absenteevoter

Name:      Mitchell Kaidy
Service:     US Army
Unit:          345th Infantry Regiment
Specialty: Combat Infantry
Status:       Veteran - WWII

I am a Lebanese-American who is a combat veteran of WW II, having served as an infantryman in Gen. Patton's Third Army through three campaigns. "For meritorious service in ground combat against an armed enemy," I won the Bronze Star Medal as well as the combat infantry badge and three battle stars. I'm an award-winning journalist and am listed in "Who's Who in America" and "Who's Who in the World."

in 1963 I contributed articles with a team of reporters that won a Special Citation from the Pulitzer Prize Committee, and in 1993 I won a Project Censored Award individually.

Please read my personal accounts and experiences of WWII below:

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All of us who trained in the Infantry in World War II -- every mother's son of us -- can attest to the discipline that was drilled into us. Today I look back and wonder whether it could have been otherwise. But then? Well, then, you couldn't have expected us to like it.

I had just reached 18 when I entered the Infantry ("with dirt behind their ears"), 19 when I was baptized by combat. A little of the rebel remained in me somehow. Not withstanding the stern, even punitive warnings against GI's keeping combat logs, I kept one.

I had more opportunity than most to compile one. Sent overseas as a heavy machine gunner, I was reassigned to heavy mortars, then made mail clerk and assistant company clerk. Having started to study journalism before being drafted, I was often detached from the front lines to write citations for Silver and Bronze Stars as well as battlefield commissions on various battered American and German typewriters. I must have batted out 15 citations.

To this day, I can recite details of some of the most sonorous deeds of my fellow combat infantrymen of Co. D, 345th Infantry. To this day, some of those deeds bring tears to my eyes.

My own combat log is somewhat cryptic, but it does evoke some of the places, names, conditions, personal feelings, and the bold sweep of the Third U.S.Army in World War II.

At first I secreted the log in my clothes. After the war, however, I carried it for awhile in my wallet, then stuffed it in drawers and suitcases wherever I lived. Without the Golden Acorn News feature and the solicitation by the Army History Institute, however, I never would have been reminded of my log.

It's not always legible and not always clear, but its mere existence in the face of severe and repeated admonitions against keeping one is, to me, a minor miracle. For this reason I don't think very many others will be uncovered.

The text of Mr. Kaidy's combat log have been transcribed below. The original document is also available in Adobe Acrobat format.