THE MEANING OF VALOR

In the winter of 1944-1945 the Soviets rolled across Poland into Nazi Germany, driving westward.  The ultimate goal was Berlin, but numerous prisoner-of-war camps (Stalags) lay in the path of the Russian juggernaut.  Rather than allowing POWs to be freed by the Soviets, the Germans decided to evacuate most of the Allied personnel.

Among the thousands of men held in Stalag Luft Four near Gross Tychow (now in Poland) was an unheralded hero in an unlikely capacity.  He was Captain Leslie Caplan, a 37-year-old Army Air Forces doctor.

Caplan was a flight surgeon in the 15th Air Force’s 449th Bomb Group based in Italy.  Unlike most flight surgeons, he insisted on flying combat missions, including tough targets such as Ploesti, Romania, and his B-24 had been shot down near Vienna in October.  The camp was incomplete when he arrived, and conditions quickly spun out of control.  The conditions went from bad to worse to terrible: overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate food, and almost no medical supplies.  He described the camp as “a domain of heroes, but from a medical standpoint it was a kingdom of illness.”  Faced with “patients” suffering malnutrition—some ate rats--Caplan worked minor miracles keeping men alive with minimal medicine.  He was one of just five Allied doctors present at “Luft Four” serving some 10,000 POWs. 

There was another, more ominous aspect to Caplan’s captivity.  He was Jewish.  Nazi Germany’s murderous antisemitism was well known, prompting some POWs to obscure the “H” indicator on their dog tags, indicating Hebrew.  Not Leslie Caplan.  He bluntly told his captors of his heritage.  For whatever reason, Caplan incurred no harm on that account.  But things were bad enough for everyone.  The weather turned bitterly cold, compounding the shortages of food, clothing, and heat.

On February 6 the Germans began evacuating Luft Four on a forced march to prevent thousands of airmen from being liberated.  Caplan could have accompanied those too sick to walk being moved to Luft One by train.  Instead he insisted on joining a group of some 2,500 sergeants, knowing the risks that lay ahead.

The Germans handed out Red Cross food parcels to the prisoners—presumably enough to last one man a week.  However, in the harsh climate, food went fast among perennially hungry men.  A B-17 gunner, teenaged Sergeant Bill Hess, said, “We went through the food in three or four days.  After that we lived on boiled potatoes and whatever we could scrounge.  I made a sugar beet last three days.”

Thus began a meandering forced march of nearly 500 miles to escape oncoming Russians.  Men subsisted on fewer than 800 calories per day—one fourth the American average.  Seven Americans in Caplan’s group died en route or in German hands but none died under his care.

Dr. Caplan was an innovator.  To reduce the effects of dysentery he burned wood into blackened remnants, pulverized the charcoal, and mixed it with a potable liquid.  The brew was ghastly to the taste but it worked—some men later said that it probably saved their lives.

Caplan’s group arrived at Stalag Eleven-B in northwestern Germany on March 30, remaining for a week.  Then on April 6 the men were forced back on their trek, trudging another three weeks—in almost the opposite direction.  The advancing Anglo-American armies convinced the captors to turn back eastward.  Said one POW, “We covered a good bit of the same territory we just come over a month before. We doubled back for over 200 kilometers and it took 26 days.”  

Dr. Caplan could have remained at Luft Eleven where his medical skills were needed, and he was offered decent quarters.  But he chose to march on with his men.

While on the road the prisoners generally were held in barns.  The conditions inevitably were crowded—sometimes there wasn’t enough room to lie down to sleep.  But Doc Caplan continued advocating for his men, and on at least one occasion he convinced a German army doctor to tend a flier’s feet.  The German, a captain who spoke fluent English, lacked anesthetics but lanced the sergeant’s suppurating sole, swabbed it out with alcohol, and bandaged it.  The Eighth Air Force radioman, Sergeant Aldon Dryer, kept his foot and his life.

On May 2 the prisoners were liberated by the British near Hamburg.  Leslie Caplan’s war was over.

Or so it seemed.  Upon return “Stateside” Caplan was promoted to major but required treatment for tuberculosis.  He recovered at Fitzsimons Hospital in Colorado, was decorated with the Legion of Merit, then left the Army to resumed his career.  He underwent a residency in psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, where his future wife Arline was on her way to a psychology PhD.  They married in 1947 and had two daughters.  Leslie died in 1969 and Arline in 2002.

Caplan’s youngest daughter, Laura, is justly proud of her father.  She has been active in POW organizations and compiled a stack of testimonials from prisoners who credited “Doc” with saving their lives.  Her 2004 privately-published account, Domain of Heroes, contains dozens of those letters.  Laura also maintains a web site with the daughter of another ex-POW, Barbed Wire Sister, http://barbedwiresister.blogspot.com/.

Caplan’s Legion of Merit was awarded in recognition of his exceptional work under harsh conditions, at risk of his life, lasting for months.  Because his deeds were not considered in combat, the decoration was “for merit” rather than “for valor,” in keeping with regulations at the time.  However, higher decorations had been presented to military personnel for actions in captivity.  The army’s Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross—ranking only below the Medal of Honor—went to half a dozen men who escaped Japanese captivity.  And two navy officers received the Medal of Honor for actions in enemy hands, one each in World War I and II.  Additionally, four POWs received Medals of Honor for actions while held in Hanoi during the long Vietnam War.

Two Minnesota senators nominated Caplan for an upgrade of his Legion of Merit to a Medal of Honor, without success.  The medal process is so politicized that high-level advocates are required, as when the late Senator Daniel Inoue and 19 other WW II veterans’ DSCs and Silver Stars were upgraded to “the big one” in 2000.  The regulations limiting retroactive awards are routinely ignored, never moreso than when President Clinton presented the Medal of Honor for Teddy Roosevelt in 2001, 103 years after the Spanish-American War.  In 1977 Jimmy Carter approved the Civil War MoH for Dr. Mary Walker, a contract surgeon who was not a member of the U.S. Army.

Leslie Caplan demonstrated far more than “merit” in the hands of the Germans.  He consistently went above and beyond his duty, flying combat missions, voluntarily remaining with enlisted men, tending to them, advocating on their behalf with his captors at risk of his life, and saving lives against incredible odds.

If that isn’t valor, please tell me what is.

THE RATE OF ATTRITION

I’m saving my take on “the greatest generation” for another time, but in the new year—which brings the 70th anniversary of some significant World War II events—I want to alert readers to the accelerating rate of attrition among TGG members.

Of my 37 or so nonfiction books, 18 wholly addressed WW II subjects and several others had significant "War Two" content.  The first, my operational history of the Douglas SBD Dauntless, was published in 1976.  The next three appeared in 1979.  Very few of the contributors to those books remain alive today.  The last of my Dauntless contributors passed away last year.  The only one of 20 Corsair contributors I know to be still living flew F4Us in Central America in the 1970s.  At least 31 of the 48 Hellcat contributors have departed the pattern, and 21 of 25 Wildcat veterans.  Probably most of those unaccounted for are in fact deceased.

However, attrition among more recent contributors provides a baseline for the growing mortality among the men who lived the events I write about.  My 2005 account of the First Battle of the Philippine Sea, titled Clash of the Carriers, was the first treatment of the subject in more than 20 years.  At the time of publication one quarter of the veterans I consulted already were deceased.

In 2010 I completed Whirlwind, the first one-volume history of all Allied air operations over Japan.   In just five years the mortality had jumped from 25 percent to 40 percent of contributors deceased upon publication.  That was unsettling, prompting a prediction that fewer than half the veterans represented in the next book would see it published.

Unfortunately, I was right.  When my history of USS Enterprise (CV-6) (“the fightingest ship”) was released in March 2012, 16 of the 30 were gone, or 53 percent.  Two more have departed since then: Rear Admiral Jig Dog Ramage (“Rampage without the P”) and Captain Stanley “Swede” Vejtasa.  Both were Big E stalwarts.  When Jig died in July 2012 he had just passed his 96th birthday, and I was privileged to know him since 1967.  Along the way he contributed to three of my books from his vantage as CO of Bombing Squadron 10 in 1944.  When I think of leaders, many names come to mind.  When I think of Jig, I think: Leader.

Swede was an exceptional naval aviator.  He entered combat flying SBDs from USS Yorktown (CV-5) in 1942, receiving a Navy Cross for the Battle of the Coral Sea.  Later that year he joined Fighting 10 and defended Enterprise from successive Japanese air attacks during the Battle of Santa Cruz. Credited with seven victories in one mission, he was recommended for the Medal of Honor but received another Navy Cross.  He died at 98, enormously respected by all who knew him.

My main point is that none of those books could be written with the same amount of detail today—in the latter case just months later.  History has a shelf life, and WW II first-person history is reaching its expiration date.  One jarring example: last September I attended the reunion of the American Fighter Aces Association.  The median age of the 20 attendees was—ninety.  The young sports from Korea were in their early eighties.

Historians should keep another thing in mind: we’re probably losing more than 2,000 WW II vets a day but we cannot assume that those remaining have adequate memories.  Two of the most senior Enterprise sailors I contacted declined to be interviewed because they did not trust their memories.  Other veterans tend to remember things as they “should have been” rather than as they likely were.  That’s why it’s always (always) important to cross check and verify.  My motto in such cases: “When in doubt, leave it out.” 

Aside from fading and faulty memories, some old timers like to gild the historical lily.  There’s a popular email about a P-51 ace who reputedly was shot down, evaded capture, and stole a Focke Wulf 190 to return to freedom.  I knew him somewhat, and he was an accomplished story teller.  But there was no documentation: nothing about him going MIA in unit records, and no Missing Air Crew Report.  Absent an MACR, alarm bells usually start ringing.

Finally some of us gleaned the facts.  In talking to the gent’s squadron mates it developed that he had visited a nearby RAF base on the continent around VE Day and borrowed the FW to show off for his pals. 

For other military subjects, bear in mind that the clock is running almost as fast for Korean War vets, who probably average about eight years younger than WW II folks.  And, hard to believe, we began slogging through the Vietnam mire in 1964, nearly half a century ago.

In conclusion, I’ll offer three words of advice to budding interviewers:

Do

It

Now.

HACKING THE PROGRAM

“Combat is a full-contact sport.”

That’s the sentiment of a late friend and coauthor, a two-war warrior who survived Korea on the ground and Vietnam in the air.  He was good for a five-minute rant when he saw the 1990s TV commercial of a female Soldier tapping on her battlefield laptop, “No enemy is going to get the best of my outfit!”

John was livid because, in his words, extremely few women can hack the program as genuine combat infantrymen.

Now here we are far downstream and we’re still flailing in sexual waters.  The Arizona Republic headlined on December 2:  “Marine Pioneers Push to Place Women in Combat.”  Meanwhile, the marines’ only two women who entered the 13-week infantry training course at Quantico, Virginia, both failed.  As of this month, no further females have applied.

However, in November four military females—two army and two marine—sued the secretary of defense regarding the law excluding women from combat units. 

Here’s a link:

http://www.stripes.com/news/women-sue-panetta-over-combat-exclusion-1.198571

The women claim that the “combat exclusion” clause is somehow unconstitutional.  Moreover, presumably the policy “sends a clear message to the world that women are not capable of serving their country to the same extent as men.”

Well, if we’re talking physical differences between the “genders” (“sex” has long since disappeared from military argot) the answer is OF COURSE THEY’RE NOT AS PHYSICALLY CAPABLE.  How many women can hump an 80-pound ruck plus weapon and ammo uphill all day?  Damn few men can do it.  But we have “gender norming” to help even the military playing field in favor of humans whom God or Nature selected as physically weaker than males.  Not even the United States Government can change that. 

The notion of some sort of DoD glass ceiling that prevents noncombatants from attaining high rank is, to put it delicately, batguano.  The pentagon is stuffed to the rafters with star wearers who've never been shot at anymore than I have.  (Though come to think on it, I was downrange of some idiot bird hunters who dusted me with No. 7 shot a time or three...)

The navy has been run by noncombatants for decades—submariners and surface officers.  The air force's mission has far less to do with air combat than with airlift so I don't hold that against the blue suits.  And I've seen photos of a "highly decorated female marine lieutenant general."  Yes, there are such things--she had more ribbons than Five-Star General Eisenhower (who was never shot at either.)  

For that matter, let’s check some other senior military leaders.

General of the Army George C. Marshal, WW II chief of staff.  Went to Europe in the Great War, serving as a staff planner.  No combat.

General of the Army Henry H. Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces in WW II.  No combat.

Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, chief of naval operations who ran the world’s biggest navy in WW II.  Observed some British operations in WW I.

Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in WW II.  No combat.

Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey.  He saw Atlantic service in The Great War but no combat before WW II.

Clearly, combat experience is irrelevant to the highest echelons of the U.S. military.  Meanwhile, we’re left to ponder upon the reality of young American females in a field environment.

I’ m not going to delve into the psychological aspects of Women In Combat—Unit Cohesion and Male Bonding and Stuff.  Instead, we should focus on the more immediate concerns—what women are capable of doing physically.  Rather than default to the rhetorical level (“How many women can go a round with Mike Tyson?”) let’s look at some specific examples over the past 30 years.

This comes from Mark Morgan, a Washington National Guardsman from 1998 to 2002.  “There was a big uproar back when the Army proudly announced it was making its physical fitness/testing standards tougher in order to improve the health and stamina of the force...and then promptly raised the standards for those of us over 40, leaving the 20-30-somethings with the same semi-low standards. Needless to say, it didn't go over too well with us old(er) troops.”

Reportedly “Big Army” used to claim it had the same standards for men and women because the required running times were identical—for 18 year old females and 50-something males.

This comes from Ken Ferguson, a former commercial pilot:

“When I was at Fort Rucker during 1981 the obstacle course was ‘gender normed.’  There were little ladders for the use of small troopies to aid in getting over walls and such.  If that was too hard or too scary, they could just go around.  We all knew it was just a crock.”

Note that we are not trying to deny women access to the military profession.  Truth be told, we cannot maintain enough (excuse the term) manpower without females, who comprise about 15% of active and reserve component personnel.

Nor are we dissing some females’ ability to perform in ground combat.  There were at least two examples in Iraq when women dismounted from stalled vehicles and killed the enemy with rifle fire.  I know several women I’d feel completely comfortable watching my back in a gunfight.  No doubt some readers do, too.  But fighting is the least of it: in the infantry world, it’s about strength, stamina, and endurance.

Sexual politics is of course not limited to the military.  In the 1970s a San Francisco (where else?) judge ruled against a fire department's physical fitness test as Discriminatory.  The trainee who filed the complaint (one firefighter said she um bitched about it) could lift and carry 75 pounds so the judge said that was the new standard.  The chief replied, "We don't have any 75-pound firefighters."  Didn’t matter.  Wasn't Fair...

So: how about True Equality?  How about one physical standard for everyone, without Gender Norming?  Then those extremely few women who want to carry more than half their body weight uphill at 8,000 feet while getting shot at can do so, comfortable in the knowledge that like their male comrades, they can hack the program.