Rewatching this Amazing series

It's been many years since I've watched it and it's entirety and I always find something new.

Parachute Infantry Good afternoon! I recently came upon the recent opportunity to purchase a multi-autograph signed copy of Parachute Infantry by Webster. The version is the Easton Press leather edition. The seller has no certificate of authenticity...but the signatures appear to be the real deal.

Long story short:

• During his trial, he escaped and was caught the next day.
• His main defense was that he was high on marijuana and qualified for an insanity plea.
• He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment at USP Lewisburg.
• He appealed his conviction in 1946 and lost.
• He was in USP Lewisburg during the 1950 census.
• He was released sometime before 1959 when he was convicted of speeding in North Carolina.
• He retired as a painter and was killed while riding a moped. (And no, the other driver wasn't "Grant Winters.")

Biography before WWII

Floyd Wilkinson Craver was from Cabarrus County, North Carolina. His Army enlistment record identifies him as Floyd W. Craver, Army serial number 34311403 (which means he was a draftee, just like most everyone else in the airborne). He enlisted at Fort Bragg on July 17, 1942. The record gives his birth year as 1921, lists his residence as Cabarrus County, and identifies him as single, without dependents. His civilian occupation was listed as an unskilled occupation in textile manufacturing.

The Murders (taken from the denial of his appeal)

On 27 May 1945, the accused and one Private First Class Dewey H. Hogue, both members of Company I, 506th Parachute Infantry, spent the afternoon together in the company of two girls, during which time the four of them consumed one bottle of cognac.

 At about 1930 hours, the accused and Hogue took over a German civilian car and returned to their billet at Zell am See, Austria. Here they went to their separate rooms and cleaned up, and at about 2030 hours, having secured the services of a German chauffeur, they started out for a ride in the direction of Saalfelden, Austria. Accused rode in the back seat and had a bottle of cognac from which Hogue saw him take one drink. Hogue and accused were each armed with a German Luger.

Several miles from Zell am See, the car ran out of gas, and the accused stopped a passing German civilian car, the driver of which was wearing the uniform of an officer of the German Army with white arm band. The accused noticed and desired a pistol which the German carried, which he was entitled to do, and accused attempted to take it away from him. Hogue interceded and told the German to drive on.

The car started off and was about 20 feet away when the accused fired three to five shots into the rear of the car, using Hogue’s Luger which Hogue had left in the rear seat of the car. Accused’s own Luger was then in his holster. The German car veered into a ditch about 40 yards away, and Hogue recovered his gun from accused and told accused to go to the car and see if he had hit the driver.

Accused then went to the car in the ditch, pushed the driver, backed up, fired a shot and said, “That finished him. I shot him in the head.” Accused then entered the car and attempted to start it. As Hogue and the German chauffeur approached the car, the accused said to Hogue, “Something happened. A man was murdered,” and said to the German chauffeur, “Don’t look in or there will be two of you.”

Hogue urged accused to get out of the car, and he emerged with his luger and another smaller pistol, remarking, “This one has never been fired.” Hogue testified that at this time the accused appeared to be insane, that his eyes were sticking out of his head and were perfectly red, like balls of fire.

The accused and the German chauffeur then started down the road in the direction of Zell am See to search for gasoline, Hogue stating that he would remain with the car. As soon as they rounded a curve, he started for Saalfelden to secure an ambulance and report the matter. Enroute thereto he heard a shot from the direction taken by accused.

Upon arrival at the CP in Saalfelden, Hogue reported the events of the evening, and a searching party was organized and an ambulance called. When they returned to the scene, the car in which Hogue and accused had been riding was gone. The other car was still there, and the occupant was examined by a medic and found to be dead as a result of four or five shots through the body and one shot through the head. He was identified as Edward Altacher, captain of the German Army.

Meanwhile, the accused and the German chauffeur had met some Russians on the road and asked them if they knew where there was any gasoline, and accused fired in front of the feet of the Russians. Accused and the chauffeur continued to a farmhouse and then returned to the car and found that Hogue had departed.

Accused got the car started, and he and the chauffeur returned to the farmhouse, which was about five kilometers away, where they were served a few drinks. A sketch of the vicinity of the farmhouse drawn by the German chauffeur was received in evidence, without objection by defense. During the thirty or forty minutes they were in the farmhouse, the accused appeared to be normal except for being a little drunk. 

Major Martin R. G. Watkin and Warrant Officer Dodd of the British Army, while driving by, noticed and stopped to check the German civilian car parked in front of the farmhouse. Accused immediately came out of the house, stated that it was his car, and asked for a push to get it started, to which Major Watkin agreed. It was apparent that accused had been drinking, but his conversation was rational; he recognized them as being British; knew that it was his car and that it would be necessary to push it in order to get it started.

An American truck came along at this time and slowed down or stopped when accused called for help, but when the British major said that he was helping, the truck started on. Accused thereupon fired two shots at the truck, which stopped, and Sergeant Charles E. Grant dismounted and came back demanding to know who had fired the shots, and accused replied that he had. Grant asked for his gun, and accused thereupon fired at Grant, who fell over backwards in the road. Grant was not armed.

The accused then turned and started firing at Major Watkin and his companion, Warrant Officer Dodd, both of whom ran to take cover. The German chauffeur who was present saw no one else firing. Major Watkin ran down an alley where his body was discovered a few minutes later by Warrant Officer Dodd and an American soldier who had been in the truck with Grant. 

Grant was still lying in the road with a bullet wound in his forehead. Doctors were secured from a nearby German hospital, and Grant was removed to the hospital. Major Watkin was found to be dead as a result of a bullet wound.

Shortly after midnight, the accused was apprehended near the hospital, about four or five hundred yards from the scene of the shooting, at which time he was staggering and evidently under the influence of liquor, although his speech was intelligible and he appeared to be in control of his mental and physical faculties. At the time of his apprehension, he was in possession of a .32 cal. pistol which did not appear to have been fired.

The accused was confined in the Regimental Guardhouse and later, upon order of Headquarters, 506th Parachute Infantry, dated 13 August 1945, was placed in confinement in the 101st Airborne Division Stockade. The confinement order was received in evidence, without objection by defense.

Although he had not been released or set at liberty by proper authority, he was not present at a roll call formation held on 9 September 1945 at approximately 1630 hours and was not found after a search of the entire stockade and all installations. He was apprehended by French civilian police near Chablis, France, on 9 September 1945 in the afternoon and turned over to American Military Police.

After the defense introduced evidence to the effect that accused was insane at the time of the shootings on 27 May 1945, the prosecution called as a witness the Division Neuropsychiatrist of the 101st Airborne Division, who had examined accused on 24 September 1945 and who had previously studied reports and findings of a prior examination of accused, dated 16 July 1945, by a board of five members convened under the provisions of AR 600-500.

A study of the reports of the Board revealed that two members thereof considered accused sane, two considered him insane, and that the fifth member was undecided. The Division Neuropsychiatrist testified that in his opinion, based upon a study of the reports and findings and his own personal examination, the accused was sane at the time the alleged offenses were committed and at the time of trial; that he was intoxicated at the time the alleged offenses were committed on 27 May 1945; that at the time of the alleged offenses on 8 September 1945 he was able and is now able to tell right from wrong and to adhere to the right; and that in his opinion the accused was not suffering from a psychosis or from psychoneurosis at the time of the alleged offenses or at time of trial.

Why was he released early

I have not found his parole file, clemency file, Bureau of Prisons release record, or War Department release order. But the broader WWII Army justice system makes early release plausible.

A 1946 House Committee report showed how large and uneven that system was. From 1942 through 1945, there were 63,876 general courts-martial in the United States, producing 60,110 convictions and 3,766 acquittals. Another 25,000 to 30,000 general courts-martial were estimated overseas. By November 30, 1945, the Army held 33,741 general prisoners.

The Army also executed soldiers, but never for minor offenses. From December 7, 1941, to February 22, 1946, Army courts-martial carried out 141 death sentences:

• 71 for murder,
• 51 for rape,
• 18 for murder and rape, and
• one for desertion.

The system was harsh, conviction-heavy, command-influenced, and inconsistent. The same House report criticized excessive and disparate sentences and noted that five-year sentences for AWOL were not uncommon.

The same system also had built-in clemency. General prisoners could apply for relief, and Army authorities could restore men to duty or release them on home parole if their offense was not considered evidence of fixed bad character and their prison record was good. The Special Clemency Board reviewed large numbers of long-term wartime confinement cases after 1945 and reduced many sentences.

That is probably the key to Craver’s release. His sentence was real. His imprisonment was real. But a postwar life sentence could later be shortened through clemency, parole, or sentence remission. We know that the Board denied his appeal in 1946, but it is possible that it recommended clemency later.

Other murder cases where an American soldier was the criminal show the same pattern.

• Sgt. Horace T. West murdered 37 Italian and German prisoners of war during the Biscari Massacre. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life, but was paroled after roughly 14 months, reduced to private, and returned to duty.
• Lt. Robert A. Schneeweis was convicted after the killing of unarmed German civilians in 1945 and later received sentence relief and parole.

Benjamin Schneider’s article “Making Killers: Hate Training and the US Army’s War in Europe, 1942–5” helps explain the climate behind some of these outcomes. Schneider argues that the Army trained soldiers to hate the enemy to make them more willing to kill, then faced the legal and moral problem of punishing soldiers who carried that violent conditioning into criminal acts. Craver’s case was not a clean battlefield atrocity case—he killed a German officer, a British officer, and shot an American NCO after the fighting in Europe had ended—but he was still processed inside the same postwar military justice environment.

i only watched the show once so i can name only a few

Spiers

Compton

???

???

???

Winters

Talbert (?)

Don Malarkey

???

Doc Eugene Roe

Nixon

In the start of episode 8, Nixon and winters are seen looking across the river in clean new uniforms. When it cuts back to them leaving the river one minute later, they are back in their old dirty uniforms from Bastogne