The following account comes to me via
Jim Hanson, who received them from Tom Higley. Bill Coleman is
deceased.
Basic Training
Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
1944
25 mile march in 8 hours. The most dreaded and most grueling task
an infantryman had to face in basic training. This required a man to
complete 25 miles of marching, carrying his full equipment, in 8
hours, including breaks, lunch, and any other necessities. This
meant we had to cover about 4 miles each hour we were moving with
about 50 pounds of equipment on our backs.
The roads or trails of Fort Wood consisted of a red clay dirt,
topped with crushed Ozark stone about the size of an egg.
A man could easily twist his ankle and if he fell he had a good
chance for a nasty cut on the sharp edged stones.
It was mid summer, hot, dry, and dusty when, to beat the heat,
our battalion started out at the first light of dawn to march our
25. Things went about normal, some gripes and complaining up to
lunch break at around 9:30 in the morning. Lunch lasted about 20
minutes which was long enough for everyone to start stiffening up.
Back on the march with the sun out in full force now, the dust of
1000 men on the move, stiff joints aching, the complaints were
numerous.
My duties as platoon guide was to move about the platoon, keeping
up the stragglers, watch for true exhaustion, threaten the men with
transfer to the M.P.'s or the motor pool if they didn't keep up.
Anything to keep up their spirit.
While moving about I noticed the Lieutenant had left the flap
open on his pack. This was all I needed. As I moved about I would
pick up a stone, show it to the men, then move up along side the
Lieutenant and gently deposit it in the Lieutenant's pack. This went
on for the next three hours, the men's spirit picked up, less
groaning and some laughter on the march. The Lieutenant was happy
that his platoon was taking the march so well, although he was
feeling pretty weary at the end. I must have bad 20 to 25 pounds of
rocks in his pack.
The Lieutenant was a Good Joe and laughed with the rest of us
after the march.
Night Compass Course
Each squad in the company received a different set of compass
instructions to be performed in a given length of time, with our
final instruction ending at a checkpoint run by the officers and
sergeants of another company.
I and my squad received our instructions which consisted of about
12 or 15 different compass readings to be made over a 3 mile course.
Off we go in a nice moonlit night. After about 3 or 4 readings
making turns and counting steps and paces, we were hopelessly
confused and lost. We wandered about in the woods for another 30 or
40 minutes or so, before
making the decision to give it up and head for the road.
Upon coming out of the woods onto the road we ran into our
checkpoint team. We had stumbled right on top of our checkpoint. The
team was amazed at our accuracy and record time for the course. We
were dumbfounded but didn't say anything.
Marseilles, France
1944
After debarking off our ship we loaded on
trucks and were hauled to a barren and windy hill top about 6 miles
outside of Marseille, France. Here we set up a pup tent camp to
await our next orders.
After doing mostly nothing all afternoon, a number of us
sergeants and corporals decided to go into Marseille and see the
town. The trucks hauling our supplies from the ship were back and
forth and it was easy for us to hop one back to town. After doing
the town, and pretty much full of cognac, we started back to camp.
It was easy to catch a ride in, but at the ship's side side the
trucks were going in every direction, and all that drivers knew was
that they were hauling supplies to different dump numbers and we
didn't know what dump we camped in. After about 2 hours we found out
what our number was and by riding on top of the supplies we all made
it back to camp to bed down for what little time was left before
dawn.
At reveille Captain Thompson lined us all up and proceeded to
give us an ace high royal flush chewing out. While we were in town,
the Germans had bombed the hill top. The Captain had called the
company to alert and more than half of his noncom's were A.W.O.L We
were lucky; there could have been a lot of new privates in the
company that morning or probably worse, had the Captain told
Battalion Headquarters about this.
First Combat - Europe
Early 1945
We were just starting to get used to France and its people
while moving up to where the fighting was taking place, when one
night some very excited Frenchmen told us about the Germans
parachuting German soldiers behind the American lines which were
some miles ahead of us. The Germans were supposed to be dressed in
American uniforms.
I drew the detail to take I squad and go find the Germans.
We didn't know what a German looked like, let alone one in an
American uniform. Everybody was in season.
We started out in the dark of the night first looking this
way, then thataway, we looked and looked and looked, finding nothing
un- til it was just breaking dawn and we came upon a small town
called Seltz, France on the Rhine River which separated France and
Germany. Looking across the river we could see the German pillboxes
and large concrete bunkers with just a German or two moving about.
Beings we didn't find any Germans during the night, we decided to
dig in along the riverbank and watch the Germans.
The German side of the river got pretty busy around 8 or 9
in the morning with them getting breakfast, doing their wash at the
riverside, resting in the sun, playing their guitar.
This was too much for us; we decided to open fire. Upon my
signal we opened fire. Big mistake: The Germans fired back with the
biggest guns I ever have seen. Luckily on the edge of town there was
a brick factory with a large and very thick brick kiln. The kiln
wasn't being used, so we retreated to the inside of the kiln. The
Germans continued to pound the river bank the rest of the day. They
even sent jet airplanes after us, the first jets I ever did see. We
snook out that night and made our way back to our outfit.
Seltz, France
Jan. 1945
After opening fire on German pillboxes and
bunker positions across the Rhine river from Seltz, our squad was
forced to take cover in a large brick kiln of a brick factory on the
outskirts of town. The Germans had returned fire with very large
artillery and jet aircraft to strafe us. As we were only a squad of
10 men we decided to stay put in the klim until after dark and then
return to our company. The Germans continued to pound the riverbank
with artillery in search of our position and we didn't want anything
more to do with their jet fighters. From our map it looked as if we
were 8 to 10 miles in front of our company and near or behind the
Germans line. We had decided to move out around 2 a.m. so as to do
most of our traveling in the dark, but a little past midnight we
heard the roar of large motors down-river of our position which we
were sure was tanks on our side of the river. Next the roar seemed
to surround the klim and we was sure we were surrounded by tanks. We
radioed headquarters our situation and they told us to check if it
wasn't an air raid passing overhead. We looked out and up and sure-nuff
the sky was full of our bombers heading into Germany. The first 1000
plane air-raid we had ever heard. Headquarters radioed for us to
start out immediately and they would send a couple of trucks with
the rest of the platoon to meet us and bail us out if we ran into
any trouble. After walking for more than an hour without meeting any
trucks we started to worry we might have taken a wrong turn in the
road. As we had stumbled into Seltz during the dark the night
before, we had no landmarks to guide by, only our map which covered
a very large section of France. After another hour or so of walking
in the dark and still no trucks we were sure we were lost. We
started to take it slow and very quiet. It was just turning dawn as
we rounded a turn in the road we spotted our town about a mile ahead
of us with the trucks just leaving town. The motor pool wouldn't
release the trucks until dawn and our radio had went dead.
Neiderbrau, France
1945
After 45 days or more on a mountain ridge in the
Neiderbrau Forest during mid-winter, contending with mud - snow -
sleet - rain and the Germans, we were a cold muddy sad looking
outfit, living in fox holes, eating out of our canteen cups.
Fresh water being rationed, we were washing ourselves, our
socks and shorts with snow water melted in our helmets. Our boots
were wet, our gloves and socks had holes, we were in sorry
shape. With the Germans' random sniper fire and artillery rounds
taking their toll among us,and the threat of a major attack any
time, we were all looking forward to relief which there wasn't a
word of, not even a rumor.
One afternoon we had a medic make a frost bite and
trench foot inspection. After being tagged along with 20 other men
or so for various conditions of frost bite, the group of us made a
march of about two hours to the aid station, where we were
greeted by a 2nd lieutenant who smeared us with a little medication,
gave us a dry pair of socks to put in our wet boots and more or less
told us we were a bunch of gold brickers and wasting his time. It
was late in the afternoon when he told us to report back to our
company. This meant a two hour march back in a light
drizzle. Also, we would miss supper and have to return to our fox
holes in the dark which was a good way to get shot.
We put up such a fuss that they let us stay over night at
the aid station. We got a hot supper and breakfast, a dry floor to
stretch out on and our boots dry during the night. Sure was a
welcome relief.
After I made 2nd lieutenant in March I made a special trip
to the aid station with the full intentions of popping the
lieutenant square in the nose, only to find he had made 1st
lieutenant. This was one of my biggest disappointments of the war.
Tom Wewer
While engaged in a fire fight with the Germans in the
Neiderbrau Forest, Tom Wewer, our Browning automatic gunner who
stood about six foot four inches tall, weighed around 240 pounds,
took a bullet through the upper leg which required a trip to the
hospital.
After two weeks or so we got word Tom was ready to rejoin
the company. I went back to the hospital to pick Tom up, only to
find they had lost Tom's boots, size 14 or so. Tom couldn't come
back barefooted, so he had to remain in the hospital two more weeks
while we had boots flown over from the States. We got 4 pair of
boots, along with an order from Division Headquarters that we were
to maintain 3 spare pair in stock at all times for Tom.
Tom was a hell of a good soldier and one of the few men in
the Army who could fire a Browning automatic rifle free hand while
standing up.
