My WWII History
1. I took a competitive examination and won a scholarship at Rutgers (Class of 1945) – so did my wife Evelyn (’46). I was going to the exams with several other classmates from East Side High School in Newark, NJ. We met at the Central RR Station on Broad St and realized at the last minute that we were at the wrong terminal. I hailed a taxicab that took us to Penn Station and a train that got us to New Brunswick in time for the exam. (This was a rare example of leadership on my part.). I had read the anti-war novels of writers like John Dos Passos & Dalton Trumbo, so I was aware that war was a serious matter. I had one year of Signal ROTC at Rutgers. Because of the war, summer vacations were dropped, and I completed three years of Engineering in about two years. I commuted by train from Newark and I felt O.K wearing my ROTC uniform once a week. But as the War went on, I felt conspicuous in civilian clothes and tried to get into 1) The Air Ferry Command, whose pilots flew military planes to England. This task was largely taken over by women. I also tried to get into 2) The Merchant Marine like my friend & high-school class president Charlie Tyjewski. In both cases, I was turned down because of poor vision – 20/200 in the left eye. My classmates in Engineering as a rule received deferments until they graduated, after which they went into the Navy. We had an ASTP (Armed Services Training Program) in which I was tutoring young draftees in Physics Lab. With most of my classmates gone, I no longer claimed my deferment. I was drafted and reported to Fort Dix, NJ on 1 September 1943.
2. I was initially assigned to the Signal Company of the 63rd Infantry Division at Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi, where we were assigned to 8-man tents. There were some permanent buildings, such as latrines & kitchens. We learned the basics of marching (close-order drill, ten mile hikes), marksmanship (WWI Springfield rifles) and sanitation - food and personal. Basic training took place in the red clay fields of Mississippi. The climate was mild and we received food parcels from home, so it wasn’t that bad. Bus transport to town was scarce, but I was able to visit Baton Rouge, LA and enjoy a first class meal at a hotel restaurant. We also visited Louisiana State University on the banks of the Mississippi River, where I met a redhead from Bastorp, LA. I remember going to an LSU football game - the male students were as unaware of the War as I had been as a freshman at Rutgers.
3. In the Fall (date?), 63rd Division elements were transferred to Camp Breckinridge, KY to fill out the Table of Organization (T/O) of the 83rd Infantry Division. I lucked out and wound up in the Signal Company of the 83rd.in which I would serve out the active part of the War. Luxury – we had two-story Barracks with plumbing and heating, as well as canteens and Service Clubs, two Jazz bands and bowling alleys. More training, marching and KP. Next we were moved to our Point of Embarkation (POE) at Camp Shanks, NY. I remember seeing children playing at an Orphanage near our Camp, and wondered what their life would be like. I visited my High School girlfriend in Westport, Connecticut and we shook hands at parting. Back in Newark, my father saw me off, and stuck a pint of bourbon in my pocket (Polish survival rations) as I took the bus to the dock in Brooklyn. As we marched onto His Majesty’s (passenger) Ship (HMS) Orion at midnight, 6 April 1944 in our combat gear and carrying our duffle bags, I had some serious thoughts about what the future held for me.
4. We landed at Liverpool 11 April 1944.. England, with its narrow, cobble-stoned streets and its chimney pots was something we had never seen before, except in the movies. We received further training at Keele Hall in Staffordshire, England and held brief maneuvers in South Wales. I met a young lady from Wolstanton, Staffordshire and we attended concerts and dances together.. British veterans from WWI in pubs in Stoke on Trent and other towns near our camp, would treat us to drinks, usually beer (“bitters”). At times, a whisky or gin bottle would be produced by the bartender and customers would snap up the drinks until the bottles were empty. I was in a pub near our camp when we learned of the D-Day invasion - British wives of service men were wondering where their husbands were that day.. On 18 June 1944, we headed down to the POE at Southampton. We threw our British coins into the streets as our trucks passed through small towns, assuming the currency would be different where we were headed. With time to kill, I had a haircut at a barber shop run by an English “walking” champ. The whole beach area was covered with barrage balloons. We boarded a ship that was loaded with crosses for the first casualties at Normandy. (Note: US military cemeteries in the US have tablet-shaped headstones; our cemeteries in Europe have Crosses and Stars of David.). We landed on Omaha Beach on 24 June 1944, after waiting 3-4 days for the storm to subside.
5. First memories after landing: a house burning near the beach, enemy shelling (88’s) of the footbridge in Carentan morning, noon and dinner time. I saw one of our GI’s get hit there at a distance of 20-30 yards from us. Joe F. from Philly commented: “A guy could get killed in this war.” We were warned not to dig our foxholes in straight rows because the German tanks would spin their treads and smash the GI’s inside. The Allies controlled the skies in the daytime, so the Luftwaffe would bomb the beach at night. After a few days, we were busy taking over and maintaining the telephone lines installed by the 101st Airborne. One hot sunny day I took off my woolen olive drab shirt (we could not wear green fatigues because we would be mistaken for Germans) and I was promptly chewed out by an Infantry officer who was leading his squad into combat – from behind. When things grew quiet, we would look for a substitute for K-Rations. I found a henhouse full of white chickens and promptly taped up the legs of 6-8 of them. As I recall, Capt Harkey asked us what we were up to and I gave some half-vast excuse about liberating the poultry, which we took back to the Signal Co. cook. Another day, a French kid came to our camp and shouted “They are baking fresh bread in Carentan!” Beats K-Ration biscuits. A young Englishman from the Isle of Jersey turned up one day and I assume he was repatriated. We were introduced to Calvados, the local applejack which sometimes tasted like vinegar but packed a wallop. One day some German planes were flying over so I picked up a German Schmeisser with a bipod and started firing. An Infantry squad came along expecting to find Germans and told us to knock it off. The Schmeisser has a distinctive sound, much faster than our burp gun.
6. As our confidence grew, we took part in actions against the enemy. A group of us decided to hunt down an enemy sniper who was shooting from a church steeple. I had a Thompson submachine gun and fired a few rounds. The Infantry came along and told us that the sniper was a 14-year old French kid who had been brainwashed by the Nazis. After that, just about every Church steeple in Normandy was destroyed. Most of the churches have been restored or rebuilt. Circa 2 July, we had a report that the Germans would attack. I spent the night behind a 50 Cal. machine gun mounted on a Signal Co ¾ ton truck waiting for the enemy to come. Fortunately they did not, because I didn’t know how to cock a 50 Cal. and make it ready to fire.
In my memory, July had been a relatively quiet time, bearing in mind that I was stringing wire between 83rd Division Hqs and one of the three Infantry Regiments – this was considered “rear echelon” by the frontline infantry. On 25 July Operation “Cobra,” the breakout from Normandy took place. I recall that the sky was lit up by our huge searchlights starting at dawn. Thousands of bombers came over from England and saturated the battlefield. This was the operation in which General Leslie McNair was killed when some of our bombs fell short. I recall visiting the battlefield afterwards. The bodies had been removed, but I found the backpack of a German soldier with letters from home and photos of his family. There were dead cows and horses stinking up the battlefield and piles of mortar shells, ours and theirs. I picked a few up out of curiosity, fortunately they didn’t explode. On to St Malo and Brittany!
7. Brittany was like a holiday for me, but not for our infantry who met German resistance approaching the fortress city of St Malo. On a warm, sunny day, we had to take phone wire across a body of water to the town center. I took off my GI shoes and swam the last 50 yards to shore. When we reached the Telephone center, there were already Army linguists listening in to phone calls to track down Nazi sympathizers. St. Malo is an interesting town and I have enjoyed my subsequent visits to the old city. On our 50th anniversary trip to France, Belgium & Germany, I stood on the shore with Allen Havens, Co “F” 330th Inf Reg’t, looking across at the Ile de Cezembre. His unit was about to set out to attack that fortress when the news came that the German commander (plus Italian troops) had surrendered.
