Off to Europe

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“Well, I, we were very fortunate for a number of reasons.  When the Battle of the Bulge broke out in Belgium, our infantry companies, three infantry regiments, were immediately rushed over as fast as they could to get them involved. They left the entire rest of the division. The division consisted of 15,000 men. The rest of us were still in Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, until some big wheels from Washington could come and verify that the rest of the division was ready for combat, which was somewhat of a joke. Just a waste of time. So, we got all this finally aboard a troop train. So, our infantry regiments, three of them, got in the last couple days of the Battle of the Bulge.  

What happened afterwards, before we arrived, they were attacked by the German army. And supposedly in a quiet area. They had a lot of casualties. Wounded, killed, and captured.  We left New York Harbor, I guess it was day after New Year's. A 15-day voyage in a large convoy because they couldn't go straight, they had to zigzag. So that's why it took 15 days for us to land in Marseilles, France. 

Well, again, I said we were somewhat fortunate, because by the time the rest of the division arrived, we were transported to an area north of Marseilles called CP2, Command Post 2. Extremely cold. The coldest weather in southern France they said in a hundred years. Extremely cold, rocky, barren, misery. But we had to wait there until the regiments could get replacements. So, when they received replacements, we had to go on maneuvers like we were in Oklahoma in training to train the new replacements, especially some officers that had to deal with the artillery forward observers.  

So there again, that delayed us from going into combat. But finally, either end of January or early February, we went into combat. Actually, we went into a position close to midnight one night, and we thought we were still on the maneuvers. The only difference was they told us to dig in our howitzers and put-up camouflage nets.  Well, that was new.  But then at break of dawn the next morning shells start flying over our heads. 'Oh, this must be the real thing.' And then we learned the first day or two that we were in a village called Wingen sur Moder, France. The village of Wingen on the Moder river. We were on one side of the river, the other side of the river was, well, the river itself, they called a river, to us it was like a creek. On the other side was what they called a mountain; we called it a very high hill. The Germans were dug in on the other side of the high hill. It took the better part of two days. You could learn by the difference in the sounds, which shells flew overhead. The Germans had fired at targets behind us and behind us were the 155mm howitzers and the heavier 240mm howitzers. Those shells were fired over the high hills to the Germans. By the difference in the sound, you could tell what was incoming and what was outgoing. We used to say, after a little experience, we weren’t concerned about those bullets that had your name on them. We were concerned about those big ones that said, 'to whom it may concern.'”