The Memoirs of an Artillery Forward Observer, 1944-1945

Memoirs written over 50 years after the fact are rightly subject of suspicion, the author has stated. But his recollections were forthcoming with the help of his letters home during World War II, as well as his notes written soon after his return. Records of his 949th Artillery Battalion, preserved in the National Archives, were also accessed to confirm his own observations. J. Russell Major states that "the artillery finally came into its own in World War II," even winning the praise of the German army, which had belittled the American infantry. The artillery had a primary role in the war -- with over half of the battle casualties caused by artillery fire. But it was better off than the infantry. Only the artillery forward observers experienced the incessant dangers and hardships that plagued the infantry. The artilleryman, Major notes, though within large-weapon range of the enemy, usually escaped small-arms fire. It was the infantryman who was the "unsung hero," who spent weeks, even months, without a shower, sweating in his wool uniform in the summer and freezing in it in the winter. The infantryman lived in the dirt, his home a foxhole. He lived for days on K rations. He was always in the greatest danger of an attack, never truly safe. The 949th Artillery Battalion arrived in France in August 1944, with the mission of supporting the 7th Armored Division and then the 5th and the 90th Infantry Divisions. In November and December of 1944, Major's battalion participated in what he calls "the real war" -- the Battle of the Bulge and events leading up to it. J. Russell Major served his battalion and his country well. He called himself a "bookish recluse who knew nothing of firearms," woefully lacking in confidence, yet was "transformed into a decorated officer with the highest possible combat efficiency rating." He subsequently became a noted historian of European affairs.