General Paul F. Gorman’s “Foreword” to Fellowship of Dust
Frank Shaw’s birthday was April 22, 1916 —106 years ago. I thought I would remember my godfather this year by publishing the “Foreword” to Fellowship of Dust: Retracing the WWI Journey of Sergeant Frank Shaw, written by General Paul Gorman, USA (Ret.).
General Gorman is a retired four-star United States Army general who served as Commander in Chief, United States Southern Command (USCINCSO) from 1983 to 1985. In addition to being a widely respected military historian, he has also worked as a consultant for the Institute for Defense Analyses and the Defense Science Board, and has served on three White House commissions: the Commission on Organized Crime, the Packard Commission on Defense Management, and the Commission on Long Term Integrated Strategy. General Gorman was also an assistant professor for Research in the Department of Neurosurgery, University of Virginia’s Health Sciences Center, dealing with issues about information technology and health care. It has been my honor to know him as his mentee and his friend. General Gorman and his family own and operate Cardinal Point Winery in Afton, Virginia.
“William P. Shaw has written an unusual biography of an unusual American. On page xiv there is a photograph of his subject, Technical Sergeant Francis E. Shaw, at the celebration of his homecoming from World War II on June 3, 1945. The author, age three, sits enfolded in his Uncle Frank’s arm, momentarily close.
In the years that followed young Bill Shaw learned little about his Uncle’s military experiences, for like many other veterans of infantry combat, Frank Shaw never wanted to talk about the war. His reticence formed a gap in Bill Shaw’s awareness of which he became conscious only when he was mature enough to appreciate the extent of the debt he owed to Frank Shaw and his generation for “their courage, their perseverance, and their simple decency.” The author has sought to fill that void with this account of his uncle’s military service, a tapestry of memories: a factual warp of names, places, and dates interwoven with a weft of recollection.
In 1994, prompted by the 50th anniversary celebration of D- Day, Bill Shaw began to borrow time from his teaching for what he terms “a work of reconstruction.” Over the ensuing decade he quizzed family members for their memories of Frank, culled through publications and photographs portraying the campaigns and personalities of Frank’s regiment (the 26th Infantry of the1st Infantry Division), collected copies of the few military records of Frank’s service that had not been destroyed, sought out any veteran he could find who had served with Frank, and twice went to Europe to visit Frank’s battlefields. His objective was to write not a “classic military history,” but rather to narrate “a coherent, personal, human response” to the events in which his uncle had participated. If his account is not definitively descriptive, it is engagingly evocative of the experiences of an average American who expended his youth in the service of his country, and thereby marred forever his declining years.
Frank Shaw was twenty-five years of age when, in 1941, he was drafted into the Army and trained as an infantryman. He was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division, and to the 26th Infantry Regiment, a much decorated Regular Army unit then commanded by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr., a redoubtable leader who had also commanded that regiment at the end of World War I (Roosevelt’s autobiographical account of the 26th Infantry of 1917-1918 is entitled Average Americans).
Over the five years that Frank Shaw served in the ranks of one rifle company (Company “E”) of the 26th Infantry, his regiment won a Presidential Unit Citation, two awards of the French Croix de Guerre with Palm (Kasserine and Normandy), the French Medaille Militaire (Streamer embroidered FRANCE, and Fourragere), the Belgian Fourragere, and was cited in the Order of the Day of the Belgian Army for action at Mons. Sergeant Shaw himself was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star; he also earned the Purple Heart, but his record does not reflect its having been awarded.*
Frank Shaw’s harsh personal experiences stemmed from serious flaws in the U.S. Army’s manpower planning that centered on training replacements as individuals and shipping them overseas: that concept for sustaining ground combat units like the 26th Infantry Regiment was manifestly bankrupt by 1945, both in failing to provide infantrymen of required quality and quantities, and in forcing men like Shaw to serve year after year with diminishing probability of surviving. Dwindling numbers of experienced soldiers within a rifle company like Frank’s Co E, 2/26 Infantry attenuated its combat efficiency, and impaired its ability to absorb increasingly young, ill-prepared replacements; the spiraling decline in effectiveness that eventuated could only be offset by heroic leadership, itself increasingly rare. Fortunately for this nation, the Germans reached the end of their human resources before we did.
At its peak strength in 1945, the Army had over eight million soldiers; of these, some two million were serving in ground combat units. But the infantry regiments had been suffering most of the losses. Of 948,574 Army casualties (KIA, WIA, and POW), infantry units sustained 70% of the total: 66% of those killed and 79 % of those wounded. When Frank Shaw was reclassified from MIA to POW on the U.S. Army’s rolls, 47 infantry regiments in 19 of its divisions had suffered between 100 to 200 per cent casualties (killed, wounded, missing).
[Adjutant General, Battle Casualties of the Army, 1 July 1946. Weigley, R.F. History of the United States Army. Macmillan Company, New York, 1967. 438.]
The author’s description of Sgt. Shaw’s actions during the ghastly battle in the Hürtgen Forest underscores the fact that his capture disproportionately depleted the strength of Company “E,” for he was among the very few experienced leaders remaining in the unit able to teach green replacements how to fight and how to survive.
But Sergeant Frank Shaw was more than an exceptional survivor among the noncommissioned officers of his regiment. The author presents him as representative of leaders of all the infantry regiments that fought in all the theaters of World War II, an “American Odysseus… the ordinary man on a mission of extraordinary historical significance, redefining himself and changing the course of events through suffering, courage, and perseverance.
Sergeant Shaw’s story is one that deserved to be told.”
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* Researching U.S. Army medical records (specifically, U.S WWII Hospital Admission Card Files, 1942-1954 from the National Archives), available years after completing my book, I discovered that my uncle had, in fact, been wounded several times. First, he was hospitalized with “non-battle” grenade fragments in his back (February 1944) during live-fire exercises in preparation for D-Day. (A “non-battle” injury, though in the line of duty, is not eligible for a Purple Heart.)
Second, another hospital record showed he fractured his ankle leaping into a Higgins boat on July 6 (D-Day). He was hospitalized and had his leg placed in a cast. Since this also was considered a “non-battle injury,” he was not eligible for a Purple Heart.
In late July 1944, during the St. Lo breakout, My uncle received serious battle injuries to the “Cranium, Face and Neck, Mandible.” The “causative agent” was “Artillery Shell, Fragments.” The treatment was “reduction by intermaxillary wiring.” This was written up as “Casualty, Battle,” but still no Purple Heart was awarded. When I checked with the First Division Museum historian in Wheaton Illinois, he said since Frank’s regiment was in constant action at the time, the paperwork was either never filed or simply “got lost in the confusion.” My uncle rejoined his unit in September 1944 in time for the Battle of Aachen and the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest — where he was captured November 30. He remained a POW till May 10, 1945.
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The book is available on Kindle ($4.99) under the full title: Fellowship of Dust: Retracing the WWII Journey of Sergeant Frank Shaw, by William P. Shaw.