have a great impact on the maintenance of army morale during the Great War and World War II. Fosdick recognized that young men had continual sexual urges and that many had not engaged in intercourse. Hormones (Fosdick did not use that term) and a natural curiosity influenced men in uniform, far from home and the restraints of society, to be drawn to the brothels and saloons.
No one in the War Department knew that in just a few months, the lessons learned about troop morale on the border would have to be applied with a national mobilization of millions of America's young men to fight overseas. Fosdick did warn Baker that many senior army officers opposed the inclusion of civilian agencies operating with the troops in the camps. They, according to Fosdick, wanted only those in uniform to minister to the needs of the troops, but their efforts during the 1916 operation amounted to almost nothing, which resulted in soldiers frequenting the brothels and tawdry saloons that had sprung up all around the camps. What Fosdick, who had now become Baker's resident authority on soldier morale, proposed was a concentration of the agencies under one authority that would work with the commanding officers but have a certain autonomy in providing for the troops. Newton Baker was impressed with the report, and he was in a political position of great power and authority. This pacifist, now in charge of the nation's preparation for war, named Raymond B. Fosdick to head the Commission of Training Camp Activities in 1917. This was a shrewd move on Baker's part in that he could allow Fosdick and the commission to take on the burden of building morale as well as morals while he spent the majority of his time supporting the requirements of John J. Pershing, who had just been appointed to command the American Expeditionary Force in France now that the United States was at war with Germany.
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against Imperial Germany, and on April 6 Congress obliged Wilson by passing the declaration after furious debate. It was confusing for many because in 1916 Wilson had campaigned for reelection on a platform that included a promise that the United States would not enter into the European war. As late as January 1917, Wilson had hoped for a "peace without victory" that would end the ghastly bloodshed in Europe. Of great concern was his secretary of war, a well-known pacifist, and many wondered if a person who had been opposed to war could lead an army into conflict. What was not clear was that Baker had thrown himself into the job, asking some key generals such as Tasker Bliss, chief of staff of the army, not only their advice but also to instruct him concerning areas in which he was totally unfamiliar. Baker brought to the War Department a concern for the troops who would have to go to France, especially now that many were drafted into the army and that National Guard units were called into federal service for overseas deployment. Newton Baker's area of influence exceeded that of Abraham Lincoln's secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from American Girls, Beer, and Glenn Miller by James J. Cooke Copyright © 2012 by The Curators of the University of Missouri. Excerpted by permission of University of Missouri Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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