Slovik was clearly a gutless whimpering coward! That was made clear in his own writings! However, he did not deserve to be executed just to be made an example. 49 other men were sentenced to death for desertion, but were not executed. This was an amazing injustice!
shareFar better men than Slovik have buckled under the stress of combat. He was a former petty criminal, and evidently not the brightest or most emotionally mature bulb on the Christmas tree.
The Hertgen Forest campaign he defected from was one of the bloodiest and longest that the U.S. army fought in Europe. The rate of desertions was soaring. the Hertgen Forest campaign is now considered by most historians to have been unnecessary and a huge mistake and waste of lives.
Slovik was an easy example because of his past criminal record. This is the very same military record that should have exempted him from combat to begin with. If you are so asocial that you are petty thief from childhood, you are probably not going to be an asset to the army as a draftee.
As I said in another thread, some people are just not suited to be combat soldiers. They could have shipped back to the states and made him clean latrines for his military service. He could have been a cook...they say he was a good cook.
Michael is right about the 49 other men sentenced for desertion and spared, but this is within the context of over twenty one thousand soldiers who were charged and punished for desertion but never sentenced to death at all.
Yes indeed, an amazing injustice.
I have to agree with both of you, on all counts.
Learn a language, serve your country www.nationallanguageservicecorps.org
Well stated. Many people cannot understand the paralyzing fear that can consume someone who is not well suited for combat.
What's really interesting about this, though, is that such an individual is actually a liability in a combat situation. The military itself shouldn't have wanted him serving in that capacity.
I think it is in the book and movie "Catch 22" that a doctor told a man that if you realize it is insane to go where people are trying to kill you then you are rational and sane enough to be sent back into combat. That's the catch.
Sometimes men go insane on death row. The state spends a lot of money treating them medically so they can be cured enough to execute. Other states don't bother.
I don't know everything. Neither does anyone else
Boot Camp is suppose to weed out those who are simply unfit for combat, that is why it is usually made so harsh and unforgiving. If guys who are not suited try hard enough though, they can make it through bootcamp into direct combat. They then usually freeze up and get themselves killed and end up taking some of their fellow soldiers with them.
In pretty much every war, you have always had guys like this, guys who WANTED combat in order to prove that they are something that they are not.
Slovik was just being honest about his limits as a human being. It may be that he wanted to be a good soldier but just found that he made for a mediocre one. Even though you might be a poor soldier, that might be sufficient enough.
I read the account of one of the men on the jury that sentenced him to death and his opinion is a bit divided on it. He himself was later captured during the battle of the bulge and remembered thinking that Slovik had probably made the right choice as he'd be safe in a prison and probably not executed while he himself was suffering in a prisoner of war camp. Mind you he never thought Slovik made an honorable choice, but he did feel that the prosecution was perfectly fair, at least as far as there not being any actual deficiency in the proceedings or his defense.
One thing that I haven't heard mentioned anywhere else is that this officer later learned that Slovik had at one point offered to do mine clearing duty in the rear which was a very dangerous duty that a lot of people didn't like doing, but which Slovik obviously preferred to being in actual combat. This had not been brought up during the trial.
He did come to think though that Slovik should have been tried by people who had actually been in combat themselves (which he himself had not been in at the time). He was shocked later when he was released and was serving during the occupation and someone who knew him from the trial told him that Slovik had actually been executed.
I'm so ugly...that's ok 'cause so are you.
What should it matter if it was an act of cowardice or conscience? Honestly, I don't blame him. I would have been scared *beep* in that situation. The point is that he was forced into something he didn't want to do, didn't do it and was killed for it... thats absolutely disgusting if you ask me. Why would you punish him at all for something like that? Would you want to be forced to kill? I'd much rather die than kill another form of life.
sharebecause that is the only way you are qualified to call Slovik a "gutless whimpering coward." Slovik saw combat and he knew he could not function in that environment. God only knows how I would react to such an event.
shareSlovik was clearly a gutless whimpering coward! That was made clear in his own writings! However, he did not deserve to be executed just to be made an example. 49 other men were sentenced to death for desertion, but were not executed. This was an amazing injustice!Was it? I present this quote concerning the case from another website.
Military law at the time was governed not by the UCMJ, but by the Articles of War, which was a lot harsher. One of the features of the Articles that leads to speculation on my part was that a sentence of death had to be approved all the way up the chain of command. This meant that the accused soldier's brigade commander, his division commander, and his corps commander all had to approve it before it was kicked upstairs to the theater commander. If any one of these did not approve, the death sentence was not carried out.share
The theater commander was Eisenhower, and he approved many such sentences, but the vast majority of the service people shot or hanged, were executed for non-military offenses. Murder was the most common reason for a death sentence, but rape was also punishable by the firing squad or the gallows. And of the two methods, hanging was preferred the majority of the time, as it was considered more disgraceful. Shooting or being 'shot to death with musketry' to use the quaint terms of the military, was usually, although not always, used for offenses that were strictly military in nature, such as sleeping on guard duty, desertion, mutiny and various other crimes.
Perhaps the reason that more death sentences were not carried out for desertion was that many commanders were more reluctant to approve such a sentence than they would be one for murder or rape. Again, that is speculation, but it could very well be at least part of the reason that the others were not executed.
I do wonder about it.
As an aside, Slovik's division commander was Norman Cota. Cota played a very major role in the Normandy invasion. In the 1962 film, The Longest Day, he was played by Robert Mitchum. I found that interesting, and Cota's unquestioned courage at Omaha Beach perhaps illustrates at least part of the reason that he did not spare Slovik.