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A Deserter
A Deserter
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- Aug, 23 , 24
Dying Hard: Company B, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th US Infantry Division in WWII by Col. French L. MacLean will be in stock very soon. Along with a ton of other content, the book includes a day by day history of Company B, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry division in combat. I explain the organization of the narrative in more detail in a video on our YouTube channel.
For this newsletter, I have included an excerpt from the combat history below. It provides a feel for the author’s style, some days have shorter entries, others are significantly longer:
NOVEMBER 29, 1944: HOHES VENN
Company B strength and location remains the same. Poor weather: high, 42°; low, 30°; intermittent light rain and drizzle before noon, scattered showers after. Virginian 1Lt. Jesse L. Wheeler is assigned. Company conducts training, road repair, and construction.
AWOL was not rare in World War II; the offense was used to describe a temporary condition, such as trying to sneak back to Paris for a wild weekend. Desertion was different. It implied that you did not intend to ever return to your unit or to military control somewhere else. The Army will just bust you to private for AWOL; for desertion, the Army will crush you.
Company B has one of the permanent kind of absentees, and a general court-martial meets at Camp Elsenborn today to try Pvt. Frank Pemberton on the charge of desertion. Pemberton, born in 1920 in Ohio, a high school graduate and married, was inducted on May 12, 1943, at Columbus.
He has a track record—never good when a soldier gets into trouble—with one previous conviction by special court-martial for absence on November 18, 1943, right smack at the time of shipment to port of embarkation for overseas duty. He also rode sick call, admitted for minor maladies last January and June. The evidence introduced at trial is compelling. In his defense, Pemberton makes an unsworn statement:
“We were waiting for the attack on these German pillboxes, and the shells were dropping back in there until I couldn’t stand it in there any longer. I never could fire a rifle when the shells were falling around me. I was always scared and nervous and excited, and the artillery would make me that way much more so. And that’s what happened to me that day.”
The court sentences Pemberton to be dishonorably discharged, forfeit all pay and allowances due or to become due, and be confined at hard labor at such place as the reviewing authority may direct, for the term of his natural life.
The reviewing authority approves the sentence and designates the US penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, for confinement. “Corner Turner” Pemberton is immediately placed in arrest in quarters. He’s lucky. The Army will execute Eddie Slovik for desertion in January 1945. And if you didn’t end up at Lewisburg, you were going to spend a lot of years busting rocks back at Uncle Sam’s Big House at Leavenworth.
For more on Company B, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry division, pre-order a copy of Dying Hard: Company B, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th US Infantry Division in WWII by French MacLean. The title is scheduled for publication on September 28 and should be in stock very shortly.
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