It’s from a synopsis of the citation for the Distinguished Service Cross Springfield’s Howard Ingling was awarded after the battle for Dernot, France.
With “Hail to the Chief” nearly audible in the background it says: “The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Howard H. Ingling, Captain (Infantry), U.S. Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations ... in action against enemy forces from 14 August 1944 to 10 September 1944. Captain Ingling’s outstanding leadership, personal bravery and zealous devotion to duty exemplify the highest traditions of the military forces of the United States ...”
More detached, the second voice is the official voice of retreat. Its source is a report on the battle from the U.S. Army’s Seventh Armored Division. It states, in objective terms, the reason for the withdrawal from Dornot and the banks of the Moselle River.
“The steady attrition of troops, caused by heavy enemy fire, lack of food and water, and the impossibility of securing any rest, made it apparent that the bridgehead, seized at so high a cost, was untenable.”
The third voice, found in Ingling’s letters, is a private voice. It’s the voice of a man trying to explain to his wife — his “Dearest Mickey Pal” — what it was like to witness and to try to lessen the flesh-and-bones cost with which the bridgehead was seized.
The letter was written in September of 1945, which means it was a year after the battle before Ingling found his voice. And his story of the battle opens with the intensity of the most dramatic scene from “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers.”
With the world shaking and men falling dead in the street, he tells his wife, “Right away, we realized what a dangerous place the patients were in.”
He speaks not of the danger to himself but to his patients, on whom he seems to be singly focused. The larger story, which will appear in tomorrow’s edition, tells more of that fearful day.
But for now, we’ll advance to a night or two after the withdrawal when he enters a tent warmed by a little gasoline stove and whose inhabitants welcome him like a hero.
It’s a welcome Ingling finds oddly unwelcome.
“I explained to them that they had me all wrong — that I was scared to death and that I was surely just plain me.”
Like most of us, Ingling thought of heroes as being somehow above the rest of us, separate and apart. And in the aftermath of the violence, suffering and bloodshed, Ingling as a person seems not to want any kind of separation from others. He wants instead to share their warm tent and their company — and to write a letter to his wife.
Of the voices I heard while working on the story, his voice rings the most true.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.
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