The 41st Infantry Division and the 4th Armored Division: memoirs of World War II

Military Review, May-June, 2004 by Gregory Fontenot

Because its scope, scale, and horrors seem incomprehensible to us now, World War II continues to fascinate us. Books published on battles that occurred over 60 years ago seem somehow both remote and immediate. World War II is remote from contemporary experience and seems particularly distant, given the intervening Cold War era. Yet, the books remain immediate because we can still hear the voices and see the veterans of World War II, albeit in rapidly diminishing numbers. The lessons learned from World War II are valuable in understanding contemporary operations, and help us understand the human conditions of war.

Aging veterans are now adding their memoirs and personal accounts to the body of literature written in the first three decades after World War II. Biographers find that aging veterans are happy to discuss experiences that have reached "the fullness of time," and in retirement, veterans have time to discuss them.

Francis B. Catanzaro's With the 41st Division in the Southwest Pacific, A Soldiers Story, a personal memoir of a young infantryman, juxtaposed against Don M. Fox's Patton's Vanguard: The United States Army Fourth Armored Division, provides an opportunity for us to relive the events that shaped their lives. (1) Both books show how conditions and fighting methods differed between the southwest Pacific and the European Theaters of Operation (ETO).

Poverty Row

Catanzaro fought with the 162d Infantry Regiment from 1944 through 1945, serving in the early months of the occupation of Japan. When the 162d broke up, its soldiers returned in small groups to the United States to be discharged. Catanzaro boarded the USS Admiral H.T. Mayo and departed for home on 29 December 1945. On New Year's Eve 1945, the 41st Infantry Division cased colors, and the soldiers still in Japan were reassigned without fanfare. More than 60 years later, Catanzaro describes the end of the 41st ID as "sad and inglorious." The end of the 41st was in some ways fitting because the battles it fought in New Guinea and the Philippines were "poverty row" compared to the experiences in Europe of the better-known 4th Armored Division (AD).

Although the 4th AD's story has been told many times, Fox makes it fresh by tapping into interviews with veterans who were junior officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted soldiers during the war. He extols the virtues of Major General John S. "P" Wood uncritically, while giving Major General Manton S. Eddy, Wood's Antagonist, short shrift. (2) This criticism aside, Fox's book has many of the same virtues as Catanzaro's memoir in that it tells the story from the viewpoint of tactical unit participants. Neither author gets at the "big blue arrow" vantage point, but they do not need to, because the general movements and combat operations of both units can be found elsewhere.

These compelling books illuminate combat at the eyeball level of troops in the field. Cantanzaro's I Company fought its way through some of the toughest tactical engagements in the Pacific. Cantanzaro was in the thick of it, although he does not recall his bullets actually hitting any Japanese soldiers while in New Guinea or in the Philippines.

After nearly 4 months of fighting at Hollandia and Biak, only one-half of Cantanzaro's company remained. He and one other soldier were the only members of his 12-man squad remaining when their regiment moved into a rest area on New Guinea.

Jungle Rot

The "well" men were treated for jungle rot, with medics treating the soldiers' affected areas with a purple-colored concoction of potassium permanganate. To the sick, who were constantly under fire and poorly supplied, even small comforts proved memorable. Catanzaro remembers on 29 May 1944 burning the straps off his helmet while using it as a pan to fry "10 to 1" bacon that he scavenged from an abandoned supply dump for himself and his squad mates.

Catanzaro's communicates his memories in such a way that the reader experiences the bloody misery of being in the infantry. His little book makes it clear that admission into the unique club of combat soldiers in his rifle company was worth the price.

ETO Luxury

The 4th AD waged war in the comparative luxury of Europe, and it too was an exclusive club. Patton's Vanguard draws on soldiers' memories of the war. Fox tracks the 4th AD from its inception through its successful drive to retrieve the 101st Airborne at Bastogne. Patton's Vanguard ably illuminates the conditions of fighting in the ETO. Soldiering in the ETO differed from soldiering in the southwest Pacific by degree, not quality. Rain, cold, and German soldiers confronted the 4th AD. While Catanzaro rarely found himself the target of enemy air attacks, his colleagues in Europe often did. Fox reports that the 4th AD's antiaircraft artillery battalion shot down 134 enemy aircraft.

These books illustrate that while the sources of misery, illness, and fatalities varied, fighting in both theaters was fierce. Troops in the 41st ID and the 4th AD earned memberships in their exclusive clubs the hard way. These timeless tales of courage, compassion, and conviction are a testimony to the mens' strength in battle. The only real difference between the units is that the history of one is not well known while the other is celebrated. Both deserve accolades.