C.G. Cooper was born on 11 July 1923 in Lafayette, Tennessee. C.G. decided to leave home after graduating high school to wander America. He ended up becoming a welder at Kaiser Shipyards in California. The draft board finally caught up with him and on 28 June 1943, just shy of his 20^th birthday, C.G. was inducted into the United States Army Air Force. He went through basic training at Camp Lee, Virginia and when asked by the Army what he wanted to do, C.G. basically said ‘anything but cooking’. Needless to say, C.G. wasn’t laughing when he was told that he’d be designated as a cook and would go through Bakery & Cook School. He graduated from Bakery & Cook School as a 1^st cook and told he would be behind the front lines with plenty of food and warmth and placed in Company E, 289^th Infantry, 75^th Division.

C.G. was supposed to be quartermaster but because of his excellent marksmanship and the need for more men to fight the elite German forces wreaking havoc on the European front, was chosen to be on the frontlines as a rifleman. Wherever his company went, C.G. was either fighting alongside them or cooking food for them. C.G. received further training at Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky and went overseas from there. He recalled when they gave the 1^st cook position to another guy who knew nothing about cooking, much less for an army of men! The new guy asked C.G. the proper amount of beans to prepare for all the men. C.G. told him to figure it out since he was now the cook and especially since he was receiving sergeant pay (C.G. was a Pfc).

The sergeant cook, as I will call him, made 17 pounds of beans for approximately 250 men, when only 7 pounds were needed! Beans, beans, and more beans! The company of men the sergeant cook prepared them for were none too happy with his lack of portion control, as they had to eat them for every meal over the days that followed until every last bean was gone! This was due to the fact that the food was considered Army property and improper disposal of Army property could lead to being court-martialed!

Around this same time period, C.G.’s wife Patricia who was back in Knoxville, Tennessee, was about to give birth. She was a very small lady and the doctor was concerned that she might have difficulty during the delivery. Like any concerned husband and soon to be papa, C.G. wanted to be with her. He was told that if he left he would be court-martialed. This warning did not deter him. Instead, C.G. made his way to the Red Cross and asked permission to go telling them that if they denied his request he would climb the walls and go anyway.

The phone rang and it was the doctor in Knoxville saying that C.G. needed to come immediately. They finally gave him permission and he began his trek by hitch hiking. At one point he was stranded in the rain. Thankfully someone stopped and offered him ride. Unfortunately the vehicle was a motorbike. C.G.’s brother had been killed while riding one so he was a bit apprehensive. He ended up accepting the offer however. He got off in Nashville where his father lived and then caught a bus on to Knoxville. C.G. was supposed to be back on the base that Sunday, but decided to stay in order to hold his baby in his arms. (All had gone well with the delivery.) Of his decision to stay he said, “I didn’t know if I’d live to ever see him again or not.”

On Monday he got orders to go to HQ as he was considered to be AWOL. C.G.’s service record indicates his one AWOL, but it was a decision he never regretted. His son was two weeks old when he left for the battlefields from New York on 22 Oct 1944. His ship arrived at in Liverpool, England on 3 Nov 1944. The men then traveled on to South Wales and finally crossed the channel to France. Once on French ground the men headed to Paris where C.G. says they were treated like heroes. Then it was on to Bastogne, Belgium where they spent their first night in battle with the enemy. This brutal battle would become known as The Battle of the Bulge.

Despite the area having its coldest winters on record up to that time, Allied leaders chose not to send appropriate winter clothing with C.G. and the other men, saying that they would only be involved in a few skirmishes. These leaders were wrong and their decision could have spelled disaster for the Allies. Fortunately our men pulled through like the troopers they are. The men were given C and K rations so there would be no need for cooks on the frontlines. C.G. was put in charge of guarding the kitchen and ammo truck on the first night while the other men were enthralled in battle. The driver of a jeep came up to him saying that a German tank was headed his way and not to let it through.

“What will I do?” C.G. remembers thinking back then. Ideas began swirling in his mind….the .45 pistol on his hip…his rifle. He grabbed a carbine, machine gun, bazooka, grenades, and ammo belts from the truck he was guarding. “I was a walking arsenal”, he said. The ideas continued in his mind…a grenade…no, that won’t work…a Molotov cocktail…no, that won’t work…blast it with a bazooka (he recalled watching a training film that showed a bazooka being used to blast the tracks off a tank)…no, I have no ammo for it. At this point, the tank is right in front of him and his mind is frozen. In the chaos, C.G. slipped falling in the tanks’ path due to the slick mud. Providence was with him as the tank rolled right over him, straddling him and continuing on its path.

The next morning he found out that some of his buddies had been killed. C.G. said it was a gruesome sight, the bodies strewn about the battlefield. The Germans had succeeded in surrounding them and they were now cut off from replacements and supplies. C.G. ate dry hog bran from a farm and was happy with that discovery. He also managed to find a turnip in the root cellar. Another group of the Allies eventually pushed the Germans back and rescued the previously surrounded men. They regrouped and received replacements, some of whom were only teenagers. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1944, a heavy snow had covered everything and C.G. said it was a beautiful sight to behold. Suddenly all heck broke loose with dogfights in the sky and heavy artillery shelling on the ground. He never forgot that Christmas Day.

At one point, C.G. was sent to the hospital due to his frostbitten toes. This was a common occurrence with the lack of appropriate clothing for the extreme weather conditions. While lying in his hospital bed, the soldier on one side said to the soldier on C.G.’s other side, ‘Joe*, I’m dying. Tell my folks how much I love them.’ C.G. later found out that the two men had fought alongside the Russians who had given them poisoned liquor for some reason. (*After a while, soldiers would call one another Joe because by the time you learned someone’s name, it seemed you died or they did.)  The soldier who asked his buddy to give the message to his parents, died later that day and his buddy soon suffered the same fate, blind and calling out for loved ones.

That same morning, soldiers were lined up to be seen by the doctor. Many of the men were there for frostbite and the doctor told most that the affected appendages needed to be amputated. When it was his turn, C.G. put his hand up to jaw and moaned. The doctor asked what was wrong with him and he said he had a toothache. The doc told him that he was in the wrong line and off C.G. went. He remembers thinking, “I came over here with all my body parts and IF I get to go home, I wanna go home with all my body parts…all together.”

From the hospital he hitchhiked back to his outfit. He went to the kitchen truck and told his company commander that he had been on the front lines and knew what it was like. “If you’ll give me permission to have a truck and driver, I would like to take hot chocolate and donuts to my buddies in the foxholes.” Permission was granted and C.G. began making preparations. “While making up the donuts the tent was hit. There was shrapnel all in the donut mix. I picked it all out and continued on,” C.G. shared. He fried the donuts and prepared the hot chocolate, the latter which he put into insulated containers to keep it hot. The refreshments were loaded on the truck and the two men headed to the front lines. On the way there they were caught in the crossfire between both sides. There were bullet holes in the hot chocolate and the truck, with hot chocolate spilling everywhere. C.G. was in the back sliding around with the containers. Thankfully neither he nor the driver was hit.

The driver soon stopped, having taken C.G. as close to the front lines as he could get him. He told the dirver it was fine as he knew where the fox holes were located. C.G. carried the refreshments to each of the fox holes and they were sure a welcomed treat. The men would hold out their steel helmets and C.G. would pour in some hot chocolate and throw in some donuts. Mind you, the soldiers’ helmets were a versatile tool. Not only did they protect their heads or hold food and drink, but they were also used by the soldiers to relieve themselves so they wouldn’t have to leave the safety of their fox hole.

After serving everyone, C.G. made his way back to the truck. The driver said that they were going a different way back since they had come under fire on the way up. It was dark and there was no GPS for them to conveniently use. Suddenly the driver shouted, ‘We’re behind German lines! Look at all those Krauts! What do I do now?’ C.G. told him to push in on the clutch and the gas at the same time to make the engine roar. The driver did so and C.G. threw his arm out the window saluting Hitler and yelling, “Heil Hitler! Comrade, Comrade.”

Once again Providence was on their side as the Germans actually allowed them to pass through safely. Eventually the two men made their way back to camp where they told of what happened. Some of their fellow soldiers were unsure whether or not to believe what they were hearing. A few days later, the 75^th captured some of those same German’s and asked them why on earth they had allowed the Americans to pass. The German’s response, ‘We didn’t know what you darn yanks were up to.’

After awhile, the 75^th and others were pulled back from the front lines and billeted in Belgian homes for a rest. At the home C.G. stayed in there was a pot bellied stove. “Oh I could not wait to get my boots off,” C.G. said of his delight at having a stove. His feet were so swollen that he couldn’t get his boots off. The ladies of the house offered to assist him and were eventually successful after much tugging and pulling. Immediately they saw how black his feet were. They would each get under one of his arms and walk him outside to wash his feet over and over again in the snow. “Thanks to those ladies I still have my feet and toes,” C.G. said of their nursing care.

Communicating with the Belgians was difficult and it was only through hand signals and motions that they were able to understand one another. He was asked his name and told them Cooper. They said ‘Jackie Cooper’ (American Actor ) and he nodded uh-huh (the two men were the same age and build). The women went into town telling everyone they had a celebrity in their home. Everyone came over with writing tablets wanting an autograph. “What else could I do? They had been so good to me, so I signed ‘Jackie Cooper’,” he said of the experience.

A 90-day wonder (second lieutenant), as the men would call them, decided that a kitchen truck would be put on the front lines and serve hot food to those in the foxholes. “We didn’t think that was too bright of an idea but after all, he was our officer,” said C.G. Snow was everywhere and the kitchen burners weren’t working properly. He had to take them outside and tinker with them. During this time, some of the fuel spilled out and caught fire. There they were in the Ardennes forest with flames shooting up through the trees giving away their position. Heavy artillery began to rain down on the men, busting trees to pieces and causing them to become spears hurling at incredible rates of speed hitting some of the men. C.G. took cover behind the kitchen truck and thankfully was not hit. Unfortunately the second lieutenant who put the kitchen trucks on the front lines was hit. C.G. never saw him again and believes he didn’t make it.

C.G. made another trip to the hospital, this time for a bleeding nose and lips. His nostrils were extremely swollen and he couldn’t breathe through them. At hospital they put him in a barber type chair then placed hot towels on his head and a curved steel cup below his ears and mouth. To thaw him out they placed long steel rods up his nostrils and switched out the towels as they cooled with fresh hot ones. All kinds of bloody ‘corruption’, as C.G. called it, came oozing out his facial orifices until finally he could breathe better. His breathes were still shallow so they wrapped up his chest with an adhesive tape bandage and let him go. Just outside the hospital was a gully which C.G. tried to jump. He was unsuccessful and fell in. Thankfully someone saw what happened and carried him back into the hospital where they loosened his chest wrap a bit.

C.G. told of a facility the soldiers entered that appeared to be a slave labor camp. Nude bodies were lined up 4 – 5 feet high and roughly 20 feet long. “What a horrible sight,” C.G. said, “Some were barely alive…just skin and bones, didn’t have the strength to move. They were a pitiful sight.” One of the camp guards had a pistol and whip on his hip that was likely used on the prisoners. C.G. relieved him of his weapons and kept the whip as a souvenir. It wasn’t long before C.G. became disgusted with the whip and the pain it had induced on innocent people so he got rid of it. He said of the item, “I got sick of that whip and what it had done. I did not even want it as a souvenir, its bad memories.”

C.G. spoke of the mental effect the war had on many of the soldiers, “Some of the soldiers had seen so much horror that they became zombies of sorts. It was as if their spirit had already left their body. Some of them just kept on walking, on into enemy fire. I felt like when they did get shot down, they did not feel the pain of the bullet. They were not in that body anymore…their spirit had left them. Oh, how horrible.” He recalled another horrible experience, “One guy next to me had been hit pretty good. (It) left him like scrambled eggs. I waved my hands in the air and said, ‘Thank you Lord. Joe. No more cold. No more pain. …Why me Lord? Why am I still here?’”

The 75^th pushed the Germans back and the medics headed out to help their wounded on the battlefield. Later on the next day or so, C.G.’s unit found their medics stripped of all clothing, tied to trees, and their bodies mutilated. Soon thereafter the 75^th believed they had captured some of the Germans responsible for the mutilated medics. Recalling what happened next C.G. shared apprehensively, “It’s not easy to talk about…..the Germans were hollering ‘Mercy, Mercy!’ as they were cornered in a barn and the flamethrowers ending their lives as they hollered ‘Mercy, Mercy!’. They showed no mercy to our fellows. Oh lordy, How cruel a human being can be, one to another.”

Back and forth both sides pushed each other in the Ardennes. Dead German soldiers andAmerican soldiers were piled up on top of one another, covered by the never ending snow. The bodies were frozen stiff. C.G. remembered when they did pick up their dead; they would throw them into the back of a truck like you would a log of wood. All piled up there together, Germans and Americans. In death it did not matter that the two had fought as bitter enemies.

One time when he went to eat his K-rations, he sat down on what he thought was a log. Something was sticking him in his bum so he began digging around in the snow to see what it could be. “It was a Germans belt buckle. I was sitting on a corpse,” C.G. said. He will never forget the bitter cold and ground frozen so hard you couldn’t even dig a foxhole. The men would sleep standing up. One wouldn’t think it possible but C.G. said that 4 of them would huddle together in a circle, putting their arms around each other’s shoulders and actually catch a few winks and maintain some warmth. He also remembers some of the men sleeping as they were walking due to their extreme exhaustion. Being hungry at the same time didn’t help and they often stumbled, falling into the snow which became the final resting place of some.

On one night in the battle, C.G. heard someone holler real loud and then a shot was fired. A soldier had chosen to shoot himself in the foot rather than continue on fighting in hell. He was unable to convince his superiors that it was an accident because of him hollering before he actually shot himself. The soldier ended up receiving some bad time and going without pay for a spell. That night “so many of us got killed,” said C.G. Many officers were among the dead and some of those who made it through told C.G. they were going to make him a second lieutenant. C.G. wanted no part of it because so many of the officers died. Another soldier ended up receiving the promotion. C.G. laughed as he said, “Would you know that sucker made it through every battle fought from then forward and made it back home.”

Near the Belgian barracks where C.G. was staying at the time, he came upon a cow and thought to himself, ‘I haven’t had milk since we left the states…..I’m an old farm boy….I’ll just sit my gun in the corner and milk her.” He patted her on the head and called her Bessie in an attempt to calm her down and placed his steel helmet beneath her udders. As he milked her she continued to moan, which C.G. latter believed was because she hadn’t been milked in so long. He successfully retrieved a helmet full of milk which he then placed in the snow to cool it. When he went to drink it some of the other soldiers said, ‘You’re not going to drink all that blanket blank milk yourself’ to which he turned up the helmet and began guzzling it. He continued with the story, “It was so good but it had no more hit my stomach than it came back out both ways. I was so sick! That milk wasn’t fit for human consumption because poor old Bessie had it in her bag for so long that it had become contaminated.”

As the men managed to push the German’s back once again, they moved forward gaining ground. They came upon a huge beautiful home and C.G. wondered if he might find any dry, clean clothes inside. He and a buddy went to check it out but he couldn’t find any men’s clothing. “There must have been a great big ole woman living there ‘cause I found a great big ole pair of bloomers.” He began to laugh as he recalled what he did next, “They were clean so I put them on. I also found a petticoat and put it on too.” This only illustrates how cold our men were.

His buddy hollered from across the room to look at what he had found. Lo and behold, that soldier had found a tuxedo and top hat. The soldier put on his find as well but left the top hat and off the two goofiest dressed soldiers went back into battle. C.G. couldn’t get the petticoat tucked into his britches so he just left it out. He said that the sight of himself and his buddy made him laugh uncontrollably at the time.

At one time the men were low on rations. One soldier who had been a butcher at a packing company in civilian life told C.G. that the two of them should go out that night and butcher the cow. C.G. thought it a great idea and the two headed out in a Jeep to procure the meat. C.G.’s buddy took his position in front of the cow, raised his knife, and took a good hard swing to cut the cow’s throat. Unfortunately, the young man managed to miss the cow and instead cut his own thigh. C.G. took over from that point, as he too had spent some time as a butcher, and slaughtered the cow. He then tied it to the Jeep and drug it into a nearby building where he butchered it. During that time, someone began knocking on the big metal door of the building. Thankfully, the person soon went away and C.G. was able to finish the task at hand. The men cooked up their meat and everyone wanted a portion, even the inspector general! C.G.  knew that he and his buddy could have been court-martialed for their actions. However, they didn’t regret their actions and their buddies were sure thankful for a reminder of what real food tasted like instead their boxes of rations.

At one point after the 75^th had been fighting in the Ardennes for some time, the French needed help in Colmar, France. The men were loaded into ‘forty & eight boxcars’, which got their name during the Great War because they could carry forty men and eight horses. C.G. said they had a lot of men packed into those boxcars like sardines. C.G. was in the middle of the boxcar next to a big container used by the men to relieve themselves. “Oh Lord,” he said laughing, “I didn’t like sitting there.” He continued on describing his ride in the forty & eight saying, “I thought to myself, ‘If I could just work my way back to the corner of this boxcar, I could lean up against the side and rest my head and back. How nice that would be.’” So C.G. began shrugging and pushing, which the other men cussed and fussed at him for. Finally he made his way to the corner he had eagerly scouted out. He leaned back, putting his head to one side and all he could hear was ‘bump, bump bump, bump…’ There was no sleep for this soldier. C.G. remembered the train coming up off the tracks for a split second and then slamming back down.

That’s how the 75^th crossed into France to fight with the French 1^st Army, who had been struggling against the Germans, in the battle of Colmar Pocket. “Oooh boy. Those Germans really let in on us,” recalled C.G. He was unsure if he would make it through the battle so he kept a picture of his wife and little boy next to his heart thinking that if he died, maybe they would bury him with it. He did make it through that battle and was awarded the Croix de guerre for his efforts. Food was scarce at times and one of the things the French soldiers would do was to put chicken coops on their armored tanks and then go out to local farms to gather whatever sources of meat they could find, including chickens and pigs. They would then put the animals in the coops and tie the coops back to the tanks, taking the animals into battle with them.

The men soon headed into Holland where C.G. says the war had been quite tough. He recalled a pub whose owners had left because of the intense fighting but who didn’t lock it up on their hasty retreat. The men went on in and enjoyed the variety and wealth of drinks and snacks to be had. C.G. spotted a radio set which he turned on to see if there was anything worth tuning in to. The broadcast just happened to be the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. Uncle Dave Macon and his son Dorris were performing.

C.G. actually knew Uncle Dave from time spent hunting near his cabin in the woods. “I was so shook up. Here I am in battle and the Grand Ole Opry, which I used to go to so often back home….ooohhhh that was so sweet,” he said of that moment. Not all the men (namely some of the yanks), cared for the music and told C.G. to turn it to something else. “I can’t believe what I did next,” C.G. recalled, “I held up my gun and said ‘Don’t nobody touch this radio’ with tears rollin’ down my face.” The yanks backed down and C.G. was able to enjoy a touch of home for a few minutes.

That same evening, in a big farm house, the men drew straws to see who would go out on a recon mission and report back where the enemy was and so forth. One of C.G.’s pals ended up as one that drew a short straw and that fella was downright angry about it. Not that he was trying to shirk his duty but rather because he had this nagging feeling that he wouldn’t make it back alive. In his eyes it was a death sentence. The soldier decided to write a letter home telling his family how much he loved them and such. He asked C.G. to mail it, explaining the 6^th sense about his death that he had. C.G. told him that he couldn’t send a letter like that and that he would safely return. The next morning, the rest of the men headed out and found the young man dead, his goodbye letter covered in blood. C.G. said he wishes to this day that he had at least gotten the contact info of his buddy’s family so he could tell them that story.

For roughly 7 – 10 days, the men fought in a fierce battle and finally made their way to the river Rhine. “Those combat engineers….I gotta give them credit,” C.G. said. They went up on the bridge and tried to repair it so the men could cross into Germany. C.G. would watch them at night. Time after time he saw a body fall off the bridge and into the river below, having been shot by the enemy. On one night in particular, he recalls standing in a building watching through a window as the night skies lit up like a 4^th of July celebration in America. Suddenly a plane came along and was firing tracer ammo beneath his feet. Thinking to himself, ‘This is a little too close for comfort’, he ran and dove beneath a bed which had a spring sticking out that scratched his back to pieces. One of his fellow soldiers ribbed him about these injuries ‘received in action’ saying that C.G. could get himself a purple heart. C.G. told the guy he didn’t want any part of a Purple Heart, especially for such minor injuries. He explained that he now had a little boy back home and one day that little boy would be asking his daddy how he got that Purple Heart. C.G. did not want to be in such a predicament.

The 75^th fought for an extended period in the area. All the time the men had been building a pontoon bridge, which is how the men ended up getting across the river Rhine into Germany. They headed out early one morning that was thick in fog and on the other side of the river there was yet another horrible sight that would leave its mark on the memory of all those who witnessed it. The trees had no leaves on them whatsoever but something was hung in the branches. Upon getting a closer look the men realized it was the flesh and body parts of the dead strewn about throughout the branches. As the men made their way through various German towns, C.G. said that many of the Germans willingly surrendered because they were as sick of the war as the Allies were.

When the 75^th came into one German town, they found a barbershop where some of the men decided to stop in to get a haircut and shave. One of the group would stand watch over the others while they were getting some proper grooming. The soldier, who was standing guard while C.G. and another were in the barber chairs, left his post early when a chair became available but before someone else could keep guard. C.G. said he was a bit nervous that the German barbers might cut their throats with the razors and drag them out back with no one the wiser. Thankfully nothing of the sort occurred and the men tipped the barbers VERY well for the services provided

At this time it was coming into spring and the snow was beginning to melt. C.G.’s group needed to get their kitchen truck across a stream but it was too deep to simply drive through. So C.G. decided to take one for the team and wade across the stream, whose waters were still freezing, in order to hook a winch cable from the truck to a tree. While he was doing this, an enemy plane began strafing them. Bark was flying off the trees as they were hit and C.G. was behind one of those very trees. He ended up diving into the water for safety and it worked!

When the war with Germany ended, C.G. was assigned to occupational forces in France, while awaiting orders to head out to Japan. “Thank the Lord for the Atom bomb,” C.G. commented. During his time with the occupation forces, he and the other Allies got to know their one time enemy. C.G. was a part of every battle from the Battle of the Bulge on to Berlin (where they stopped outside and allowed the Russians to take over) and was among those who safely returned home but not without some physical and many emotional scars.

The 75^th also fought alongside the British and C.G. remembers how every afternoon round the same time they would have a spot of tea. Bullets would be a flying but the British would still take time out to have their tea. “I don’t know if they were tough, crazy, or if they just loved their tea,” C.G. said of this tradition.

Source http://wwiiwartimememories.blogspot.com/2012/05/cg-cooper-rifleman-cook-in-75th.html

The first day, December 16th, of the German Ardennes offensive was a huge success. Up and down the First Army front the Germans advanced as planned. In the Ghost Front area, where the main thrust was made, the 395th and the 394th were hit hard; to their right the 106th was overrun; and, to the right of the l06th, the situation was just as bad. On the 17th the Siegfried Line attack was called off and the withdrawal of the 395th to Elsenborn Ridge began.

Generally speaking, that was the situation. Now, what did soldiers like me know? We knew, first of all, that we were no longer attacking. Secondly, we knew from rumors and bits and pieces of news, that the Germans had launched an offensive of their own and were punishing the 99th and the 106th. Some rumors even had the Germans breaking through and racing for Paris. Next, we knew that the 395th was in a precarious situation; common sense told us that we were beyond the present front line. We did not know, or at least I did not know, that the 395th was carrying out a planned withdrawal. My impression was that 395th was cut off, surrounded, and that we were moving here and there trying to find an escape route. For many years I thought that we had escaped being captured only because the Germans, in their haste to reach and cross the Meuse River, bypassed us.

The four of five days that the 395th struggled to reach Elsenborn Ridge were the worst days that I spent in the Ardennes. Never again was the cold so cold, the shelling so fierce, or the uncertainty so great such specific memories as I have will be shared under their own descriptive headings. At some point, during the withdrawal, the 395th was placed under the command of the Commanding General, 2nd Division.

I have read everything that I could get my hands on dealing with the Battle of the Bulge. So, when I say that in withdrawing to Elsenborn Ridge, the 395th Combat Team utilized the procedure known as leap-frogging, you will already have guessed what I am now going to tell you—that I did not know that leap-frogging was going on until I read about it much later. As I said, my low level sense of the situation was that we were cut off, maybe even surrounded, and were searching for an escape route. Simplified, when leap-frogging unit A withdraws through a defensive line formed by unit B and, having passed through unit B’s defensive line, unit A forms a defensive line through which unit B then withdraws-with this going on until the withdrawal is complete.

As I said, I had no idea that we were leap-froging. I only knew that, endlessly, we were marching, digging in, freezing, getting shelled, and moving out, and going through it all again. Ammunition bearers in a heavy weapons company do not access to the big picture-in the Ardennes in December 1944, this probably was a good thing.

The Long Night

There was a long night. I endured it. Books say that the long night was the night of December 18th. I do not recall the date, but I do recall the night. What happened can be told in one long sentence. On a bitterly cold night, during the withdrawal to Elsenborn Ridge, the weary soldiers of the 395th climbed out of their foxholes, trudged across the frozen ground of the Ardennes for what seemed like forever, then turned around and retraced their steps, climbing back into the same foxholes that they had climbed out of earlier.

How could such a fiasco happen? One answer, if you can picture those weary soldiers trudging across the frozen ground, will bring tears to your eyes. According to books that I have read, that answer is: The 395th was met with “What Order”? No one there knew anything about such an order. With the 395th out of the defensive line, a gaping hole existed. The 395th was instantly ordered to retrace its steps. The incredible part of the story is-the order to pull out had been received by the 395th over the radio and had been given, probably in jest, by an English speaking German officer. That the order had been blindly obeyed seems unreal.

One battalion commander, I have also read, was sacked because, his men being exhausted to the point of dropping, he refused to order them back to their empty foxholes. His conduct paints a better picture of the whole episode than lean paint in words. I knew nothing about the mix up, or joke, or whatever it was. As I said earlier, I thought we were surrounded and trying to escape—that this was just more evidence of our plight.

More than sixty years later, I still remember the long night.

The Tank Battle

One dark, dark night during the withdrawal to Elsenborn Ridge, as our column was stealthily making its way along the edge of a clearing, staying far enough inside the wooded area to be out of sight, the sounds of tanks grinding away on the frozen ground broke the silence. The column halted, for the chilling sounds did not tell how many tanks there were or in which direction they were moving. At that time, remember, Germans were thought to be everywhere.

Just then, from the flashes of their guns, glimpses were caught of the silhouettes of two tanks. Was one of them a Tiger–one of them a Sherman? We could not tell. But the firing told us that they were after each other, not infantry soldiers. Like two prehistoric monsters, they were locked in a battle to the death. The battle did not last long. One of them burst into flames. Where the two tanks came from, and how they happened to meet, only their crews knew. Was one of them trying to find its way to Elsenborn Ridge? The column moved on, the mystery unsolved.

The Borrowed Shovel

My army shovel was a small implement. Its small size, however, was not a measure of its importance. On the contrary, in the Ardennes a shovel was of such importance that I took a substantial risk to replace one. One day, while trying to dig in the snow covered, frozen ground, I broke my shovel. I don’t remember what broke, just that my shovel broke. The timing could not have been worse. It broke just as Company H began to move. Hoping against hope that artillery fire would hold off until I came across a replacement shovel, I joined the column. As it happened, the column soon passed a dead German soldier whose shovel I could see.

I knew that taking the shovel would be risky. First, his body could have been booby-trapped. Next, we had been warned that being captured with a piece of German equipment was very, very dangerous. Weighing the risks did not take long. Scared to death, I borrowed the shovel. Nothing happened; the column kept moving. I got rid of the shovel as soon as possible.

Incoming-Outgoing

It seemed to me that artillery fire never let up—and that was not altogether a bad thing. Artillery fire, I am sure, was a major factor in the failure of 6th Panzer Army’s to break through the Ghost Front I was a fan of anything of ours having two or more wheels and a weapon with a large barrel-I05, 155, or whatever. All infantry soldiers shared my respect for artillery.

One night, during a particularly heavy artillery barrage, I was in a large dugout with four or five other soldiers. Some of them may not have been from Company H; for there was a time during the withdrawal when members of the 2nd Division and the 395th became mingled. One of two of them could have been from the 2nd Division.

As the shells were passing overhead, one of tile soldiers in the dugout kept saying either “incoming” or “outgoing”. He seemed to know from experience how to tell the difference. He probably was a member of the battle-experienced 2nd Division.

My ear was not that good. I never learned to distinguish incoming from outgoing. All sounds to me were incoming. I would say that silence was golden, except that outgoing probably is the reason why the 395th managed to withdraw to Elsenborn Ridge.

Holding Elsenborn Ridge

The 395th made its way hack to Elsenborn Ridge and became a part of the defensive line formed there. The defensive line, which later became known as the North Shoulder of the Bulge, was anchored by the 1st Division, the 2nd Division, the 99th Division and perhaps other units unknown to me. The defensive line held; the 6th Panzer Army did not break through to the Meuse; the Meuse River was not crossed.

When their offensive bogged down at Elsenborn Ridge, the Germans shifted the main thrust of the offensive south to Bastogne. Life on Elsenborn Ridge then eased a little. By January 11th the 395th had resumed attacking and had advanced far enough that I spent the night in a farm house. The night in the farm house ended my part in the Battle of the Bulge.

Strangely, I have few memories of my days on Elsenborn Ridge. I do remember looking out over what we called no man’s land and wondering “Are they coming today?” And, of course, I do remember, in a blurred way, the bitter cold, the miserable snow, the too-small foxholes, and the artillery fire that never seemed to let up.

Editor’s Note: Billy H. Clampett passed away on January 19, 2015. This story was submitted by his son Stephen M. Clampett, Associate, in his memory.

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My father, Anthony John Capozzoli was 18 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in February 1943, the fourth son to go in his family.  He left his job at Temple Music in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York, and reported to Camp Upton, located in Suffolk County, Long Island, for a few days.

He travelled by train to Camp McCain, MS where he was assigned to Headquarters Company 346th Infantry Regiment for several weeks.  “The barracks were made of packing crates with tar paper over them.  There were 2 potbelly stoves you were assigned to maintain.  It was the middle of winter down there,” he explained.

From there he went to Fort Bragg, NC for a few months.  “We went out on maneuvers —learning how to fight—going under barbed wire with real machine guns firing over you—role playing as if you were in combat,” he told me.  He had the job of cleaning the latrines while there, a job that kept him in a warm location.

This training was followed by a 6-month stint at Fort Benning, GA. where he attended school to learn Morse Code.  “We would get up about 3 o’clock in the morning, have breakfast, then we went to an area where we sat at a table, put earphones on and practiced Morse Code.  We had to read what you heard,” he said.

With training in communications as a radio operator, he went back to Fort Bragg to join the rest of his company.  He, along with other members of the 87th Infantry Division, boarded the Queen Mary in October 1944 and travelled to Scotland on a 4-day voyage.  They stayed in Scotland until their equipment arrived.  He drove a big truck down to Dover, England with the rest of the convoy.  “I had never driven a truck in my life,” he noted.

The 87th Infantry Division crossed the English Channel on a liberty ship and arrived in LeHavre, France, in November of 1944.  As part of the 87th, he travelled through France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany mostly by Jeep.  The mission was specific, where “whenever we got to a town, we would cut the lines of communication and set up our own.”  He explained that:  “We camped in houses when we took over a town” noting that “our communications people were behind the infantry.”  They knew they were supporting the troops, but  “we did not know what we were sending because it was in code.  The message center would decode it after it arrived.”

Dad participated in campaigns in the Ardennes, the Rhineland, and in the Battle of the Bulge as part of Patton’s Third Army.  During this battle, he assisted in keeping wire communications for the 346th HQ Company of the 87th Division.  He recalls going as far as Yugoslavia before stopping so that the Russians could come in and occupy part of Germany.  At this point, the war in Europe had finally ended.

He went back to Germany where they were assigned to a camp while waiting to sail home.  Upon his return to the U.S., he was on furlough for 30 days during August 1945, awaiting assignment to fight the Japanese in the Pacific.  But the war ended.

Because Anthony did not have enough points to be discharged, he was sent from Boston where their ship landed, to Sandy Hook, NJ, which was a reception center for new recruits.  Here his job was handing out uniforms.  Whenever possible, he went home on weekends by boat to Brooklyn and from there, by train back to Freeport, NY.

After his discharge, Anthony returned home to Freeport, resumed his job, and attended New York Radio Institute in New York City at night.  He married Joan Michalicki in 1950.  They settled in Merrick 5 years later. Until his retirement in 1989, he owned his own business as a television/radio technician.  He moved to Sebastian, FL in 1991.  This year he celebrated his 90th birthday there with family and friends.

Submitted by Mary Jane Capozzoli-Ingui

In the dead of winter with snow and sub-zero temperatures at times, U.S. soldiers, with the help of allied forces, fought brutally during World War II against Hitler’s army at the Battle of the Bulge between Dec. 6, 1944 and Jan. 28, 1945.

Not far from the frontlines, Dorothy Steinbis-Davis, RN, served the wounded—many of whom suffered from frostbite and other cold-related injuries—and saw many more casualties as they were brought to her small detachment, part of the 57^th Field Hospital.

Working in the mobile unit, made up of four physicians, a dentist, a medical administrative officer, five nurses, several enlistees and a small surgical team, proved to be a demanding and exhausting task for Davis.

“Our patients were those who were critically wounded and needed extensive nursing care,” said Davis, a 2^nd lieutenant with the U.S. Army Medical Corps. “The mortality rate was high—at times, over 20 percent. This was emotionally difficult. A patient you had over the past 12 to 15 hours, and whom you thought would survive, may have died when you returned to work after a few hours of sleep.”

With gun fire ringing out just a short distance away, Davis shared that there were many times when she and her crew didn’t know if they were going to be able to evacuate before the area was overrun by Germans.

“Transportation in these situations was always a grave problem,” she said.

She added, “You are afraid but on the other hand, you really had to stay focused on what you were doing.”

Though Davis’ detachment wasn’t officially assigned to the Battle of the Bulge, they were on the “French rim,” just close enough to treat any wounded in the area. At one point, the small detachment supported 24 battalions of troops, including a number of civilians who required emergency medical care before they could be transported to civilian hospitals.

“I can distinctly remember crawling into my bedroll after one exhausting day and thinking, ‘My God, what if we should lose the war?’”

During the Battle of the Bulge, Davis recalled how the hospitals often suffered from mass confusion particularly with the continuous need for blood and not knowing the state of the combat situation. Between October 1944, when Davis’ detachment first joined the Theater of Operations, and April 1945, the hospital moved 40 times.

Davis explained that many of the moves took place at night in blackout conditions so that the roads would be available during the day for use by the tanks, infantry and the Red Ball Express, a fleet of over 6,000 trucks and trailers that delivered over 400,000 tons of ammunition, food, and fuel to the Allied armies.

When possible, a schoolhouse or large building was selected for a makeshift hospital. On several occasions, Davis said that her crew would move into a building still occupied by a German hospital.

Because most of the buildings were so war-ravaged, Davis said that oftentimes patients on litters would be waiting for medical service to arrive. Nurses and doctors would immediately have to begin preparing the patients for surgery while the enlistees set to work cleaning the area, setting up a generator for electricity and assembling an X-ray unit, operating room and post-op ward.

By mid-March, as the war was nearing the end, the entire 57^th Field Hospital was assigned to Toul, France, to care for 355 Allied national patients, most of whom were Russian, as well as Yugoslavian, Serbian and Polish nationals, who had been liberated from the Germans.

The prisoners, who had been forced by the Germans to work in the lime mines near Metz, France, suffered from tuberculosis, osteomyelitis (infection of the bone caused by the seeding of the bacteria within the bone from a remote source), mine injuries and various nutritional diseases.

“[The prisoners’] state had been reduced to one of animals in their struggle for existence,” said Davis, who helped improve their health status so they could withstand their return trip to Russia.

Davis said the devastation and destruction around her could scarcely be imagined—roads littered for miles with debris and cities destroyed to almost non-existence. But her job in Europe was not over yet.

When her unit reached Germany, they worked at several air strips to serve as air holding hospitals before the wounded were air evacuated back to the United States once physically able. Some days, Davis and her crew saw up to 1,000 patients come through.

For three or four hours before a flight, the medical staff would feed, medicate and change the patients’ bandages.

“Many of them had never been on an airplane before so we really tried to make them feel comfortable and tried to control their worries,” said Davis. She learned many years later that the planes, used to bring food, gasoline and equipment to Europe, were soaked in gasoline. Not a good mix when there were several oxygen tanks set up for patients to withstand the long flight home.

After the war, Davis married a member of the 57^th Field Hospital, Col. William V. Davis, an Adjutant from Illinois who had served in the U.S. Army since 1938 and who survived the bombing at Pearl Harbor.

Though Davis retired from the U.S. Army after serving two years, she continued to use her nursing skills volunteering with the American Red Cross, an organization she still dedicates her time to—as a registered nurse—60 years later. Over the years, she helped run school health programs, provided immunizations and eye checks, and has volunteered for numerous other activities.

Davis, who originally wanted to be an “airline stewardess”—a profession that required a nursing background—soon realized that nursing was her love. Several years before graduating from nursing school at the University of Minnesota, she not only signed up for the American Red Cross when representatives came to her hospital to recruit nurses, but she also enlisted in the U.S. Army, which would recruit her as soon as she graduated, passed her boards and turned age 21.

“I fell in love with nursing and then when the war came along there was no thought of becoming an airline stewardess,” said Davis. “The Nurse Corps changed my whole life.”

Reprinted with permission from www.nycop.com

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An excerpt from the article “From Minsk, to Hollywood, to Buchenwald” by Joanne Palmer, originally appearing in the “Jewish Standard”, reprinted with permission

Harry Feinberg spent a few years playing with the Harmonica Rascals. The group went to Hollywood, where they appeared in movies. That was Old Hollywood, the place of black-and-white glamour and dangerous glittery prewar dreams. Mr. Feinberg lived very well there. “I met Tyrone Power. We worked with Mischa Auer, and Mae West. (“She was blind as a bat,” Mr. Feinberg said. “Her chauffeur was backstage with her to hold her hand and led her whenever she was ready to go on stage. But every time she passed me, she’d say, ‘Hello, Harry.’”) He never went back to [finish] high school. But in 1940, his parents called him home. The war was coming closer, the harmonica wave had crested, and it was time.

Mr. Feinberg’s father and his uncle had become building contractors, and he worked with them. Then he was drafted. That was 1942; Mr. Feinberg was 21. Basic training was in Fort Dix. “It was a cold winter, and we slept in tents,” Mr. Feinberg said. “You had to look at the bulletin board every day to see what your duty was going to be the next day. One night I saw that I was on KP. That’s kitchen police. I thought that I would have to guard the kitchen with a gun at my side, but it was not that at all.

“We went to the mess hall at 5 in the morning. The sergeant said to the other guy, ‘Come with me.’ There was a cubicle, and inside it were piles of potatoes, bags and bags of potatoes. The other guy had to peel potatoes all day long. “I went to the next cubicle, and there were onions, bags and bags of onions. Up to the ceiling. And there was a pot of boiling water. “So from 5 in the morning until about 11 at night, I peeled onions. I couldn’t see from the fumes. I stunk to high heaven. It was unbearable. My eyes were watery red. “From that day until today, I have never eaten another onion.” If all that had changed for him on that day was the acquisition of a lifelong aversion to onions, that would have been enough.

But it wasn’t. “The funny thing is that I got drafted the same day as a trumpet player who played with all the big bands,” he said. “While I was peeling onions, his name and mine kept being blared out all over Fort Dix. Then, at 11 o’clock at night, I came back to my tent, and one of the guys tells me, and says you’d better go see the first sergeant. As I went to him — they were playing cards at night, they were really rough guys — and one of them picks his head up and says ‘Oh yeah, there is some kind of show, and your name was called.’” He was to have been in it, but he missed the call. He was too busy peeling onions. The show was the review “This Is The Army,” written by Irving Berlin. In the movie version, Mr. Berlin sings his own song, “Oh How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning.”

Instead of being a traveling [harmonica] player, Mr. Feinberg fought in Europe. He was in the army from 1943 to 1945 — “three years and ten months,” he said — and “I was one of General George S. Patton’s tankers. “We really spearheaded the European campaign. I was in all five of Patton’s campaigns. We started out in Utah Beach, in France, then Luxembourg, Belgium, the Battle of the Bulge, and on into Czechoslovakia. “I have no idea why I’m alive today.” Mr. Feinberg drove a tank.

“We came face to face with Germany every day,” he said. “I was a gunner. I had a big gun next to me. I would take a big shell, put it in the gun. I had a telescope right next to the gun. I was in the turret, I would see the enemy, and I would shoot. “I saw heads flying, arms flying. When the dust cleared, I would see bodies all over the place. It didn’t look real. Not a thing for a Jewish boy to see. Or actually for anybody to see.” He eventually was made a tank commander. “I took a few hits,” he said. “I lost two tanks. It was no joke. I don’t know how we got out alive. The second tank just burned to a crisp. “When we were hit, I yelled, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ The gunner was such a polite guy that he said, ‘Go out. I’ll go after you.’ I had to pick him up and throw him out, and then I jumped out and ran. I don’t know how many yards. And then I looked back and saw billows of smoke.

“It drove me a little nuts. The medics saw me and tackled me, and put me in an ambulance, took me to a field hospital. I was there three days, under a doctor’s care. They gave me big blue pills to calm me down. “The doctor had a card table, and we would line up. He smoked a cigar. He said, ‘Follow my fingers. How many fingers do you see?’ I told him and he said, ‘You’re ready to go back to the front.’ I said, ‘Please don’t send me back,’ but he said, ‘Sorry. I have to.’ “I went back. “They got me a third tank, and my company commander said, ‘Harry, we got a new buggy for you.’ I said, ‘I can’t get into a tank again. It’s impossible. My head doesn’t allow it.’ And he said, ‘You’re right. You’re not getting into another tank. Do you realize that they cost $30,000 each?’ So he put me in a jeep, and made me a corporal.

“I would have to go from company to company with a secret message.” It would be on a small scroll of paper that he would hide in a slit cut into his uniform, right next to the zipper. “That was my job until the end of the war,” he said. “It was scary. Everything happened at night, and here I was, driving by myself at night. “One night, my first sergeant and I got to a town in Germany, and we smelled something wrong. “He looked at his map, and said that this is a town called Jenna — and I don’t think this town has been taken. We were the first Americans there. “We said that we’d better get the hell out of there. “As we turned around, we saw two Germans standing there in uniform, a major and his aide. My sergeant says ‘Stop,’ and he runs out and points his gun at them. They both come out with their hands up. He took their guns, and asked me which one I wanted. “I still have it.”

Mr. Feinberg spoke Yiddish, so he interrogated some of the Germans the army captured. “They were happy to give up,” he said. “I mentioned Patton, and they’d stand up. The name would freeze the blood in their veins. “We were not there to liberate anyone,” he continued. “Just to find and destroy. That’s what our outfit did. We were a combat outfit. We would get up, eat breakfast, and shoot.” After attacks, General Patton would come by, drive in his jeep with the four stars, and call us all over to say, ‘Good job, boys. Mr. Feinberg stood close to him at one of these sessions. “I was interested not in looking at him or listening to him, but in looking at the two ivory-handled guns on his belt,” he said. “He was big. Tall. His eyes were always bloodshot. I think he drank a lot of booze. “And he shortened the war for us.”

Although his job was not to liberate, his unit — the Fourth Armored Division — liberated a concentration camp, and then got to Buchenwald six days after its liberation. Mr. Feinberg and his unit entered Ohrdruf, a concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 4, 1945. “We were driving into Germany; we got into Gotha without firing a shot,” he said. “We took over the town. There were no cars, no people, no activity. Of course, everyone was hiding from us. We kept going until we came to the town of Ohrdruf. We had no idea about labor or concentration camps. “We went up into the woods. There were signs on the trees saying ‘Verboten.’” Forbidden. “We came up to the edge of the woods, and we saw fences, and a gate, with only two men there. One was 65 years old and one was 70. They were in German uniforms, with helmets and rifles. As soon as they saw us, they threw them down.

“We saw the ugliest thing that anyone had ever seen, toothpicks walking around. There were bodies in the courtyard, with striped uniforms. We thought that everyone in the pile was dead, but there were barracks. I got off my tank and looked around, with my handkerchief over my mouth. I spooked a man lying on his back, with his head shaved, in a striped uniform, gasping for air. I knelt down, and he sensed that somebody was there. He looks up, and he didn’t have the strength for it but he said, ‘Amerikaner?’ and I said “Jah. Amerikaner.’ He didn’t have the strength, but he put his hands together, thanking me for freeing him.” Mr. Feinberg got a doctor and an ambulance for the man, but he does not know the end of that story. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was there, and so was General Patton. “As tough a guy as Patton was, I saw him go back behind one of the barracks upchucking,” Mr. Feinberg said.

As for Buchenwald, amid all the horrors he saw — the people were gone by then, as were their murderers, but their tools remained — what haunts him most, “what drove me crazy, was a wooden crate with babies’ shoes,” he said. After the war, as part of the Army of Occupation, Mr. Feinberg helped police towns in Germany. “We were on guard night and day to make sure that there was no uprising,” he said. “They gave me a territory of 13 little towns. They were very quaint. Very cute. It was my job to find the mayor of each town. I would go into the town — the road would be lined with cattle. At 4:30 or so, the kids in town would have the job of bringing the cows back home. The cows knew which house to go to, and the kids would make sure that they didn’t stray, but only went to the house they belonged to. I would interrogate the mayor. I was a tough guy, a tough sergeant. No smiles. I told them that I had to know what was going on. I had to know about all meetings. If they had any guns or ammunition or explosives or hand grenades, they had to bring them to their yards, and we would destroy them.

“The Americans would get up at 2 in the morning and raid their houses. It was cruel, but it had to be done. “The mayor knew I was Jewish. They all knew, and they were frightened of me. “One day, I saw a girl who said she spoke English; she said she came from Montclair. I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ and she said ‘My family was in Germany.’ I said, ‘You mean that your father thought that Hitler was going to take over America, so you’d be safer here.’ She put her head down and wouldn’t answer me. But she was a big help to me.”

Once he came home, Mr. Feinberg took advantage of the GI Bill to go to a school in Paterson that taught building trades, and he got married; he and his wife, Edie, have been married for more than 50 years, and they are proud parents of three children and grandparents of three grandchildren. Mr. Feinberg worked as a contractor until the injuries he’d gotten during the war caught up with him. He is now in a wheelchair. Mr. Feinberg, past president of the national Fourth Armored Division Association, secretary/treasurer of the New York chapter of that association, and past president of the Garden State Harmonica Club, has two Purple Hearts. Last month [November 2013], the French government named him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, its highest honor.

Of the many incidents that happened to me while serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, One evening stands out with great clarity. On December 24,1944,1 was a Second Lieutenant, Medical Administrative Corps, commanding a platoon of ten enlisted men, equipped with ten ambulances and one jeep. Our company, the 587^th; had spent a period of rest and recuperation after working in the Alsace region of France, north of Luneville. We received orders to move out and proceed to Luxembourg City.

A few days before we left I had observed very heavy traffic going north. Also, much to my surprise, the vehicles were being driven with their headlights on.   Previously we had always driven under blackout conditions using cats eye illumination. Our company consisting of headquarters and three platoons left the area north of Luneville on December 24 arrived in Luxembourg City in the early evening and reported to a medical battalion headquarters.   It was freezing cold!

Having been through more than a few Windy City (Chicago) December blizzards, I immediately located a Quartermaster store and bought an army trench coat to go with overshoes I had received from the company supply. The trench coat came down below my knees and I had to roll up the sleeves.   I wore an O.D. shirt, an O.D. sweater, a field jacket, the trench coat, G.I. Boots, socks, a helmet with liner and was ready to travel in a jeep with the top down. My platoon was assigned to begin evacuating casualties from the Clearing Station of the 80th Infantry Division at Esch Sur Sur. Not to be confused with another Esch in the south part of the Duchy. One of my men of the Catholic faith had found a church and decided to attend mass that evening. The entire platoon waited outside the church and watched as large flakes of snow started to fall. When mass was over we began motoring north to our destination.

Security was very strict everywhere as there were rumors that the Nazi enemy was infiltrating the American lines with Germans dressed in American uniforms speaking English. Supposedly one of the Germans was Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s favorite commando. At every village we approached, and there were many of them, we encountered sentries coming out of the darkness with loaded weapons challenging everything and anything. All of them had itchy trigger fingers. At one village, I was sitting in the passenger seat of my vehicle and as we stopped the driver was challenged with the usual sign. That evening it was”eagle” and it was to be answered by the counter sign of “nest”. To my amazement my driver forgot both the sign and the counter sign and Froze speechless! The sentry kept repeating the sign louder and louder all the while poking his rifle through the window closer and closer to me. I finally yelled “you S.O.B. it’s NEST! NEST! And he allowed us to proceed.

It bears mentioning at this point that the 587^th was an unusual and unique U.S. Army formation. It was one of the few medical units composed of all black, now known as African American, enlisted men commanded by all Caucasian, or white, commissioned officers. One of which was me! The Germans may have been masquerading as Americans but they sure weren’t black! The snow filled roads were treacherous but we finally arrived at the clearing station, located in a Castle, in the early hours of December 25,1944. Tired and ready to carry out our assignment, but not  to tired however to refuse when the cooks offered me a night cap. They had “found” some medical alcohol (normally used to make cough medicine and other liquid medicines) mixed it with some powdered lemon and Viola, a cocktail. It was the best cocktail I have ever had. I proceeded to find a space on the floor of the castle spread out my bedroll and fall asleep.

Christmas Day we were treated to a traditional repast of turkey with all the trimmings.  The weather had cleared and when we looked up we could see airplanes. To our relief they were American airplanes. The Eighth Air Force B17s flying east to bomb the Germans. After a few weeks in Esch Sur Sur evacuating all kinds of wounded we moved up to Wiltz. Subsequently, we were ordered back to somewhere in France assigned to what was left of the 28^th Infantry Division and continued with our job of moving patients from Clearing Stations to Evac Hospitals.

It was a most memorable Christmas Season. I would like to pay tribute to the junior officers and enlisted men who by their bravery and perseverance won the battle, despite the miscalculations of higher headquarters.

I was in the 16th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, Battery A. We were the eyes and ears of the Field Artillery. We fought our way from Utah Beach to the border of Belgium & Germany at a place named Auw, GERMANY, not a town just a place.  We were there in the winter.  Our area was considered a light fighting area. The heavy fighting was North of us at Cologne, Germany and South of us in Southern France. We were fired on by German artillery and the German infantry was very close.

The Germans fired Buzz Bombs over us frequently. A Buzz Bomb is an unmanned airplane that flew very low and is filled with flammable liquid and shrapnel. We could near the motor as it flew over us and when the motor stopped, we knew it would crash in seconds.  We had three land close to us, but no one was injured. Buzz Bombs killed & injured many Americans.

We were in the Hurtgen Forest in the Schnee Eifel Mountains where the snow was deep, the ground was frozen and we did not have winter clothes. On Dec. 16, 1944 Nazi General Von Runsted made a break thru on a fifty mile front. He came thru with the 5th Panzer Army, the 6th Panzer Army and the 7th German Army. He had brand new King Tiger tanks, new heavy artillery and thousands of infantry, most dressed in white for camouflage. Auw, Germany was in the very center of this onslaught.   We lost much equipment and pulled back to St. Vith, Belgium.  We were overpowered there and retreated back to Bastogne where we were surrounded Many of the American soldiers there were killed, wounded or went insane from the constant bombardment.

When the Battle of the Bulge started, it was cloudy and very foggy.  We could hear Tank treads coming toward us, but could not tell if it was a Nazi Tiger Tank or an American Sherman Tank.  General George Patton ordered the 101st and 82nd Airborne up to Bastogne.  They could not jump from planes because of the fog. They were brought up in 6×6 Army trucks and it took them two days to reach us. A paratrooper ask me where the front line was and I told him he was standing on it_.  Somehow our battery escaped the Bastogne encirclement. Three us came upon a Belgium farmhouse in the middle of the battlefield.  We went inside and there was a father, mother and two children, a boy and girl about 7 or 8 years old.  The mother gave us some soup and black bread and we save them some candy.  This was Christmas Eve.  We sang Christmas songs that night.  We sang Jingle Bells and Silent Night, the words were different, but the music was the same.   We were wet and cold, but we dried off that night.  We could hear machine guns rattle and Artillery shells bursting all night.  We didn’t get much sleep, but we got warm and dry.

We left the next morning and the family didn’t want to see us go, The 16th was badly shot up and the 285th FAOB in the same area was badly shot up.  The two Observation Battalions decided to form one unit, so they could be more effective in the war.  This did not happen, the Nazi SS Troops captured a Battery of the 285th and herded them into an open snowy field and machine gunned them down in cold blood_.  This was not war, this was murder and was known as the Malmedy Massacre.

The clouds and fog started to break up and the Air Force flew thousands of sorties over the area.  They bombed tank positions, artillery positions and machine-gunned infantry troops and supply lines.  We watched C-47 planes fly low over the battlefield and drop by parachute food, guns, gasoline and medical supplies,we were out of everything. We begin to hold our own and gradually fought our way back to Auw, Germany.

On January 30th, 1945 we were at the same location we were on Dec 16, 1944. Up to now were liberators, from now on we will be conquerors.  Over one million men fought in the “Battle of the Bulge”, 600,000  Americans, 500,000 Germans, and 35,000 English, French, Canadians and others.  This is the largest land battle ever fought by any American Army_. We fought our way to Koblenz, Germany, crossed the Rhine River, was at the liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp, the first camp liberated on the Western Front, fought thru Nuremberg into Czechoslovakia, met the Russian Army and on May 8, 1945 was V.E. Day.  The War in Europe was over.  From the time we went ashore on Utah Beach, until we met the Russians, I was on the front lines the whole time.  I know that Freedom is not Free!

A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed
by John P. Malloy, 75^th ID, 291^st IR

I worried and wondered if my best friend, Dean Lusjenski, had survived the recent vicious fighting at Grand-Halleux. Dean was with L (Love) Company in a machine gun section, in the 291st heavy weapons company. That company had sustained serious casualties in that battle. I decided I should find his company and see if he was still ok.

Dean and I had been called to duty on the same day in March 1943. He was a senior at Creighton University in Omaha, and I was a junior there. We had spent the entire war together and had become fast friends. We looked after one another, as soldiers often do. Now I wondered, and worried, what had happened to him during the vicious battles along the Salm River.

The 291 st Regiment had played an important role in counter attacking the retreating German forces. The Gl’s had suffered severe frostbite and trench foot because of the cold and snow. Huddling for days in a wet, cold, foxhole wore men down. This suffering, combined with battle wounds, had taken a severe toll.

I was lucky I was able to track him down. My job, as wire crew chief, gave me considerable independence and freedom of action. I knew my crew would handle any problems while I was gone. Earlier that morning the Third Battalion, Dean’s unit, had attacked a heavily defended hill-casualties were heavy. I knew the current action was centered in a small village about a quarter of a mile to the east. I took our jeep and headed that way. As I approached the village I stopped and proceeded on foot. When I reached the village center, I could see the German defenders had been forced back, perhaps five hundred yards. There was confusion. Medics evacuated wounded. Tanks slowly ground forward. An artillery spotter moved his vantage point.

Infantry units continued the attack. Apparently another unit had just been relieved. Those men were half hidden in doorways. Others hunkered down, waiting, hoping. They were a disheveled, bearded crew. They were exhausted. Most had not been out of their clothes for days. They hadn’t had a truly hot meal for some time. Artillery fire had devastated the area. Buildings were smoking shambles. Some still stood, in others, men sought what shelter they could find. An improvised aid station was operating. Medics treated bloody wounds. There was the awful smell of cordite-a reminder of death.

A winter sun shone weakly on the chaos. Just a month ago a pristine snow had drifted down, providing a beautiful blanket, covering this remote countryside. Now, brown replaced white. Brown clad warriors brought brown tanks, brown trucks, and brown cannon. Brown buildings burned. Dirty, brown soil lay exposed. It was an ugly place. This was not an unusual sight across France and Belgium. Our War Machine destroyed what little the Germans left when they fled.

There was occasional incoming mortar fire now; this was not a safe area. I tried to identify the units present. I could see that some Third Battalion Companies were involved in the firefight but I could not find L Company. I decided my efforts were futile. I couldn’t find my friend so I decided to return to my outfit. I retreated towards my jeep. The late afternoon light was turning to dusk. I worried about the drive. Driving in pitch black darkness was dangerous. I worried I might encounter a trigger happy Gl. He would shoot first and ask questions later.

Then I saw him. He was slumped in a ruined doorway.

“Dean, Dean is that you?”

He looked at me. I moved closer-he had an unfocused, zombie like, gaze. He stared vacantly.

“Lusienski-Lusienski it’s me, John.”

His only comment was,” I’m cold, I’m cold.”

“Dean I’m taking you with me. You need rest and a hot meal inside you.”

He mumbled,” I can’t. I’ve got to get back to my platoon.”

“You are coming with me and that’s that. Don’t give me a hard time.”

I walked him to the jeep. We took off. A commandeered farmhouse served as the Regimental CP. The wire section’s sleeping bags were on a dirt floor in an adjoining barn. I got Dean out of his overcoat. I removed his boots and put him into my sleeping bag. I covered him with an extra blanket. He slept eighteen hours. I brought him a hot meal. He slept again. When he woke he was a different man. We had a good conversation. We exchanged news. He had another good meal. Then it was time to go. His dry clothes and boots were ready. He got into his overcoat, put on his helmet, slung his weapon over his shoulder. I returned him to his company.

I didn’t see him again for several weeks. After the Bulge, the Division headed south and east to Colmar France near Strasburg. There we continued kitting Germans. Dean, in the weeks following the battles in the Ardennes and Colmar, was promoted to Staff Sergeant and awarded the Bronze Star for his leadership in operations in the Rhine River area.

Epilogue: After the war Dean Lusienski returned to his home in Nebraska. He married and had a family/He used the G\ bill to earn a PhD in Educational Psychology at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He served for many years as Principal for the world famous Boy’s Town. In later years, I occasionally traveled to Omaha from my home in Milwaukee. Dean and I would have dinner together. We talked about the early years. Dean died several years ago at the age of seventy.

Dean Lusienski was an outstanding example of Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation”.

I still miss my best friend.

Excerpts from “Combat Engineers in WWII”
by Wesley Ross 3rd  Platoon, 146^th Engineer Combat Bn.

About 10 December 1944, as a nervous tag-along member of a six man patrol from a 38^th Cavalry troop–forward of the front and east of Bullingen, Belgium at the German border–we found plenty of German activity across the bottom of a tree-filled canyon. Trees were being cut down with saws and axes, and tanks and other heavy motorized equipment were moving around over straw covered trails, to muffle their sounds. While watching this activity from a concealed position two hundred yards away on the opposite side of the canyon, we listened to the big tank engines for some time and sensed that “something unusual was afoot”.

When information regarding all of this German activity was sent to army headquarters, their response was “this is just a feint to trick us into pulling our troops away from our planned offensive near Schmidt in the Hurtgen Forest”. If it had not been so serious, an almost comical ploy was our leaders attempt to enhance our perceived troop strength in the Ardennes, in order to draw more Germans troops from the front further north at Aachen. They conjured up a non-existent infantry division to further promote the ruse. (Heard, but not verified—WR)

As a result, our high-level commanders were not suspicious when the Germans began bringing in more and more troops prior to the Bulge—this is exactly what our leaders had hoped–and they happily believed that their scheme was working to perfection. There were a few red faces when the axe finally fell! We at the lower levels, were unaware of these machinations, but were kept alert by the persistent rumors that were floating around. On our return trip from our canyon viewpoint, the cavalry used pull-igniters on three Tellermines left by a German patrol that had been chased off the previous night. Several enemy were killed when they tried to reclaim their AT mines.

While I occasionally had patrolled in areas forward of our front lines, I had never patrolled with the audacity of these 38^th Cavalry troopers. They were fearless and not concerned that might bump into German patrols. They probably would have welcomed the opportunity! My 3^rd platoon had laid AT mines along the road shoulders near Bullingen a few weeks earlier, but that was probably done to deter small-scale penetrations. Bullingen was on the route to be taken by Kampgruppe Peiper and where his forces captured a large quantity of our gasoline, before heading west, towards Huy on the Meuse River. On 14 December the 2^nd Infantry Division launched an attack from the Elsenborn Ridge to capture the Roer River dams–to keep the Germans from flooding the Roer River plain and foiling our advance at Aachen. The “Indian Head Division” was making good progress in a flanking action–thus gaining ground that had been denied us in the September to November frontal assaults in the Hurtgen Forest.

V-Corps called off the attack on the second day of the Bulge–to keep our forces from being decimated by the massive enemy infantry and armored forces that were attacking there. The Bulge was considerably more than a feint–it was a giant leap beyond what any of us could have imagined, and it caught everyone by surprise—even those of us at the lower levels, who suspected that “something unusual was afoot”!

On the morning of 16 December, the well-orchestrated German attack in the Ardennes—that they called the “Wacht am Rhein”— was launched. The name was a subterfuge to hide their offensive intentions behind a pretended defense. Hitler suspected a security leak within his Wehrmacht and so he limited disclosures of the attack plans to only his most trusted generals. He was unaware that the British had broken his Enigma Code, even though some of his advisors had suggested that this may have happened. “Impossible” said der Fuehrer!

There were so few radio intercepts concerning the upcoming Ardennes offensive that our top level commanders were caught off guard—even though many of us at lower levels were antsy about all of the enemy activity nearby. In general, the Wehrmacht followed the mandated secrecy orders, but there were enough slip-ups by their air force and civilian transportation units to have given our commanders sufficient insight had they not been so supremely overconfident. The 14 6ECB was bivouacked at Mutzenich Junction, three miles west of the front at Monschau—which was at the northern shoulder of the German build-up. The 38^th Cavalry was also at the northern flank of the Bulge at Monschau and just north of the 3rd Battalion, 395th Regiment, 99th Infantry Division–who managed to hold their ground even though the remainder of the division was badly chewed up, and much of their command was shifted to the 2nd Infantry Division.

For several days this small cavalry force—plus 3rd Platoon, A-Co, 112ECB; A-Co, 146ECB; and their attached 105mm and 155mm artillery—fought off several attacks by vastly superior enemy forces. Several times artillery fire was called in on their own positions to thwart the attacks. Canister rounds—a cannoneer’s shotgun—were used with devastating effect when they were about to be overrun. For their stout defense, all three units were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation–the nation’s highest unit award. According to “Cavalry on the Shoulder”, the 38^th Cavalry was the only cavalry squadron to be so honored in WWII.

The 14 6th Engineer Combat Battalion had received a Presidential Unit Citation for their D-Day demolition mission on Omaha Beach, so an oak leaf cluster was added to A-Co’s PUC. The battlefield success of the 38^th Cavalry Squadron in the Bulge, was due to a number of elements, including a seasoned cadre that had fought from Normandy—but probably the most important factor was their commanding officer–Lt Colonel Robert 0’Brien–a 1936 West Point cavalry graduate. He was a fanatic in his dedication to patrolling the area forward of his lines–to the extent that his Cavalry Squadron eventually came to own that area! Initially, this was not the case but came to pass after several fierce firefights that inflicted heavy casualties on enemy patrols.

This type of aggressive action was repeated often in the Monschau sector, causing enemy patrols to avoid contact and allowing cavalry patrols to make increasingly detailed reconnaissance reports and sketches of enemy positions. More importantly, it left the German commanders ignorant of the details of the cavalry’s defensive positions. The cavalry’s weapons were carefully positioned, so as to provide interlocking grazing fire along all of the likely enemy avenues of approach. They were further tied into obstacles of concertina wire and personnel mines along these likely avenues. Further, extensive use was made of trip flares to provide early warning of enemy approach. Flares were preferred because they prevented friendly casualties in case of mistakes, and they did not give the false sense of security be associated with an extensive minefield.

All of the weapons were dug in, with overhead cover to survive artillery attack, and they were carefully concealed so that an attacking enemy had to literally be on the position to recognize it as a machine gun position. Finally the positions were integrated into the squadron command and control telephone net. A final point on the preparation of the Monschau defense was a typical characteristic of defense common to the United States army—the thorough integration and abundance of artillery support–105mm and 150mm howitzers, augmented by their organic 60mm and 81mm mortars. “The effectiveness of the artillery support was later verified by a German prisoner. He reported that German troops in the Monschau sector were forbidden to leave their bunkers and foxholes during the hours of daylight. They were reduced to observing their sectors through the use of mirrors in order not to attract rapid and deadly artillery fire.

This dedicated defensive preparation was tested at 0545 on the morning of 16 December 1944, when the intense German artillery barrage announced the start of the Battle of the Bulge. On the night of 16/17 December 1944, the 1,500 man parachute force, under Lieutenant Colonel Frederich-August von der Heydte, dropped into the Hohes Venn in “Operation Stosser”. His group had fought several vicious engagements with the 101st Airborne Division in Normandy and again in General Bernard Montgomery’s flawed Market Garden offensive in September 1944–as portrayed in “The Band of Brothers”. The Hohes Venn is a swampy area on the headwaters of the Roer River. In November, three of us tried to cross through this swampy area. With our Jeep flat out in four wheel drive, we traveled about 50 yards, before dropping it down to its axles. We then had to jack it up out of the mud and build a corduroy road to get back on solid ground.

The paratroopers were a day late because of glitches in getting their gasoline delivered and in getting the troops assembled. They were scattered for 25 miles from Malmedy to Eupen because of inexperienced pilots and the minimal advance notice regarding the mission—dictated by Hitler as a security measure. The unsynchronized twin Jumo engines of their planes generated an interesting slow beat-frequency sound. Many parachutes were found after the drop. I rescued an undamaged white one—also a large section from a brown and green camouflaged model. Both appeared to be silk. The camouflaged silk made fine neck scarves and several still reside in my dresser drawer to be worn occasionally, but I finally gave the white one to the Salvation Army, after it had taken up closet space for more than twenty years.

General Dietrich’s 6th Panzer Army—the main German force in the Bulge–included four Panzer Divisions with the latest tanks, weapons and infantry.  It included the 1st SS Panzer Division–Leibstandarte S S Adolph Hitler.  The lightning strike to the Meuse River near Huy, Belgium was to be led by Joachim Peiper leader of Kampfgruppe Peiper, from this division.  They then would move north to Antwerp and enveloping our northern armies, similar to the 1940 French and British defeat there! In the planning, Dietrich’s forces were to have reached the Baroque Michel crossroads—midway between Malmedy and Eupen—on the 16th, which was to have been captured by the paratroopers by then. The 38^th Cavalry’s stand at Monschau blunted that effort, so Dietrich’s forces were directed south toward Elsenborn, Bullingen and Malmedy.

Had Dietrich been able to force his way through Monschau, he very well may have rolled up our front and then captured the large gasoline dumps near Eupen. Had this come to pass, their armies could then have moved almost unimpeded north to Antwerp. Despite all of the negative opinions about the stupidity of launching the Ardennes offensive and taking troops and materiel away from the Russian front, honesty must conclude that with a few fortunate breaks, the Bulge could have been a phenomenal German success and Hitler would then have been trumpeted as a great tactician!

At 1520 hours on 16 Dec, V-Corp’s Colonel Pattillo called Major Willard Baker—our S-3 and ordered 146ECB to furnish a company of engineers to serve as infantry–to be attached to the 38th Cavalry Squadron at Monschau. A-Company was in the line at 1700 that evening, where they furnished support for the outnumbered troopers. At 1525 Hours, Colonel McDonough—the 1121^st Engineer Combat Group commander—called our headquarters and ordered another engineer company to be deployed as infantry.The three B-Company platoons moved into position the next morning and for several days formed a barrier line, a short distance behind the front between Monschau and Elsenborn. Our purpose was to slow the advance of the the Panzer Army, should they penetrate our lines. The 3rd Platoon covered a 1,000 yard front in the snow, until relieved on 23 December.

We set up three 50 caliber machine guns in defensive positions and patrolled between them, but being in a semi-wooded area we had inadequate fields of fire and would have been captured or bypassed by any enemy attack in force! Several men manned daisy-chain roadblocks on nearby roads. These are AT mines roped together, so they can be pulled across the road at the approach of enemy vehicles, but they are not effective unless they are adequately supported by covering fire. Trees had explosives strapped to their trunks in order to drop them and form abatis, at the approach of enemy vehicles. Engineers have only occasional needs for machine guns, but we had both the WWI vintage water cooled .30 caliber Brownings and the newer air cooled version—as well as the .50 caliber Brownings that were normally ring-mounted on our truck cabs for anti-aircraft fire. Our .30 caliber Brownings were light-years behind the vastly superior German MG-42. In the early hours of the parachute drop, one of our water-cooled Brownings fired one round only and then sat there mute–the water in the cooling jacket had frozen, jamming the action!

While on outpost duty, the 3rd Platoon had no clue as to the enemy’s intentions, or what was actually taking place nearby at the front. We were located in a sparsely woody area away from our headquarters, but the wealth of rumors and the actuality of the paratroopers and reports of Skorzeny’s men in American uniforms kept us alert.  Unconfirmed rumors abounded! Anyone moving around was challenged–this included even our easily recognized generals. Lt Leonard Fox—now a C-Company platoon leader–was taken prisoner by a patrol from the 38th Cavalry Squadron. He had not received the password for the day. After six hours, while his legitimacy was being confirmed, he was released. Lt Refert Croon led a patrol of Joe Manning, Marvin Lowery, Warren Hodges and others, looking for the paratroopers. Lowery was killed in an ensuing firefight that killed two Germans and wounded several more–the rest surrendered. Nine paratoopers were killed and about sixty were captured—all by C-Company and HQ-Company—as A-Company and B-Company were deployed elsewhere as infantry. Fred Matthews was captured by the paratroopers, but he managed to escape during another firefight.

The 291^st Engineer Combat Battalion set up roadblocks near Malmedy. Even more important than establishing the roadblocks was their contribution in slowing Kampfgruppe Peiper by blowing a number of bridges and thwarting his intended drive to the Meuse River. Some of the bridges were destroyed just as Peiper’s tanks arrived on the scene. I believe that their stout defense was a major factor in blunting Kampfgruppe Peiper’s drive to the Meuse River at Huy. The 291^st Engineers, along with the 30^th Infantry Division, were bombed three times by our 9th Air Force during their days in Malmedy. Misdirected air strikes were not too unusual an occurrence when mists and clouds mask events on the ground–or when the front is poorly defined. These fatalities were related by Colonel Pergrin–the unhappy commander of a battalion of combat engineers.

Julius Mate–whom I had not seen since before the Bulge-related the following at our annual battalion reunion in 1993: “Early on the morning of 17 December, Sergeant Henri Rioux sent Nettles and another radio man to the battalion headquarters for breakfast. When the radio operators had not returned as expected, Rioux told Mate and James France to go to breakfast and to see what had happened to them. Later we heard that the paratrooper’s planned assembly area was this battalion radio shack, several hundred yards from our bivouac area—located away to keep from drawing artillery fire on our headquarters.” On their way, they saw a parachute with an attached bag hanging in a dead tree. Seeing evidence of the paratroopers was not surprising since they had heard the planes overhead the previous night and our men had seen their green recognition lights. Mate attempted to recover the chute by pulling on the shroud lines, but the rotten tree broke and the trunk fell across his ankle, pinning’him to the “ground.”

“After working free, they continued toward the headquarters and breakfast and then saw Nettles up ahead acting very strange. When they ran up to ask what was happening, six paratroopers with machine pistols stepped out of hiding, took them captive, disarmed them and then threw their M-l Garand rifles into a nearby creek–where they were found later that day by a patrol led by Lt Refert Croon.” “Nettles and Mate were directed to make a double-pole support to carry a paratrooper who had compound fractures of both legs. At the end of the day, Mate’s ankle was swollen and painful, so France and Nettles carried the wounded trooper.” “This small group kept moving during the day and slept under fir boughs at night. After wandering about for two days, they joined the main body of about 150 paratroopers and were then interrogated by a German officer who spoke impeccable English. He had studied at a Texas university and so not only knew the language–but also the American idioms and customs.”

“They were combined with twenty others who had been captured from a laundry unit near Eupen. At night they slept in a tight pile to keep warm, as it was very cold. After a time when the body parts against the ground were growing cold, they all turned at a given signal. They kept up a running conversation to keep telling of the importance of moving toes and fingers to avert frostbite.” “One of the captives, who understood German, heard their captors discussing how they should dispose of the Americans by throwing grenades into their midst while they slept. When a patrol from the 1st Infantry Division engaged the paratroopers, the captives ran up waving their shirts and yelling “Don’t shoot–were Americans”. Early in the Bulge, Earl Buffington—from C-Company–was riding in Blaine Hefner’s truck, as they won the race with a German tank to a crossroad near Malmedy. The tank halted and began firing at them as they scurried away.

Earl’s arm was injured by a low hanging tree limb and he was hospitalized near Spa, Belgium. The limb also brushed off his “Omaha Beach Trophy Helmet” which sported two clean 8mm holes. The bullet had passed from front to back nicking his ear and the side of his head. He was not seriously wounded, so he considered that a good omen and he refused to swap the helmet for a new one.  However, his Trophy Helmet was never recovered. Soon after Earl and several others were dropped off at the field hospital in Spa, he was told that the Germans were about to overrun the area, so Earl and a group “af patients scurried out the back. In a similar fashion Mugg Pawless, Julian Mathies and eight others fled out the back door of a hospital in Malmedy just ahead of the attacking Germans and later ended up at a temporary hospital in the Grand Hotel in Paris.

In November—at Vossenack in the Hurtgen Forest—Mugg was wounded in the heel by an artillery round. After returning from that infantry support mission, the wound was periodically sore and treatment was ineffective, so he was finally sent to an evacuation hospital. When German tanks were heard snorting around nearby, he was moved to another hospital in Malmedy. Before his treatment could be completed, the Germans also cut short that hospital stay. Mugg couldn’t don a shoe on his sore foot, so he put on seven socks, slipped on an overshoe and walked out into the snow with his fellow patients. The next morning they wandered into a gasoline dump near Spa that was being evacuated. Mugg and Julian rode atop gas cans to Rheims where the Red Cross fed them doughnuts and coffee and took them to a hospital where Mugg’s wound was dressed.

He was sent by ambulance to Paris where his wound was cleaned surgically and he was given penicillin. After a short stop in a Cherbourg hospital where his wound was again cleaned and antibiotics administered, Mugg eventually ended up in a hospital in England. When that doctor asked what the x-rays had shown, Mugg stated that no x-rays had been taken. The doctor was surprised and the follow-up x-rays showed a small artillery fragment lodged in his heel—cause of the pain that had plagued him for months.  It was removed and his recovery was uneventful.

987^th FIELD ARTILLERY BATTALION IN WORLD WAR II (From D-Day in Normandy to VE-Day in Czechoslovakia)
by Harlan Lincoln Harner, 987^th FAB

The 987^th Field Artillery Battalion, minus its 155mm self-propelled guns, left Camp Bowie, Texas 17 February, 1944, and five days later arrived at Camp Shanks, New York, where it prepared for shipment overseas.

On 13 March, the 987^th sailed from New York Harbor with several thousand other servicemen and women aboard the converted French luxury liner He de France, bound for an unescorted crossing of the North Atlantic. After outrunning several German U-boats, the He de France, after nine days at sea, arrived at Greenock, Scotland on March 22^nd.

Upon debarking, the battalion traveled by rail to Camp Bulwark at Chepstow in the south of Wales, where it remained just three weeks before being sent to Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, on the North Sea coast of England. At that location, it worked with the British 50^th (Northumbrian) Division, and waterproofed its vehicles, including its M-12 155mm self-propelled guns mounted on Sherman tank chassis that it received on 2 May, all in preparation for the invasion of Normandy, France.

The First Party, 22 officers and 276 enlisted men, the personnel and equipment needed for operations on the “first wave,” moved 30 miles to Camp R7 at Suffolk, just north of Ipswich, for preliminary briefing, then on 29 May to R6 12 miles south of Ipswich, and on June 1 to Felixstowe, where it loaded onto four LSTs (Landing Ship Tank).

On 5 June, the battalion’s advance party sailed from Felixstowe, past the White Cliffs of Dover and into the English Channel. It arrived on the Normandy coast near La Riviere Harbor at 2000 on D-Day, June 6. Rough seas prevented landing at H hour plus 12, as originally planned. There was a night of fireworks as two Luftwaffe planes attempted to attack along the beach, were fired on from ships and forces on the beachhead, and a British battleship and other naval craft fired on enemy shore batteries and other targets inland. At daybreak, about 30 captured German soldiers were brought aboard and were guarded by members of the 987^th prior to their being taken to a prisoner of war camp in England.

The battalion’s first party landed at King Green Beach in the British Gold Beach sector, about 20 miles east of the U.S. Army’s Omaha Beach, in late morning of 7 June, and took up its first combat position three miles inland, one mile south of Ryes, Normandy, attached to the British 50th (Northumbrian) Division. The war had begun for the 987^th. The rest of the battalion came ashore in the next few days.

The next move for the battalion was to the outskirts of Bayeaux where it was assigned to 5^th AGRA (Army Group Royal Artillery), British 2^nd Army. The 987^th supported the British forces in their effort to capture Caen. On 30 June 1944, the 987^th reverted to U.S. Army command and was attached to V Corps, First Army as corps artillery. In short order, temporary assignment to VII Corps sent the 987^th racing up the Cotentin Peninsula to the outskirts of Cherbourg. But when informed it was not needed it quickly returned to the V Corps sector.

The 987^th supported the 2^nd Armored Division in the 27 July breakthrough at St. Lo and its drive southwest to the coast. The battalion then was part of the race east across France in a major effort to close the Falais Gap and surround numerous thousands of German soldiers to prevent their escape. Many thousands were captured, but other thousands were able to flee east toward the Fatherland. Then, it was on to the French capital. On 30 August the battalion entered Paris with the 5^th Armored Division to wild celebration by French citizens dressed in their finest. There were bouquets of flowers and kisses from French madamoiselles. German snipers still in the city fired on the parading troops, but they were quickly flushed out and killed or captured.

Once through Paris, the 987^th moved northward with the 5^th Armored for that division’s September push through Northern France into Belgium and then to the south and east through Luxembourg and into Germany. With the 5^th Armored, the 987^th‘s 155mm self-propelled guns were the first heavy artillery to crack the Siegfried Line. A heavy German counterattack on 19 September forced the battalion, as part of a combat command of 5^th Armored and 28^th Division troops, from Wallendorf back to Cruchten, where they came under heavy enemy fire, and then back into Luxembourg.

Numerous times the 987^th‘s guns performed direct fire on Siegfried Line pillboxes, well-dug-in, thick, reinforced concrete bunkers manned with machine guns and heavy anti-tank weapons. It knocked out eleven pillboxes in its first penetration of the Siegfried Line, and overall, including a later penetration, the 987^th knocked out about 100 of them.

Platoons and even individual guns of the battalion’s batteries were often separated, supporting different divisions. For instance, at one time one gun of B Battery supported the 8^th Division at Hurtgen, while one platoon of A Battery supported the 104^th Division at Eschweiler, another platoon of A Battery supported the 1^st Division south of Heistein, and the remainder of the battalion was at Rotgen in support of the 78^th Division.

When a German counter-offensive struck on 16 December 1944 in the Ardennes, opening what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, the 987^th‘s gun batteries were separated, supporting various units at Hurtgen, Krinkelt and Elsenborn. On 20 December the battalion moved to a position near Ster, Belgium, the first time the battalion had been together since 8 October 1944.

It was at this time that the battalion sighted the first German “buzz bombs,” self-propelled flying bombs, which flew over the battalion’s position west of Malmedy on their way to Liege, Belgium. One buzz bomb’s motor cut out prematurely and it landed and exploded on a road less than 100 yards from a railroad station being used as B Battery headquarters. The explosion blew out the windows and knocked down the ceilings in the depot, but it resulted in only two persons being slightly injured from flying debris.

The 987^th‘s activity in the Bulge found it supporting the 1^st, 2^nd, 9^th, 28^th, 30^th and 104^th Infantry Divisions and the 7^th Armored Division in the drive to take St. Vith. During December 1944, the 987^th‘s guns fired 7,108 rounds in 271 missions, the most rounds of any month in combat, and nearly 800 more than the previous high in June 1944. The Battle of the Bulge didn’t end until January 24, 1945

Early March, 1945 found the 987^th at Remagen on the Rhine River in Germany helping defend the Ludendorf Railroad Bridge to prevent it from being blown up by retreating German forces. On 9 March, one A Battery gun attached to the 9^th Division crossed the Remagen bridge, the only heavy artillery to do so and the first heavy artillery across the Rhine. By 21 March, the entire battalion had crossed the Rhine on pontoon bridges.

It was at Remagen that members of the battalion first saw German jet planes, which attempted to knock out the bridge to deny its use to U.S. troops. One of our 50-caliber machine guns helped shoot down one of the enemy planes. The German pilot who parachuted was captured by B Battery members.

After crossing the Rhine, the 987^th raced across Germany with First Army, then with General Patton’s 3^rd Army. It moved as far East as the vicinity of Leipzig in eastern Germany. At Werben, near Leipzig, the battalion received its heaviest shelling of the war when German 88mm and 128mm guns of the Leipzig anti-aircraft defense ring turned on our big 155s. On 26 April 1945, the battalion’s two liaison pilots flew two reporters to Torgau on the Elbe River to cover the meeting of the Americans with the Russians.

From Leipzig, the battalion turned south, and on 5 May, crossed the border into Czechoslovakia. On the 7^th, B Battery moved with the 16^th Armored Division spearhead to capture Pilsen, home of Pilsner beer and the Skoda Armament Works. It was on the tankers’ radios the next day, the 8^th of May, that B Battery’s men heard the BBC broadcast that the Germans had surrendered, and the war was over. There was no Pilsner beer to be had, but before leaving Pilsen, a number of B Battery men “liberated” a warehouse full of German brandy, backed up a 2 1/2-ton 6X6 truck and loaded up. The battery commandeer made sure the brandy was shared with the rest of the battalion, which was just outside of the city. The last round fired in combat by the 987^th was on May 4^th by C Battery on the town of Stiebenreith, Germany.

From 31 May to 1 July, 1945, the 987^th was on security guard and road patrol at such places as Mies, Heiligen, Hostice and Horazdovic, Czechoslovakia. It guarded numerous prisoners, including 6,000 members of the SS, and during May, the battalion captured 122 enemy soldiers.

For its part in the war that subdued Nazi Germany, the 987 FA Bn was awarded the Normandy Invasion arrowhead and five battle stars for all the European campaigns-Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes, Rhineland and Central Europe. From 6 June 1944 to 31 May 1945, the 987^th in whole or in part, was assigned, attached to, or in support of the following units:

Armies—Second British, First US and Third US Corps-30^th British; III, V, VII and XVIIIAB US Infantry Divisions-British 49^th and 50^th, and US 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, 8^th, 9^th, 28^th 30^th, 69^th, 78^th, 97^th, 99^th and 104^th. Armored Divisions-US 2^nd, 5^th, 7^th, 9^th, 16^th and British 7^th Airborne Divisions—82^nd Field Artillery Groups-5^th Royal Artillery, US 187^th, 188^th 190^th, 258^th, 351^st, 406^th and 408^th.

The 987^th traveled some 1,850 miles from the Normandy beachhead to Czechoslovakia, fired 45,058 rounds, including 1,517 captured enemy projectiles, had 9 men killed in action and 74 wounded, and captured 256 enemy soldiers. Air Ops flew 306 sorties totaling 580 hours. One of the battalion’s observation planes was shot down by Messerschmidts in France.

Men of the 987^th were awarded one Distinguished Service Cross, 11 Silver Stars, 90 Bronze Stars, 77 Purple Hearts, 16 Air Medals, one Croix de Guerre avec Palms (French), one Distinguished Service Order (British), and one Military Cross (British). Two sergeants were given battlefield commissions.

Though it was heavy artillery, the 987^th‘s mobility resulted in its often being on the front lines with the infantry. One U.S. general in the Hurtgen Forest, who had never seen the M-12 with its big 155mm gun that could fire and move quickly, called it our secret weapon after he observed it in direct fire on enemy fortifications.

The 987^th Field Artillery Battalion was one of numerous individual units in the European Theatre that fought courageously, with little time out of the front lines but got little of the credit they deserved because they were not part of a specific division. But the men of the 987^th were there when they were needed, impressed not only the enemy but also the American units they supported, and they contributed mightily to victory over an enemy that had brutally killed and enslaved millions.

I was born on March 1, 1925 in Pasadena, California and I am now eighty nine years old. I was drafted in to the United States Army in June of 1943 at the age of eighteen. I was a Corporal in the Sound Section of the 288^th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. My job was a Forward Observer and I worked one to three miles in front of my unit. If we were being shelled or I could spot enemy tanks or artillery I would then start the process of getting that information and coordinates back to my unit so they could begin our action against it.

The purpose of my unit was to measure sound and flash and spot the exact location of the enemy’s tanks and artillery. When the location was determined it was phoned to our Artillery Gun Batteries who then fired… If they got a hit our unit got credit for it!

As my unit moved forward from the villages of Condor and Eschdorf in Luxemburg, we stopped at a house that had already been partially hit by shells. The second story had no roof or walls left. We decided to set up a Forward Observation Post there. I was waiting for the telephone crew to run wires upstairs to my phone that I had attached to a 4×4 post. It was snowing and cold, so I started down the stairs, thinking I would wait in the enclosed bottom floor of the house where it was warmer. I was still on the stairs when a German shell came in and exploded on the top floor where I had just been! The impact knocked me all the way down the stairs and after realizing I was still in one piece, I went up to what was left of the second floor and the phone I had put up on the 4×4 post… was blown to pieces! It then hit me, 1 could have been blown to pieces just like the phone! I went down stairs and threw up many times!

Later on the same day, in that same house I heard some weird noises coming from the basement. I went down to investigate and found one of the Army Infantry Sergeants, holding a 45 pistol and crying. I asked if I could help him. He kept saying” I can’t stand this any longer”. I went back upstairs to my First lieutenant, in charge of tagging and sending wounded soldiers back to 1^st Aid Stations and asked him if he could send the guy downstairs to the rear lines to get some help. He said “Hell No! If we send everyone back who doesn’t want to be here, there would be no one left to fight this F—– war!” I returned back down to the Sergeant in the basement and he finally gave me his gun. I have often wondered what became of him!

My most vivid recollections of my World War II Service include seeing my first American GIs shot dead and lying frozen in the snow banks, the horrible sounds of the shells, mortars and screaming meemies hitting the snow and turning it black. My most haunting memory is the feeling of the bitter cold, snow and heavy rain. I suffered permanent damage of my toes from frostbite, lying in the foxholes in the middle of winter, in the Battle of the Bulge.

I am blessed to have a wonderful wife of 66 years, two wonderful children, four beautiful grandchildren and six amazing great grandchildren. I was in the building business for over forty- five years and retired several years ago.   Through all of these years the great men of “A “Battery Sound Section have stayed in my heart, my thoughts, and my prayers. The experiences we shared can never be forgotten!