A Soldier Strips the Romance Out of Life at War

From The GI Journal of Sergeant Giles (Henry Giles 291st Engineer Bn)

Friday Oct 20, 1944

Couldn't take any more pain, so went on sick call this morning. Haven't slept much for a week & none at all the last two nights. Last night my ears hurt so damned bad I passed some urine in an empty cartridge & made Hinkel pour it in them. He didn't want to, for they are both draining & he was afraid it would infect them. I said, "Hell, why do you think they're draining? They're already infected. Pour it in."....

Now there's just something that must have been loads of fun.....

Monday Feb 19, 1945 (near Schmidt in the Hurtgenwald)

Too tired tonight. Worked on the bridge today. It's a bitch. Slipped in the slick & had trouble regaining my footing. Mac grabbed & I do believe I migh thave gon into the drink if he hadn't. Gave me heart failure. As cold as the water is & as fast as the current is, I don't think I'd have made it out.

The wonders of visiting foreign countries....

Feb 23, 1945

Well, the outfit can take another bow. We just built the goddamndest Bailey anybody ever built across any blasted river. A triple single. The only thing.... Damn nasty river, too. Not very wide bu awfully swift.
We also had just enough shelling to make it uncomfortable.....

 

The glory of war,

 

Truly moving letter. I have a friend whose mother found a letter from an American soldier on the fronteir against German tanks in WWI. I have to ask him to borrow the letter and I'll post up the text or photocopy it.

Those pictures are depressing.


Glorious isn't it?

 

Yes. Please do if you can.

 

Bill Karr
They waited until he and his fellow infantrymen were already on board ship to tell them where they were headed: Guadalcanal.
The South Pacific island had some of the bloodiest fighting of World War II, and in October 1942, Sgt. Bill Karr's troops had the crucial job of holding Henderson Air Field after an early Marine effort had won it from the Japanese.
Karr had enlisted in the Army at the Urbana Armory when he turned 19, more than a year before Pearl Harbor. The young man from Rantoul was a champion sprinter who intended to try out for the University of Illinois track team when he got out of the Army.
Shrapnel injuries to his shoulders and a leg stopped any dreams of running the 100-yard dash.
Instead, Karr married a girl he met in Texas. Ruth and he had three sons, and he worked for the UI athletic department for 38 years.
Now 87, the wounds remain with him, not just the physical ones.
He remembers a friend he cradled in his arms. The buddy was getting sulfa drugs for one wound before taking another, fatal one.
He remembers "stepping over bodies to get anywhere." He remembers mass graves dug by Army engineers.
Of 60 local men from Company B, 130th Infantry, Karr knows of only four who made it back from the South Pacific.
"There's really nobody to talk about it with," says Karr, who also lost his wife in 2001.
Nowadays there's a diagnosis for soldiers called post-traumatic stress disorder. When Karr came back from Guadalcanal on a hospital ship, there wasn't any such label – or any welcoming parade, either, he says.
For about 20 years, Karr drove to the Danville Veterans Affairs hospital to join about a dozen other veterans in talk therapy. He'd try to talk about his experiences, but stop. He'd get nightmares, and he'd think about digging foxholes.
But old age, he says, has mellowed his traumas.
"Twenty years ago, I couldn't have talked about this," he says. "But there aren't many of us left to talk."

The News-Gazette.com: Area World War II veterans' tales keep historical event alive

 

Let me add, I have the original Western Union telegram my grandparents received informing them of my uncle being KIA. It was delivered on......... Christmas Eve 1944.

 

Sorry to hear that Steve. Not something you want to hear on Christmas Eve. I think that there were probably quite a few of those going out. And of course with government efficiency .

 

J.C. and All,

Another example of another uncle.

My uncle Archie was a favorite of mine. As a young boy my mother and I would go see my uncle Arch after church every Sunday. I watched my uncle deteriorate every year. He always loved having family over for weekend bar-b-que untill everyone got older and passed on. Like I said untill the end, we went to see uncle Arch after church on Sundays.

Uncle Arch spent his last years as a confussed mumbling old man never showing any sign as a happy old man. A pipe in his hand and a shot of whiskey in the other were his constant companion during his last years. This bothered me because he was much more than that. He was a skilled hard working carpenter in his younger years, but I watched uncle Arch go down hill. Not understanding I still stood beside him and felt sorry for him blaming his condition on the death of his wife, my Aunt Elsie in 1958 due to a brain tumor.

As uncle Arch became bed ridden at the age of 58, my mom and I still went to see him every Sunday after church. The difference was he was now in the asylum at Cochoran Veterans Hospital in St Louis. The last years were brutal. He was in diapers completely incompasitated and mumbling as a lost poor old man.

I always wonderd why. What happened to good ole uncle Arch ??!! As a teenager it bothered me but some things were left unexplained in life.

We burried uncle Arch and knew he was finally at peace.

In 2001 I discovered what happened to good ole uncle Arch. I learned how to use the internet and made a incedible discovery.

My uncle Arch was an original member of the 101st Airboune Division. He was a Sargent with the lives of many Troopers under his controll.

Now it all made sense to me. Training, D-Day, The Hedgerows, Market-Garden, Bastogne, The Sigfried Line, all the German 88,s and the death of his closest brother at the Colmar Pocket took a tremendous toll on my brave uncle.

Nowdays its called Post Tramatic, back then we called it poor old uncle Arch.

Steve

 

Another example of what a soldier goes through is the Holiday season. To spend Christmas in a foxhole,sometimes alone,in the freezing weather while trying to stay warm and alive.To be away from friends,familyand loved ones. Sometimes for years.

 

Thanks again Steve for sharing.

 

You Never Knew What Somebody's Limit Was - WWII Vet Reflects on Combat Trauma

"Plus ca change; plus c'est le meme chose." Translated from the French, that means, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." All too true when it comes to combat trauma and PTSD, as well.
The other day I was reading an award-winning newspaper story by a colleague, where he profiled a World War II veteran, now in his mid-80s. The Army infantryman veteran saw an awful lot of action with the 79th U.S. Infantry Unit liberating Cherbourg. He says, "The casualties were fierce. I ended up as the only officer left in the company. One was killed, the rest were injured." He continues, "I was just a little kid from college. With my pink cheeks, I looked like I was about 12. But I took over the company. Then, I went to sleep, because I hadn't slept in three or four days, and I'd been injured." Tellingly, he adds: "There were 200 soldiers in the company," when he went to sleep, but, "when I woke up, I could only find six..."
Here's what the veteran said about combat trauma, as he became aware of it at the time, along with the lead-in to it by the journalist:

"The fear of coming home in a body bag could cause many men to tremble."
"One of the company executive officers went into a catatonic trance. Boom! The first day," said [the veteran]. "You never knew what would set somebody off or what their limit was. You got guys who can handle it all and others who struggle and struggle and then just go over the edge and they're gone."
"Crying, weeping and lying on the ground and hugging your feet. You had to be careful not to judge them. Everybody reacts different[ly] to a situation."
​

Wisdom, indeed.

Healing Combat Trauma: You Never Knew What Somebody's Limit Was - WWII Vet Reflects on Combat Trauma

 

"Most of them were mere teenagers – unfamiliar with killing and death -- when they went to Europe. Lou Slama of Salt Lake City still chokes up when he remembers his best buddy dying in his arms. “You know I cried like a baby,” he recalls. “It was disastrous to see him laying there…it was just like he was asleep. So Lieutenant Pollet came and said, ‘You gotta stay with it, you gotta remember…You kill ‘em first so they can’t kill you.”

Utah World War II Stories : Part 4 "The Homefront" December 7, 2006 on KUED-7

 

For World War II veteran from Wolfsville, memories of war's horror remain fresh

By DAN DEARTH
November 10, 2008
dan.dearth@herald-mail.com
WOLFSVILLE, Md. — Mark Lewis vowed he would never surrender when he saw dozens of American soldiers lying dead in the snow during the Battle of the Bulge.

Lewis said he witnessed that grim sight when his unit, the 17th Airborne Division, was rushing to the front to help stall the German advance.

As the men approached their positions, Lewis said, they passed the frozen bodies of nearly 100 American soldiers who had been shot after they surrendered to the German army.

The incident became infamously known as the Malmedy Massacre. After the war, several German soldiers were tried and sentenced to death by an American tribunal for their participation in the killings.

Lewis said he thought the American commanders intentionally tried to make the 17th angry by ordering the soldiers to walk past their dead comrades.

"My stomach started to hurt," Lewis said. "I knew right then I would never be captured."

Lewis, 84, said he was helping build what is now Camp David before he joined the Army in 1943. He said he wanted to join the Marine Corps, but a recruiter told him there was a waiting list.

Lewis then turned his attention to the Army.

"I told them I wanted to see action, so they put me in the airborne," Lewis said.

Shortly thereafter, Lewis was assigned to a unit of combat engineers in the 17th. Before he went overseas, Lewis was trained to be a demolition expert.

Lewis said part of his mission during the Battle of the Bulge, which lasted from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945, in the mountain region of Belgium, France and Luxembourg, was to blow up trees so they would fall over roads and slow German vehicles.

"You could only slow them," he said. "You couldn't stop them."

His primary mission, however, was to remove German land mines.

Lewis said some of those mines were booby trapped with a secondary charge that exploded as they were pulled from the ground. The Germans also laid plastic mines that wouldn't register on metal detectors.

"We had to probe with a knife," he said. "We were scared. It was the worst winter in 20 years."

Lewis said the temperature often dipped below zero and many of the troops suffered from cold-weather injuries. Several of the men contracted trench foot from wearing wet socks and had to be pulled from the front line.

Lewis said he kept his feet in good shape by drying one of his two pairs of socks with a candle, a ritual he repeated daily.

Lewis said the 17th entered the Bulge in December 1944 and withdrew to France in February 1945 after the German army was in full retreat.

It was in March, Lewis said, that he and the rest of the 17th learned they would return to battle as a part of Operation Varsity - an invasion across the Rhine River into Germany. The assault - spearheaded by the 17th and the British 6th Airborne Division - kicked off March 24, 1945.

Airborne divisions during World War II were comprised of paratroopers, who jumped from planes, and glidermen, who landed behind enemy lines in wooden gliders that held about 15 troops. Lewis was among the latter.

Because the military didn't have enough planes to pull the gliders, Lewis said, some of the planes pulled two at once.

As Lewis' glider was cut loose, the plane that was pulling him was shot down by enemy flak so heavy that it "looked like you could walk on it," he said.

Lewis said the landing was rough and, as he and the other glidermen rushed out of their aircraft, they heard German bullets whiz past their heads.

The Americans quickly engaged in a firefight with Germans in a nearby house. He said the shooting lasted only a few minutes before the Germans surrendered.

Lewis said the 17th pressed forward and saw dead American paratroopers who had landed in electrical wires.

"You could smell their flesh burning," he said. "It was holy hell."

The 17th was ordered to dig foxholes every time they stopped, Lewis said.

One of his most vivid memories of Operation Varsity occurred when his platoon set up a defensive position with a .30-caliber machine gun overlooking a road. As the enemy approached that night, the machine gunners opened up and killed about 25 Germans.

"You could see where they had crawled to get away from being killed," he said. "They were massacred."

Lewis said the Allied army broke the German resistance about three days after Operation Varsity started. It was then, he said, that the Germans began surrendering by the thousands - except for Hitler's elite Waffen SS.

"You had to kill them," Lewis said. "They fought like savages."

Lewis said he doubted whether Operation Varsity was necessary because Germany surrendered in May 1945.

"(Operation Varsity) helped break the front open," he said.

After the battle, the 17th returned to France to receive orders to participate in the invasion of Japan. But in August 1945, the war ended when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Lewis said he was discharged and returned home. He landed several construction jobs, and helped build cottages and fallout shelters at Camp David.

In the late 1950s, Lewis said he met President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who also had been the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II.

"He was a likable person," Lewis said. "He was real friendly. He talked to us a little bit and said we did a nice job."

Lewis said one of the projects that he worked on at Camp David involved building a helicopter landing pad. As soon as the workers had finished, they were ushered out so a helicopter that was hovering above them could land.

That helicopter was carrying Nikita Khrushchev.

Maryland: For World War II veteran from Wolfsville, memories of war's horror remain fresh

 

"Glorious"

 

Days before the end of the war in April 1945, Ryan and another soldier were in a jeep when they came across a truck loaded with Germans coming in the opposite direction. To avoid contact, Ryan said they drove down an embankment, coming to a stop. A German officer stepped out of the truck and fired two shots from his pistol, missing both men. Ryan returned fire with his Colt 45.

"I hit him right square in the chest and he went over backwards," he said.

Ryan then ordered the rest of the Germans to surrender. "Throw all your weapons out of the truck," he recalled saying at the time.

A German doctor who spoke English repeated the command and then asked for help for two badly wounded soldiers. Curious as to the German's command of English, the doctor told Ryan he was a graduate of Harvard College.

At his kitchen table, Ryan gingerly thumbs through the old photos and documents he found on the German he killed. There's one photo of the officer with someone who is likely his wife, another of a little boy, still another of an older couple, who may have been the officer's parents.

Years later, Ryan attempted to return the documents to the soldier's family through the German Consulate in Boston.

"You know what they told me," said Ryan, a hint of anger in his voice. "Burn 'em."

That's something Ryan just couldn't bring himself to do. "I've kept them all these years because it's always bothered me a little bit, you know," he said, his voice trailing off.

The war officially ended on May 8, 1945. By the end of that year, Ryan was on his way home to his wife, Joyce, and their son. He turned down an offer to stay in the Army, spending the better part of the post-war years working as a forklift mechanic and building midget race cars. Following the death of his wife in 1986, he moved from Massachusetts to a secluded spot in Brandon off Carver Street.

Ryan says he isn't much for socializing but he is a proud member of the 10th Mountain Division Association. He's also a member of the Vermont Ski Hall of Fame.

Like others of his generation, Ryan said the war left an indelible mark: "If you've ever been in combat, and I'm talking about real heavy combat, you ain't never the same, any more."

The war memories of Sgt. Ryan: Times Argus Online

 

JC

Good job, I hope this thread continues on.

Merry Christmas to all,

Steve