Carl F. Heintze

— Carl F. Heintze —

Willow Glen Resident

All they had

Carl Heintze ~ Main Page

Commentary: Memories of the Great Depression not all that great

by Carl F. Heintze
Saratoga News
Article Launched: 10/23/2008 03:56:29 PM PDT

When the Depression came, I was a boy of 7 or 8. (It depends on when you date the beginning of the Depression, or the Great Depression, as some used to call it.) So I don't remember much about it.

I do, however, remember when the banks all closed, because my mother thought it was more or less the end of the world. The banks had never all closed that way, all at once, and besides she had worked as a secretary at the local bank and she simply could not accept that you couldn't get money out of its coffers.

Banks were like the stock market of today. They just kept on dispensing money as if it had no end, as if there was no bottom to the pot.

But the bottom was gone. It suddenly had disappeared and with it, a lot of illusions about our world.

Certainly the bottom of her world had disappeared. I don't believe she had much money in or out of the bank, but it was the sudden lack of security that made it so difficult for her.

I also remember once going to Sacramento with her to see my grandparents and seeing hundreds of homeless, jobless men circling the blocks along the Sacramento waterfront, waiting to get into a soup kitchen to get something to eat. I'd never seen that before (and never saw it again because I didn't live in Sacramento). But it stuck in my mind. They looked so dark, so sad, so without hope.

Fortunately, I lived in a small agricultural town north of San Francisco. The Depression had an impact on it, but not much.

No one went hungry. Everyone could grow food to eat and they did. Times were tough, but they weren't that tough. Or so it seemed to me, anyway.

I did have one uncle, however, who had his ranch foreclosed on and had to move to a smaller place, though he still seemed at least partly solvent, just not the owner of as much land as he once had held.

I think of all these things because the rumblings and groanings coming from New York City and Washington seem to portend another time of economic agony. It's as if we have come full circle and we're facing the same kind of crisis all over again.

Of course, not a whole lot of people remember the Depression, although most of them have surely heard of it.

With those that do recall, I remember the days that followed 1929 — although 1932 seems a more likely date for its beginning to me. The`30s were a time of trial for the United States — for the world, for that matter. Communism and fascism were on the rise in part because of the fears the economic disaster had awakened everywhere.

Although President Roosevelt told us, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," fear was there for all to share. It permeated most everything. The nation seemed paralyzed and it was years before it seemed to have gotten itself together.

In many ways the coming of World War II awakened our spirits again because it gave us a tangible foe to face. The enemy during the Depression had been anonymous, surreptitious. Perhaps that's why we equated it later with Communism, even as Communism adopted the trappings of a secret society (phony names like Josef Stalin, cells with secret memberships, party cards and the like).

The Depression also, it seems to me, marked a sudden change of course for our country. While it is true this probably happened more rapidly than it might have because of World War II, the changes in our economy brought on by the Depression were fundamental. They are with us still.

It's possible, even probable, that we are due for more changes in our economics because of what, for lack of a better term, we can call the mortgage crisis. The over-extension of credit, which seems at the bottom of the present mess, has to be resolved some way. How we do that will have a lot to do not only with how we get out of our quandary, but also on how we do business in the future.

Already legislators are talking about trying to prevent the gargantuan salaries paid to some corporation leaders and about putting tighter reins on how money is lent. I'm not enough an economist to know whether things like this are going to make a difference. All I am observing is that change is in the air and change often is difficult to experience.

But at the same time I also have to note that, as Lincoln or someone said, the one sure thing we are to experience in life is change.

Neither the nation nor we are static. We change. It changes. And what we know today will not be what we are to know tomorrow.

And what tomorrow will be like is as uncertain as what today has become.

Carle Heintze can be reached at carlheintze@juno.com

All They Had ~ Stories of War and It's Aftermath
Carl's book of short stories based actual WWII events.
Published by Robertson Publishing

Willow Glen Resident March 20, 2002

Thinking about the infantrymen ... every day

By Carl Heintze

There's an Internet site devoted solely to infantrymen.

I don't suppose I should be surprised at that. There are websites devoted to almost anything. In the old days of the Internet, they used to be called newsgroups. They are places where people with like interests can exchange information, ideas and messages. They run the gamut of almost every human endeavor.

And there's no reason why infantrymen shouldn't have one.

Because infantry combat is one of the most intense experiences one can experience--life threatening most of the time--most old infantrymen, including myself, tend to remember every detail of that time, now fortunately long ago.

And there's something about being an infantryman that makes it unique, that creates a kind of fraternity. First, you carry anything you're going to need in the performance of your duties with you, most of it on your back or around your waist.

Secondly, although you're an individual and you can walk and talk like a human being, you can't really move about freely. You're really at the mercy of others--your squad, platoon or company leader. They tell you where to stand, march, lie down, run or stand still.

You don't get to argue about this. Infantry combat is the business of moving groups of men around, or, as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (published by the army) puts it, being in the infantry means "to close with the enemy, kill or capture him and occupy his ground." (I suppose I amend this to say "his or her ground," as women are getting closer and closer to ground combat.)

Most of the business of the infantry and infantrymen is just that--moving from one place to another to stand or lie on a certain strategic section of the earth.

There often doesn't seem any apparent reason for where you're sent, how long you are there or the fact that you're not doing anything while you are there. Presumably someone higher up the chain of command has a reason for you doing what you're doing--although you can't always count on that.

In the fog of war often nothing makes sense--not to you, not to the enemy, not to anyone.

All these things make being an infantryman tough. You're out in all weather; you are constantly afraid of getting wounded at the least and killed at the most; you don't have a clue as to what you're doing; and you can't do much on your own to better your lot.

I was thinking of all these things because of the members of the 10th Mountain Division and the 101st Airborne who have been trudging around the Afghan mountains in the snow at 8,000 to 10,000 feet looking for various Taliban and Al Queda infantrymen who are trying to kill them (and vice versa).

The weather is miserable, the troops are carrying large packs and moving slowly because of the altitude, and they are meeting more resistance than they anticipated.

I know how they feel. I spent most of the winter of 1944-'45 trudging through the snow along the Belgian-German border while the enemy fired artillery and mortar shells at me and my fellows and occasionally shot their machine pistols and rifles in our direction.

We slept out in all weather, were wet, cold, frightened and pretty much unaware of why we were where we were. Most of us were replacements. We had been shipped overseas as unattached individuals, destined to be inserted into the ranks of companies decimated by the fall fighting at the end of the war.

Most of us were ill trained. Some of us were physically handicapped. (I remember one deaf soldier who somehow had made it to the front in spite of being unable to hear incoming shells, and a second who arrived without a trigger finger.)

Most of us had gotten into the Army to do something else and had been transferred into the infantry when casualties were far larger than the campaign's commanders had anticipated.

Still, we learned. If we didn't, we were wounded or killed. And we weren't unique. The enemy side had rounded up the same set of misfits--men and boys with bad stomachs, the old and the young who were sent into the final battles of the war because there wasn't anybody else to send.

I'm sure that's not the case in Afghanistan. The American infantry there are all volunteers. They've spent months training, and they are magnificently equipped and supported. They know why they are where they are and what they're supposed to do.

But it's still the infantry; and it is still infantry combat--single men moving about in the cold and the high altitude, being shot at and shooting back, trying to dislodge the enemy from the high ground, still dealing with fear and trembling.

As an old infantryman, my heart goes out to them. As an old infantryman, I know how they feel. I don't wish to take anyone's place. One war in one lifetime is enough.

And I hope others do, too.

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