A World at War
History records that World War II began in earnest on September 1, 1939, when German troops invaded Poland. Treaty allies Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. Italy, already branded an aggressor for its campaign in Ethiopia, entered the war on the side of its German ally. The third "Axis" power, Japan, in the 1930's signaled its intentions with campaigns of conquest in Manchuria and China and an attack on the United States gunboat Panay in Chinese waters.
The United States reluctantly began to gird itself for involvement in case diplomacy failed. In 1940 the Selective Services and Training Law established the nation's first peacetime draft. Industrial capacity was hurriedly pushed into high gear. Emergency actions taken included the mobilization of the 38th Infantry Division, Indiana National Guard. In addition to men called in the draft, other Hoosier reservists including the Indiana Naval Militia reported for activity duty. Through these mobilization actions the size of America's armed forces was quickly doubled even before the United States went to war.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, the most important U.S. military base in the Pacific. The surprised U.S. Fleet and Army ground and air elements suffered
many casualties and destruction of ships, aircraft and ground installations. 18 naval vessels sunk or badly damaged: 292 aircraft destroyed or damaged, 2,403 servicemen killed or missing, 1,178 wounded.
One day later the Japanese struck at the Philippine Islands and President Franklin D. Roosevelt went before Congress requesting a declaration of war. A few days later, Germany and Italy, Japan's treaty partners, in turn declared war on the U.S. The battle lines for global warfare had been drawn. As the year came to an end, Japan had seized Guam and Wake Island (U.S.), Hong Kong and Singapore (U.K.) and other Asian lands. German armored columns were deep inside the Soviet Union.
The U.S. moved swiftly in the transition from peacetime preparedness actions in full wartime mobilization of manpower and resources. While U.S. forces under General Douglas MacArthur waged a gallant delaying action in the Philippines, American forces deployed to meet the enemy on many fronts. With Australia as their initial Pacific base, American soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen set out to contain and defeat the Japanese. With the United Kingdom as its major European base, the U.S. began to amass the force that would be needed for victory.
The tide of Japanese aggression in Asia reached its zenith in 1942. U.S. forces trapped on the Bataan peninsula without food, ammunition,
supplies, or prospects of reinforcements, surrendered on April 9, 1942. A month later, the fall of Corregidor, an island bastion in Manila Bay, symbolized the U.S. defeat in the Philippines. Japanese forces completed the seizure of the Netherlands, East Indies, held large areas of New Guinea and surrounding islands, and threatened to take Australia.
The U.S. Navy rebuilt rapidly after the disaster at Pearl Harbor, scored a stunning success against Japan in June 1942 at the battle of Midway in the north Central Pacific. The Pacific Fleet, commanded by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz used its meager forces combined with superior intelligence information turn back a powerful Japanese task force. By late 1942, the U.S. Navy was well on its way to control of the seas.
The time had come for the U.S. to take the offensive. On August 7, 1942, U.S. Marines, in their first wartime amphibious mission, assaulted Tulagi and Guadalcanal in the Solomons. Two Marine Corps divisions would later be reinforced with an Army division task force in a campaign which raged until February, 1943. The U.S. victory in the Solomons and subsequent succession in Papua New Guinea, ended the threat to Australia. The Japanese would henceforth be on the defensive.
The American and the British Combined Chiefs of Staff evolved a strategy making Europe the main effort. The Axis forces by
then in full control of the Continent, were launching devastating bombardment attacks and later rocket attacks on England, were continuing to penetrate the Soviet Union, and were in control of North Africa.
The leaders of the Soviet Union pressed for a second front but the U.S. and British decided to begin the offensive against the Axis with an assault on the North African coast, November 8, 1942. The combined assault force was under the command of Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower. U.S. and British troops landed on the French-held Moroccan and Algerian beaches. After initial resistance, the U.S. forces soon reforged old bonds with the French Army. The French military severed its relations with the Nazi dominated Vichy government in France and rallied to the Allies. The Axis armies consolidated their forces and prepared to continue the campaign in Tunisia. U.S. forces rebounded from a disaster at Kasserine Pass in February, 1943 to overcome German field Marshal Rommel and the Afrika Korps. This campaign marked the emergence of Major General George S. Patton, Jr. as a great field commander. The surrender of the German and Italian forces in May, 1943 denied German armor reinforcements to the Eastern front where Soviet forces were starting to beat back the Germans after a grim winter campaign.
Taking advantage of the momentum from the North African campaign, the Allies attacked Sicily on July 10, 1943, fighting a campaign which culminated in the defeat of Italian and GErman defenders by August 17. As the campaign in Sicily drew to a successful conclusion, bombers attacked Naples, a signal that the Allies would soon strike at the Italian mainland. Allied military power prompted the collapse Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime and laid the groundwork for Italy dropping out of the war. The Germans reinforced their field armies in Italy and fought often doggedly. What was destined to be a long and bloody Italian campaign began on September 9, 1943 with an Anglo-American amphibious assault at Salerno. A few months late came the epic Anzio beachhead battle.
During 1943, the Eighth U.S. Air Force B-17s, based in England began the strategic bombardment of targets in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent. B-24s from the Eighth joined the 9th Air Force in a daring raid on the Ploesti (Rumania) oil fields in August 1943. Allied air power drove the once invincible Luftwaffe from the skis over the Mediterranean and Europe.
Meanwhile, General MacArthur's forces in the Southwest Pacific and admiral Nimitz's forces in the Central Pacific conducted aggressive island hopping campaign during 1943-44, rolling back the Japanese Army destroying the Japanese fleet and moving the U.S. perimeter closer to the Japanese home islands with the capture of Saipan and Tinian and the recapture of Guam in the summer of 1944. U.S. aviation was now within bomber-range of Japan. In yet another bold move, MacArthur's forces began the return to the Philippines with the seizure of Leyte and Samar in the fall of 1944.
The liberation of western Europe began in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944 when Allied airborn and seaborne forces landed on the Normandy Coast of France. D-Day marked the beginning of the final and fateful campaigns of war in Europe. After including a Free French armored division, racing to liberate the city of Paris, which had been in enemy hands since May, 1940. Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944. ON august 15, the allies landed on Southern France, U.S. and Free French forces drove up the Rhone River Valley to make contact with the armies pushing from the west toward Alsace.
A vicious infantry campaign in the Huertgen Forest in November 1944, brought the U.S. to the Roer river—but in the forests of the Ardennes the war took on a new dimensions as Adolph Hitler launched General von Rundstedt on a last ditch effort to success, inflicting heavy casualties on U.S. forces in the "Battle of the Bulge". Eventually however, the Germans were beaten back and broken by Allied forces buoyed by the gallant defense of the village of Bastogne (Belgium) by the U.S. airborne and the extraordinary dash of General Patton's armored columns.
Early in 1945, the allies resumed the advance pushing into Germany, crossing the Rhine River at Remagen, not stopping until U.S. elements met the Russians at Torgau on the Elbe River. On May 8, 1945, the Germans surrendered unconditionally in a schoolhouse in the French town of Rheims and the nation turned its attention to the Asian battlefronts where Japan's cities were being pounded from the air.
In the Pacific, MacArthur's forces invaded the island of Luzon and soon entered Manila which had been abandoned to the Japanese on Christmas Day, 1941. It was during this campaign that Indiana's 38th Division earned it's nickname, "the Avengers of Bataan". While the Army was concentrating on the Luzon battle, Admiral Nimitz sent three Marine Divisions to seize the island of Iwo Jima which was taken after a bitter fight, costing the Corps 23,203 casualties of whom 5,931 were killed in action. Soldiers and Marines opened the battle for Okinawa—the last campaign as it turned out—East Sunday, April 1, 1945 and the bitterly contested campaign was concluded on July 2.
U.S. forces were spared the grim tasks of invading the home islands of Japan by the courageous decision of President Harry S. Truman to deploy the newly-tested atomic bomb. The first A bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, a second over Nagasaki, on August 6 and 9, crossing a new threshold in military technology. It forced the Japanese to acknowledge that the end had come. On September 2, 1945, the Japanese government surrendered to the Allies in a ceremony aboard the battleship USS Missouri.
Three years, eight months and 24 days after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. and the Allies had prevailed. The greatest fighting force ever assembled in U.S. history had achieved its goal of total and complete victory over America's enemies.
Indiana's Contribution
Total number served: 395,982
Wounded: 17,700
Total Killed: 11,680
United States of America
Congressional Medals of Honor
Private First Class Melvin E. Biddle
Army December 23-24, 1944
Lieutenant Gerry H. Kisters
Army July 31, 1943
Staff Sergeant Thomas E. McCall
Army January 27, 1944
Private William D. McGee*
Army March 18, 1945
Lieutenant Harry J. Michael*
Army March 14, 1945
Lieutenant Thomas W. Wigle
Army September 14, 1944
Commander Richard Nott Antrim
Navy April 1944
Rear Admiral Norman Scott*
Navy November 12-13, 1943
Colonel David Monroe Shoup
Marine Corps September 14, 1944
* Posthumous
Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date that will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
December 8, 1941
Dear Mom and Dad,
This is a letter that I hope need not be delivered, for that would mean that I am considered missing or killed in action ... Please don't think that you have lost everything in losing your son. Remember that I volunteered for this and knew what it might lead to. I have spent some of my happiest moments in the A.A.F. I feel I have done perhaps that will aid America to remain "the land of the free, the home of the brave." If my death helps end this war one minute sooner, I consider it worthwhile.
Eternally your son,
Vernon
Vernon Clay Buchanan, Indianapolis
Killed in Action, Philippines, 1944
For two weeks and more I haven't had my clothes off, not even my shoes, almost three weeks without a shave, K-rations for chow when we got it. Everybody lost weight, got diarrhea from muddy, filthy water. Due to hardships of terrain, heat, now chow, no water, battle strain, the first few days I hardly ate, had no sleep and was so weary, I didn't give a damn if artillery shells hit me or not.
"March"
Marchmont Kovas, South Bend
Italy, July, 1944
Dear Folks,
I am very comfortable situated in a prison hospital in Germany and very thankful to be alive. You may as well know that my left foot and part of my leg have been amputated. The doctor's don't have much hope of saving my knee which was left stiff as the result of the operation. All amputation cases are eligible for automatic repatriation, so I think the doctors are going to delay a second amputation until the physicians in America have a chance to look at it. But don't get too impatient about this repatriation, because it may take six months to a year. Losing my leg seemed pretty awful to me at first, but I have grown used to it now and realize how lucky I am now to be dead.
Love,
Bill
William B. Rudy, Indianapolis
Stalag, XVIII, February, 1945
It will seem odd when, at some given hour, the shooting stops and everything suddenly changes again. It will be odd to drive down an unknown road without that little knot of fear in your stomach; odd not to listen with animal-like alertness for the meaning of each distant sound; odd to have your spirit released from the perpetual weight that is compounded of fear and death and dirt and noise and anguish.
"A Last Word"
Ernie Pyle
August, 1944
There's a bit of Indiana in the sighing of the breeze.
There's a hint of Indiana in the rustling of the trees.
And the Jungle's myriad whisperings are sibilantly clear.
("They are having injun summer,"
just ten thousand miles from here.)
There's a part of Indiana in the blazing tropic moon,
There's a trace of Indiana in the shimmering lagoon,
And a message in the framping of a sentry very near;
("Oh, the frost is on the punkin."
just ten thousand miles from here.)
There's a share of Indiana in the crosses by the palms
There's a touch of Indiana in the South Pacific Calms
And the murmur of the breakers brings me desolating
cheer ("Oh, the corn is heavy on the stalk,"
just ten thousand miles from here.)
There's a piece of Indiana where the sand is stained with red:
There's a lot of Indiana where the Hoosier lays his head,
And I seem to hear him saying as I stand beside his Bier:
("Let me sleep once more beneath the Sky,"
ten thousand miles from here.)
"Elegy"
James McGregor, Munster
Biak Island, February 1944
Dear Friend:
Many of my friends are now dead. To a man, each died with a nonchalance that each would have denied was courage. They simply called it lack of fear, and forgot the triumph. If anything great or good is born of this wr, it should not be valued in the colonies we may win nor in the pages historians will attempt to write, but rather in the youth of our country who never trained for war, rather almost who never believed in war, but who have from some hidden source, brought forth a gallantry which is homespun it is so real I say these things because I know you liked and understood boys, because I wanted you to know that they have not let you down. That our there here, between a spaceless sea and sky, American youth has found itself and given itself so that at home, the spark may catch, burst into flame and burn high. If the country takes these sacrifices with indifference, it will be the cruelest ingratitude the world has ever known. My luck can't last much longer, but the flame goes on and on that is important. Please give all my best wishes to all of the family, and may all you do find favor in God's grace.
Bill
William Evans, Indianapolis
USS Hornet, April 1942
Killed at the Battle of Midway
As I stood on the crowded bus on D-Day morning, somebody started singing a song made famous by Kate Smith, "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition," and we followed it with the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Many were in tears. That noon all the church doors were wide open. Lutie and I went to Christ Church on the Monument Circle. There were no flowers, no organ, no priest, just kneeling women. When the pews filled up, people knelt on the floor and we grabbed the hand of someone we had never known before. Maybe we were circling our wagons against the terror. The bells in the steeple were playing hymns like "Onward Christian Soldiers," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and "Rock of Ages," hymns that are stirring whenever they are heard. That noon their message came into every heart. Prayers were almost palpable in the air.
Susanahh Mayberry
Indianapolis
"It was the spirit of liberty, which gave us our armed strength and which made our men invincible in battle. We now know that the spirit of liberty, the freedom of the individual and the personal dignity of man are the strongest and toughest and most enduring forces in the world."
President Harry S. Truman
September 1, 1945
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