Foxholed: A Local Soldier's War Memoir

In the June 8, 1944 issue of the Red Bank Register, the newspaper of record for decades, a soldier named PFC Austin Johnson wrote much of the time from a foxhole about his experiences to a friend of his — Nick, an attorney. He penned the letters from somewhere in Italy.

The letters epitomize why those who fought in World War II became known as the Greatest Generation. Read the following excerpts and see for yourself.

"Dear Nick," Johnson wrote. "Your lengthy and highly interesting epistle mailed on March 24th from Newark, New Jersey, arrived here at my dugout deep in the heart of Italy …"

In that letter written from Kaiser, there were vivid recollections of what used to be but was no longer:

"In the past year overseas have had little time to think about them. Having been through North Africa, the invasion of Sicily, the whole Sicilian campaign, and the Italian campaign since last October and having been in combat the majority of this time many things have been knocked out of my mind.

"Have reached the point where it is damn difficult to concentrate on anything and extremely difficult to retain things in one's mind. Bombing and artillery shells even though they do not kill you sure raise hell with your nervous system and take a lot out of you.

"After a year in sleeping in dugouts, fox holes surrounded by mud, rain, water and snow, and some days catching a lot of hell from the enemy, plus the hell we pitch back at them one gets hardened and becomes immune to a lot of things. Its surprising what the human body can take, and under normal conditions in the states they would not stand up under it. Their minds and body would be on their discomforts but when one’s mind is primarily on dropping bombs and shells, he is in another world and completely oblivious to all physical discomforts."

He wrote about near misses and fear:

"It is when there is no action or you have been sent to the rear of the line for several days rest that you realize what a beating your nervous system has taken over a period of months. It is not the direct hits that get you, it is the near misses. If the Germans get a direct hit on you or your immediate area with a bomb or shell, you have nothing to worry about except eternal rest."

He questioned religion:

"If all work and suffering is finished, you are at peace with the world, and what a world after 2,000 years of Christianity. After being through what I have and having seen what I have seen, I have been at a loss from my first day of action to see how the powers-that-be correlate religion and war."

He reflected on fate and its cruelty and mercy:

"There must be a rebirth and a complete change of thought, education and logical down-to-earth thinking, constructive planning and unselfish endeavors on the part of any and all individuals when the post-war period arrives. Right now we are and have been for the whole world — no one escapes by reason of a geographical position.

"Man, through the machine age, has brought all the world together, but through greed, avarice and the worship of gold and power he has pointed that machine in a destructive rather than a constructive direction. Man made machines but he has not grown up and advanced with them; they are still his master; he does not know how to control them as yet. Machines advanced while man stood still and stuck to his old ways, desires and ambitions."

Johnson's letter was published two days after the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France.

Right after D-Day, he was looking forward "to the day when all of these things will be coordinated, oriented and put on a sound, sane, peaceful, truthful, logical and humane basis. The level of education that I have encountered in all of the countries to date has been pathetic.

"Ignorance is the watchword, coupled together with superstition and mythology, filth, dirt, disease and a standard of living and work that are 500 to 1,000 years behind the United States. The majority of them are mere serfs and slaves of a few of the minority who have exploited them over thousands of years ...

"I have been lucky and fortunate so far and have nothing to complain about in this respect. A German heavy shell knocked me out of my blankets down in my hole one morning, and six more sped over my head.

"… For quite few minutes you cannot orient yourself, just like floating on air or coming out of ether — that is after the first great blast when you think all the world has descended on your head and body — then you gradually come to realize that you are not dead. And then the reaction sets in and your whole body shakes and trembles, and your knees knock together faster than one can count. It is all involuntary and you have no control over same. The whole procedure may last for 10 minutes …"

At the end of the letter, Johnson told his friend that he was at liberty to publish the letter in The Register or any other paper. He probably never imagined that his letter would be published in an online newspaper 67 years later.

PFC Austin W. Johnson would be in his late 80s today. We hope he got out of that foxhole and made it through the war to realize his American Dream.