Author Archives: John Romeiser

Both on the home front and in the combat zones of 1918, the greatest single killer of the Great War was not artillery, machine guns, or poison gas: it was far more insidious and invisible.  By some estimates, half of the doughboys, Marines and sailors who died in Europe fell not to enemy fire but to the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920.  Sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu, the “plague of the Spanish lady,” and the “grippe,” the epidemic disappeared as quickly as it had appeared by the time the Armistice was signed in November 1918.

On March 11, 1918 the first cases of what would become the influenza pandemic were reported in the U.S. when 107 soldiers rapidly became ill at the Camp Funston training camp in Fort Riley, Kansas.  It was the worst pandemic in modern history. The flu that year killed only 2.5 percent of its victims, but more than a fifth of the world’s entire population caught it; it is estimated that between fifty million and one hundred million people died in just a few months. Historians believe at least 500,000 died in the United States alone.

The influenza outbreak swept through military bases in the United States.  The virus was an exceptionally deadly strain that struck young, previously healthy adults particularly hard. Once their bodies were weakened, many were vulnerable to secondary infections such as pneumonia, often leading to death. By the late spring, there were influenza outbreaks in fourteen of the largest Army training camps in the United States. After temporarily subsiding, a second more deadly wave of influenza appeared in late summer 1918. By mid-September, it had developed into a mass outbreak. Many servicemen caught the influenza virus in the United States and boarded troopships bound for Europe, unaware of their infected condition. Crowded quarters on the ships provided an ideal environment that readily enabled the flu to spread. Some soldiers did not survive the two-week voyage. Others fell sick during the crossing and were taken directly to hospitals in Britain and France when their vessels entered port.

Healthy soldiers arriving in France in late 1917 and in early 1918 immediately went into battle, distinguishing themselves in infantry charges, artillery exchanges, and trench warfare.  However, if they were not already infected by the virus, many contracted it in the close quarters in which they were confined.  As has been pointed out, others contracted the disease onboard ship before even arriving in England or France.  A third group became ill so quickly in the U.S. that they never had time to go overseas.  They died in the field hospitals of their training camps.  Others were buried at sea before even reaching land.

A Sampling, by County, of East Tennesseans Who Succumbed to the Flu Outbreak

Leonard F. Marine, Blount

Hobart D. Willocks, Blount

Charles S. Lacey, Carter

Cecil C. Broyles, Greene

Vestus Kesterson, Greene

Charles D. Johnston Jr, Knox

Arl B. Kelly, Knox

Grant Vandeventer, Knox

Arthur N. Bacon, McMinn

Lacy O. Smith, Marion

Jasper York, Scott

Benjamin J. Cogdill, Sevier

Joseph S. Bachman, Sullivan

Wesley M. Furches, Washington

U.S. Marines invaded Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945, after months of naval and air bombardment. The Japanese defenders of the island were dug into bunkers deep within the volcanic rocks. Approximately 70,000 U.S. Marines and 18,000 Japanese soldiers took part in the battle. The Battle for Iwo Jima was an epic military campaign between U.S. Marines and the Imperial Army of Japan in early 1945.

Located 750 miles off the coast of Japan, the island of Iwo Jima had three airfields that could serve as a staging facility for a potential invasion of mainland Japan. American forces invaded the island on February 19, 1945, and the ensuing Battle of Iwo Jima lasted for five weeks. In some of the bloodiest fighting of World War II, it’s believed that all but 200 or so of the 21,000 Japanese forces on the island were killed, as were almost 7,000 Marines. But once the fighting was over, the strategic value of Iwo Jima was called into question.

According to postwar analyses, the Imperial Japanese Navy had been so crippled by earlier World War II clashes in the Pacific that it was already unable to defend the empire’s island holdings, including the Marshall archipelago. In addition, Japan’s air force had lost many of its warplanes, and those it had were unable to protect an inner line of defenses set up by the empire’s military leaders. This line of defenses included islands like Iwo Jima.

Given this information, American military leaders planned an attack on the island that they believed would last no more than a few days. However, the Japanese had secretly embarked on a new defensive tactic, taking advantage of Iwo Jima’s mountainous landscape and jungles to set up camouflaged artillery positions.

Although Allied forces led by the Americans bombarded Iwo Jima with bombs dropped from the sky and heavy gunfire from ships positioned off the coast of the island, the strategy developed by Japanese General Tadamichi Kuribayashi meant that the forces controlling it suffered little damage and were thus ready to repel the initial attack by the U.S. Marines.

Twenty-eight East Tennessee Marines and Sailors died in this five-week campaign — Anderson 1, Blount 2, Cumberland 1, Grainger 1, Greene 2, Hamilton 10, Hawkins 1, Knox 2, Marion 1, McMinn 1, Monroe 1, Sullivan 4, Washington 1.

On February 15, 1968, during some of the heaviest fighting of the Tet Offensive, James T. (Tommy) Davis of Meigs County fell to enemy fire as a result of multiple shrapnel wounds. Six other East Tennesseans died during the campaign. Their bios can be found below.

The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) was a series of battles fought from 19 September to 16 December 1944, between American and German forces on the Western Front during World War II, in the Hürtgen Forest, a 140 km² (54 sq mi) area about 5 km (3.1 mi) east of the Belgian–German border.^[1] It was the longest battle on German ground during World War II and is the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought.^[7]

The U.S. commanders’ initial goal was to pin down German forces in the area to keep them from reinforcing the front lines farther north in the Battle of Aachen, where the US forces were fighting against the Siegfried Line network of fortified industrial towns and villages speckled with pillboxes, tank traps, and minefields. The Americans’ initial tactical objectives were to take the village of Schmidt and clear Monschau. In a second phase, the Allies wanted to advance to the Rur River as part of Operation Queen.

Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model intended to bring the Allied thrust to a standstill. While he interfered less in the day-to-day movements of units than at the Battle of Arnhem, he still kept himself fully informed on the situation, slowing the Allies’ progress, inflicting heavy casualties, and taking full advantage of the fortifications the Germans called the Westwall, better known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line. The Hürtgen Forest cost the U.S. First Army at least 33,000 killed and wounded, including both combat and non-combat losses, with upper estimates at 55,000; German casualties were 28,000. The city of Aachen in the north eventually fell on 22 October at high cost to the U.S. Ninth Army, but they failed to cross the Rur river or wrest control of its dams from the Germans. The battle was so costly that it has been described as an Allied “defeat of the first magnitude,” with specific credit given to Model.^{[8][9]: 391}

The Germans fiercely defended the area because it served as a staging area for the 1944 winter offensive Wacht am Rhein (known in English-speaking countries as the Battle of the Bulge), and because the mountains commanded access to the Rur Dam^{[notes 3]} at the head of the Rur Reservoir (Rurstausee). The Allies failed to capture the area after several heavy setbacks, and the Germans successfully held the region until they launched their last-ditch offensive into the Ardennes.^[2][10] This was launched on 16 December and ended the Hürtgen offensive.^[1] The Battle of the Bulge gained widespread press and public attention, leaving the battle of Hürtgen Forest less well remembered.

Sixteen East Tennesseans were killed in this brutal conflict.  One  survivor, now deceased, Command Sergeant Major Ben Franklin with the 16th Regiment, First Infantry Division, described it as the worst fight he experienced during the war:  The Hürtgen Forest was an unexplainable mistake of the American General staff, one not to be questioned by simple soldiers. We just obeyed orders. Four divisions took part in the area of the Hürtgen Forest. We had massive casualties out of those four divisions. If you figure the average division normally has 14,000 to 16,000 men in it, but after they’ve been on the line for six months like we had been, we were reduced down to a division, maybe a 10,000 division. So out of 40,000 or 45,000 troops that participated in the Hürtgen Forest, we had 33,000 casualties. You can readily see the impact casualty wise. Now why? One, there were no roads through the forest; there were simply fire trails. Two, the trees were so dense, so close together that you could not even drive a Jeep between them. So everything was on foot, and you had to carry everything, and the weather was miserable!”

Families who lost loved ones have finally gotten closure after decades of uncertainty owing to today’s advanced forensics employed in recent years to identify the remains of these four East Tennesseans, now back home again:

The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted for five weeks from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945, towards the end of the war in Europe. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg. It overlapped with the Alsace Offensive, subsequently the Colmar Pocket, another series of battles launched by the Germans in support of the Ardennes thrust.

Left:  American soldiers of the 117th Infantry Regiment, Tennessee National Guard, part of the 30th Infantry Division, move past a destroyed American M5A1 “Stuart” tank on their march to recapture the town of St. Vith during the Battle of the Bulge, January 1945.

The primary military objectives were to deny further use of the Belgian Port of Antwerp to the Allies and to split the Allied lines, which potentially could have allowed the Germans to encircle and destroy the four Allied forces. The Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, who since December 1941 had assumed direct command of the German army,^[16] believed that achieving these objectives would compel the Western Allies to accept a peace treaty in the Axis powers‘ favor. By this time, it was palpable to virtually the entire German leadership including Hitler himself that they had no realistic hope of repelling the imminent Soviet invasion of Germany unless the Wehrmacht was able to concentrate the entirety of its remaining forces on the Eastern Front, which in turn required that hostilities on the Western and Italian Fronts be terminated. The Battle of the Bulge remains among the most important battles of the war, as it marked the last major offensive attempted by the Axis Powers on the Western front. After their defeat, Germany would retreat for the remainder of the war.

The Germans achieved a total surprise attack on the morning of 16 December 1944, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans, and poor aerial reconnaissance due to bad weather. American forces bore the brunt of the attack. The Germans attacked a weakly defended section of the Allied line, taking advantage of heavily overcast weather conditions that grounded the Allies’ superior air forces. Fierce American resistance on the northern shoulder of the offensive, around Elsenborn Ridge, and in the south, around Bastogne, blocked German access to key roads to the northwest and west that they counted on for success. Columns of armor and infantry that were supposed to advance along parallel routes found themselves on the same roads. This congestion, and terrain that favored the defenders, threw the German advance behind schedule and allowed the Allies to reinforce the thinly placed troops.

Allied strength during the battle peaked at more than 700,000 men; combined, U.S. and British forces suffered from 77,000 to more than 83,000 battle casualties,^[19] including at least 8,600^[13] killed. The “Bulge” was the largest and bloodiest single battle fought by the United States in World War II^[20][21][22] and the third-deadliest campaign in American history.^[23]

Fifty-three East Tennesseans died during the epic battle.  Here is the breakdown by county:  Anderson, 2; Blount, 2; Bradley, 3; Campbell, 1; Carter, 2; Cocke, 3; Cumberland, 1; Fentress, 3; Grainger, 1; Greene, 1; Hamblen, 1; Hamilton, 7; Hancock, 1; Hawkins, 2; Jefferson, 1; Johnson, 1; Knox, 8; Loudon, 2; Marion, 1; Monroe, 1; Morgan, 1; Polk, 1; Rhea, 1; Roane, 2; Sullivan, 1; Unicoi, 1; Union, 1; Washington, 1.