ONE SOLDIER’S STORY

 

The Wartime Experience of John Gay Bascom

World War II Italian Campaign

as told by his son, John Gay Bascom II

Foreword 

This is the story, cobbled from damaged, partial army records, old military history sources, and family lore, of my father’s service during World War II.  He died in 1985, having rarely spoken of his combat experiences.  That war was a world-changing struggle against the evil of human domination and exploitation.  It represented perhaps America’s finest hours, and our most heartfelt tragedies.  The costs for our country collectively and our soldiers individually in terms of sacrifice and suffering were immense.  I am writing his story because people who made a difference in extraordinary times and during important events should not be forgotten.

John Gay Bascom, my father, was born in February 1910 in St. Louis.  In early 1940 at age 30 he married divorcée Louise Virginia Schneider, a pretty girl of German-American descent born in St. Louis, Missouri.  She already had a five-year-old child, Walter, from her previous marriage.  It was my father’s first and only marriage.

Dad, a pen salesman, had never finished high school.  He was a bright, personable young man neither intellectual nor brilliant, yet successful for his station by the standards of the times.  Bespectacled, standing 5’ 8 1/2” and weighing about a hundred-fifty pounds, he could justifiably be called on the slight side.  His eyes were a medium blue like most in our family, his hair a wavy brown.  He never displayed any special athletic prowess.

They moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to take a better job in the same field, and a respectable year-plus later, in December 1941, my sister Judy was born there.  I would arrive just shy of two years after that, but back in St. Louis.

Geopolitical Landscape 

Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party came into power in Germany in the early-mid 1930s, a militant extremist bent on avenging Germany’s defeat in World War I, purifying the German Aryan race, and unifying German speaking people throughout Europe under his Reich.  He built a powerful military and pursued his dream by

successfully invading his neighbors, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria, by 1939.  When England and France resisted those moves, he promptly invaded west, conquering much of the rest of western Europe including Belgium, Holland, parts of Scandinavia, and most importantly, France.  Spain and Italy had allied with Hitler and were spared for the time being.  The grand prize, Great Britain, was next on the list.  But as an island nation, it was to prove not as easy as the others.  Still, he decimated British troops that were in continental Europe and sent them retreating to their homeland in the humiliating rout at Dunkirk.  While he then paused the ground offensive in Western Europe to regroup his forces, he initiated a vicious bombing campaign against the British Isles and southern England in particular.  Emboldened, he also invaded Russia, which would prove a fatal mistake.

On the other side of the world at roughly the same time, Japan had been busy pursuing their militaristic vision of racial superiority and domination.  They invaded and seized large parts of China and Korea in the most brutal fashion imaginable.  The United States, uninterested in military entanglement, nonetheless pressured Japan with an embargo of strategic materials they needed to continue their campaign of terror on the Asian continent.  We supported Britain, hanging by fingernails, by supplying strategic war materials just short of actual military involvement.

All came to head on December 7, 1941—two days after my sister’s birth—when Japan bombed the U.S. naval and other forces in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the “Day That Will Live in Infamy.”  They were motivated by thoughts of avenging the embargo and pressuring the Americans into a negotiated settlement that, they stupidly believed, would get materials flowing again and keep us out of the way.  They were wrong.

America responded by immediately declaring war on Japan.  Days later, their ally, Germany, declared war on the U.S.  We were in it all the way.

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Next installment in One Soldier's Story, The Military Situation and You're In the Army Now