The Last Full Measure (61 page)

  
1.
“Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for Man-made Multicides Throughout History,” from Matthew White’s invaluable Atlas of Twentieth Century History website:
http://necrometrics.com/warstats.htm
. His numbers are derived from a review of more than 50 sources.

  
2.
Catherine Merridale,
Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945
(New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2006), 337.

  
3.
Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev, ed.,
Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century
(London: Greenhill, 1997), 85, 96. David M. Glantz and Jonathan House,
When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995), adopt Krivosheev’s numbers (from the original 1993 Russian-language edition). Richard Ellis,
World War II: The Encyclopedia of Facts and Figures
(Madison, WI: Facts on File, 1995), 254, gives Soviet “killed and missing” at 11 million.

  
4.
Omer Bartov,
Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 83.

  
5.
Glantz and House,
When Titans Clashed
, 123.

  
6.
Ibid., 284.

  
7.
Ibid. Ellis,
World War II
, 253, gives a much lower figure for German losses: 7.9 million casualties in all theaters, of whom 3.3 million were killed.

  
8.
http://necrometrics.com/warstats.htm
.

  
9.
Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, “American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics,”
Congressional Record
S3 (2007), CRS3.

10.
http://necrometrics.com/warstats.htm
.

11.
Ellis,
World War II
, 256.

12.
James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi,
The Pacific War Encyclopedia
(Madison, WI: Facts on File, 1998), 690.

13.
Perrett,
Battle Book
, 127; and Dunnigan and Nofi,
Pacific War
, 255.

14.
Perrett,
Battle Book
, 224.

15.
Michael Bess,
Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II
(New York: Knopf, 2006), 212.

16.
Quoted in Bartov,
Hitler’s Army
, 130.

17.
Paul Fussell,
Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 116.

18.
Quoted in Craig M. Cameron,
American Samurai: Myth, Imagination and the Conduct of Battle in the First Marine Division, 1941–1951
(Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1.

19.
E. B. Sledge,
With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa
(1981; repr., New York: Ballantine, 2007), 400.

20.
George MacDonald Fraser,
Quartered Safe Out Here: A Harrowing Tale of World War II
(New York: Skyhorse, 2007), 125.

21.
John C. McManus,
The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II
(Novato, CA: Presidio, 1998), 172.

22.
Quoted in Richard J. Aldrich,
Witness to War: Diaries of the Second World War in Europe and the Middle East
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2004), 541–42.

23.
Günter K. Koschorrek,
Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front
(Minneapolis: Zenith, 2005), 255.

24.
Fussell,
Wartime
, 140.

25.
Quoted in ibid.

26.
Alex Bowlby,
The Recollections of Rifleman Bowlby: Italy 1944
(London: Leo Cooper, 1969), 114.

27.
William Manchester,
Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 391.

28.
Lee Kennett,
G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II
(New York: Scribner’s, 1987), 140.

29.
McManus,
Deadly Brotherhood
, 237.

30.
Quoted in ibid., 240.

31.
Quoted in ibid., 283.

32.
Quoted in Merridale,
Ivan’s War
, 233.

33.
Ellis,
World War II
, 161.

34.
Frank A. Reister,
Medical Statistics in World War II
(Washington, DC: Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 1975), 16.

35.
Thomas M. Huber, “Japanese Counterartillery Methods on Okinawa, April–June 1945,” Combined Studies Institute Report 13,
Tactical Responses to Concentrated Artillery
, US Army Combined Arms Center.

36.
Kennett,
G.I.
, 152.

37.
John Lucas,
The Silken Canopy: A History of the Parachute
(Shrewsbury, UK: Airlife, 1997), 67.

38.
Glantz and House,
When Titans Clashed
, 172.

39.
Quoted in Gerald Astor,
The Mighty Eighth: The Air War in Europe as Told by the Men Who Fought It
(New York: Dell, 1997), 308.

40.
War Chronicle,
http://warchronicle.com/16th–infantry.com
.

41.
29th Infantry Division Historical Society,
http://www.29infantrydivision.org/WWII-stories/Ford_Richard_J_2.html
.

42.
D-Day Museum and Overlord Embroidery,
http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk
.

43.
Manchester,
Goodbye
, 224.

44.
Gordon L. Rottman,
U.S. World War II Amphibious Tactics: Army & Marine Corps, Pacific Theater
(London: Osprey, 2004), 31. Ironically, Andrew Higgins’s inspiration came from a photograph the Marines had shown him in 1941 of a Japanese drop-ramp landing craft—the
Daisatsu
—developed in the late 1920s.

45.
Robert Leckie,
Helmet for My Pillow
(New York: iBooks, 2001), 57.

46.
Manchester,
Goodbye
, 162.

47.
Raymond Gantter,
Roll Me Over: An Infantryman’s World War II
(New York: Ballantine, 1997), 4.

48.
Quoted in Martin Bowman,
Remembering D-Day: Personal Histories of Everyday Heroes
(New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 118.

49.
Quoted in Ronald Lewin, ed.,
Voices from the War on Land, 1939–1945
(New York: Vintage, 2007), 205.

50.
Ibid.

51.
John Ellis,
On the Front Lines: The Experience of War Through the Eyes of Allied Soldiers in World War II
(New York: Wiley, 1991), 61.

52.
Manchester,
Goodbye
, 228. This anecdote is reminiscent of a similar accusation made by Stephen Ambrose in
D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II
(New York: Touchstone, 1994), 337, 343, that a British coxswain ferrying men of the U.S. assault force at Omaha Beach lost his nerve and would not press on to the beach until threatened by an officer with a Colt .45. Ambrose had based his story on an account by another fabulist, S. L. A. Marshall (who would himself be discredited for fabricating evidence to support his thesis that most soldiers were too intimidated to fire their weapons). An American survivor of that boat, Bob Sales, knew the story to be a complete fabrication and confronted Ambrose with his scurrilous fiction. Sales recounts that Ambrose “just laughed it off and said, ‘I can’t do everything,’ ” For a full account see
http://www.warchronicle.com/correcting–the–record/ambrose–coxswains
.

53.
Bowman,
Remembering D-Day
, 268.

54.
Quoted in Manchester,
Goodbye
, 224.

55.
McManus,
Deadly Brotherhood
, 128.

56.
Quoted in Lewin,
War on Land
, 252.

57.
Bowman,
Remembering D-Day
, 123.

58.
Ibid., 117.

59.
Manchester,
Goodbye
, 340.

60.
Rottman,
Amphibious Tactics
, 9.

61.
Cameron,
American Samurai
, 135.

62.
Quoted in ibid., 155.

63.
Manchester,
Goodbye
, 238.

64.
Cameron,
American Samurai
, 142.

65.
Leckie,
Helmet
, 58.

66.
Donald R. Burgett,
Currahee! A Screaming Eagle at Normandy
(New York: Dell, 2000), 8.

67.
Quoted in Lewin,
Voices
, 191.

68.
John Lucas,
The Silken Canopy: A History of the Parachute
(Shrewsbury, UK: Airlife, 1997), 87.

69.
Burgett,
Currahee!
, 32–33.

70.
John Weeks,
The Airborne Soldier
(Poole, UK: Blandford, 1982), 45, 53.

71.
John Weeks,
Assault from the Sky: The History of Airborne Warfare
(Newton Abbot, UK: David and Charles, 1978), 66.

72.
Burgett,
Currahee!
, 66.

73.
Antony Beevor,
D-Day: The Battle for Normandy
(New York: Viking, 2009), 64.

74.
Quoted in Fussell,
Wartime
, 271.

75.
Bowman,
Remembering D-Day
, 63.

76.
Weeks,
Assault
, 57.

77.
Ibid., 58.

78.
Rick Atkinson,
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944
(New York: Holt, 2007), 108–9.

79.
Quoted in Beevor,
D-Day
, 62.

80.
Burgett,
Currahee!
, 76.

81.
Randy Hils, “An Open Letter to the Airborne Community on the History of OPERATION NEPTUNE, June 6, 1944,”
http://www.warchronicle.com/correcting–the–record/NEPTUNE–airborne.htm
. Hils is particularly scathing about the uncritical acceptance of S. L. A. Marshall’s assertions of pilot failure (in his book
Night Drop
) adopted by many subsequent military historians, the most influential being Stephen E. Ambrose in
D-Day, June 6, 1944
.

82.
Ellis,
On the Front Lines
, 64.

83.
Weeks,
Airborne Soldier
, 102.

84.
Quoted in McManus,
Deadly Brotherhood
, 154.

85.
Gantter,
Roll Me Over
, 32.

86.
Paul Fussell,
The Boys’ Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwest Europe, 1944–1945
(New York: Modern Library, 2003), xiii.

87.
Paddy Griffith,
Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to the Near Future
(Novato, CA: Presidio, 1997), 111. See also Ellis,
On the Front Lines
, 74.

88.
Griffith,
Forward into Battle
, 118.

89.
Quoted in Ellis,
On the Front Lines
, 52.

90.
Quoted in Fussell,
Boys’ Crusade
, 96.

91.
US Army Medical Department,
Medical Statistics in World War II
,
Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army (1975), frontispiece chart.

92.
Fussell,
Boys’ Crusade
, 10.

93.
McManus,
Deadly Brotherhood
, 4.

94.
US Army,
Medical Statistics
, 350.

95.
William W. Tribby, “Examination of 1,000 American Casualties Killed in Italy,” US Army Medical Department Office of Medical History,
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/woundblstcs/chapter6.htm
, 441.

96.
Ibid., 446.

97.
Quoted in Ellis,
On the Front Lines
, 70.

98.
Gantter,
Roll Me Over
, 304.

99.
David Kenyon Webster,
Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper’s Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich
(New York: Delta/Dell, 2002), 100.

100.
Quoted in Ellis,
On the Front Lines
, 70.

101.
Koschorrek,
Blood Red Snow
, 284–85.

102.
Burgett,
Seven Roads
, 250.

103.
Gantter,
Roll Me Over
, 95.

104.
Leo Litwak,
Medic: Life and Death in the Last Days of World War II
(Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 2001), 81.

105.
Paul Fussell,
Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic
(Boston: Back Bay/Little, Brown, 1996), 133–34.

106.
Burgett,
Currahee!
, 138.

107.
Morris Fishbein, ed.,
Doctors at War
(New York: Dutton, 1945), 177.

108.
Ibid.

109.
Ellis,
On the Front Lines
, 89.

110.
Quoted in ibid., 330.

111.
Quoted in ibid., 88.

112.
William Woodruff,
Vessel of Sadness
(Boston: Abacus, 2004), 54.

113.
Bergerud,
Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific
(New York: Viking, 1996), 287.

114.
Burgett,
Currahee!
, 92.

115.
Quoted in McManus,
Deadly Brotherhood
, 46.

116.
Ellis,
On the Front Lines
, 90.

117.
Bergerud,
Touched with Fire
, 319; and Griffith,
Forward into Battle
, 117.

118.
Quoted in Bergerud,
Touched with Fire
, 321.

119.
Quoted in Lewin,
Voices from the War
, 239.

120.
Manchester,
Goodbye
, 384.

121.
Quoted in Bowman,
Remembering D-Day
, 107.

122.
Roscoe C. Blunt Jr.,
Foot Soldier: A Combat Infantryman’s War in Europe
(Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2002), 69.