A Journey from Texas ends at the cold waters of the Rapido in Italy.
Today’s book I would like to pitch as a movie is Crossing the Rapido: A Tragedy of World War II by Duane Schultz, from Westholme Yardley.
The 36th Infantry Division, also known as The Arrowhead, Panther, or Lone Star Division was a unit of the Texas National Guard organized during World War 1. During the Great Depression, many Texans joined the 36th to support their families or pay their way through college. On November 16th, 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt Executive’s Order No. 8594 brought the T-Patchers, a nickname derived from the upper-case T insignia on their identification badge, into federal service and they were sent to Louisiana to participate in training maneuvers. Over the years the T-Patchers developed a distrust of regular army officers as drones with easy jobs who couldn’t make a living as civilians.
The regular army shared a similar mistrust of National Guard units and being placed in command of what were supposedly inferior troops was considered an unwise career move. Thus when Brigadier General Fred L. Walker found himself placed in command of the 36th on a rainy night at a muddy camp in Louisiana, he found himself with a command that he did not want and a command that did not want him. The first words from the general he relieved, Claude V. Birkhead included, “I want you to know you are not welcomed here.”
Walker, an Ohioan, was a mild-mannered, even austere, veteran of World War 1 who had served in the Philippines and the expedition against Pancho Villa. While he did not belittle his subordinates as was the common practice of officers during that time, he had a look of displeasure that “cut like a knife.” He disliked the language used by General Patton, and some of his comrades never knew him to make an uncouth remark. Those who did remember him using profanity did so because it showed the seriousness of the situation.
Crossing the Rapido follows Walker and the T-Patchers as they develop into a unit, with Walker admiring their esprit de corps and the Texans respecting the outsider’s leadership. After more training in North Africa, they became the first Americans to set foot on European soil during the war at Salerno. Schultz chronicles their cruel journey up the Italian Peninsula against a combat-tested German army. The 36th fights its way over the mountains of Italy and through San Pietro losing one man for every two yards gained until it is stopped before the enemy fortifications at the Gustav Line and the swift, cold waters of the Rapido.
At the Rapido, the Allied forces met their match due to the high ground held by the enemy, including the site of the ancient Monastery Mount Cassino, whose destruction deserves a movie of its own. The Allied high command decided to outflank the enemy by landing at Anzio and needed a diversionary force to attack the Rapido. This assignment fell to the depleted T-Patchers.
Everything was wrong from the start. The Germans had demolished dams upriver and built dams downriver to make the banks marshy, thus denying the army the ability to drive trucks and tanks to the edge. They had cleared away the brush along the banks, giving them a clear line of fire across the low-lying fields the Americans would have to cross. The U. S. Army did not have proper boats for crossing the river. Instead, they would use rubber dinghies and heavy M-2 plywood assault boats, both of which were very vulnerable to enemy fire. Without trucks, the soldiers would have to carry the boats to the river’s edge through minefields while under fire. Engineers did their best to remove the mines under the cover of darkness to avoid sniper fire, only for the Germans to cross over the river during the day and plant new mines.
That the mission would fail was apparent to everyone. Chief Engineer Major Oran Stovall, who, after a comprehensive study, concluded that even if the 36th managed to cross the river, there would be no place for them to go. The soldiers on the frontlines, who had to go into combat with green replacements and inexperienced second lieutenants. The Germans, who had spent months fortifying the opposite bank. Brigadier General Walker, who had been at The Rock of the Marne during World War 1 where he defended a position similar to the one he was now ordered to attack. Everyone but General Mark W. Clark, commander of the Fifth U. S. Army knew this. After a British diversionary attack failed miles downriver, Clark admitted some doubts about the attack but still ignored the advice of Walker and the other officers.
The attack occurred January 20-22, 1944, and was one of the greatest tragedies to befall the Allies. One in every two men became casualties – killed, wounded, or missing, washed away by the rapid currents that gave the river its name. Many were killed before they even reached the river, either felled by snipers or torn apart by landmines or shells as they struggled to carry the awkward boats across the open plain. More were drowned and washed away, weighted down by their equipment, after their boats were shot by either enemy or friendly fire or overturned by the current of the river. If they made it to the other side, the men, often without their equipment, were lost, disorganized, and unable to communicate with their support, either had to fight to the death, surrender, or face an impossible escape back across the river.
Even after it became apparent that the first day’s attack was a disaster and despite protests from his officers, including his old friend Walker, General Clark ordered another attack. This one failed as well, only resulting in rescuing some men trapped on the other side. The battle finally ended when the Germans, who had finished taking care of their few casualties, asked for a cease-fire to take care of the multitude of American casualties in no man’s land. Several other instances of German compassion occurred at the Rapido. A Wehrmacht soldier behind a machine gun made eye contact with an American medic, pointed to his Red Cross badge on his arm, and motioned for him to get out of the line of fire, only opening up when the medic was safely out of the way. Another German allowed a G.I. to escape. After the G.I. had swum back to the American side of the river, he turned and saw the enemy soldier holding his gun up in salute.
After the battle, Clark telephoned Walker and told him to meet him at an isolated spot on the road between their headquarters. Clark told Walker that he believed the low morale in the division was due to poor leadership, but not his own. He proceeded to name the low-ranking officers, COs, and junior officers, many of whom had been personally selected by Walker, whom he would replace. Among them were Walker’s two sons. An enraged Walker realized that he too would be relieved and asked General Geoffrey T. Keyes if that was indeed the case. Keyes informed him that that would occur once a battlefield success had cleansed Keyes and Clark’s reputations of the Rapido debacle.
Walker was relieved of command after the 36th was taken off the Gustav line, landed at Anzio, and was honored with being the first Allied troops to enter Rome. They participated in the landings in southern France and fought their way across the Siegfried lines and into Germany before returning home to Texas to live out their lives in relative peace. But they never forgot their needless sacrifice by Clark at the Rapido. On March 2, 1944, Texas Independence Day, the officers of the 36th formed a resolution asking for an investigation into the battle but agreed to wait until the war was over to avoid undermining American morale.
After the war, the investigation became a cause célèbre for Texas politicians and newspapers. A hearing was finally called at Capitol Hill, but other than tarnishing Clark’s reputation in the court of public opinion, nothing came of it. Due to his Cold War diplomatic position and his friends in the War Department, the veterans of the 36th never saw Clark receive the justice he deserved.
I believe a movie about the Rapido could help us remember the sacrifice of the men of the 36th at the Rapido. Men like Captain John Chapin and his men of Company E of the 141st Regiment. Consisting of Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and Latin-Americans, the men of Company E spoke little English, grew up in the same El Paso barrios, and had faced segregation and prejudice all their lives. Pablo Segura, who was from an impoverished barrio in El Paso, saved up money for college both with help from his mother and working with the Civilian Conservation Corps in California for thirty dollars a month before enrolling in the University of Texas to become an engineer. He had to drop out after two years due to lack of funds and joined the National Guard. He applied to an Officer’s Candidate school but was turned down because his fluent English had too much of an accent. Nicanor Aguilar was from a rural tenant farm where racism was a bigger problem than in the city and was not allowed to attend Anglo schools beyond the elementary level. Technical Sergeant Manuel Gonzales was called El Feo, the Ugly One, but was one of the best non-commissioned officers in the company, earning a Distinguished Service Cross at Salerno. Due to the discrimination these men faced from restaurants in Brownsville, they became a close-knit group and showed exemplary skill in their drills. A movie adaption of Crossing the River portraying the bravery of the men of Company E would offer Hispanic actors roles beyond that of the stereotypical gangbanger or goofy sidekick.
Their leader, Chapin, also known as “Captain John,” or “Daddy Longlegs,” was twenty-seven years old and married to his childhood sweetheart with a son when the unit was activated. He had spent six years getting a degree in chemistry but found that work was hard to come by. After working for the post office, he decided to attend medical school. To earn money he enlisted as a chemical warfare officer with a period of service of one year in 1940. He was assigned to Company E because he could speak Spanish and soon earned the company’s respect, standing up for them and turning down several promotions to stay with them. Chapin was devoted to his men, even going AWOL from the hospital after being wounded at San Pietro to participate in the attack upon the Rapido. Chapin personally cut through barbed wire and led nearly one hundred of his men to the German side of the river, digging in and setting up mortars at 500 yards. Chapin was yelling “fire wholeheartedly”, or “foolhardily,” when he was killed. His A&M college ring was sent back to his wife, still caked in Rapido river mud. Most of the men of Company E were captured after their captain had fallen. Fifty-five years after his death, the veterans of Company E still wept over his death. In 1999, Captain John L. Chapin High School was founded in El Paso in his honor.
I could see John Lee Hancock, Paul Greengrass, Taylor Sheridan, Patricia Riggen, or Angelina Jolie behind the director’s wheel of such a film. A haunting rendition of “The Eyes Of Texas” sung by someone with a voice like Sinead O’Connor, Charlotte Church, Lisa Gerrard, Tarja, Joy Williams, Loreena McKennitt, Hayley Westenra or Enya could play during the closing credits.
To remember and honor men like Captain Chapin is why the story of the men of the 36th Division as told in Crossing the Rapido by Duane Schulte Should Be A Movie.
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