ENGINEER MEMOIRS

BRIGADIER GENERAL WILLIAM M. GLASGOW USA, RETIRED

*** Only a portion of this interview has been published, as we are missing pages 2-23 and all subsequent pages after page 31…Editor. 

This edited manuscript is the product of a tape-recorded interview conducted by Dr. Lynn L. Sims for the Historical Division, Office of History, Office of the Chief of Engineers, with Brigadier General William M. Glasgow, USA, Retired, in Charlotte, North Carolina, on November 20, 1981.

Q: When you approached the beach, what was your first job, or who told you to do something first?

A: By that time I was a platoon commander. Our job was to get ourselves and elements of the 4th Armored Division across the beach, laying pierced steel plank and other expedients to get their vehicles out of the sand up onto a road net. Then we began to get constant assignments from the 4th Armored. They took control of us and we were clearing mine fields, clearing roads, roadblocks, so that we could find whether we could go down a road, repairing artillery damage in roads) manning our own perimeter defense, bivouacs, and so forth.

Q: So from June of ^!44 when you hit the Continent, how long did you stay with your particular unit there?

A: That was the 248th Engineer Battalion, the Bowie unit, the one I went in with, and I stayed with them until about November, between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Q:   By that time, where were you geographically?

A: Near Nancy, France, on the Moselle River, where we had stalled down. The 4th Armored rush had run out of gas. We had been across that blasted river, had penetrated almost to the German lines, and had to pull back behind the Moselle River because it was a natural line of defense.

Q:  Because you lacked gas?

A: Because we lacked gas and logistics support. I then moved to the 167th Engineer Battalion, the same kind of battalion and in the same kind of position.

Q:   How did the move happen?

A: They wanted an S-3, a major's slot. I was a captain and I wanted an S-3 job. I was following a man who wasn't going to move out of his job in this battalion. This looked like a good opportunity. I hated to leave the battalion, but opportunity knocked and I went.

Q:   The battalion commander didn't mind you going?

A: We parted company with regret, I think, on both sides. But he too saw opportunity for me and said, "Look, I can't put you in a major slot." At that time you had to occupy a slot of the next higher rank or you couldn’t get promoted. And he felt I was worthy of promotion so he was happy to see me go to a better opportunity.

Q:  Was that before the Bulge?

A: before the Bulge. In the fall. Now, you could hardly tell the difference between the two battalions. Each battalion was doing the same thing in support of the same people, although more in support of the 30th and 35th Infantry divisions and also the 80th Division. The 80th came in while we were on the Moselle, green from the States, never heard a shot fired in anger. They then moved up to the river and got the heck bombarded out of them and suffered a lot of casualties and had a very, very bad period. They even had some panic in the division. Their baptism under fire was not very good.

We, by this time, were "old veterans," so we played quite a role in pulling them back together and we were integrated with them and occupied their defense lines to help break them in. We had had our baptism earlier, that's all.

We built bridge after bridge on that river and had them knocked out. The Germans advanced again up to that line. They had been really routed by the rapidity of our advance. This pause gave them time to consolidate, and they came back in and really dug in on that river line. And we sat there for a long, long time making feints across the river, not being able to hold a crossing and having to withdraw again and losing a bridge and men in the process. The Bulge came.

We were below the Bulge, were not hit by the Bulge. But the 4th Armored Division, and I think the 35th, all moved up to contain the Bulge. And we were left down on the southern flank of the Bulge and put into the line as infantry, holding the flanks because all the Infantry were shifted up north. Artillery units, Engineer units, anti-aircraft units, and everything else were thrown in the line down there to hold it. I remember Christmas Eve. The Bulge now was underway, and we were extremely uncertain. Nobody really knew if the Bulge was all there was to it, or whether they were going to come busting out in front of you, and everybody was very edgy. The Germans dropped paratroopers all over us, in back of us, in the middle of us, and I spent Christmas Eve 1944—a cold, snowy night—chasing paratroopers. We had patrol s out everywhere, and I' m sure they were shooting at each other because anything that moved got shot at because a lot of the paratroopers were in civilian clothes—I mean, carried civilian clothes with them, and it was a very, very sensitive night.

Dawn came and some order returned. A number of the German paratroopers were picked up. Whether we got all of them or not, I don't know. We went through a period of time there, the Bulge stabilized, and we started limited offenses again, probes, and we were making a combat river crossing under fire, again for an armored unit. I had taken a tractor and a crew of men on a raft over the river to prepare the far abutment. You had to get a tractor over there or you couldn’t level it and break it down.

It was mined fairly well, but we thought we had all the mines off on the road proper. The whole area was marked mine field. We thought we had a breach. I was walking at the edge of the blade, walking the cat off the ramp, and the operator dug his blade in, struck a stack of teller mines, and the whole thing blew up and blew me over in a mine field. Fortunately, I was knocked out. And fortunately I was standing just behind the corner of the blade, so the blade took the full blast. Well, I was peppered and my ankle was broken and mussed up a bit. My soldiers swept their way into the mine field and got me out. I was in the hospital for some time—about a couple of weeks.

Q:   Back in the hospital? You mean, inside France?

A: In a field hospital, not very far behind the lines. I wanted out, and they wouldn' t discharge me, so I went AWOL. And I'm still AWOL from that field hospital. I went back to my unit.

Q:   On crutches or a cane?

A:   On a cane.  I'd reached that point of healing.

Q; Well, then how long did you stay with the 167th before you went over to become the executive of the 251st Engineer Battalion?

A: Now, I'm not really sure. The Bulge was contained, and offenses had started again. We're into February or March of ^!45. We were picked up and moved way around the Bulge and attached to the British Eighth Army at Wesel on the Rhine. They had been on the Rhine River for quite some months, held up just as we were while the Bulge was being taken care of. The crossing at Remagen hadn't occurred. We were selected to put in a floating Bailey bridge across the Rhine there. And we were training, building and re-building and re-building that bridge that we would build in the dry. Dry running it, dry running it. Bringing these up by trucks and so forth, just how we would build it. We did that for ten days. During that ten-day period Remagen occurred and we were across. We were to have been the first crossing, and therefore the operation was big. The 17th Airborne was making airborne assault. The 101st and two or three divisions were going to come across there. It was a very large operation.

When Remagen occurred, they pulled some of the troops out but not all. We still made the crossing and it was almost unopposed, I suppose because the Germans were preoccupied down the road and they had pulled a lot of defense troops out. I don't mean there was a Sunday picnic. There was some fire, but nothing like we were prepared for. We thought we were all going to get it. We put the bridge in, put it in in good shape and good time, and had some very light losses. Then a doggone tank stalled in the middle of it. You know, a floating bridge bows a great deal under tank load and you've got to keep moving. Well, the damn thing got downhill and was starting uphill and the driver stalled the tank and the nose of the floats went under water and the current turned that whole middle part of the bridge over.

The bridge was about 1,100 feet long, and it turned the middle third of the thing over, the tank hung up on the girders of the bridge. So here was this beautiful bridge that went out, turned upside down, went under water, came out, turned rightside up, and came out the far side. Well, that posed a far greater problem than putting in the bridge in the first place.

We finally got it cut apart with torches and got the debris out of the alignment and made new bays to put in and got the bridge restored. Meanwhile, a heavy pontoon bridge had been put in and an advance section (ad sec), heavy bridge outfit, had already come up and started to put in a pile bridge. I mean, they did beautiful work. They were big engineering outfits. So we crossed and were holding the area before the 17th Airborne landed. They brought a glider outfit in. And if you have ever seen a glider outfit land—it was horrible. They were in every tree. People were hanging out of trees and they did themselves far more harm than the Germans. Fortunately, there were ground troops on the ground pretty much in the whole landing zone that they were coming into. Otherwise they would have suffered terrible losses. As it was, it was bad enough.

Q:   Now, you got your Purple Heart when the mine blew up.

A:   Yes.

Q:  Did you have an impression when someone you actually knew was killed? Did that affect you in any way?

A: I guess I would have to say that time has erased that. I can't remember names. I can remember incidences where either we were present when someone was killed or we would learn of someone who we were close to being killed. But it all sort of ran together. I don't know, I guess you get somewhat inured to that. You had losses. We didn't have tremendous losses. We had them sporadically. But during the times that we spent fixing roads we didn't have losses.

So you still got used to them. You'd have an operation and you' d lose, I don' t know, four to six men, eight men.

Q: At this time, when you are a young lieutenant in combat, did you run across any points of time where you had a disagreement with your commanding officer that you thought something should be done this way, but you had to do it some other way?

A:   Yes.

Q:   Anything that really stands out in your mind?

A: Well, a series of problems. The 251st was commanded by a man from Boston, a man whom I did not really respect, and I had a disagreement with him in what I felt we should do or not do in the direction at the time. I was his executive officer, the number two guy. I did not feel he was aggressive. I did not feel that he was using the battalion to the best advantage, and I so told him, and I guess we really kind of agreed to disagree.

He would remind me periodically that he was my commander, and I needed that reminder, I'm sure. I was not always successful in persuading him what I thought was right, but I suppose I batted 50 percent, which may be good enough. But he's the only person in the story to date that I really had fundamental disagreements with.

Q: What do you consider the most important thing that you did in the action in the Second World War? A particular bridge? A particular road?

A:   I think the most significant one was the Moselle River crossing. It was Nancy and Met2 near Sargamines. It was the toughest river crossing we had. It marked one of my two very personal experiences with Patton.

The 4th Armored was waiting to be crossed, and we were building a floating bridge under fire. We' d put in a bay of that bridge and the enemy artillery would knock it out. We just went on and on and on, and it was a case where everybody did what they had to do. I was the S-3 of the outfit. I was on the bridge pushing, shoving, encouraging, and lifting and twisting and doing things that I felt were necessary to get it done—almost a panic situation. And Patton came, walked onto the bridge, and asked who was the senior officer, I identified myself, and he asked what our problems were, and I told him. And he asked when the bridge was going to be in, and I told him how long I thought we were going to have to take, and he told me that wasn't good enough. We had to do better. He explained that he had the whole damn 4th Armored Division waiting to go across and to bust the tails of these people. In his own high voice and flowery language—well, he impressed me, I'll tell you. He really encouraged me to greater effort, as did he all the people on that bridge. And we did do it faster than we had expected.

Another experience that I had with him, we were back fixing roads in the rear area, and when I say rear area, I mean within the division boundaries, maybe a mile back, something like that. I was inspecting the work that was being done by one of the companies, and I came onto a tar kettle and a truck and no one in sight at the crater in the road. I looked over in an apple orchard nearby and all these ya-hoos were over there picking apples. Just then Patton came up with his two ivory-handled guns and his military police escort. Roared up there and hauled me up, and he said, "What in hell is going on." I said, oh, Lord, he is going to be really teed-off about those guys stealing apples over there.

Well, that wasn’t it at all. He said, "I don't give a damn if they steal every apple in France, but," he said, "they are stealing green apples, and they are going to be sick and they are going to be ineffective as soldiers, and that I won't have." And he said, "Either you get them back on this road job or 1*11 get them back and you won't have a job." That impressed me, too. And I got them back, needless to say. But, I mean, that was the kind of strong leadership he exercised.

Q:   In your engineering work there, do you remember any innovations or new techniques that were developed kind of as expedients?

A: None in particular. I think every bridge abutment or approach to a bridge was a new problem even though you might be using a pre-fabricated bridge, as you had to improvise at both ends. Each one represented a challenge, and you really had to be an engineer to know what to do and how to design it. I think you were met with that more often than you were some brand new idea.

Q:  Did you ever have to work with explosives?

A: Yes, blowing German mines, demolishing bridges, and putting in defensive mine fields. At the time of the Bulge we put in extensive mine fields, like three to five miles long, thousands and thousands of mines. And they were British mines that had been frozen, and they were just as ticklish as nitroglycerin. We lost more men putting that damn mine field in than we ever lost breaching a mine field. The mine fields were near Pont- a-Mouggat, South France.

Q: Was the problem the quality of mines that you were dealing with?

A: Well, it was a combination of ground that was frozen; the mines had been frozen and thus were temperamental; they were a British mine that I think in many cases our men weren't totally familiar with. And we had accident after accident of men being killed or loss of hands and this sort of thing. A very, very tragic thing. It stuck out in my mind as one of the toughest tasks we had to do.

Q:   Where was the 167th when victory was declared?

A: We were up in the Ruhr portion of Germany, north of Frankfort, a little short of the Elbe. We were with the troops that met the Russians. We were building bridges. They had blown some very, very high concrete arch bridges on the autobahns over valleys, and we were putting in makeshift spans and building by-pass roads for continued advance. We were headed toward Berlin, not south. We were no longer with the 4th Armored Division; they went south and east. We were headed straight for Berlin and were in the Ruhr, a highly industrial area.

Q:   Did you ever see the Russian Army?

A:   Yes.  After the peace was declared, we were doing road work up there and we had to coordinate with the Russian troops because we did meet. But we didn't meet in combat or anything like that.

Q:  How did they impress you?

A:  Oh, they were a pretty rugged outfit, good troops.

Q:  Did they have women with them?

A: No, I didn't see any, not the troops that we had contact with. They were all business. They played as hard as they worked. You know, they would invite the officers of the American unit to come over and have a drink with them. I did it one time—almost like the movies, you know. They really were hard drinkers.

Q:  After the war, you stayed on, then, in Europe?

A:   Yes.

Q:   What was your rank by this time?

A: I was a major. The battalion was pulled out of Germany and was headed to the Pacific, and we went back to the redeployment camps in France. They had two series. They had the so-called cigarette camps, and they had camps that were named after cities—Camp Philadelphia, Camp New York. Those were in France and the cigarette camps were near the ports.

Q:   What was the significance of the cigarette camps?

A: They were Lucky Strike and Camel, named after popular brands of cigarettes, and were port staging areas. We went back to the city area around Rheims in France and while waiting to be redeployed we worked on those camps, building them for the redeployment of all the troops. They were going to be staged through there, at this time still headed for the Pacific. Or in some cases very high point units were filled up with men who had been at it a long time and they were going home to stay. All the troops weren't going from Europe home.

Before the units left, all the Regular Army soldiers were pulled out. We couldn't move home on points. Only the citizen soldiers—the drafted soldiers—and the non- professional officers who had sufficient points could go home or be redeployed. I had plenty of points to go home, but was stripped out and went into a base section, so-called, in Rheims, Oise Base Section, which was in charge of these camps and engaged in developing the…

*** Subsequent pages are missing from our records...Editor