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Isadore Levine
But where was the journal? Our substitute journal clerk produced it, but it was an
inaccurate, incomplete scrawl, containing nothing we could use. We wrote our response,
but it lacked the punch and authority that excerpts from an adequate journal would have
given.
Eric Peach had seen the need for a journal. He had found, assigned, and saved the
right man to keep it. As an ultimate irony, he got no benefit from it when it was needed!
FINAL NOTE: It came out all right: Lt Col Peach was reassigned to command an heavy
artillery battalion - mobile earthquakes, he called them - which was not expected to move
on a moment's notice. He got along fine under a new commander and in a job that fit his
temperament better. So actually, our inability to protect him didn't matter. He was
relieved, not for of the misdeeds alleged, but because he and Gen Bixby were on different
wave lengths.
Levine returned to duty, was promoted to Private First Class (PFC) and stayed
with us as journal clerk until the end of the war, when the journal was valuable for
preparing after-action reports.
I have recently obtained copies of the Unit Journal and tried to use it in reviewing
this book. I do not recommend it for light reading - a duller document was never written.
It is replete with location given in map coordinates, useless without the appropriate maps,
and recording the precise time of receipt of written orders and documents long lost.
However, it is like placer mining: after panning tons of gravel, a few grains of gold dust
can still be found.
61, (62 blank)
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