Customer Reviews

The Slaughter: An American Atrocity

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

The Slaughter is by no means the work of a professional researcher or an academician. The author says so himself. Carroll Case is a businessman who had heard rumors and tales of this horrible massacre all of his life.

After a conversation with an employee of his who was an eyewitness to this crime, Case spent thirteen years investigating all aspects of the story and has endured personal tragedy as a result of his curiosity. He is convinced this took place because, among other evidence, he has heard eyewitness accounts. What better affirmation could there be than video tapes of this testimony, regardless of whether the witnesses are alive today?

Case brought this incident to light when no other person had the courage to do so. In his preface, he says that to write the book in the form of a novel was necessary because the facts have, to date, not been confirmed. Mr. Case offers the circumstances as he knows them to be true, and offers the rest of the world a chance to decide for themselves. This is a story written by a man passionate about his experiences and passionate about seeing the Army explain to the American people just what did go on in 1943 in Centreville, Mississippi at Camp Van Dorn.

In another of my favorite books, The Gold of Exodus, Larry Williams and Bob Cornuke did not come home from Jabal al Lawz with a fortune in gold proving they found the true Mount Sinai. They came home with a conviction and a Best Seller. We don't criticize their adventure story for lack of evidence, nor should we demand that Carroll Case produce the bodies of dead soldiers.

The Slaughter was convincing enough for a United States Congressman to demand an inquiry by the Secretary of Defense; something few books in this decade have done. In addition, it raised enough important questions for the NAACP to demand a full accounting from the Secretary of the Army. All within three weeks of the publication date of this book.

Pandora's box has been opened and the contents are frightening !

Could it be true that the United States Military machine conspired against some of its own soldiers during WWII ? Conspired to such an extent as to exterminate 1200 black soldiers in an attempt to regain control of a documented uprising in the deep south?

As told by Carroll Case, The Slaughter, An American Atrocity, is not only believable as fiction but as fact is gut wrenchingly scary.

Told in two parts, the first section reveals the facts that Case stumbled on after a happenchance conversation with an eye witness to the proposed massacre. After thirteen years of investigation , Case has uncovered what seems to be a governmental cover-up of monumental proportions.

Official military documents as well as personal letters pleading for help, indicate a southern stew ready to boil over. What do you do with 1200 misfits threatening mutiny and spoiling a good war effort ? If Cases conclusion is correct, you eradicate the obstacle and you do so where redneck justice, folklore, fact and fiction all intermingle to blur the line between reality and creative imagination.

After all, its 1943, the world is at war, and in the swampy backwoods of Mississippi, no one hears you scream. Not if your property of the U.S.Military. Not if your black.

The second part of the book is an intriguing tale of cover-up, murder, greed, and justice, all moving with breakneck speed, keeping this reader spellbound until the last word.

Set in Mississippi, the redneck is alive and well, as is "BIG BROTHER" in this current day small town thriller.

Amidst the moss covered oaks, eccentric characters from the wealthy to the classless, lurk in the shadows at every corner propelling the reader foward, hanging on everyword.

With a plot rich in deception and cover-up, Case has managed to weave fact into believable fiction. The use of eyewitness accounts as well as governmental documents in section one plants a seed of reality so indelible one has trouble separating the two.

Undoubtedly this work will rekindle a roaring blaze in the voice of the civil rights activests. Aided by public awareness and desire for the truth, expect intense investigations to soon follow. THIS CAN NOT BE IGNORED.

Should this atrocity be proven true, we may all find ourselves questioning our leaders and once again asking...... "at what price does freedom come."

I've read the 1-star reviews, which are almost vitriolic in their negation of this atrocity. They seem proof that we're a generation of the less curious and the less concerned, not to mention the truly jaded. But if you've walked the streets as a person of color, you know "The Slaughter" may indeed be fact, not emotional fiction. Truth can be stranger than fiction... AND there are many things the government (American or not) would rather not reveal. Look how we've forgotten history -- altered or not, believed or not: 6 million Jews, Eastern Europeans and homosexuals exterminated in concentration camps. And the martyrs of the 60s: Are the lives of countless civil rights workers, JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Malcom X and that generation who never returned from Viet Nam, only to be remembered when a point needs to be made? How many books have been written (and negated) on a truth "better left unsaid," according to some nay-sayers? And let's not get started on the terrors in the 80s -- South Africa, Bosnia....

Face it, the human beast is capable tremendous beauty and unbelieveable tragedy. The truth will out as it may.

"White MPs were called in... armed with machine guns...They shot everything that moved, until nothing did; not one defenseless soldier got away. When the shooting stopped, over 1200 members of the 364th were slaughtered." In December of 1943, over one thousand black soldiers were slaughtered at Camp Van Dorn, located just outside the sleepy southern town of Centreville Mississippi. These enlisted men weren't killed in combat with the enemy, but lined up and mowed down, unarmed, by white soldiers acting on orders from superiors in the US Army. Unbelieveable, isn't it? The first thought I had upon hearing about the incident was that it couldn't possibly be true. So, I got my hands on the book, The Slaughter, written by Carroll Case, a local, white Mississippi journalist who blew the cover off this shocking, long-rumored massacre. And as I examined the proof offered by the author in his carefully-researched text, the shock of recognition set in, even though the truth remains difficult to swallow. Nobody wants to think that a government-sanctioned Holocaust of African-Americans could have occurred during WWII. Or that it was successfully hidden for over 50 years, despite the military's ability to keep so many of its operations an absolute secret. But Mr. Case has pieced together the scenario which led to this unthinkable crime against humanity, relying on a combination of eyewitness accounts and declassified documents unearthed by way of a Freedom of Information Act inquiry. Thus, we learn, for instance, that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, some five months before the atrocity, filed an affidavit with the Secretary of War on behalf of the 364th Infantry, an all-black regiment. NAACP attorney Milton Konvitz attached to his appeal the emotional letters of several members of the 364th which eloquently but desperately complained about their mistreatment on the basis of race. The book explains that the regiment had specifically been relocated from Phoenix to the Deep South because of insubordination. The black soldiers had repeatedly complained about the unequal treatment of blacks and whites in the armed forces. So, they were shipped to a remote outpost in Mississippi in order to have their rebellious spirit broken by an even more repressive social code. At Camp Van Dorn, however, matters only went from bad to worse as the African-American soldiers still refused to capitulate. And when white officers observed that the surly attitude of these Northern blacks were beginning to infect their obedient Southern brethren, extermination was ordered as the final solution.

To all readers of this review, think through carefully the following: this is not the first nor the last coverup. Allow the truth to be exposed before denying the incident altogether. If presidential assassinations can be covered up, why can't the deaths of african-american soldiers be covered up. Especially in the 1940's when civil rights was unheard of. Regardless of the validity of Case's argument, this book is a good read. Chocked full of declassified info that should be investigated further.

Those seeking the real story of the 364th Infantry at Camp Van Dorn will do well to read "A Historical Analysis of the 364th Infantry in World War II," which is the best single source of information regarding the regiment's activities during the war. A total of 3,981 officers and enlisted men served in the 364th Infantry at Camp Van Dorn. The above-mentioned text accounts for the fates of every single one of them. Each man's name, service number, unit, and discharge date is provided. Moreover, interviews were conducted with a number of 364th veterans, including CSM Richard E. Douglass, USA (Ret.), who served a total of thirty-six years in the army. All of the men virulently deny Case's story of mass murder at Camp Van Dorn. The 364th's three infantry battalions departed the camp intact for Seattle on 25 December 1943.

The author's website contains an excerpt from a letter allegedly written by "Corporal Anthony J. Smirley, Jr." of H Company, 364th Inf. regarding the purported "killings." The soldier in question is actually CPL Anthony J. Snively, Service Number 13079357, who was discharged from the U.S. Army on 4 November 1945. It is interesting to note that the two staff historians from the Textual Records Branch of the National Archives who assisted Case, Richard L. Boylan and Clifford L. Snyder, state that the book is utterly false.

The release of Case's book has unleashed a great deal of emotion. The best way to prove or disprove the allegation of mass murder at Camp Van Dorn is through research, not polemics. "A Historical Analysis of the 364th Infantry in World War II" does just that.

(NOTE: ** means new paragraph. I was an English professor for 11 years; it can't be helped! :o]) **I have no doubt that SOMETHING happened at Camp Van Dorn in 1943. Only those who are blatantly racist or locked away in ivory towers can still pretend that the United States Army was not often as cruel to its African-American employees as it was to its international enemies. President Truman did not just make drastic changes to the military system because he needed a new project. He knew that amends needed to be made -- and quickly. **My consternation about this book is its stark lack of in-depth research. In part one, we learn more than we need to about Case's efforts to learn about the atrocity at Van Dorn. While the process of acquiring information is often an interesting travelogue, Case does not offer enough substance to show that the fruits of his 13 years of labor were not in fact spoiled on the vine. **I find it offensive that Case does not dispute the widely accepted version of the 364th's misconduct. I was reminded of "The Confession of Nat Turner" as I read part one. I tend to dismiss that confession because it is written by an amanuensis. We have only David Gray's word about what Nat Turner's motives were; Gray's is the only voice we hear from Nat Turner; therefore, Nat himself is actually silenced. Such is the case with the victims of the Van Dorn horror. Why should we believe that they were as disruptive as they are reported to be by people who still refer to African-Americans as "niggers"? **Case has verbatim transcriptions of the photocopied letters he places at the end of the 40-page "facts" section. Ultimately, only five pages of the facts surrounding the incident can be found in part one. I could perhaps understand why he decided to tell the whole story in novel form IF the novel were the well-written result of a full disclosure of some detailed and well done research. Alas, his work is poorly presented, and Carroll's case is not just half-baked, it is nearly raw. **It is therefore very easy for the rabidly racist and those who would deny that anything happened at all to say the book is false. I won't know about the total veracity of what seems a plausible incident until I do some research of my own, but I do know that had he written about the facts in painstaking detail, nobody would give a second thought to those who malign the truth of this incident. **I truly wasted my money on this one and would give it zero stars if I had the option!

Most of the reviews here are harsh and do not take into consideration that this is a novel. Fiction entitles the author to write from the heart in any way he sees fit. Ignored by most of the various reviewers, who are so quick to defend the Department of Defense, is the intense segregation and discrimination directed at black soldiers and sailors during World War II. The most poignant example of racism from that era in what we now know as the Department of Defense is told in the movie Mutiny, based on the well-documented ship explosion on July 17, 1944. Segregated black soldiers were forced to speed up while loading explosives with their bare hands, upon orders of all white officers who were betting as if they were at a race track. 350, mostly black sailors died near Richmond, CA. that day. The remaining white sailors and officers were given leave to recover. The black sailors were ordered back to work immediately-- with none of the dangerous conditions changed. Many of them refused and were found guilty of mutiny by an all-white court martial. Thurgood Marshall, who later became U.S. Supreme Court Justice, defended them. Many have spent their lives trying to have their good names cleared, and mostly they failed at that. They were patriotic black men treated like trash. If DoD were honest, it would own up to the biased circumstances of this terrible event and acknowledge the trashy way it treated its loyal black service men and women during the war. Then, novels like this would not have to be written. I don't hear these reviwers complaining about all of the fictions in Birth of a Nation, or is that more to their political liking?

Any information on the USA's history is valuable, be it an atrocity or victory. Our history books are already sweeten to the point that no one is sure of whom actually made that history. I appreciate the actual facts in the beginning of the book, but the fictional story does not soften the blow of the inhuman acts that took place. What about the families of the victims? Will their 1200 stories be heard? Will there be justice? These questions where missing is this book along with the answers. It reads like an old American history book, too many unanswered questions.

For years I have read book about the conditions of life for blakcs in the south prior to continuing through the civil rights era. I have an extensive library of books which subject matter includes antebellum era, slavery, reconstruction, the kkk, civil rights leaders etc, so when I came across this book it was a must read. What peeked my interest more then the subject matter was the fact that in 15 years of reading and research I had never heard about this incident. Needless to say I was very excited to recieve and read this book. I opened the first page of this book with an open mind having read of so many other atrocities perpatrated against blacks in this country it would not surprise me in the least if one of the worst ones in more recent times was government sanctioned.

Having said that I must also conclude that although it was a very interesting read this book ends up to be just as is stated, a colorful if not horrific work of fiction. I must admit that completing the book Mr Case had stirred my curiosity enough to delve deeper into this matter on my own. I felt the fact that the government had any paperwork at all on file in regards to this matter lent itself to take the matter seriously enough. I too came across the book written by an historian in regards to the 364th as well as a Biography channel account of this same unit. Since it has been my experience that the Biography channel does not as a matter of course color coat history to suit any one agenda I found it almost disappointing that none of the hype in Mr Case's book ended up having any legs. Through research each and every member of the 364th had been located and accounted for and not one family member came forward to say that their loved one was "missing", killed in action (even as a cover story) etc.

I can only sum all of this up to say that although the book was intriguing and "caught me" up in the possibility of this all any reader must enter into this knowing it is what it is...a dead end...although the story has the ring of truth to it for atrocities like this were every day occurances for many blacks in our country during this time frame, one must know that this portayal is a conglomeration of stories and tales woven into a bigger story for impact. If you understand this going into it you will not be disappointed in the end. Still I gave it a high rating because I have read so many books about the daily lives of blacks in the south from slavery to civil rights that the concept of this book was never too far fetched for me.