A Soldier Strips the Romance Out of Life at War

WW II Pacific campaign filled with misery



By RON SIMON • News Journal • September 1, 2008

LUCAS -- In the summer of 1943, Lt. Bernard Kasten only saw the sun twice.
As Kasten, 90, a retired Sears and Roebuck store manager recalls, "It's 1,000 miles from Dutch Harbor to Attu. They are the most brutal miles in the Pacific Ocean. For 15 months, that is where we fought one of the toughest campaigns of World War II."
Kasten believes the long Aleutians Islands campaign has been mostly forgotten.
It began with the Japanese bombing Dutch Harbor's naval base. It included one battle on Attu Island and a huge surprise, when it was found the Japanese had evacuated Kiska Island.
The rest, Kasten said, was pure misery.
He said the only authentic book written on this campaign was "The Thousand Miles War" by Brian Garfield.
"In the context of the global war, it was a relatively small campaign. About 500,000 men took part through land, sea and air.
There were few American casualties at the battle on Attu Island but one of them, the death in action of 2nd Lt. "Shorty" Brewer, brought tears to Kasten's eyes.
Brewer was a good friend and Kasten believes he may have died himself, in Brewer's place, had his own infantry company been in reserve.
Otherwise, Kasten's memories of the Aleutian Islands are of fog, cold, damp, wind, and black muck a foot deep.
Kasten's unit landed on a forsaken island called Amchitka to establish an air base.
"My memory of the first 10 days on that island is mostly a blur," Kasten said. "The weather conditions were constantly bad."
Just getting a tent erected in the wind was hard, he said.
Wheeled vehicles sank in the black muck so everything had to be carried ashore and moved by hand.
But the men did eat well for those first 10 days. A supply ship was driven ashore by the wind.
Its cargo of food was quickly devoured before it could go bad, Kasten said. From that point, it was field rations all the way.
Water was nearly undrinkable despite being purified with chlorine.
"The G.I.s called it 50-50," Kasten said.
Establishing an air field was difficult and Japanese fighter and bomber planes made it even harder with their daily raids.
Kasten said morale got a boost when some American fighter planes managed to ambush the Japanese during one of those raids. Otherwise, he said, the Japanese often had the advantage.
The Japanese occupied two of the outermost islands, Attu and Kiska.
Kasten said there were few Japanese on Attu and most died in a final suicide charge.
He said the Americans hit Kiska hard, only to find there were no Japanese there.
That was the end of what turned out to be an 18-month campaign for Kasten's 7th Infantry Division.
He said his unit had been trained to fight in the deserts of North Africa. So the shift to the chill, windy Aleutian Islands was a shock.
A native of Grand Rapids, Mich., Kasten earned a degree in business administration and paid for his schooling by owning and operating the East Lansing Heating Co.
"We cleaned and repaired coal furnaces in homes," he said.
Sears and Roebuck officials liked Kasten's background and hired him as a trainee. His training was in Cleveland. That's where he met his wife, Mary June, at Euclid Beach Amusement Park.
He was drafted in early 1942. After basic training, he attended Officers Candidate School.
Not long after graduation, he and Mary June were married. There wasn't much time to celebrate. After training in California, Kasten's 7th Division was on its way to the Thousand Mile War.
When he got home from Alaska, Kasten was promoted twice and became a captain in the infantry.
He was assigned to Fort Benning, Ga., where he instructed trainees in the 82nd Airborne in infantry tactics. That's where he was when the war ended.
He said Sears kept his job open for him and he eventually became a store manager. His last store was at Great Northern Mall in North Olmsted. He retired in 1974.
Kasten and June spend summers on the shores of Charles Mill Lake and their winters in Florida.
He enjoys painting and gardening and she has a large doll collection. They are active in the United Methodist Church and he is a member of Disabled American Veterans.
"I'm still a Michigan boy at heart," Kasten said. "I still root for the Detroit Tigers and Lions and for Michigan State."
The couple had four boys and three of them, Bernard Jr., William Richard and James C. are physicians. The fourth son, Robert Mark, is a businessman in Cincinnati.
There are 14 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren to date. There are more doctors on the way," Kasten said.
Recalling his war in the Aleutians, Kasten believes the entire campaign was largely mismanaged and didn't provide much in the way of glory for those involved -- just misery.
"Frostbite was our biggest problem," he said.
"Attu was one of the biggest operations in the Pacific War and to this day you won't hear much about it," he said.

WW II Pacific campaign filled with misery | mansfieldnewsjournal.com | Mansfield News Journal

 

Bump again

 

Great thread, JC!

 

Thanks . I hope that some of the younger crowd and others take the words here to heart.

 

Battle haunts WWII vet

‘I see those dead people ... every day’

By JEFF WILKINSON - jwilkinson@thestate.com

Frederick 'Fitz' Gray, 83, of Gadsden, will be one of 100 veterans on the Honor Flight Nov. 15 to see the National World War II Memorial. During the Battle of the Bulge, Gray survived six weeks in a foxhole.

Fifty-two bodies — German or American, Fritz Gray couldn’t tell — lay frozen in a minefield.

They were there for five weeks in the winter of 1944 as Gray shivered in a foxhole in the shattered Hertgen Forest, on the German-Belgian border, during the Battle of the Bulge.
The sight has haunted Gray for 64 years.
“I see those dead people in front of my gun every day,” said Gray, 83. “They were lined up like football players in the snow.”
Pvt. Gray, a teenage draftee from Gadsden, was ill-prepared for the sight and has undergone therapy ever since. Even now, he attends monthly meetings for World War II veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Gray never has spoken publicly about his experiences.
“Until the past few years, he didn’t talk about it at all,” said his wife of 60 years, the former Pearl Abernathy.
Gray said the images are getting worse and, perhaps, a public airing will help exorcise them. “It’s manifesting itself more now than 10 years ago,” he said.
Gray is one of 100 veterans who will be on the inaugural Honor Flight to the nation’s capital Nov. 15 to visit the National World War II Memorial.
Local organizers hope to raise $300,000 to charter six flights to take 600 veterans to Washington for free. Priority will be given to veterans in ill health or those who have not seen the memorial.
Frederick D. “Fritz” Gray, son of a Gadsden farm family, was a reluctant warrior.
He was drafted in March 1943, when the United States — running out of soldiers — lowered the draft age to 18 from 21.
“They said, ‘I want you!’” Gray said from the living room of his neat home close to the Dorn Veterans Hospital, where he worked for 38 years.
Gray didn’t particularly want to go to war. In fact, he had never spent the night away from his parents until he was inducted in March 1943 at Fort Jackson. And he had only traveled outside of South Carolina once — on a family trip to Virginia Beach.
“The first couple of months were rough,” he said. “I was homesick. But there were other Carolina boys there like me. We were all in the same boat.”
Gray says death always made him queasy. He remembers as a child always getting a little sick and not being able to eat at a “set up,” an old Southern term for a home funeral.
Because he had learned to type at Lower Richland High School — a skill that served him well throughout his life — the Army made him a clerk.
He was assigned to the 269th Field Artillery Battalion at Fort Bragg. But Gray wasn’t taught to fire the battalion’s 240-mm “black dragon” howitzers — guns that could throw a 360-pound shell 17 miles. “I was a mail clerk,” he said.
In April 1944, Gray sailed to England on the Queen Elizabeth, a luxury liner that had been converted into a troopship. At D-Day plus 44 — July 20 — he crossed the English Channel and landed on Omaha Beach in France in a landing ship. His unit spent the next two weeks in the hedgerows shelling St. Lo.
That action marked the beginning of 10 months of continuous fighting. The battalion, at one time or another, supported every Allied army on the Western Front.
In December 1944, the farm boy-turned-clerk found himself manning a captured German artillery piece in the cauldron of the Ardennes.
“Our shelling. The German shelling. It looked worse than when (Hurricane) Hugo hit,” he said.
The 18 guns — captured 105-mm artillery pieces — had been pre-positioned by someone. Gray and his buddy Oscar “Bennie” Groves would just load the German shells and pull the lanyard, praying the ammunition hadn’t been sabotaged. One member of their unit had been killed when a sabotaged shell exploded.
Gray said he didn’t know what killed the men in the minefield.
For weeks, the two men would sleep huddled together for warmth in the snow-covered foxhole, within 50 feet of the 52 bodies.
“It was so cold,” Gray said. “At least, there was no odor.”
Despite his phobia about corpses, Gray ate every meal brought to him. “You gotta do what you gotta do,” he said.
Finally, a unit entered the field to remove the dead. But one man stepped on a mine and was severely injured as Gray watched.
Gray remembers a medic — a conscientious objector — ran into the field to aid the injured man.
“The medic said, ‘I was going to help someone. So if I stepped on every mine, God wouldn’t let them go off,’” Gray remembered.
Eventually, Gray’s battalion moved on to other battles and he returned to duty as a mail clerk.
When the war ended on May 7, 1945, “we mixed all the (liquor) we had together and had a party,” he said. “And when I got to New York, I kissed the ground.”
Despite his disturbing experience, Gray joined the S.C. Air National Guard after the war and saw service in Alaska during the Korean Conflict and in Spain during the Berlin Airlift.
He was in the Air Guard for 22 years while working at the VA, again as a clerk.
“Because I could type,” he said.

The State | 09/15/2008 | Battle haunts WWII vet

 

Another example of how "Glorious" and "Awesome" war is .

 

I can't believe I missed this thread! Too much time on the road and not enough free wi-fi spots!!

Great letter!
I know it would be impossible, but I wish every one who joined here would read that letter!
Thanks again JCF!

 

Thanks bigfun. Like I have said before. So do I. Its better to hear the words from those who were there and experienced it then from some Video game or documentary.

 

"Cool"

 

Just another bump for those who have no real idea what war is about and thing its "Cool" and "awesome" .

 

Hey JCFalkenbergIII, I see that you and some of the other guys allready put up some experiences of Allied soldiers. But could you also put up experiences of Soviet soldiers?

Because I've heard and read lots of stories about Soviet soldiers being ordered by their superiors to fight to their deaths, getting shot for ''deserting'' or retreating, forced to sacrifice their lives just to make some progress, being put under terrible arctic circumstances (just like the Germans) and lots of other cruelties. This happened especially in Stalingrad and other parts of the ''motherland''.

 

When I first put up the original article it was because I beleive it was a perfect example of what a SOLDIER really experiences in wartime. I gave no thought as to whether it was an American or other nationality. But I think you miss the point of what the thread is about. I felt the the articles transended race,politcal beliefs and nationalities. And they certainly were not posted to show that the US soldiers had it the worse or were more effected by the War then others.They were posted to show what war is really like as opposed to what some here think it really is. The "glorious" and "awesome" . These personal views I feel typify the average soldier in all armies.There was not any intent to leave out the Soviets or the Germans. I would have posted them if they were Soviet and German too. Or any other country for that matter. These experiences happen in all the armies of the world be it American,Soviet,Japanese,Chinese Italian, Ect. And all the others that fought and died. If you feel the need to post stories from other armies then please do so. They would be a welcome addition to this thread.

 

Well, I didn't mean that this topic was biased with Allied esperiences only.
I was simply making a suggestion to add experiences of for-instance Soviet or Axis forces. I would also be interested in reading those, because I've read mainly literature written by Allied soldiers (for example: ''All the way to Berlin'' by ltc. James Megellas & ''Blood on Borneo'' by Jack Wong Sue).

So, I wasn't trying to be bias in any way.

About my avatar: I chose George Patton, because I personally thought he was one hell of a general. Always first to fight and never willing to back off (and a bit crazy ). I wouldn't care if he wasn't Allied, but Axis, it's about the person, not the nationality.

 

Well like the thead is entitled "A SOLDIER Strips the Romance Out of Life at War ". You can add if you want like others have. If you can find a story that is better then the first in explaining how a SOLDIER felt and viewed the war please post one. And you will notice I didn't say "American". "Russian",British,Dutch,Finnish,Chinese,Indian,Japanese. Its the SOLDIER feelings and events. Not the Country. As many here have known and seen I post many things about ALL the countries involved in the war. The first story to me and others has really shown what a individual's thoughts and views on war can be. That is the intent of this thread. To be truthful I am a little disturbed that nationality had to be brought up. It all comes down to the individual no matter what country.

 

I completely understand.
So I'll apologize to you & Otto that I brought nationalities, but you can't ignore the fact that different armies in general have different ways to fight, lead and more. That also causes different experiences, because for example: some superiors (especially the USSR) would order their men to carry out a frontal charge on a MG post or tank, while superiors from a different country's army would try to find other ways to get past such obstacles. That causes a big difference between experiences.

Anyway, I'll shut up about this subject now and keep an eye on this topic to read more experiences of individual soldiers and their personal opinions about the war.

 

Here is a site with a large number of Soviet soldier memoirs. I hope this will be useful in replying to Xcombatx query.

 

Thanks alot for that very useful link, Za Rodinu!

 

And yet no one is ignoring that. This is about the PERSONAL experiences. There are many threads on the way that the different forces fought and was lead in the war here on the forums. The experiences of these individual go way past that. For most soldiers the way they experienced the war were quite similar to others in the war. And quite alot died in the same ways as others in different parts of the world.