The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II (49 page)

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

“the twenty-five-year-old”
William Bradford Huie, “Are Americans Afraid to Fight?”
Liberty
, June 1948, p. 80.

“It is always an enriching”
Charles B. MacDonald,
The Siegfried Line Campaign
, U.S. Army in World War II, European Theater of Operations, Center of Military History, U.S. Army, Washington, DC, 1993 (originally published, 1963), p. xi.

“The mystery to me”
Ernie Pyle,
Brave Men
, New York: Henry Holt, 1944, p. 164.

“American Army deserters”
Dana Adams Schmidt, “Deserters, Gangs Run Paris Racket,”
New York Times
, 23 January 1945, p. 5.

“The French police fear”
Dana Adams Schmidt, “Americans Leave Dislike in France,”
New York Times
, 12 November 1945, p. 5.

“American men have no”
Committee of the National Research Council with the Collaboration of Science Service as a Contribution to the War Effort,
Psychology for the Fighting Man, Prepared for the Fighting Man Himself
, Washington, DC: The Infantry Journal (and Penguin Books), 1943, p. 13.

“What war can ever”
John Keegan,
The Battle for History
(Toronto: Random House, 1995), p. 9.

BOOK I: OF BOYS TO SOLDIERS

ONE

“The East Side”
“Storm of Protest May Save Parade,”
New York Times
, 6 April 1919, pp. 1 and 4.

“as Commander in Chief”
“Appeal to Wilson for Parade of the 77th,”
New York Times
, 6 April 1919, p. 1.

“The 77th fought”
“History of the 77th,”
New York Times Magazine
, 4 May 1919, p. 80.

“the foreign-born, and especially the Jews”
Richard Slotkin,
Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality
, New York: Henry Holt, 2005, p. 76.

“There are citizens”
President Woodrow Wilson, “State of the Union,” 7 December 1915. Full text at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1328. Also quoted in Gary Mead,
The Doughboys: America and the First World War
, New York: Overlook Press, 2002, p. 365.

“Every building had”
“2,000,000 Out to See Veterans Pass By,”
New York Times
, 7 May 1919, p. 1.

Only the deserters
Robert Fantina,
Desertion and the American Soldier, 1776–2006,
New York: Algora Publishing, 2006, p. 112. See also “Punishing the Army Deserter,”
New York Times
, 16 June 1918, p. 7.

Britain shot 304 soldiers
Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson,
Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War
, London: Cassell, 2001, pp. 484–503.

“The time has come”
“A Million Cheer 77th in Final Hike of War Up 5th Av.,”
New York Times
, 7 May 1919, pp. 1 and 5.

“The neighborhood was”
Steve Weiss, e-mail to the author, 17 April 2010.

“I didn’t know”
Steve Weiss, interview with the author, London, 7 October 2009.

“Seems like yesterday”
Stephen J. Weiss, “War Dance (1943–1946),” unpublished manuscript, second draft, London, 2009, pp. 24–25. Weiss has written two drafts of his memoir, which are hereafter referred to as WD/First Draft and WD/Second Draft.

TWO

The nineteen-year-old volunteer’s
Vernon Scannell, notes for his author’s biography for his novel
The Big Time
, Scannell papers, University of Reading Archives, Special Collections Service.

“that dark and grey”
Vernon Scannell,
Argument of Kings
, London: Robson Books, 1987, p. 112. [Hereafter, Scannell,
Kings
.]

“I was supposed”
Vernon Scannell, Interview, Imperial War Museum, London, 21 October 1987, Tape No. 10009 (Four reels, 120 minutes), transcribed by the author. [Hereafter, Scannell, IWM Interview.]

“If you did revert”
Ibid.

“singularly ignorant of”
Ibid.

“Are you over 18”
Vernon Scannell,
Drums of Morning: Growing Up in the Thirties
, London: Robson Books, 1992, p. 200. [Hereafter, Scannell,
Drums
.]

“The recruiting officer”
Ibid.

“The Army was”
Ibid.

“disliked the Army”
Vernon Scannell,
The Tiger and the Rose: An Autobiography
, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971, p. 3. [Hereafter, Scannell,
Tiger
.]

“early days in”
Scannell,
Kings
, p. 17.

“By nature I was”
Vernon Scannell, “Coming to Life in Leeds,”
The Listener
, 22 August 1963, galley proof in Vernon Scannell Collection, Box 4, Vernon Works: The Walking Wounded, A, T and TCCMSS Letters Recip, Miscellaneous, Folder: Scannell Letters [Corris, Eric C], Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.

“not so much”
Vernon Scannell,
A Proper Gentleman
, London: Robson Books, 1977, p. 103.

“working class but”
Scannell,
Kings
, p. 77.

“‘Vernon? What’s that?’”
Vernon Scannell, Interview with Michael Parkinson,
Desert Island Discs
, BBC Radio, 29 November 1987. [Hereafter, Parkinson interview.]

“A lot of the chaps”
Scannell, IWM Interview.

“My comrades were”
Scannell, “Coming to Life in Leeds.”

“I became ashamed”
Scannell,
Tiger
.

“They had no respect”
Scannell, IWM Interview.

“It was defeat”
Alan Moorehead,
The African Trilogy: The North African Campaign, 1940–43,
London: Cassell, 1998 (originally published by Hamish Hamilton, 1944), p. 381.

“a full scale retreat”
Ibid., pp 385–86.

Worst of all
Artemis Cooper,
Cairo in the War, 1939–1945,
London: Penguin, 1998, p. 189.

“Every vehicle was”
S. F. Crozier,
The History of the Corps of Royal Military Police
, Aldershot: Gale and Polden, 1951, p. 74.

“that His Majesty’s”
General C. J. E. Auchinleck to the Under-Secretary of State, the War Office, 7 April 1942, British National Archives, CAB 66/25/32.

During the First World War
Sir Percy James Grigg, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for War, 14 June 1942, British National Archives, CAB 66/25/32.

“With the increase”
Crozier,
The History of the Corps of Royal Military Police
, p. 177.

“a shilling a day”
Wilf Swales (968), Interview with the Second World War Experience Centre, Leeds, England, recorded on 21 June 2001.

Two leaders in
Donald Thomas,
An Underworld at War: Spivs, Deserters, Racketeers and Civilians in the Second World War
, London: John Murray, 2003, pp. 187–88.

“The number of”
Crozier,
The History of the Corps of Royal Military Police
, p. 178.

This deserter band
Thomas,
An Underworld at War
, p. 186.

“My military advisers”
Sir Percy James Grigg, Secretary of State for War, Memorandum to the War Cabinet, “Death Penalty for Offences Committed on Active Service,” 14 June 1942, British National Archives, CAB 66/25/32.

“If legislation is”
Ben Shephard,
A War of Nerves
, London: Jonathan Cape, 2000, p. 239.

“softness in education”
Letter from General Archibald Percival Wavell, former Commander-in-Chief Middle East, to Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Alan Brooke, 31 May 1942. Brooke wrote to Wavell on 5 July 1942, “I agree with you that we are not anything like as tough as we were in the last war. There has been far too much luxury, safety first, red triangle, etc., in this country.” Quoted in David French,
Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War Against Germany, 1939–1945,
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 1 and 242.

The first units
Ibid., p. 140.

“a fairly constant”
Edgar Jones and Simon Wesseley, “‘Forward Psychiatry’ in the Military: Its Origins and Effectiveness,”
Journal of Traumatic Stress
, Vol. 16, August 2003, p. 413 (complete article, pp. 411–19).

“Recent desertions show”
Auchinleck to War Office, 19 July 1942, British National Archives, WO 32/15773. See also David French, “Discipline and the Death Penalty in the British Army in the War Against Germany During the Second World War,”
Journal of Contemporary History
, Vol. 33, No. 4, October 1998, pp. 531–45.

“The place we see”
Vernon Scannell,
Soldiering On: Poems of Military Life
, London: Robson Books, 1989, p. 29. [Hereafter, Scannell,
Soldiering On
.]

“I do remember”
Scannell, IWM Interview.

Some of the more
Cooper,
Cairo in the War, 1939–1945,
p. 214.

“who for their own”
Douglas H. Tobler,
Intelligence in the Desert: The Recollections and Reminiscences of a Brigade Intelligence Officer
, self-published, Gold Bridge, B.C., 1978, p. 45. See also French,
Raising Churchill’s Army
, p. 139.

“The 51st Highland”
J. B. Salmond,
The History of the 51st
Highland Division, 1939–1945,
Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1953, p. 29.

“An Arab was”
Scannell, IWM interview.