Eddie Slovik was the fifth child of an immigrant family that settled in Michigan. The family was poor and during the Depression his father was often unemployed. At age 12, Eddie took to supplementing the family income by stealing. He was arrested several times as a teenager and joined a gang. Finally, he was sentenced to a reformatory for car theft. He was released after the U.S. entered WWII. He got a job in a factory and got married. He knew he would be a poor soldier, but he was classified as “4-F” (unfit for service), so he didn’t have to worry. However, on his and Antoinette’s first anniversary, he was drafted. The Army had reclassified him as 1-A because a pressing need for more soldiers. At boot camp, his prediction of his unsuitability as a soldier was clear. His drill sergeant gave him a wooden gun because he was so incompetent with guns. His wife suffered a miscarriage when he was away and the grief-stricken Eddie wrote her 376 letters in the 372 days he was away.
He was a replacement. On the way to the front, he came under bombardment and got separated from the others. He hooked up with a Canadian unit. He stayed with them for two months and was safely away from any combat. Eventually, he was turned over to American military police and escorted to the 28th Division. He was not charged with desertion because soldiers being away from their units was common. He told his new officers that he would not participate in combat and would run away. They ignored him. Many G.I.’s cracked and Eddie was one that didn’t take much to crack. He deserted, but turned himself in after a few days with a written confession that stated that he would probably desert again. He was urged to take back the confession and the threat to desert again. He was told that if he just returned to his unit, all would be forgiven. He refused the deal. A court martial found him guilty of desertion and sentenced him to be executed. Normally, these sentences were reduced. 21,049 Americans were court-martialed for desertion in the war. No American soldier had been executed for desertion since the Civil War. Eddie wrote a letter to Gen. Eisenhower begging for clemency and it was expected he would get it. Unfortunately, Ike was in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge and decided to make an example of Slovik. Soldiers were deserting or shooting themselves because prison (with the war near an end) was preferable to death. On Jan. 31, 1945 he was executed by firing squad. He was the only American deserter to be executed in WWII and the only deserter to be executed in the 20th Century. A poor sap who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
– https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-execution-of-pvt-slovik
– Amazing 610-2
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