Sergeant Nibley PhD — Memories of an Unlikely Screaming Eagle, by Hugh Nibley and Alex Nibley
Reviewed by Catherine K. Arveseth

Driving a waterproofed jeep onto Utah Beach during the Invasion of Normandy, Hugh Nibley found himself in a most improbable place — part of the famous 101^st Airborne — a leading, pivotal unit in World War II known as the Screaming Eagles.

Most of us revere Nibley as a well-known philosopher, professor, author, and devoted disciple.  He almost never spoke of the war, and definitely never drew attention to his heroics connected to its progression.  As a result, his book was a surprise when it arrived in my mailbox for review.  Intrigued and anxious to read of Nibley’s perspective on the war (not to mention his experiences), I dived in.

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Sergeant Nibley PhD was a collaborative effort between Hugh Nibley and his son, Alex Nibley.  Hugh Nibley died in February 2005, knowing the book was in transcript form, near completion.  His son, Alex, however, did the bulk of the compiling and editing, and wrote the narrating voice that threads the work with needed clarification and familial illumination. 

This is quite the task for a filmmaker by trade.  Alex Nibley first heard his father’s war stories while making a documentary film about Hugh Nibley in 1983.  Alex says his father refused to write his own memoirs, but finally agreed to let Alex interview him in the late nineties, and the stories began to pour out. 

The final product was this book — memoirs augmented with letters, photos, maps, excerpts from authors like Robert Bowen, Stephen Ambrose, and Albert Speer, and statements from other soldiers or military leaders.  The book reads like a film, a documentary of sorts.  Several stories developing at once, the sound of many voices with flashes of images — tactile, engaging, life-like. 

It is not glossy or watered-down in its recounting of war events.  No sensationalism.  And at times, reading can be uncomfortable.  Alex Nibley wrote, “I think it is a good thing not to be comfortable with some things… it is essential that we not forget them to the point that we can become comfortable with repeating them” (xi).

As a disclaimer, Alex mentions that working with memoirs is a tricky thing.  Memoirs are sometimes inaccurate, slanted by what the word implies — memory.  So Alex uses letters and statements from some of his father’s war friends to substantiate details and where discrepancies exist, he has faithfully noted them.

I must admit I have done very little reading about World War II.  The Nibleys’ book was like a crash course for me.  Alex’s footnotes read like “World War II for Dummies” and I so appreciated his filling in the gaps, defining terms, providing timelines and stepping back to illustrate the big picture. 

This aside, all you war buffs out there, like my father and brother, do not be deterred!  Knowing more about the war will only make your reading more enjoyable.  It will allow you to focus on Nibley’s war experience, his faith, and the influence he had on others, without needing to remind yourself which battle it was or which country they were in!  This is a book for both buff and novice. If the subject interests you, be sure to pick it up.

It is of great credit to both Nibleys that the doctrinal genius, Hugh Nibley, is portrayed with such blatant honesty.  In the later months of Hugh’s life, arthritis confined him to his bed and he asked Alex to read to him.  Alex read him part of the manuscript. 

Alex writes, “He was sickened by the arrogance of what he had written when he was young.  Another thing that bothered him was the anger he had expressed at the Germans at the end of the war.  It was my mother who persuaded him that, pretty or not, these were parts of history and the formative process that made him who he eventually became.  With her support he agreed to have these less than admirable parts of himself exposed to the public.  To me, knowing him as I do, that was an act of courage on a par with those that win medals in battle” (ix).

Alex handles his father’s “arrogance” and severe criticism candidly, even smartly.  He says what readers will inevitably think before the thought can be formulated. This frankness prevents the reader from getting hung up on disparaging thoughts or disappointments.  I appreciated this.  It made Hugh Nibley a more approachable man, one who reflected the thinking of his time, yet cultivated the ability to see through what would not last, what made soldiers men, and what, in the end, mattered most.

Drawing an unusual parallel between the lives of Hugh Nibley and Adolph Hitler, Alex keeps us abreast of their whereabouts throughout the entire span of the book — how they were the same at times, and how they were different. 

Hugh Nibley served as a missionary in Germany before enlisting.  It was during this time that he crossed paths with Hitler in a restroom — the “Wozelbest der Kaiser muss” (“the place even the Kaiser must go”).  This encounter, burned in Nibley’s memory, offers a strong jumping off point for the book. 

Most are familiar with Hitler’s rise and demise, but the book fleshes it out in an intriguing way.  Toward the book’s end, Alex writes, “In the late twenties, two preachers in southern Germany were giving speeches on street corners and handing out pamphlets.  Once became the essence of militarism, challenged the world, and energized his nation with a vision of world dominance.  The other, among the least likely soldiers in the world, joined several million other oddballs and military misfits to challenge the dictator and bring his thousand-year Reich to a disgraceful end only twelve years after it had come to power” (288).

Hugh Nibley’s fluency in many languages and brilliant mind, made him attractive to the intelligence community.  He soon found himself at Camp Ritchie in Maryland, one of many brainiacs and linguists who formed a group that would eventually become the Intelligence Corps, and later the Central Intelligence Agency.

Much of Hugh Nibley’s wartime was spent plotting maps, instructing soldiers in German tactics, and making strategic plans for battles.  He was the mind behind the men in action, unadorned, never an officer.  Repeatedly, he describes himself as an observer — “always observing without participating” (193) — disconnected from the war in a paradoxical way. 

Occasionally, he was called to the frontlines, as in Normandy.  His brushes with death were not few.  He spent many nights in foxholes, once with a British tank parked right above his head so he couldn’t get out.  He came face to face with German soldiers, stole electricity from German generators in Holland.  One sergeant of the 101^st used to say of him, “Everything happens to Nibley, and nothing ever happens to him” (194).

Despite heated engagements, Hugh Nibley felt he was fighting a private war.  He mentions this again and again in letters and interviews.  “For me it was still a private war, and I would meet others who were fighting the same kind of private war, but differently” (193).

He writes, “I was interested in observing what was happening, but I really wasn’t in it. I often wondered why I should find myself in a battle like [Normandy]… here I find myself with my face all blackened and clusters of grenades on my chest with my trusty carbine, and I say, ‘How in the hell did I ever get into this?’  But I think it was to observe.  Because I was in the perfect position to observe.  I had to see what was going on, not only in my own position, but on the whole front.  I had to be in communication and receive the reports over the radio” (137). 

Nibley’s life was repeatedly spared and his role at times was pivotal in the pace and direction of the war.  His “observations,” however, went much deeper than war tactics and technicalities, his communications more divine than radio reports and orders.

Hitler used his religion as a disgraceful platform to justify the extermination of an entire race while Nibley’s religion allowed him to maintain his wits, his humanity, and his relationship with God.  Hugh sat smack in the middle of death and ruin, and by the war’s end, had watched men all around him relinquish morality, sanity, and most things good. 

What was this “private war” in which Nibley engaged? 

Nibley recalls, “I remember the dream I had in the foxhole outside Carentan.  The one where Dave Bernay woke me up and I felt so happy because it was just a dream and I hadn’t actually committed the terrible crime I had dreamed about.  There I was in the middle of a battle, and I was completely happy.  It was a very strong thing; it came to me very strongly: I shouldn’t be happy in this circumstance!  But it’s not what happens to you that matters.  It’s not what becomes of you, it’s what you become that’s important” (146-147). 

His son explains, “The most important thing to [Hugh Nibley] was not the political position on war, but a personal spiritual stance on what it all means. He hated war and volunteered to fight. The objective was not to take himself out of the war, but to take the war out of himself” (340).

In the final pages of the book, Alex indicates that Hugh Nibley was frustrated with mankind, including Americans — that most had not learned the lessons they should have from war.  In a letter to the editor of BYU’s campus paper, Alex says his father “threw away discretion and started crying repentance from the Doctrine and Covenants.  This time it was during the Vietnam conflict.” 

In the letter Nibley uses scriptural admonition to “renounce war.”  He quoted the words of the Savior, “Who takes up the sword shall perish with the sword.”  He concludes, “This is not a protest; just a timely reminder, that we may remember when it happens that we have been warned and forewarned” (324). 

Alex explains, “He seemed to go out of his way to make people uncomfortable, especially anyone who appeared complacent and believed that mankind was in a position to run its own affairs.  He gained a reputation as a man full of paradoxes” (323).  Alex continues, “His statements seem to contradict and make no sense, but then, what does make sense when it comes to war?  An industry spending trillions of dollars to destroy human life — does that make sense?  War is a time when good people do bad things. When loving mothers and fathers send their children out to slaughter beloved sons and daughters.  Does that make sense?” (323-333).

Truman Madsen said of Hugh Nibley, “There have been some things said about Brigham Young University by others, but none of them are as painfully critical as what Nibley occasionally says.  And the same is true about certain aspects of the Church, institutionally speaking.  He really is its gadfly critic… Is he a cynic and a pessimist with all kinds of negative things to say?  Yes.  Is he an optimist, an idealist with great hope for the future?  Yes.  Some say you can’t get those together. He does” (323).

“The scriptural world where Hugh Nibley spent most of his time is filled with paradox and seeming nonsense.  So what, in the end, did Hugh Nibley believe about war?  The answer lies in another one of this paradoxical statements, that the war he fought was a ‘private war’… I believe that what Hugh Nibley was saying is this: The spiritual danger of war is greater than the physical danger” (333-334).

These concluding insights made me want to read the book again, this time with pearls of truth already in hand.  Through it all, this man of paradoxes, keeps you thinking, guessing, wondering why he feels the way he does.

Sergeant Nibley PhD is a fascinating window into Hugh Nibley’s life, never publicly seen before.  It is most captivating, not for its adventure or excitement, but for its candidness, honesty, and permissible access to a man who, for good or bad, dared to show us his truest colors.

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Catherine Keddington Arveseth is a native of Salt Lake City, but resides now with her husband, Doug, and their new daughter, Eliza, in Fairfax, Virginia. She is a graduate of the University of Utah in Exercise Physiology with a minor in English. She works as a Clinical Exercise Specialist for a Sports Therapy Facility in the Washington DC area, loves running and outdoor recreation, but has a particular love for reading and writing. As an aspiring poet, she loves the Romantics and the scriptures. She served a full-time mission to Peoria, Illinois with special assignment to the Nauvoo Visitors' Center and currently serves as a ward missionary.

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