WWII Heroes: We Were Just Doing Our Jobs

by Minton, Linda E.

  “The 14th Armored Division took over this big laundry out in the middle of this area. They put their ordnance in there. The Germans shot those big guns, hit the laundry, killing twenty-two of the twenty-four mechanics in the building. They shot another round that hit a big cemetery. The cemetery had both American and German alternating crosses. The crosses didn’t look alike, and you could tell they were different. They blew those bones everywhere!”

  The invasion of Germany began. “Mostly we went at night, with lots of shooting. General Smith said, ‘I’ve got to fire that M7 over there.’ We asked why. He said, ‘When an outfit fires their millionth round, I have to fire it.’ So he fired our millionth round.

  Meeting General Patton

  “We kept on going and went to another town on the Danube in Bavaria. We are in the third vehicle back when guess who is standing there? Patton!” General Patton was standing at the river. He said, “Just what are you afraid of, Sergeant?” to the soldier in the first tank. The sergeant said, “Nothing, sir.” General Patton said, “Get those sandbags off those tanks!”

  “General Patch commanded the third division. General Patton, commander of the Seventh Army, jerked the whole division out—12,500 men—to get the sandbags off the tanks. General Patton’s son-in-law was in Moosburg, Germany’s largest prisoner-of-war camp, so he took a company of tanks, seventeen tanks, to free his son-in-law. The Germans knocked out all but five tanks, killing lots of people. Three or four weeks later, Patton admitted that this was a mistake. It was too late. The whole army was coming, the Third Army and the Seventh Army combined at this point. Many of the men did not like Patton.

  “We had five-man tents and two-man tents. We would pitch a five-man tent, staking down the corners, and left the other part open. We would dig a three-or four-foot trench around the outside, so if needed we could roll out into the trench. They took the barn doors off the barns, put them inside the tent, and rolled out our bedrolls to sleep on instead of the snow. Sometimes we had to roll out into the trench and sleep where it was wet and snowy.”

  On one occasion “a shell fell outside the five-man tent and killed the sergeant; the rest of us rolled out of the tent. It blew a great big hole in the tent! The first aid man came by and picked him [the wounded sergeant] up. They never brought him back, so I guess it killed him.

  “We got one star for the battle of Germany, which lasted about two months and consisted mostly of chasing after the Germans and not shooting much. But in Alsace we fought all winter in the snow and fought two real big battles where the 14th Division lost heavily. We haven’t gotten a star for this, which is the one really should have,” Bob said.

  Battle of Philippsburg

  Bob was in active combat during the Battle of Philippsburg. “The battle took place in a small town where the buildings were strong, built of stone and brick.” From their arrival in Marseilles until the Germans surrendered, the 14th Armored Division fought in France. After Germany surrendered, Bob was sent to Germany.

  Battle of Hatten-Rittershoffen

  The second battle, the Battle of Hatten-Rittershoffen, was fought in France during January 10–20, 1945. “Rittershoffen and Hatten were surrounded and cut off from the rest. There were about six hundred men [American] in our 14th Armored Division. We were hit by the 21st German Panzer Division. The snow was about a foot deep, and all the tanks and vehicles were painted white.”

  “When the second lieutenant came back, he was out of his head, with too much fighting. So they took him to the hospital.” They fought for twelve days, and there were houses next to each other where the Americans and Germans would fight each other. One house would be occupied by the Americans, the next house by the Germans. The first lieutenant called for shells on their own building. So they could get shells in there.

  “This little town was blown to pieces! This was the most defensive battle of the war. The 14th Armored Division received the French Legion of Honor Medal for their part in the battle. It was the last battle of the war until they went into Germany and occupied the country.”

  Bob’s unit liberated some of the prisoner of war camps in Germany. This is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to his wife:

  Then we liberated the big camp of prisoners and moved on a few days til it ended before we got to Austria. Was I glad. We liberated camp Hammelburg when we first got in Germany, and our section took a Scotchman who was a prisoner for five and a half years. He went through Germany with us and is still with us. This makes his eighth week with us. Our officers used him for an interperater [sic], as he speaks perfect German and French, good Polish, and some Spanish and Egyptian.

  Bob went on to elaborate about the Scotsman: “Nice fellow. He had a choice of going to America or going back to Scotland. He chose Scotland.”

  Riedenburg, Germany

  “Bob’s unit went into Germany and opened prison of war camps in Germany, 14th Armored Division was called Liberators. In 1944, after Germany surrendered, Bob’s unit guarded German prisoners at Riedenburg Castle, in Riedenburg, Germany. When war criminals went down for their trials, they did not come back. This included Goering and other well-known German officers. It was a very large place.

  “Every morning our officer of the day would go through the castle. There were one hundred twenty-seven prisoners, officers, helpers, and workers. Their job was to clean the castle. The officer of the day looked up over to another area and saw the prisoners signaling the other side. The officer of the day picked up a machine gun, fired at the guys who were doing it, but no one was hit.

  Austria

  “A week after the war ended, we went into these big woods in Austria. We went through this large underground room that the Germans had built. There were sacks of ammunition, with occasional rooms where they were two sacks high. The GIs were crazy! One of them said, ‘Let’s throw it down the street and light it.’ Another one said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ Well, it’s going up the street, and we are going down the street. It’s flaming up about six inches high.

  “We saw a big concrete two-story building, and we went in. You could not go downstairs; you had to go upstairs when you went in. About seven of us went up the steps, where there was a big metal door and a big safe. We had this GI with a German Luger. Any chance he had to fire it, he would pull it out and fire it. So he fired about seven shells into that metal door. He never got in, but he got every man that was standing there mad! Because these bullets are all flying around in the room. The bullets didn’t hit us.

  “I was the only one watching out the window at the flames outside. I saw the fire turn and go into the room with the double sacks of ammo downstairs of the building we were in. I told the guys, ‘We better get out of here!’” Everyone ran out of the building.

  “There was a big bang! This other guy and I ran into the next building. The rest of the guys took off running, and it [the explosion] pushed them down in the mud. I looked back; the building wasn’t there. It blew away!” Bob was discharged in August or September 1945.

  Jerry Moser—US Navy

  “D-Day—we escorted a convoy to Normandy.”

  Jerry was on a US naval destroyer during the invasion of Sicily. First he was on the USS Duran DD-634. The second ship he served on, was the USS Orleck DD-886 during WWII. The USS Orleck was also used in Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm. Currently the Orleck is in a museum at Lake Charles, Louisiana.

  Jerry was at Operation Husky, which was the code name for the invasion of Sicily. This was an important operation for the Allied forces. This took place during July and August 1943. Jerry’s job was a sound operator, which meant he hunted German submarines. The destroyers went in close to the beach to clear a path for the army. Their guns had an eight-mile range. He recalled the town of Gela, on the south coast of Sicily, and Scoglitti.

  Jerry was eighteen when he went into the service. In 1942 he graduated from Central High School, Evansville, Indiana, and enlisted in the US Navy. “If I had waited to be drafted, I could have been sent to
another branch of the service.”

  The invasion of North Africa

  The destroyer to which Jerry was assigned was a ship that collected intelligence at various times. In 1942 there was an invasion of North Africa. His ship went alone and was not part of a fleet or convoy. There was a cove where they stopped their engines. They stopped and then put six or eight men on a whale boat. All of the men spoke three or four languages—German, French, and Arabic. The men went to find out what was beyond the rugged cliffs. They were out to find out what they could about the area. They found a German airfield and gathered intelligence. While there was some light left, they returned to the ship. They got this intel so we would know where the German air power was located. The invasion started shortly after that. Casablanca was also invaded.

  “In Italy the Duran DD634 went to gather intelligence of Italy’s firepower from the beach. They started firing on us, and we could see how much range they had from the beach. This was after dark, and the German air force spotted us. We shut down all our engines because of the wake. The wake was like phosphorus on the water at night. We did this all night. The enemy couldn’t see us, so when we left we could pick up speed again. By daybreak the enemy had turned back.”

  France

  “There was a group convoy in the English Channel with orders to head to Normandy. It was D-Day—we escorted a convoy to Normandy. It was the largest convoy of ships in the war. When we arrived, the convoy began to split up. Some ships went one way, some went another way. We started to turn at a ninety-degree turn down the English Channel. We were the decoy ship. We sailed down the Mediterranean Sea to Oran, Africa. The purpose was to send a signal to Germany that there may be another invasion south of France.

  Was your ship ever hit?

  “There was a near hit. A torpedo came within fifty feet of hitting the destroyer. Their ship was reported sunk after the run-in with the Germans. Jerry said, “People said, ‘We thought you were sunk.’” This was after they returned to their home port at Oran, North Africa. The Cowan, another destroyer, was sunk.

  Jerry said he saw a lot of people killed on beaches. He received two Bronze Stars for the Battles of North Africa and Sicily. Jerry said, “The LST 325, which is docked in Evansville, was at the invasion of Sicily while he was there.” We discussed the LSTs, since some of them were built in Evansville.

  Where were you when the war was over?

  Jerry was on the USS Orleck. “Some were glad to go home. I came home after that.” He was discharged in October 1945.

  What did you think about the bombing of Japan?

  “I think it saved lives. I think it was the right decision, or the war would still be going on!”

  William (Bill) Muller—Army Air Corps

  A sign at the entrance of the POW camp read, “For you the war is over.”

  Bill was drafted in July 1941, when he was twenty-four years old. Bill would have been considered an old man, compared to many of the seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds drafted into service in 1941. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky. Bill is an amazing person who is in a wheelchair now.

  Bill grew up during the Depression and had a paper route. He graduated from Manual High School in Louisville and even took a few classes at University of Louisville. He had two sisters and a brother. He also worked at the Census Bureau in Washington, DC, for two years.

  The War

  Since Bill didn’t like fourteen-mile hikes so much, he took an exam to get into pilot training. However, he washed out of that and took a job as a bombardier. His first sergeant said he could file paperwork, but he took cadet training to become an officer. He taught training at the bomb site school in Texas. Early in 1943, Pilot Captain Robert Bigelow, Bill’s friend, was getting a crew together, and he wanted Bill to be on his crew. Bill would be the bombardier in a B-24 H plane. He was in the 461st Bomb Group, 766th Crew 54, Aircraft B-24 Liberator.

  Next Bill’s group went to California to get their B-24 bomber plane. They flew all across the country and to Brazil. Bill said the Amazon River was so wide, he couldn’t see across it. They flew to Africa and then to Italy, where they were based. In Brazil his group had one of the monkeys there as a mascot. “The superiors finally said to get rid of the monkey. So someone shot him with a forty-five pistol and threw him in the crapper. The monkey came up out of the crapper all full of crap! They shot him again and threw him back in the crapper.

  “The morning of a mission, you would go to meetings and have an early breakfast at four a.m. If you were going to fly that day, there would be a big board with red string showing where you were going. The bombers would bomb railroad crossings and do bombing runs.” He remembered that “the longer the string, the more nervous you would get.”

  Shot Down in Austria

  On May 24, 1944, after more than twenty-three missions, Bill’s plane was shot down. The mission started in Torretta, Italy, on the way to Austria. They were getting flak that took out the number three engine. He knew he had to jump, or the plane was going down. Bill jumped out of the front wheel well when the plane caught fire. He tried to contact the pilot, but was unable to do so.

  He recalled how he felt when he jumped: “The plane was noisy, and when I was floating, it was quiet.” He said when he pulled the cord, it jerked him, but he was impressed with how quiet it was. When he got closer to the ground, he could hear dogs barking, and church spires appeared. He remembered thinking, I hope I don’t land on a church spire.

  Bill’s B-24 Liberator bomber contained ten crewmen. They were flying over Wiener Neustadt, Austria. Bill was wounded in the leg by shrapnel from the damage on the plane. The nose gunner, Sgt. Frank Caron, was the last one to leave the plane before it blew up, killing the remaining soldiers on the B-24.

  Bill was captured by the Germans as he landed in a field near a village. He had a medical kit and gave himself a shot of morphine. His leg was bleeding and painful from the shrapnel injury. The Germans took him to the German military hospital. Another guy they picked up had a leg wound. That guy had a bad infection, and they had to remove his leg. Bill’s leg healed. A side note to this story is that the original copilot was scheduled to make the flight that day but didn’t for some reason, so another copilot was on the ill-fated mission.

  Did the Germans treat you well?

  “Yes, they did, because I was an officer.” If he had landed in Berlin, they would have shot him. He spent six weeks in a German military hospital.

  During this time Bill’s family didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. He was listed as MIA for four or five months. Finally, in February 1945, his family received a postcard from a soldier who had been released in a soldier exchange. He let Bill’s family know he was alive and in good health.

  POW Camp

  Bill was sent to Stalag Luft I, north of Berlin on the Baltic Sea, from July 1944 until the end of the war. A sign at the entrance of the POW camp stated, “For you the war is over.”

  The Red Cross sent food such as Spam and crackers to the camp, but the Germans stole it. The POWs planted turnips and rutabagas, which they had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They also had some German bread that “looked like it had little chips of wood in it.” Bill said he got to like the bread, though. When he went into the POW camp, he weighed 160 pounds; he weighed 130 pounds when he came out. He was under German control for over a year.

  Normally, regular soldiers would work, not the officers. During Bill’s time in the camp, he said, a Russian colonel was assigned to empty the bathroom box. The soldiers had to use the box at night, since they were not allowed out of the barracks after the doors were locked. The Russians and Germans hated each other. So the American soldiers asked the Russian colonel how he felt about cleaning out the boxes. “If I wasn’t cleaning up your mess, it would be someone else’s,” he replied. The POWs were allowed to go swimming in the Baltic Sea.

  Once, when Allied planes were flying over the camp, one guy stepped outside, and the guards shot him. The prisoners would look
up when the B-17s from England turned in over the prison camp and say, “Go get ‘em! Yay!” But the prisoners were sent back to their barracks. Bill stated, “The guards were rough.” Just like in some WWII movies, if the prisoners got too close to the warning wire or the barbed wire fences, the guards would shoot at them. At night the guards let out police dogs.

  Liberation of the Camp

  The Russians liberated the camp in May 1945. Bill went down to get his medical records. He had to stay in the camp for a couple of weeks after the liberation, since it was not safe to leave. In July 1945 he took a B-17 to Camp Lucky Strike in France, then a ship to Boston. On August 4, 1945, two days before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Bill married Betty Murphy.

  Should the United States have dropped the bomb on Japan?

  “That ended it.”

  After the War

  After the war Bill wanted to put it behind him. His daughter said she didn’t know he had been in WWII until she was in the fifth grade. He never talked about it, just wanted to put it behind him.

  In the 1990s Bill’s family wanted him to receive a Purple Heart. He applied for it and finally was awarded the medal in 2001. There was some problem because there were no witnesses to Bill’s injuries. The other serviceman, Sgt. Frank Caron, was sent to another German POW camp.

  Bill’s daughter said, “My wedding day was May 24, and as we were walking down the aisle, Dad said, ‘This was the date I was shot down.’” That will make you cry every time!

  On a lighter note, Bill said he still likes Spam today.