FORWARD

What those men endured…

During the first week of February 1946, a young Army lieutenant, Jack Gieck, spent part of his ten-day leave observing the court-martial of Sergeant Judson H. Smith in London, England. Smith was the centerpiece of an enormous military conspiracy involving the torture of thousands of American soldiers at the Army's 10th Replacement Depot barracks located near Lichfield, in England's midlands north of Birmingham. Initially, the story broke on December 5, 1945, in the military's Stars and Stripes soldiers' newspaper. Unfortunately, the Nazi Nuremburg tribunals overcame the public news interest of the story. In the 1970s, to his inestimable credit, Jack sought to bring to light one of the most remarkable chapters in American military justice history. He subsequently obtained the trial record and interviewed surviving witnesses of the Lichfield court-martial. His first-hand account is recorded in Lichfield, The U.S. Army on Trial published in 1997 by the University of Akron Press. When Greg Huckabee served as chair of the American Bar Association's (ABA) Military Law Committee, he came across Jack's book. He later invited Jack to give a presentation on this court-martial at an annual ABA meeting in Chicago. Jack knew there was more to tell about this story, and that it deserved a second look. He sent the court-martial record to Greg, encouraging him to follow up and share the full story. What you read here is the result of 18 years of research, reflection, and story-telling. While Greg spent 27 years as a Regular Army judge advocate, his brother, Dale Keiser was an English and composition teacher at Mead High School in Spokane, Washington. They collaborated to share a special story inspired by Jack Gieck but lived by thousands who came to war to do their duty. What those men endured needs telling. While based on the transcript, which is quoted at length, what happened behind the scenes outside the courtroom needed explanation. Many of the names and their testimony are factual. We added what we believe happened in some cases to fill in courtroom situations, but we introduced several fictional characters to interrupt what was a lengthy and unheard-of 55-day court-martial. The souls involved have all long passed, including Jack Gieck. Nevertheless, the tension of military justice and good order and discipline are questions that continue to haunt our Armed Forces as the Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, Private First Class Bradley Manning, Private Lynndie England, and other cases remind us. No generation of Americans since 1775 has avoided the scourge of war. Freedom is not free. It requires eternal vigilance and sacrifice, as Revolutionary War patriots reminded us. There are two rules in war. Rule number one: young men and women die. Rule number two: you cannot change rule number one. At the hands of the enemy, such sacrifice is the price we pay for what we enjoy as a nation, but this sacrifice need not be at the hands of our own people.