Many of us hope to leave behind some sort of
legacy after we’re gone. For a lucky few, this means accomplishing things in life so
heroic (or
infamous, you know, whatever) that volumes will be written about us, movies made, and future generations left to talk about where they were when we momentarily imperiled a baby.
Sadly, most of us will never achieve that level of greatness. For many, becoming a historical
footnote becomes our only
bronze, or even occasional
silver medal of fame. And if any man were said to have achieved this notability runners-up prize in
1944, it would be Army
Private Eddie Slovik. In that year he became the first man since the
civil war to be executed by the
United States Military for being stupid.
Yes, yes, I’ll admit, there was perhaps a smidge of bad luck on Eddie’s part. He was thoroughly made an example of, and certainly suffered from more then a little
naivety. Eddie foolishly attempted to engage his superiors, earnestly trying to appeal to their sense of mercy and emotion (something which we all know that great men don’t have, especially in a time of war). He tried to convince them to rise above their blind, almost mechanical adherence to the law, and in the end, Eddie got himself shot….quite a few times, I might add.
Read his story well, as it should send an icy warning down your spine whenever you next find yourself standing at a vexing juncture, debating between actually doing something wrong, or seeking help to prevent you from for doing something wrong, as, apparently, only an idiot like Eddie would do.
This rare picture of Eddie in uniform is
required to accompany any mention of him.
Every recounting of Eddie’s star-crossed tale always starts from well before the war, in his youth. By all accounts, Eddie was a bit of a troublemaker. At the age of 12, he and some friends
anachronistically broke into a
foundry and stole some metal, generations before countless
meth addicts would make that crime into a thriving industry.
And it didn’t end there. Years later he was arrested for selling
bootleg DVD’s, more then 50 years before anyone would possess the technology to watch them.
Note: The modern reader should strive to keep this analysis in proper perspective however, as even the worst 1940’s delinquent is pathetically innocent when compared to today’s average, facially-tattooed, Satan-worshiping, public school student.
Say hello to your daughter's prom date. Don't worry; he's working toward becoming a mortician.
As he got older, Eddie was able to enjoy many of the perks that came with being a
convicted felon. One of which was being classified as “unfit” to
serve or even be
drafted into the military. This is a pretty big deal when the world is over-indulging on the delectable parfait known as
WWII, the single deadliest conflict in human history (it comes topped with a couple maraschino cherries of
nuclear weapons used against civilian populations). As humanity performed unconscionable atrocities upon itself, many of which are still seared into our collective nightmares, Eddie was working for a plumber in
Wisconsin (boooooring).
But, like so many fun moments of slipping through the cracks, it wasn’t bound to last. The army eventually discovered that many criminals are actually pretty good at killing people and began to change their policies. In late
1943 Eddie was one of those effected, and he became officially re-classified as “the cat’s pajamas”, which, in
1940’s slang, means acceptable
infantryman.
This piece of pictorial propaganda was photoshopped by the Nazis in an attempt to show American servicemen as "caring" and "humane",
thus demoralizing them. As professional killing machines, soldiers never hug.
When Eddie finally made it to his unit he made the prudent, if not completely pansy decision that the inside of a cell was preferable to the outside world of mortal combat. After all, he had spent a significant chunk of his life behind bars already. [Let me just interject here and say that as a youth who grew up playing
Wolfenstein 3D and other various, fictional, pixilated accounts of WWII battlefields, Eddie’s decision not to single-handedly save anonymous villages from Nazi occupation or perform other feats of heroics that all WWII infantrymen were obviously capable of leaves me greatly disappointed in him.]
In passing up the front lines, Eddie forever gave up his chance to assassinate
a crazed, double chain-gun wielding Hitler.
At first, Eddie told his
captain that he was “too scared” to serve in a rifle company and asked to be assigned to a
rear unit. The captain, knowing that grueling combat against the
Nazis would help Eddie build character and look good on his post-war resume, denied his request and sent him to a rifle company like the dick he was.
The next day, when Eddie actually found and joined up with his
rifle company…well, I’m no soldier, but let’s just say that writing a note telling the army that you're planning on
deserting is a lot like writing some guy a note telling him that you're planning on banging his wife. In very few situations is that a good idea. Yet that’s
exactly what Eddie did next. Few people would have guessed that he’d be so ballsy at proclaiming his unballsyness.
Eddie was given several opportunities to shred his note and go back to dying out in some forest somewhere, but he declined each time. He even went so far as to write a second note onto the back of the first one when asked to, stating that he knew what kind of shit he was getting into. Going back to my earlier analogy, that’s like taking the note you wrote to that dude saying you were going to bang his wife, and then writing a
second note on the back of it saying, “
no, seriously, I’m going to bang the shit out of your wife.”
Needless to say, Eddie was quickly
court marshaled and
sentenced to death. The court declined to note the irony behind this outcome on the record.
Not surprisingly, this wasn’t exactly the result Eddie was hoping for. He appealed, even going so far as to write
Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the European front and future president, asking for
clemency. Eisenhower, facing rising numbers of desertion and some of the toughest fighting of the war, formally responded with “
Meh”, sealing Eddie’s fate.
As tragic as this was, what's even worse is that this scene
Later, after the
sentence had been carried out, some officers felt disbelief over what happened. Colonel Guy Williams (not the
60’s fashion model) a member of the court martial board that convicted Eddie said that he didn’t think “a single member of that court actually believed that Slovik would ever be shot. I know I didn’t believe it.”
He later went on to say “I thought it was going to be one of those
surprise birthday things. You know, we tie him up, blindfold him, have him say a few
last words and then BAM, we hit him in the face with some cake like those timely and hilariously cutting-edge
Three Stooges.” Then, the officer extinguished his cigarette on the face of a dead German and just for shits went out and single-handedly saved a small village from the Nazi advance.
Did you know? In 1944, it took less time to issue and carry out a death
As you can imagine, many of Eddie’s fellow
rank-and-file soldiers that ended up fighting and dying in his place also took sympathy on him. One of his firing squad executioners was quoted saying:
“I got no sympathy for that sonofabitch! He deserted us, didn’t he? He didn’t give a damn how many of us of us got the hell shot out of us, why should we care for him?”
Touche’ sir, touche’, but how many Nazis have
you killed with your bare hands? Only 12? Well then you obviously have little room to talk...
Anyway, I think we’ve all learned something here today. First, don’t ever threaten to do something wrong and ask for clemency as that just tells people you’re probably a pussy. Better to actually
be a pussy and run away to begin with. Secondly, and as I’m sure you’ll agree more importantly, don’t
ever piss off former president Eisenhower, especially if he comes back from the dead and becomes supreme commander of an
undead army (As “supreme commander” is the appropriate title for a leader of an undead army).
On second thought, just try not pissing off anyone named Dwight, as they tend to be a little hardcore.
At any rate, a couple decades have gone by and now papabear nostalgically wants himself some candy cigarettes. Why? BECAUSE I CAN’T FIND THEM ANYMORE. Now, I know they are still out there; I could buy them off the internet if I REALLY wanted too. But I don’t. I want them in convenience stores again for no apparent reason. I’m not even sure they tasted very good, but I want to be able to buy them.
