Reflecting on two conflicts
John Costello’s war is not Michael Hall’s war, but it’s war all the same.
Hall, 33, a captain with Battery P, 5th Battalion, 14th Marines, has served two tours of duty in Iraq and expects to go back for a third.
Costello, 84, was drafted into the Army in 1943 and served in the 14th Infantry Battalion, returning at the end of WWII as a first lieutenant, earning a Silver Star – among other medals – from combat in Europe.
Hall admires Costello’s generation. “There are just as good a people around today but as a nation, as a whole, they had higher standards in individual conduct than we do today … My grandparents didn’t have squat. They lived during the Great Depression … You will never hear them complain about not having a car when they were 16. Everybody today thinks they are owed certain things.”
Hall lives in Post Falls with his wife and 2-year-old daughter.
“The taxpayers pay me to be ready for war. Do I want to go? Certainly not. I don’t want to miss six months of my daughter’s life. … The taxpayers don’t pay me to be ready to go when I want to go.”
Costello, a retired farmer and former Lincoln County commissioner, now lives in a gated community in the South Hill area of Spokane. He can spend a leisurely summer afternoon admiring his dahlias and petunias. But in the span of a deep breath, he can return to early 1945 and the terror of being surrounded by German tanks in Paderhorn. He can’t forget the sight that American troops later stumbled on: Unfriendly, patriotic and pregnant German females housed in baby factories for Hitler’s super race.
“I went back to Germany in the mid-‘90s. I went to some of the towns I’d been. … I asked about those baby factories. What happened to them? Nobody knew a thing.”
In separate interviews, Hall and Costello reflect on war then and now.
Costello
Q. What do you remember about your first time in combat?
A. We assembled at 2 a.m. I never imagined such force. I would say the whole division was moving, and it was dark and some of the tanks were backfiring … we kept moving until daybreak, about four hours. … I remember seeing my first German casualty, it kind of tugged at my heart a little bit. He looked just like some classmate of mine in high school.
Q. If you were a young man today, would you volunteer to fight in Iraq?
A. No … I feel sorry for the people that are in it. It’s not my bag … I don’t think it relates very closely at all to anything I experienced.
Q. Do you think the draft should be reinstated?
A. Oh, God, no. I don’t think it would be beneficial. I don’t know how he (Bush) is gonna do it, but if he could declare victory (in Iraq) and say “We won, come on home,” similar to what happened in Vietnam.
Q. What did you tell your children about your war experience?
A. Not very much. … I don’t think my family has any real desire to know much about it. (Laughs) My wife doesn’t hold combat veterans in very high esteem. She says the smart guys stayed out of it. Only the dumb ones got into the fight. … Her father was a Marine in World War I but a noncombatant. The fireworks on the 4th of July are enough for her.
Q. Is life sacred in war?
A. Always. There are people who act differently, and some just can’t take it, bail out and run. Others fire when they’re told to and do as they’re trained. There is always – I shouldn’t say always, but usually – a humorous side to sadness, and I think it is one of those things you have to be there and experience to appreciate the humor, when guys are scared to death one minute and sitting up laughing at themselves the next.
Q. Do you think there will be another world war?
A. Not in our lifetime. … What do they say about history? It’s going to happen again if you don’t learn anything from it? I think the nuclear threat is such … that is something to sweat. There are nuts who will blow themselves up with ordinary TNT. What would they do if they got ahold of the big one?
Hall
Q. What do you remember about your first time in combat?
A. Sitting in gas masks, our full MOPP gear (chemical protective equipment) on for hours at a time when we had rockets, which were very inaccurate. They never hit us. They had such poor technology. … That was the roughest time, sitting for an hour or two, in the summertime in 120 to 130 degrees. The first time or two it was scary, very scary, because you couldn’t breathe it was so hot. But after three or four times you see the results of what they can do to us. Well, you know, if they hit us, they got lucky. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it has been. If they hit you, they just got lucky.
Q. Do you ever wish you could have fought in WWII?
A. I don’t think so. … They (WWII vets) certainly saw far more casualties than we did. America is crying over 2,000, and let’s compare the ratio. Not a lot of people came back from World War II. The ones that came back were the ones who went last. And you went, and you were there and you made it through the war or you passed on, and that’s the way it was then. … (Now troops in combat serve tours of duty) … I had to go to Iraq twice. I’d rather go twice than stay there three years. I think for sanity’s sake, about six months is all anybody can take.
Q. Do you think the draft should be reinstated?
A. I don’t want drafted people around me. I’m not a slave driver. I’m a leader. You can’t lead people who don’t want to be led. … If we had to save every inch of this land, we would need the draft. If you had another world war, there will be a draft.
Q. What will you tell your children about Iraq?
A. I probably won’t tell them. … It’s not something my daughter needs to know. I do want her to know the world is not a nice place. I don’t think I need to give her examples. I want her to have an appreciation for America – and the freedom not to like America.
Q. Is life sacred in war?
A. I think it is. I had two Marines wounded very badly on a mission that I sent them on … They went over a 50-foot cliff. It was a serious accident. Their Humvee was destroyed. … (Chokes up) I’m sorry … They had to take a hatchet and cut through the bulletproof glass and get them out … and I didn’t think they were going to walk again … Neither one of them broke a bone, which blows my mind … My Marine lives are incredibly sacred. I would say my Marines are worth more to me over there than any stupid person doing stupid stuff in this country.
Q. Do you think there will be another world war?
A. Sometimes I think about it, and I do ‘cause I’m a Marine. … Sometimes I think we’re at the forefront of it, then I think about it another way: No, we have too many world powers. But there were world powers during WWII. Are we any smarter now than they were 60 years ago? I have to think not.