Think Tanks
The Electronic Battlefield
Chow: A Cook’s Tour of Military Food
The Dickson Baseball Dictionary
War Slang: American Fighting Words and Phrases from the Civil War to the Gulf War
The Official Rules
Sputnik: The Shock of the Century
The Bonus Army: An American Epic (with Thomas B. Allen)
A Dictionary of the Space Age
Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick
Courage in the Moment: The Civil Rights Struggle, 1961–1964
Leo Durocher: Baseball’s Prodigal Son
Copyright © 2020 by Paul Dickson
Jacket design by Gretchen Mergenthaler
Jacket photograph: Artillerymen roll a big howitzer into
mock battle during the Carolina Maneuvers in Heath Springs,
North Carolina, October 30, 1941. (Author’s collection)
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FIRST EDITION
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in Canada
This book was set in 11-pt. Janson Text LT by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH.
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: July 2020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.
ISBN 978-0-8021-4767-7
eISBN 978-0-8021-4768-4
Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
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To the memory of Thomas B. Allen and James Srodes—great, good friends and accomplished fellow writers—both of whom were constantly at my elbow helping and encouraging me with this book but who would not live to see it published.
So sorry was the state of the U.S. Army in 1939 that had Pancho Villa been alive to raid the southwestern United States it would have been as ill-prepared to repulse or punish him as it had been in 1916.
—Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War
World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind. However, the half century that now separates us from that conflict has exacted its toll on our collective knowledge. While World War II continues to absorb the interest of military scholars and historians, as well as its veterans, a generation of Americans has grown to maturity largely unaware of the political, social, and military implications of a war that, more than any other, united us as a people with a common purpose.
—Michael P. Stone, Secretary of the Army, 1992
Far-flung ordinary men, unspectacular but free, rousing out of their habits and their homes, got up early one morning, flexed their muscles, learned (as amateurs) the manual of arms, and set out across perilous plains and oceans to whop the bejesus out of the professionals.
—Norman Corwin, On a Note of Triumph, his hour-long CBS Radio broadcast after victory in Europe, May 8, 1945
CONTENTS
Chapter 2 The Tree Army to the Rescue
Chapter 3 A “Phoney” War Abroad and a Mock War at Home
Chapter 4 For the Want of a Nail
Chapter 5 “Your Number Came Up”: The 1940 Peacetime Draft
Chapter 6 Assembling the New Army: “The Blind Leading the Blind”
Chapter 7 The Battle of Tennessee and the “Yoo-Hoo” Incident
Chapter 8 “Over the Hill in October”: Treason, Sabotage, and the Vote