The ANNOTICO Report
The legendary World War II correspondent still speaks
to us on this
Memorial Day.
NY Daily Record/Sunday News
Monday, May 30, 2005
On this Memorial Day, with the nation at war, it is proper
to recall the
death of U.S. Army Capt. Henry T. Waskow, captured so
poetically by the
greatest war correspondent this country has ever produced,
Ernie Pyle.
“The Death of Capt. Waskow,” written on the front lines
in Italy on Jan.
10, 1944, is among the best depictions of the cost of
war, a vivid and
moving tale of the sacrifice of one soldier — in this
case, a company
commander loved by his troops. Here it is, slightly edited:
AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 — In this
war I have known a
lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers
under them.
But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved
as Capt. Henry T.
Waskow of Belton, Texas.
Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division.
He had led his
company since long before it left the States. He was
very young, only in
his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity
and gentleness that
made people want to be guided by him. “After my own father,
he came next,”
a sergeant told me.
“He always looked after us,” a soldier said. “He’d go
to bat for us every
time.” “I’ve never knowed him to do anything unfair,”
another one said.
I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought
Capt. Waskow’s
body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and
you could see far up
the trail, and even part way across the valley below.
Soldiers made shadows
in the moonlight as they walked.
Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening,
lashed onto the
backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the
wooden pack-saddles,
their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule,
their stiffened legs
sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up
and down as the mule
walked.
The Italian mule-skinners were reluctant to walk beside
dead men, so
Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even
the Americans were
reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies at the bottom,
so an officer
had to do it himself, and ask others to help.
The first one came early in the morning. They slid him
down from the mule
and stood him on his feet for a moment, while they got
a new grip. In the
half light he might have been merely a sick man standing
there, leaning on
the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow
of the low stone
wall alongside the road.
I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small in
the presence of dead
men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don’t ask silly
questions.
We left him there beside the road, that first one, and
we all went back
into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the
straw, waiting for the
next batch of mules.
Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four
days, and then nobody
said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for
an hour or more.
The dead man lay all alone outside in the shadow of the
low stone wall.
Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were
some more bodies
outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood
there, in the
moonlight, in the road where the trail came down off
the mountain. The
soldiers who led them stood there waiting. “This one
is Captain Waskow,”
one of them said quietly.
Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it
off and laid it in
the shadow beside the low stone wall. Other men took
the other bodies off.
Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row,
alongside the road.
You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They
just lie there in the
shadows until somebody else comes after them.
The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard.
The men in the road
seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually
one by one I
could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body.
Not so much to look,
I think, as to say something in finality to him, and
to themselves. I stood
close by and I could hear.
. . . (A) man looked down into the dead captain’s face,
and then he spoke
directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: “I’m
sorry, old man.”
Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and
bent over, and he too
spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully
tenderly, and he
said:
“I sure am sorry, sir.”
Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down
and took the dead
hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding
the dead hand in
his own and looking intently into the dead face, and
he never uttered a
sound all the time he sat there.
And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up
and gently
straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar,
and then he sort of
rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the
wound. And then he
got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight,
all alone.
After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed,
leaving the five dead
men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the
low stone wall. We
lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon
we were all asleep.