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One of my favorite writers on the subject of World War II is a veteran named Morse
Johnson, who went on to become one of Cincinnati's most prominent citizens. He was very
active in the American Civil Liberties Union and he was the founding chairman of
Cincinnati's Theater in the Park, where a statue called the "Morse Johnson
Memorial" has been erected outside. He died in 1997.
The only book he ever wrote was the official unit history of the 712th Tank Battalion,
with which my father served in combat. I have yet to see an original copy of the history
that didn't have its cover worn off --- except the one preserved by the family of Billy
Wolfe, who was killed in action at age 18 --- and the only copy I have is a "third
edition" published by Kinko's.
Like many veterans, Morse Johnson didn't talk much about the war --- except when he was at
battalion reunions, amongst the men with whom he had shared 310 days in combat, "298
of which were in active contact with the enemy," as he noted in the unit history. But
he gave his unique voice to a valuable piece of writing: a collection of letters to his
mother and sister (his father died when he was a child) back home in Cincinnati.
"I don't believe I ever told you about 'Brooklyn,'" he wrote in one of the
letters. There are no dates on the excerpts, which he prepared for publication in the
journal of a historical society to which he belonged, but they are in chronological order,
and the preceding letter refers to the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt less than
a month before the end of the war in Europe. "At one of our tight spots, we shared a
room with an infantry squad, all of the members of which we got to know quite well. One
was 'Brooklyn,' obviously from Brooklyn.
"One night he mentioned having written a song for his C. O. [commanding officer] and
with little urging sang it for us, with a song plugger's voice and style --- like Irving
Berlin or even Eddie Cantor.
"'Good,' I applauded and it really was. 'Let's hear some more of your stuff.'
"Here was an extrovert of the first order and for a half-hour he stood in the middle
of a Heine kitchen singing his songs and telling the story behind each with a smart
vaudevillian patter. I began to doubt whether all these songs were his and told him so. At
once he asked me the name of my girl --- which I faked --- and my home town. Not five
seconds later, he was singing a catchy ditty about me, the girl, Cincinnati, etcetera.
"I told him to do the same for Mac, my driver, and he had just started when the guard
rushed in and we had to rush out to repel the umpteenth counterattack."
Morse Johnson died of complications related to Alzheimer's disease. He was already in its
early stages when I conducted an oral history interview with him in 1992, and I had not
yet seen his collection of letters. But an educated guess would place this incident in the
village of Oberwampach, Luxembourg, from January 17-19, 1945, when he notes in the unit
history that "for three days and nights the 712th, 773rd Tank Destroyer Battalion,
and 90th Infantry Division doughs stood firm against nine major counterattacks, inflicting
huge casualties in men and equipment. Fighting became so intense that one tank, dealing
with the Boche on its right, had just enough time to traverse left and knock out at a
15-yard range the lead halftrack of another armored column." (In one of the letters,
it becomes apparent who the commander of that tank was: Morse Johnson.)
In one of its later chapters, Johnson pays tribute to the battalion's service and
headquarters personnel: "The tank-infantry team cooperated as effectively in tackling
problems on paper as it did in tactical operations against the enemy. During the
Battalion's initial commitment in Normandy, typewriter keys played a shrill obligato to
the thunderous booming of heavy artillery nearby as the first casualty reports filtered in
from the front."
It is through letters such as these, oral history interviews, and individual accounts and
memoirs that the story of any war is best told. The most that readers will likely ever see
of John Colby's WAR FROM THE GROUND UP, about the 90th Infantry Division, are the frequent
quotations from it in Stephen Ambrose's CITIZEN SOLDIERS; yet a military book collector
once told me WAR FROM THE GROUND UP is considered to be one of the best unit histories
ever written. The recent BREAKOUT by Martin Russ, about the Chosin River campaign in
Korea, and WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE...AND YOUNG by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (ret.) and Joseph
L. Galloway, about the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam, are two other fine
examples.
"The other day 'Brooklyn' rode on my tank," the letter Morse Johnson wrote in
the last days of the war continued, "and I coaxed him to write a song for us. At once
he burst out with a really dandy tune, the first words of which were: 'There will be no
more falling arches, there's no more walking Yank; going to hitch a ride, going to hop
inside, going to Berlin on a tank.' The tank stopped and 'Brooklyn' was just about to
write it all down for me when his squad was called to clean out a slight pocket.
"We tanks were in close support but the terrain did not permit us to be right with
them. I guess I heard the shots --- there were a lot of them --- but I didn't see him get
it. I did see him, however, and fortunately he had died instantly."
--- Aaron Elson
(c) Copyright 2001, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
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Aaron Elson is the author of four oral histories of World War II Veterans, the most recent
of which are 9 LIVES: An Oral History and A MILE IN THEIR SHOES: Conversations with
Veterans of World War II. The collection of letters from Morse Johnson can be found at the
World War II Oral History Web
Site and at Morse Johnson's letters.
(c)
Copyright 2001, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
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