My Reflections as a Military Historian
The date was August 25, 1944. The place: Paris, France. As our jeep moved down the broad Champs Élysées, several times we had to bail out and take cover in doorways as bullets from Nazi snipers zipped across the street.
THAT day began the liberation of Paris from Hitler’s troops during World War II, and I was among the first Americans to enter the city. Throngs of exuberant French men and women streamed down the streets to welcome us as liberators. We spent the night at a luxurious hotel that just that morning had hastily been evacuated by high-ranking German officers.
I was in Europe as a member of the combat historical team that was covering the operations of the U.S. Third Army, commanded by General George S. Patton, Jr.
Questions the War Raised
A few days before entering Paris, we drove over narrow roads that had recently been cleared of burned hulks of German armored vehicles. We paused at a fortified place in the woods recently overrun by U.S. forces. The bodies of German soldiers lay about, twisted and torn. Their belt buckles bore the standard inscription, “God is with us.” Yet, on a nearby stone wall, a German soldier had scrawled the appeal, “Leader [Hitler], stand by us!”
Those two statements made an indelible impression on my mind. On the one hand, the Nazi regime asserted that God was with them, but on the other, a soldier appealed for salvation to the führer, Hitler. I realized that this paradox was not peculiar to Germans. It was typical of both sides in this terrible conflict. So I wondered, ‘Does God take sides in wars? Whose side is God on?’
Wars and Forebodings of War
I was born in Butte, Montana, in 1917, the year America entered the first world war. After graduating from a private academy in 1936, I entered Stanford University in California. However, I found the required freshman courses boring compared with the stirring events going on around the globe. Japan had invaded China, Mussolini had conquered Ethiopia, and the Spanish Civil War was raging. In that war the Nazis, Fascists, and Communists were testing their weapons and strategies in rehearsal for World War II, while the League of Nations sat impotently by.
After two semesters, I dropped out of college, choosing instead, with my father’s consent, to use the rest of the money set aside for my education to travel to Europe and Africa. I crossed the Atlantic in the fall of 1938 on a German ship, the Deutschland, and had long debates with the young German officers on board about the relative strengths of Hitler’s Germany versus the British and French empires. In Paris people talked about Hitler’s latest threats, boasts, and promises, yet life went on as usual. While visiting Tangier, in Africa, I could occasionally hear the sounds of battle in civil-war-torn Spain, just across the Strait of Gibraltar.
When I returned to the United States in 1939, I had forebodings about our times. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, bringing the United States into World War II, I joined the Army Transport Service as a civilian. In 1942, while I was in Alaska, I received a summons from the draft board.
To the British Isles
After a visit home, I was inducted into the army and stationed in the States for a year. I was then shipped to England, our convoy leaving the East Coast of the United States in the spring of 1944. My first taste of war occurred in the North Atlantic when a German submarine sank the ship next to ours. Our convoy broke up, and it was every ship for itself from there to Liverpool.
While awaiting assignment at a depot in England, the troops were assembled for an address by an army chaplain. It bothered me that chaplains urged men into battle against members of their own religious organizations on the opposing side, yet always claimed that God was backing their side of the conflict. Obviously, both sides could not have God’s support.
By the spring of 1944, the British Isles were crammed with American and British soldiers and equipment. General Patton (below), renowned for his daring tactics in the Sicilian and North African campaigns, gave fire-eating pep talks that left the troops with no doubt as to why they were there—to kill as many of the enemy as possible with every weapon at hand until victory was achieved. Patton was the image of a modern gladiator: towering, armed and helmeted, and immaculately uniformed—his battle jacket gleamed with stars and decorations. He was also hard-driving, savagely profane, and religious—he would pray before battle.
In his “Soldiers Prayer” of January 1, 1944, Patton had petitioned: “God of our Fathers, who by land and sea has ever led us to victory, please continue your inspiring guidance in this the greatest of our conflicts. . . . Grant us the victory, Lord.”
Invasion of Europe
On June 6, 1944, the Allied invasion forces crossed the English Channel in the greatest armada the world had ever seen, landing on the beaches of Normandy under heavy German fire. The beachhead was still narrow when our Third Army landed 30 days later. We spent the night in foxholes while German planes heavily bombed the area.
On July 25 the Allied forces broke out of the beachhead, and a week later our Third Army was unleashed to burst through onto the Brittany Peninsula. Then we spearheaded east through retreating German forces to the Seine River near Paris. By September, Patton’s tanks and troops were deep in eastern France, after one of the most remarkable military campaigns in modern history. Jubilantly, we felt the end of the war was near.
Yet, any such possibility vanished when most supplies and troops suddenly were diverted to British Field Marshal Montgomery’s forces on the northern front. There a massive assault was mounted on German units in Holland. But disaster ensued when an airborne division unwittingly landed in the midst of a powerful German armored corps and was decimated. The remainder of the Allied units bogged down, and the offensive failed.
Battle of the Bulge
Hitler and his generals seized the opportunity to regroup, calling up new reserves and secretly assembling a huge panzer striking force near where U.S. forces were thinnest. The Nazi offensive, called the Battle of the Bulge, began on the night of December 16 under heavy cloud cover. It was intended to drive a wedge of German armor clear to the North Sea, splitting the Allied armies in half and capturing their main supply port.
The German armor poured through the breach and before long had laid siege to American forces at Bastogne. Rapidly the Third Army under General Patton reversed its direction, and after a long march, we eventually arrived to mount strong attacks against the panzer columns. However, because of heavy clouds and rain that lasted nearly a week, air power could not be brought to bear.
Patton’s Prayer
On December 22 something happened that touched the core of my spiritual dilemma. Weeks before, General Patton had his chief of chaplains prepare a prayer in leaflet form to be used later at the German Siegfried line fortifications that stretched west of the Rhine River. But now Patton had some 350,000 copies distributed within hours, one to every soldier in the Third Army. It entreated the Father to “restrain these immoderate rains” and “grant us fair weather for battle” that the U.S. Army might “crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies, and establish Thy justice among men and nations.”
Remarkably, that night the skies suddenly cleared and remained clear for the next five days. This allowed Allied fighters and bombers to range the length of the Nazi columns, wreaking havoc and destruction on them. This spelled the end for Hitler’s final blitzkrieg, and his shattered forces began to withdraw.
Patton was ecstatic. “I guess I’ll have another 100,000 of those prayers printed,” he said. “The Lord is on our side, and we’ve got to keep Him informed of what we need.” But I wondered, ‘Would not the skies have cleared on December 23 whether the prayer was distributed or not?’ The weather detachment explained that a cold front from the Russian steppes had moved in and dissipated the overcast.
German Surrender and Postwar Germany
The Allied spring offensives brought Hitler’s empire to its finish, surrender taking place on May 7, 1945. That day found me in a German village in the Rhineland where I met my lovely future wife, Lilly, a displaced person from Belgium. In November 1945, I received my army discharge and joined the historical section, U.S. army of occupation in Germany. In December, Lilly and I were married by the mayor of Frankfurt.
The historical section had the mission of covering the history of the occupation. It utilized hundreds of captured German generals in writing the history of the war from the German side. I remained five years in Germany as chief archivist. Then, with our two children, Gary and Lizette, we moved to the United States.
After a visit with my parents, I enrolled at the University of Montana. I had assumed that my association with the military had ended. However, in the spring of 1954, as I was about to receive a master’s degree in anthropology, two of my former colleagues notified me of a director/curator position open at the U.S. Army Artillery and Missile Center Museum in Oklahoma. I applied and was accepted, and we moved.
Military Museum Activities
Once again I was dealing with military history. I plunged into research, acquisitions of artifacts, exhibits, tours, lectures, archaeological excavations, and military and historical ceremonies. I organized a vintage ceremonial equestrian unit that participated in the presidential inaugural parade in Washington, D.C., in 1973. I also established an exhibit hall of flags, depicting the history and traditions of the national flag and military-unit flags. Over the years the artillery museum expanded from a single building to become the largest military museum in the country.
Meanwhile, our children were growing. Our son, Gary, after graduating from high school, felt adrift and rudderless. He joined the Marine Corps and served in the Vietnam War. After he had spent two years overseas, we were grateful to have him safely home again. Clearly, wars fail to preserve peace. Instead, we have had the continuing spectacle of member nations of the United Nations warring against one another while starvation and disease ravage their peoples.
Retirement and Frustration
Finally, after 33 years of association with the military, I decided it was time to retire. The commanding general and staff held a special retirement ceremony for me, and the governor of the state of Oklahoma proclaimed a day in my name, July 20, 1979. Letters of commendation for my contributions in the fields of military history and museums were received.
My cup should have been overflowing. And yet, when I reflected on my past, I was not pleased. Rather than exposing the horrible realities of war, my career had been devoted to its glorification, emphasizing the traditions, the uniforms and medals, the weapons and tactics, the rituals and ceremonies, and the pomp and pageantry. Even General Dwight D. Eisenhower, later the 34th U.S. president, said: “The essence of war is fire, famine and pestilence . . . I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.”
In time I learned that Eisenhower’s mother had been one of Jehovah’s Witnesses—a faith that was already affecting me through my wife’s study of the Bible with the Witnesses. She became a baptized Witness in 1979, six months before my retirement. She seemed to be transformed. Such was her elation and desire to share what she had learned that our son and his wife, Karin, began to study the Bible, and within a year they also became baptized Witnesses.
However, I was skeptical. That God would actually intervene in human affairs and bring an end to this world and usher in a new, war-free world seemed farfetched. Yet, I too started to study with the Witnesses, primarily to find out whether their religious convictions had any sound basis. With my background and trained research capabilities, I presumed that it would not be long before I would be detecting errors and contradictions in their beliefs.
A New Way of Life
As my Bible study progressed, however, I soon found out how wrong I was. My skepticism faded as the scales of religious ignorance began to drop from my eyes. I could see that, indeed, there is a sound basis for confidence in God’s promise of a new world of righteousness. (2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:3, 4) And what a relief it was to learn that the evils and injustices now rampant among mankind exist because Satan, not Almighty God, is the ruler of this system of things! (John 14:30; 2 Corinthians 4:4) Thus, Jehovah God is not on either side in the wars of the nations, yet he does care about humans.—John 3:16.
In 1983, I was baptized at a convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Billings, Montana, thus symbolizing my dedication to Jehovah. My son, Gary, and I serve as elders in our respective congregations. Lilly and I are deeply grateful that Jehovah, by means of his Word and his Witnesses, has opened our hearts to Bible truths so that we understand the meaning of the cataclysmic events that mark this generation. (Matthew 24:3-14; 1 John 2:17)—As told by Gillett Griswold.
[Picture Credit Line on page 9]
Parisians scatter as German snipers open fire, August 1944 (U.S. National Archives photo)
[Picture Credit Line on page 10]
U.S. National Archives photo
[Picture on page 11]
Battered and burned hulks of German armor, France, 1944
[Credit Line]
U.S. Department of Defense
[Picture on page 12]
With my wife and daughter in 1947