Remember the Alamo? Some of that was made up after the fact. A myth of brave men, which the mission’s defenders undoubtedly were, who fought to the last man which they almost certainly did not. It took 150 years more or less for the best source to be uncovered—a memoir by a Mexican Army officer who helped defeat the Texans and who informs us that half a dozen men surrendered and were shot. The manuscript was last said to be in the hands of Texas A&M but doesn't get much play. We’re now about halfway through the same historical cycle on another famous Lone Star battle that has an odor of fabrication or worse. This one features an enduring episode of anti-Semitism and actually had its roots in the bucolic Liri Valley, in January 1944, where the U.S. 36th Infantry Division, a former National Guard unit known unofficially as the Texas Division—or Texas Army as its soldiers liked to say, and famous for a T shoulder patch on their uniforms—crossed a river on a mission.
It didn’t bode well
that the body of water was not the Rapido River, as planned, but the Gari, a
detail that only came to light some years after the war. The German commander
speaking post-belli said that the assault was so disorganized
he did not know at the time that it was a major attack. The Texans would gain fame
later in the war, in France and in Bavaria, even taking prisoner Nazi Number
Two Herman Goering. But that would be Germany in the spring of ’45 and this was
Italy during the winter of '43, on the road to Rome, real estate that had at
that point in time been fought over for more than two thousand years. The most
extraordinary statistic regarding the Texan casualties at the Rapido is that
almost half or 900 men were simply missing the next day,
floating down the river—or lost, or surrendered which Texans don’t do but they
did at the riverbank, apparently in droves. Two whole regiments of the 36th were
broken and there were consequences.
On March 2, 1944, Texas Independence Day, according to one source, “with memories of the disaster still fresh, a group of 25 officers of the 36th Division met in an Italian farmhouse and pledged to do everything possible to prompt a postwar inquiry.” The failure of the attack would shake the State of Texas after the war, leading to a Congressional inquiry after accusations that a lone Jewish officer had destroyed the best of Lone Star manhood—and prompting whispering that continues even today. All in the name of the sideshow that was Italy during World War II. What started that night with an artillery barrage “to soften the Germans up” went wrong quickly and turned even uglier later in Austin. But the gunfight at the Gari, as one would more accurately call it, was a shaky undertaking from the start. There was a bridge that had to be crossed under fire and over the course of the night the attacking Texans made it to the far bank. The next night more men crossed. On the near side of the river, before the shooting started, the expected narrative was Texas exceptionalism, the Alamo redux with an equally glorious result but this time a victory. No one told the Germans. Afterwards the State of Texas's honor required a scapegoat and for that luckily there was a Jew. The attack didn't succeed but that didn't mean it didn't need to be ordered, a Congressional inquiry found that the assault ordered by General Clark was daring but not reckless, case closed. If anything, his reputation has grown, except in Texas where, dead these many years, he is still hated.
There’s a cool old film, probably made by the Signal Corps at the end of the war. It looks like
central or Western Europe, maybe Germany, in the garden of a schloss or French
castle. No sound but the film shows all the top U.S. Army commanders in Europe socializing,
including General Eisenhower and his right hand General Bradley. Clearly these are
the victors or the soon-to-be victors. And the survivors. General Patton
himself, looking typically bellicose, wearing a ceremonial cavalry
uniform—sidearm and polished helmet, like for a parade—is in the garden too. In the
clip there’s also a fleeting view of a tall and thin, elegant officer
who looks like he could have been a movie producer or Wall Street banker.
That's Mark Clark of 5th Army. The tendency in the American Army of
the period—dominated by Southern-born Protestant officers—was to paint General Clark
as somehow not real Army, not like the others. That is wrong. He grew up on post, son of an U.S. infantry officer and a Rumanian Jewish mom. Inevitably the horror of what happened at the Rapido has become
caught up in our feeling for the man who ordered the attack. Just a few
years ago there were whispers still of a yearly reunion, usually in Lubbock—many
of the men who served were from West Texas, for whatever reason. They were
survivors of a ghost company of the 36th that started the fight
with more than 120 men and ended with 17 soldiers and the officers dead.
How and why get rehashed continuously, in books, in colloquia, in chatrooms and on Facebook. These missives mostly have one thing in common, blaming the commanding general. Just last month a woman wrote on the 36th Division Association Facepage, “There are no Mark Clark fans in this family,” as hating the general is now passed down generation to generation. The Battle of the Rapido River—the “Gunfight at the Gari” is better, it sounds better to a Texan ear. It's all just another example of the Lone Star myth, the idea that in some areas of human commerce, violence being one, Texans do it better than anyone else.
The British liked to
say that the Germans were “easy to trick but hard to panic” and after an
artillery bombardment warned of a coming attack, the Texans' only chance was if
the Germans panicked which they did not. That was not explanation enough later
in Austin however. And even today on websites devoted to military history
there’s bullshit chatter about “the Jew Clark being promoted,” after the
battle, “by the Jew Eisenhower,” although General Eisenhower was not
Jewish. As with the Alamo, neither logic nor fact has been consistently
applied. The big-balled Texan persona is everywhere
however. Today if you visit the National Guard barracks at Camp Mabry, in
West Austin, there’s a museum much-devoted to the 36th, and a marker
tells you all you need to know about the spirit of the troops. “In bars
and clubs, both at home and, eventually, overseas, soldiers who wore the
T-Patch insignia of the division were apt to insist that everyone within
earshot stand when they sang ‘The Eyes of Texas.’ If men from other units
refused to do so, the result was usually a brawl.” As for the commanding
general, the plaque reads, “Bitter survivors swore they would never forgive
Mark Clark for ordering the hopeless assault and most maintained a healthy
hatred or disgust for the general for the rest of their lives.” Unlike the
Alamo where facts were lacking for so long, the events in the Liri Valley are
more a question of interpretation, not dueling details. In the Rapido
context it wouldn’t have mattered if Mark Clark was black or Hispanic or
Muslim, or if the era were today. Whether it’s money in play, or power, or as
with the officers and men of the 36th—reputation—there’s always a
reason for blaming others. Race is the excuse. Witness Robert E. Lee, who
ordered the charge at Gettysburg that caused 6,000 casualties among his own
men, including over 1,000 dead, and doomed the Confederacy, but Southerners
were still naming their sons after him for generations. And in the Texas
narrative, the bloodier the better. It was losing that hurt so
bad.
General Clark had
influential defenders even at the time. Dwight Eisenhower is said to have
described Mark Clark as the best staff officer he ever knew, which is
considerable praise since President Eisenhower’s own reputation in the Army was built on
being a good staff officer. For his part General Clark never testified before
Congress and is said to have never spoken publicly, after the war, about what
happened at the Gari. But he did put his thoughts down on paper. “Nothing,” he
wrote, “can minimize the losses of the 36th Division, which I
selected for the tough unglamorous job at the Rapido because I knew its men had
the stuff to get across the river if anybody could.” He was totally
unapologetic of the pressure to win that everyone was under in Italy, including
the enemy, backwater theater of operations or not. “I heard no more about
this attack until after the war, when I was stationed in Vienna. At that time,
a meeting of former officers of the 36th Division in Texas
passed a resolution asking Congress to investigate the Rapido River failure,
which was blamed entirely on me.” Vendetta was next.
When he was nominated
by President Truman as Ambassador to the Vatican, Texas' senior U.S. Senator
Tom Connally protested. (Future president LBJ who was junior senator did not object to the appointment.)
Protestants are said to have objected because of Clark’s parentage even though
troops under his direct command liberated Rome from the Nazis. For which he was
also criticized, by the British, who called General Clark a glory-hound. When the road to
Rome was finally open, and the Germans were in retreat, instead of chasing the Nazis, General Clark went to the Eternal City, can you blame him, the first
European capital to fall to the Allies during the war. His later career proved
that he was indeed a great general.
During the fighting in Korea,
after Douglas MacArthur was sacked as commander of United Nations forces, a
tactician was brought in, to stabilize the military situation. Then
General Clark assumed command in order to finalize the ceasefire with the
People's Republic and North Koreans. That was a staff officer's job
and one that he accomplished. He was the kind of general whose battlefields include
a negotiating table. Later in Washington, where he also served, he coined the
phrase “intelligence community” for the matrix of federal agencies that Edward
Snowden recently outed. In the end Texans did not forgive him but the Army's
officer class accepted him. The general's final posting was as
superintendent of The Citadel, in the heart of the old U.S. Army establishment. That
appointment officially ended the second Battle of the Rapido River, fought
after the Second World War and won by General Mark Clark. Both the first and
second battles of the Rapido were lost by Texans.
