MEMORIES OF WORLD WAR II
I remember going out to find what happened to headquarters company recon jeep. We found it where Lt. Ziegler and other soldiers were taken prisoner. Coming back through town, i ran into a friend of mine from Madison, WI. He was with the 80th Division and they were taking prisoners.
There were many dead Germans, horses and guns and right over the hill, P-51's were strafing a German convoy. What precision; one squadron after another. We were mixed in with the 4th Armored. We were going around Paris and the French Armored were also in our sector.
I remember removing barricades in a street in Orleans. The "cat" hit a mine and there was a big explosion. Luckily we had just sat down to eat our "c" rations. The explosion went over our heads but many French people who were standing on sidewalks were hit.
The Germans flooded the fields. When we unplugged the culvert, out comes all kinds of dynamite and a time clock. I believe it was Lt. Lusti who pulled off the primer charges on the clock and threw the primer out in the water. Later a picture and diagram of the time clock came out in the Stars and Stripes. Two other G.I.'s and myself stayed in a small town measuring the water in the river until it lowers in depth. It seemed like no mans land. We could hear the town crier shouting out the news as he walked around the town.
I remember the Saar River crossing. The entire 12th core shot all the artillery they had along the entire front. It reminded me of Christmas or the Fourth of July as the entire front was lit up. We crossed the Blies River, which was a part of the Saar. We put a footbridge across for the 35th Division to cross on. While pulling arms across for them, i got tangled up in the safety rope and was swept down stream. I held on to the rope and pulled myself back to the bridge. I was very quiet as i heard the Germans talking in a little shack right next to the riverbank.
At the Mossele River crossing at Doulard, we put the 80th Division across with a treadway bridge. I believe there was a small canal there also. While we were watching the infantry fan out across the river, the Germans started throwing in mortars along the riverbank. We dived for cover under a trailer on the bank. When i reached for a cigarette, i noticed that the top of my pack was sheared off. It looked like it was cut by a razor but it must have been cut by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel. I didn't get a scratch. We heard that General Patton was there the next day. I don't know as we weren't there then.
I remember going through Nancy with The 4th Armored. We were draining water from a crater to get the recon outfit through. We went down the road with The 4th Armored, blasting some tanks in the woods. I was directing a column of tanks at night with a flashlight at a cross road. We were dropped off at a small village to hold it. I remember a Frenchman coming out of his house and taking a German in civilian clothes off the wall. He was a SS German soldier. We thought he was Polish. Our Polish friend told us this German was Polish. While helping a girl get up to her house on a hill, the mortars followed us all the way. On my way back, there were no mortars. Coming back to Doulard four or five days later the fighting was still going on in the same place. We carried mines about two miles at night and laid them right under the German’s noses. We also laid trip wires in front of the 80th Division. Pretty scary when Steve, our Sergeant, set off a flare at night, we all took cover. We made our way back to bivwock area at night. On the outskirts of Nancy, we saw civilian Frenchmen who had been executed by the Germans earlier in the day for demonstrating. They were covered by a red, white and blue banner (French colors).
I remember being attached to the 7th army. We were laying mines everywhere around Sarganinos. We watched the 4th Armored pull out as they were going up to break the bulge. We wished at the time that we were going with them. We moved up to the 9th Army section up north to put a floating Baily bridge across the Rhine River at Wessel. After the war, our group was broken up into a forestry company and moved to Bavaria.