Jess E. Weiss

Review written by Bernie Weisz, Historian, Pembroke Pines, Florida, USA Contact: BernWei1@aol.com January 10, 2012 Title of Review: "D-Day At Omaha Beach, June 6th, 1944; It Took Me The Next 50 Years To Realize I Never Got Off The Beach At All."
If you ask ten different readers who have completed Jess Weiss's amazing memoir "Warrior to Spiritual Warrior" what it means to them, you are likely to get ten different opinions. World War Two and the Normandy Invasion? PTSD, Survivor Guilt and mysticism? These topics, including spousal bereavement, reconciliation with one's past and Christian Science plus much more are guaranteed to induce rumination long after the last page is turned! Jess Weiss brings you through his thoughts and feelings as a child, his distant relationships with both his father and two children that he was unable to overcome as well as his exceptionally traumatic W.W. II ordeal. On the identical day Weiss received the envelope containing his "Dependency Discharge," the December 7, 1941 Japanese sneak attack at Pearl Harbor occurred. Knowing it was canceled before even opening the document was an inauspicious harbinger for Weiss of the calamitous combat tour he would partake in as a member of the 16th Infantry Regiment. This was an element of the "First Infantry Division, more popularly known as the "Big Red One." The reader is introduced to Weiss's travails in experiencing anti Semitism in basic training, combat in North Africa and Sicily which would culminate in his participation in the June 6th, 1944 Normandy Invasion of France. As you will undoubtedly find with this memoir, Jess Weiss's unorthodox upbringing and the precarious world events of his time spontaneously coincided, climaxing in a day where close to 9,000 of his fellow soldiers would lose their lives alongside him.

For on that early June day, Weiss would watch after the LST landing ramp was lowered innumerable Nazi machine guns spit rapid fire full metal jacket death at him causing lifelong horrors. Weiss would explain why his mind would never forget the sights he saw as he waded through the waist-deep water watching his buddies fall alongside of him. As he both anticipated enemy bullets ripping lethal holes in him as well as watched the corpses of men floating who were alive only hours earlier, his subconscious was recording everything. Making his way to the beach as the surf turned red with his fellow soldier's blood, Weiss described what was psychologically happening to himself; "Your mind turns into a camera taking pictures and storing their negatives in your brain stem, but you don't develop them. You don't hang them out to dry. You never make sense of them, if there's any sense to be made. You go through the motions. You go to your church or your synagogue or your mosque. You praise God and salute the flag. You say your 23rd Psalm or your Lord's Prayer in the hope your undeveloped negatives will go away. You're a pretend guy walking around in some other guy's pretend clothes, living some other guy's pretend life; You convince yourself that he's you, which works most of the time, but the real you down there in the base of your brain is dormant, waiting for the right sound or sign to trigger something berserk. You clamp down on that guy. You clamp down on him real tight. And that just makes the berserker more berserk when he does break out. And he will. You're a real fun guy to grow up with."

This is one of the most apt descriptions of PTSD I have ever come across. If you do not understand what this author means by this explanation, read WTSW and you will understand the aforementioned completely! The author's parents were both born in America and although Jewish, nonreligious. Growing up initially in Pennsylvania and after his father filed for divorce, Jess Weiss, his mother and sister relocated to Sunnyside, Queens, N.Y. Besides himself, Weiss would have a grandmother affected by an Austrian-born German politician and chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and dictator of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. His name was Adolf Hitler, a banal and bizarrely murderous dictator associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust. The Fuehrer was one of the chief causes in what resulted in between almost 70 million fatalities, the deadliest conflict in human history. It is also because of Adolf Hitler that made W.W II different than any war America has been involved in since. Hitler was a decorated German veteran of World War I and in 1919 joined the German Workers Party, the predecessor of the Nazi Party. Becoming its leader in 1923, Hitler attempted a coup d'état, which failed and resulted in his imprisonment. It was then that he wrote his memoir, "Mein Kampf." After his release in 1924, Hitler gained support of all of Germany by promoting Antisemitism, anti-Communist and Nazi propaganda.

Appointed chancellor in 1933, he created his "Third Reich" dictatorship whose stated aims were complete destruction of world Jewry, deemed "The Final Solution," and total Nazi control of continental Europe. W.W. II unofficially started in 1937 with the Japanese invasion of China. Hitler's foreign and domestic policies borrowed from Japan's military expansionism, which was called the "Greater East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere. Officially, W.W. II commenced for the record books on September 1st, 1939. On that day, while Jess Weiss was the "fastest nickel pitcher cashier" at "Horn & Hardart's," a Manhattan restaurant, Germany and the Soviet Union jointly invaded Poland and W.W. II was on. The reason America felt conscientiously compelled to enter this war was because the Axis Powers were bent on occupying and subjugating militarily the entire world and had to be stopped. Compared to the Korean or even the Vietnam War, where the "Domino Theory" of Communist revolutions would hypothetically spread if unchecked, Hitler put his ideas into practice. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany The Fuhrer promulgated that the "Aryan race," was the master race and all others were inferior. The Holocaust was the genocide of approximately 6 million European Jews, 20 million Soviets and millions of other Gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses and any other political and religious opponents of the Third Reich. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease.

Nazi Camps equipped with gas chambers were built and run for the purpose of systematic and cruel mass extermination. Nazi doctors were directed to use human subjects in sadistic medical experiments placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, performing various amputations and other brutal surgeries. A war measured by the forces of good versus evil made this conflict one that simply had to be fought to forcibly stop inhumane outrages. With Jess Weiss's dependency discharge canceled following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, an immediate declaration of a state of war commenced between the U.S. and The Rising Sun. Hitler was not obligated to, but eagerly chose to declare war on America.In May of 1940 Hitler's forces attacked France, which surrendered on June 22, 1940. Britain's forces were forced to leave France by a dramatic sea rescue at Dunkirk but continued to fight Hitler. With France neutralized The Fuehrer made peace overtures to the British leader, Winston Churchill. Flat out rejected, Hitler ordered bombing raids and a planned invasion on the United Kingdom. The air campaign, known as "The Battle of Britain" failed, and the invasion plans were canceled by September. However, Using newly captured French ports, the German Navy enjoyed success against the Royal Navy, using U-boats against British shipping in the Atlantic. Jess Weiss was about to have a rare experience three years after Pearl Harbor. He was sent from England on the U.S.S. Samuel Chase troop ship as part of a cross channel Allied armada.

On June 6th 1944, halfway across the English Channel, he was jammed along with 12 other war weary veterans from his platoon, the rest fresh recruits from the states. Bobbing up and down in 15 foot waves, the 60 foot Landing Craft Tank was part of the historic operation that launched the invasion of liberating German-occupied Western Europe. Nearly 160,000 Allied troops crossed the English Channel on that day, and by the end of August, three million more would be in France. Weiss's mission was to breach the German beach defenses, seize their bunkers and secure the assigned landing site by dark. With Normandy secured, the Allies could now commence the Western European campaign which would spell the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. The Invasion Jess Weiss was part of and so vividly described was the largest amphibious operation in history and would ultimately end with the final defeat of the Third Reich. At age 25, and freshly married, Weiss would tragically be the only survivor of his Landing Ship Tank, a small naval vessel designed to carry cargo and troops onto the heavily defended shoreline of the Nazi German occupiers at Normandy, France. Once onshore at "Omaha," an Allied codename for one of five beach head landings, Weiss's serves up readers with a spine tingling description of dodging pillbox entrenched German defenders raking the shoreline with machine gun fire. Causing lifelong "survivor guilt," he accomplished this by hiding under the corpses of his deceased comrades. Perhaps this is an unconscious reason for authoring his fifth book as a nonagenarian, yet Weiss's lifelong description of tumult and self condemnation continues. Once onshore at Normandy, he would witness a German sharpshooter hidden in a tree shoot a fellow soldier.

A trained sniper himself, Weiss retaliated by shooting and killing the German defender, taking the slain sniper's unused diary to document the rest of his tour. It is from this journal that Weiss penned the rest of his tour's memories, of which the entire fascinating contents appear in this multifaceted, revealing memoir. Weiss warns the reader to be careful for what one prays for, as it just might happen. Experiencing nonstop fighting against the tenacious Germans from his unit's 1942 beachhead landing on the coast of Algeria all the way to where his unit, the 16th Infantry Regiment i.e., "Big Read One," was inside the Third Reich, Weiss knew the odds against any soldier surviving that level of continuous combat were slim. He would pray for a way out of participating in the seemingly never ending carnage. The final entry of this historically priceless journal would occur when German mortar fragments would severely wound him. Although he would experience "Victory in Europe" day from a yearlong convalescence and depressing separation from his bride, a separate book alone could be written about his involvement in World War II. Weiss's war injury would take a year in a Wala Wala, Washington military hospital to convalesce resulting in a lifelong numbness he would desperately attempt to interpret. Yet from 1945 to the Vietnam War where the term PTSD evolved, he couldn't figure out why even though he came back from the war alive, only his body really came back.

As if he had not had enough tragedies already, Weiss would sadly watch the love of his life mortally deteriorate from cancer and have a son and daughter show no compassion for a man simply wanting to find his up to now elusive happiness. However, this book goes much deeper than his filial relations. As an American born from nonreligious parents of the Jewish faith, Jess Weiss neither understood the Hebrew language nor its customs. Seeking an understanding of his creator, he became a Christian Scientist as well as devoured the writings of celebrated mystics, particularly Joel Goldsmith. Once again, the feeling of guilt, especially in terms of his adopted religion would follow Jess Weiss. He would be mocked as a guest by a radio program's obnoxious disc jockey for his beliefs to the point where Weiss walked out of the broadcasting booth. Not quite knowing why his W.W. II experiences were jumbled up inside him producing a psychologically frozen effect, Weiss desperately sought an understanding as to its reason. Labeling himself a "Willie and Joe" type of guy, Weiss read "unauthorized" Christian Science material. This was his way of describing himself as a nonconformist, patterned after Bill Mauldin's W.W. II cartoons. This depicted American soldiers with Mauldin's archetypal characters of "Willie and Joe," two weary, unkempt soldiers who stoically endured the carnage of war, despite its bitter grimness. Weiss's analogy was from his wartime experiences.

Despite Weiss being elected as a "First Reader" in his church, Christian Science viewed anyone who read unauthorized literature as heretical and rebellious. Although Mauldin's cartoons made him a hero to the common soldier, Weiss's studies of the mystics made him feel like a traitor to his religion and his wife, also an adherent. Weiss elaborated; "Any claim I had to spirit came from the mystics I read outside Christian Science. It came from heretics and malcontents. Every time I stepped onto the dais to read I was fooling somebody, if not myself then the church. Let's face it. I was still a Willie and Joe G.I. I was constitutionally allergic to brass, even though I was the brass." After years of marriage, his first wife Shirley died. So devastating was this to his children that Jess's marriage to Joyce six months later would unfairly result in his daughter permanently limiting her fatherly contact and his son self imposing a complete truncation of relations, another painful cross Jess Weiss was forced to bear. It was only Joyce who would accept her husband's quest to find himself, whether it be Goldsmith's offerings or what he describes as follows; I became something of a mystic myself in the process of writing. The march of my titles metaphorically tells my story; "The Vestibule," "Overcoming the Fear of Death and Dying" and "The Adam and Eve Fantasy" as well as "A Soldier's Journey Into Mysticism." Indeed it does, as demonstrated by his prolific output including this book.

With all the aforementioned, Jess Weiss in his mid 90's asserts his view of PTSD; "There's nothing "Post" about the trauma of war while it's happening to you. There's nothing "Post" about the impulse to retaliate that a war fuels in a human heart. "Let loose the dogs of war, "Shakespeare wrote and he was right. There's no putting the pack back in the kennel. Atrocities occur in wars for the simple reason that war is atrocity." How does this mental state occur in the life of this author? You, the reader can take your pick. Maybe it started in 1941 at Basic Training. At Camp Croft, South Carolina, Weiss wrote; "Kike" was my drill sergeants' favorite synonym for "Weiss and "Hey Jew Boy" was their corporal's shorthand for "Hiya, Jess." Possibly it increased in 1943 after the author married his bride in Brooklyn, N.Y. Weiss stepped on a transport ship crossing the North Atlantic where he wrote about the rough seas and gale force winds; "We were so seasick we stopped complaining about the chow. Nobody could keep the chow down. Please God, we prayed, let us reach port, any port, anything to stop the rocking." Docking in Oran, Algeria fighting horrible heat and mosquitos only revved up the insanity. On a hill in El Quettar, North Africa, he was asked to dig trenches in the concrete hardened mud. Maybe his PTSD progressed further, as he described the following; "We dug like maniacs and somehow got six holes gouged out of that stuff. We flung ourselves onto them just as the mortar shells arrived. Two of the holes took direct hits. Four of my buddies were torn apart beyond recognition. I don't mean beyond recognizing who they were. I mean recognizing them as human beings."

Whether it was the aforementioned, the horror at Omaha Beach of watching the rest of his men machine gunned to death on June 6th, 1944, or his using their lifeless bodies as protection against German machine gun fire, his own mental turmoil continued to fester. Despite the author taking as his own the slain sniper's diary, his conscience was operational enough to write his cousin one day before he was wounded of the perils of war. Named Howard Johnson, Weiss's relative was a man foolishly itching for combat action despite having a wife, baby and a stateside assignment. Reacting to Johnson's triplicate request for transfer to immediate overseas combat duty as sheer insanity, Weiss exhorted; "The majority of us are fighting to just keep alive." What he didn't tell anyone was his private observations that really explained the ugliness of war. This Weiss only inscribed in deceased Nazi officer Fritz Hobble's diary, now being used as his own. There is an eerie photo of this book in WTSW. There are entries like "June 29, 1944: "Today I stood watching the mail clerk while he went through the dozens and dozens of letters and packages. As I watched, I saw him write on each one the words DECEASED, MISSING, Wounded, on letters from mothers, wives, sisters, friends. The guys we knew so well, we knew so little about them. They were our buddies and now life and war goes on as though nothing had actually happened. There are new men coming in and gradually everything is just a horrible nightmare that doesn't go away when the night does."

Lasting many years after his war ended, Weiss remarked; "I lost count of the nights I woke up under my bed, not in it. I lost count of the nights I woke up with cold sweats and dives for cover that didn't wake Shirley, or she pretended they didn't. When I did sleep I thrashed. Every night I saw the faces of my buddies dying inches from me. The mortar shells that never hit me square in the war blew me to fragments in peacetime." Possibly it was the era of W.W. II that can account for this silence. In W.W. II not only was Jess Weiss's letters home censured for contents, but the American antiwar protests seen in the mid 1960's and early 1970's would never be allowed to occur between 1941-1945. Expanding on the cliche "Silence is Golden," Weiss teaches us all a very important historical lesson of the times; "The W.W. II home front knew nothing about combat or combat soldiers beyond what they read in censored newspapers or heard on censored radios. Combat deaths went unreported. Newspapers never showed dead soldiers, body bags with dead soldiers in them or flag draped coffins being offloaded at Dover Air Force Base. Combat injuries were not tallied, not officially for the home public. We had no Internet, no cell phones. We had military V-Mail, a one-page handwritten letter that was censored, then microfilmed and forwarded in place of the original. Our officers removed anything they thought might dampen civilian military enthusiasm for our military mission. Our loved ones had no idea of what we were going through." We were one big John Wayne movie for all we knew."

However you read Jess Weiss's book, and whatever conclusion you come to in regard to his observations, opinions, and statements, one inarguable assertion he makes rings true in the myriad of memoirs written about PTSD as well as the effects of war and killing. For in Weiss's final determination of all wars, combat stress, atrocities as well as his entire world War II experiences, surely something General Patton would disagree with this "Willie and Joe type of guy's" synopsis of, is as follows; "Do you want to drive a human being insane? Here's a sure formula. Batter him and his buddies into killing machines. That's what basic training does to you. Next, send him to strange lands populated by people with strange customs speaking strange languages. There, subject him to long periods of unrelieved tedium and petty tyranny. Then expose him to periodic doses of stark terror in combat, kill his buddies at random. Make sure half their deaths are grotesque, almost jokes. Finally, to finish the job, make sure he's totally isolated from his family, his friends, his sweetheart, his wife, his child, Good. Now sit back and watch the payoff." Whether you agree or not with the following statement, or any of Jess Weiss's book, this brave man's efforts to explain his life's ordeal has important lessons that the most impartial, stoical of readers will find impossible to ignore. Certainly this is among the most memorable, significant memoirs of the century that will stand the test of time. A must read!… (mehr)