Wikipedia Commons climbing and skiing. It was very exciting, very rigorous, and a wonderful group of people.
I was there almost a year when they gave us a sort of questionnaire asking if anyone would like to learn languages. I signed up right away, but was told only one person from the division would be accepted.
Knowing my odds of acceptance were slim, I forgot all about it until one day the sergeant came up and said,“ Hey! You got to get on the train this afternoon.”
“ Where?” I asked.
I found out it was because I had been selected to go learn Turkish at the University of Indiana, but as I would discover, the program I was sent to participate in evolved over time. Our group first spent a couple of weeks at the University of Nebraska. From there, we went on to Indiana only to discover the language program was abolished. They needed cannon fodder, so we were told we’ d be trained as engineers instead. The entire program, which was called Army Specialized Training Program( a kind of junior Officer Candidate School) was abolished just a couple of weeks after that. All of us were then sent to Camp Campbell in Kentucky to join the 20th Armored Division.
By that time it was the beginning of 1944. We trained at Camp Campbell and sometimes at Fort Knox for a
couple of months. We were well trained and very much itching to join the war effort.
It seemed to take forever, but finally toward the end of that year we were sent up to Massachusetts to board our ships and begin our route to France. Our voyage officially began at the start of 1945. It was a long convoy and we spent nearly three weeks zig-zagging
THE GATE AT THE JOURHAUS BUILDING THROUGH WHICH THE PRISONERS’ CAMP WAS ENTERED. THE SLOGAN“ ARBEIT MACHT FREI” TRANSLATES TO“ WORK WILL MAKE YOU FREE.” FOR THE VAST MAJORITY, THE SLOGAN PROVED A DISGUSTING LIE.
to avoid Nazi submarines operating on our route, but we eventually landed in France in January, 1945. Upon arrival, my group was taken by truck to Le Havre, France. As the only soldier who spoke French, I became the unofficial interpreter and got to know a French family who I remain in contact with today. The family had a young girl who is now grown and married. She hosted us when my wife and I took a trip back this summer. It’ s a wonderful little village.
After waiting in this village for a while, we received orders to travel further in February. The village was liberated in that area by the Canadians, which made our travel easier in the beginning. As we progressed, we managed to liberate a quarter of Belgium and Holland without much resistance. We had a couple of short battles, but moved pretty quickly.
Our engineers ahead of us had just secured a bridge across the Rhine and so it was our turn to cross, and I’ ll never forget that because we had these big tanks and we were wobbling all over the bridge. It was quite exciting.
Our strongest weapons were called M-7s. They were 105 mm howitzers sitting on top of Sherman tanks. It was a very awkward, unwieldy weapon. We had four of these in each battery of about 100 people, with four batteries in each company.
My job was to figure out where to shoot these big things. I did the math and figured out the trajectory. One person did it for all four M-7s in the battery. Sometimes we had spotter planes that would wire back to us and let us know what kind of adjustments needed to be made on the guns. That was my role.
When we crossed the Rhine, we were supposed to join 1st Army in the North, but traveled so fast they figured we’ d meet up with the 3rd Army under Gen. George Patton instead. But as it happened, we kept moving rapidly, past
32 AMERICAN VALOR QUARTERLY