Wednesday, June 2, 2021
A4
OPINION
VOICE of the CHIEFTAIN
The death
of Captain
Waskow
Editor’s note: Pulitzer Prize-winning World War II cor-
respondent Ernie Pyle wrote the following column after
a stay with the 36th Division units near Mignano and
Venafro, Italy. Pyle was later killed on April 18, 1945, by
Japanese forces.
n 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 mid-20s, but
he carried in him a sincerity and a 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 known 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 mountain. The
moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far
up the trail and even partway across the valley. Soldiers
made shadows 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 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 afraid 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 in early in the evening. They slid
him down from the mule and stood him on his feet for a
moment.
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 along-
side the road.
I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small in
the presence of the dead men and ashamed of 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 laid 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 stone wall.
Then a soldier came into the dark 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 Capt. Waskow,” one of them said quietly.
Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted
it off and lay 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 you
could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body.
One soldier came and looked down and he said out
loud, “G** dammit.” That was all he said, and then he
walked away. Another one came. He said “G** dammit
to hell anyway.” He looked down for a few moments, and
then he turned and left.
Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was
hard to tell officers from men in the half-light, for all were
bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down in to 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 five
full minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and look-
ing intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a
sound all the time he sat there.
And then finally he put the hand down, and then
reached up and gently straightened the points of the cap-
tain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tat-
tered edges of his uniform around the wound.
And then he got up and walked away down the road in
the moonlight, all alone.
I
LETTER to the EDITOR
Simpson should
put up or shut up
Why does Mike Simpson expect
others to present alternatives to his $33
billion plan to gut the economy of the
Pacific Northwest? He claims, “We
need to have honest conversations.”
So, let’s be honest.
The science has already been
proven and recorded as fact; fish and
dams can successfully co-exist. As
a matter of fact, the highest num-
bers of both salmon and steelhead
ever recorded returning to our riv-
ers came during a 10-year period that
began 25 years after the last dam was
completed.
From 1938-1947, approximately
1.9 million anadromous fish returned
over Bonneville Dam, the only dam
in the river system at that time. From
2000–09, approximately 6.8 million
salmon and steelhead returned to our
river system, an increase of 358%. The
last dam was completed on the Snake
CONTACT your REPRESENTATIVES
U.S. PRESIDENT
U.S. SENATORS
Joe Biden
Ron Wyden
The White House
221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20510
Washington, DC 20500
202-224-5244
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Jeff Merkley
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GOVERNOR
Bobby Levy, District 58
900 Court St. NE, H-376
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1458
Rep.BobbyLevy@state.or.us
Kate Brown
160 State Capitol
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Salem, OR 97301-4047
503-378-4582
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Greg Smith, District 57
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VOLUME 134
River in 1975. Proof positive that fish
and dams can, and do, co-exist.
Simpson and his minions need to
prove their scheme to breach our dams
and destroy our economy, at such a
great cost, will result in the return of
even one more fish to our rivers. The
burden of proof is on them alone,
nobody else. If they cannot prove
their case, they need to shut up and go
home.
Dick Sherwin
Lewiston, Idaho
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