Recorded Memoir

This is a transcription of a memoir that Lee recorded between November 1980 and January 1981. The first part was a personal history presentation he gave to a group of men in his church congregation. Only the portions of the memoir relevant to his war experience are included here.

I was scheduled to be drafted in 1942, about two months after we were married. At that time my father had an industrial accident and severely mangled a leg and I was given a six-month deferment to help care for him until he got back, at least till he could care for himself. So, I was drafted into the service, and I might say drawn in screaming and kicking and protesting in every way. I was no patriot, but I was drafted. I came to Fort Douglas in Salt Lake for processing. Some of you who are about my age will remember the reception center and the indignities with which we were face there. The only thing I really remember there was the various tests that we took and someone had told me that you really needed to get 100% on that army general classification test, the IQ test if you were ever going to be able to get any where in the service and I remember, after they graded the tests and I was sitting there with the interviewer looking down at that paper and I saw 90-something on there and I thought, “Boy, I have blown it,” and the interviewer said, “Boy, you sure blew the top out of that test, didn’t you.” I said, “Yeah, I sure did. I blew it.” I never knew till much later that that was the raw score and not the adjusted score, which did get me in a position where, had I been otherwise qualified, I could have been accepted promotions in the service.

I was sent from… I’m going to take a little time on this because it’s really the only interesting thing that’s happened to me. My first stop was Camp Swift in Austin, Texas in a field artillery unit and we were to take basic training as a unit. We were waiting for the full compliment to come in. We were amongst the first to come and so we did a little close order drill and watched a lot of movies, of the kind they make fun of on M.A.S.H. and while we were waiting, one morning on a bulletin board there appeared a notice that there was a new program opening up for anyone who was desirous of getting into the special educational program in the military and a bunch of us felt that this might be an opportunity to get out of the army for a little while so we went and took the tests and this was the old ASTP program, Army Specialized Training Program and out particular branch of it was an engineering program. How I ever passed the test I have no idea, but evidently did and was accepted and went to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge for further processing.

We had just got there and someone came down with spinal meningitis and so we were quarantined for all the time we were there and never ever did take any of the tests. They wouldn’t let us together in groups. We just stayed there for three weeks, once again, goofing off on campus, sneaking out at night and going into Tiger Town which was the area right adjacent to the campus with movie theatres and cafes and this sort of thing.

They sent me back to Baylor University in Waco, Texas where I spent a year in an engineering program, very heavy on math, physics, chemistry with some history, some geo-politics, but primarily the heavy engineering course and here’s this dumb kid that never could graduate from South Cache starting out in calculus as the beginning math program. But, I was able to make it through all right. I was going to say, after that first year, it became apparent that this program was folding up, so a group of us decided that we really didn’t want to get back in the regular army grind again because this had just been college life. We lived in the dorm on campus and we had true, about a 27-hour study load but that’s all we had to do. We had one drill period a week on Saturday mornings where we paraded for the co-eds.

During the time I was at Baylor, my first child arrived. It was very painless for me because I didn’t know about until the wire came after it was all over, but that’s when DeeAnn was born.

At any rate, there was an air field in the Waco, Texas area, and so we went out an applied for air cadets; pilot training. Some of us made it and were accepted and sent to Shepherd Field in Wichita Falls, Texas, which is the kind of thing I can say is the armpit of the universe. We were there for a few weeks for processing and then I was sent to Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. So you see, my army training had been real great up to this point. This was a CTD unit in, College Training Detachment, in the Air Force. It was duck soup of course because we had just completed this year of real heavy academics at Baylor and this was very elementary at Creighton. We were only there for a short period of time, relatively speaking, when the Air Force came to the realization that they really had more pilots than they needed and so they washed out about 40,000 people who were in the program, some of you may remember this, and sent them back to the unit from whence they transferred. My problem was, I had no unit to go back to and so guess where they needed bodies the most. So, back to the infantry and many of us were, and I included, was so upset and ashamed if you will, of this whole thing that we were just ashamed to write home and tell people what had happened and we had people going AWOL in every direction and so on. I went AWOL into the hospital. I scratched my athlete’s foot until I got infection so I went in the hospital and spent six weeks trying to stay out. This is a great record militarily.

A couple of us were the biggest goof-offs that ever existed as far as doing what we were supposed to do. We were continually on KP. We’d continually sneak away from KP. They finally got disgusted with us and gave us a fourteen-day furlough and assigned us as replacements in combat. So, after my fourteen-day furlough, I was shipped to Fort George G. Meade in Maryland for processing; from there to Camp Miles Stanton in Massachusetts for a week or so; put on the boat, sent to England; spent three weeks in central England in a little town called Warminster at a military camp there while they got together a little convoy there to go across the Channel and we landed as infantry replacements on Omaha Beach, sometime after the fighting had left Omaha Beach, so it was not that uncomfortable there; through various, as we called them “repple-depples” in France; Le Mans to Vervier, Belgium and then was sent on to an infantry division in Stohlburg, Germany, which is just inside the line, on what was called then Siegfried line. We were sent in just in time to breach that line.

I was assigned as an assistant platoon runner. I was still a buck private at this time. My duties were to carry messages from the platoon sergeant to the platoon leader. I was given a rifle which I had the foggiest notion what to do with because I had never learned to use any of this. I had never had any infantry training because I had goofed off all the time. We went out the next morning on a bayonet charge into a prepared position the Germans were holding. I had a little problem. I had a rifle grenade launcher on the end of my rifle so I couldn’t participate in the bayonet charge. I didn’t know what all that noise was. I could hear things whizzing by my head and plunking into the trees and later found out it was artillery. So you see, I had a great introduction into combat. We were out fourteen days. Our platoon of 39 men came back with six of us for about a week’s rest and replacements. I went back out as a squad leader as a staff sergeant, go out about two more weeks, came back in the same sort of situation, promoted to assistant platoon leader and platoon leader and so on just by staying alive and through all this I still maintained my back trouble, that is the broad yellow streak. I always knew immediately every step that I took where I was going to jump the next one and so stayed alive, while others who were braver didn’t.

I fought all the way through Germany, walked through Germany. We, some of the towns that you might recognize, we were the ones that took Cologne, we were the people who broke through the Remagen Bridge, circled the Ruhr, circled across. I ended up at Leipzig.

During this time, I accumulated a number of battle stars and a fair number of decorations, which came in extremely handy later on when they decided they would discharge people on the point system basis where you were given so many points for years service, months service I should say; so many points for our wife, so many points for a child, five points for each battle decoration. As I say, I was fortunate enough to get the Purple Heart without being really injured and that was worth five points. I had three battle stars: the Bronze Star, the French Croix de Guerre, the Silver Star, and so on. These all enabled me to get out of the service much earlier than all of the people that I went into the same time as.

One of the most common questions that comes up is, “Were you afraid when you were in a position of great danger?” All of us have been in a position where bodily harm could come to us and I suppose all of us are afraid to a greater or a less degree depending on our understanding of the situation. Frequently, I think you’ll all agree, fear comes in great part through a lack of knowledge or understanding of the situation with which we are confronted. I can truly say that during the time that I was in combat in Germany, in 1944 and 1945, there were certainly times when I experienced fear. But there were far more times where the danger was great but where we really didn’t experience any great degree of fear. We knew there was a job to be done, and if we did it the way we had been trained to do, the chances were that we would be all right.

I’d like to go over three or four separate experiences that illustrate a point related to this. The first one occurred shortly after I had gone into combat in the western most part of Germany and where I had been left behind as the rest of the unit moved on into a small town; the reason being, one of my comrades needed help in getting to an aid station due to a slight accident, and I was to rejoin my group the next morning after daylight. The terrain was such that the town was, at least on this one side, bordered by sugar beet fields, and I would gauge this to have been about four hundred yards from the edge of the town, the first buildings, across this sugar beet field, to a heavily wooded area where we had spent the night. The rest of our unit had been able to make into some of the buildings on the edge of the town but had not been able to take all of the town and so my problem was to get across that sugar beet field in the daylight and find the buildings where our people were and rejoin them. A sugar beet field, which is mature, and this was in October or November, can present quite a hazard if you’re trying to sprint. The sugar beets stand up above the surface of the ground an inch or two and form a very, very slippery and unsure footing. So, as you’re running across this field, you slip and you slide, you fall and you get up and run again. It sort of looks like, maybe a Harold Lloyd comedy. The complicating factor in this particular instance was the enemy who were holding positions on either side of the buildings on the edge of town which our people held, and also a mired down tank out in the muddy field was occupied by a German sniper and so as I was running across this field, you could hear the rifle shells snapping by your ear. Those of you who have ever been that close to s shell, a bullet know what I mean. It’s a different sound, very different sound than you might expect. They were snapping past my ears as I was running across this field and others, who also were making the journey, were felled by the snipers. I was fortunate enough to struggle across that field and, bear in mind, you’re not dressed for the hundred yard dash or the 440 or whatever it might be. It was muddy and slick and weighed down with an over-coat and a pack and a rifle. But, at any rate, I made it across the field and dove headlong through a window into a building and found it to be one of our aid stations.

The second incident that I’d like to relate to you, was one night when we were on the edge of a gully on the upper edge, dug in, and looking out over a field and as we were in this position, German planes dropped flares and then proceeded to strafe us and bomb us and I very clearly remember sliding down a ways below the crest of that hill and finding a depression to get into and of the bombs landing and of the dirt flying, clouds of earth from the bomb craters which partially buried us.

The third instance was where we were dug-in in a small town and the Germans were shelling us, an artillery barrage, with a frequency of one shell per minute landing in this area wherein we had formed our attack line and more than one instance of the shells actually landing in an individual’s foxhole occurred during this night. That shelling went on continually if you can imagine being in the center of one of those artillery bursts, one a minute, the whole night, you can get some kind of idea as to what we were involved in.

Each of these three times, I was completely convinced in my own mind that there was no way I could make it through and the feeling of peace, of calmness, and of lack of worry was something that was very striking. I knew that I was going to die, at least in my own mind, felt that if I died, I’d see my mother whom I hadn’t seen for many, many years. If I survived, I’d see my sweet wife and child again. But I had a very, very calm felling, a very peaceful feeling in each of these instances and some others of like character.

The question also has been asked about the various decorations, which I was, I suppose, fortunate enough to receive. I’m going to relate to you one of the early experiences that I had shortly after going into combat. It was the first attack that we went out on after I had been promoted to staff sergeant and had been given a squad to lead. The first objective was that of taking a moated castle, which was known as Chateau Mullenark. By this time we were known as the night fighters and this was a midnight to dawn foray. Our squad was given the objective of taking what appeared on aerial photos as a group of low sheds to the right of the main building. As the attack began across the moat by the side of the castle, we headed for the right flank and our assigned objective. We were unable to find the sheds since they turned out to be piles of sugar beets. As we continued around to the rear of the castle my first face-to-face confrontation with the enemy occurred. I stepped around a large clump of shrubbery and there was a German private, rifle in hand but with little heart for the fight. He became our first P.O.W. of the day. Situated on a direct line between the castle and the Roer River was a large storage cellar. Here we decided to stop, regroup and await the out come of the company's thrust against the castle itself. We were not aware of the desperate plight of our comrades. They had come under severe mortar and small arms fire and were pinned down on the banks of the moat. Our position was relatively strong and reasonably safe. The cellar was constructed of brick in the walls, a stone floor and a thick dirt covered roof. By now it was full day light and the German garrison in the castle sent a lone soldier from the rear of the castle toward the river and the main German lines. As he approached our position we invited him in and he wisely accepted. This same scenario was repeated over and over during the morning hours until we had collected twelve prisoners and had placed them along the wall on one side of the cellar. Finally the enemy came to realize what was happening and opened mortar fire on our position. They would drop a round at the doorway and the shrapnel would fly through the opening. We were protected by the heavy brick front walls which provided an area of safety on each side of the cellar. The day wore on and late in the afternoon we decided to leave the cellar and make our way around the back of the castle and into the small village on the opposite side. We proceeded with our group of P.O.W.'s along the high wall which enclosed the grounds of the castle and reached our company head quarters. Here we learned of the plight of our platoon whose members were still out on the banks of the moat. The company commander gave me the assignment of going out and bringing them in. This required completing the circle around the castle, moving through the dark of night and locating the position of the platoon. Then it was necessary to move from foxhole to foxhole to advise each man of the situation and how to reach the main company position. This action was completed without further casualties. Later the Bronze Star Medal for heroism was awarded for this patrol action.

A second experience occurred at the German city of Nordhausen. Nordhausen was an industrial city which had been so severely bombed by the Air Force, that literally not a brick was still fastened to another brick. The buildings had been completely demolished. You could see no streets. It was a place of great devastation. My combat patrol was first to enter Nordhausen and that which we found there was virtually unbelievable. The city was the location of underground factories which produced the V2 Rockets—the secret weapon the Germans were hoping would turn the tide in their favor. The city also was the location of slave labor camp. These people were literally worked and starved to death. Some 5000 bodies were discovered, many stacked like so much cord wood awaiting final disposal. Most were apparently French. As we came into the compound which housed the slave laborers, it was surrounded by a chain-link fence which I would guess to have been ten or twelve feet high. The French slave-laborers, when they saw who we were, literally climbed over that fence en masse and broke it down, just laid it flat, they were so happy to see us. The French government later awarded some of us the Croix de Guerre medal for this action.

The third experience I’d like to relate occurred in the small city of Raguhn. We entered the city late in the afternoon and found a small tank repair crew with two partially disabled tanks already there. The area had been cleared of enemy troops, so we were told, and we settled in for a good nights peaceful rest for a change. Much to our chagrin we awakened in the morning to find ourselves, one infantry platoon plus the tank mechanics, surrounded by the enemy and cut off from our support. Our platoon leader at the time was unable to function due to battle fatigue. We made him comfortable in a basement and went out to see what needed doing. It was routine work clearing the enemy from all of the buildings in town with the exception of a large factory. This was a brick building of one story located at the extreme edge of town adjacent to open fields. The enemy command post was located in this building and the German troops were "dug in" in the fields surrounding the town. We called to the German officers to surrender but they refused. To try and take the factory building with our small force would have been most difficult and dangerous. Someone had the idea of bringing one of the tanks down to the building as a persuasive force. The tank mechanics were very reluctant to get involved but finally agreed to bring the better of the two tanks along and see if it could be of help. We positioned the tank close to a window of the building and placed the muzzle of the cannon directly facing the window. Fortunately there was nothing wrong with that part of the tank and we sent a round into the building. The shrapnel ricocheting about the inside of that building must have been most disconcerting to the German officers inside. Another invitation to surrender was tendered. This time they offered to leave the town and take all their people from the fields about the town with them. We refused their most generous offer and presented them with another round or two of fire from the big gun on the tank. After the reverberations died down we again invited them and all their men from the surrounding fields to join us with hands behind their heads. This time they agreed that might be a good idea after all and proceeded to line up the entire unit in the courtyard. We sent back to the basement room where we had left out platoon leader and had him come to accept the surrender of over a hundred German troops. You see, I was leading the platoon and as a non-commissioned officer was not worthy to accept the surrender of the German officers and their men.

The fourth medal which I was awarded during my combat duty, was the Purple Heart, also known as the German Good Conduct Medal. This came about as really a result of my finding that each of these battle decorations would be worth five points towards the point total which would be the basis for discharge. The more points you had the earlier you’d get to go home. I never really was wounded to any great degree during all the time I was in combat service but the Purple Heart is awarded for any wound, and it doesn’t mention anything about how severe it might be, which is sustained in a combat situation, and so it was relatively easy to have an affidavit prepared by our medic and our company commander to the effect that a wound had been received on such and such a date but had been not reported due to the press of combat and so with the Purple Heart and the Silver Star and the Croix de Guerre and the Bronze Star, and the three battle stars and the points which were accumulated through months of service overseas, months of service domestic, the points which were given for a wife and a child, I had accumulated a sufficient number of points to be discharged earlier than most all of the people who had been taken into the service at the time I was drafted.

Still another experience is brought to mind almost every fall when deer hunting season comes about. Virtually every year, someone asks me, “Are you going deer hunting?” I always say, “No, I’m not going deer hunting,” and they always say “Well, how come? Haven’t you ever been deer hunting?” As I say that brings to mind the one experience that I had deer hunting in the Hurtgen forest of Germany, West Germany. This was at the time the Battle of the Bulge or the battle of the Ardennes offensive, counter-offensive I guess would be a better term, on the part of the Germans which was roughly in the middle part of December to the first part of January of 1944-1945. The German offensive had broken through our lines at a position adjacent to that which our division was holding. All of the time during which the Battle of the Bulge was progressing on the part of the Germans and the time when it was being pushed back on our part, we were in a relatively secure position holding one corner of the line adjacent to this penetration. During this period, we heard of a unit next to us who had been able to shoot a deer in the area out behind us in the area where we had already fought our way through and so, had fresh meat on the table for that Christmas season. My sergeant, my buck sergeants and I and one other individual, one of our medics, decided we would go up into the forest into the hills behind our positions in this little town on the river and see if we could come up with some venison for the kitchen. As we got deeper into the forest and was climbing up a small hill, we came to the top of it and there was snow on the ground and we noticed a discoloration like dust had been scattered over the snow. As we looked about we saw an American soldier about twenty to thirty yards away lying in the snow and there was blood on the snow. We could see that he had been injured. We had no idea right at that moment exactly what had happened to him. As we looked over we could see that one arm had been blown away just below…well, between the wrist and the elbow and the two bones were sticking out, completely devoid of the hand, of any flesh. About this time we came to realize what had happened; that we had stumbled into a German minefield. The German army had a small anti-personnel mine which was called a Schue mine and which consisted really of just a small wooden box with a half-pound of TNT in it and a lid which was not completely closed and which when was closed by someone stepping on it, would set off the half pound of TNT and the usual wound was the loss of a foot, just about at the ankle. My comrade had gone on ahead of us and come around from a different angle and was not aware what was going on. We called to him to stop, to not jump across the trench which separated us from the American soldier who had been injured. He didn’t understand what we were saying, jumped across, and stepped on one of these Schue mines. It blew off his foot, threw him to the ground where he rolled over and detonated another Schue mine with his abdomen and obviously was instantly killed. We then learned from the injured American soldier that we had first seen, he was still conscious, he told us that we had better stay where we were and of course we already knew that and also that he had come up with a comrade that had gone to get help and within a few minutes a medical team came up with stretcher. There was nothing we could do for my comrade other than just take him back for burial. The American soldier who was still alive, was loaded onto the stretcher and as the medic reached down to pick up the stretcher and stepped back, he stepped on another mine and blew his heal off. Eventually we were able to get everything cleaned up and get the injured back for treatment and report the whole thing to our commanding officers and of course there was a rather extensive investigation into the whole situation. So you can see, that experience hunting deer was one that is really not conducive to fond memories and to the pursuit of the sport.

Perhaps the worst part of being an infantryman in combat was the continual 24 hour a day, 7 day a week, possibility of sudden injury or death, coming not only at times when it might be expected, but at the most unexpected times. The mental strain of the realization that at any time your end might come, or that you might be gravely injured was really the hardest part of the whole infantry experience. As the days passed and more comrades fell, one couldn’t avoid thoughts of the shell that was meant for you. Many times in the intervening years, thirty-five-thirty-six years it has been now, I’ve thought of this “shell meant for you” concept and while you really don’t believe that there is one that’s especially meant for you, you still can’t help but wonder how come so many good people were shot down at your side, literally and you went through unscathed. Let me give you an example.

As the war was winding down and as the German Wermacht, the German Army was in a state of almost complete disorganization, and this would have been just prior to the surrender of the German forces, we were moving rapidly through Germany in the area of Halle, near the great city of Leipzig. We were working with a light tank, which was going before us as we would enter these small towns to provide us firepower and some cover. Now, there were three of us following behind this light tank and that’s about how wide this tank was; just wide enough for three. You don’t see these tanks anymore. They were obsolete even at that time and all they had as far was firepower was concerned was a 37mm cannon if you will, and a machine-gun but they were helpful. As we were going across the open fields coming up to the edge of this town, we crossed over a line of foxholes, which had been dug by the SS troops. Now, the SS were the German elite and they were really the only ones that were fighting right to the end and they would fight, do whatever was necessary to kill one of their enemies, even if they knew it would result in their death immediately after. So it was a common tactic for these people to dig in in the fields surrounding these towns and stay undercover until the tanks with infantrymen following them would pass over their positions. Then they would rise out of their foxholes and with their German “burp” guns as we called them and this was a designation given to a small automatic weapon which had the characteristic “brbrbrbrbrp” sound and the shots came about that fast. They would rise out of their foxholes and using this burp gun they would spray the unprotected American infantrymen with this machine gun fire. The usual result was injuries and some American soldiers killed and always resulting in the death of the German SS trooper because of course we’d turn around and take care of him. On this particular instance, I was walking in the center of this group of three men behind the tank when the German SS trooper arose out of his foxhole and sprayed us with machine gun fire. Now, at least one round passed through the thigh of my squad leader, sergeant Lasik, shattering the bone and knocking him to the ground. On the opposite side at least two of those bullets passed through the abdomen of Junior the medic who was on my right. There is no way that I could conceive of that I could have been missed. There is absolutely no way and yet, I was. The man on my right was killed. The man on my left was gravely injured but survived. I went totally unscathed and when you think of the rapidity of the fire from those machine guns and how as they sprayed the area wherein we were standing, it’s almost impossible to conceive of one not being hit and so, it gives rise to thoughts: How come I’m alive? How come I came back? How come I wasn’t injured? How come I went through all of these experiences virtually unscathed, the most serious injury being well, either a scratch on a barbed wire fence when I crawled through it or a piece of spent shrapnel which hit my big toenail and caused it to turn black and drop off eventually?

People have asked, “What do you think was the major contributing factor to our winning the war against Germany and certainly, the overwhelming superiority of materiel has to be part of it. The character of the American fighting man has to be part of it and sometimes with tongue in cheek, we say, one of the principal reasons was that the German intelligence was extremely effective and efficient and they knew almost to the most minute detail what we were planning to do. The problem came in, that as they prepared to offer a defense against this plan which we were going to run, they weren’t aware of the characteristic of the American soldier to get everything completely fouled up and so as a result, they would be prepared for what we were supposed to do and we wouldn’t do it. We’d do something else, take them by surprise and win the battle and eventually the war. Now, while that may not be totally true, it does point up the fact that the American soldier, more often than not, didn’t get too serious about anything except trying to stay alive and the sense of humor which most of us had that made it all the way through was a great contributing factor in our surviving. I saw many individual that simply could not take it psychologically. They cracked up. They didn’t have a sense of humor and I can think of just any number of times where we had a great time over there because I always seemed to fall in with someone who was sort of a nut and had a great sense of humor and even in the darkest times, you can find things to smile about and things which, as you look back upon them, are really quite funny. I remember one time when we as an infantry regiment had been attached to an armored division and this was primarily to break out across, after we had captured the bridge and the bridgehead at Remagen, over the Rhine River in March of 1945, we joined up with this armored division and together formed a combat team that headed out across Germany. A piece of equipment that the armored divisions use is know as a tank destroyer, or was at the time and this looks something like a tank only it had a larger more powerful rifle mounted on it and the top of the tank destroyer was quite flat as opposed to the rounded contours of the tanks of that time and I remember as we had taken this one town, I had found a beautiful overstuffed chair which I took out and placed on top of the tank destroyer and wired it to the top of the tank destroyer surface. At this same, I had found a beautiful blue-gray leather coat which evidently was German Marine issue and I had found a beautiful gnarled wood cane and also a fur scarf and it was fairly cool at that time but I remember riding on the top of that tank, sitting in my chair with my leather coat and the scarf around my neck and the cane at my side, pulling into these small towns and the German civilians would look up and… I’ve often wondered who and what they thought I might have been. Obviously this was not regulations and obviously if there were any of our officers around who might take a dim view of this kind of procedure, I would not have done it but it was just a way of expression, a way of showing a sense of humor and putting a lightness to the whole situation which really deep down was a very serious situation.