“Nice was nice!” he said with a laugh. Tom’s job was squadron leader. “I was a staff sergeant, that was twelve people, counting myself.” Tom went on to explain, “There was a half track and a fifty-millimeter gun and eleven guys. They kept me busy, and we had some problems...Everybody did, that’s for sure.”
Tom said, “We were out, and when I came back they told me that my youngest son was born when I was in Schaumburg, France. We had to drive the Germans back across the Lauter River. We had a lot of battles, and we lost a lot of men. From there we went to a rest area, to Alsace-Lorraine, France. We lost several men.
Did you see General Patton?
“We saw Patton, and he came over and checked our tankers. We had sandbags on the tanks for extra protection. Well, he got all over them and called them everything but good guys. I mean he got on them. After that, that’s when the trouble started, and they called him up to where they broke through at Bastogne. They called Patton up with his Third Army, and when they did that it stretched us out real thin. What we had down here was what they had up there [in Bastogne]. The same kind of tanks and everything, but you never heard anything about it. Well, it wasn’t advertised or talked about like Bastogne was. We didn’t get surrounded; we held them. We did have to back up. Well, it was quite a place, but we got through it. Then we were in Germany for a while.”
Tom explained, “I was over there about nine months. When I got into Germany, I kind of lost it, and they brought me back.” He was in Southhampton, England, for two or three months. The ship he was supposed to come back on was torpedoed but not sunk. “I left there and was in the middle of the ocean when Franklin D. died. I came back when the war in Europe was over.” He was in the hospital in Indianapolis for quite a while. He regretted leaving his dog tags on the head of the bed while he was in the hospital. He never got them back.
“We were in twin towns,” Tom said, “and the Germans were going to close the road on us. This is the road where we got supplies. We had to keep that road open, so we went in and attacked them and pushed them back. Which we did. Back out of the way so we could keep our road open. Then it was beginning to get dark, and we were digging our foxholes, and here are three Germans walking in uniforms and rifles and everything...Just walking in.
“The guy below me was fixing his foxhole and not paying any attention. He had one of those small shovels that we used to dig our foxholes with, and the Germans just walked up to him. He looked up and pointed his shovel at them, and they laid down their rifles—all three of them. And he captured them with a shovel. I’m standing there with my rifle, not knowing what to do or what was going to happen. Just watching them. They didn’t look like they wanted to fight, so I am glad that I held off and didn’t do any firing.” He took all three of them to headquarters.
Schambach, Germany
Tom told a story about cake and German soldiers. The American troops were driving the Germans out of Schambach, which is located right next to a river. “We went into this lady’s house in Schambach, and on the table was a big-size cake, with three nice slices cut out of it. This lady was in the house all by herself, and three slices cut out of it meant somebody else was there somewhere. It might have been two or three or four Germans. Anyhow, we ended up finding one guy in the house. But she was real nice. Needless to say, I had some cake too.
“We had to fight our way out to the river and stayed out there that night. We threw up a lot of smoke to cover ourselves, and it was cold. The Germans kept firing artillery at us. I remember a big tree had fallen down, and there was enough room that I could get underneath it. It was the safest place I could find. It was a good place. The next morning we went across the river and captured a few Germans and brought them back.
“We came back, and I got a letter. We had letters waiting for us there. I found out my son was born, little Tom, and they brought us our beer. The officers got a bottle of booze. Our officer sat down with us when he found out about my son being born. We all sat down there and had a party with beer and whiskey.” He laughed. “It was something!”
Alsace-Lorraine
Tom talked about a time in Alsace-Lorraine when their men were under attack, after Patton had taken his men and gone up to Bastogne. “We fall back and hold, fall back and hold. Instead of retreating we were going forward. First the tanks went in, and boy, they really hit them! You always wanted to be behind the tanks. We went up to where there was a line of trees. I knew that line of trees wasn’t any good. When a line of trees is hit, the trees scatter all over—shrapnel all over. It is called point detonated. In other words it blows the shrapnel over a wide range.
“Of course my men went up there. They wouldn’t stay back, and I found a foxhole and got in it. Well, it was a sad story from there on out. I came out of it with some scratches and nicks but not really wounded. I was bleeding once, but it was only a small place. They bandaged it up, and I went back up there. While I was in the first aid station, there was one man with his arm off and one man with his foot off. Well, you just don’t stand around and look around there. You just came on back.” That was at Hatten.
As of this writing, Tom is ninety-eight years old. In April 2015 he went on the Indy Honor Flight to Washington, DC. He had never flown in an airplane before this flight. He was reluctant to go at first, but his daughter-in-law, Kathy, urged him to take the trip. He enjoyed it—and the flight!
What did you think of Truman dropping the atomic bomb on Japan?
“Well, it saved a lot of lives, but it took a lot of lives too. It shortened the war, but it is hard for me to say. I am glad he did, but I regret that it killed all those people. I wasn’t glad that I went over there, and I wasn’t glad that I was shooting at them either. What could you do? What could you think? You either do it to help or not do it and cause a lot more casualties. I guess you could say I am in between. It is no fun.”
Albert Raymond Clark – US Army Air Corps by Shirley Clark Buttler
“It would have cut him in half if he had been sitting in his seat.”
On January 28, 1924, Albert was born in Newman, Illinois. His family always called him Ray. There were twelve children in the family—five boys and six girls; one child died in infancy. He enlisted in the US Air Corps during WWII and assigned to Squadron C 2512th AAF Base Unit. He was a tail gunner and flew thirty-five bombing missions over Germany. He flew in a B-17G Flying Fortress. The Flying Fortress, a famous bomber during the war, was responsible for the successful bombing of various enemy sites. From April 1944 - June 1944, Ray attended Gunnery School in Kingman, Arizona.
Ray tried to enlist in another branch of the military, but they wouldn’t take him. He wanted to be a pilot, but that didn’t happen either.
One incident his daughter, Shirley, recalled was when Ray was sitting in the back of a plane, where the tail gunner was located. He had gotten up from his spot to get more ammo, and a piece of shrapnel came up through the plane. It would have cut him in half if he had been sitting in his seat.
Shirley said her dad talked about the men in his group often and told the family many stories of his military experiences. Ray said, “The Germans in Dresden put American soldiers on the railroad tracks to keep US planes from bombing certain targets.” He was given three Bronze Stars; the Good Conduct Medal; the Victory Medal: and the Air Medal with five Oak Leaf Clusters. He was honorably discharged November 5, 1945 at Chanute Field, Illinois with the rank of staff sergeant.
Ray wrote letters to his girlfriend, Juanita Josephine Duncan, during the war. In 1945, after WWII ended, he returned home. He and Juanita were married in 1946. After returning from the war, Ray farmed in Illinois for a while. Later he moved to Indianapolis and began working at Eli Lilly and Company. Eight years later Ray died from colon cancer, on February 16, 2003.
Ralph Cooley – US Army
“In WWII we fought during the day and stayed put at night.”
Ralph was a private in the US Army, in the 78th, from 1943 to 1945. Ralph was sent to Ft. Ogl
ethorpe in Jacksonville, Florida. He said, “I was in basic training for thirteen weeks then was sent to Germany on a ship that took ten days to get there.” Ralph, eighteen years old, had lived all his life in Dyersburg, Tennessee. His commander was also from Dyersburg.
On the home front, he saw German prisoners who were in the United States working, cooking, and doing other work in Tullahoma, Tennessee. Ralph’s mother, Emma Clara Hendrix, was German. She said that German farmers could do as good with fifty acres of farmland as Americans could do with one hundred acres. She also said, “Germans were just like you, except they fought for their flag like we did.” Ralph felt like his mom had distant cousins in Germany who were fighting against the United States. Ralph said, “We were following what our government told us to do, and that was what the German boys were doing too.”
Military life
He was stationed along the Rhine River. He was in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, and other parts of Germany. “I was trained to fire a rifle, bazooka, machine gun, mortars, and grenades.” Also, he guarded German prisoners and visited the place where Hitler gave his speeches. Ralph said, “I have been to the Eagle’s Nest, where Hitler lived.”
Ralph’s cousin, Duff, was hit at the Remagen Bridge. Ralph had a gold ring with the bridge on it but gave it to his cousin to wear, since his cousin had been wounded there. The ring had the Remagen Bridge on the top and “Remagen Bridge” on the sides of it. Duff told Ralph his unit was in a wide space near the bridge, and the Germans started shooting at them. They had to fall back, and when they returned to the bridge the Germans had blown it up. So they took platoons across the Rhine River.
One of Ralph’s buddies, Cleo Reeves, was a POW for two years. Cleo said, “Field Marshal Rommel wanted to kill Hitler.” Reeves told Ralph, “Rommel stood on a stump and told the POWs, ‘You will get one meal a day and water to drink. You will not be mistreated.’” Hitler called Field Marshal Rommel to Berlin. Ralph said, “Hitler told Rommel to take his life, or he would take it for him.”
Ralph had five buddies who lived on his road in Tennessee who were killed in the war. He said, “I was just lucky to come back alive.”
How was the fighting different in WWII than in Vietnam?
In Ralph’s opinion WWII was a war of always “pushing, pushing” whereas in Vietnam there was a different way of fighting. In WWII the troops pushed forward the enemy using mortars. They would shoot over the heads of their troops. There were planes behind them, keeping the enemy from attacking from the rear. In Vietnam, it was a “camp”—ten marines and two medics—where they ran patrols at night. “In WWII,” said Ralph “we fought during the day and stayed put at night.”
Those boys [enemy soldiers] are just like us—just doing their job.
—Melvin Eakle
US Army, Prisoner of War
Melvin Eakle—US Army
“German women were the prettiest women in the world.”
Melvin was drafted into the military on April 2, 1942, at age twenty-nine. An article in the Tompkinsville Times listed Melvin as missing in action in December 1944. His father, Clayton Eakle, tried to console him when he’d left for the military. He’d told him he would get a pension when he got out.
Military service
Melvin was stationed at Ft. Benning, Georgia, where, he jokingly said, they had “mosquitoes as big as buzzards.” He made corporal, then sergeant; however, he didn’t like to give people orders. He gave up his sergeant stripes and returned to the rank of corporal.
During the Battle of the Bulge, Melvin’s unit lost 182 men. He was one of the eight remaining men. The regiments formed the southern shoulder of the Bulge. This was a time of fierce fighting, with heavy casualties.
German Prisoner of War
Melvin was taken prisoner sometime during December 16–18, 1944. According to Melvin’s Prisoner of War Record, he was in Stalag 12D near Waldreitbach, Prussia where 109 other American POWs were held. Although he was taken prisoner earlier, Melvin’s capture was first reported to the International Committee of the Red Cross on February 14, 1945. The last report was made on July 21, 1945.
Prior to his capture, he had been shot in the hand. The bullet hit his rifle and travelled up the gun barrel, then through his hand. Melvin was captured in Luxembourg and sent to a German POW camp. Melvin was imprisoned for at least 157 days.
On one occasion the prisoners were walking a long distance. Being an old country boy, he was used to walking, and it didn’t bother him so much. However, some of the city boys had some problems with walking so far. They told the guards they were tired and didn’t want to go on. The guards shot them along the road. Glen, Melvin’s younger brother, said, “They were on a death march, like the ones in the Philippines.”
Melvin was released from the army on September 7, 1945. He had contracted tuberculosis while being a prisoner of war. He went home, and then to a hospital in Western Kentucky for two years to recover from the tuberculosis. After his stay in the TB hospital, he returned to Tompkinsville and worked picking up milk from farmers.
Iree Eakle Francis, Melvin’s Sister
“I was a young girl, about eleven or twelve years old, and didn’t know much about what was going on with my brothers. At one time there were four of my brothers in the war. Henry, Melvin, and Elmer were in the army. Glen was in the navy.”
Iree said, “A mailman brought a telegram to the house. He told Papa that he wanted to read it to him. I was at school when they brought the telegram.” She went on to say, “Mama’s hair was black when the week started and was gray at the end of the week [when] they found out about Melvin being missing. They didn’t know whether he was dead or alive. About this time Mama had a strip of material tied around her head because she had migraines; I guess this made her feel better.”
After the war was over, Melvin returned home. He bought a Harley motorcycle, which he stored at Jackson’s store. Later he traded it for some land in front of the store. After surviving combat, injury, and capture during the war, ironically, Melvin was killed by a falling tree limb at age sixty-nine.
The Parachute Quilt, by Carol Eakle Smith, Melvin’s Niece
Melvin parachuted during his time in the service and brought home the parachute. His mother made a quilt out of it. She (Vada) was a very resourceful woman who used whatever material was available in her quilts. Also there was another quilt that is set together with pieces from that parachute.
Saving Money for a Rainy Day
When Melvin left for the war, he sewed a ten-dollar bill in the lining of his coat. He carried it with him the entire time he was in the military. According to family members, he brought it home with him when he returned.
Trudy Ann Eakle Lillard, Melvin’s Daughter
Trudy said, “My dad never talked about the war with me. I remember him saying that the German women were the prettiest women in the world.” Also he said, “The soldiers used gasoline to clean their clothes.”
After her father died, Trudy contacted the War Department to get his medals for her mother. He was awarded a Purple Heart, a Good Conduct Medal, medals for rifle and sharpshooting, campaign ribbons, a Bronze Star, and many others. Trudy said, “One time I asked him if he was angry toward the enemy soldiers. He stated, ‘Those boys are just like us—just doing their job.’”
William Fischer—US Army, Combat Engineer
“While we there, we went into Buchenwald, [a] German concentration camp, and it was a horrible place.”
“July of 1943, I went to Ft. Leonard Wood for basic training. From there I went to New York City, Broadway! I stayed in a hotel and went to trade school. Later I went to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, then overseas and landed in Glasgow, Scotland. I was a replacement and ended up with 294th Combat Engineer Battalion Company D. From there we were onboard the ship USS Susan B. Anthony, going for the D-Day invasion. We hit a mine, and the ship sunk.” Fortunately, “all the people on the ship were rescued and taken off before the ship sank.”
Bill continu
ed, “We waded ashore on Utah Beach and started working on the damaged roads and sweeping for mines. We repaired the roads so the transportation could go back and forward.
“We built bridges for the army. For example, we rebuilt two bridges across the Seine River that the Germans blew up. One of them was dedicated to 1940s singer Dinah Shore. She came to the dedication of the bridge.”
Bill and his unit were close to St. Lo, Melun, near Paris. They built Bailey bridges, steel Treadway bridges, and timber trestle bridges. They also made pontoon bridges. Some of them were constructed on land and rolled out to the other bank. Sometimes smoke would be spread across the Rhine River as cover to protect the workers during combat.
“We helped build two bridges across the Rhine River,” said Bill. “They were wooden pontoon, and it is flexible, so you could drive a tank across it. After the bridge was built, they would run a tank across it to test it out. The Remagen Bridge fell and was made of wood on the treads. The wood was floating down the river. Our guys had to get out in the water and push the floating wood away from what we were building.
“The code name for the outfit was the Jack Snipe. It was like the signs along the road with verses. Jack Snipe did this or did that. We left a sign on the bridges we built. There were three companies in the battalion, and I was in Company B.
“We ended up in Berlin, guarding German prisoners at this area where the Allied headquarters was going to be. We had the German prisoners refurbish the buildings, so the Allies could move into the headquarters.
WWII Heroes: We Were Just Doing Our Jobs Page 14