Wyoming History in the First Person: Looking for Dad in World War Two Continued (3 of 3)

Later, Back in Wyoming

As I attempted to turn my father's random war stories into history, discomforts stirred. His account of WWII was too inclusive, placing him in the entire war from a troop ship in the Pacific on December 7th, 1942, to the German surrender on May 8th, 1945.

Contradictions kept popping up in the documentation. And many incidents he recounted seemed too . . . well, too crafted.

A major puzzlement in 1st Lt. Max Crowe's account had to be confronted. In WWII the U.S. Army was forced to expand from barely a quarter million men in 1940 to over eight million in 1945. It grew by training up civilians and was desperate for experienced leadership.

We know that in the closing months of the war Max successfully led a recon platoon across Germany, and that he was decorated for heroism while doing so. But he also claimed he'd been involved in the fighting from the beginning, starting in North Africa early in 1943.

So why, in 1945, would he be still be a mere lieutenant and platoon leader?

Too much happened at once

Discordant facts turned up when I was double checking some dates.

I remember Max saying that, on Attu in the Aleutians, "the Japanese gave us a tough fight." He also said that during the Battle of Kasserine Pass in North Africa, "the Germans really whipped our butts."

However, Max could not realistically have been present at both battles; nor could he have fought in both plus the subsequent invasion of Sicily, another action he placed himself at.

We're looking at the four month period between late February and early July, 1943. The Aleutians were 6,000 difficult miles from North Africa and Sicily. The landing on Attu came after the Battle of Kasserine Pass, which had occurred only ten weeks previously. And the Attu landing preceded the 1st Infantry Division landing on Sicily by barely another ten weeks.

Too much of the war was fought in too short a time in too many places too far apart for one young officer to have participated in them all.

The wheels come off

I continued checking dates. Max's expansive construct of his war came crashing down when a major link pin dropped out.

Gen. Allen's letter (reproduced in the preceding post) is the sole document supporting Max's claim that—previous to serving under Allen in the 104th Infantry Division in Germany—he had already served under him in the 1st Infantry Division in Africa and Sicily.

Max said he was in the U.S. recovering from serious wounds suffered at Normandy when Allen requested that he be assigned to the combat-bound 104th when released from the hospital.

The strong, laudatory language of Allen's letter distracted us and seemed to corroborate Max: "It is urgently requested that Lt Max U. Crowe be re-assigned to the 104th Infantry Division with the least practicable delay prior to the redeployment of this division in combat . . . he had an outstanding combat record."

The general contradicts the lieutenant

However, Allen's short letter contains four facts which, individually and cumulatively, disprove Max's version of how he spent WWII.

We'll deal with three now, the fourth later.

First, the 104th was still training in Oregon when, according to Max, Allen wrote the letter. At that time the 104th was not preparing for redeployment to combat, as Allen's letter states. It had yet to serve in combat.

Second, Allen's letter requested that Max be reassigned to the 104th. But a transfer from a hospital to the 104th would have been a new assignment, not a reassignment.

Moreover, Max could not have been re-assigned to the 104th division unless he first became dis-assigned somehow. Nothing in Max's account suggests when or how that might have happened.

Third (and, to an historian, embarrassingly obvious now) Allen did not write his letter during the claimed time period: that is, between Max's purported service with the 1st Infantry Division and his known service with the 104th Infantry Division. Allen wrote the letter thirteen days after the war in Europe ended.

Allen's strong language and high praise of Max bedazzled. It was easy to overlook the date: 21 May 1945. The war Allen and Max fought together had already been won.

Allen's letter is an indisputable fact; Max's explanation of it is demonstrably untrue. So how does Allen's urgent, but post-war, request fit into what we know about the end of WWII in Europe? And what does the answer to that question reveal about Max's version of his war?

First, we can discount the significance of Allen's hyperbolic language. Even major generals have to shout sometimes to jar the military bureaucracy into action.

Allen's phrase "redeployment in combat," for example, was clearly a rhetorical exaggeration. With Germany defeated, the 104th was included in preparatory plans for an invasion of Japan. But the division's prospect of resuming combat was many months away.

The discussion boils down to a single question to be answered. Why, immediately after the war, would Gen. Allen write a heartfelt request that Lt. Max Crowe be reassigned to the 104th?

What probably happened

Documented events and dates, combined with some reasonable speculation, suggest that Max spent the closing weeks of WWII much differently than he later claimed.

Max was captured by the Germans and reported "Missing in Action" on 28 March 1945. On 16 April his status was reported "Returned to Duty." But Max had not returned to duty with the 104th. If he had, Allen would have had no reason to request his reassignment to the 104th.

So where was Max assigned instead? The most likely answer is that Max sat out the closing weeks of WWII in Europe in a replacement depot.

If so, his prospects would have been grim. Reduced to just another lonely file buried in a bureaucratic stack, even after four years in the Army he would have had faint hope of a timely discharge.

We can reasonably conclude that Allen's forceful and laudatory letter was intended to spring Max from a replacement depot so he could rotate home with other long-serving troops from the 104th.

Reading the letter from that perspective, we can perceive Allen's mind set behind every statement.

The sergeant contradicts the lieutenant too

As to the fourth flat out contradiction of Max's version of his WWII service, Allen's letter and Jones's letter (written 46 years later) inadvertently confirm each other. Max did not spend the earlier years of the war fighting here, there, and everywhere.

Jones and Allen both declare that Max was with the 104th "from the beginning." (Jones's letter says 1942, which is correct; Allen's says 1943, which was when he took command of the division.)

Together their letters establish that during the period November 1942 - midsummer 1944 Max was not, as he later claimed, fighting in North Africa, the Aleutians, Sicily, and Normandy. He was in Oregon training with the newly organised 104th Infantry Division, which did not join the fight until late October, 1944, in Holland.

1st Lt Max Crowe's actual war

Now that Max's fanciful construct has collapsed, what can be salvaged from the wreckage? What do the extant documents tell us—for certain—about Max Crowe in WWII?

First, the documentation proves Max was in fact a war hero. He and the 104th Infantry Division fought a six month war. They were six consecutive months of almost constant, mobile, and sometimes desperate combat.

Allen declared Max "had an outstanding combat record and is a distinct asset to his unit." He led reconnaissance troops across Europe, right up front where the shooting was happening. He was praised as a good officer; was a POW briefly (and may have escaped from the Germans); was wounded; and was decorated twice for acts of courage.

The loose collection of Max's ribbons preserved at the Wyoming War Memorial Museum is consistent with this account.

Much of Max's administrative record is documented as well, from when he signed a Wyoming National Guard enlistment form in 1941; was called into federal service with the 115th Cavalry Regiment; graduated from OCS; was assigned to the 104th Division during its organisation in 1942; trained with the 104th in Oregon before it was shipped to Europe in 1944; and was honorably discharged in 1945.

In short, we know Max Crowe was a veteran of WWII who experienced some of the most ferocious fighting in Europe. And we know he acquitted himself well.

But we also know he exaggerated his combat record after he returned to Wyoming. Extravagantly.

Other, different, truths

As Max Crowe's son I'm neither shocked, embarrassed, nor even surprised by this discovery. I have other memories of my father.

He taught me to read the pinprick dots on his marked blackjack decks. He demonstrated how he could draw out his choice of the five top cards. Despite his big, clumsy looking hands, the move was performed so smoothly it could not be detected, even when he did it slowly and while holding the deck in plain view.

He also demonstrated how, when reaching across the table to pay a winner, he sometimes surreptitiously dragged back chips from a distracted player's pile.

These were skills Max perfected while serving in the Army for four years, three of those years and some months in Oregon. He practiced on fellow GIs, not Germans.

Years after the war I watched Max run a blackjack game in a bar in Dubois. A cigarette dangled from his lips and a drink waited at his elbow. He was carrying on a conversation with two acquaintances standing at the end of the table while casually dealing losing hands to four players.

Except for his war stories and decorations, the only heirloom Max bequeathed the family is a set of loaded dice.

Max was good natured and affable; down to earth and seemingly modest; probably smarter than he pretended to be; attractive to women and popular with men; a master at playing a role that was important in his life—drinking companion.

He was also an opportunist. Some would say a rogue. (He appeared in an earlier post to this blog as the 18 year old impregnator of my precocious 14 year old mother.)

Gamblers, like magicians, are experts at distraction. Allen's post-war letter gifted Max with a strong cover story for elaborating his WWII service.

During those later years when hanging out at the Big Horn Bar in Ten Sleep, Max would have consumed far more alcohol than he paid for, thanks to his skill at keeping listeners enthralled. They were so taken with his tales they elected him Most Decorated Soldier from Wyoming in WWII.

Max Crowe was a war hero who left us a fine collection of war stories. As an historian I can't sort out the true ones from the counterfeit. So as a writer and raconteur I've had to abandon a lot of good material, reluctantly.

The 104th Infantry Division in Germany