A few days late for Memorial Day

Crossposted from the LNL Chat thread:

Remembering Red and Floyd

Yesterday I bought an old copy of Bill Mauldin’s Book Up Front, as I’ve always been a fan of Mauldin’s Willie and Joe cartoons. I was interested to see the text that Mauldin included in this book, written in the late days of World War II in Europe, but mostly I bought it for the chance to see some of his war cartoons that I had not seen before and to revisit some old friends. The inside cover was inscribed “Red from Floyd, Dec. 25, 1945” in a beautiful cursive hand. As I read farther, an old gift tag which had been used as a bookmark for so long that its silhouette has permanently marked pages 130 and 131 fell out. In a much more basic hand, mostly block printing, it read “To – Red From Floyd.” This told me a story. An incomplete and somewhat conjectural story, but one that made we want to celebrate Red and Floyd.

If you are not familiar with Mauldin’s work, he drew the grimy, tired, unshaven face of war. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work, exemplified by this cartoon showing the victorious troops as battle-weary as the defeated:

His main characters, Willie and Joe, were infantrymen. American everymen, they were cynical, tired, “dogface” combat soldiers. In his book Up Front, Mauldin was even more overt that his work was about and for the “doggies,” even if it spoke to most soldiers, and the book was written to explain, and even to celebrate, these hard fighters. Among the traits of combat infantrymen, Mauldin argued that they wanted their lost comrades remembered to the point that they “have an overwhelming desire to go back home and yell in everybody’s ear, ‘This guy was killed fighting for you. Don’t forget him–ever. Keep him in your mind when you wake up in the morning and when you go to bed at night.’” Throughout the rest of the book, Mauldin made it clear that the doggies who made it home deserved to be remembered as well. So let’s remember Red and Floyd.

Who were they? I don’t know. But I feel confident that Floyd was a combat soldier and Red was a good buddy. Clearly, Up Front spoke to Floyd, and he either expected it to speak to Red, or at least to make sense. Were they the Willie and Joe of their unit, or did Floyd choose this book as a gift hoping that it would explain to Red how Floyd saw the world now? I don’t know, but given the nickname Red, and the fact that this present came before much demobilization was complete, I suspect the former is more likely. These men were likely literal battle buddies who recognized themselves and their experiences of war in Mauldin’s cartoons, men who knew mud, fear, and exhaustion. As for what they did specifically, or where they fought, I have no clues.

I also have few clues for their lives before the war. I suspect that someone else (perhaps the clerk at the PX where he bought it) wrote the neat inscription inside the cover, and the block printing on the gift tag was Floyd’s own hand. Based on that hand, Floyd’s background didn’t place an emphasis on penmanship, but more than that I cannot say. The book clearly meant a lot to Red, as it had been read enough that they dust jacket was in tatters, but he had saved the front cover portion, carefully tucking it in to pages, and saving the gift tag as mentioned above. I found the book at a used bookstore in Birmingham, Alabama, so perhaps Red was from the area. That might lead folks to speculate that this Red was Medal of Honor recipient Henry "Red" Erwin, who lived in Birmingham after being medically retired following treatment for burns for his heroic action throwing a burning phosphorous bomb from the cabin of a B-29 in April 1945. This is possible, but seems unlikely. Erwin was still undergoing surgeries to, among other injuries, restore his eyesight for 30 months after his injury. A 1945 Christmas present of a book seems premature. This is likely some other Alabama redhead. One who did his fighting on the ground, and whose actions, if not less heroic, were not so widely noted.

If we can’t remember Red and Floyd specifically, let us remember them as everymen. The term “Greatest Generation” is too often thrown about, and often making Superman seem more of an everyman than Willie and Joe. But the memory of those who fought in World War II is built on what they endured as much as what they accomplished. And if they did it without much spit and polish, but with great dedication for the folks in their unit, even while griping about the brass, the politicians, and the war itself, that almost makes it more noble.