The Live Mike Podcast In our work as veterans oral historians and recordists, we most often explore the positive after effects of serving in the military, stuff like the learning of discipline, honor, and the value of hard work.
Sometimes, veterans tell us about the darker side of things, such as the lingering effects of physical and moral trauma, the nightmares. The horrific stories sometimes abruptly stop, often in mid sentence. "That's all I'm going to say about that," we are warned. And we turn off the camera.
I've often written about what I find to be a glaring blindspot in most veterans oral history work--the brutal truth. Or perhaps it is the raw truth of the brutal experiences endured by some veterans.
Of course, oral history ethics remind us to go only as far as veterans want or can go with their own stories. We often suspect that there is so much more to some of these stories that won't get told--things like how the act of killing and committing unspeakable violence shapes veterans for the rest of their lives.
I write this because I've recently come across something that takes all this to a whole new level!
Although this podcast is not about Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran in WWII, it references something very interesting about Sheeran's 411 days in combat.
Charles Brandt: “To help me understand his combat days, Sheeran tracked down [for me] the 45th Infantry Division’s hardbound, 202-page official Combat Report, issued within months of World War II’s end. The more I learned from both this report and Frank himself, the clearer it seemed to me that it was during his prolonged and unremitting combat duty that Frank Sheeran learned to kill in cold blood."
Mentioned in this podcast is a passing reference to the 45th Infantry's reported ruthlessness toward German POWs. They took no prisoners. That was the order of the day, perhaps from Gen. Patton himself.
To my point that most veterans oral histories do not “go there” with veterans—for whatever reason—there certainly are these darker stories lurking in the shadows. Here’s something stunning from Sheeran’s Wikipedia page. Such candor is very rare:
Sheeran later recalled his war service as the time when he first developed callousness to the taking of human life. Sheeran claimed to have participated in numerous massacres and summary executions of German POWs, acts which violated the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the 1929 Geneva Convention on POWs. In later interviews with Charles Brandt, he divided such massacres into four different categories:
Revenge killings in the heat of battle: Sheeran told Brandt that, when a German soldier had just killed his close friends and then tried to surrender, he would often "send him to hell, too". He described often witnessing similar behavior by fellow GIs.
Orders from unit commanders during a mission: When describing his first murder for organized crime, Sheeran recalled: "It was just like when an officer would tell you to take a couple of German prisoners back behind the line and for you to 'hurry back'. You did what you had to do."
The Dachau massacre and other reprisal killings of concentration camp guards and trustee inmates.
Calculated attempts to dehumanize and degrade German POWs: While Sheeran's unit was climbing the Harz Mountains, they came upon a Wehrmacht mule train carrying food and drink up the mountainside. The female cooks were first allowed to leave unmolested, then Sheeran and his fellow GI's "ate what we wanted and soiled the rest with our waste". Then the Wehrmacht mule drivers were given shovels and ordered to "dig their own shallow graves". Sheeran later joked that they did so without complaint, likely hoping that he and his buddies would change their minds. But the mule drivers were shot and buried in the holes they had dug. Sheeran explained that by then, he "had no hesitation in doing what I had to do."
Although I am not surprised there is a connection between the ruthless violence of war and the mobster underworld, I've never heard this connection made before as a result of oral history interviewing.
Perhaps what I should say is that it is rare for such dark stories and experiences to be made public. In fact, Brandt reveals that of all the topics he discussed with Sheeran, including The Irishman's killing of Jimmy Hoffa, Sheeran was most reluctant to talk about his time in the war. The brutality of war was somehow too painful for the mafia hitman to discuss. ... See more
“The more I learned from Frank himself, the clearer it seemed to me that it was during his prolonged and unremitting combat duty [during WWII] that Frank Sheeran learned to kill in cold blood.”
― Charles Brandt, "I Heard You Paint Houses"
On episode 15 of the Live Mike Podcast with Mike Romigh, we talk with Charles Brandt, author of I Heard You Paint Houses, a true confession by famed mobster Frank Sheeran about his hit on Jimmy Hoffa and other crimes.
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Mike Romigh Charles Brandt #truecrime ... See more
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