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| Other Clay: A Remembrance of the World War II Infantry | 
 enlarge | Author: Charles R. Cawthon
Creator: Jerry Cooper
Publisher: Bison Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $1.88
You Save: $14.07 (88%)
New (12) Used (14) from $1.59
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 1031635
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 180
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.5
ISBN: 0803264429
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.541273092
EAN: 9780803264427
ASIN: 0803264429
Publication Date: April 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: store sticker
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Product Description
Other Clay is a survivor’s account of World War II infantry combat, told by a front-line officer whose 116th Infantry Regiment landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day and fought its way across Europe to the Elbe. Charles R. Cawthon joined the Virginia National Guard in 1940—to avoid being drafted and to spend his expected one year of service in officer training. When America entered the war, his division was among the first shipped out to England, where they spent two years preparing to spearhead the largest amphibious military operation in history. On the beaches of Normandy, on June 6, 1944, the U.S. Army suffered its heaviest casualties since Gettysburg. The losses were greatest among the infantry companies that led the assault, and Cawthon describes firsthand the furious and deathly chaos of the daylong battle to get off the beach and up the heights. Reduced by casualties to half its preinvasion strength, Cawthon’s regiment still managed to fight off German counterattacks and engage in an all-out pursuit across France before the Germans counterattacked again at the Ardennes forest. Thoughtful, candid, and revealing, Cawthon’s memoir is a deeply felt and carefully recollected study of men confronting the face of death—their fear, their courage, their hunger and exhaustion, their loyalty to one another, and their miraculous and unreasoning ability to go one more step, one more day, one more mile.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Other Clay February 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found this book interesting, though somewhat less than I had hoped. Still, it is a good book for anyone interested in the actions of D-Day and in particular, the 29th Divisions role in the invasion. Cawthon tells a good story but I found myself wanting to know more about certain things he talked about. Most of which I'm sure he never knew the details of, but it appears that he had probably, simply forgot most of the facts needed to flesh out the story lines.
 The Way To Write A Personal Memoir. November 26, 2007
"Other Clay" by Charles R. Cawthon.
Subtitled:" A Remembrance Of The World War II Infantry".
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2004.
This is a well written personal memoir, written the way all personal memoirs should be written: less on the preliminary training, more on the actual combat experiences. The author's emphasis is on the action in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), with a fairly brief introductory section highlighting the people involved, the training involved and the feelings involved in anticipation of the D-Day landings.
Charles R. Cawthon (1912-1996) served with the 2nd Battalion, 116th Regiment, commonly known as the Stonewall Brigade of the 29th Infantry Division. Recall that the 29th Infantry Division shoulder patch was a circle made up of blue and gray, in a yang and yin arrangement, meaning the both Northern and Southern outfits in one division. Cawthon was part of the gray section; the southern group that once, years ago, had been commanded by confederate General Thomas Jackson, "Stonewall" Jackson. Cawthon's personal memoir begins with his company, "H Company", Virginia National Guard, mustering in the armory to take the oath as they entered federal service on 3 February 1941. In the next 33 pages or so, the author describes preparation for the invasion of Europe, moving quickly through an analysis of the ethnic make-up of the men in the command, to their training and their shipping overseas. The entire division went on the Queen Mary, a Cunard Line ship that was fast enough so that she could outrun German submarines. On page 22, Cawthon describes how the Queen Mary cut the cruiser, HMS Curacao in half with loss of 332 seamen, "... there was a bump and then a tremor underfoot, and a shout that we had run down one of the escorts." With this quiet and un-excited writing, the author recounts how 332 men died in oil-coated cold seas. On page 33, Charles Cawthon quietly describes how a man, in training on the beach went up to an uncovered mine, and, for some reason, tapped the top of the mine with the toe of his boot. "There was a blinding flash and a clap of sound, and he disappeared as by a magician's sleight of hand. The illusion terminated in pieces of anatomy plopping into the sand around us." This is presented in quiet, well-written prose. The landing on D-Day, 1944, the ineffectiveness of their precautions to keep weapons dry, and the casualties suffered (more than 50%by Cawthon's 2nd Battalion) are all quietly recorded in good English prose that keeps you reading and reading.
This same understatement is carried throughout the book and throughout the ETO, from the battles in the hedgerows of Normandy, to Operation Cobra, to the time in October 1944 when he is wounded in the leg. Even when describing K-rations, his prose is understated, "...the soldier ate the part least offensive to his taste...For me, the sugar cubes were the most familiar tasting, and, in the belief that they yielded energy, I consumed them heavily... " He expresses concern with the replacements, whose way to war "... was hard, crowded and dull. ... to join strangers in facing death or great injury". He describes the replacements as innocent and somehow pathetic ..."I felt an ancient among children, knowing and dreading what they were to meet". (Page 81).
I found this book to be well worth reading.
Bathos on the Beach May 29, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an interesting book. Perhaps not as good as I'd initially thought, and hoped, but good nonetheless. From what I can tell the book wasn't written till the late-80's early 90's, although it is based in part on a trio of articles written in the 70s and early 80s. I think it suffers - as a memoir - from having been written so long after the event. Notably, there is an almost complete absence of spoken word interactions, and in a way it almost seems like Cawthon is writing about someone else.
I really, really liked Cawthon's modesty. Also, the changing character of the division over it's months in battle was interesting. The importance of personal relationships was brought out well, both at the peer level, and at the superior level (e.g., his good first impression with Gerhardt, which made things a little easier with this notoriously difficult man for Cawthon later). The emphasis he put on psychological casualties and the 'voluntary' nature of being a rifleman in the US Army in WWII was enlightening, and isn't something I've seen much - or any - discussion of elsewhere (although ... Bowlby and Milligan do so for the British Army, as does Mowat for the Canadian Army).
OTOH, there was strangely little information about the mechanics of running an infantry unit in battle (unlike, say, Wilson or Johns). I also tired of Cawthon's repeatedly going off on little tangents then pulling up short with "but that belongs in a later part of this story" - he did that a lot with Howie, in particular.
On a minor note; the maps were ok, but I think are the worse for having been borrowed from another context rather than having been drawn specifically for this one. OTOH, those official history maps really are nice, and it is profoundly unlikely anything similar would have been produced just for this book.
Would I recommend this book? Well, yes, but not to all and sundry. The 29th Inf Div has been blessed with a number of very good biographers (Johns "The Clay Pigeons of St. Lo", Balkoski "Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Division in Normandy" and "Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944", and Cawthon), and I would recommend it to anyone who's read either or both of those others, but perhaps not as a first read.
I'm glad I read it, but I think it'll be a long while before I read it again, or even refer to it.
 Forgotten Details February 27, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I gave up on this book in the third chapter. The author remembers very few details and readily admits he has to rely on his scanty notes. To fill the pages he uses his vast knowledge of the Civil War and ancient history.
The Dupes of the Game March 11, 2006
6 out of 22 found this review helpful
The Yanks (as the British call us) put very little trust in government or politicians, and with good reasons. An old proverb explains that "Dumb crooks go to prison, while smart crooks go into government".
U.S. politicians have a long history of selling the Yankee people out to British foreign policy. President Wilson sold out America during World War I by helping the British sleeper cell to propagate propaganda, declaring war against the Central Powers, and setting up the Committee on Public Information to "sell the war to America". After the war, the Yanks felt betrayed and said "NEVER AGAIN".
Then came Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR, too, sold the Yanks out to British foreign policy. After the British sounded the alarm that the Russians were winning against Germany and all of Europe would fall to the Soviets, FDR provoked the Japanese to hit at Pearl Harbor and sat on his hands to let it happen. Afterward, the Yanks went war crazy and were sent to Europe to fight the Germans so as to stop the Soviets' westward advance. Churchill, who held both American and British citizenships, was instrumental in his work through the British fifth column to get the Yanks back to Europe (see Nicholas John Cull's "Selling War").
In 1941 when Pearl Harbor was allowed by FDR to be hit, a young Charles R. Cawthon joined the 116th Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division of the United States Army. This book, then, is a memoir of a lad who was caught up in "the gambling table of governments" as Tom Paine once put it. Cawthon was sent to England to train for the D-Day invasion at Normandy, then went in with the second wave at Omaha Beach. He writes "Next I recall standing beside a small, rural hotel and the bodies of three Americans who had met final appointments there. The corporal of a live squad of the 16th Regiment deployed around the hotel told me that the dead had been there when he had arrived; he did not know their outfit". Cawthon spent most of the day trying to find his squad and is eventually reunited with his unit.
It is interesting to note that he was a Yank fighting for the Union Jack: "Assuredly, that night I did not speculate on whether the shade of Old Jack might be drawn from the shadows to this battle-swept place on the coast of France". FDR's Pearl Harbor created American-powered British Empire - strange bedfellows indeed! I wonder what George Washington or Andy Jackson were thinking at the time - were they rolling in the graves?!
Lady Liberty had served America well until the twentieth century when the politicans rejected her and sold us out to British empire. It is past time to return to our libertarian roots and chart the course for the future of a free America rather than a corporatist Amerika, British-style. In conclusion, the reader will finish the book probably with a heavy heart from having spent a day in time with poor Cawthon and "the dupes of the game".
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