Eddie Slovik: A Casualty We Shouldn't Forget
Trigger warnings: war, WWII, capital punishment violence, injustice
I can tell you exactly how I came to discover the tragic story of Eddie Slovik (1920-1945).
It started with research for one of my books, “what happens to people who escape from prison.” It wasn’t my clearest search, but I was working for the punishment if escapees are caught. It led to a couple of legal explanations on lawyer’s websites, then a Quora [page] answering “Say you escape from prison, and while you are on the run, your innocence is proved. What happens?” Wait, do people really ever escape from prison? Yes, but they almost always get caught.
Then came the Wikipedia rabbit holes...
“ADX Florence,” the most secure prison in the U.S.
“Federal Medical Center, Carswell,” the most secure prison for female inmates
“Nuwaubian Nation.” Because who ends up in supermax? Answer: terrorists, spies, leaders of organized crime, and inmates with “an extensive history in other prisons of committing violent crimes, including murder, against corrections officers and fellow inmates.” So, that’s nice.
“Capital punishment by the United States federal government.” And that’s where I first saw his name. One click and it began...
Eddie Slovik was 23 when he was drafted to the U.S. Army during World War II in 1944.
Eddie In Wartime
He started his basic military training in Texas on January 24, 1944. In August, he was dispatched to join the fighting in German-occupied France as part of Company G of the 109th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 28th Infantry Division ("Eddie Slovik").
“Slovik appeared frail, timid and somewhat of a misfit, definitely not military material,” and he “made no secret of his unwillingness to enter combat,” (Simmons).
On October 8th, 1944, after surviving at least one artillery attack, told his superior officer, company commander Captain Ralph Grotte’ that he was “‘too scared’ to serve in a front-line rifle company,” (“Eddie Slovik”). He didn’t hide the fact that he was scared. He later said that artillery attack, which occurred six weeks prior, showed him he "wasn't cut out for combat," (“Eddie Slovik”).
He asked to be re-assigned to “a unit in the rear area,” (“Eddie Slovik”) and told his Captain he would run away if he was forced to stay on the rifle unit. Grotte refused his request.
And so, the next day, he “walked several miles to the rear and approached an enlisted cook at a headquarters detachment, presenting him with a note which stated:
I, Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik, 36896415, confess to the desertion of the United States Army. At the time of my desertion we were in Albuff in France. I came to Albuff as a replacement. They were shelling the town and we were told to dig in for the night. The following morning they were shelling us again. I was so scared, nerves and trembling, that at the time the other replacements moved out, I couldn’t move. I stayed there in my fox hole till it was quiet and I was able to move. I then walked into town. Not seeing any of our troops, so I stayed over night at a French hospital. The next morning I turned myself over to the Canadian Provost Corp. After being with them six weeks I was turned over to American M.P. They turned me loose. I told my commanding officer my story. I said that if I had to go out there again I'd run away. He said there was nothing he could do for me so I ran away again AND I'LL RUN AWAY AGAIN IF I HAVE TO GO OUT THERE.
— Signed Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik A.S.N. 3689641,” (“Eddie Slovik").
The cook took him to a military police officer, then to Groffe who told Eddie to destroy his letter before he was taken into custody. The next man Eddie was sent to, Lieutenant Colonel Ross Henbest echoed Groffe’s suggestion and gave Eddie the choice to “tear up the note, return to his unit, and face no further charges” (“Eddie Slovik”) and every time, he refused.
Henbest then told Eddie to add a message to his note, this one stating he “fully understood the legal consequences of deliberately incriminating himself, and that it would be used as evidence against him in a court-martial,” (“Eddie Slovik”).
After he was put in the custody of the division stockage, division's judge advocate general, Lt. Col. Henry Sommer, offered him a similar plea deal to the others, adding that he could transfer Eddie to a different unit. Eddie turned it down and here’s why:
Why, Eddie?
Eddie had been to prison before the army, in fact, “[his] criminal record… classified him as morally unfit for duty in the U.S. military (4-F)” and him and Antoinette were “happy and secure in the belief that ex-convicts would not be drafted,” (Simmons, pp. 5) until he was reclassified when the U.S. needed more soldiers. His criminal record came from a kid, a troublemaker, who was arrested for things like “petty theft, breaking and entering, and disturbing the peace,” ("Eddie Slovik"). His first arrest? 12 years old. I don’t think most people would have called him an upstanding citizen, but, as far as I know, he never deliberately hurt anyone.
Overall, “Slovik appeared frail, timid and somewhat of a misfit, definitely not military material,” and he “made no secret of his unwillingness to enter combat,” (Simmons).
Keep the following two things in mind: Eddie had been to prison and preferred it to wartime and prison time was what every other deserter was getting.
He thought he could handle a dishonorable discharge. “As he was an ex-convict [it] would have made little further impact on his civilian life as a common laborer, and military prison terms for discipline offenses were widely expected to be commuted once the war was over,” ("Eddie Slovik").
“Slovik made it clear he did not consider himself a fighting man. He feared weapons so much that his drill instructors had to furnish him with dummy grenades and escort him through the infiltration course,” (Simmons). I mean, come on. Eddie didn’t have reason to think his punishment would be any different. He had seen many deserters get these sentences. And there were a lot of deserters.*
At his hearing,
“...Slovik had elected not to testify. At the end of the day, the nine officers of the court found Slovik guilty and sentenced him to death. The sentence was reviewed and approved by the division commander, Major General Norman Cota. General Cota's stated attitude was ‘Given the situation as I knew it in November, 1944, I thought it was my duty to this country to approve that sentence. If I hadn't approved it—if I had let Slovik accomplish his purpose—I don't know how I could have gone up to the line and looked a good soldier in the face,’" (“Eddie Slovik").
After that sentencing, “On December 9, Slovik wrote a letter to the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, pleading for clemency… Eisenhower confirmed the execution order on December 23, noting that it was necessary to discourage further desertions,” (Simmons).
As I learned in a Washington Post article “The Army’s 1944 “Procedure for Military Executions “manual doesn’t even call such sentences death by firing squad,” (Gibbons-Neff), there was a specific set of procedures (listed in the article) not all of which were followed in Eddie’s case. The firing squad couldn’t even kill him with the first round bullets, eleven of which hit him. The fact doesn’t fit in with the rest, somehow, for me. Eddie died before they could reload.
You Were Only 24 Years Old, Eddie?
Before being drafted, Eddie was working at Montella Plumbing and Heating in Dearborn, Michigan . He had been married to Antoinette Wisniewski for one year, a bookkeeper for Montella Plumbing's owner. The couple lived with Antoinette’s parents.
“Bitterly unhappy, he tried to forget his sorrow by writing long letters to Antoinette. During his 372 days in the Army, he wrote 376 letters...” (Simmons). In his last letter to his wife, he said “Everything happens to me. I've never had a streak of luck in my life. The only luck I had in my life was when I married you. I knew it wouldn't last because I was too happy. I knew they would not let me be happy,” (Simmons).
Antoinette Wisniewski Slovik
Poor Antoinette. In 1945, she learned she had become one of many American women widowed by the war. However, she was not informed of the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death, that he was executed by a firing squad of twelve “hand-picked” men until William Bradford Huie interviewed her for his book “The Execution of Private Slovik” in 1953. That’s eight years without knowing that her husband was the “only American soldier to be [court-martialed] and executed for desertion since the American Civil War,” ("Eddie Slovik"). The only deserter of WWII of 40,000, the only one out of the 2,864 convicted to be killed (Fraser qdt. Huie). Death sentences for desertions at this time were rare, with only 49 given, “usually only for cases involving rape or murder. [Eddie] was the only soldier executed [for] a ‘purely military’ offense,” (Simmons). President Eistenhower said he hoped Eddie’s execution would be a “deterrent” to other soldiers considering desertion.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine asking “why mine?” “Why did my husband have to be the example?”
At some point after Antoinette learned about the execution, the Army claimed they had no responsibility to notify her, that instead, Eddie should have (Simmons).
According to an article, published in 1979 in New York Times, the day after Antoinette’s death, “Antoinette Slovik, Widow of a G.I. Shot by Army for Desertion in 1945,” Antoinette spent the remaining twenty-six years of her life “trying to clear her husband's name.” Perhaps through the media that has been created from Eddie’s story, she has. But every one of the seven U.S. presidents she and others petitioned refused to grant Eddie a posthumous pardon (that is: Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter). This meant she never got the money she was owed from his insurance.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagen agreed to move Eddie’s remains from Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial in Fère-en-Tardenois home to Detroit's Woodmere Cemetery beside Antoinette with money raised by former Macomb County Commissioner Bernard V. Calka, a Polish-American World War II veteran (“Eddie Slovik"). This was meaningful because in France he was buried “alongside 95 American soldiers executed for rape or murder. Their grave markers are hidden from view by shrubbery and bear sequential numbers instead of names, making it impossible to identify them individually without knowing the key,” (“Eddie Slovik").
Eddie's Relevance In 2021 - 76 Years After His Death
The U.S. is still in wars and while we don't currently have a draft per say (how wealthy people in the U.S. government get poor people to fight their wars is a topic for another day), there are still soldiers who are labeled as "deserters." The Gibbsons-Neff article serves as proof that we are still having a conversation about this issue.
I don't support the death penalty as punishment for any crimes for many reasons.
My state, Virginia, abolished the death penalty March 24th of this year. Virginia's first execution was in 1608, back when it was a colony. Captain George Kendall was the first to be killed via the death penalty in the American colonies. He was accused for spying for Spain, in case you were wondering (Andone). So, there is a long history. There is also a lot of history as Virginia had the second-highest number of execution in the U.S. after Texas.
"Virginia has executed a higher percentage of its death-row prisoners than any other state. That high percentage was the combined product of poor defense representation and the most draconian procedural rules in the country, under which defendants were denied any judicial review of legal claims that their lawyers failed to raise at the right time or in the right manner, even when through no fault of the defendant a lawyer missed a filing deadline," ("History of the Death Penalty").
Virginia, under Governor Ralph Northam, is the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty.
“'We can’t give out the ultimate punishment without being 100% sure that we’re right, and we can’t sentence people to that ultimate punishment knowing that the system doesn’t work the same for everyone,' Northam said," (Lavoie).
I have a soft spot for the almost forgotten of history and the victims who died without any reparations.
At his execution, a member of the firing squad told Eddie to “try and take it easy… [to] try and make it easy on yourself- and on us.” Eddie said not to worry about him, some say he was being defiant when he replied, "I'm okay. They're not shooting me for deserting the United State[s] Army- thousands of guys have done that. They're shooting me for bread I stole when I was 12 years old,” (Simmons).
*I saw a range of estimates for the number of deserters during World War II:
"[desertion] had become a systemic problem in France, [especially after the] surprise German offensive [that had] with severe U.S. casualties...” (“Eddie Slovik").
“According to Mr. Huie, about 40,000 American soldiers deserted under fire in World War II. Of these, 2,864 were convicted…” (Fraser)
“21,049 American military personnel were convicted of desertion…” (Simmons)
All 3 sources said 49 convicted deserters of WWII were sentenced to death, but only Eddie was executed.
"Nearly 50,000 American... soldiers deserted from the armed forces during World War II," (Garner).
For more about WWII "deserters," you may be interested in reading or listening to this interview from Charles Glass' book The Deserters. "'WWII 'Deserters': Stories Of Men Who Left The Front Lines," quote, "tells the stories of three very different men whose lives dramatize how the strain of war can push a soldier to the breaking point — and how the line between courage and cowardice is never simple."
Works Cited
Andone, Dakin. "Why Virginia's abolition of the death penalty is a big deal for the state and the US." CNN. 29 March, 2021. www.cnn.com/2021/03/29/us/virginia-death-penalty-abolition-significance/index.html. Accessed 24 April, 2021.
“Eddie Slovik.” Wikipedia, 18 April 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Slovik. Accessed 23 April 2021.
Fraser, C. Gerald. “Antoinette Slovik, Widow of a G.I. Shot by Army for Desertion in 1945.” The New York Times, 8 September, 1979, www.nytimes.com/1979/09/08/archives/antoinette-slovik-widow-of-a-gi-shot-by-army-for-desertion-in-1945.html?smid=url-share. Accessed 23 April 2021.
Garner, Dwight. "Into the Lives of Three Deserters Who Did Not Have a Good War." New York Times, 9 June, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/books/the-deserters-a-world-war-ii-history-by-charles-glass.html?auth=login-google. Accessed 24 April 2021.
Gibbons-Neff, Thomas. “Why Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will never face an Army firing squad.” The Washington Post, 16 December, 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/12/16/why-sgt-bowe-bergdahl-will-never-face-an-army-firing-squad/. Accessed 24 April 2021.
"History of the Death Penalty." Death Penalty Information Center,
Lavoie, Denise. "Virginia, with 2nd-most executions, outlaws death penalty." The Associated Press, 24 March, 2021, apnews.com/article/virginia-to-end-death-penalty-ralph-northam-0a5b51f2e4458a0600bce6b75e6389bd. 24 April, 2021.
Simmons, Zena. “The Execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik.” The Detroit News, 25 August, 1999, archive.ph/20120525211811/http://apps.detnews.com/apps/history/index.php?id=103#selection-1335.28-1335.117. Accessed 24 April 2021.
"WWII 'Deserters': Stories Of Men Who Left The Front Lines." WBUR, 17 June, 2013, www.wbur.org/npr/189275754/wwii-deserters-stories-of-men-who-left-the-front-lines. Accessed 24 April 2021. Transcript provided by NPR.
