Foreword

Dogface Soldier

Stories Part I

Stories Part 2

To A Medic

Why

Who Was The Dogface Soldier

by Robert Maxwell O'Kane "Okie" September 1993

First, what he wasn't.

He wasn't tall or short; fat or thin; a Southerner or Northerner or Westerner or Easterner; he wasn't Protestant or Catholic or Jew or Zen Buddhist; he wasn't ugly or handsome; not Democrat or Republican or Socialist; not a college boy or a dropout from school; he wasn't loud or quiet; he wasn't happy or sad; he wasn't fearless or frightened.

No — he was just all of these. The foot soldier was not pre-destined, not even, as far as we know, was he pre-selected for any particular reason. He was not Superman—he was just a boy/man.

He came from everywhere—and found himself in what can only be described as a series of no-wheres.

He had only recently been playing in the streets of his home town, or in the fields of his farm or ranch, or on the beaches of the Atlantic or Pacific. He had lived in years of the Great Depression and probably had never strayed very far from home.

Then, all too suddenly, he was a soldier—not quite sure of why except that there seemed a threat from far away which might destroy those home town streets, those and ranches and those beaches.

So he found himself, for reasons he never did fathom, in the Army; more specifically, in the Infantry. Any notions of the supposed glamour of the "service" with its uniforms, parades and pageants were soon dispelled when, after a mysterious process he found himself a "replacement" (a very ominous term when one stops to think about it) anonymously arranged in a system which would eventually place him in Company B, 7th Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division.

Here he would meet other young men from everywhere—men he most likely would never have met otherwise. Any differences soon, for the most part, were soon extinguished; soon it became difficult to distinguish one soldier from another in a physical sense; we were all dressed in similar arrays of uniforms, carrying the MI rifle, loaded down with ammunition bandoleers, grenades hanging from already heavy web belts with more ammunition, plus a canteen, a bayonet, an entrenching tool, first aid kit ... usually, after a few days in combat, the gas mask was torn out of its holder and the holder became a "loot bag" or a place for extra rations, next to go was the regular pack and shelter half; blankets were prized, especially in winter; as the weather grew warmer more and more of heavy outerwear were discarded; the same old woolen shirts and pants remained; hot or cold.

He lived close to the earth—it was his best cover so often—a ditch by the roadside, a bomb crater, a fox hole.

He lived and died in the heat and the cold, in the vineyards, in the snow on the mountains, in little villages, in large cities, on patrols, and in the Siegfried Line, and crossing the Rhine.

He didn't know the "big-picture"—he only knew the constant dangers, the terror of tree bursts, the whine of an "88", the burp of a Schmeiser, the appearance of a Tiger tank bearing down on him, the explosion of a Shu mine or a bouncing betty ...

He knew of fatigue so complete it completely enveloped him, of dirt it seemed would never be removed, of fear which got right into his inner self—a constant which kept him suspicious of sounds, of movements, of shadows, of being afraid of falling asleep even though he knew he couldn't stay awake . . .

By the end of WWII there were about 11 million in the Army; of that number 2 million were in 90 combat divisions and of those fewer than 700,000 were in the Infantry.

"The war on the ground was predominantly the infantry—man's war ... if one is searching for a picture of those in something close to sustained combat for long periods of time, this is where one finds it ... of the millions sent overseas by the Army during WWII, only 14 percent were infantrymen ... those 14 percent took more than 70 percent of all the battle casualties among overseas troops."

We, of Company B, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division, were part of that very special breed—the Dog Faces.

I salute you and I salute all of those who are not here who shared the distinction of being a Combat Infantryman.