Biography of RussCloer

Capt., I & R Platoon Leader, 7th Inf.,3rd Inf. Div., VI Corp., 7th Army, USArmy

Table of Contents of Russ Cloer's WorldWar Two Story

Before the War         

90 Day Wonder         

                 Hey Soldier, Where Ya From?

Road to Rome             

Initiative                       

 A Visit by theGeneral

Humor & Morale       

   D-Day SouthernFrance

         Il Y A DesBoches En Bas!

Motorcycle Mystique   

Vagney, France             

The Venerable Jeep     

Bloody Colmar Pocket

Loneliness                      

Crossing the Rhine       

Bloody Bandages           

PFC Steele                       

 Final Days of the War   

  Occupation ofGermany  

Civilian                 

Soldier                   

      RapeInvestigation               

       40 & 8's                                    

      Back Home                             

      Awards &Decorations            

       Faces of War                              

      TrainWhistles                            

Before theWar

   I was born in Jersey City, N. J. on January 4, 1921. Allfour of my grandparents were born in Germany and emigrated to the U. S. inthe late 1800's. My parents were both born in this country. They lived inthe Jersey City - Hoboken area, popular with other German immigrant families.My father was the youngest of five children, my mother, one of six. Neitherof my parents was educated beyond the 6th or 8th grade because they had togo to work at an early age to help support their parents and siblings. Myfather became a toolmaker, my mother a seamstress and after marriage, ahomemaker. My paternal grandfather was a carpenter and lived to the age of91. My maternal grandfather was a construction worker and he died in hislate 30's when he fell from the roof of a building. There was no Social Securityin those days, no unemployment insurance, no workman's compensation, no childlabor laws, and in immigrant families, no relatives on whom to lean forsupport.

   My earliest recollections go back to my first 4 years.We lived in a 3rd floor "railroad" type walk-up apartment in a wood frameapartment building in Jersey City, N. J. And we shared a bathroom with theadjacent apartment on the same floor. We had no telephone, no radio and nocar. Nor did many of our neighbors, in those early 1920's. But my fatherhad a red Indian motorcycle with sidecar that he kept in a nearby rentedgarage. On summer Sundays, my mother, my younger sister and I would pileinto the sidecar and we would go for a ride, usually to visit one of my manyaunts and uncles, all of whom lived within easy driving distance. In winter,my father stored the engine and transmission under his bed, when he wasn'tworking on it on the kitchen table.

   When I was four years old, my parents bought a very old2 bedroom wood frame house on a 50 by 100 foot lot in Roselle Park, N. J.We thought we were living in the country! We were happy there, despite theconstant home maintenance required. The school system was good, the neighborswere amenable, stores were just around the corner and the railroad, whichtook my father to work, was only a 3 or 4 block walk. (Or run, if he waslate, which was more often than not.)

   I entered kindergarten at age 5, and since the cut-offdate was January 1 and my birthday was January 4, I was the oldest kid inmy class all through school. This had certain advantages for a boy! The only‘disadvantage' was that I would graduate from high school one year later.(And as it turned out, enter the Army one year later!)

   My childhood was a happy time, even though I didn't havemany of the things my friends had. Despite growing up during the GreatDepression, I don't remember ever going hungry nor lacking suitable clothesfor school. Of course Christmas and Birthday gifts were pretty sparse andmost of my few toys (precious to me) were home made or second hand. And Iwasn't alone. That was the norm during the Depression. (Home-made scootersmade from a discarded roller skate, a 2 x 4 and a discarded orange crate;home-made wooden stilts; sling shots from slices of an old inner tube anda Y shaped tree branch; rubber band guns from slices of the same inner tubeand a piece of wood; a bag of scratched marbles and a "nickel rocket" baseballthat we would wrap with friction tape when the seams broke.

   In 1933, my father was laid off and there was no longera pay envelope on Fridays. Our mortgage payments on the house were $22 amonth and my parents didn't have it. We were in danger of losing our house,our place to live. But the mortgage holder couldn't resell the house in thoseDepression days, so he agreed to accept interest only, no payment of principal,"until times got better." The payments became $11 a month and we hung on.I distinctly remember being entrusted to take the $11 in cash to the bankonce a month. Of course we had no checking account. I remember my fatherleaving the house every morning at the same time, to look for work. And returningin late afternoon with a haggard look. Machine shops at that time would hireworkers only when they got a contract, and when the deliveries were completed,they would lay off the workers. Somehow we struggled through until war cloudsloomed and the economy began to recover in 1939.

   Also in 1933, a new Boy Scout Troop was formed in our smalltown. I had just reached my 12th birthday and was invited to join. But joiningrequired that I have a Boy Scout uniform. The uniform cost $7 and my parentsdidn't have it. (Plus $3 for the hat which was optional. I knew only 3 boyswho had a hat!) But somehow the uniform, (less hat,) appeared and I becamea Boy Scout. The troop was sponsored by the local Rotary Club, and I suspectthey had a hand in making the uniform available. I was active in Boy Scoutsfor 5 years and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life! I knowof no better way to instill a set of worthy values in our youth. "On my honor,I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the ScoutLaw. To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.""A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, thrifty,brave, clean and reverent."

   And when I grew old enough to notice girls, I had to lookno further than the house next door. Living there was Beverly, the girl ofmy dreams who is now my wife of 59 years!

   I always did well in school, making the Honor Roll everyyear, but in those times there was no thought of going to college. Few peoplehad the money. I remember when I entered High School, (9th grade) in 1935,having to choose between the "College Course", the "General Course," or the"Commercial Course." Like 80% of my classmates, I elected the "General Course."For electives, I chose what I thought would help me get a job when I graduated:Bookkeeping, Typing, Shop, Junior Business Training, etc. My parents didn'thave sufficient education to give me much guidance and no one else offeredto.

  But a wonderful thing happened to me near the end of my secondyear! My History teacher told me she had been looking at my grades and wonderedwhy I was not taking the "College Course." I told her we couldn't affordcollege. Actually, I had never given it any serious thought for that reason.She said she thought she could get me a scholarship when the time came andshe would help by guiding me through the application procedures. I didn'teven know what a "scholarship" was at that time! She arranged for me to taketwo years of a language and two years of algebra as electives in my lasttwo years to meet minimum college entrance requirements. I am eternally gratefulto that lady.

   In my third year of high school, my algebra teacher, whowas also coach of the track team, suggested I "come out" for track." "You'retall and skinny," he said, "just the right build for the high jump." I tookhis advice and won the high jump in 10 out of 10 dual meets that season.I was elected captain of the track team in my senior year, won the Statehigh jump championship and set a new State record for the event. I thinkthat too, may have had a bearing on the scholarship award.

   I graduated from high school in 1939 as valedictorian ofmy class of 128 graduates. I applied for academic scholarships at two colleges,with help from my teacher "angel", and was offered a full tuition scholarshipat both. I chose Rutgers University.

   In high school, competence in sports was the key to popularity.At my 50th High School Reunion, everybody remembered my track record. Onlyone person remembered that I had been valedictorian. She was the salutatorianand she introduced me to her husband as follows: "I'd like you to meet RussCloer. He's the one who beat me out for valedictorian!" And then, by wayof explanation, she added: "They always chose a boy in those days."

   When I registered, I was asked in which College of theUniversity I wanted to enroll. I told the advisor. " I want to be a MechanicalEngineer." She said, "There is no way we can admit you to the College ofEngineering. You're lacking too many prerequisites. In fact, we are makingan exception in admitting you at all, only because your high school gradesare so good."

   "What is the closest you can give me?" I asked. And shesaid, "I can admit you to the College of Arts and Sciences, with a majorin physics and a minor in math." So that's what I did. She suggested thealternative of going back to high school for a post graduate year to getthe needed prerequisites, but the scholarship would not carry over so I couldn'tdo that.

   I started at Rutgers in September 1939. The scholarshipcovered only tuition and fees, not room, board and books. So I commuted thefirst year, lived in an inexpensive rooming house for the second and thirdyears and in a college dorm for my last year. I worked part time during theschool year in the College bookstore, as a typist in the Personnel office,as an usher at football games, as a free lance typist and as a Physics labassistant. I worked summers as a YMCA camp counselor, for the college bookstore,and in the Assembly Department of the Western Electric Company. These jobs,along with a what help my parents could afford, paid for my books, room andboard.

   My jobs paid only minimum wage, which at that time was40 cents/hour. But the tuition and fees of $330/year were covered by thescholarship. Room and board of about $350/year is what I had to earn.

   Rutgers was a land grant college, which required all physicallyfit male students to take two years of basic ROTC. (Military Science andTactics). Fifty students would be chosen from among those who volunteeredfor Advanced ROTC. Those who completed the four years of ROTC would go toa 6 week summer camp for field training between the 3rd and 4th years andwould be commissioned 2nd Lieutenants in the Reserve at graduation. Eachweek, there were three hours of class room work and two hours of close orderdrill, in uniform. (3 credits/semester). The Rutgers ROTC staff was Infantryonly at that time, but we were told that we would be allowed to choose ourarm of the Army when we graduated. A reserve commission in ordnance or signalcorps appeared attractive to me because of their utilization of engineers.I volunteered for Advanced ROTC and was accepted. There were no financialawards offered for ROTC at that time, but we did get one complete officer'suniform, tailor made.

   When War was declared, the rules were changed, one at atime:

   1. The six week summer camp was abolished.

   2. Instead, we would have to go through Infantry OCS (OfficerCandidate School) upon graduation, and those who made it would then becommissioned. Those who didn't, would be sent to Infantry Replacement TrainingCenters with the rank of Corporal.

   3. We could no longer choose our Arm of the Army. We wereneeded in Infantry. We were pressured to volunteer for the ERC (enlistedreserve corps) and we would go on active duty on campus as Infantry privatesfor the last semester, then be ordered to Infantry OCS.

   4. Anyone that did not volunteer for the ERC would be droppedfrom the ROTC program upon graduation and would have to register with hisdraft board at that time. (Not previously required because we were consideredReservists.)

   Spending the last semester as an Infantry Private on campusmade no sense to me, so I was one of five Advanced ROTC seniors (out of 50)who declined to volunteer for the ERC. We five spent the last semester ascivilian members of the ROTC. The other 45 were privates in the Army, assignedto a barracks in one of the dorms, and fed in a section of the college cafeteriaset aside as a mess hall. They couldn't leave campus without a pass signedby the ROTC Major. Just before graduation, we 5 were asked again to jointhe ERC. If we joined now, we would receive orders to report to Ft. BenningInfantry OCS along with the other members of our ROTC class. If we did notvolunteer for this alternative, we would be dropped from the program andwould be required by law to register with our respective draft boards. Twoof the five, including me, signed on and reported to Fort Benning with therest of our ROTC class. The other 3, to the best of my knowledge, never servedin the military. Of the 21 Rutgers 1943 ROTC graduates who were commissioned2nd Lieutenants, Infantry, on September 20, 1943, eleven were killed in actionby War's end.

          I entered the Army 6/15/43 after4 yrs of Infantry ROTC at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.

90 DayWonder

       WWII Infantry OCS, (Officer Candidate School),at Ft. Benning, Georgia, was a 13 week training program turning out Infantry2nd Lieutenants at the rate of 140/day. Those graduates who did not measureup to expectations when later assigned to units, were disparagingly referredto by their men as "90 Day Wonders", due in part to the limited durationof their training.

       I reported to OCS Class #298 on June 15,1943, along with thirty of my classmates who had volunteered for InfantryOCS after four years of ROTC at a land grant college. I was in civilian clothesand it was my first day in the army. Ninety-seven day later, twenty-one ofus from my college ROTC class were commissioned 2nd Lieutenants, Infantry.By War's end, eleven of the twenty-one had been killed in action. I haveno way of knowing how many of the rest of class #298 were lost in the War,but I have no reason to believe that the same 52% loss rate did notprevail.

       I remember OCS as being one of the most intenseepisodes of my life, aside from infantry combat, which of course was whatit prepared us for. Our determination to successfully complete the programwas the primary goal of our young lives. Our TO (Tactical Officer) jotteddown notes about our performance in his little black book, but we were nevertold how we were doing. Those of us that he decided couldn't hack it wereordered to report to the orderly room, without explanation, at the end ofthe next daily morning formation. When we returned to the barracks at theend of the day, the space on the floor where their cot and foot locker hadbeen was bare. It was quite motivational!

       I remember running the uphill bayonet courseunder the hot Georgia sun in mid-July. Bayoneting straw dummies or breakingtheir heads with a "horizontal butt stroke." I remember following a compassheading in the middle of the night through three miles of pitch black woods,while falling into ravines and avoiding simulated enemy lurking in the dark.And qualifying with every infantry weapon on its respective range.

       I remember believing that the 37 mm anti-tankgun would penetrate the armor of a German tank. And I remember my first 60mm mortar round overshooting the target by 150 yards. Then correcting rangeand direction to see the 4x6 foot orange canvas target disappear in the smokeof the second round's impact. I crawled under double apron barbed wire carryingan LMG on my forearms, with live machine gun fire four feet overhead. Whilehidden school cadre threw OD pineapple grenades at us with their safety spoonsgone and 4 second fuses hissing. We didn't know that the bursting chargehad been removed, but exploding 1/4 lb. blocks of buried TNT added sufficientrealism. I remember running the obstacle course against a stop watch withthe TO yelling FASTER, FASTER! And swinging hand over hand across theChattahoochee River on a rope stretched between the banks. Running the villagefighting course, firing our rifles at pop up targets in doors and windows.Being ambushed in a ravine by live overhead machine gun fire which tore upthe opposite bank and seeing the student leader of our patrol sit on theground and cry. (He was gone next morning!) Marching back into the companyarea at the end of each day, exhausted in our sweat soaked green coveralls,but maintaining perfect formation at quick step march, with heads held highwhile loudly singing, "I've Got Sixpence."

       And how well I remember my college ROTC andOCS buddies, Cox, Dupuis, Everett, Hutcheon, Lipphardt, Pangburn, Potzer,Schweiker, Stavros, Thompson, and Young. They too earned their gold bars,but they never came back from Italy, France, Germany and Okinawa.

       I think the Army did a good job with InfantryOCS. The program was carefully planned, well implemented by a trained schoolcadre and managed by a capable staff of officers. The emphasis was alwayson leadership skills, consistent with the OCS motto, "Follow Me." It instilledin the officer candidates an intense need to destroy the enemy and to carefor their men. The result was not perfection, but it provided the best possibleleadership training in the short time available, while weeding out the unfitand developing good leadership qualities in those who showed promise. Myclass started with 200 men and 140 infantry second lieutenants were commissioned97 days later. And as best I can remember, a new class started every day.(Overlapping).

       Three months after graduating from OCS, Ishipped out as an overseas replacement and was assigned to the Division thatsaw the most combat of any Division in the U. S. Army (3rd Infantry Division,7th Infantry Regiment) on the Anzio Beachhead in Italy. And to the best ofmy knowledge, I was never referred to as a "90 Day Wonder."

       And yet the term "90 Day Wonder," disparagingthough it was intended to be by some, is really quite accurate when takenliterally. When our country was suddenly attacked on two fronts by massiveforces of tyranny, we were far from ready to defend ourselves and other freepeople of the world against this treachery. But the American people reactedswiftly and Infantry OCS was but one of many such programs of selection andtraining which made it possible for us to defeat the best armed, best trainedand most experienced armed forces in the world at that time. We could havedone even better with more time, but there was no more time. Schoolboys whoseexperience was limited to the Boy Scouts and high school sports rose to thechallenge and became leaders of men in a life or death struggle. And theresults of that effort and sacrifice, which was truly a "Wonder," is nowa matter of recorded history. I was a "90 Day Wonder" and I say that withpride!

Hey Soldier, WhereYa From?

       I met lots of people and made many friendsduring my army years in WWII. But they weren't friends in the way that wethink of friends in civilian life. These were fleeting rather than lastingrelationships. Perhaps a more fitting term would be buddies. Some might evenuse the word comrades, but that seems too stilted, like something out ofa WWI novel. These friends were a port in a violent storm, an oasis on anendless desert of boredom, an island on a sea of loneliness and apprehension.They were someone to lean on, with whom to share the misery and uncertainty,or just kindred souls who briefly filled the lonesome void.

       "Hey, soldier, where ya from?" These areamong the saddest words I know, the words of a lonely, homesick soldier.He reaches out for a buddy who will ease the terrible loneliness with talkof home. These friendships might last for only a minute or two, for a day,or at most a few weeks, before the soldiers are sent their separate ways.The one thing they had in common was that once they parted, they rarely saweach other again.

       I met John Rahill when we dumped our gearon adjacent cots at Ft. Meade, Maryland. I'd been in the Army for just sixmonths. We were on the second floor of a barracks at the overseas replacementcenter. We shared the dubious distinction of being infantry replacement 2ndLieutenants, headed we knew not where. Rahill had been plucked from the 10thMountain Division in Colorado. I had been sent from the 13th Airborne Divisionin North Carolina. In neither case did we know why we were chosen, wherewe were headed, nor what the future held.

       "Hey Lieutenant, where ya from?" we discoveredthat our homes were both in New Jersey, in towns only 20 miles apart. Rahillwas tall and rangy and had played football at Caldwell High School. I hadbeen captain of the track team at Roselle Park High School. We got alongwell and a tentative bond began to develop. As we went through our overseasprocessing, we joked with each other, with forced bravado, as we reaffirmedthe beneficiaries of our G.I. life insurance and made out our last will andtestament. All at the age of 22.

       On a January night in 1944, we boarded atroop transport carrying a cargo of 5,000 replacement infantrymen out ofNewport News, Virginia. Each of us felt alone. Rahill and I made a pointof finding bunks in the same compartment in the hold. As we zig-zagged ourway across the Atlantic to Casablanca, we gave a lot of private thought towhat probably lay ahead. Foremost in our thinking was our determination tooverride our fears and carry out our responsibilities honorably, as we hadbeen trained to do. "Follow me" was the motto of Infantry Officer CandidateSchool and we both knew what that meant. Between these periods of direintrospection, we swapped paper back books and forced ourselves to make cheerfulconversation. Upon arrival in Casablanca, we were trucked to a tent studdedreplacement depot outside the city where we found bunks in the same eightman pyramidal tent. Rahill and I ignored the restriction to camp and wentthrough a well worn hole in the fence after dark. Having seen the hit movieCasablanca, we hitchhiked into the city to see the real thing. We felt anurgent need to make the most of the time left us.

       Next morning, about 1,000 of us boarded along freight train composed of ancient 40 and 8's. (Freight cars with a capacityof 40 men or 8 horses). Rahill and I disregarded our car assignments andboarded the same box car for the three day trip across the Sahara Desertto Oran. Then, after a few days in yet another tent city, we boarded a smallBritish steamer headed for Naples. We were part of a priority shipment ofreplacement infantry lieutenants urgently needed in Italy. Once again wewere restricted, this time to the replacement depot at a race track northof Naples. Ignoring the order, we took off next morning and hitchhiked toPompeii where we toured the ruins of that historic civilization. (What couldthe Army do to us? Send us overseas?)

       A few days later, I was ordered to reportto the 7th Infantry on the Anzio Beachhead and I boarded my LST for the overnighttrip. I vividly remember trudging up the ramp and seeing large white lettersover the gaping entry maw which read, "GATEWAY TO GLORY." (A patriotic gesture?Or a swabby's gallows humor?) I was alone now. My buddy Rahill did not yethave an assignment. We parted at the "repple depple" and I never saw himagain.

       That might well have been the end of thisstory, but in early 1946, now a civilian, I went to work as an engineer forthe Curtiss-Wright Corporation in their Caldwell, N. J. plant I was in anoffice separated from the next room by a six foot high, wood and frostedglass partition. The next room was occupied by 6 or 8 Engineering Assistants,young college women hired during the War to perform some of the more routineengineering work. One of my co-workers, who had been a draft deferred engineerat Curtiss-Wright throughout the War, entered my office and I said, "HeyGeorge, what's all the laughter about next door? Sounds like they're havinga party."

       "Yeah," he grinned, "One of the girls whoworked here during the War came back for a visit and they're reminiscingabout old times. Her name is Clarissa Rahill.

       I was suddenly very attentive. Hey soldier,where ya from? I remembered that John Rahill was from Caldwell. Wouldn'tit be great to see him again, to compare the experiences which followed ourseparation in Naples two years ago? We had some reminiscing to do too. Myspirits rose in anticipation.

       "Does she have a brother named JohnRahill?"

       There was a pause, then George said, "Shedid, but he was killed in action in Italy." Then another pause as Georgeread my reaction. "Did you know him?" he asked somberly? I was stunned! Ishould not have been surprised that he had been KIA knowing the horrendouscasualty rates suffered by Infantry Lieutenants in Italy, but the War wasover, the killing had stopped and this was now. Rahill was my buddy! Thecoincidence of all this information coming together so suddenly at this place,at this time, with Rahill's sister in the next room was mind boggling. Isaid nothing, but George was perceptive and he knew the answer. After a furtherpause he said softly, "Would you like me to introduce you?"

       My mind raced. What can I tell her? I wasn'twith him when he died. I don't know where or how he died. Those are the thingsshe would want to know. She's enjoying this moment of happiness. Why dredgeup those painful memories of his death, which time has healed at least inpart? What good could it possibly do? And I said, "No George. Let it rest."He understood and never mentioned it again. But I wonder to this day if Idid the right thing. Hey soldier, where ya from?"

Addendum: 1/3/03

   I was able to make contact with John Rahill's family viathe Internet during the past year. His nephew, Major Roger W. Rahill sentme the following article which appeared in the 5/28/02 issue of "Herald Union",which is printed by the "Stars & Stripes" in Germany. I will be 82 yearsold tomorrow. - Russ Cloer

Article honoring Lt. John Grant Rahill, CO BakerCompany, 1/1-179th Infantry, 3 Purple Hearts, Silver Star

***

          I was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenantin the Infantry on 9/20/43 at Ft. Benning, Ga. Inf. OCS. Of the Twenty-oneRutgers Class of ‘43 ROTC grads commissioned 9/20/43, Eleven would beKIA in World War Two.

          I was assigned to the 13th AirborneDivision, 190th Glider Inf., Ft. Bragg, NC. on 10/10/43. Then I was reassignedto Ft. Meade, MD Overseas Replacement Center about 1/4/44 as replacement2LT.

          I left Newport News, VA about 1/23/44aboard SS General Horace A. Mann, with 5,000 Infantry replacements. Afterbrief stops at Repple Depples in Casablanca, Oran and Naples, I was assignedto 7th Inf. Reg't, 3rd Inf. Div. on the Anzio Beachhead. I was assigned platoonleader of the Intelligence & Reconnaissance (I&R) platoon out ofHq. Co. late Feb. 1944. Our primary assignment was recon, working out ofRegimental HQ.  I led one of the 1st patrols into Rome on 6/4/44.

A photo of me, on the left, in one of my recon jeeps,taken on the Anzio Beachhead in early 1944. The driver's name was LeoPerrault.

The Road toRome

       I had just turned 23 when I arrived on theAnzio Beachhead, 30 miles south of Rome, and was assigned to the 7th Infantry,3rd Division. It was February 1944 and I was a replacement Infantry Lieutenant.Vivid memories of the combat which followed were etched in my memory forever.At night, the constant rumble and flutter of artillery overhead, theirs andours. The rattle of machine gun fire, ours slow, theirs rapid. The ricochetof brilliant tracers skyward; ours red, theirs green or white. The waveringlight of a parachute flare, lighting the flat and desolate landscape. Thesolid mass of white searchlight beams and red antiaircraft tracers over theharbor during air attack.

       Outnumbered by the enemy two to one, withour backs to the sea. The sheer terror of incoming 88 mm fire from a GermanTiger tank. The haunting cry of "Medic!" echoing through the night. And ona rare quiet night, the sound of the Krauts singing Lili Marlene. Bloatedcorpses and black flies. The sickening odor of death. Cold C or K rations.No sleep. Rain. Mud. Trench Foot. Malaria. The incredible loneliness. Thejoy of a letter from home! Sixty-seven days without a change of clothes.Horrendous casualties! More than 100% in the 7th Infantry Regiment plus anequal number lost to malaria and trench foot. Thousands of good men diedthere, three thousand in the 3rd Division alone.

       And finally, reinforcements and the "breakout"at dawn on May 23, 1944. My Division lost three thousand men killed or woundedin the first three days. We fought our way through the battered town of Cisternaat night. Fires were everywhere from artillery and white phosphorous mortarfire. We choked on smoke, cordite, and cement dust from the shattered concretebuildings. A Sherman tank supported us, obliterating enemy strong pointswith its 75mm cannon at point blank range. The streets were littered withcorpses lying where they fell, abandoned weapons, destroyed vehicles andcollapsed buildings. This was what Hell must be like.

       We fought our way north through the mountainvillages of Cori, Giulianello, Artena, Valmontone, to Pallestrina. The fightingwas savage. We left a scene of desolation behind us, burning tanks and vehicles,dead men and horses bloated in the Italian sun, their eyes and wounds coveredwith swarms of huge black flies, the odor indescribable. Fire, smoke andcollapsed buildings destroyed by tanks, artillery and fire. Abandoned weapons,helmets, ammo and equipment of every description littered the landscape.Columns of Kraut POWs trudged to our rear in shock, helmets and weapons gone,hands clasped above heads bowed in submission. The residue of war.

       Twelve days of bitter fighting and on thenight of June 4, 1944, I reported to Colonel Wiley O'Muhundro's dugout, asordered. "Lieutenant, there's a rumor that the Krauts have declared Romean open city and are pulling out. I want you to take a patrol into the cityand find out if it's true. And get back here fast. I'll have the 2nd and3rd Battalions on trucks. I want my Regiment to be the first to enter Rome."I took four jeeps with 50 caliber machine guns and headed toward Rome with 15men. It was pitch dark. Smoke made visibility worse. We passed burning Americantanks and recon vehicles, and dead soldiers along the Appian Way. We metno resistance. We saw nothing alive.

       After five miles, we entered the city whichwas ominously silent. No trace of light anywhere. We saw no Krauts, no Americans,no civilians. In the total darkness, we expected to be ambushed at everycorner. It was deathly quiet. Spooky. I had a street map, but I dared showno light to read it. We pressed on but were soon lost amid the narrow windingtunnel-like streets. Until we rounded a bend, entered a huge cobblestonepiazza and there before us stood the Coliseum, silhouetted against the firstblush of pink light in the eastern sky! It was a sight I'll never forget!The thrill of a lifetime! I stood in the midst of 2,000 years of historyand I felt a strong sense of having added to it.

       My driver found the way back and I reportedto the CO. "How far into the city did you go," he accused? "As far as theColiseum," I told him. He grinned and ordered the 2nd and 3rd Battalionsin on trucks. Two days later the Allies invaded Normandy. We were no longerfighting alone.

       Our decimated Division garrisoned Rome forone week. I visited St. Peters, the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, the Catacombs,the Aqueducts, the Coliseum, the Forum, a wealth of history. Only one otherLieutenant from my group of twenty-one junior officer replacements, who joinedthe Regiment on the same day, made it to Rome. -- It was good to be alive!

Initiative

   In May of 1944, during the Breakout from the Anzio Beachheadin Italy, the Third Infantry Division suffered twenty-eight hundred battlecasualties in the first three days of the attack. The ancient town of Cisterna,which controlled access to NS Highway 5 (The Appian Way), was the initialobjective. Having taken that objective, the next problem was to move northeastthrough the Alban Hills which surrounded us on three sides. Only in Italywould these be called hills. They reached 3,000 feet and had only a few unpavedroads running EW on which to bring our tanks, artillery and supply vehiclesforward. The entire Beachhead force, some seven Divisions and their supportingunits, took to the few roads available and conditions quickly becamechaotic.

   As Platoon Leader of the Intelligence and Reconnaissance(I & R) platoon, I was ordered to patrol to the northeast and reporton road conditions, traffic and the fighting. At dusk, I left the 7th InfantryCP, which would soon be abandoned on the basis of my report on conditionsahead. Before we reached the first rise in the ground, my jeep was stoppedby a line of traffic all trying to move eastward on the single, narrow, unpavedroad to Artena. Field artillery, tanks, antitank guns, engineers, medics,wiremen, and service company trucks carrying ammo, rations, water and gasolinewere parked in a seemingly endless line at the side of the narrow, unpavedroad. I was impressed with the training and discipline of the drivers. Althoughthere was no traffic coming toward us, not one of the hundreds of eastbounddrivers tried to move up by driving on the left side of the road. They allpulled over and turned off their ignition switches. We waited like everyoneelse.

   Around midnight, we saw and heard a small airplane witha muffled engine coming toward us from up ahead. As we watched, I could tracethe trail of a Feisler Storch, a German light reconnaissance aircraft similarto our Piper Cub, by following the tiny blue flames from its single engine'sexhaust stacks, a few hundred feet overhead. The Storch was easy to recognizebecause of its two unusually long landing gear struts, which gave it theappearance of a stork in flight, hence the German name Storch. It was flyingvery low, very slow and very quietly. It flew directly above the road headedwest, no doubt counting the tanks, trucks and artillery pieces of the advancingAmerican Army. When it had disappeared from sight, I thought to myself, "He'sgot to come back this way to get to his base. He'll probably come back downthe same road for a second look."

   I told my driver to move the jeep about 50 yards into thecleared field on our right and park it. The jeep had a 50-caliber machinegun mounted on a pedestal in the center of the vehicle. I checked to be sureit was ready to fire and that the feed had a full box of ammunition. I thenpointed it at the spot over the road where the Storch was likely to reappear,if he did in fact come back. And I watched and I listened and I waited.

   About five to ten minutes later, I began to hear the samemuffled engine noises as before. Then, the blue exhaust stack flame becamevisible. I took careful aim, leading the target by a plane length to compensatefor its forward speed. I fired about 30 rounds while swinging the muzzleto the right. The Storch went into a violent left bank and disappeared inthe darkness. I didn't bring him down, but I may have put some holes in hisairplane and apparently terminated his observation for the night.

   Next morning at daybreak, the column began to creep forwardslowly, in fits and starts, as we climbed into the hills. The narrow, unpavedroad, through the wooded hillside, was littered with dead Germans, dead horses,wagons and equipment of every description. (A German Infantry Division atthat time had more horses than men. They were draft horses, not riding horses.)I vividly remember seeing my first German Mark VI Tiger tank up close. Itwas huge! The tracks seemed at least three feet wide and its fearsome 88mmgun, with its characteristic muzzle brake, seemed impossibly long. The tankappeared to have been abandoned at roadside because of mechanical failureor lack of fuel. Those were the only things that could stop the 72-ton MarkVI Tiger with its eight inches of armor plate! After another half mile, thecolumn stopped again and the drivers dutifully pulled over, turned off theirengines and settled in to wait.

   Even though only a 2nd Lieutenant at the time, I felt Ishould be doing something to help untangle this mess, but I didn't know what.I was reluctant to go forward, to pass all the stopped drivers doing whatthey had been trained to do. Fortunately, there was no air threat, or wewould have been strafed. Our Air Corps had complete air supremacy. In fact,there was a story going around at that time about a Kraut replacement beingindoctrinated by his sergeant. "Look up," the sergeant said, "always lookup! If you see silver airplanes, they're American. If you see camouflagedairplanes, they're British. If you don't see any airplanes, it's the Luftwaffe."

   In Infantry OCS we had been taught to exercise initiativeand to be decisive. "Even a bad decision is better than no decision at all,"we were told. I decided to have my driver take me forward in the left lane,despite standard operating procedure. My objective was not to get a betterplace in line, but to see if there was anything I could possibly do to helpbreak this logjam.

   Steele pulled out and we made our way forward past somepretty mean looks from the parked drivers, who were now spending their secondday in line. "Lookit that smart-ass 2nd Lieutenant movin' up to the headof the f---in' line! Who the f--- does he think he is!" One more mile andthe woods ended. There were rolling fields ahead and the sound of heavy rifle,machine gun, and incoming artillery and mortar fire assaulted our ears. Justinside the last patch of trees, two jeeps were parked off the road and twoLt. Colonels were studying a map spread out on the hood of one of the jeeps.Several staff members were standing around at a respectful distance. Smallarms fire crackled overhead. I had Steele park close enough so I could seeand hear what was happening. It became obvious that the column of vehicleshad caught up to the rifle companies and could go no further. One of theColonels was an Infantry Battalion commander agonizing over the fact thathis attacking battalion was being chewed up by the Krauts because he hadno artillery support. The other colonel was the Artillery Battalion commanderwho could offer no help because all of his guns had bogged down in the trafficjam, while attempting to move up within firing distance.

   I walked over to the two Colonels, a lowly 2nd Lieutenantwith a single tarnished gold bar, and said, "Sir, I'm Lt. Cloer, 7th InfantryRecon Platoon. If you tell me which artillery unit you want, I'll pull itout of that traffic jam and get it up here." They looked doubtfully at meand each other but their demeanor said, "What have we got to lose?" The artilleryColonel said, "I need any vehicles from the 10th Field Artillery. The gunsare being towed by 1 ½ ton trucks with gun crews and ammo aboard."

   Steele and I hurried back down the column. We knew, ofcourse, that the Army used a uniform marking system on its vehicles whichmade it easy to identify the unit to which they belonged. On the front andrear bumpers, the unit designation was stenciled in white on an olive drabbackground, in this case, "3-10 FA," Third Division, 10th Field ArtilleryBattalion. We hurried back down the column, slowing only when we identifieda 10th Field truck. I yelled, "10th Field only, pull out and move to thehead of the column!" Response from the drivers was magnificent! In the firstmile and one half, we sent four trucks forward, towing their 105mm howitzers,complete with gun crews and ammo. We then went forward again, but this timeI got no dirty looks from the drivers still waiting in line.

   When we returned to the edge of the woods, the first twoguns were firing. The Artillery Colonel had marked out positions for theremaining two and they too were firing within a few minutes. I felt reallygood about what I had done. Not only was it essential to continuing our advanceon Rome, but it almost certainly saved American lives as well. And nobodyelse had thought of it! Or perhaps they had, but their training, disciplineand the old adage, "Never volunteer," were too ingrained for them to act.It takes a certain amount of guts for a 2nd Lieutenant to walk up to twoLt. Colonels in a critical situation and tell them what they should donext.

   The word "Thanks" is not one you hear very often in theArmy, and never by a Lt. Colonel to a 2nd Lieutenant. And I didn't hear itthis time. It just wasn't done. If you did something right, it was considerednothing more than what you had been trained to do. But the Artillery Colonelwalked over to me after the fourth gun was firing and his words still ringin my ears, "Lieutenant, you sure earned your pay today!"

A Visit bythe General

   Following the breakout from the Anzio Beachhead on May23, 1944, the 7th Infantry fought its way north through Cisterna di Littoria.By May 27, in hard fighting, we were still pushing north about 1 ½ milesNW of Artena. The Regimental forward Command Post was located in a gullyrecently vacated by the 1st Bn. C.P. It was about 200 yards off the unpavedroad leading to Artena. We had been advised by 1st Bn. that this area wasunder enemy observation and any activity between the ravine and the roadwould bring accurate enemy shellfire into the ravine. Any vehicle which foundit necessary to approach the C.P. in daylight was to stay on the road andturn off at a wooded area which provided a concealed path back to theravine.

   As platoon leader of the I & R platoon, I was responsiblefor C.P. security along with my Intelligence and Reconnaissance duties. Iwas also responsible for the movement of enemy POW's from the three Bn. C.P.'s,back to Regiment for interrogation and then on to Division. To this end,I had two of my men assigned to each Bn. Hq. Co. on a rotating basis. Oneof these men was Sam Aldrich, an easy going southerner, always agreeable,always good natured. He smoked an old corn cob pipe, which when not in hismouth, was stuck stem down in the top of his combat boot. He was kiddedunmercifully by the other men because the acrid ‘juice' from the bowlhad to be seeping down into the stem and then into his mouth when he litup. Sam took it all good naturedly and just grinned.

   The day before we moved forward into the 1st Bn. C.P.,Sam's partner came back guarding two Kraut POWs with the news that Sam hadbeen hit by 88 mm shell fire, had lost his leg at the knee and had been evacuated.When we moved forward into the former 1st Bn. C.P., one of the first thingsI noticed was a bloody human leg, severed at the knee, lying in the bottomof the ravine. There was an old corncob pipe stuck in the top of the combatboot. It was Sam's leg and I had the men bury it. It was a very soberingexperience.

   I had the men dig two man foxholes deep in the sides ofthe ravine and after seeing Sam's leg, they needed no encouragement. Theydug like ferrets! My platoon runner, PFC Bigler, dug a hole for me and himselfat a location I designated. The colonel and his immediate staff moved intoa sandbagged room-size bunker built into the side of the ravine earlier,either by the 1st Bn. or by the Krauts before them.

   We hadn't been there long when one of my lookouts announcedthat there was a jeep approaching across the field via the most direct routefrom the road. We had been warned not to use this route in daylight becauseit was under enemy observation. As the jeep drew closer, we could see thatthere were three people in it and there was a one foot square red placardon the front bumper with a large silver star in the middle designating thatone of the occupants was a General. My lookout swore softly. The jeep pulledup to the rim of the ravine, the General scrambled down the steep 25 footslope and headed for the C.P. bunker at a very fast walk. The other two peoplewere his aide, a major, and his driver, a sergeant, Neither of them followedhim into the bunker. They stood in the bottom of the ravine to await hisreturn.

   As the jeep approached the rim, I had yelled for my mento take cover in their foxholes. I then waited just long enough to see thatthe General was in fact a General and had entered the C.P. bunker safely.I then ran to my foxhole. My runner, PFC Bigler was already in it. It tookmaybe ten more seconds before the first shell came in. It was terrifying!The 88 mm high velocity, flat trajectory shell travels so fast that the firstsound you hear is the ear-splitting crash of the shell burst. This is followeda fraction of a second later by the fearsome crack of its supersonic flightand then by the soft boom of the muzzle blast a half mile or so away. I wasn'tcounting the shell bursts but there must have been about five and they wereall inside the ravine!

   There was then a lull of about 30 or 40 seconds and Biglersaid, "Lt., shouldn't we be checking to see what we can do for the wounded?Nothing was further from my mind! How did we know the 88 was through firing?I waited another 10 seconds and then my sense of duty forced me out of ourhole to check the ravine. All of my men were in their deep foxholes and seemedOK. But the General's aide and his driver had no foxhole. The sergeant wassitting on the floor of the ravine exploring his face with his hands. AsI came up beside him, I saw in profile that he had no face! It was gone,from his eyebrows to his neck! The eyes, the nose, the mouth, the chin, nothingwas left but a bloody red maw which he pawed at, fully conscious and tryingto understand. He was choking from the blood in his throat. What can youdo for a man like that? You feel helpless and frustrated because you knowthere is nothing you can do!

   I moved to the major who was lying on his back. He hada bloody hole in the center of his chest, but he too was conscious. Therewas no arterial spurting, but blood was leaking out steadily. He asked forwater. Perhaps he shouldn't have it with a chest wound. But I didn't havethe strength to deny it. After warning him of that, I tilted my canteen andlet an ounce or two drip into his mouth. He asked me to lift his head sohe could swallow it. He couldn't raise his head alone. I did.

   About then, a medic showed up from the bunker. He gavethe sergeant a shot of morphine and began wrapping his head in white gauze,from his neck up to the top of his head, round and around and around. Bythis time, the sergeant was unconscious. The Regimental Surgeon now showedup from the bunker. He had called for an ambulance by radio or field telephone.I asked him if he thought the sergeant would "make it," our euphemism for"survive." His answer was a soft, "I hope not." We now found out that oneof my men, Corporal Fennell, had been wounded in his foxhole. A shell fragmentstruck him in the buttocks and went on through to tear up his intestines.

   The ambulance, with enormous red crosses on a white background,now came up the road and turned off to cross the same shortcut the Generalhad taken. I thought to myself, "Oh man! Here it comes again!" But he parkedright next to the General's jeep on the lip of the ravine and nothing happened.The three badly wounded men were loaded aboard and he then drove back tothe road and wherever they take wounded men in that condition. The Germangunner didn't fire. I know what the Geneva Convention says about firing onmedical personnel but the rules were observed only sporadically.

   I wonder to this day if the General's trip was worth thecost. And whether the German gunner could see the General's ostentatioussilver star on the red plaque through his binoculars. And whether the Generalknew that he should not have approached the C.P. by that route, or if hethought rules don't apply to Generals and besides, if he moved quickly, hecould make it to the bunker before the gunner could fire. He destroyed thelives of three other men making his point, whatever it was.

   Later in the day, the Regimental Surgeon asked me if Iwanted a Colt 45 caliber pistol. I was not authorized to wear one. My weaponwas the 30 caliber carbine. But it was a comforting feeling to have thatreserve firepower on your hip and I hastened to say yes. I was to carry itfor the rest of the War. It was only after I noticed the fresh red bloodstains on the top of the brown leather holster that I realized where it camefrom.

HUMOR &MORALE

     In May 1944, an aging 2nd Lieutenant joined the7th Infantry Regiment as a replacement officer on the Anzio Beachhead inItaly. He was in his late thirties and in civilian life he had been a schoolteacher. Because of his age, he was not assigned to a rifle platoon, butrather, was made a Liaison Officer on the Regimental Staff. Lt. White, wasa rather prissy individual and being the junior officer on the staff, hewas singled out as the butt of jokes on those rare occasions when timingand environment made jokes acceptable. Some thought him rather strange becauseof his huge handlebar mustache which he kept waxed and carefully groomedwith the tips curled up into half circles. His small, perfectly round,steel-rimmed G.I. glasses rounded out his bizarre appearance.

     Jokes and horseplay were a rare commodity in anInfantry Regiment, what with the maiming and dying that went on daily. Whatlittle humor there was, was of the black variety, as illustrated by BillMauldin's cartoons in the Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper. They werepertinent, subtle and timely, poking fun at the Army, the rear echelon, officers,and the hardships of the Infantryman's lot. The men regarded Mauldin as oneof their own, which he had been as a private in the 45th Infantry Division.He showed a remarkable insight into the mind of the Combat Infantryman. Thattype of humor, frequently misunderstood or not understood at all by outsiders,gave the men a much needed chuckle and a release from the terrible stressand pressures of War.

"I need a couple guys what don't owe meno money fer a little routine patrol"

     After the Anzio breakout and the taking of Rome,the Third Division, decimated by battle casualties, moved from Rome to awooded area near Naples for a few weeks, to take on replacements and to trainfor the amphibious assault on southern France. During one of these trainingexercises, Lieutenant White was assigned as loading officer for a group ofLCTs (Landing Craft, Tank) taking aboard thirty-five ton Sherman tanks. Thefirst LCT pulled up to the dock, bow first, and lowered its ramp onto theconcrete at a twenty-degree angle. There was no convenient bollard to tieup to, so the Navy crew applied forward thrust to hold the LCT against thedock. Lieutenant White, in charge of loading, waved the first tank forward.When the tracks were half on the ramp and half on the dock, the climb provedtoo steep and the engine stalled. The driver restarted, shifted to a lowergear, raced the engine and let out the clutch. The thirty five-ton tank leapedforward, and with the rubber padded steel tracks gripping the concrete dockrather than the slick metal ramp, the tank pushed the LCT away from the dock,continued on, and with an enormous splash, sank in fifteen feet of water.Fortunately, all hatches were open and the tank crew members bobbed to thesurface like so many corks.

     The next day, Lt. White was served with a "Statementof Charges," an Army form used to enforce the regulation which held a soldierpersonally responsible for the cost of any piece of government property lost,damaged, or destroyed as a result of the soldier's negligence, or neglect.The form read as follows: "Lt. White is held responsible, as loading officer,for the loss of one (1) Sherman tank due to his negligence during a loadingexercise in the Bay of Naples, Italy. The tank is valued at $75,000. Lt.White is hereby held liable for repayment of this sum to the government ofthe United States. Toward this end, eighty per cent of all pay and allowancesdue or to become due will be withheld from said officer's monthly pay untilsuch time as this debt is satisfied."

     Lt.White didn't have to be a mathematical geniusto figure out that eighty percent of $150 per month is $120 or $1440 peryear and it would therefore take him fifty-two years to pay off this debt,assuming no interest charges.

     Of course, he knew about Statements of Charges,but they were never used in combat. Soldiers routinely threw away governmentproperty; gas masks, ponchos, camouflage capes, mess kits, ammunition, leggings,and none had ever been served with a statement of charges in combat. Butwe weren't in combat now! We were training in a rear area and many high rankingsticklers for regulations routinely enforced rules in rear areas that thecombat veterans thought unnecessary. Besides, this document was signed bythe Regimental Commander, a West Point full Colonel, a no-nonsense leader,fair but not known to make jokes or even to smile. (Colonel Wiley O'Muhundro).The story spread rapidly while Lt. White worried himself sick. After allowinga few days for the story to complete its rounds, the Colonel told Lt. Whiteit was only a joke and the entire regiment had a morale boosting laugh atthe Lieutenant's expense. The butt of the joke was a member of the RegimentalStaff, not a front line soldier, and he was a junior officer besides, whichmade the joke all the more enjoyable for the dogfaces. And the Colonel cameout of it with recognition that he was a regular guy, a human being afterall. The affair had a salutary effect on morale just when it was needed most,on the eve of a bloody amphibious assault landing in Southern France.

     We made the D Day landing in Southern France atH+40 minutes near St. Tropez.

D Day - SouthernFrance - 0800 - August 15, 1944

     When the victorious 3rd Division marched into Romeon June 5, 1944, it was decimated after four months of vicious fighting onthe Anzio Beachhead and the breakout to Rome. In those four months it hadsuffered 9616 battle casualties (killed, wounded or missing) and 13,238non-battle casualties (mostly trench foot and malaria). (Ref. Division History.)Many of the survivors were inexperienced replacements or hospital returneeswho were still on the mend. Average Division strength during that periodwas about 10,000 men which meant that the replacement rate was 230%!

     The Division was given one week of R & R inRome, then trucked to a wooded area north of Naples (near the town of Pozzuoli)to integrate replacements and to train for an assault amphibious landing.It would be on the coast of Southern France, although we were not told thelocation nor timing for security reasons. We slept in tents, washed in outdoorshowers and ate hot food in an outdoor chow line. And we took an Atabrinepill every day to suppress the symptoms of malaria with which most of ushad been infected in the Pontine Marshes on the Anzio Beachhead. There wasa curious procedure for this. Since some soldiers apparently preferred malariato infantry combat, an officer stood at the head of each chow line with acan of pills. As each soldier went by, he opened his mouth, the officer insertedthe Atabrine pill on his tongue, and the soldier then took a swallow of waterfrom his aluminum canteen cup. The officer was responsible to see to it thateach man swallowed his pill. Once back in combat, the Atabrine pillsdisappeared.

     On the other end of the chow line there were threelarge garbage cans. The first was for any food left over after the soldierfinished eating. The second was hot soapy water in which he swished his emptymess kit to clean it and the third was very hot clear water to remove anysoap and sterilize the mess kit. In Italy, there were usually a half dozenragged Italian kids, each holding an empty gallon can that the kitchen crewhad disposed of, begging for scraps of food before the soldier emptied hismess kit into the garbage can. Two rather famous cartoons came out of this.Bill Mauldin shows "Willie" in his combat regalia, holding his full messkit while a ragged little girl with an empty gallon can looks up at himhopefully. The caption is "The Prince and the Pauper." The other was, I think,a "Sad Sack" cartoon. The first frame shows a similar scene. But the followingframes show the little girl carrying her full can home and dumping it intothe hog slop behind her house.

     We had excellent maps and an accurate 20 foot sandtable model of Red 1 beach on which we would land near Cavalaire-sur-Mer.There were detailed lectures on what we could be expected to encounter andhow to cope with the defenses. We practiced endlessly loading and debarkingfrom our landing craft, LST's, LCT's, LCI's and LCVP's. The landing craftwere not noted for their speed. (There was a joke, popular at the time. Howfast is an LST? It actually has four speeds. Ahead slow, reverse, full aheadand flank speed. Each of these is about six knots!)

     The Generals gave us pep talks on how weak the enemyopposition would be and on the overwhelming strength of our Navy and AirCorps support. The chaplains were kept busy leading us in prayer and theattendance at services grew as the date of departure approached. Of course,the date and location were kept secret, but we knew we were getting closewhen a concertina barbed wire stockade was erected in the Regimental areaand about 50 GIs, who were potential AWOL suspects, were confined underarmed guard until they could be loaded aboard ship. Business picked up atthe Aid Stations as a rash of self inflicted gunshot wounds broke out. Mostclaimed to have shot themselves in the foot while cleaning their weapon.We were issued gas masks and told to discard them once ashore if there wasno gas. Service personnel would pick them up later. It's the only time throughoutthe War that I remember having to carry a gas mask except for the trip overseasand then we turned them in at the replacement depot before being assignedto a unit.

     Shortly thereafter, we were told to pack up andwe were trucked to the docks in Naples. The Italian civilians told us wewere headed for Southern France, not the Balkans as some suspected. Thatwas fine with me because I spoke French fluently at that time. No word fromour superiors until we were told to turn in all our Italian Occupation Lirein exchange for Occupation French Francs. (Two for one.) A Lire was worth1 cent American, a Franc 2 cents American. Possession of American money wasillegal. We were assigned to landing craft and we climbed aboard. My companyof approximately 150 men was assigned to an LCI (landing craft infantry).The medium sized LCI had a pointed nose, but narrow ramps on either sideof the prow which could be dropped on the beach to exit. As we slowly drewaway from Naples and out to sea on August 9, 1944, I remember looking backover the fantail at the thin trail of smoke rising from Mt. Vesuvius andwondered who would and who would not survive this one.

     We had been told that the convoy was enormous;battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and more landing craftthan were landed in Normandy on June 6. But the convoy was so spread outthat we could only see four or five ships from our position through the thinhaze and smoke. Six days after leaving Naples, the convoy arrived off thebeaches between Cavalaire-sur-Mer and St. Tropez. The assault was made bythree Infantry Divisions, the 3rd, 45th and 36th, all of which had compiledstellar combat records in Italy and Sicily. Naval guns saturated the shorelinebefore H Hour which was 0800. Return fire, both artillery and small armswas lighter than expected. But there were mines and tetrahedrons in the shallowwater and three of my Division's LCI's were blown up with a loss of 60 menMissing In Action. This caused some changes in plans and my platoon, whichwas scheduled to hit the beach at Hour + 40 minutes, was held up for almostan hour.

D Day Southern France, 0800, 8/15/44

(Smoke covered beach from LCI ramp)

     We watched as the small LCVP's circled until allwere present for a given wave and then they separated and headed for thebeach in a more or less straight line parallel to the shore. This tacticavoided concentrations of men and landing craft which would have made theenemy's job easier. Shellfire from our Navy's big guns rumbled overhead.Nearby were flat bottom LCT's whooshing off rockets row after row with terrifyingscreams as each rack went off. Small Navy ships (destroyers?) equipped withsmoke generators raced back and forth along the beach. The beach was coveredwith smoke so the Krauts couldn't see what was coming at them.

     A rope cargo net was thrown over the side of ourLCI and one of the smaller LCVP's (landing craft, vehicle, personnel) camealongside. Because of LCI losses to mines, a change of plans had been made.We clambered down the rope cargo net which had been thrown over the sideof our LCI (hold the verticals dummy, or your hands will be stepped on!)and jumped into a small LCVP which was bobbing up and down below us. Onceaboard, we joined the circle, became a line parallel to the beach and thenour wave went in.

     I stood up front right behind the raised loadingramp and my 35 man platoon crowded in behind me. Enemy mortar, artilleryand rocket fire caused water spouts which we could see above the high sidesof our LCVP and small arms fire crackled overhead. We couldn't see the beach.The front and sides of the LCVP were too high. I saw no fear shown by anyone.Nor enthusiasm. We had a job to do, we had been trained to do it and Armydiscipline took over. Military discipline is a hard thing to explain. Weknew what was expected of us and we would do it to the best of our abilityregardless of the dangers. We had stopped independent thought when we boardedthe LCVP. Our minds went into a different mode. Our actions were programmedand we would follow the script.

D Day Southern France

88 mm gun on beach

     My first surprise was that the Navy Coxswain ranthe LCVP right up on the beach, dropped the ramp and I stepped off onto drysand! Didn't even get my feet wet! This was very unusual because of the Navy'sfear of mines in shallow water. We had been trained to "GET OFF THE BEACH!"because that's where the mortar and shellfire was falling. So I ran forwardwith a loud "Follow Me" and found that the 50 yard wide strip of trees betweenthe coast road and the sand, unlike our sand table model, had all been felledtoward the water, creating an almost impassable barrier! I got my 3rd surprisewhen I looked back for the first time and saw my men in single file, joggingafter me in my footprints! If someone was going to step on a mine, let itbe the Lieutenant! Some of these men had made as many as five previous landingsunder fire, Casablanca, Sicily; Salerno, Italy and Anzio. I quickly founda passage through the felled trees that someone had gone through before andtherefore seemed less likely to be mined or trip wired. We took up firingpositions along the slope of the slightly elevated coast road with one ofthe rifle companies.

     Resistance at this stage was surprisingly light.Instead of a solid wall of concrete bunkers like those encountered in Normandy,we met only scattered small arms fire and intermittent artillery and mortarfire on the beaches. There were a few 88 mm guns in log surrounded emplacements,but it appeared that the crews had fired a few shots at the landing forceand then fled. The POW's we took fitted the mold we had been told to expect.Lots of older men and young boys with a large percentage of Russian and Polishvolunteers who had apparently accepted this assignment in lieu of forcedlabor in German POW camps. And one fairly large group of German soldiersthat I saw, had small rectangular black mustaches under their noses, justlike Adolph Hitler's. It was not apparent whether they were doing thisvoluntarily as a show of support for the Nazi cause, or whether they hadgrown the mustache under orders from their superior officers. By the timemy platoon landed, about an hour after the first wave, the beach area hadbeen pretty well cleared of enemy resistance by our Battle Patrol. Despitethe lighter than expected resistance, my Regiment lost 58 men KIA and about250 WIA. Many of these were from mines rather than aimed fire. The 3rd Divisiontook 1627 enemy POWs on D Day.

     The stiffest resistance was met at Cape Cavalaire,a promontory jutting out into the sea and capped with artillery, mortarsand machine guns covering the landing beaches. This was similar to PointDu Hoc in Normandy. The relatively light casualties in the 7th Infantry intaking this vital strong point, were largely due to the bravery of one man,Sergeant James Connor of the Battle Patrol. Conner was knocked down and seriouslywounded in the neck by the same hanging mine that killed his platoon leader.Refusing aid, he urged his men across several hundred yards of mined beachunder heavy fire from mortar, 20 mm flak guns, machine gun and rifle fire.Taking over as platoon leader, Sergeant Connor inspired his men forward.He received a second painful wound which lacerated his neck and back, buthe refused evacuation and impelled his men to assault the enemy gun positionson the hilltop. His third grave wound, this one in the leg, felled him inhis tracks, but still he urged his men on from the prone position. Less than1/3 of his original 36 man platoon remained, but they took the enemy position,killing 7 and capturing 40 of the entrenched enemy. They stopped all enemyfire on the landing beach from this vantage point. Sergeant Conner was awardedthe Medal of Honor.

     The principal mission of my platoon the first daywas to move about a half mile inland, establish and secure a new RegimentalC.P. ashore and to assist the rifle platoons in the guarding and evacuationof the many POW's by loading them aboard returning LCVP's. Engineers sweptthe beach for mines and marked cleared paths after which our vehicles startedto come ashore.

     We moved inland rapidly against relatively lightresistance. We were told that a radio intercept had ordered the Krauts todelay their counterattack until they were out of range of our naval gunfire.D-Day objectives were achieved by noon of the first day. Our vehicles cameashore and we moved rapidly northeast toward Avignon and the Rhone RiverValley which was the primary road, railroad and river route north towardBesancon, Montelimar and the Belfort Gap. My recon platoon was on the movealmost continuously, feeling out the next defensive stand of the fleeingenemy. We were overwhelmed with Kraut POW's, many of whom seemed glad tohave the opportunity to surrender to the Americans. When one of my reconjeeps with four men was late getting back from what I thought was an easymission, I went looking for them in another jeep. I found them eating ripemelons at the side of a road which bordered a huge melon field. The weatherwas beautiful and you would think they were on a picnic!

     We bypassed the ports of Marseilles and Toulonand left the mop up of enemy, who were now completely cut off from retreat,to the French forces which had landed on our left. The town of Montelimarwas a key early objectives because it controlled the entrance to the RhoneValley passage north. This escape route was choked off early by our artillery,infantry and air force and the retreating enemy forces were trapped betweenour attack and the Rhone River. Twelve miles of roadway was covered withthousands of dead horses, smashed carts, burned out vehicles and blackenedcorpses. It later served as an introduction to War for replacements cominginto Marseille and moving up to join us in the Vosges Mountains and the ColmarPocket. At that time, August 1944, the Germans had more horses in an InfantryDivision than they had men. These were draft horses pulling carts, wagons,and artillery pieces. There were some vehicles, but the Germans were criticallyshort of gasoline and diesel fuel. Many of the military vehicles and mostof the confiscated civilian vehicles were run by charcoal burners which pipeda combustible gas to the engine. What little fuel was available was apparentlysaved for tanks and aircraft.

Montelimar, France - August 1944

(Remains of German 19th Army fleeingnorth.)

     We fought our way north against relatively lightresistance in what the G.I.s called the Champagne Campaign. Little did werealize what bitter fighting lay ahead in the Vosges Mountains and the ColmarPocket.

Il y a desBoches en bas!

(There are German soldiers in thecellar!)

       Another jeep Recon patrol in Southern Franceon a beautiful Indian summer day in 1944, this time to find a suitable locationfor the forward displacement of the Regimental CP. I took all four of myjeeps and fifteen men, since we carefully marked the route for others tofollow, eliminating the need to go back. There were no front lines, as such.The Krauts were slowly withdrawing to the north, stopping only to defendfavorable terrain. The situation was "fluid" which means in this case thatneither side knew for sure where the enemy was.

       We drove through a small French town to thecontinuous ringing of church bells. French civilians of every age and descriptionlined the road, cheering, throwing flowers, offering wine and fruit, manycrying with joy after four years of brutal occupation. A very pretty youngwoman danced up to our jeep on the driver's side. Steele braked to a stop,and she gave him a big hug and a kiss. I was riding in the front passengerseat. She leaned forward between Steele and the steering wheel and was aboutto give me a kiss too, when she suddenly recoiled and backed away into thecrowd. I couldn't imagine what I had done to cause this reaction. I turnedto Steele and said, "What do you suppose that was all about?" He gave mea salacious grin and said, "I squeezed her titty!" I said, "Steele, you maybe the best jeep driver in the company, but you're no gentleman." To whichhe replied, "You got that right, Lootenant."

       I found a large chateau in late afternoonin the area that the Colonel had designated on his map. I reserved the mainhouse for the War Room, the Colonel and his staff. There were a number ofsmall workers' cottages on the land and after setting up defensive positionsaround the CP, I occupied the northern most cottage with Steele and my platoonrunner, Bigler. The house was on the side of a hill abutting a small lakewhich was surrounded by trees. The rest of my patrol moved into other isolatedworker's cottages within a few hundred yards.

       I enjoyed conversing with the farm workerand his wife in their language. My four years of French language study servedme well. It was almost dusk and they invited the three of us to have dinnerwith them. We offered to share our C rations, much to their delight. Thewoman went down the cellar stairway to get some potatoes and several minuteslater returned with an apron full. But her face was as white as a sheet!She whispered in my ear, "Il-y-a des Boches en bas!" "Combien?" I asked."A-peu-pres douze!" "Est-que-ils a des fusils?" "Oui, beaucoup de fusils!"She was telling me that there were twelve armed German soldiers in the cellar!

       I acted reflexively. "Bigler, cover the cellardoor with your Thompson. Steele, round up as many men as you can find quickly,including Nessman with his machine gun. I'll cover the cellar door and windowsfrom outside. Move!" In a few minutes we were in position. It was almostdark. Corporal Nessman was fluent in German and I had him shout at the outsidecellar door, "We know you are in there. Drop your weapons and come out withyour hands up." No response! Could the woman have been mistaken? Not likely.Once more, in German, "Kommen sie hier mit der hande hoch, Raus!, Schnelle!,or grenades are coming in through the door and windows!"

       After a brief hesitation, we heard shufflingnoises and then "Kamerade!" the standard Kraut expression for surrender.Three Krauts came out with their hands clasped overhead. Where were the othernine? The lead Kraut then told Nessman that their sergeant, having seen usenter the area, hid them in the cellar and was waiting for dark to escape.When the French woman entered the cellar, they held her as long as possiblewithout alerting us to their presence, then went out the window nearest thewoods. Three decided to give up and lagged behind. I checked out the cellarand the rest were gone.

       They could just as easily have crept upthe cellar stairs and killed the three of us before we realized we were indanger and then made their escape through the woods. They had rapid firemachine pistols, while our weapons were stacked in a corner, except for the45 caliber pistol on my belt. In retrospect, I think they may have been aRecon patrol like us, with orders to get information but to shoot only iffired upon. Or possibly, they were a combat patrol left behind to shoot upwhat was a likely command post location. But after seeing the four jeepswith 50 caliber machine guns, they decided that their chances of escape werebetter if they didn't start a firefight.

MotorcycleMystique

     My earliest recollection of a motorcycle goes allthe way back to 1925 when I was four years old. My parents, my sister andI lived in a second floor apartment in Jersey City, New Jersey. We had nocar, but my father owned a red Indian motorcycle with a side-car which hekept in a nearby rented garage. On a pleasant Sunday, my mother would sometimessay, "Let's take a ride up to Sussex County for a breath of fresh air." Myfather would get the motorcycle while my mother fixed a picnic lunch andoff we would go to spend the day in what was then sparsely populated farmcountry. In winter, my father removed the engine and transmission and storedthem under his bed when he wasn't overhauling them on the kitchen table.

     So, not surprisingly, my first ride on a motorcyclewas a very memorable event. It took place in France in 1944. I was platoonleader of the 7th Infantry I & R platoon and I spoke French quite fluentlyat that time. We had just liberated another French farming village and thevillagers crowded the roadside to offer us hugs, kisses, fruit and wine.But one old farmer heard me speaking his language and came over to my jeepto begin jabbering away, as the French were wont to do. He had a greatergift to offer. He told me that the Germans had left behind a motorcycle inapparently good condition, because they had run out of gasoline, a constantproblem for them. He had put it in his barn with the intention of turningit over to the Americans. We had a policy of not using enemy vehicles becausewe had enough of our own and to drive Kraut equipment was an invitation todeath by "friendly fire." Besides, we had an image to maintain. We were anadvancing American Army, not a bunch of gypsies!

     But there is a certain mystique about motorcycles.My curiosity and pleasant memories of the old Indian demanded that I at leastgo look at the German machine. I told the farmer to climb in the back ofthe jeep and he guided us to his barn. I wheeled out the huge BMW (BavarianMotor Works) machine and was fascinated by it! It radiated raw power andsuperb German workmanship. It was painted in the Wehrmacht light earth/darkearth flat camouflage colors and it was beautiful! I turned to my jeep driver."Steele, how about getting that spare jerry can of gas off the back of thejeep and let's see if we can start this monster." We filled the tank, I turnedon the ignition, kicked the starter crank, and was rewarded with the throatyroar of the engine. It was sweet music to my ears and my spine tingled. Ifamiliarized myself with the controls. The temptation to ride it was justtoo great.

     I had never ridden a motorcycle before, but I convincedmyself in no time at all, that years of experience on a bicycle were sufficienttraining. I shifted to low gear and sedately cruised out of the drivewayand onto the paved road. For the next half hour, I rode serenely throughthe beautiful French countryside at a leisurely pace. The feeling ofexhilaration, the joy of the wind in my face, the sensation of controllingsuch power, and the complete sense of freedom I felt is indescribable. Itwas truly a one of a kind experience.

     I took a different route on the way back and soonfound myself on an unpaved road. I drove slowly and carefully, but as I leanedinto one curve, the wheels slid out from under me and I found myself slidingdown the road on my hands and knees at about 20 MPH. I picked myself up andsat at the edge of the deserted roadside for five or ten minutes and examinedmy scrapes, cuts and bruises while the shock wore off. The knees were gonefrom my wool O.D. trousers and both knees were raw and bloody. But my handswere worse. Both palms were lacerated and bleeding. The BMW was lying onits side, stalled out, but apparently no worse for wear. I cursed it soundly,stood it up and climbed back on. No piece of Kraut equipment was going toget the better of me! I started it up and the engine responded with a smoothmusical burble which I took as a welcome apology. I drove back to the barnand told the farmer to hold onto the Hog and give it to the rear echelontroops which would follow us. Only then did I stop at the aid station tohave the cuts and abrasions cleaned and sterilized.

     But by far the worst part of the experience, wasfacing the men of my platoon. The story had traveled like lightning, andalthough no one said a word, I knew what they were all thinking. "How thehell could the Lieutenant do such a damn-fool thing? We would never havefallen off!" But we moved out the next morning, the lacerations healed andthe motorcycle adventure was history.

     I never rode a motorcycle again. The closest I camewas on a Bermuda vacation, forty years later, when my wife and I rented Hondamopeds to tour the island. The moped was a far cry from the BMW and doesn'teven count as a motorcycle. But I do remember passing a teen age native onhis beat up moped. As I breezed by, he shouted after me, "GO, GRANDPA,GO!"

Vagney,France

       From Maxonchamp, the 7th Infantry clearedRemiremont and pressed on toward Vagney, France and the Vosges Mountains.In early October 1944, our CP was established in a large two story stonehouse in an open field on the edge of Vagney. A two-lane road on our leftled into the center of town. To the left of the road was heavily wooded highground. Fighting had been heavy and we hadn't moved in several days.

       Early one morning, I was ordered to lead a small patrol into the center of town and check the condition of the 1st Battalion CP, since all communication had gone out during the night. This was vitally important because with no communication from the Battalion CP, the rifle companies had no direction and Regiment and the Field Artillery could provide no support. I was also ordered to be on the lookout for "stragglers," a term used to describe men who had become separated from their company, for one reason or another, and were in no hurry to get back. Some were careful to not go far enough to the rear to be considered deserters, just close enough to be able to claim that they were trying to find their way back. They wanted a few days to collect their senses. Thankfully, I wasn't called upon to do this very often because I hated it. It was a Military Police function but there were no MPs this close to the rifle companies.

       I took PFC Bigler, my platoon runner, and another man with me and we went in on foot. We crossed the destroyed bridge leading into town which was lying on the bottom of the shallow stream bed. Soon thereafter, we came upon a storefront with all glass gone from the windows. I looked inside and saw about a dozen GIs sleeping on top of six foot long restaurant tables. It was cold and they were all covered with their blankets. They hadn't even posted a guard. I walked inside and noticed that they had pulled the blankets over their heads and since the blankets weren't long enough, their combat boots stuck out the bottom end of the blanket. This was a very disagreeable assignment I had been given and I would have preferred to walk right on by. But, I couldn't ignore it. It was my duty to find out what was going on here. I drew the blanket back from the head of the nearest man and as I stared at his face, I realized that he wasn't sleeping. He was dead. I checked one more with the same result. I then realized that the battalion was using this restaurant as a collecting point for KIAs so that Graves Registration would have no trouble finding them. Here were a dozen men who had given their lives for their country and I had suspected them of malingering. That was a hard fact to live with and I never looked for stragglers again, orders or no orders.

       We continued on through to the center of town. There was an American Sherman tank motionless and silent in the middle of the street and three or four GIs wandering around where the CP was supposedto be. One of the men was a sergeant and seeing the silver bar on my helmet, he told me what had happened. A German patrol, consisting of a Mark IV tank and an estimated 30 infantrymen, came into the town during the hours of darkness, right down this same street. A firefight erupted and the GI's could hear, but not see, the German tank which moved forward in the darkness and stopped repeatedly. An American Sherman tank was hidden behind a house around the corner behind the CP. The tank platoon leader, 2nd Lieutenant James Harris,came forward on foot in the darkness to investigate. He was severely wounded by a burst of enemy machine gun fire and the man with him was killed instantly. He crawled back to the corner and directed his tank forward. He didn't have the strength to climb aboard. When the two tanks were head to head in the middle of the street, about thirty yards apart, they still couldn't see each other. A German light machine gun, off to one side of the street, opened fire on the American tank. The Sherman tank machine gunner immediately fired his machine gun on the source of the German tracers. The German tank, having now located the American tank by the source of its tracer bullets, fired three quick rounds from its high velocity 75mm main gun using armor piercing shells. The three projectiles went clean through the heaviest armor plate on the Sherman, killing three men inside and severely woundeing the fourth. Other GIs, firing from the street and windows, were hit by the Kraut small arms fire from other members of the patrol. The Kraut tank then began firing at the CP building with its main gun. There were further casualties and all communication was knocked out. Their job done, the Krauts then withdrew.

       A medic found Lt. Harris in the street betweenthe two tank positions, still conscious. The Lieutenant insisted that themedic look after the men in the tank first, only one of whom turned out to be still alive. The medic later returned to the Lieutenant and found that his leg was shot off at the hip and he was bleeding profusely. Lt. Harris, (756th tank battalion), was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for saving the Battalion CP from destruction, with all of the attendant effects on the battle.

A photo I took early that morning of the K.O.'d Sherman tank. Note the three holes in the front in the heaviest armor plate. That could be an unexploded rifle grenade on the ground although I don't remember. I don't know the sergeant's name. We used to say we had the best tanks in the world except for the Germans, the Russians and the British. It's a good thing we had so many. The 1st Bn. CP is to the right rear where you see the vehicles.

       I found the Battalion CO and he confirmed what the sergeant had told me. He said he had wire men stringing wire back to the Regimental CP and expected to be in communication with the Regimental CO shortly. I returned to the Regimental CP and reported. We used the say that the American Army had the best tanks in the world, except for the Germans, the Russians and the British. It's a good thing we had so many.

       When I got back to the Regimental CP, I beefed up the defense and made arrangements with the 601 TD battalion, to get a Tank Destroyer (an armored vehicle that looked like a tank but had a more effective 90 mm antitank gun, rather than the Sherman's 75mm gun) and stationed it out of sight behind the CP building. I was concerned that the Krauts, after their success at the 1st Battalion CP, might decide to take a crack at the Regimental CP. Late that afternoon, we came under attack. We were hit with mortar fire first and then machine gun and rifle fire from what appeared to be about one under strength infantry platoon. My platoon was dug in positions surrounding the CP building, and we returned the fire with our rifles, BAR's and two light machine guns.

       The Krauts were firing from the edge of the woods about 150 yards away. Suddenly, a German "flak wagon" poked its nose out of the woods and opened full automatic fire on us with its 20 mm exploding shells. The "flak wagon" was a self-propelled vehicle with four 20 mm anti-aircraft guns which the Krauts used with equal effectiveness against ground troops. The crew was protected by a single sheet of armor, effective only against small arms fire. Our tank destroyer, which had been hidden behind the building, lumbered around the corner and scored a direct hit on the "flak wagon" with the first shot from its 90mm gun, tearing the "flak wagon" to bits. It then reloaded with high explosive shells and went to work on the enemy infantry. The fight was over in minutes and the remaining Krauts withdrew into the woods carrying their wounded with them. We remained in our defensive positions throughout the night, but they didn't choose to challenge us again.

The VenerableJeep

     If the 2 ½ ton (6x6) truck was the workhorseof WWII, (and it was), then the jeep was the cavalry horse of the same era.The jeep's real name was truck, 1/4 ton, 4x4, G. P.- {G. P. for general purpose,hence the acronym jeep}. Its classic lines, its capabilities, reliability,durability and versatility will live forever in the minds of we who knewit.

     I was platoon leader of the 7th Infantry I &R platoon in Italy, France and Germany. We had four jeeps which were essentialto our reconnaissance missions. They were rated as having a load capacityof 1/4 ton (500 lbs). Mine carried four men with their weapons and equipment,a 50 caliber machine gun on a central pedestal plus ammo boxes, sandbagslining the floor in hope of some protection against a mine, a second sparewheel and tire hung on the wire cutter welded to the front bumper, and spare5 gallon water and gas cans. Its cargo probably weighed in at twice therecommended max load yet it never once broke down even though traveling oversome of the worst roads in Europe and cross country on no roads at all.

     It had four wheel drive and an optional low rangetransmission which made it unstoppable by mud, snow and steep inclines, despiteits having only a simple four cylinder engine. I never saw its canvas top.And the windshield was always down flat on the hood in its canvas cover soas not to obstruct firing to the front or cast reflected light which mightgive away our position. Comfort was not a factor. The canvas windshield coverserved as a waterproof foot locker for the driver's personal belongings,which usually meant that any glass remaining in the windshield was crackedor shattered by a restless bottle of vino or some other hard object.

     My jeep did have glass in the windshield for avery short time while we were out of the line near Naples. My driver droveme into the city one evening to deliver some documents to Division Headquarters.On the way in, the windshield was down and covered of course, which madethings quite chilly at 35 miles per hour in the cool night air. I mentionedthis to my driver. When we rode back about an hour later, I noticed thatthe windshield was up, it had clear glass in it and it was quite comfortable.I said nothing, but early next morning I saw the driver in the motor poolwith a can of olive drab paint, painting out the words U. S. Navy on themetal panel just below the glass. The jeep windshield frame is fastened tothe body with only two large wing nuts. He had obviously exchanged windshieldswith an unattended Navy jeep parked in the street. Better I shouldn't know!

     The jeeps were made by Willys and Ford. Some hadignition keys, but most did not. A simple on-off switch precluded theembarrassment of losing one's keys. This, of course, made jeeps a priorityitem for theft in rear areas by both soldiers and black marketeers. The drivershad a habit of removing the distributor rotor when they had to leave theirjeep unattended. But a really good driver always carried a rotor in his pocket.That way, if someone stole his jeep, he had only to put his rotor in thenearest unattended jeep and steal someone else's to replace it. On his nexttrip to the motor pool he would paint over the serial number on the sideof the replacement jeep's hood and stencil in the serial number of his assignedjeep. A little touch up on the front and rear bumper unit designations completedthe transition.

     There were no springs in the seats, just a feltpad with a canvas cover on a heavy steel plate. It was a bone jarring rideat best, but it offered the advantage of not trying to eject you when thehard suspension hit a hole in the road, as did the Command Car, a largerand more luxurious vehicle used by some generals. There were no seat belts,sides nor doors on the jeep, and nothing for the passenger to hold onto.But one developed a sense of balance after awhile, almost like riding a horse,lessening the chances of being unceremoniously thrown out. I remember onceseeing a jeep driver speeding back to the battalion aid station in Francewith a soldier in the front seat whose foot had been blown off, apparentlyby a mine. His lower leg rested on top of the hood, presumably to slow theloss of blood. The shin bone rattled audibly against the steel top of thehood. The driver steered with his left hand while cradling the wounded man'sshoulders so he wouldn't fall out.

     One of the reasons that the jeep was so reliableis that the drivers were trained in routine maintenance. Each driver wasresponsible for his jeep's condition and no one else was allowed to driveit. The drivers were young men, products of the Great Depression, one ofwhose first goals in life was to own their own jalopy. The jeep was theirfirst car, their pride and joy , and they looked after it lovingly, justas if it really was their own. I only drove a jeep once. Officer's rarely,if ever, were seen driving. But I muscled my driver, on a trip once, to letme try it. He did and it was fun. But he appeared so nervous while I wasdriving that I turned the duty back to him after only a few minutes at thewheel.

     In Southern France, we were making our way veryslowly along a road lined with cheering French civilians after just havingliberated their village. An especially attractive young lady danced overto the driver's side of my jeep and we came to a stop as she gave my drivera big hug and kiss. She then leaned forward between the driver and the steeringwheel to give me a kiss too. But just before we made contact she recoiledand backed away into the crowd. I couldn't imagine what I had done wrong.I said to the driver, "What do you suppose that was all about?" He gave mea salacious grin and said, "I squeezed her titty." I said, "Steele, you maybe the best driver in the company, but you're no gentleman!" His response:"You got that right Lootenant!"

When a Jeep Runs Over aMine

     My driver, PFC Steele was one of the best. He wasalert, had exceptional night and day vision, and an uncanny sense of direction.I still marvel at his getting us to the Coliseum in central Rome on a midnightpatrol to see if the Krauts had pulled out yet. And then finding his wayback, with no wrong turns, and no map because we dared show no light! Throughsix campaigns, he never struck a mine which I attribute to more than luck.Thanks to his good driving, I was only in a vehicular accident once and italmost caused me serious injury. For some reason Steele was not availableand I was riding with a substitute driver who wasn't paying attention. Wewere in the city of Strasbourg, France which we had just captured. Therewere no civilian vehicles on the streets and only a very occasional militaryvehicle to be seen. As we approached a major intersection with clear visibilityin all directions, I noticed a military 2 ½ ton 6x6 truck bearing downon us from the road coming into the intersection at right angles to us. Ididn't say anything because my driver had to have seen him and besides officersdon't tell their drivers how to drive nor do they want a reputation of beinga "nervous Nellie." So we crashed in the center of the intersection atconsiderable speed, the truck hitting us just forward of dead center on myside and driving us sideways for about 50 feet. Had the high bumper on the6x6 not cleared the top of our hood and held the right side of the jeep down,it would have rolled us over and crushed us beneath the open topped jeepor under the wheels of the truck or both. Since there were no sides on thejeep, the truck's left front fender struck me in the right rear and broketwo of my ribs. When we finished our mission, I stopped at the aid stationand the "doc" taped my ribs and told me not to do any heavy lifting for afew days. The hardy jeep fared better and needed no repairs at all nor didthe careless driver.

     The 6.00 x 16 tires were sometimes a problem eventhough ruggedly built and usually in adequate supply. Both sides shelledthe roads incessantly, particularly key intersections, when supplies werebeing moved up at night. The razor sharp shards left on the road were a constantmenace to vehicle tires of all types.

     The jeep was not fast but it could be pushed upto 60 MPH if necessary. During occupation duty, immediately after the warin Germany, we were riding on the Autobahn at close to 60 on a downhill stretch.The drivers had never seen roads like this! Suddenly we heard the unmistakableblast of a 2 ½ ton truck horn right behind us. The damn fool wantedto pass! My driver looked into his rear view mirror and saw nothing. Aftera few more impatient beeps, an olive drab Piper Cub airplane, flying about10 feet off the ground slowly passed us on the left, then picked up speedand left us behind, its crazy pilot grinning and waving wildly. These airplanes,which were capable to flying low and slow, were used for artillery spottingin combat. Some of the pilots, bored and anxious to be sent home now thatthe war was over, would mount a standard truck horn on their airplane andperform the maneuver described above to relieve their boredom.

     There are still a few of the old olive drab wartimejeeps around, now much cherished by classic car collectors. When I occasionallysee one on the road, the memories come flooding back.

           I was promoted to ExecutiveOfficer, Hq. Co. (1LT) + I&R Platoon 12/1/44.  Then we fought Southto Colmar, Alsace (1-2/45).  

BloodyColmar Pocket

(Ardennes-AlsaceCampaign)

     By December 20, 1944, the 3rd Division had movedout of Strasbourg, and the 7th Infantry CP moved south to the tiny Alsationvillage of Hachimette. The German Ardennes offensive was five days old andthe Krauts were still advancing steadily. Although we didn't know it, wewere on hold. At General Eisenour's Headquarters, they were waiting to seeif the German offensive in the Ardennes could be contained. If not, thenthe 3rd Division would either go north to attack the German southern flankof the Bulge or if it looked really bad, we would fall back and take up defensivepositions in the Vosges Mountains. Strasbourg and Hachimette were both nowsurrounded on three sides by the Wehrmacht. We faced them in the east acrossthe Rhine and they were 40 to 50 miles west of us to both north and south.But after less than a week in Hachimette, the German Ardennes attack in theBulge began to collapse. Hitler then triggered "Operation Nordwind," an attackto the north out of the Colmar Pocket and south out of the southern flankof the Bulge. Its objective was to cut off the American Strasbourg eastwardbulge of which we were part. We were sandwiched between the southern flankof the German Ardennes Bulge and the northern flank of the German ColmarBulge.

The Colmar Pocket

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     The First French Army was on our right, holdinga line surrounding the Colmar Pocket, which was a bridgehead some forty mileslong and twenty-five miles deep on the west bank of the Rhine River, stillheld by the Germans in strength. The French had proved incapable of drivingthem back across the Rhine. The First French Army was a collection of "FreeFrench" from North Africa, made up mostly of Moroccans and Algerians underFrench officers. They were outfitted by the Americans, using American vehicles,weapons, uniforms, rations, artillery, and ammo.

     The French were having trouble containing the ColmarPocket, let alone eliminating it. As the German offensive in the Ardennesfaltered, and German Operation Nordwind began, the American Third Divisionwas temporarily assigned to the First French Army to help them destroy theGerman bridgehead on the west bank of the Rhine. The plan was that the ThirdDivision would punch a hole through the northern edge of the German bridgeheadand then the 2nd French Armored Division would go through them to sweep southand cut off the German retreat across the Rhine bridge at Neuf-Brisach. Whatactually happened was that the Third Division did, in fact, punch a holethrough the German line as ordered and the French armor poured through. Butinstead of heading southeast to cut off the Germans at Neuf-Brisach, theywent southwest to occupy the city of Colmar. We never saw the French afterthe first day of the attack. When we had cleared the last German from thewest bank of the Rhine, the French government awarded the entire Third Divisionthe Croix de Guerre which authorized everyone in the Division, to wear thered and green fourragere over the left shoulder. Not to be outdone, the Presidentof the United States awarded us a Division Distinguished Unit Citation, oneof only four awarded during the entire War. The other three went to the 101stAirborne (Bastogne), the 4th Armored (relief of Bastogne) and the 1st Marine(Guadalcanal). I visited our old battle area many years later while on vacationin Europe. I saw several War Memorials to the gallantry of the French soldiersin liberating Alsace and never a mention of the Americans.

Lt Cloer - Colmar

     The Colmar Pocket was in the heart of Alsace. Mostof the people spoke both German and French. The names of the towns gave anindication of the turbulent history of this border area. German names likeOstheim, Kunheim, Beisheim and French names like Ribeauville, Hachimetteand Neuf-Brisach. The people were not friendly, but neither was there anyovert resistance by civilians. This was farm country and the people werevery poor. And the campaign was fought in the dead of winter, January andFebruary 1945, in about a foot of snow at sub-freezing temperatures, theworst winter in fifty years! We rarely saw the civilians. They stayed intheir cellars where they were relatively safe and didn't have to associatewith us. We had no qualms about taking over their houses, but since thiswas technically still France, we allowed them to remain in their cellars.Later, in Germany, we often ran the occupants out. And the Wehrmacht soldiersthat faced us were as tough and battle-wise as any we had ever encountered.They were initially flushed by the early German success in the Ardennes,by their belief that this was to be the offensive which would lead them tofinal victory, by the fact that their backs were to the Rhine and the nextbattle would be in their homeland.

     Before leaving Strasbourg, we had received replacementsand I became quite friendly with two young second lieutenants assigned tothe Battle Patrol. Sharing the same house, I got to know Lt. Richard Brown,a friendly young man, quiet and unassuming. Lt. Stanley Petropolis, alsobilleted with us and was more the outgoing, self-confident type, but alsovery friendly. The third officer of the Battle Patrol, a direct oppositeof the other two, was Lt. Bill Moeglin, a "man of the world" from Brooklyn,N.Y. His big concern at the time was that he had contracted a case of V.D.and if he reported for treatment, he would be transferred back to his formerunit, Charlie Company. These three officers were all killed in action inthe first ten days of the attack!

     At the start of the attack, I remember trying tomove through the French 2nd Armored Division in a small village near thecity of Selestat. It was snowing, bitter cold and late at night. The roadswere a sheet of ice. As I led the CP advance party into the village, I foundthe streets and roads almost completely blocked with French vehicles of everydescription; tanks, half tracks, trucks and jeeps. Many of them were in roadsideditches, having slid on the ice and then been abandoned. Every house in townwas occupied by French troops, (Moroccans and Algerians). I found a Frenchofficer and demanded that he vacate one house for our Regimental CP. (I spokefluent French at the time.) He refused! I demanded to see his senior officerand he agreed to take me to him. As we negotiated the icy streets on foot,a French tank came along, (an American built Sherman with French markings).He was moving slowly because the road was solid ice. As he approached a slightdownward grade, the tank started to slide. The driver applied the brakesand the tracks locked. Nevertheless, the tank continued to slide slowly downthe hill, all thirty-five tons of it, gradually picking up speed. It finallycrashed through the wall of a house at the foot of the hill, the floor collapsedand the tank fell into the cellar! What a circus! The French officer tookme to his CO who was more understanding. He ordered the junior officer tovacate whatever building I chose for our Regimental CP. We got out of therethe next day and I never saw the French Army again until the War was over.

     Progress was slow and the Germans fought back fiercely.Artillery fire was very heavy on both sides, and the villages in our pathwere almost completely destroyed. The weather was awful and the rifle companies,who for the most part could not take shelter in the buildings or their remains,suffered severely from the wet and the cold. Evacuations for trench footand frostbite were very high.

     My principal responsibilities during this periodwere recon patrols and CP defense. It was becoming almost impossible to finda building for the CP that was relatively intact and we were grateful thatthe Europeans used nothing but stone in their construction. On one of myRecon excursions through a town whose name I can no longer remember, I wassubjected to my first German TOT (Time on Target). This was a deadly techniqueused by the artillery of both sides. What they did was aim every piece ofartillery within range, perhaps several hundred guns, at a single targetand all guns would fire simultaneously at a time which was predeterminedto the second. Hundreds of rounds would come crashing in on the single targetwith no advance warning. The results could be devastating because there wasno time to take cover. Fortunately I wasn't hit, but it was an experienceone never forgets!

     While I was still out on this recon, the directionof advance was changing and the Colonel wanted another recon to the villageof Ostheim to set up an advance CP in that town. (I will never forget Ostheim!)Since I was not available, and the Colonel was not willing to wait for myreturn, he sent my CO, Captain Alarie and the Communication Officer, WO Keough,on the recon which would otherwise have been mine. When I returned to theCP, I was told that both Captain Alarie and WO Keough had been seriouslywounded in Ostheim, both with shell fragment wounds in the neck, and bothhad been evacuated. (Neither returned until the War was nearly over.)

     I was now the sole surviving officer in HeadquartersCompany! Brown, Petropoulos, and Moeglin had been KIA and Alarie and Keoughhad both been WIA and evacuated. We had lost five of our six officers inten days! I was appointed Acting Company Commander and was ordered to takeover the job that Captain Alarie and WO Keough had been attempting to do.I took Sergeant Anderson, the senior non-com in the Communications Platoon,and we set out for Ostheim with two jeeps and six men.

     There was not a single building in the town of Ostheimleft standing. The location I chose was not a building, but rather the largestpile of rubble in the area which still had an entrance to the cellar. Sgt.Anderson brought up some more men, set up a switchboard in the cellar andput men to work running lines to the Battalion CPs. I brought the rest ofmy platoon up and set up a defensive perimeter in the surrounding rubble.We were under heavy enemy shellfire and scattered small arms fire throughoutthis operation.

     Many years after the War, I sought out Ostheim duringa vacation trip to Europe. The village had been completely restored and Icouldn't find the spot where I had located the CP. There was, however, onedestroyed building left untouched as a memorial. The entrance was markedwith a plaque headed "A Nos Mortes," which in English means "To Our Dead."Only two partial walls and part of a chimney were standing and it could havebeen our old CP. My eyes teared and I can't describe the emotion I felt uponseeing that memorial. I had my camera with me, but it seemed sacrilegiousto take a picture at that moment.

     We stayed in Ostheim for two days and then movedforward again to the village of Kunheim. The advance had ground to a haltwith the rifle companies deployed in the farmland between Kunheim which weheld and the next town, Beisheim, which the Germans held. The towns wereless than a mile apart. Our CP was in a farmhouse at the southern (forward)edge of Kunheim and I had part of my platoon in another farmhouse acrossthe dirt road. Sergeant Anderson became 2nd Lieutenant Anderson and a coupleof days later, Captain Brink, a burned out rifle company commander, was madeCO of Headquarters Company. I moved back to 1st Lt., Executive Officer andPlatoon Leader of the Recon Platoon. Having no aspirations toward an Armycareer, this arrangement suited me just fine.

     We were so far forward at the Kunheim CP that mostof the artillery fire was going over our heads and landing behind us in thecenter of the village. We were, however, subjected to flat trajectory tankfire and SP 88mm fire. During the first night in Kunheim, we took directhits on both buildings, fortunately on the second floor. And hits on nearbytrees, which spattered the buildings with shell fragments. The windows hadwooden shutters which we closed at night and covered with blankets to serveas blackout curtains. There was no electricity of course, but we did usecandles after dark. Just before the shelling, I had been sitting at the tableopposite a window writing a letter by candlelight. Sergeant Duprey was atthe cellar door dealing with some problem with the owner of the house whohad come up the stairs with a request or a complaint. I got up and went overto the cellar door to find out what the problem was. When the first shellburst, a large shell fragment came through the top of the wooden shutter,smashed the glass lighting fixture over the table, left a hole in the backof the leather chair in which I had been sitting and lodged in the wall behindthe chair. Had I not moved, it would have killed me. Across the street inthe War Room, another large shell fragment came through the window shutterand split the table around which the Colonel and several members of his staffhad been studying a map. The next day, he had me get someone to brick upthe window.

     The Battle Patrol was billeted in the house behindmine and their jeeps were kept in the courtyard adjacent to the house. Anexhausted foot patrol came in early in the morning after an all night patrol,went up to the second floor where they were billeted and began to shed theirgear. One of the men took off his cartridge belt and webbed suspenders, withtwo grenades attached by the pull rings, and dropped it on the floor. Thejolt of hitting the floor was enough to dislodge the safety pin, the spoonflew off and a live grenade rolled across the floor, its four second fusehissing. Another of the men quickly scooped it up and threw it out the window.It landed in the courtyard below and exploded wounding four men. I rememberthe incident clearly because I can still visualize one of the wounded witha perfectly square hole in the bridge of his nose exactly between his eyeswhere a fragment of the "pineapple" grenade had lodged. He showed no emotionat all, just waited patiently for his turn to be treated and hopefully evacuated.(And thankful to still be able to see).

     I had two men assigned to each Battalion CP to evacuatePOWs. During the fighting for Beisheim, "Ike" Clanton and another of my menassigned to 1st Battalion, headed for the rear in total darkness with twelveGerman POWs under guard. They were ambushed by a German patrol and were captured.The Krauts then sent them to the German rear under guard by two of the formerPOWs. While en route, they were ambushed by an American patrol from the 1stBattalion and the guards again became POWs and vice-versa. This time theyarrived without incident. It was wild!

     Beisheim finally fell to the 2nd Battalion on February4 and some 500 German prisoners were taken. The rifle companies moved ontoward Vogelsheim and Neuf-Brisach, the last two towns before the Rhine Riverbridge across which the Germans were escaping before blowing it up. TheRegimental CP was moved forward to Beisheim. On the road between the twotowns, which were about a mile apart, there stood a jeep with an Americanmajor and his driver, both dead and frozen stiff, sitting upright in theirseats behind a bullet riddled windshield. The vehicle was not from our Regimentand I could only conclude that the major was lost and had driven throughKunheim during the night and run right into the Krauts.

     On a European vacation trip, long after the War,I visited Kunheim briefly during the same side trip to Ostheim. I lookedfor our old CP without success. The village had been completely restoredand the two lane dirt road separating the CP from the building that I occupied,was now a wider paved road. Our location had been at the very edge of Kunheim,but Kunheim had now expanded for about a quarter mile into the farmland betweenit and Beisheim. I could find no familiar landmark. There was no memorialhere as in Ostheim, but there was one on the outskirts of town. It was anAmerican Sherman tank with all French markings sitting on a concrete base.There was a large plaque which credited the French 2nd Armored Division withthe liberation and told of the intense fighting. There was no mention ofAmerican participation! I saw no French troops anywhere near that area whenthe fighting was going on. Just one more example of the politicians rewritinghistory.

     It took four more days to clean out the remainderof the bridgehead and the "Colmar Pocket" was now in American hands, exceptfor the city of Colmar which had been occupied by the French. The 7th InfantryRegiment took up positions along the Rhine overlooking Germany and the RegimentalCP was moved back to Kunheim, which was more centrally located for this mission.We stayed in these positions for about ten days after which the decimated7th Infantry moved north by truck to an area one hundred miles north of Nancy,(a town called Dieulouard) to absorb replacements and prepare for the invasionof the German "Fatherland" and the crossing of the Rhine.

          Next we motored to Nancy, then foughtnorth and east into Germany. We breached the Siegfried Line and came up onthe Rhine.

Loneliness

   My wife and I have been married for 60 years and we hada boy friend-girl friend relationship for 10 years before that. In the 58years since I returned from overseas service in WWII, we have rarely beenapart for more than a day or two. But I remember well those years when wewere apart and they were the loneliest times of my life.

   My first Army assignment after OCS was to an AirborneDivision at Fort Bragg, N.C. We married and rented a room on a cotton andtobacco farm owned by a caring elderly couple, the Elliots. Those were amongthe happiest days of my life. But after only eight weeks, it all came crashingdown around me. Because of staggering battle losses in Italy, Infantryreplacement officers were in desperate need. As junior officer in my company,I received orders, along with several others, to report to a Port of Embarkation.In record time, I was on my way to the Anzio Beachhead in Italy. There were5,000 Infantry replacements aboard our troop transport. I didn't come homefor two years! Five hundred of the others never came home at all!

   In Infantry combat, life takes on an intensity unmatchedby any other form of activity. There is fear, and there is valor in overridingthe fear to do what has to be done. There is awesome responsibility.Responsibility not only for the mission but for the lives of the 35 enlistedmen under your command. There is enormous satisfaction in doing the job well.A whole gamut of emotions sweeps over you with an intensity that cannot beimagined. And one of the most powerful of these is loneliness. Men fall aroundyou and you can't help but wonder when your turn will come. The statisticsyour brain takes aboard tell you that you can't possibly survive. You willnever see home and your loved ones again. But there is no satisfactoryalternative to going on and doing what you have been trained to do. Thereis no end to the War in sight. You have no doubt that you will go on untilyou are killed or so badly wounded that you can't be patched up and sentback to your unit.

   You write often and treasure the letters from home. Yourwife at home is in your thoughts at every quiet moment. A hopelessness comesover you because you know that no one in this Regiment is going to make itto War's end, an event which is not even on the horizon. Common sense tellsyou that. And yet there is that thread of hope that you reach out for. Maybeit won't happen to me. You know it will, but maybe, just maybe . . . Andyou go on, and on, and on.

   You are surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of men,yet you feel alone. The only ones you see are the men in your own platoonand even they are spread out so you see only a few at a time. Your trainingtells you that you are responsible for these men, for their well-being, fortheir very lives. They're not friends, not buddies, there is no familiarity.You call them by their last names. They call you "Lootenant," pronouncedwith two o's. They are your charges. The Army has arranged things so thatyou exist on two different levels, officer and enlisted man, even thoughyou share the same foxhole, rations, clothing and blanket. The Army tellsthem that they must respect you and follow your orders without question.The Army tells you that you must earn their respect by looking after them,keeping them fed, clothed, and as safe as is reasonably possible consistentwith performing the mission. You both take that charge very seriously. Yourlives depend upon it.

   What about the other officers in your company? Can't youmake friends there? Somehow or other it doesn't seem to work out, primarilybecause you are physically separated most of the time. It's not like an Armypost in the States. There you see each other at reveille formation, threetimes a day in the mess hall, at the officer's club after duty hours andperhaps in the BOQ. In Infantry combat, there are no formations, and mealsare eaten alone right out of the C ration cans you carry on your back. Thereis no officers' club, no BOQ.

   I have heard it said that officers and men alike avoidmaking friends because it only hurts that much more when your friend "getshit." In my experience, that line, and others like it, come only out of amovie script. Aside from physical separation, the reason Infantrymen don'tmake friends is because of the high rate of turnover. People come and goconstantly and they all remain strangers. In my regiment, wartime battlecasualties came to 500% of average strength and non-battle casualties (evacuationfor malaria, trench foot, pneumonia, accidents, etc.) took another 500%.The Division goes on because of a continuous flow of replacements comingup from the rear as the casualties are evacuated. On average, every spotin the Regiment is filled at one time or another by ten different men. Theaverage length of stay is measured in weeks and the overlap between individualsis even less. It's not uncommon for a man to be evacuated before others evenknow his name. How could he possibly have made friends?

   During his time in combat, he is constantly lonely becausehe knows no one. He has never been so lonely. Nor afraid. If he is wounded,evacuated and later returned to his unit, he will find few familiar faces.Those few that he may have known will have been hit and replaced. And thisapplies to junior officers as well as enlisted men. After replacements areassigned to units, they never see each other again.

   It's a terrifying, miserable, and above all, lonely lifein an Infantry Company. The only personal objective, the only hope, the onlyprayer is for survival. Because survival means return to your loved onesand an end to the terrible loneliness.

Crossing theRhine

           In mid March of 1945, as the3rd Division prepared to attack the Siegfried Line in Germany, my CompanyCommander told me I was eligible for a three day pass in Paris under an R&Rprogram that I didn't even know existed. I had been with the 7th Infantryfor 14 months. I was assigned as replacement platoon leader of the I &R platoon when my predecessor was KIA on a recon for the Volturno River crossingin Italy. I was delighted and wasted no time in accepting his offer. I wasauthorized two days travel time each way and was allowed to take my jeepand driver. PFC Steele and I stopped at Service Company to pick up some cleanclothes and headed west, arriving in Paris by mid-afternoon of the secondday. We checked in at the leave center, where the Army impounded our jeep,and we were assigned to hotels on the Place de la Concorde.

          I had a wonderful time in Paris andsaw all the sights despite not having the jeep to get around. I learned touse the Paris subway which was highly efficient, went everywhere and waseasy to use, particularly with French civilians standing by to help at thefirst sign of bewilderment by an American soldier. The only problem was thatthe subway stopped running at 10:00 P. M. and aside from walking, there wasno transportation available other than taxis which were very expensive. Theonly real sour note for me was that I saw more French soldiers in Paris thanI had seen in the Colmar Pocket which was supposedly their sector offighting.

          Early on the morning of the scheduledreturn day, I reported back to the leave center where I was reunited withmy driver and jeep and we headed east to rejoin the Regiment. We made muchbetter time on the way back being more familiar with the road net. Also wewere heading in the same direction as the Red Ball Express 6x6's going tothe forward supply dumps with ammo, fuel, rations and with top priority onthe roads. By late afternoon, it became apparent that we could make it backin one day so we pushed on and found Headquarters Company in Frankenthal,Germany by dusk.

          I reported to my C.O. and told himI was back a day early and why. "Good," he said, "I have a job for you. We'recrossing the Rhine tonight. H hour is 0230 and we'll be crossing about 200yards downstream of the blown Autobahn bridge." He pointed it out on a map."I want you to take your jeep and reconnoiter a route down to the river banksuitable for tanks. Then come back here and there will be four amphibiousDD Shermans waiting to follow you down to their I. P. The assault troopsare going to need that armored support badly."

           I stifled the urge to tellhim I was still on leave. I needed no reminder of the devastating losseswe suffered a few weeks earlier when Major Duncan's 2nd Battalion attackedthe town of Utweiler without armored support. So I settled for a simple "Yessir." and went looking for my driver PFC Steele to break the news to him.

           We traversed about two or threemiles of perfectly flat farming country between Frankenthal and the RhineRiver, which was interlaced with a few dirt roads used by farm equipment.It was pitch dark of course, but we had no trouble finding our way becausewe could guide on the slightly elevated Autobahn leading to the blown bridgeand Steele's night vision was superb. We rode right down to the river bank.It was about a four foot drop to the water, the river was almost 400 yardswide, and the water was flowing at about eight MPH. Visibility was unlimitedexcept for the darkness. What I remember most is the absolute silence. Theonly faint sound was the soft gurgling of the water against the river bankand the muffled sound of the jeep's idling engine. The Autobahn bridge onour right was silhouetted against the sky, a huge and very high single spansuspension bridge with a section of roadway missing in the very center. Iscanned the other side of the river looking for defenses but saw nothingbut more flat ground with no vegetation or structures. If there were anti-tankguns over there, (and there surely were), they had to be under the far sidebridge ramp which would provide both overhead protection and concealmentfor the crews. I was no tactician, but I wondered if the planners of thisoperation had planned it from a map or had come down here to look at theterrain. I would have moved the crossing site another 200-300 yards downstream,not nearly so close to what appeared to be an obvious enemy strong point.

           It was between 10:00 and 11:00P. M. when we turned around and made our way back to Frankenthal. We sawno one and nothing in the way of military preparations on the way to theriver and back which surprised me. The four DD Shermans were waiting inFrankenthal. I talked to the tank platoon leader and he showed me the accordionor bellows-like rubberized canvas surrounded by a steel framework to liftit into place so the tank would float. There were two propellers on the backend for propulsion and steering. I remember thinking it looked like a real"Rube Goldberg" and I tried to visualize the 35 tons dropping down that fourfoot bank into the 8 MPH water.

Duplex Drive DD Sherman Medium Tank,Amphibious

That's exactly what I saw when I turned around inmy jeep, except that it was dark! I was leading them in column down to theriver in the dark and they stayed close so they wouldn't lose me. That'sabout how far back it was when we reached the Rhine

           The tanks started their enginesand the roar was deafening! They started forward behind us in column andthe clanking of the tracks was fearsome! I remember thinking that when weget down near the river bank, all that noise would alert every Kraut withinmiles. All hell would surely break loose!

           And so it was. Our jeep wasabout 20 feet from the river bank when the first 88 mm shell came streakingacross the river from beneath the bridge ramp and hit the lead tank causingit to burst into flames right behind us. As the burning tank lit up the area,more shells followed, focusing on the remaining tanks. Steele and I reflexivelydove out of the jeep and crawled into the nearest depression in the groundwhich appeared to be a bomb crater from an earlier air attack on the bridge.We felt reasonably safe there until artillery shells began to burst overhead(air bursts). I remember thinking at the time that it had to be "friendlyfire" falling short, because every shell seemed to burst at the same heightindicating use of proximity fuses (posit fuses) which I don't think the Krautshad at that time. But it mattered not who was firing it. We had no overheadcover in the bomb crater, so we climbed out and made a desperate run forthe bridge ramp about 200 yards away. We waited there until things quieteddown and then walked back to Hq. Company abandoning the jeep on the riverbank. I heard later that the first tank had been destroyed, two others hadtheir flotation gear perforated and the fourth was missing.

          When we got back to the CP, I noticedfor the first time that there was a lot of pain in my upper left arm. I peeledoff my field jacket, pile liner, wool sweater and wool shirt and found thatthe upper arm from shoulder to elbow was completely discolored in blues,purples, greens, reds and yellows and it was swollen and throbbing. I walkedover to the aid station where I was told that I had probably been hit bya spent shell fragment but it had not broken the skin because the blow wascushioned by my heavy layered clothing. No treatment was necessary. It wouldgo away in a few days. I still wondered whether that artillery fire was enemyor short "friendly" fire until I read the crossing account in the RegimentalHistory years later. It says, "The DD, or "floating" tanks of Company C,756th Tank Battalion had moved up during the artillery barrage before H Hourbut one was hit by enemy fire, set ablaze and destroyed. Two others developedmaintenance trouble." That answered my question but raised two more. Whydidn't someone tell the two guys leading the parade in an open jeep whattime the artillery barrage was scheduled to start and was the "maintenancetrouble" holes in the rubberized flotation gear from the "friendly" artilleryfire? I heard that three more amphibious tanks came forward after the enemyanti-tank guns were silenced. They floated across the Rhine, but two slidbackward into the water while trying to climb the far bank and were lostwith their crews. I have read that most of these DDswere given to the British. That was a splendid idea which could only havebeen improved upon by giving them to the Germans. The 7th Infantry had sevenof them attached for the crossing. One DD tank made it across the river.Three were destroyed along with their crews. And three were damaged and couldn'tenter the water.

           I had little time to thinkabout it because my CO was waiting for me with another assignment. Engineershad built (or were building) a pontoon bridge across the Rhine at Worms whichwas ten miles north where the 30th Infantry was crossing. I was to get anotherjeep and lead four conventional Sherman tanks north to the new bridge, crossthe Rhine and then lead them ten miles south through the enemy held eastbank to join the 7th Infantry bridgehead, all during the remaining hoursof darkness. I had several more questions, but I remembered Utweiler andmy leave in Paris and therefor kept them to myself. I accomplished the missionbefore daylight and felt good about having helped to get armored supportto the rifle companies which were meeting stiff resistance in the battlefor Sandhofen.

BloodyBandages

       It's often been said that, "War is Hell!"Those of us who have "been there" can certainly endorse that statement. Ispent two years in Italy, France and Germany during WWII, most of it in Infantrycombat. Those memories are still distinct fifty and more years later. Itseems to me that the most vivid memories are those that originated at timesof peak emotion such as fear, pride, terror, joy, despair, loneliness, andvictory. And then there are the macabre memories that never go away.

       In late March of 1945, The Third InfantryDivision was attacking southeast in Germany after having pierced the SiegfriedLine, crossed the Rhine River and then the winding Main River three times.The Krauts were making an orderly retreat, but bitterly defending good defensiveterrain. There was no "front line" as such. It was called "a fluid situation,"which means that neither side knew for sure where the enemy was. I was incommand of the 7th Infantry Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon and mymission was patrolling ahead to seek out the enemy's position and strength.The War was starting to wind down, but it wouldn't be over until there wasnothing left for the Wehrmacht to defend.

       On one such mission, I was ordered to patrolas far as a small German town, about three to five miles east, whose nameI can no longer remember. I took only one of my four jeeps, my driver andmy platoon runner. Our job was to find the enemy, not fight him. We rodethrough farm country, flat and treeless. We had unobstructed visibility almostto the horizon. About a half mile from our objective, we came upon a huge,solitary, stone farmhouse at the side of the unpaved road. It was surroundedby a six-foot high stone wall and built like a fortress. There was nothingto indicate that the house was occupied but I felt it was my duty to findout for sure, because it would make an ideal defensive position in the otherwiseflat farmland. I could see a cobblestone courtyard through the open gate.My sense of duty overcame my fear of an ambush and we drove through thegate.

       We slowly bumped over the courtyard cobbleswith our weapons ready to fire. When Pfc. Steele turned off the engine, therewas no sound but the soft sighing of the wind. It was eerie! Spooky! Steeletook the opportunity to utter one of his favorite ungrammatical, but sage,expressions. "I don't like the looks of this place, Loo-tenant. It's toodamn quiet!" And it was! We approached an open door with no idea of whatmight be waiting for us inside. We entered and found ourselves in a fairlylarge deserted kitchen. In the center of the room was a wooden kitchen tableabout eight feet long. The table and the floor surrounding it were coveredwith blood! Literally gallons of it! There were footprints in the blood onthe floor which struck me as a form of sacrilege and we tried to avoid steppingin it. The color of the blood ranged from bright red to maroon, dependingupon the degree of coagulation. An expert could probably have estimated fromthe consistency of the blood, how long they had been here and when they hadleft. I quickly recovered from my initial shock and surmised that this wasan abandoned Aid Station run by the enemy's medical personnel.

       Footprints in the blood on the floor pointedto and from a stairway leading to the cellar. The cellar door was wide open.I traded weapons with PFC Bigler, my runner, and with his Thompson submachinegun set on Full Automatic, I crept down the stairs. The lighting was verydim, with diffused daylight coming through a few small, mud spattered windowsup high at ground level. It was deathly quiet. At first glance, I thoughtthe cellar was being used as a barracks. Three walls were lined with twotier bunks made from two-by-fours, hastily nailed together. There was a fullyuniformed German soldier in each bunk, but no one moved!

       As my eyes adjusted to the gloomy light,I moved to the nearest bunks and saw a German soldier on each level. Onehad a large bloody bandage around his chest, the other around his head. Theywere fully clothed except for caps or helmets. The large, snow white dressingscontrasted with the dirty field gray uniforms as did the huge bright redstains in their centers. There were no mattresses, no pillows. Both men layon their backs on bare boards, their eyes looking straight up. I looked aroundthe room and counted twenty bunks, every one of which was occupied by a Germansoldier swathed in bloody white bandages. I was struck by the fact that everywound was a head or chest wound, the worst kind. For an instant, I thoughtthat the enemy had abandoned his wounded. But no one moved nor made a sound.Some had their eyes open. Others did not. The dim lighting and complete silenceadded to the oppressive atmosphere. I realized then that they were all dead!

       I concluded that this had, in fact, beenan enemy Aid Station, that emergency first aid was performed on the kitchentable after which the wounded were placed on bunks in the cellar, where theywould be safe from artillery fire. The medics could probably do no more thanadminister morphine (if they had it) and try to stop the bleeding with compressbandages. When the Germans were forced to withdraw, they took their survivorswith them and left the dead behind, probably because of insufficient transport.I knew they had not been gone long, because much of the blood looked freshand there was no trace of that familiar cloying smell of decaying human flesh.

       As I looked around at those mortally woundedyoung men, a great sadness came over me. They were pawns, whose lives weresuddenly and painfully terminated with the War almost over. All in supportof the wild ambitions of that egomaniac, Adolph Hitler. My heart brieflywent out to them and their families, even though they were the enemy. Butas we drove away, my military training put my mind back on track. I had ajob to do. The ashen faces faded. And two weeks later, when we overran theDachau concentration camp, the faces of the enemy dead no longer seemedimportant.

PFC NormanSteele - (Operator, Truck, 1/4 ton, 4x4, GeneralPurpose)

   Of all the men and officers I knew during my WWII armyservice, I can still remember the names of many and the faces of quite afew. But there are only a handful with whom I was sufficiently close to rememberthe details of the adventures we shared. One of these is PFC Norman Steele,my jeep driver. I'm sure his skills and courage saved my life on more thanone occasion.

   In February 1944, I was a green replacement 2nd Lieutenantassigned to the 7th Infantry Regiment on the Anzio Beachhead in Italy. Myassignment was platoon leader of the I & R Platoon (Intelligence andReconnaissance). I would be assuming command from Sgt. Claude Bond (pseudonym),a regular Army 1st sergeant who had held the job since my predecessor, platoonleader Lt. John Banks, had been KIA leading a recon patrol across the VolturnoRiver. My first meeting with Sgt. Bond, was at night in one of the shellbattered stone houses of the regimental forward CP near Conca. He describedthe platoon organization, personnel and equipment. He said the platoon wasassigned four jeeps, but these were kept back at Service Company to avoidattracting artillery fire on the forward Command Post. He told me that hisown jeep driver was PFC Steele and he recommended that I use Pfc. Perrault,neither of whom I had yet met. There were two other drivers, one of whomlater deserted in the Vosges Mountains of France and the other, a battlefatigue victim, who accidentally shot and killed himself in Germany, twoweeks before VE Day. Although I had very limited Army experience at thatpoint, I sized up Sgt. Bond quickly and was determined to start things offon the right foot. I told him there would be no personal chauffeurs in myplatoon. If PFC Steele had been driving him, then Steele was obviously theplatoon leader's driver and since I was now the platoon leader, Steele wouldbe my driver. It turned out to be one of the best moves I ever made.

   I met Steele for the first time a few nights later whenit was his turn to bring up the nighttime rations, ammo and water in hisjeep and trailer. And later, he drove my lead jeep on night patrols of therear areas to give early warning in the event of enemy parachute attackstargeting rear Command Posts. The enemy had zeroed in on road junctions indaylight and then shelled them intermittently all night in the hope of destroyingsupply vehicles. And enemy aircraft would strafe the roads at night untildriven away by the Spitfires based at the Beachhead steel matting airstripbuilt by the Army Engineers. I never saw Steele in daylight until about threemonths later when we broke out of the Beachhead and it became possible touse the roads again, which heretofore were subject to pinpoint artilleryfire during daylight.

   Steele was rather short and a little stocky. I don't rememberever seeing him without his helmet and the "steel pot" became part of hisface in my memory. He was a skillful yet careful driver, totally focusedon the job at hand. His night vision and sense of direction were uncanny.We traveled countless miles on unpaved roads, many of which had surely beenmined by the retreating enemy. He had either x-ray vision or a lot of luck,because we never triggered one. You only do that once.

   And he had other attributes. I have described in anotheranecdote how Steele solved the problem of broken glass in the windshieldof our jeep while we were briefly off the line near Naples. Under cover ofdarkness, he swapped windshields with another jeep, which was parked in thecity unattended. Next morning, I saw him in the motor pool painting out thewords U. S. NAVY on the metal portion beneath the glass.

   Our relationship was not formal, but neither was it oneof familiarity. He called me "Lootenant," never "sir," and I called him Steele.And of course there was never any saluting. We never talked about home orfriends or made small talk. He was my driver for about a year and a halfand I don't even know where he was from. Our conversation was limited tothe business at hand. He held up his end and I held up mine. We respectedeach other for that and we saw no need for further discussion. He seemedto resist any intrusion into the enlisted man/officer relationship and maybeI did too. That's the way we had both been trained and army training translatesinto action without conscious thought.

    I remember our jeep being caught in the open in broaddaylight by a German tank near Artena during the Anzio Breakout. The tankwas so well concealed that we couldn't see it, but the burst of its first88 mm shell on the unpaved road 20 yards in front of us was terrifying. Asour jeep skidded to a stop, Steele and I bailed out and took cover in theshallow drainage ditches on opposite sides of the road. They were so shallow,that I remember turning my head to one side, turning my toes outward andpressing my arms against my sides in an effort to make a smaller (and lower)target. Several more 88 mm shells came crashing in and then the fire stopped.We made a dash back to the jeep and Steele got us out of there safely withwheels spinning.

   And on the night of June 4, 1944, he drove the lead jeepon our nighttime patrol into Rome. Our mission was to see if the Krauts hadpulled out, as rumored. Rome is an enormous city with dark, narrow, windingstreets and we expected to be ambushed at every corner. I was lost but Idared show no light to read my map. Until we entered a huge piazza and therestood the Coliseum silhouetted against the night sky! I was looking at twothousand years of history and I felt that I had become part of it. Threecivilians appeared from one of the nearby buildings. Two with resistancearmbands dragged the third, an alleged collaborator with the Krauts, betweenthem. One of the captors carried a captured German machine pistol. They wantedus to take the collaborator into custody. Through my interpreter, PFC Tosti,I told them we had no time for that, to turn the suspect over to the Americantroops, who would be in at daylight. As we left the piazza, we heard theburrrrp of the machine pistol. I looked back and saw their captive face downon the cobble stones. They killed him. Steele found the way back in completedarkness, never missing a turn. His courage and driving skills played a largerole in the success of the mission and our survival. I reported in and ColonelO'Muhundro then sent the second and third battalions of the 7th Infantryin on trucks.

    In Southern France, my recon platoon was often one ofthe first American units to liberate a French village. The church bells rangcontinuously, as the grateful French civilians, after four years of brutaloccupation, lined the road to cheer us and hand us fruit and bottles of wine.In a small town near Orange, France, a very pretty young lady approachedour jeep on the driver's side and gave Steele a big hug and a kiss as heslowed the jeep to a stop. The girl then leaned forward between Steele andthe steering wheel to give me a kiss in the front passenger seat. But asI was about to get my kiss, she suddenly withdrew and backed away into thecrowd. I turned to Steele and said, "What do you suppose that was all about?"With a salacious grin on his face, he said, "I squeezed her titty!

   On another occasion, in France, we were reconnoiteringa dirt road one night, that ran around the enemy's flank. We found the roadended at a farmhouse about two or three miles ahead. On the way in, we noticedthat the trees bordering the road had been heavily notched so that they couldbe dropped across the road with very little additional effort. On the wayback out, after dark, one of the trees was down and lay across the road blockingour escape. While I covered the woods with our 50 caliber machine gun, Steelepulled a length of chain out of his tool compartment, chained the tree trunkto the front bumper of the jeep and pulled it far enough off the road toget by. Was it an ambush foiled by the threat of the machine gun? Or didthe wind blow the weakened tree down? We will never know.

    On a similar nighttime recon, we saw no one going in.But coming back out, there was an American 6x6 truck blocking the narrowdirt road. Steele stopped the jeep and we walked ahead, four of us, and foundthat another unit was moving in behind us and their truck had struck a mine.The right front wheel, fender and hood had been blown away. The road wasmined and we had somehow missed the mine or mines on the way in. Where thereis one mine, there are usually more nearby. Yet, Steele volunteered to drivethe jeep around the truck, on the narrow shoulder of the dirt road, whilethe rest of us took cover behind the truck. Brave man!

    We had many other close calls when we were spotted bythe enemy and became the target of accurate tank or artillery fire. Steele'snerve, concentration and driving skills were largely responsible for ourescape in each case, even on the snow and ice of the Colmar Pocket.

   And I have described the night we crossed the Rhine Riverand flat trajectory 88 mm enemy shellfire from across the river that hit anddestroyed the amphibious tanks which we were leading to the river bank. Thiswas followed by a "friendly fire" artillery barrage of air bursts overhead.I found out later that our new proximity fuses were defective and were burstingat the right height, but on the way up instead of on the way down. We abandonedthe jeep on the river bank and made our way back to the CP on foot. Withthe amphibs destroyed, we were then ordered to lead four conventional Shermansto Worms,10 miles north, where a pontoon bridge was nearing completion inthe 30th Inf. zone of advance. Tank drivers had limited vision, especiallyat night. We crossed the river on the pontoon bridge and led them south inthe dark to Sandhofen on the east bank. I remember looking back at them onthe bridge, and they appeared to be riding on the surface of the water. Theirweight forced the rubber pontoons under until the tracks were in the water.Our rifle companies had now crossed the river in boats near Mannheim andthe armored support was badly needed in the attack on Sandhofen on the eastbank.

   And yet, the Army caste system, kept Steele and I frombecoming good friends. In fact, when we were on Occupation Duty in Germanyafter the War and people were being rotated individually back to the Statesby the point system, I never even knew Steele was leaving until a new driversuddenly appeared. Steele, who was with me through six campaigns, (he hadten!) was already gone. I never saw him again. In recent years, I have triedto locate him through the Internet without success. It's said that you can'tgo back, and maybe it's better that way.

PFC Steele in Southern France

(Razor sharp shell fragments on the roads tore uptires)

The Final Daysof the War

     In mid-April of 1945, the 3rd Division directionof advance swung 135 degrees to the right, from northeast to south. Althoughwe did not know it, we had been headed for Berlin. But a decision was madeto leave Berlin to the Russians and our new objective became Berchtesgaden,the so called "Inner Redoubt," the anticipated focal point of final Germanresistance.

     From the Bamberg area, we attacked south, enteringNurnberg on April 20, 1945 after a bitter three-day fight. Nurnberg had beena center of German culture and a Nazi shrine, but now there was little leftof the large city. What Air Corps bombing had not already destroyed, wasfinished off by our tanks and artillery during the battle. The city was littlemore than a huge heap of rubble. I remember standing in the ruins of theAdolph Hitler Platz and in the Nurnberg Stadium, both of which had been thecenter of the huge political rallies featured in newsreels at home.

Lt. Russ Cloer, Adolph Hitler Platz, Nurnburg,Germany April 1945

     German resistance was weakening at last . All butthe diehards knew it was over. The Volksturm, Hitler's "fight to the death"civilian volunteer group, never materialized in our zone except for a fewarm bands we found in some of the houses. The soldiers we were still fightinghad a high percentage of teen-age boys and middle-aged men, but there stillremained a hard core of tough and experienced soldiers that held them together.The German civilians, offered no overt resistance, nor were they friendly.For the most part, they would hang white bed sheets out of their windowsas a sign of surrender and take refuge in their basements as we approached.Those few that we did talk to, claimed to be totally opposed to the Hitlerregime. They were afraid of us and told us what they thought we wanted tohear. There were no young men. They were all with the German armed forces,prisoners of War, or already dead. The old people and the children left usalone and we left them alone. These relations tended to thaw somewhat afterthe War ended and they realized how much better we were treating them thanthe Russians were treating their eastern cousins.

     We were quite concerned about an intelligence reportto the effect that the Germans had hidden more than a thousand warplanesof all types south of Nurnberg for one last desperate counterattack. Aftertheir Christmas counteroffensive in the Ardennes, anything seemed possible.We traveled south by vehicle from Nurnberg to Munich along the Autobahn andwe found the one thousand planes, all in good condition and with plenty ofammunition. The Germans had hidden them in a wooded area several miles longon either side of the Autobahn. Where trees had been taken down, the aircraftwere covered with camouflage nets. The center dividing island of the Autobahn,which was grass elsewhere, had been leveled, paved and painted green so thatit would look normal from the air. In fact, however, they had a wide straightrunway several miles long and had only to move the aircraft out onto theroad. There was only one problem. They didn't have a drop of fuel!

Lt. Russ Cloer in front of a Me-262, thefirst jet fighter

     We took Munich with only two men in the whole Regimentwounded, and we took 2699 German POWs, including a Brigadier General. Resistancenow bordered on the nonexistent. We overran a POW camp for Allied soldiersand freed some of our own 3rd Division men who had been captured on the AnzioBeachhead in Italy fourteen months earlier. Can you imagine their joy andastonishment at seeing American soldiers at the gates wearing the 3rd Divisionpatch, their very own outfit?

     As we continued south, we overran Dachau, one ofthe Nazi's most infamous concentration camps. We had never heard of aconcentration camp and couldn't believe what we were seeing. There was arailroad siding outside the barbed wire enclosure on which stood a freighttrain with no place left to go. The flat cars and gondola cars were filled,layer upon layer, with the naked bodies of people who had been starved untiltheir bones protruded through their skin. They couldn't have weighed morethan fifty or sixty pounds each. We found out later that they had been starved,then gassed to death. There must have been several thousand of them! Insideand outside the enclosure, a few live inmates in black and white stripedsuits, zombies of little more than skin and bones, wandering about in a dazedstate. What was this terrible sight we were seeing? At the time, we couldn'tunderstand it. We had orders not to go inside the enclosure, because of thedanger of typhus, or so we were told, and we continued our drive to the south.Rear echelon troops had the job of caring for the few survivors.

     Since that time, I have met many Germans who livedin Germany during the War. Without exception, they deny that they had everheard of a concentration camp! Some even explain that Hitler did not knowthat his subordinates were running these camps! They even deny knowledgeof the millions of slave laborers from occupied countries, who lived amongthem. They lied with a straight face and pretended righteous indignationat being asked the question.

     There was believable intelligence now that the Nazishad prepared a stronghold known as the "Inner Redoubt" in the vicinity ofObersalzburg, Hitler's headquarters in the mountains near Berchtesgaden.All German troops in the south of Germany were reportedly headed for thisarea, where enormous supplies of food and ammunition had been stored in thesalt mines. Impregnable concrete bunkers and fortifications were said toguard the mountain passes. The mountainous country was ideally suited todefense. We raced south toward Salzburg, Austria, against light resistance.We took thousands of POWs and didn't even slow down to put them under guard.We had them throw their weapons in a pile, then pointed them to the rear,where hopefully other troops were setting up concertina wire POW cages. Iremember one column led by a German general in his kubelwagen, the Volkswagenequivalent of our jeep. He was followed by about twenty German trucks loadedto overflowing with German soldiers, standing shoulder to shoulder in thetruck beds. There were no guards or guides. They were headed to our rearand we passed them going in the opposite direction. This was around May 2,1945, six days before the War in Europe officially ended. We didn't realizeuntil later that the entire German Army in this area was fleeing westwardto avoid capture by the Russians. And with good reason! Prisoners taken bythe Americans were screened and held at most for a few weeks before beingreleased to go home, unless it appeared that they were involved in War crimes.Prisoners taken by the Russians were sent to forced labor camps and the fewthat survived were not released for ten years.

     The Third Division captured Salzburg, Austria onMay 3, 1945 and our Division Commander, Iron Mike O'Daniel decided that wewere in the best position to take Berchtesgaden and the Obersalzburg, eventhough it was in the zone of advance of the French 2nd Armored Division onour right. This was strictly against orders, but the general saw an opportunityto put a few feathers in the Third Division's cap as well as that of the7th Infantry Regiment which would lead the charge. Especially after all thepublicity about the so called "Inner Redoubt."

     There were only two bridges still standing overthe Saalach River which had to be crossed to get to Berchtesgaden and theObersalzburg. Once the 7th Infantry was across, strong roadblocks wereestablished at each bridge with instructions to let no one cross withoutthe express permission of the 3rd Division Commander. On May 4, the 7th Infantrytook Berchtesgaden and the Obersalzburg and raised the American flag overHitler's Berghof retreat. I was there. A few hours later, the French arrivedat the bridges guarded by roadblocks and were denied permission to pass.Their commander, Major General Le Clerc, came forward in a state of outrage,not without good reason. We were not only Allies, but the bridges were inhis zone of advance! He was told by, Lt. Col. Ramsey, the Officer commandingthe road block detachment, that his orders were to let no one pass withoutthe express permission of the 3rd Division Commander. But unfortunately,no one knew exactly where he was.

     After delaying the French long enough to be surethere could be no question as to who had captured Berchtesgaden, they wereallowed to enter the town. (But not the Berghof). They immediately beganlooting it, with a precision that smacked of long practice. They parked ahalf track crossways at the end of each block to prevent escape and thenwent through the houses and stores one by one, throwing their loot out thewindows into the street. What they deigned to keep, they loaded aboard thehalf tracks and the rest was left behind. Perhaps they thought they hadjustification, in light of what Germany had done to France during the Germanoccupation, but we were careful to disassociate ourselves from the wholeoperation. Most of the enlisted men in these units were French Colonial troops,Algerians and Morrocans. Only the officers were French.

     Before the French arrived, we had taken Obersalzburgwith only token opposition by the few SS troops that remained. We gawkedlike sightseers at Hitler's Berghof, which we had seen at home in newsreels.It was an enormous building of Bavarian architecture, up high, overlookingthe valley in which the town of Berchtesgaden was located. There was a giganticliving room with a picture window sixty feet long and fifteen feet high,which offered a splendid view of the valley.

Hitler's Berghof, Berchtesgaden, Germany, May6, 1945

      On a slightly lower level were a number of SS barrackswhich had housed "Der Fuhrer's" bodyguard. As we all know now, Hitler wasn'tthere. He had committed suicide in Berlin. But we did capture Hermann Goeringand other high ranking Nazis. The entire complex had been bombed by BritishLancasters a couple of nights before we arrived and most of the buildings,although made primarily of concrete, had burned and were still smoldering.There were bomb craters in the surrounding area thirty feet deep from delayedaction "blockbusters." Despite the bombing and the fires, the basement andair raid shelters of Hitler's building were intact and we liberated severaltruckloads of the finest wines and liquors in Europe.

     It was May 4, 1945 and the War was over, even thoughthe official signing did not take place until May 8. Many years later, whenI told this story, a friend asked a foolish question. "What did you do withall that liquor?" Needless to say, we drank it! Or at least we tried to.I settled into a chateau on the hillside for the night with Lt. Seifarthand his platoon, and we went to work with a vengeance on our share of theliquor. We enjoyed it all the more knowing it had belonged to Adolph Hitler.We celebrated the end of the War, and more importantly to us, our personalsurvival. I was not a drinker and therefore not worldly enough to know thatif you planned to get drunk, you didn't do it on Dom Perignon champagne.I did and I suffered mightily the next day as a result. We were smart enoughto stay inside the chateau, because the odds of getting killed accidentallyrose sharply with all the drunken soldiers wandering about firing weaponsin celebration of the War's end.

This Mercedes belonged to Hermann Goering. Wecaptured it when we took him prisoner on May 4, 1945 near Berchtesgaden.Our Colonel had it repainted in Army OD and used it as his personal vehicleduring the Occupation. That's me in the front seat

     On May 5, 1945, Colonel Heintges ordered a ceremonialraising of the American flag over the Berghof, which was photographed bythe American press. It was a simple, but impressive ceremony conducted infront of the building which looked out for miles over the valley toBerchtesgaden. It finally drove home to us the improbable truth that theWar, which we thought would never end, was finally over.

           Our Occupation Duty was inSalzburg, Austria and Bad Hersfeld, Germany (5-12/45). I was then ActingC.O. Hq Co, 7th Inf.  I was promoted to Captain and shipped Home 1/23/46. 

Occupationof Germany (May through December 1945)

   A. The GermanCivilian

     The War ended on May 8, 1945 with the German armedforces in a state of total collapse. Millions of German soldiers had beenkilled in action and millions of German civilians had died in the day andnight bombing of their cities. More millions of German soldiers had beencaptured by the Russians and these POWs were sent east to work in forcedlabor camps, many beyond the Urals. Those German soldiers who fell into thehands of the British and the Americans, near War's end, were screened forSS or Gestapo connections and when cleared, were promptly released and senthome. Those who were in prison camps in the U. S. or Allied countries otherthan Russia were held for another 2 to 5 years and of those held in Russia,few came home at all.

     These German veterans were bitter. Many felt thatthey had been betrayed by their leaders. They smarted in defeat after fiveyears of victories and the glory and respect which they enjoyed in the early1940s. They were superb in battle, rarely losing an engagement when on equalterms. Man for man, gun for gun, tank for tank and plane for plane, theirclaim to being "super men" appeared to have validity. But in the end, theyhad been overwhelmed by sheer numbers and by an ever increasing level ofwar materiel production which simply could not be matched. They were confusedby the sudden and complete reversal. As individuals, many still felt superiorto the American soldier. They remembered their parents' tales of the oppressiveoccupation by the Allies after WWI and the hyper-inflation which destroyedwhat was left of the German economy. They seethed, seeing blatant fraternizationbetween American soldiers and German frauleins. But their defeat was a factand they strongly resented the American forces who occupied their homelandunder an initially stringent set of rules. They had their pride, but littleelse.

     On the home front, almost all major cities had beendestroyed by three years of 1,000 plane, night and day bombing attacks, duringwhich incendiaries and high explosives rained from the skies. In the beginning,only military targets were bombed. But as the fighting grew more intense,entire cities were destroyed with civilians killed or maimed by the tensof thousands. Most were women, children and the elderly, since the rest werefighting at the front. Scarcely a building was left standing. The major streetsconsisted of narrow paths cut through the rubble by American bulldozers.With the German surrender, food, fuel and vital services were in short supplyor non-existent. The farmers were reasonable well off, but the food distributionsystem had broken down completely. Broken water mains, lack of transportand an almost total lack of food, fuel and shelter made the cities a livinghell.

     The civilian population did not welcome the occupation,but with typical German discipline, they were obsequious and hurried to doas they were told. They gave the occupation troops no trouble. Some pretendedto welcome the American and British troops. To a man, they swore that theynever supported Hitler's Nazi regime, but they were helpless to stop it.And no one, not any one, knew that there was such a thing as a concentrationcamp and they knew nothing, they said, about the extermination of Jews andpolitical undesirables. Some even maintained that Hitler, himself, did notknow about this genocide! They were totally unaware, if you would believethem, of the millions of slave laborers in their midst, brought into Germanyfrom vanquished countries to staff their farms and the production lines oftheir factories. Like the proverbial three monkeys, they saw no evil, heardno evil and spoke no evil. They pretended to welcome the occupation forcesbecause they were afraid of them, because they knew that their well-beingdepended on them.

     Although the large cities were rubble, most of thesmall and mid-sized towns were untouched by the bombing. The occupation forcesmoved into these, requisitioning the best buildings and homes to house theirtroops. Food was very scarce and fuel of any kind was practically non-existent.Those civilians who were employed by the occupying powers lived better thanmost and these jobs were highly sought after. These people were better fed,better housed and clothed and their position gave opportunities forentrepreneurship in the black market to those who were so inclined.

     The economy was a shambles. There was neither foodnor goods in the stores, civilian jobs were few and unemployment was therule. No civilian motor vehicles were in use and the roads carried only Alliedmilitary traffic. The Nazi government had printed paper money as needed tofinance the war effort and there was little or nothing for civilians to buybecause all factories had been converted to wartime needs. Inflation wasrampant. The occupation powers compounded this problem by printing "OccupationDeutsche marks" to finance all expenses relating to the occupation, includingthe Army payroll. This currency did not replace the inflated German Deutschemark. It supplemented it! As the situation grew worse, a barter system inevitablytook hold. American cigarettes were the principal medium of exchange, althoughArmy "C", "K", and "D" rations, liquor and wristwatches were also highlyprized. American soldiers were rationed one pack of twenty cigarettes a dayfor which they paid five cents. On the civilian black market, or in the RussianZone, the five cent pack would sell for as much as ten dollars in OccupationDeutsche marks, or twenty dollars in German issued Deutsche marks. They didn'tsmoke the cigarettes. The were used as money, a medium of exchange.

     U. S. soldier participation in black market activitywas stimulated by the postal money order system.. Prior to November 1, 1945,it provided a ready means of converting inflated Occupation Deutsche marksto American dollars. The official exchange rate was one U.S. dollar for tenOccupation Deutsche marks. There was no black market exchange rate, becausethere was no U. S. currency in circulation in Germany. To hold U. S. currencywas, in fact, illegal. But the U. S. soldier could buy unlimited postal moneyorders from his company mail orderly, paying for them in Occupation Deutschemarks, and his designated recipient in the U. S. would receive the equivalentamount in U. S. dollars at the 10 to 1 official exchange rate. In other words,the Army provided a means for unlimited conversion of the inflated OccupationDeutsche marks into hard currency, but only to U. S. soldiers. This leakin the system was plugged on November 1, 1945, when new currency controlregulations went into effect. After that date, a soldier could no longerpurchase postal money orders in any amount greater than that which he hadbeen paid by the Army in cash.

     When the War ended, literally millions of slavelaborers from the conquered countries were left in Germany, with no jobs,no food, no housing nor clothing other than the rags on their backs. Theirsituation was desperate, far worse than that of the German civilians. Theywere known as D.P.s (displaced persons). A United Nations sponsored relieforganization known as UNRRA (United Nations Relief and RehabilitationAdministration) went to work under the American Military Government to helpthese people. They were housed in huge camps and fed by the U.S. Military.UNRRA organized to repatriate these people, but reached a stalemate whenthe Eastern Bloc refugees refused to go home! The Russians, Poles, Czechs,Slavs, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Hungarians, Rumanians and otherfeared for their lives and with good reason. Their countries were now underRussian control. They knew that they would be persecuted at home for servingthe German military machine throughout the War, however unwillingly, . Ayear after the War ended, they were still in Germany, cared for by UNRRAand the occupation forces, with no solution in sight.

     The German young women were in a most unusual situation.Their husbands, fiancees, and boy friends had left home four to five yearsago and most were now dead or imprisoned in the Russian gulags. An entiregeneration of young men had simply vanished. And now tens of thousands ofyoung, healthy, well-fed, well-paid, well-clothed, lonely and sex-starvedAmerican males had been placed among them. Their choices were limited toliving a monastic life of hardship or becoming "friendly" with an attractiveAmerican soldier, preferably one with access to food and cigarettes. TheU.S. Supreme Command, in its infinite wisdom, recognized the problem andas only the military can, came up with an unrealistic and unenforceable solution- the "Non-Fraternization Policy." This policy prohibited soldiers fromsocializing with any German civilian. The only contact was to be strictlyin line of duty. A soldier couldn't legally give a child a candy bar. "Thiswas the enemy and we are not going to let him forget it!"

Lt. Cloer violating the non-fraternization regulationsin Bad Hersfeld

     The policy was, of course, a dismal failure. TheAmerican soldier, friendly by nature, and single in most cases, had beenaway from home for a year or two and his situation was, in some respects,similar to that of the frauleins. The G.I.s were, by now, highly skilledat evading odious regulations and although violation was not blatant, itproceeded smoothly behind the scenes. Enforcement was lax to begin with andbecame even more so as the months dragged by. Pregnant German women walkedthe streets for the first time in years and the American soldiers responsibleleft for home.

B. The AmericanSoldier

     Most of the men, officers and enlisted men alike,were draftees or had volunteered to serve "for the duration." These werenot regular Army career men. They were civilians by nature, (Citizen Soldiers),and so far as they were concerned, the "duration" was over. The job theyhad agreed to do was finished. In combat, they lived with an extreme intensity.They found it hard to adjust to the eternal boredom of occupation duty andhad no patience with what they regarded as "chickenshit" regulations. Theyhad no useful duties, as such. Control of civilians was handled by AmericanMilitary Government (AMG) forces, a special branch of the Army. The Infantryand Armored Divisions assigned to Occupation Duty were there to "show theAmerican flag". Their mission was to act as a deterrent to further Russianexpansion into Western Europe, militarily if necessary. They were markingtime, they were lonely while awaiting their turn to go home, and Army discipline,essential in combat, was now fading fast.

     The Army recognized the problem and came up witha solution, one which Mencken would call, "Neat, plausible and wrong." ThoseDivisions which had seen little fighting and spent the least time overseaswere put in the pipeline for transhipment to the Pacific, by way of the UnitedStates, to fight the Japs. A point system was put into effect which sortedthe remaining men by time in the Army, time overseas, and related criteria.Those with the fewest points were put in the same pipeline and those withthe highest points were assigned to occupation duty. At the time, it allseemed very fair. But, as you may remember, the War in the Pacific endedvery suddenly, three months after VE Day, when the atom bomb was droppedon Japan. Those soldiers with low points were, at that time, in the Stateson 30 day leave, or in the pipe line headed for home. Since they were nolonger needed, they were separated from the service in late summer or earlyfall, while the high pointers were stuck in Germany for at least six moremonths of occupation duty.

     With the War over, the Army was no longer sendingreplacements to Europe. There were few new draftees and the Army didn't daretry to turn around and send back those who had just come home. Add to thata policy where the Army, in its desire to retain combat veterans, offereda 30 day leave in the States plus up to 60 days travel time, and a promotionof one grade to selected officers who volunteered to stay in the Army. Manyjunior officers who were short on education and qualifications for civilianemployment found this offer attractive. This left the Occupation Forcesshort-handed. With no replacements coming in, those who wanted and deservedmost to get out, were held for three or more months beyond their date ofeligibility for redeployment as established by the already unfair point system.Such was my fate. I was separated from the military service on January 23,1946, almost eight months after the War ended.

     My Division, the 3rd Infantry, was deployed alongthe line of demarcation between the American and Russian zones. I spent thefirst two months in Salzburg, Austria and the next six months in Bad Hersfeld,Germany. In my case, I would describe that time as a time of extreme lonelinessand brain-deadening boredom. In combat, we had lived with an intensity thatcannot be imagined by those who have not experienced it. The suddenness ofthe contrast was something that I found hard to adapt to. Not that I missedcombat! But I missed having something useful to do, I missed the innersatisfaction that comes from seeing daily results from my contribution tovictory and I had been over sensitized by being away from my loved ones toolong. I had volunteered for "the duration" as it was called in those days.The "duration" was over. I had done my part. It was now someone else's turn.

This is one of four similar homes in which mycompany was billeted for two months in Salzburg, Austria (May-June1945)

     When the War ended, my company commander CaptainAlarie was promoted and made a Battalion Commander. A newly arrived Captain,a protege of the politician Huey Long, replaced him. He saw his job as takingcare of the Regimental Commander and his immediate staff of senior officersat the downtown Command Post. The rest of his company (about 150 men) wasabout a mile and one half away under my command as Executive Officer. Theonly time we ever saw the new company commander was once a month when hecame down to distribute the monthly payroll to the men in cash. There werefour other company officers, but three of them disappeared quickly. Mr. Keogh,a regular Army Warrant Officer was promoted to Captain and retired. Two otherSecond Lieutenants signed on for four years and were rewarded with a 30 dayleave at home plus 30 days travel time each way. They were still not backwhen I left seven months after the War ended. That left me and a WarrantOfficer who was the assistant communication officer. I was acting CompanyCommander for all but one day of each month (pay day), Executive Officer,Motor Officer, Mess Officer for the enlisted men's and for the Jr Officer'sMess, Supply Officer, Provost (responsible for the Regimental Stockade),I & R Platoon leader and anything else that didn't fall under the categoryof Communications.

     You would think that I would have been overworked!The truth is that in the absence of a mission, with help from good sergeants,and with civilian help, there was still little for me to do, which only addedto the boredom! The enlisted men were quartered in the former resort Kurhoteland the junior officers in nearby surrounding homes. We hired kitchen helpfor both the Jr. Officers and the Enlisted Mens Messes, from pot scrubbersto professional pastry chefs. We hired waitresses for the Junior Officers'mess who were both efficient and attractive and maids to clean and make upour rooms.

This is the Kurhotel in Bad Hersfeld which wasmy company's enlisted men's quarters and mess, July - December 1945. TheRed Cross was on the roof when we got there

     But the real prize was a German middle aged man,Herr Wulff, who spoke both German and English, who I hired as my civiliandeputy. He managed, bought, stole, wheedled, bargained, traded and procuredall our needs at no cost to us. One of his most useful functions was touringthe local farms which had plenty of fresh food but no transport to get itto market. He traded them GI rations which were preserved for long term storagewhile we dined on delicious fresh salads, fresh meat and vegetables and deliciousdeserts, all prepared by professional German chefs. He was full of ideason how to make our time there less odious. In order to improve his scopeof activity, I assigned him a captured German Kubelwagen (German MilitaryJeep) which our motor pool maintained for him. I needed only tell him whatI wanted. He would snap to attention, click his heels, and with a "Jawohl,Herr Leutnant!" would be on his way. And the job he did always exceeded myexpectations. He often came to me with splendid ideas (such as having themotor pool black topped and paid for by the owner of the land) after whichhe convinced me that the idea was my very own. He furnished the junior officersearly on with typewriters, radios, and a grand piano, freshly tuned, forthe music room of our beautiful Junior Officers' Mess. The German homeownersfrom whom he requisitioned (stole) these items were given a receipt promisingreturn or reimbursement signed with a fictitious Officers name. He requisitionedthe local factory owner's lovely home for our Junior Officer's Mess and aformer Nazi meeting hall with a large dance floor, stage, bar and cocktailchairs and tables for an Officers' Club. Beer was free and mixed drinks costfive cents per glass as a result of a deal he made with a local distilleryand brewery. I know these things seem unbelievable now, but that's the wayit was. The German population was so beaten down after five years of Warand so afraid of the Russian's who were only a few miles away on the otherside of the Occupation Demarcation Line, that they offered no resistanceat all. My character would not have allowed me to do the things that HerrWulff did on my behalf, but somehow, after what I had been through, my characterallowed these things to happen using him as the interface with the unfortunatesand myself as the interface with the beneficiaries.

Junior Officers' Mess, Bad Hersfeld, (July-December1945)

     A typical day for me started about 10 A.M. whenI would wander down to either the enlisted men's or the Junior Officers'Mess to inspect the kitchen, check on any problems the mess sergeant washaving and to savor my custom made late breakfast. I'd then call for my jeepand ride over to the Motor Pool to see if the Motor Sergeant had any problems.Back to the Jr. Officers' Mess to have lunch with about 20 other Junior Officerswho had discovered I served the best meals in town. We had two BattalionSurgeons who kept me up to date on the men's health and morale out in therifle companies, two Red Cross Girls who gave me the enlisted men's latestgripes, a Military Government man who gave me the latest civilian politicalgossip, a French women who ran the Displaced Persons' Camp with the lateston attempts to make the Eastern nation D.P.'s go home instead of being fed,clothed and housed by the United Nations, several Liaison Officer's who keptme abreast of activity within the Regimental Staff downtown (the big picture!),the Regimental interpreter who regaled us with tales of his latest conquests,and our Liaison Officer with the Russians who kept us abreast of what wasgoing on across the border. Information flowed freely among this friendlyand well-fed group of bored young people.

     After lunch, I'd usually take a nap until it wastime for pre-dinner cocktails at the Jr. Officers Mess. The same well fed,knowledgeable group was present but in a much more relaxed atmosphere. Thedinner prepared by the German chefs was superb, our army cooks being limitedto peeling potatoes, lighting the stoves, disposing of the garbage and washingthe China. After dinner some of us would retire to the music room and listento beautiful classical music performed on the grand piano by a liaison officerwho in civilian life had been a concert pianist. The rest, who preferred"Mairzy D'Oats" type music, wasted no time making their way to the OfficersClub Bar a few blocks away. I would join them there and the drinks, gripes,and personal plans for "after the War" would be casually explored not onlyby my messmates, but by Officers from other Companies and Battalions. Onememory stands out as being typical. I was sitting at a table with Lt. Col.Wallace, our 3rd Battalion commander, commanding as many as 800 men. He wasa very brave man, highly decorated, and an outstanding leader. We were supposedto wear our ribbons, but he would only wear one. It was the DistinguishedService Cross with an Oak Leaf Cluster. We were discussing our plans for"after the War" and he allowed as how he probably would stay in the Army.He didn't think much of the alternative which was to "go back to the firehouse."Another young Officer who had received a battlefield promotion from sergeantto 2nd Lt. late in the War, decided he would rather be an Army Officer thango "back to the steel mills in Youngstown." At about midnight I would callit a day so as to be up for breakfast at 10 A.M. The next day was just likethe last except that my after breakfast visit would be to the Orderly Roomand the Supply Room. I'd save inspection of the Stockade until the followingday.

     But the Army likes to keep its men busy! The wordcame down that inter-company leagues would be formed for softball and forvolleyball. Sports were the thing! Good exercise, good competition, goodunit morale and cooperation, all those good things! I turned out for theHq. Co.'s first softball practice, but found that most of the positions werealready assigned. I told them that I used to pitch softball in college. Iwas told that the Colonel would be doing the pitching, but they might finda spot for me in the outfield. The Regimental Exec. was catcher and the infieldwas manned by three majors and a captain. I got to play in the outfield whichwas a very busy place with the Colonel pitching. I was not overly surprisedto learn, when it was our turn to bat, that the Colonel would bat first andthe batting order would be in order of rank. I batted last and we lost everygame!

     Volley ball proved to be equally ridiculous. Therules state that after each point is scored, the six man team will rotateone position clockwise. We did that except for the Colonel. He played centerforward at all times and everyone else rotated around him, lofting the ballup for him so he could kill it! We didn't win any of those games either!

     Finally, after seven months of this incessant boredom,during which all my friends and buddies had left for home, I was fed intothe rotation pipeline and in two more months was home.

RapeInvestigation

     On May 5, 1945, the 7th Infantry captured Berchtesgadenand Hitler's Retreat at the Obersalzburg. I was there. In three more days,the War in Europe was officially over. The Regiment then moved to the nearbycity of Salzburg, Austria, while the Allied Powers made plans to deploy theirOccupation Forces in accordance with the Yalta agreement by Roosevelt, Churchilland Stalin. The Regimental Command Post and my company were billeted in fourlarge homes on an estate near the edge of the city. All utilities were inworking order (a first!) and we had a wonderful view of Salzburg's medievalcastle. (Der Schloss).

7th Inf. Hq and Hq Co quarters in Salzberg, Austriawith Der Schloss in the background

     We had been there only a short time when I was orderedto report to the Regimental Commander. As executive officer of HeadquartersCompany, it was not unusual for me to be called upon when the Colonel wantedsomething out of the ordinary done. He told me that the AMG (American MilitaryGovernment), had received a complaint of rape from a young German woman inAugsburg, a city we had taken about two weeks earlier. She reported the nameand rank of her alleged attacker as 1st Lieutenant Barry, an officer whoI knew well and considered to be a friend. (Barry is a pseudonym). Lt. Barrywas a forward observer for the 10th Field Artillery and had compiled an enviablecombat record during the War. From his front line positions, he had savedthe lives of countless infantrymen by accurately directing the fire of hisbattalion on the enemy. Rape was a very serious court-martial offense. The"Articles of War" specified "death or such other punishment as the courts-martialmay direct," for those found guilty. The "Articles of War" were read to alltroops, no less frequently than every three months, so everybody understoodthis.

     The Colonel appointed me as investigating officerand ordered me to interview the woman in question. My verbal report wouldbe delivered to him personally and would be used by him to make his decisionon whether or not to convene a General Court Martial to try Lt. Barry. Atthis juncture, no one else was to know about the accusation nor theinvestigation. The colonel was strictly impartial in his instructions, butI was sensitive enough to read his discomfort at being placed in this awkwardsituation. Regardless of outcome, a court-martial for rape would be a bloton the record of the 7th Infantry Regiment.

    We drove to Augsburg the next day; my driver, my interpreter(a corporal who spoke German) and me. The AMG had furnished the woman's nameand address and we found her without difficulty. I explained who I was, whyI was there and told her that I would have to ask her some questions. Hermother was with her at all times, as was my interpreter. I didn't ask whereher father was. At that time, there were very few German men of any age whowere not dead or in Allied POW camps.

     In response to my questions, the young woman gaveher description of what had happened. The day the American soldiers cameto Augsburg, she said, the Lieutenant noticed her looking out the secondstory window of her mother's house. He forced the lock on the front doorand broke in. He was very drunk, she said. He attacked her and when she resisted,he drew his pistol and held it to her head. She submitted, she said, underthreat to her life. Her mother wasn't home at the time. There were no witnesses.She was composed throughout our discussion and smiled frequently. It wasnow two weeks later and she had no marks or bruises that I could see. Ifthere had been mental or physical trauma, it was not apparent now.

     Like all German civilians at War's end, she wasobsequious toward the victors. And well they should be, I thought! Theirhusbands, their brothers and their fathers had been doing their best to killus for the better part of three and a half years. The civilians had joinedin the Hitler worship and had given his barbaric racial and territorialobjectives their wholehearted support. Their "Sig Heils!," and the euphoriathey displayed at political rallies filled the home front newsreels. Thecost to humanity was tens of millions of lives lost and untold misery forthose who survived. Irrelevant to the matter at hand, you might say. AndI agree. But I didn't then.

     I asked the fraulein if she was a virgin at thetime of the alleged attack. She answered no, with no show of embarrassment.She had been having a sexual relationship with her "fiancee" before he wentoff to war. I was inclined to believe her story, except for the part aboutthe gun being held to her head. I doubted that a soldier would need or usethat kind of threat because of the differences in their size and physicalstrength. The accusation of using a gun, however, could bolster her claimthat she did, in fact, resist until faced with deadly force.

     I was in a quandary. There was little doubt in mymind that they did have sexual relations. But under what conditions? Didhe threaten her with the pistol? Or did a K ration and a pack of cigaretteschange hands? The latter happened untold times every day in post war Germany.And why was she looking out her second story window? Why was her mother notwith her when their enemy entered the city? It was his word against hers,but to carry the charge to a court-martial would hurt many innocent people,regardless of the outcome. I thought mostly about the effect on Lt. Barry'sparents and his loved ones at home. And what would the fraulein gain, besidessatisfaction? In fact, the strongest part of her story was the apparent lackof motive in submitting the complaint to AMG.

     I asked if she knew the penalty for a military rapeconviction. She said she did not. I told her the penalty was death. (In truth,that was the maximum penalty. But 30 years in prison might be just as bad.)She and her mother were shocked. I asked if they wanted to see this youngsoldier die, now that the terrible war was finally over. They shook theirheads vigorously and agreed that they did not. They had no idea, they said,that the penalty was so severe. I reminded them that if the charges werenot withdrawn, there would be a court-martial with all of its attendant publicityand media sensationalism. The fraulein would be questioned under oath bya military prosecutor seeking to air every last detail of the alleged rapeand by a defense attorney determined to make her look like a tramp. I convincedthem that there was nothing to be gained by pressing these charges, exceptmore misery for all concerned. They agreed.

     I felt a certain amount of guilt during the rideback to Salzburg, a feeling of having interfered with the judicial process.But in our system of justice, (unlike that of Hitler's Germany) the burdenof proof rests with the accuser. In this case, I was satisfied there wasno evidence to support the charge. It was her word against his. I was actinglike a judge rather than an investigator, but I was convinced that everyonewould be better off if this case never came to trial. The purpose of punishmentis not retribution, but rather that an example be set to prevent such criminalacts by others in the future. But in this case, we were citizen soldierswho would soon leave Germany and the Army forever.

     When I reported to the Colonel and handed him asigned statement to the effect that the charges would be withdrawn, he breatheda muted sigh of relief, as I knew he would. Yet, fifty-four years have goneby since that day in Germany and this is the first time I have told anyoneabout it. I suspect this indicates that I have some feeling of guilt despitecomplete confidence that my handling of the problem was the best course ofaction, for all concerned, at that time, and under those conditions. I haveno regrets.

"They oughta hire a homme to clean up afterthem chevaux."

Forty &Eights

     I was one of 5,000 infantry replacements who debarkedfrom the troopship "Horace A. Mann" in Casablanca in January 1944. We hadcrossed the Atlantic from Newport News, Va. We spent the night in a "reppledepple" and next morning, about 1,000 of us were trucked to a railroad sidinga few miles away. There we were introduced to our transportation for thenext leg of our journey to Italy. It was a 36 car train with an ancient steamengine on one end and a tiny caboose on the other. Immediately behind theengine were two large Pullman cars for the Army Transportation Corps crewand then thirty-three "40 & 8's" for the replacement Infantrymen.

     It was a narrow gage railroad. Each box car hadfour wheels instead of eight and the car was ½ to 2/3 the size of itsAmerican counterpart. The cars were all wood, except for the running gear,and their condition bespoke their advanced age. On each side were stenciledthe words "Quarante Hommes ou Huit Chevaux", meaning 40 men or 8 horses inFrench. There was a large sliding door on each side and a small window uphigh in each corner for ventilation. We were told that our next destinationwas Oran, some 500 miles away across the Sahara Desert. C Rations and fivegallon water cans for three days had been put aboard. We were assigned tocars, loaded up and the ancient steam locomotive chugged out of the station.

     It was late January. The daytime weather in thedesert was pleasant, but frigid air whistled between wide cracks in thefloorboards at night. And even with only 30 men to a car, there was not enoughroom for everybody to lie down at the same time. The days were long and boringand the nights long, cold and sleepless. The line was single track, so wehad to park on a siding whenever a train approached from the other direction.Top speed was about 20 mph. There were no sanitary facilities aboard. Thetrain would stop from time to time at isolated spots in the desert, but wenever knew why or for how long. Those who chose the wrong stop to relievethemselves would run to catch the train, pulling their pants up on the run.Of course, we all leaned out the doors to cheer them on. Some didn't makeit. But they were able to hitchhike a ride on the parallel roadway (militarytraffic)and we would find them waiting for us at the next station. The localpopulation crowded the stations trying to sell us eggs and goats milk. Theircamels looked on.

     For the first day or two, we found a suitable diversionfrom the boredom. We all had rifles or carbines and live ammunition. Therewere telegraph lines paralleling the railroad tracks and the glass insulatorsproved to be irresistible targets. After three days, we pulled into the Oranfreight yards at dusk. It was very cold and we were overjoyed to hear thata hot meal was waiting for us at the camp. We were trucked to the "reppledepple" and we lined up with our mess kits at huge kettles over open fires.Each kettle contained a mixture of the three C ration varieties, corned beefhash, pork and beans and beef-vegetable stew! It was hot and we ate everyspeck!

     From there, a group of us sailed to Naples aboarda British ship, "The Highland Queen." From Naples, we went on to the 7thInfantry on the Anzio Beachhead aboard an LST.

     My next encounter with "40 & 8's" came two yearslater when War was over and I was finally eligible to go home. I was no longerthe green second lieutenant that had been put ashore in Casablanca. I wasa tough, cynical, experienced, and proud Infantryman who took no xxxx fromanybody! I left the 7th Infantry on December 1, 1945 with an equally cynical1st Lt. named George Rebovich. We hoped and expected to be home for Christmas.But the Army moved slowly and we spent our second miserable Christmas overseasin a redeployment unit (84th Inf. Div.) in Eberbach, Germany..

     About a week later, our battalion was trucked toa nearby rail yard where our transportation to Le Havre had finally arrived.It was bitterly cold, snowing and very windy. We were each handed a cardwith our rail car number on it. Rebovich and I stood side by side, shivering,and stared at a mirror image of the "40 and 8's" we had ridden in North Africatwo years earlier. Mirror image because they were now pointed west insteadof east. And now the weather was sub-freezing, the "40 & 8's" were snowcovered, the doors were wide open and there was no heat of any kind. TheC rations and water were no doubt frozen solid. In the distance, up behindthe engine, were the two Army Transportation Corps Pullman cars bathed inclouds of steam. The "40 & 8's" stood cold and forbidding. Was this thebest the Army and our Country could do for us after what we had beenthrough?

     Rebovich turned to me and masterfully summed upour anger, frustration and despair in three four letter words of Army vernacular:"XXXX this XXXX"! And with that, he and I strode to the head of the trainand up the forward stairway of the first Pullman car. (Clearly marked OFFLIMITS). The seats had been removed from the front half of the car and wewere standing in a carpeted office. The lone occupant, a Transportation CorpsCaptain in his class A uniform, sat behind a stack of papers on his desk.And it was warm! The REB (Rear Echelon Bastard) was startled by our presencebut recovered some of his poise and said, "What can I do for yougentlemen?"

     Rebovich and I wore the field uniform of wool O.D.,combat boots, combat jacket with the well known 3rd Division patch and CombatInfantry Badge. Over the jacket, we wore our web belts with holstered .45caliber pistols, trench knives, and ammo pouches and we still wore ourcamouflaged steel helmets. We hadn't had a change of clothes in a month andthose we wore had been slept in because it was so cold. We must have lookedlike Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe, except for our scratched and tarnishedinsignia, crossed rifles and silver bars.

     During the Occupation, Rebovich had been our liaisonofficer with the Russians. I had absolute confidence in his ability to forcefullystate our case and in more colorful language than I. We focused on this RearEchelon Bastard and his branch of the Army as being responsible for our notgetting home for Christmas.

     "I'll tell you what you can do for us," Rebovichreplied. "You can make room for us up here in this nice warm car for therest of this trip. We've been freezing our ass in wet foxholes for two XXXXingyears, and by God, we've had enough!" His statement of our case was deliveredwith just the right blend of determination and controlled rage, with a strongimplication of "or else." I was proud of him!

     "All right," replied the REB. "Why don't you makeyourselves comfortable in one of the compartments in the rear half of thecar and I'll show you where we sleep and eat after we get underway. Thecompartment was comfortable and roomy. It had two fold down beds and upholsteredbench seats and it was warm! When his three sergeants had come back aboard,after having loaded the 800 infantrymen into the "40 & 8's," we got underway.The friendly Captain came back to our compartment, welcomed us aboard, showedus how to put the bunks down, showed us the restroom and told us that thesecond Pullman was equipped with a small kitchen and a G.I. cook. We playedcards, told war stories, and awakened next morning to the smell of freshcoffee and frying bacon.

     We felt bad about the 800 dogfaces freezing in the"40 & 8's" behind us, but we rationalized that there was nothing we coulddo for them under the circumstances and besides, they weren't our men. Hadthey been the men who fought under our command during the war, we would havebeen back there suffering with them to offer what meager comfort andencouragement we could. But after two pleasant days and nights, we arrivedat Camp Philip Morris near Le Havre where we were billeted in heated Nissanhuts for about ten more days. Finally, our grubby little Liberty ship arrivedand was ready to sail. Eleven seasick days later, we arrived in New Yorkharbor on a bitterly cold and windy January winter day. Every man was ondeck, eyes searching for that first sight of home. When the Statue of Libertycame into view, there was hardly a dry eye among us.

P.S.

     In 1998, I was able to locate ex-Lt. Rebovich throughthe 7th Infantry Association and I sent him a copy of this story. He telephonedme the same day he received it. He said, "I read your story about the 40& 8's, handed it to my wife and said, Read this!" She did and then replied,"That's the same story you've been telling us for 50 years."

      "Right," he replied, "but now maybe you'llbelieve it!"

      He then added, "My son graduates from college tomorrowand we're having a big family gathering afterward. I'm going to make everybodyin the family read this story!"

BackHome

  I was ordered overseas at age 22 as an Infantry replacement2nd Lieutenant after only six months in the Army and two months of marriageto my childhood sweetheart. I was assigned to the regular Army 3rd InfantryDivision on the Anzio Beachhead in Italy and introduced to War in one ofthe bloodiest battles of the century. What followed was five more major campaignsin Italy, France and Germany. My 3rd Division suffered 34,000 battle casualties.Statistically speaking, my chances of survival were infinitesimal. Yet, myhomecoming, which I anticipated as one of the happiest moments of my life,was a dismal disappointment.

   When the War in Europe ended on May 8, 1945, I was 24 yearsold and I was in Berchtesgaden, Germany. The Army, in its infinite wisdom,decided that those units and individuals who had seen the least combat wouldbe shipped to the Pacific where the War with Japan was still raging.Because of my arduous service, I was one of the lucky ones chosen to servein the German occupation instead. But occupation duty was a brain deadeningbore, especially after the intensity of combat, and it was the loneliesttime of my life. My Division manned a section of the border with the Russianzone to discourage any expansion to the west. Four months later, on September1, 1945, I was finally eligible to go home. The War in the Pacific was overand my spirits soared. But there was another regulation of which I was unaware.Unit commanders could hold an officer for up to three additional months ofoccupation duty if there was no adequate replacement available. Of course,there was none available and I was held by my unit until December 1, 1945.During that period, I was pressured to sign on for the Regular Army in returnfor an immediate promotion and a 30 day leave at home. To come to the aidof my country in time of War was one thing. To commit to 30 years of boredom,chickenshit and abuse of power in the peacetime Army was quite another. Ideclined their generous offer.

     Still, all is not lost, I thought. Surely I wouldbe home for what would have been another Christmas overseas. Christmas wasonly 25 days away. Wrong again! I spent Christmas and New Years Day in a"redeployment unit" (the 84th Inf. Div.) in Germany doing absolutely nothingbut wait for transportation. While there, we were asked to go down to Heidelberg(in trucks) to attend General Patton's funeral. We told them what they coulddo with General Patton's funeral. In early January 1946, we were transportedin 40 and 8's to Le Havre, where we were billeted in a Nissan Hut city erectedto hold German POWs awaiting shipment to the States. Stalag 17 revisited!Another wait began for a ship. On January 10, 1946, we were packed into theS.S. Maritime Victory, one of Henry Kaiser's grubby little freighters, andwe headed west into some of the worst winter storms ever experienced in theNorth Atlantic. I was continuously seasick for eleven days and I lost 15pounds.

     We finally arrived in New York harbor. It was nowJanuary 21, 1946 and I was 24 years old. The temperature was sub-freezingand the wind velocity was about 30 knots. None the less, all of the 2,000G.I.'s aboard crowded the deck looking for their first sight of home. Asthe Statue of Liberty came into view, the men went silent. But every eyewas riveted to the Lady of Liberty and warm twinges ran up and down our spines.Our eyes teared and some of the men wept aloud. It was the most emotionalmoment in my life. The War was over, I had done my duty and now, after twoyears of Hell, I was home.

Heroes and Garbage

     As we drew closer to the docks on the New Jerseyside of the river, we looked for signs of welcome. There were none. No band,no hot coffee, no Red Cross doughnut dollies, no red carpet, no loud speakerwelcome, nothing but a small, faded and tattered canvas banner which said"Welcome Home." Its condition spoke louder than the printed word. It implied,"We no longer care." And then to add insult to injury, the ship's crew begandragging hundreds of steel garbage cans filled with eleven days of ship'sgarbage to compete for space on deck. A column of open garbage trucks waitedon the dock to take it away. We wondered whether the heroes or the garbagewould be given priority in debarking.

"Back Home"

"You boys shoulda been here V-J Day. Free drinks,pretty girls kissin' everybody, whistles blowin', windows busted... "

   When I got home three days later, we went through the hugsand kisses routine, but a great divide seemed to have grown between us. Wewere like aliens from two different worlds trying unsuccessfully to communicate.The fact that I had made Captain, something of which I was very proud, meantnothing to them. When I brought up the subject of my wartime experiences,they were quick to change the subject. They asked no questions about therows of ribbons on my chest, nor the Combat Infantry Badge, the Croix deGuerre, and the Distinguished Unit Citation. And I had little sympathy fortheir problems with food stamps and a shortage of cigarettes and gasoline.It was as if they were trying to convince me that their wartime sacrificeswere greater than mine. Even though I didn't agree, they could have at leastshown the good judgement to refrain from verbalizing those thoughts duringmy Welcome Home. In summary, my homecoming, which I had visualized as oneof life's great moments, was one of the more extreme let downs of mylife!

Awards &Decorations

Combat Infantry Badge (First issue, 3/44 on Anzio Beachhead).

Bronze Star Medal w/4 OLC.

ETO Medal w/6 Battle Stars and Bronze Arrowhead (Anzio, Rome-Arno,Southern France, Ardennes-Alsace, Rhineland, Central Europe.)

Distinguished Unit Medal

Croix de Guerre

Germany Occupation Medal

Victory Medal

Four overseas stripes

     After the War, I went to work for Curtiss-Wrightin Caldwell as an engineer. Starting in 1950, I went to Newark College ofEngineering for four years at night (on the GI Bill) to get my MS in ManagementEngineering. I stayed with CW for 35 years, retiring from the Wood-RidgeFacility as Director of Finance and Administration. I retired in 1980 andwe moved to Florida.

Faces ofWar

Etched in an old soldier's memory, are the faces of comrades he knew.Faces reflecting the terror and suffering, The exhaustion of endless battles,And the courage to see them through.Those long gone faces haunt the old soldier's memory.And yet, they sustain him, too.They're reminders of the price of freedom.To we the remaining few.- Russ Cloer

    This Sketch was drawn by Dick Merrill, who served withthe 7th Division in Korea. When I first saw it, I saw in thatface, the faces of at least 100 men with whom I had served inWWII. I was so moved by it that I begged for a copy and immediatelymy mind went to work describing poetically what I was seeing andfeeling.

TrainWhistles

   When did you last hear the doleful wail of a steam train'swhistle? I don't mean the raucous blast of the air horn on a diesel locomotive.I'm talking about the steam whistle on an old-fashioned steam locomotive,the kind that the engineer sounded to send his message to all within earshot.It was the punctuation he added to the sound of incessant hissing, chuggingand huffing and puffing. To the pervasive smell of coal smoke and cinders.Two short chirps meant that the train was ready to leave the station. A briefseries of trumpet-like blasts was the engineer's impatient plea to hurrythe passengers aboard. Once underway, a long moan, building in both pitchand intensity, warned motorists that the train was approaching a grade crossing.And out in the country, away from the crowds, the engineer might turn loosea series of wavering crescendos out of sheer exuberance just to hear theechoes reverberate across the countryside. His repertoire included scoresof stirring and imaginative compositions. The meaning of these, only he andperhaps the brakeman and conductor knew. He played them with feeling andexpression rivaling that of an organ virtuoso.

   As a young boy, I was captivated by these sounds and nevertired of hearing them. They told me that my small town was part of a muchlarger world which I longed to see. There are few sounds on earth that willbring forth visions of adventure in romantic, faraway places, like the insistentcall of a steam locomotive's whistle. It brought schoolbook pictures to lifeand held them just out of my reach. I listened to its music and it tuggedat me like the Pied Piper's flute. It brought visions of snow-covered mountains,of barns and silos, of castles and minarets, of camels and deserts, of canals,windmills and shimmering rivers, of narrow cobble-stoned streets, houseswith steep, gabled, red tile roofs and window boxes bursting with redgeraniums.

   And when I grew older, I saw all these things along withenough adventure to last me a lifetime. I saw camels and deserts while crossingthe Sahara in "40 & 8's." I saw Mt. Vesuvius and the ancient ruins ofPompeii on my way to the Anzio Beachhead. I saw the Coliseum silhouettedagainst the first pink streaks of dawn while leading one of the first patrolsinto Rome. And I saw the sandy beaches of Southern France from the ramp ofmy LCVP. I saw castles and minarets among France's great chateaux. And Iwas welcomed by cheering French crowds, ringing church bells and the singingof La Marseillaise in the Rhone Valley. I trudged through the snow coveredVosges mountains on Christmas Day and saw the Austrian Alp from Hitler'sBerghof on the last day of the War. The shimmering rivers were the Moselle,the Rhine and the Danube all of which I crossed under enemy fire. The cobblestoned streets, houses with steep gabled roofs and window boxes burstingwith red geraniums were in those small German towns which had not been bombedinto oblivion. Barns, of course, were everywhere. They gave us shelter anda place to sleep. I saw the famous cities of the Mediterranean and Europe;Casablanca, Oran, Rome, Paris and Salzburg, all mostly untouched: Nurnbergand Munich in ruins. To be sure, it wasn't all pleasant. In fact, it wasmostly hell! But it's nice to remember the "good stuff" and to be able tointerpret later developments with the knowledge of having "been there."

   But when the War was over I still heard the melancholycall of the steam train's whistle. The tug was even stronger now, but thewhistle was sending a different message. The faraway place, which it nowextolled, was the one I had left three years earlier. That wonderful placecalled home. That place where your friends and loved ones await you and yourpresence is sure to bring smiles. The whistles were calling me home.

   But now, in my late retirement years, the whistle no longercalls. I listen, but I hear no plaintive wail. The engineer is gone, as ishis whistle and his locomotive. They are dinosaurs out of the past and perhapsI am too. But I haven't forgotten the romantic songs that the whistle usedto play, nor the dreams and visions which it inspired. Nor the adventuresand the faraway places that the whistle implored me to see. I am glad thatI listened to the whistle. But with steam locomotives gone, I wonder whatwill stir my grandchildren's imagination, like the steam whistle did forme.

   And yet, I know that the day will come when I will hearthe wail of the whistle one last time. Its tone will be soft and serene butit will not be denied. It's call will be insistent and its message will beclear. The time has come, it will tell me, to make that final journey, theone to join my buddies, my friends and loved ones who were given less timethan I. The engineer will be there, as will his train and whistle. They assureme that I will be welcomed with smiles to a place of peace, love and harmony.A place where we will all be together again. A place from which there willno longer be any need to journey afar.

----- Russ Cloer

      Rwcloer@aol.com

LINKS

Russ Cloer& Leo Perrault, Russ Cloer, Capt., I & R Platoon Leader, 7thInf., 3rd Inf. Div., VI Corp., 7th Army US Army

Map ofColmar Pocket, Capt., I & R Platoon Leader, 7th Inf., 3rd Inf. Div.,VI Corp., 7th Army US Army

Lt. RusselW. Cloer in Colmar, Capt., I & R Platoon Leader, 7th Inf., 3rd Inf.Div., VI Corp., 7th Army US Army

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