A Soldier Strips the Romance Out of Life at War

My father had a few bad memories from his tours in Vietnam. Sometimes even a smell would bring them back.

 

"Sixty-three years later, George Losio can still hear the machine guns.
He was 22 when he first hit the beach at Leyte Island in the Philippines. Leyte had been held by the Japanese for three years, and in October 1944 the Allies launched an assault to take it back. Losio, new to his battalion, was handed an M1 rifle on his way ashore. But his landing barge sank, taking half his equipment. Losio ended up separated from his battalion.
During 14 months of fighting in the Pacific, Losio had many close encounters with death. He watched in horror as others around him were blown apart. In 1945, he was ordered home, suffering from combat fatigue. He still has nightmares."

Race to record memories of World War II veterans gains momentum — JSCMS

 

American soldiers looking at a dead German pilot and his wrecked plane near Gela, Sicily. (12 Jul 43)

 

American POWs killed by the Japanese


The first public execution in German-occupied Russia was the hanging of Masha Bruskina on 26 October 1941.

 

Lools like someone is going to be popular here... And nice photo in your profile, very school etc. friendly

 

There seems to be some confusion as to the meaning and intent of my "fluffy kittens" post.

Did you click on and expand the pic?

Note it says "Dresden 1945 ; Fluffy Kittens carpet bomb the city."

I thought it was an apt comment on the subject of the thread, i.e. the romanticizing of war.

To me, it epitomizes the point of view of many of the sheltered young whose only concept of the reality of war comes from playing graphic video games.

Sarcastic?

Hardly.

But I can tell you are a sober bunch, serious, single-minded, humorless: obviously my attempt at counterpoint fell on unreceptive eyes.

Maybe I should post some pictures of dead soldiers, that seems to be What The People Want.

 

'Looking death in the eye'

Holocaust survivor Small staring down cancer

By Sally Bridges (Contact)
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Photo by David Jennings
LIFE WELL LIVED: Martin Small and wife, Doris, hold a family portrait. Small who survived the holocaust is the father of one, grandfather of two and great-grandfather of six. Of surviving his harrowing imprisonment and abuse, Small said, 'God had better plans for me.'

Photo by David Jennings
HAUNTING IMAGES: Holocaust survivor Martin Small is surrounded by his artwork at his Broomfield home. His art often depicts the horrors of the holocaust.


READ, WATCH MORE

Broomfield-based Omni Media Services produced an award-winning video on Martin Small. The video, "American Memories, In Their Own Words --Holocaust Survivor, Martin Small," is available at the Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library, 3 Community Park Road.
Small's book, co-written by Vic Shayne, "Remember Us: From My Shtetl Through the Holocaust" is available through Amazon.com or can be ordered through Shayne's Web site at www.vicshayne.com. Small's proceeds from book sales support the Torah scroll at Congregation Bonai Shalom in Boulder.
To learn more about Martin Small, his life, his art and his poetry visit: www.martinsmallholocaustsurvivor.com



Death has followed Martin Small in whispers and screams, smoke and bullets for 70 years. It's reflected in his art and in his eyes, which tear easily with the unlocked memories. He has survived a thousand deaths and witnessed a thousand more.


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This time there is no escape. Small, 91 and a holocaust survivor, has pancreatic cancer. No cure, no treatment, only narcotic painkillers by his bed in his Broomfield home, where he spends much of his time. He has the company of Doris, his wife of 57 years, his family and God.
"I'm sitting here looking death in the eye. Death is torture," Small said. "God has a reason; a purpose. We don't know.
"I live to remember."
As a prisoner, Small weighed only about 75 pounds. He doesn't weigh much more now. In a life that was stripped of all possessions, dignity, respect and muscle, Small embraces the intangibles -- love, faith, and friendship. Memories.
A fat, narrow strip of white tape, just below the knuckle of his ring finger, ensures his wedding band will not fall off.
"It's never been off in 57 years, I'm not letting it fall off now," Small said.
He holds a photograph of his family, taken soon after his cancer diagnosis in April. The portrait features his wife, daughter and son-in-law. There are his two grandchildren with their spouses. Six great-grandchildren.
He points to the picture. This family is his legacy. His purpose in life. The reason God allowed him to survive, he said.
"God had better plans for me," he said.
Small's life is a classic "hero's journey," a frequently used literary convention, Boulder author Vic Shayne said. It is a story where a fictional character, such as Indiana Jones, overcomes all odds to cheat death time after time, he said. But in Small's case the story is true.
Shayne helped Small write his memoir, "Remember Us: From My Shtetl Through the Holocaust," which was published in May. "Shtetl" is the Yiddish word for village.
Small grew up in Molchad, a small Polish village that is now in Belarus. He was strong from working on the family farm and he was devout. He was the son and grandson of a Rabbi and can trace Rabbis back nine generations.
His neighbors included five uncles and their families. In 1942, 86 members of his family were killed when the Germans invaded his village. Small was moved to a ghetto.
Small was told his father was "cut into pieces," while his mother and two teenage sisters, who had been repeatedly raped, were buried alive in a mass grave of 3,600 in Molchad.
When Patton's Army liberated Mauthausen concentration camp on May 5, 1945, Small, who had been at the camp a little over a year, had been left for dead in Barrack No. 9, where all the other prisoners were dead. A soldier somehow noticed Small and carried him to an ambulance.
"I don't know if there was a light in my eye or if I moved. He saw a sign of life," said Small, who doesn't rememberthe rescue, but recounted what he had been told by others.
From 1941 until he was rescued, Small had endured unbelievable horrors. He spent months on the run after escaping ghettos and prison camps. He was shot in the arm after one escape through an underground tunnel dug by prisoners. There were days without water. Years without a decent meal.
He landed in Mauthausen after following the sound of the train, filled with Jewish detainees. Searching for discarded food, he was captured and put on board. There his fellow prisoners called him "The Rabbi" as he led them in Hebrew prayers he had memorized as a boy.
After the war, Small was nursed back to health in Austria and then moved to Italy. He fought in the war to establish Israel before moving to New York City in 1950. He met Doris soon after.
"I told him he needed me," Doris said. "I could speak English and he couldn't."
Small became a business man and married Doris in 1951. They lived near Central Park and soon became friends with Jim Curry, a police officer, who patrolled the park on horseback.
"I met Martin because he was breaking the law. He was a criminal," Curry said with a laugh from his Long Island, N.Y., home last week. "He had these two Dobermans and he let his dogs go (off leash). You know these dogs have a reputation."
As Curry scolded Small, the dogs gently nuzzled his hand and Curry was unable to hide his love for dogs. Small and Curry were fast friends. Throughout their friendship, Curry, a World War II veteran, and Small never discussed the specifics of the war.
It would be 35 years later, after Small moved to Colorado, when they would discover Curry, a 19-year-old private in Patton's Army, had carried a lifeless prisoner out of Mauthausen.
Curry said he isn't sure he was the one who carried out Small. Small is convinced.
"He calls me his messiah. He's too generous," Curry said. "We were very busy. There were a lot of bodies we had to carry."
It would take years for the horror of what he saw to sink in. There were lots of nightmares, Curry said.
"You wonder how you come out normal," Curry said.
After Small retired, he began to paint, carve wood and write poetry. His artwork and writing are often of haunting images from the Holocaust. His works line the walls of his basement.
Like many of the Holocaust survivors, Small had pushed the images out of his head, just to survive, Shayne said.
It was very painful for Small to recount what had happened. Once he began telling his story, he started having nightmares again, Shayne said.
"He told me, 'I'm going through the pain to remember, to know what my village was like,'" Shayne said. " 'These things are painful to remember, but even more painful to forget.'"

'Looking death in the eye' : Home Life : Broomfield Enterprise

 

Mr. V, I feel you are mistaken in the intent of the thread. Far too many youngsters appear on the site with such comments as the W-SS are cool. When asked if they would commit such atrocities as the W-SS did a few have even replied, yes without hesitation. My breath is taken away with such horrible pictures as are shown in this thread, but it was a horrible time in our worlds history. Not that we want such images all over the forum, but they are necessary to show what it was like. We may all like to think that war is cool or awesome, but the fact remains it was not. This thread was designed to show all these young kids how tramatic war really is and was. A wise man once said "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."

 

Thanks Mike. Exactly. The intent of this thread is to show the young ones and others here who think war is "glorious" and "awesome" and "cool" that it is not. THAT is the intent. Of course if all the responses and posts were read that would be apparent. . But it appears that some just don't understand the concept.

 

Thank you for the comments.

I am most certainly NOT of the younger generation, and I was not trying to hijack the post or be flippant.

I have long been a serious student of history.

War ... Is ... Hell ...

On that we can all agree.

 

I did expand the photo and to me it looked like it epitomized your point of view,
it's a pity you did not happen on a more effective way to make your point come across.
Mike Batzel replied to you in a very appropriate manner, and the capitals in your last
sentence look a bit awkward in that light. It's the first time I see the members of this
forum as a whole being branded as humourless, but there has to be a first for everything.

Or maybe we are just too thick for your brilliance.

 

Hurmor in a thread about the horrors of war? It shows a severe lack of sensitivity about the subject. And a lack of respect to those who lived and died in the war.

 

BACK to the SUBJECT at hand,

Byline: Amy Raisin Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - Jerry Sullivan turned 19 the day he sailed off, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge as Frank Sinatra's ``Sentimental Journey'' serenaded young Americans headed for the Philippines and World War II.

But the naivete of a proud young man sent over seas to defend his country quickly disappeared when he was sent ahead to survey enemy presence in remote jungle terrain and witnessed his sergeant die from two shots to his head.

Nearly 60 years after he returned home 20 pounds lighter, ravaged by malaria and jaundice, and decorated with a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars, Sullivan shared his memories of war with eighth-graders Wednesday at La Mesa Junior High.

``We ate everything cold because there were never any fires allowed on the front lines,'' he said. ``And we never wore any emblems of any kind on the front lines, because (the enemy) would see that and shoot.''

VETERAN VOICE WWII SOLDIER TALKS TO STUDENTS. - Free Online Library

 

2 May ; 1945
Dearest Mom and Lou,
A year ago today I was sweating out shells on Anzio Beachhead ; today I am sitting in Hitler’s luxuriously furnished apartment in Munich writing a few lines home. ; What a contrast. ; A still greater contrast is that between his quarters here and the living hell of DACHAU Concentration Camp only 10 miles from here. ; I had the misfortune of seeing the camp yesterday and I still find it hard to believe what my eyes told me.- A railroad runs alongside the camp and as we walked toward the box cars on the track I thought of some of the stories I previously had read about DACHAU and was glad of the chance to see for myself just to prove once and for all that what I had heard was propaganda. ; But no it wasn’t propaganda at all ; if anything ; some of the truth had been held back. In two years of combat you can imagine I have seen a lot of death, furious deaths mostly. But nothing has ever stirred me as much as this. The first box car I came to had about 30 what were once humans in it. ; All were just bone with a layer of skin over them. Most of the eyes were open and had an undescribable look about them. They had that beaten "what did I do to deserve this" look. Twenty to thirty other box cars were the same. Bodies on top of each other ; no telling how many. No identification as far as I could see. ; And then into the camp itself. ; Filthy barracks suitable for about 200 persons held 1500. 160,000 persons were originally in the camp and 32,000 were alive (or almost alive) when we arrived.- There is a gas chamber and furnace room in one barracks.; Two rooms were full of bodies waiting to be cremated. ; In one room they were all nude -in the other they had prison clothes on ; As filthy as dirt itself. How can people do things like that? I never believed they could until now. Well enough for now- Miss you all very much. Your son, Horace

 

Humor in the thread?

What humor?

I employed an anthropomorphism, substituting fluffy kittens for B-17s.

It was done NOT as humor, but as an example of the absurdity of believing war could possibly be romantic.

Obviously my intent, like the fluffy kittens, flew over your head.

Alas, I had hoped for an on target grouping.

 

In "The Other Nuremberg," Arnold Brackman cites (for instance) "the case of Lucas Doctolero, crucified, nails driven through hands, feet and skull"; "the case of a blind woman who was dragged from her home November 17, 1943, stripped naked, and hanged"; "five Filipinos thrown into a latrine and buried alive."

Taste Commentary - WSJ.com

 

Not WW2 but still definatly fits

Tis hard to see the mighty prancing war horse, trampling the dying and dead beneath their merciless feet. No dear wife, near to speak a word of comfort. No living sister or Mother to administer relief in that hour the most sad in the history of humanity. O the humanity. O the horrors of war. Truly it may be considered the most cruel and awful scourge which can befall a nation. Heaven grant there may be an end soon. (Samuel D. Lougheed letter to his wife Jane "Jennie" Lougheed, October 7, 1862)

 

I am not sure of the link but if anybody else has the picture, its of a man holding his leg which looks to be half blown off from an S-Mine. The picture almost brought me to tears myself.