The famous battle sites of WW1 and WW2 still have news to bring us. Why don’t we start posting news about those sites from today’s newspapers and Internet sites?
Here is a starter.
Stripes Article
Ade
Full Version: Today's News From The Battle Sites
Not a bad idea, but we would do well to publish the article complete with attribution, as over time links disappear from websites. BK
~~~
Stars 'n Stripes
Saturday, November 11, 2006
In Belgium's annual Battle of the Bulge tribute, thanks but no tanks
By Kevin Dougherty, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, November 11, 2006
A walk, three wreaths and 60 pounds of walnuts sum up next month’s annual commemoration of the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne, Belgium.
But for the first time in nearly a half-century, a gritty, steely veteran of the war will miss the observance, scheduled this year for Dec. 16.
“I don’t think it has been renovated since it was first put there,” Marie-Lise Baneton, a spokeswoman for U.S. Army Garrison Benelux, said of the absent vet — an M4A4 Sherman tank used during World War II.
Several days ago, Belgian soldiers removed the tank — No. 3081532 — from its low, stone perch in Bastogne’s town center, renamed McAuliffe Square after the war. The tribute is to Army Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, the commander in Bastogne in December 1944 and the guy who uttered the famous one-word reply — “Nuts!” — to a German surrender demand.
The 11th Armored Division tank, knocked out of the war on Dec. 30, 1944, near the village of Renuamont, is undergoing a six-month refurbishment at a nearby Belgian military base.
Meanwhile, an effort is under way to find a replacement, possibly from one of the many World War II re-enactment groups that return each year, Baneton said.
During the one-day observance, which shifts from year to year to keep it a weekend affair, Bastogne becomes a magnet for re-enactors. This year’s event falls on the actual anniversary of the beginning of the battle.
The Battle of the Bulge, the largest land battle in Army history, involved a series of engagements over several hundred miles from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945. U.S. forces incurred 19,000 deaths and more than 1 million combatants took part.
Bastogne, a strategic crossroad in Germany’s quest to turn the tide after its defeat in Normandy, became an enduring symbol of grit and courage when the U.S. Army held the city despite being encircled for several days.
The Belgians have never forgotten.
“Every year we get swamped,” said Tom Larscheid, one of the organizers of a commemorative walk, now in its 29th year.
The crowd is one reason Larscheid is asking people to sign up early for the walk.
The memorial walk covers a different section of the Allied perimeter around Bastogne each year. This time the route goes north of Bastogne, to villages such as Foy and Noville. The area was defended by the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, immortalized in the TV series “Band of Brothers.”
Walkers have their choice of three distances: six, 14 or 20 kilometers.
Larscheid said re-enactors plan to man foxholes along the route.
“The re-enactors look good in their foxholes,” he said. “It adds some realism to the walk.”
A group of Boy Scouts from Heidelberg, Germany, will have the honor of laying a wreath — one of three planned for the day — along the route, he added.
In the afternoon after the walk, city officials joined by special guests will toss walnuts to crowds gathered below the town hall balcony. It is a tradition that predates the battle, but it is now included in the commemoration.
For more details on all the events, see http://bastogne.jemesouviens.fr/. There is an English option on the main page.
© 2006 Stars and Stripes. All Rights Reserved.
~~~
Stars 'n Stripes
Saturday, November 11, 2006
In Belgium's annual Battle of the Bulge tribute, thanks but no tanks
By Kevin Dougherty, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, November 11, 2006
A walk, three wreaths and 60 pounds of walnuts sum up next month’s annual commemoration of the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne, Belgium.
But for the first time in nearly a half-century, a gritty, steely veteran of the war will miss the observance, scheduled this year for Dec. 16.
“I don’t think it has been renovated since it was first put there,” Marie-Lise Baneton, a spokeswoman for U.S. Army Garrison Benelux, said of the absent vet — an M4A4 Sherman tank used during World War II.
Several days ago, Belgian soldiers removed the tank — No. 3081532 — from its low, stone perch in Bastogne’s town center, renamed McAuliffe Square after the war. The tribute is to Army Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, the commander in Bastogne in December 1944 and the guy who uttered the famous one-word reply — “Nuts!” — to a German surrender demand.
The 11th Armored Division tank, knocked out of the war on Dec. 30, 1944, near the village of Renuamont, is undergoing a six-month refurbishment at a nearby Belgian military base.
Meanwhile, an effort is under way to find a replacement, possibly from one of the many World War II re-enactment groups that return each year, Baneton said.
During the one-day observance, which shifts from year to year to keep it a weekend affair, Bastogne becomes a magnet for re-enactors. This year’s event falls on the actual anniversary of the beginning of the battle.
The Battle of the Bulge, the largest land battle in Army history, involved a series of engagements over several hundred miles from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945. U.S. forces incurred 19,000 deaths and more than 1 million combatants took part.
Bastogne, a strategic crossroad in Germany’s quest to turn the tide after its defeat in Normandy, became an enduring symbol of grit and courage when the U.S. Army held the city despite being encircled for several days.
The Belgians have never forgotten.
“Every year we get swamped,” said Tom Larscheid, one of the organizers of a commemorative walk, now in its 29th year.
The crowd is one reason Larscheid is asking people to sign up early for the walk.
The memorial walk covers a different section of the Allied perimeter around Bastogne each year. This time the route goes north of Bastogne, to villages such as Foy and Noville. The area was defended by the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, immortalized in the TV series “Band of Brothers.”
Walkers have their choice of three distances: six, 14 or 20 kilometers.
Larscheid said re-enactors plan to man foxholes along the route.
“The re-enactors look good in their foxholes,” he said. “It adds some realism to the walk.”
A group of Boy Scouts from Heidelberg, Germany, will have the honor of laying a wreath — one of three planned for the day — along the route, he added.
In the afternoon after the walk, city officials joined by special guests will toss walnuts to crowds gathered below the town hall balcony. It is a tradition that predates the battle, but it is now included in the commemoration.
For more details on all the events, see http://bastogne.jemesouviens.fr/. There is an English option on the main page.
© 2006 Stars and Stripes. All Rights Reserved.
Good point. Also it means straight away we acknowledge the writers efforts.
Ade
Ade
Another Story of Bastogne
From the Cleburne Times Review
Published 31st December
Larue Barnes: Battle of the Bulge
Sixty-two years ago today, during World War II, the Battle of the Bulge rage along a 70-mile front in Belgium’s Ardennes Forest.
J.C. Marshall was there and lived to tell about the greatest land battle ever fought and won by the U. S. Army.
The victory came at a terrible price: 19,000 Americans were killed with 62,000 wounded or captured by Nazi forces. The long battle, involving more than one million men, lasted from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945.
“I was in the 6th Armored Division of the 3rd Army, under Gen. George Patton,” Marshall recalled. “As we moved up from England through France it was rainy and so very cold. We set up tents in the mud. There were haystacks all around, but they warned us not to try to find dry hay inside of them because they might have land mines. We did it anyway.”
He said they were getting close to the front lines.
“We could hear the big guns at night. They loaded us into trucks and took us into towns for us to take them. The shelling never stopped. Our drivers circled the square, slowed down and we bailed out with our duffle bags and rifles.”
He said he remembered on one occasion that the driver was so eager to get out of town that he slowed down very little.
“That was a rough jump out of the truck. We had been instructed to hit the cellars for protection. In one town we stayed there for four days. On the other side of the creek there was a little village filled with Germans. I had to go out at night to pull guard duty.
The first night this other guy and I stayed in a foxhole. It was so cold! We saw an old tank knocked off its tracks that had been left behind. We thought we might be warmer in it than in a foxhole. We were wrong. There were Germans across the creek by then and we couldn’t get out. We almost froze to death that night.”
The Nazis were helped by bad weather, which kept Allied planes grounded and forced troops to fight in sub-zero temperatures. The bolts froze on machine guns.
“At another town we had guard duty under a railroad underpass,” Marshall said. “The shelling was heavy. The cellars were full, with soldiers running to the stairways of buildings. When there was no other choice, I bedded down on my bedroll on an upstairs floor of the building. A big shell came right through the wall and landed by me.”
He looked down.
“Thank God it was a dud.”
By then the Nazis had killed so many Americans that they sometimes wore U.S. uniforms.
“You never knew if somebody was an American or not when they approached you. We always had a password that we knew that only an American would know.”
The routine began again — this time, on half-tracks.
“We were at the front lines by then. Germans were everywhere. We boarded our half tracks and headed in. We had a .50-caliber machine gun on the front, with .30-caliber guns on each side. Inside we had a radio operator and at the back I had a bazooka and another soldier had a carbine. We took turns bailing out and walking. Germans were in the hay stacks, in holes, inside buildings — everywhere.
“At Bastogne, Belgium, we took the town. We had 72 prisoners of war. Another soldier and I were told to march them to the nearest military police. The problem was — it was eight miles away.
“The two of us kept them all together in a group, not in single file. We were exhausted, as we had fought all day, across the fields. On the way, the Nazis opened fire on us. We were hollering for the prisoners to hit the ground. Some tried to run away, but we got them back. Nobody was killed.”
When Marshall and his buddy reported to a colonel with the military police after the prisoners were delivered, they were treated with kindness and consideration. They were later awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in action.
“The colonel told us, ‘You soldiers need a good meal and a good place to sleep. Then, we’ll take you back to your outfit in the morning.’
“Oh, the food was so good and we slept so dry and warm. Before morning, though, we could hear the firing up close. Then it stopped. An officer woke us up, and, after chow, he told us to go out and find our outfit. We had walked eight miles. We didn’t know if we could find it, or not.”
With emotion, Marshall explained that the Germans had counterattacked and taken the town back. His outfit was nearby at the foot of the hill. What he found haunts him today.
“My half-track had taken a direct hit. Everybody who was in it — where I would have been — was dead.”
Marshall was assigned to another half-track.
“As we drove, the snow got deeper. It was so soft that you could tunnel through it. We stopped at night and moved in the daytime. The Nazis shelled all night. It was so dark in those piney woods. Because of the frigid weather we had no airplanes to cover us. I remember digging foxholes and using the pine boughs as good heavy cover over the top.
“There was a pattern in the shelling. They came in threes. If the first went over you and the second one was short, you could be sure the next one would be close.”
A shell hit just outside Marshall’s foxhole, digging a crater.
“When I came to, they were bathing my face with snow. My nose was bleeding. The next morning my officer was going to send me to the aid station to be checked, but I refused. I thought I was okay.
“We continued to fight across the fields. On the third day after the shell had hit so near my foxhole, I noticed how stiff my back was. When I had to bail out of my half-track and hit the ground, I found that I couldn’t get back up. I tried and tried — but I couldn’t move.
“It was horrible. The Germans were shooting and killing Americans everywhere. While I way lying there, the Red Cross came by, loading the dead soldiers. I was on the ambulance before I knew it. They threw me in with the dead and wounded and took me back to the aid station. There were so many dead bodies — so many.”
Marshall’s feet were frozen.
“I remember that my feet hurt for some time. Then, after they froze I didn’t even know it. They had to cut my boots off — my feet were so swollen and black. They took me to a hospital in France.
“Someone at the hospital thought the thing to do was to put my feet in warm water. That put me in agony! I was so afraid I was going to lose my feet.”
Marshall was flown out to a hospital in England, where he remained for three months.
“I found men there who had lost toes — had missing feet. I was so afraid that would happen to me.”
He recovered gradually. A couple in town became his friends, introducing him to hot tea.
On the battlefront the skies finally cleared. The wonderful sound of 10,000 Allied airplanes put the Germans once more on the defensive. In desperation, Hitler had used 12-year-olds and old men to reinforce his dwindling troops. Of those, 100,000 Germans were killed, wounded or captured.
Then, glorious news came.
“I was on a long march with the 6th Armored Division somewhere in France when we came close to a town. We heard hollering, shouting, radios.”
Germany had surrendered. The Battle of the Bulge had been won by Allied forces.
But Japan was still fighting. Marshall, with the 4141st Service Company, began to remobilize to go to Japan. This invasion was dreaded most of all.
But they would never make the trip. The news reached them that after atomic bombs were dropped: Japan had also surrendered.
It was true — the war was finally over.
But Marshall still had time in the U.S. Army. He served with the 52nd railhead company in Giessen, Germany, where troops unloaded all incoming supplies. Then he was transferred to Frankfort, Germany.
“They told me I was going to be with a bakery company. All I could cook was burned toast. Then they explained that I would be over the motor pool until my discharge date.”
During the occupation period Marshall directed German prisoners of war and some German civilians who worked at the bakery in redesigning an Army jeep.
He smiled, “I had them to add mud flaps, fenders and a wooden top to make it warmer. I was told to go pick up a colonel, and I was afraid he would be angry about my messing with regulation equipment, and he did look shocked when he first saw it.
“When he got in, and I told him I had designed it, he said, ‘Soldier, I’m certainly glad you did this. I was really dreading this cold ride.’”
Marshall also used his communication and persuasive skills to bring a large boat by truck to a river where he and friends could fish. When military police told him he could not keep it he convinced a German citizen to store it in his boat house and to leave his own boat outside.
Marshall grinned: “I brought him fresh bakery food every single day.”
Mable Moser and Marshall had married in 1943, and he was drafted eight months later.
She said, “We had met at a skating rink in Rio Vista. I dated J. C. all through high school; then we married. He was working on a dairy, but took a job in town at a service station. When he was drafted I went to work at Woolsworth for Pansy Burke; then for G. W. Lankford Cleaners in Cleburne.
“For two years,” she said, “I lived with my sister and her husband, Verna and Frank Millsap in Rio Vista. Frank worked at the Santa Fe Shops and I rode to work with him. Then I lived with another sister, Helen, and her husband, Frank Morris, in Fort Worth, and worked at Pangburn’s Candy and Ice Cream on West Seventh.
When Marshall was discharged from the Army, June 7, 1946, she said, “Adjustment was not easy for J.C. He had been through so much in the war. He worked various places and we rented rooms in homes — and moved to another one when he changed jobs so often.”
But they remember fondly their time spent in a rented room on North Wilhite Street in Cleburne.
“Mr. and Mrs. Frank Gustafson shared their kitchen with us, and we rented one room,” she said. “I worked at Westway, making little girl dresses and Jay worked at Meredith’s Service Station. We’d meet at home for lunch, and Mrs. Gustafson would have food on the table for us.”
They decided to go to work at Convair in Fort Worth. On the same shift, they provided a car pool for others with their station wagon. After three years, she learned she was expecting a baby. Her supervisor urged her not to resign, but to wait for a layoff that was coming soon so that she could draw unemployment.
Their son, Rick was born in 1953.
Marshall continued to work at Convair, but found that layoffs happened frequently. He began work for ARA Manufacturing Co. in Fort Worth, and enjoyed that career for 31 years, retiring in 1990.
Mable worked at J.C. Penney’s in Cleburne for more than 27 years.
The Marshalls are members of Nolan River Church of Christ. Their son, Rick, passed away in 1993. Their family includes their daughter-in-law, Tina Marshall, and grandchildren Melissa Burton, Maci Marshall and Mitchell Marshall. There are also two great-grandchildren, Madison and Espn.
Looking back at the war years, Mable spoke fondly of her mailman, Sam McClusky.
“He knew I hadn’t heard from Jay in three months. One day Mr. McClusky came to the cleaners where I was working and handed me a V-mail letter. It had a hole cut out of it. J. C. had tried to tell me where he was and it had been censored.
“I’ve thought of my mailman’s kindness many times. He didn’t want me to have to wait until I got home in Rio Vista. That was so very kind of him.”
I thought about that act of kindness, too. I wonder if, in a time with so much sadness and worry, if perhaps he was eager to share a young wife’s joy.
From the Cleburne Times Review
Published 31st December
Larue Barnes: Battle of the Bulge
Sixty-two years ago today, during World War II, the Battle of the Bulge rage along a 70-mile front in Belgium’s Ardennes Forest.
J.C. Marshall was there and lived to tell about the greatest land battle ever fought and won by the U. S. Army.
The victory came at a terrible price: 19,000 Americans were killed with 62,000 wounded or captured by Nazi forces. The long battle, involving more than one million men, lasted from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945.
“I was in the 6th Armored Division of the 3rd Army, under Gen. George Patton,” Marshall recalled. “As we moved up from England through France it was rainy and so very cold. We set up tents in the mud. There were haystacks all around, but they warned us not to try to find dry hay inside of them because they might have land mines. We did it anyway.”
He said they were getting close to the front lines.
“We could hear the big guns at night. They loaded us into trucks and took us into towns for us to take them. The shelling never stopped. Our drivers circled the square, slowed down and we bailed out with our duffle bags and rifles.”
He said he remembered on one occasion that the driver was so eager to get out of town that he slowed down very little.
“That was a rough jump out of the truck. We had been instructed to hit the cellars for protection. In one town we stayed there for four days. On the other side of the creek there was a little village filled with Germans. I had to go out at night to pull guard duty.
The first night this other guy and I stayed in a foxhole. It was so cold! We saw an old tank knocked off its tracks that had been left behind. We thought we might be warmer in it than in a foxhole. We were wrong. There were Germans across the creek by then and we couldn’t get out. We almost froze to death that night.”
The Nazis were helped by bad weather, which kept Allied planes grounded and forced troops to fight in sub-zero temperatures. The bolts froze on machine guns.
“At another town we had guard duty under a railroad underpass,” Marshall said. “The shelling was heavy. The cellars were full, with soldiers running to the stairways of buildings. When there was no other choice, I bedded down on my bedroll on an upstairs floor of the building. A big shell came right through the wall and landed by me.”
He looked down.
“Thank God it was a dud.”
By then the Nazis had killed so many Americans that they sometimes wore U.S. uniforms.
“You never knew if somebody was an American or not when they approached you. We always had a password that we knew that only an American would know.”
The routine began again — this time, on half-tracks.
“We were at the front lines by then. Germans were everywhere. We boarded our half tracks and headed in. We had a .50-caliber machine gun on the front, with .30-caliber guns on each side. Inside we had a radio operator and at the back I had a bazooka and another soldier had a carbine. We took turns bailing out and walking. Germans were in the hay stacks, in holes, inside buildings — everywhere.
“At Bastogne, Belgium, we took the town. We had 72 prisoners of war. Another soldier and I were told to march them to the nearest military police. The problem was — it was eight miles away.
“The two of us kept them all together in a group, not in single file. We were exhausted, as we had fought all day, across the fields. On the way, the Nazis opened fire on us. We were hollering for the prisoners to hit the ground. Some tried to run away, but we got them back. Nobody was killed.”
When Marshall and his buddy reported to a colonel with the military police after the prisoners were delivered, they were treated with kindness and consideration. They were later awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in action.
“The colonel told us, ‘You soldiers need a good meal and a good place to sleep. Then, we’ll take you back to your outfit in the morning.’
“Oh, the food was so good and we slept so dry and warm. Before morning, though, we could hear the firing up close. Then it stopped. An officer woke us up, and, after chow, he told us to go out and find our outfit. We had walked eight miles. We didn’t know if we could find it, or not.”
With emotion, Marshall explained that the Germans had counterattacked and taken the town back. His outfit was nearby at the foot of the hill. What he found haunts him today.
“My half-track had taken a direct hit. Everybody who was in it — where I would have been — was dead.”
Marshall was assigned to another half-track.
“As we drove, the snow got deeper. It was so soft that you could tunnel through it. We stopped at night and moved in the daytime. The Nazis shelled all night. It was so dark in those piney woods. Because of the frigid weather we had no airplanes to cover us. I remember digging foxholes and using the pine boughs as good heavy cover over the top.
“There was a pattern in the shelling. They came in threes. If the first went over you and the second one was short, you could be sure the next one would be close.”
A shell hit just outside Marshall’s foxhole, digging a crater.
“When I came to, they were bathing my face with snow. My nose was bleeding. The next morning my officer was going to send me to the aid station to be checked, but I refused. I thought I was okay.
“We continued to fight across the fields. On the third day after the shell had hit so near my foxhole, I noticed how stiff my back was. When I had to bail out of my half-track and hit the ground, I found that I couldn’t get back up. I tried and tried — but I couldn’t move.
“It was horrible. The Germans were shooting and killing Americans everywhere. While I way lying there, the Red Cross came by, loading the dead soldiers. I was on the ambulance before I knew it. They threw me in with the dead and wounded and took me back to the aid station. There were so many dead bodies — so many.”
Marshall’s feet were frozen.
“I remember that my feet hurt for some time. Then, after they froze I didn’t even know it. They had to cut my boots off — my feet were so swollen and black. They took me to a hospital in France.
“Someone at the hospital thought the thing to do was to put my feet in warm water. That put me in agony! I was so afraid I was going to lose my feet.”
Marshall was flown out to a hospital in England, where he remained for three months.
“I found men there who had lost toes — had missing feet. I was so afraid that would happen to me.”
He recovered gradually. A couple in town became his friends, introducing him to hot tea.
On the battlefront the skies finally cleared. The wonderful sound of 10,000 Allied airplanes put the Germans once more on the defensive. In desperation, Hitler had used 12-year-olds and old men to reinforce his dwindling troops. Of those, 100,000 Germans were killed, wounded or captured.
Then, glorious news came.
“I was on a long march with the 6th Armored Division somewhere in France when we came close to a town. We heard hollering, shouting, radios.”
Germany had surrendered. The Battle of the Bulge had been won by Allied forces.
But Japan was still fighting. Marshall, with the 4141st Service Company, began to remobilize to go to Japan. This invasion was dreaded most of all.
But they would never make the trip. The news reached them that after atomic bombs were dropped: Japan had also surrendered.
It was true — the war was finally over.
But Marshall still had time in the U.S. Army. He served with the 52nd railhead company in Giessen, Germany, where troops unloaded all incoming supplies. Then he was transferred to Frankfort, Germany.
“They told me I was going to be with a bakery company. All I could cook was burned toast. Then they explained that I would be over the motor pool until my discharge date.”
During the occupation period Marshall directed German prisoners of war and some German civilians who worked at the bakery in redesigning an Army jeep.
He smiled, “I had them to add mud flaps, fenders and a wooden top to make it warmer. I was told to go pick up a colonel, and I was afraid he would be angry about my messing with regulation equipment, and he did look shocked when he first saw it.
“When he got in, and I told him I had designed it, he said, ‘Soldier, I’m certainly glad you did this. I was really dreading this cold ride.’”
Marshall also used his communication and persuasive skills to bring a large boat by truck to a river where he and friends could fish. When military police told him he could not keep it he convinced a German citizen to store it in his boat house and to leave his own boat outside.
Marshall grinned: “I brought him fresh bakery food every single day.”
Mable Moser and Marshall had married in 1943, and he was drafted eight months later.
She said, “We had met at a skating rink in Rio Vista. I dated J. C. all through high school; then we married. He was working on a dairy, but took a job in town at a service station. When he was drafted I went to work at Woolsworth for Pansy Burke; then for G. W. Lankford Cleaners in Cleburne.
“For two years,” she said, “I lived with my sister and her husband, Verna and Frank Millsap in Rio Vista. Frank worked at the Santa Fe Shops and I rode to work with him. Then I lived with another sister, Helen, and her husband, Frank Morris, in Fort Worth, and worked at Pangburn’s Candy and Ice Cream on West Seventh.
When Marshall was discharged from the Army, June 7, 1946, she said, “Adjustment was not easy for J.C. He had been through so much in the war. He worked various places and we rented rooms in homes — and moved to another one when he changed jobs so often.”
But they remember fondly their time spent in a rented room on North Wilhite Street in Cleburne.
“Mr. and Mrs. Frank Gustafson shared their kitchen with us, and we rented one room,” she said. “I worked at Westway, making little girl dresses and Jay worked at Meredith’s Service Station. We’d meet at home for lunch, and Mrs. Gustafson would have food on the table for us.”
They decided to go to work at Convair in Fort Worth. On the same shift, they provided a car pool for others with their station wagon. After three years, she learned she was expecting a baby. Her supervisor urged her not to resign, but to wait for a layoff that was coming soon so that she could draw unemployment.
Their son, Rick was born in 1953.
Marshall continued to work at Convair, but found that layoffs happened frequently. He began work for ARA Manufacturing Co. in Fort Worth, and enjoyed that career for 31 years, retiring in 1990.
Mable worked at J.C. Penney’s in Cleburne for more than 27 years.
The Marshalls are members of Nolan River Church of Christ. Their son, Rick, passed away in 1993. Their family includes their daughter-in-law, Tina Marshall, and grandchildren Melissa Burton, Maci Marshall and Mitchell Marshall. There are also two great-grandchildren, Madison and Espn.
Looking back at the war years, Mable spoke fondly of her mailman, Sam McClusky.
“He knew I hadn’t heard from Jay in three months. One day Mr. McClusky came to the cleaners where I was working and handed me a V-mail letter. It had a hole cut out of it. J. C. had tried to tell me where he was and it had been censored.
“I’ve thought of my mailman’s kindness many times. He didn’t want me to have to wait until I got home in Rio Vista. That was so very kind of him.”
I thought about that act of kindness, too. I wonder if, in a time with so much sadness and worry, if perhaps he was eager to share a young wife’s joy.
Thank you Ade. Very nice. (I like to include an article also instad of a link. Its frustrating to follow a link that no longer exists. As long as you credit the author I think its the better way to go) Thanks again for the great article
Cindy
Cindy
Taken from swtexaslive
Original Article
For three days, in daunting drifts, sheets of ice, and cold so bitter the water cooling the barrels of soldiers’ machine guns froze in its channels, Staff Sgt. Chester “Rudy” Rutigliano rode with his buddies in an open truck to Bastogne, Belgium. Earth was frozen, so foxholes were dug only as deep as the snow. The GIs were positioned at the portal of the bloodiest battle fought by American forces during World War II.
Before the “Battle of the Bulge” ended 40 days later, 19,276 Americans lay dead (six times the number killed in the war in Iraq as of April 11), 24,000 were captured or missing, and 43,493 were wounded. Rutigliano was among the fortunates in the last group, downed – temporarily – by a hand grenade.
Monday (April 9), Rutigliano sat erect in his West 9th Street, Del Rio, Texas, living room, chuckling over X-rays showing a bright, white spot, the grenade fragment never removed from his right leg. In the hallway, hangs a shadow-box containing Rutigliano’s Bronze Star, a Purple Heart medal, and a set of tarnished dog tags.
Before the vicious fighting ended with a stunning victory for Allied forces, Rutigliano and 83,000 Americans and British had defeated a desperate German force of more than 200,000. American commanders – Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton – and the British leader, Montgomery, pushed back the German salient, or “bulge” that had unexpectedly advanced into Allied lines before the counteroffensive started.
Rutigliano’s military career was less than two years old when he was ordered to the European theater. After his 18th birthday, he and four buddies dropped out of high school in Ridgeway, Penn. to volunteer.
At Fort Jackson, S.C., Rutigliano poses with a .30 caliber, water-cooled machine gun, a type used in his platoon’s assaults on enemy positions in Europe. The gun was not impervious to the bitter cold there in November and December, 1944, and the early months of 1945, with the water freezing in the gun’s channels, making them impossible to fire until the water was replaced by antifreeze. (Contributed photo/Chester Rutigliano)
click to enlarge
Rutigliano was born August 19, 1923, in Crenshaw, Penn. where his dad was a coal miner, and later a leather tanner for shoe manufacture. The younger Rutigliano made the decision to volunteer for overseas duty, along with thousands of patriotic young men and women caught up in the indignation and anger over Nazi predations in Europe.
But his father voiced strong feelings about his branch of service, as Rutigliano trundled off to Erie, Penn. for his Armed Services physical. “Make sure you’re in the Army,” he admonished. “In the Navy, you die, and you die in the water. Air Force? You die up in the air. In the Army, if you die, you die on land, and that way we can have you back home.”
After training at Fort Jackson, S.C., and Camp McCain, Miss., Rutigliano and his unit, Company M, 346th Infantry Regiment, 87th “Golden Acorn” Infantry Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Frank L. Culin Jr., were transported to the theater of war aboard the British luxury liner Queen Elizabeth, retrofitted for troop-carrying. “We had 18,000 guys on that ship! We were all packed in there,” said Rutigliano, whose combat military career then began with this ocean passage.
In Europe, from Manchester, England (Nov. 1944), the 87th pushed up the English Channel through France, to the city of Metz. Staff Sgt. Rutigliano was non-commissioned officer in charge of a heavy weapons machine gun platoon of 36 men, most of whom would not survive the next few weeks.
Rutigliano, second from left, and platoon members take a break from training at Fort Jackson, S.C. in 1944, prior to deployment to the front lines of combat in Europe. (Contributed photo/Chester Rutigliano)
click to enlarge
In early fighting, the unit’s machine guns ran low on ammunition, and Rutigliano sent a soldier to the rear for re-supply. The GI never returned, but was spotted months later, bragging to Rutigliano that he’d spent the whole war with a beautiful French girl in a remote country house. Rutigliano detained the errant soldier, turning him in to the company commander, who ordered the man shot. “They took him off, and I just don’t know if they really killed him or not, but legally they could have,” Rutigliano said.
At Bastogne, Company M was attached to Company L, Infantry, to provide “overhead protection.” Quickly, a lieutenant platoon commander was killed, and Rutigliano was asked to accept a battlefield commission to assume command as a second lieutenant. “They couldn’t pronounce my last name – Rutigliano – so they gave me a nickname, said my name was now ‘Rudy’,” he said. He declined the commission. “I said, ‘Sir, give it to somebody else. I don’t want it.’”
A replacement officer finally arrived in a Jeep, and reprimanded Rutigliano for failing to salute, at which Rutigliano explained that, on the front lines neither saluting nor shiny uniform brass were permitted, thus avoiding the eyes and targets of enemy snipers. The new lieutenant complained to Rutigliano’s commander who “threw that lieutenant right to the ground and said ‘Don’t you ever salute on the front lines!’”
Rutigliano, right, and Mike Carrieri, pose for a photograph during training at Camp McCain, Miss. before re-deployment to Ft. Jackson, S.C. for additional training, and eventual deployment to Europe at the peak of World War II combat. Both men were staff sergeants during the war in Europe. (Contributed photo/Chester Rutigliano)
click to enlarge
The junior officer later wore bright brass insignia, polished helmet, and spit-shined boots going into battle, and was instantly killed by a sniper’s bullet through the spiffy helmet. With this command vacancy repeated, Rutigliano was ordered to take command of the platoon. But his own heroism once again deflected the job he didn’t want.
Three days before the brevet commission was to become effective, Rutigliano was patrolling a street in Falkenstein, Germany. “All at once, there was a guy, threw a hand grenade out a window, and it landed right beside me. So I picked up the grenade, and I was going to throw it back up, but there was two little kids out in the window. Not to kill ‘em or anything, so I dropped the hand grenade, and jumped into a doorway, and it went off.
“So I came out, and hollered, ‘Anybody get hurt?’” Rutigliano said. His buddies asked if he was OK, and thought he was. “But later, I’m walking down the road, towards the guys, and I feel my leg wet, and I thought, heck, I must’ve wet my pants. But then I look back, and I see all these little red dots, and then down the front of my shoe was all full of blood.”
In a field hospital, surgeons told Rutigliano they had removed the “bullet” from his leg and discarded it, though he’d asked for it as a souvenir. Years later, Rutigliano discovered that nothing had been removed, because the grenade shrapnel was too close to a major nerve, threatening paralysis if it was damaged during surgery. Recent Val Verde Regional Medical Center X-rays reveal the 62-year-old fragment clearly.
In Belgium, Rutigliano said, two men in German uniforms jumped in front of him in frantic gestures of surrender, and he obliged, taking them prisoner. “SS” tattoos on their upper arms identified the men as officers of Hitler’s elite schutzstaffel, literally “protective force” that, toward the end of the war, built and operated concentration and extermination camps. Turning the captives in to his commanding officer, he was told, “You know what the order is. Any time you capture an SS, shoot ‘em.”
Rutigliano reviews a map of Europe that shows the path of the 87th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge and a continuing race across Germany to finally defeat stubborn German troops near the Germany/Czechoslovakia border on the celebrated Victory in Europe (VE) Day, May 8, 1945. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag)
click to enlarge
Rutigliano refused, saying there must be an explanation for their surrender, but his reticence only got him a threat of court martial. Two recent recruits, fresh from the States, were assigned the job, and took more pleasure in it than Rutigliano could stomach. The soldiers bragged, “We stopped the Jeep, and one was screaming, ‘Don’t shoot me! Don’t shoot me!’ I took my .45 out and – bang – blew his head off. The other guy turned around and he said ‘Heil Hitler’, and I walked down the road and got behind this .50 caliber machine gun, opened fire, and I cut him in two.” “And I said to him,” Rutigliano recalled, “‘You’re stupid!.’”
The unit commander offered this pair to fill two vacancies in Rutigliano’s platoon, and he declined. “I said, ‘I don’t want ‘em. Give ‘em to somebody else. I’d rather have less men than have these two guys with what they just did.’” An hour later, the company commander came around to investigate what happened, taking the platoon leader and the two gun-happy soldiers away. “I never found out what happened, because just then we got orders to attack Goldbrick Hill.”
At the orders of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr., Rutigliano’s unit, the 346th Regiment, sped toward the Germans’ Siegfried Line, marked most conspicuously by two soaring hills, together dubbed “Goldbrick Hill.” The Line had to be penetrated to advance Allied forces deeper into Germany, and it was, but at a cost of 829 soldiers killed or wounded. Rutigliano’s platoon commenced the battle with 36 men. When the smoke cleared, only six remained standing.
Rutigliano “revisits” evidence of an old war wound, examining a recent Val Verde Regional Medical Center X-ray of his leg. The film reveals a fragment of hand grenade that penetrated flesh close to nerve and bone when he tossed it out of harm’s way to fellow soldiers and nearby children. The shrapnel was deemed inoperable because of its proximity to nerves, and possible paralysis. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag)
click to enlarge
“You know when I came back to the states, we got orders to regroup, get training, and go over to the Pacific and fight,” Rutigliano said. “We had a 30-day leave, and I went home, and that’s when they finally dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, and they surrendered.” Because of his wound he was not allowed to ship out to help clean up the tragic mess in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
In 1989, Rutigliano and his wife, Rose, took a tour with veterans, seeing again the battlefields and cemeteries from the bloodiest struggle of the war. “We went all over Luxembourg, France, Belgium and Germany,” said Rose. “And all those battle sites and cemeteries are so carefully maintained and, too, all those thousands of white crosses!”
At another reunion, in Oklahoma City, a fellow veteran approached “Rudy” and Rose on the street, extending his hand and thanking Rutigliano profusely for being so tough in training for the rigors of war and soldiering. “He told me I saved his life by teaching him how to fight and stay alive.” Rose chimed in, “I told him Chet is not tough at all; he’s just a little pussycat! But this cat has nine lives, too.”
Rose Rutigliano’s oblique reference to her husband’s lifetime of near misses includes not only surviving the Battle of the Bulge with little more than a grenade fragment still in his leg, but also a terrific automobile crash, as well as a near-fatal accident at Del Rio National Bank. In the 1969 car wreck at St. Mary’s, Penn., Rutigliano’s vehicle was demolished, and he escaped, but sustained serious injuries.
The former soldier, grocer, butcher, and women’s clothier also became a teller at Del Rio National Bank while it was still locally-owned. Rutigliano rose to the position of vice president, when his fifth or sixth career was interrupted by a malfunctioning elevator.
“I was jack-of-all-trades at that bank, so I told ‘em I could fix it. I got the key, and put it into the door, and started pulling the doors apart, when they flew open, and I fell forward into the shaft.” Rutigliano landed hard on a steel railing twenty feet below, sustaining only seven broken ribs. “But then I had to retire after 18 years at the bank.”
“Rudy,” the soldier whose last name was unpronounceable to fellow mortals in combat, now busies himself with activities in the Rotary Club of Del Rio and the Elks Lodge. Rutigliano served on the Chamber of Commerce Red Carpet Ambassadors Committee for more than 30 years.
And he’s preparing for a big celebration. “Hey, on April 19, Rose and I will be married 60 years, and we’re having a big family party in Colorado Springs!”
Original Article
For three days, in daunting drifts, sheets of ice, and cold so bitter the water cooling the barrels of soldiers’ machine guns froze in its channels, Staff Sgt. Chester “Rudy” Rutigliano rode with his buddies in an open truck to Bastogne, Belgium. Earth was frozen, so foxholes were dug only as deep as the snow. The GIs were positioned at the portal of the bloodiest battle fought by American forces during World War II.
Before the “Battle of the Bulge” ended 40 days later, 19,276 Americans lay dead (six times the number killed in the war in Iraq as of April 11), 24,000 were captured or missing, and 43,493 were wounded. Rutigliano was among the fortunates in the last group, downed – temporarily – by a hand grenade.
Monday (April 9), Rutigliano sat erect in his West 9th Street, Del Rio, Texas, living room, chuckling over X-rays showing a bright, white spot, the grenade fragment never removed from his right leg. In the hallway, hangs a shadow-box containing Rutigliano’s Bronze Star, a Purple Heart medal, and a set of tarnished dog tags.
Before the vicious fighting ended with a stunning victory for Allied forces, Rutigliano and 83,000 Americans and British had defeated a desperate German force of more than 200,000. American commanders – Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton – and the British leader, Montgomery, pushed back the German salient, or “bulge” that had unexpectedly advanced into Allied lines before the counteroffensive started.
Rutigliano’s military career was less than two years old when he was ordered to the European theater. After his 18th birthday, he and four buddies dropped out of high school in Ridgeway, Penn. to volunteer.
At Fort Jackson, S.C., Rutigliano poses with a .30 caliber, water-cooled machine gun, a type used in his platoon’s assaults on enemy positions in Europe. The gun was not impervious to the bitter cold there in November and December, 1944, and the early months of 1945, with the water freezing in the gun’s channels, making them impossible to fire until the water was replaced by antifreeze. (Contributed photo/Chester Rutigliano)
click to enlarge
Rutigliano was born August 19, 1923, in Crenshaw, Penn. where his dad was a coal miner, and later a leather tanner for shoe manufacture. The younger Rutigliano made the decision to volunteer for overseas duty, along with thousands of patriotic young men and women caught up in the indignation and anger over Nazi predations in Europe.
But his father voiced strong feelings about his branch of service, as Rutigliano trundled off to Erie, Penn. for his Armed Services physical. “Make sure you’re in the Army,” he admonished. “In the Navy, you die, and you die in the water. Air Force? You die up in the air. In the Army, if you die, you die on land, and that way we can have you back home.”
After training at Fort Jackson, S.C., and Camp McCain, Miss., Rutigliano and his unit, Company M, 346th Infantry Regiment, 87th “Golden Acorn” Infantry Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Frank L. Culin Jr., were transported to the theater of war aboard the British luxury liner Queen Elizabeth, retrofitted for troop-carrying. “We had 18,000 guys on that ship! We were all packed in there,” said Rutigliano, whose combat military career then began with this ocean passage.
In Europe, from Manchester, England (Nov. 1944), the 87th pushed up the English Channel through France, to the city of Metz. Staff Sgt. Rutigliano was non-commissioned officer in charge of a heavy weapons machine gun platoon of 36 men, most of whom would not survive the next few weeks.
Rutigliano, second from left, and platoon members take a break from training at Fort Jackson, S.C. in 1944, prior to deployment to the front lines of combat in Europe. (Contributed photo/Chester Rutigliano)
click to enlarge
In early fighting, the unit’s machine guns ran low on ammunition, and Rutigliano sent a soldier to the rear for re-supply. The GI never returned, but was spotted months later, bragging to Rutigliano that he’d spent the whole war with a beautiful French girl in a remote country house. Rutigliano detained the errant soldier, turning him in to the company commander, who ordered the man shot. “They took him off, and I just don’t know if they really killed him or not, but legally they could have,” Rutigliano said.
At Bastogne, Company M was attached to Company L, Infantry, to provide “overhead protection.” Quickly, a lieutenant platoon commander was killed, and Rutigliano was asked to accept a battlefield commission to assume command as a second lieutenant. “They couldn’t pronounce my last name – Rutigliano – so they gave me a nickname, said my name was now ‘Rudy’,” he said. He declined the commission. “I said, ‘Sir, give it to somebody else. I don’t want it.’”
A replacement officer finally arrived in a Jeep, and reprimanded Rutigliano for failing to salute, at which Rutigliano explained that, on the front lines neither saluting nor shiny uniform brass were permitted, thus avoiding the eyes and targets of enemy snipers. The new lieutenant complained to Rutigliano’s commander who “threw that lieutenant right to the ground and said ‘Don’t you ever salute on the front lines!’”
Rutigliano, right, and Mike Carrieri, pose for a photograph during training at Camp McCain, Miss. before re-deployment to Ft. Jackson, S.C. for additional training, and eventual deployment to Europe at the peak of World War II combat. Both men were staff sergeants during the war in Europe. (Contributed photo/Chester Rutigliano)
click to enlarge
The junior officer later wore bright brass insignia, polished helmet, and spit-shined boots going into battle, and was instantly killed by a sniper’s bullet through the spiffy helmet. With this command vacancy repeated, Rutigliano was ordered to take command of the platoon. But his own heroism once again deflected the job he didn’t want.
Three days before the brevet commission was to become effective, Rutigliano was patrolling a street in Falkenstein, Germany. “All at once, there was a guy, threw a hand grenade out a window, and it landed right beside me. So I picked up the grenade, and I was going to throw it back up, but there was two little kids out in the window. Not to kill ‘em or anything, so I dropped the hand grenade, and jumped into a doorway, and it went off.
“So I came out, and hollered, ‘Anybody get hurt?’” Rutigliano said. His buddies asked if he was OK, and thought he was. “But later, I’m walking down the road, towards the guys, and I feel my leg wet, and I thought, heck, I must’ve wet my pants. But then I look back, and I see all these little red dots, and then down the front of my shoe was all full of blood.”
In a field hospital, surgeons told Rutigliano they had removed the “bullet” from his leg and discarded it, though he’d asked for it as a souvenir. Years later, Rutigliano discovered that nothing had been removed, because the grenade shrapnel was too close to a major nerve, threatening paralysis if it was damaged during surgery. Recent Val Verde Regional Medical Center X-rays reveal the 62-year-old fragment clearly.
In Belgium, Rutigliano said, two men in German uniforms jumped in front of him in frantic gestures of surrender, and he obliged, taking them prisoner. “SS” tattoos on their upper arms identified the men as officers of Hitler’s elite schutzstaffel, literally “protective force” that, toward the end of the war, built and operated concentration and extermination camps. Turning the captives in to his commanding officer, he was told, “You know what the order is. Any time you capture an SS, shoot ‘em.”
Rutigliano reviews a map of Europe that shows the path of the 87th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge and a continuing race across Germany to finally defeat stubborn German troops near the Germany/Czechoslovakia border on the celebrated Victory in Europe (VE) Day, May 8, 1945. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag)
click to enlarge
Rutigliano refused, saying there must be an explanation for their surrender, but his reticence only got him a threat of court martial. Two recent recruits, fresh from the States, were assigned the job, and took more pleasure in it than Rutigliano could stomach. The soldiers bragged, “We stopped the Jeep, and one was screaming, ‘Don’t shoot me! Don’t shoot me!’ I took my .45 out and – bang – blew his head off. The other guy turned around and he said ‘Heil Hitler’, and I walked down the road and got behind this .50 caliber machine gun, opened fire, and I cut him in two.” “And I said to him,” Rutigliano recalled, “‘You’re stupid!.’”
The unit commander offered this pair to fill two vacancies in Rutigliano’s platoon, and he declined. “I said, ‘I don’t want ‘em. Give ‘em to somebody else. I’d rather have less men than have these two guys with what they just did.’” An hour later, the company commander came around to investigate what happened, taking the platoon leader and the two gun-happy soldiers away. “I never found out what happened, because just then we got orders to attack Goldbrick Hill.”
At the orders of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr., Rutigliano’s unit, the 346th Regiment, sped toward the Germans’ Siegfried Line, marked most conspicuously by two soaring hills, together dubbed “Goldbrick Hill.” The Line had to be penetrated to advance Allied forces deeper into Germany, and it was, but at a cost of 829 soldiers killed or wounded. Rutigliano’s platoon commenced the battle with 36 men. When the smoke cleared, only six remained standing.
Rutigliano “revisits” evidence of an old war wound, examining a recent Val Verde Regional Medical Center X-ray of his leg. The film reveals a fragment of hand grenade that penetrated flesh close to nerve and bone when he tossed it out of harm’s way to fellow soldiers and nearby children. The shrapnel was deemed inoperable because of its proximity to nerves, and possible paralysis. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag)
click to enlarge
“You know when I came back to the states, we got orders to regroup, get training, and go over to the Pacific and fight,” Rutigliano said. “We had a 30-day leave, and I went home, and that’s when they finally dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, and they surrendered.” Because of his wound he was not allowed to ship out to help clean up the tragic mess in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
In 1989, Rutigliano and his wife, Rose, took a tour with veterans, seeing again the battlefields and cemeteries from the bloodiest struggle of the war. “We went all over Luxembourg, France, Belgium and Germany,” said Rose. “And all those battle sites and cemeteries are so carefully maintained and, too, all those thousands of white crosses!”
At another reunion, in Oklahoma City, a fellow veteran approached “Rudy” and Rose on the street, extending his hand and thanking Rutigliano profusely for being so tough in training for the rigors of war and soldiering. “He told me I saved his life by teaching him how to fight and stay alive.” Rose chimed in, “I told him Chet is not tough at all; he’s just a little pussycat! But this cat has nine lives, too.”
Rose Rutigliano’s oblique reference to her husband’s lifetime of near misses includes not only surviving the Battle of the Bulge with little more than a grenade fragment still in his leg, but also a terrific automobile crash, as well as a near-fatal accident at Del Rio National Bank. In the 1969 car wreck at St. Mary’s, Penn., Rutigliano’s vehicle was demolished, and he escaped, but sustained serious injuries.
The former soldier, grocer, butcher, and women’s clothier also became a teller at Del Rio National Bank while it was still locally-owned. Rutigliano rose to the position of vice president, when his fifth or sixth career was interrupted by a malfunctioning elevator.
“I was jack-of-all-trades at that bank, so I told ‘em I could fix it. I got the key, and put it into the door, and started pulling the doors apart, when they flew open, and I fell forward into the shaft.” Rutigliano landed hard on a steel railing twenty feet below, sustaining only seven broken ribs. “But then I had to retire after 18 years at the bank.”
“Rudy,” the soldier whose last name was unpronounceable to fellow mortals in combat, now busies himself with activities in the Rotary Club of Del Rio and the Elks Lodge. Rutigliano served on the Chamber of Commerce Red Carpet Ambassadors Committee for more than 30 years.
And he’s preparing for a big celebration. “Hey, on April 19, Rose and I will be married 60 years, and we’re having a big family party in Colorado Springs!”
Ex-paratrooper says life after war is pale
By David Zizzo
Staff Writer
NewsOK.com
Battle changes you, Bobby Hunter said.
"You're kind of a skeptic the rest of your life. You're quieter. You don't worry about death anymore,” he said. "Unless you've been there, you cannot understand it.”
As a former member of the 101st Airborne Division who survived many bloody encounters with the Germans, including a bitter siege at Bastogne, Belgium, Hunter has been there.
Steeled warriors also don't worry about killing the enemy, said Hunter, 83, who now lives in Gunter, Texas. After a lifetime of learning that killing — violence of any kind — is wrong, Hunter said, the first time you kill someone in battle, "it gives you a funny feeling.” But, he said, once you realize, "Hey, these people are trying to kill me ... it don't take you long to get over it. Here's the bottom line, now think about it, these people are trying to literally lay your brains on the ground. Are you going to like that? Are you going to like them? I don't think so. It's either kill or be killed. It's that simple.”
"It didn't bother me one particle. I hated them people. This is a hard thing to say, the only thing I wish is I wish I'd killed more of them. They was trying to kill me and they killed a bunch of my very good friends. I was mad at them people.”
Youth helps with this thought process and with dealing with war, old soldiers say. "When people get 35 or 40, you couldn't run them up on the front line,” Hunter said. "They're not immortal anymore.” Hunter was only 20 when he went to war.
"I was sorry I missed Normandy,” he said, joining frontline troops soon after the big invasion. "I was gung ho.”
Hunter was a paratrooper, one of the guys who jumped behind enemy lines.
"Everywhere we went, we were surrounded.”
Battle, he recalled, "never did bother me that much. You don't really get afraid until it's over with. Like, you're in a big firefight, when it's over, you wonder, ‘How in the hell did I live through that?'”
As horrible and deadly as it all can be, he said, the adrenaline, emotion and monumental nature of what you're doing can make the rest of life pale.
"That was the most important and the most thrilling part of your life,” he said. "It's gone. It'll never come back.”
When it's over, do you miss it?
"More or less,” he said. The feeling drove him to volunteer for the next war, Korea, where he "got wounded pretty bad.”
By then he was 26, though. And the guys who fought alongside him seemed different, he said.
"It wasn't like the first time.”
NewsOK
By David Zizzo
Staff Writer
NewsOK.com
Battle changes you, Bobby Hunter said.
"You're kind of a skeptic the rest of your life. You're quieter. You don't worry about death anymore,” he said. "Unless you've been there, you cannot understand it.”
As a former member of the 101st Airborne Division who survived many bloody encounters with the Germans, including a bitter siege at Bastogne, Belgium, Hunter has been there.
Steeled warriors also don't worry about killing the enemy, said Hunter, 83, who now lives in Gunter, Texas. After a lifetime of learning that killing — violence of any kind — is wrong, Hunter said, the first time you kill someone in battle, "it gives you a funny feeling.” But, he said, once you realize, "Hey, these people are trying to kill me ... it don't take you long to get over it. Here's the bottom line, now think about it, these people are trying to literally lay your brains on the ground. Are you going to like that? Are you going to like them? I don't think so. It's either kill or be killed. It's that simple.”
"It didn't bother me one particle. I hated them people. This is a hard thing to say, the only thing I wish is I wish I'd killed more of them. They was trying to kill me and they killed a bunch of my very good friends. I was mad at them people.”
Youth helps with this thought process and with dealing with war, old soldiers say. "When people get 35 or 40, you couldn't run them up on the front line,” Hunter said. "They're not immortal anymore.” Hunter was only 20 when he went to war.
"I was sorry I missed Normandy,” he said, joining frontline troops soon after the big invasion. "I was gung ho.”
Hunter was a paratrooper, one of the guys who jumped behind enemy lines.
"Everywhere we went, we were surrounded.”
Battle, he recalled, "never did bother me that much. You don't really get afraid until it's over with. Like, you're in a big firefight, when it's over, you wonder, ‘How in the hell did I live through that?'”
As horrible and deadly as it all can be, he said, the adrenaline, emotion and monumental nature of what you're doing can make the rest of life pale.
"That was the most important and the most thrilling part of your life,” he said. "It's gone. It'll never come back.”
When it's over, do you miss it?
"More or less,” he said. The feeling drove him to volunteer for the next war, Korea, where he "got wounded pretty bad.”
By then he was 26, though. And the guys who fought alongside him seemed different, he said.
"It wasn't like the first time.”
NewsOK
Does Pointe du Hoc Still Matter?
The discovery of a massive gun position at Maisy, France, has led one amateur historian to conclude that General Dwight D. Eisenhower deliberately sent the 2nd Ranger Battalion on a bloody, but unnecessary, mission on D-Day.
By David Lesjak
Armed with little more than grit, on the morning of June 6, 1944, some 200 men of Colonel James E. Rudder’s 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled the 100-foot cliff of Pointe du Hoc and passed into legend.
Theirs was a remarkable achievement. At a cost of more than 135 casualties, Rudder’s men seized an objective that Allied leaders had deemed the most important piece of real estate on the whole Norman coast, while destroying a nearby battery of heavy guns and protecting the right flank of the Omaha Beach landings when the success of the D-Day invasion itself was in doubt. General Omar N. Bradley later remarked, “No soldier in my command has ever been wished a more difficult task than Rudder.”
So important is the site of Rudder’s heroics that in the years since the invasion the battlefield itself has been preserved, with the lunar landscape and shattered remains of massive concrete bunkers maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission as an eternal reminder of the might of the Allied invasion force and the bravery of its participants. Millions have made the pilgrimage to the battlefield, among them several U.S. presidents, including Ronald Reagan, whose address to the “boys of Pointe du Hoc” on the 40th anniversary of the invasion has come to be regarded as a major policy speech and was the subject of a bestselling book by historian Douglas Brinkley.
Given the Pointe’s significance, it would be shocking indeed if it turned out that the Rangers’ D-Day heroism had all been for naught. As capricious an idea as that may seem, it is just what amateur historian and militaria collector Gary Sterne is claiming. Sterne also asserts that it was a massive intelligence failure that led to an unnecessary slaughter of GIs on Omaha Beach and a subsequent military coverup.
Normally, such outrageous notions would be given short shrift by all but a few of the most devoted conspiracy theorists, but Sterne’s discovery of a long-forgotten German battery complex at Maisy and his ongoing investigation of the site raise the possibility that his outlandish remarks might have substance.
As reported in “WWII Today” in the July/August issue of World War II Magazine, Sterne’s routine purchase of a Ranger’s military memorabilia led to the accidental discovery of a massive German battery complex outside the village of Maisy. Among the items in the collection was a map with the words “area of high resistance” scribbled on it.
Curious, Sterne took the map on his next visit to Normandy. As he traveled down one of the roads marked on the map, he came across three large casemates that are well known as the La Martiničre bunkers. These emplacements, however, were not the ones indicated on the map. He began searching the area behind the three gun positions and before long was standing on top of a large concrete slab nearby at Les Perruques. Further investigation revealed the entrance to a bunker, then another and still another. Most important was the discovery of a concrete mount for a large 155mm gun.
Unsure of what he had discovered, but well aware that anything this size was considerably important, Sterne began the process of quietly purchasing the land. Four years and 25 acres later, in January 2006 he made the official announcement of his discovery and his plans to eventually purchase the remainder of the 100-acre complex and to open up the battery site as a major Norman tourist destination by 2007. To make it clear that his bunker complex is not just another of the countless concrete relics that dot the invasion coast, Sterne claims that it was the battery at Maisy that did the real killing on Omaha Beach.
Although his assertions have generated much outrage, Sterne has presented a sufficiently intriguing case to interest not only local French officials and Normandy enthusiasts, but also the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which is planning a major documentary on the site.
Because of the importance of Sterne’s discovery and its potential impact on our understanding of the most significant invasion of the war, World War II believes it is worthwhile to consider the claims and counterclaims surrounding the mysterious Maisy battery.
To the German defenders of Normandy, what everyone today is calling the Maisy battery was officially known as Widerstandsnest (Resistance Nest) 83 at Les Perruques, and its neighbor WN84 at La Martiničre. The Royal Air Force flew several reconnaissance missions over the site, and Allied aircrews later bombed it. The two Widerstandsnesten received another pasting on D-Day itself, with several aerial bombing missions flown against the two batteries, as well as bombardment from the British cruiser Hawkins and other Allied ships. The 352nd Infantry Division, the Wehrmacht unit responsible for defense of the area, stated in a later report that the “area around Maisy is being subjected to heavy artillery fire from Allied ships located off Marcouf.”
Even with this pummeling, Sterne maintains that the structures on the site suffered little or no damage. “Until the evening of the 6th of June, the HQ and 155mm battery was untouched. Despite the Allied attempts to destroy it -- I guess 90 percent survived totally intact. One bomb landed within the wire and nothing else. It was fully operational on D-Day.”
Interested? Scroll on.
http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/w..._2/4395951.html
The discovery of a massive gun position at Maisy, France, has led one amateur historian to conclude that General Dwight D. Eisenhower deliberately sent the 2nd Ranger Battalion on a bloody, but unnecessary, mission on D-Day.
By David Lesjak
Armed with little more than grit, on the morning of June 6, 1944, some 200 men of Colonel James E. Rudder’s 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled the 100-foot cliff of Pointe du Hoc and passed into legend.
Theirs was a remarkable achievement. At a cost of more than 135 casualties, Rudder’s men seized an objective that Allied leaders had deemed the most important piece of real estate on the whole Norman coast, while destroying a nearby battery of heavy guns and protecting the right flank of the Omaha Beach landings when the success of the D-Day invasion itself was in doubt. General Omar N. Bradley later remarked, “No soldier in my command has ever been wished a more difficult task than Rudder.”
So important is the site of Rudder’s heroics that in the years since the invasion the battlefield itself has been preserved, with the lunar landscape and shattered remains of massive concrete bunkers maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission as an eternal reminder of the might of the Allied invasion force and the bravery of its participants. Millions have made the pilgrimage to the battlefield, among them several U.S. presidents, including Ronald Reagan, whose address to the “boys of Pointe du Hoc” on the 40th anniversary of the invasion has come to be regarded as a major policy speech and was the subject of a bestselling book by historian Douglas Brinkley.
Given the Pointe’s significance, it would be shocking indeed if it turned out that the Rangers’ D-Day heroism had all been for naught. As capricious an idea as that may seem, it is just what amateur historian and militaria collector Gary Sterne is claiming. Sterne also asserts that it was a massive intelligence failure that led to an unnecessary slaughter of GIs on Omaha Beach and a subsequent military coverup.
Normally, such outrageous notions would be given short shrift by all but a few of the most devoted conspiracy theorists, but Sterne’s discovery of a long-forgotten German battery complex at Maisy and his ongoing investigation of the site raise the possibility that his outlandish remarks might have substance.
As reported in “WWII Today” in the July/August issue of World War II Magazine, Sterne’s routine purchase of a Ranger’s military memorabilia led to the accidental discovery of a massive German battery complex outside the village of Maisy. Among the items in the collection was a map with the words “area of high resistance” scribbled on it.
Curious, Sterne took the map on his next visit to Normandy. As he traveled down one of the roads marked on the map, he came across three large casemates that are well known as the La Martiničre bunkers. These emplacements, however, were not the ones indicated on the map. He began searching the area behind the three gun positions and before long was standing on top of a large concrete slab nearby at Les Perruques. Further investigation revealed the entrance to a bunker, then another and still another. Most important was the discovery of a concrete mount for a large 155mm gun.
Unsure of what he had discovered, but well aware that anything this size was considerably important, Sterne began the process of quietly purchasing the land. Four years and 25 acres later, in January 2006 he made the official announcement of his discovery and his plans to eventually purchase the remainder of the 100-acre complex and to open up the battery site as a major Norman tourist destination by 2007. To make it clear that his bunker complex is not just another of the countless concrete relics that dot the invasion coast, Sterne claims that it was the battery at Maisy that did the real killing on Omaha Beach.
Although his assertions have generated much outrage, Sterne has presented a sufficiently intriguing case to interest not only local French officials and Normandy enthusiasts, but also the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which is planning a major documentary on the site.
Because of the importance of Sterne’s discovery and its potential impact on our understanding of the most significant invasion of the war, World War II believes it is worthwhile to consider the claims and counterclaims surrounding the mysterious Maisy battery.
To the German defenders of Normandy, what everyone today is calling the Maisy battery was officially known as Widerstandsnest (Resistance Nest) 83 at Les Perruques, and its neighbor WN84 at La Martiničre. The Royal Air Force flew several reconnaissance missions over the site, and Allied aircrews later bombed it. The two Widerstandsnesten received another pasting on D-Day itself, with several aerial bombing missions flown against the two batteries, as well as bombardment from the British cruiser Hawkins and other Allied ships. The 352nd Infantry Division, the Wehrmacht unit responsible for defense of the area, stated in a later report that the “area around Maisy is being subjected to heavy artillery fire from Allied ships located off Marcouf.”
Even with this pummeling, Sterne maintains that the structures on the site suffered little or no damage. “Until the evening of the 6th of June, the HQ and 155mm battery was untouched. Despite the Allied attempts to destroy it -- I guess 90 percent survived totally intact. One bomb landed within the wire and nothing else. It was fully operational on D-Day.”
Interested? Scroll on.
http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/w..._2/4395951.html
QUOTE(Dirigoboy @ Jan 27 2008, 11:33 PM) 
Does Pointe du Hoc Still Matter?
Yes it does.
There are a number of unanswered questions regarding the effectiveness of the guns at Maisey. There are also questions about the effectiveness of Pointe Du Hoc battery but look at the evidence:
1, Kuhn and Lomell, sergeants from the Ranger units who stormed the cliffs disabled 5 French Howitzers.
2, At Pointe Du Hoc there were 6 open concrete emplacements (the casements were not completed). These distinctive round features are shown on this photo.
3, One gun was destroyed by Allied air bombardment prior to D-Day (the reason the guns were moved inland)
Therefore the guns which Kuhn and Lomell disabled were the five remaining guns from this battery.
It is also a myth that the Rangers did not know the guns had been removed. Evidence of this was passed to senior commanders on and prior to D-Day.
Steve
QUOTE(Mr_Sunray @ Jan 27 2008, 08:25 PM)
It is also a myth that the Rangers did not know the guns had been removed. Evidence of this was passed to senior commanders on and prior to D-Day.
Do you have any source info for this Steve? I can't recall ever hearing this before and I'd like to dig a little deeper. Thanks!
QUOTE(EmersonBigguns @ Jan 28 2008, 11:57 AM)
Do you have any source info for this Steve? I can't recall ever hearing this before and I'd like to dig a little deeper. Thanks!
Oh that's right. Go and spoil everything by asking for proof!
I read seperate accounts that a combination of intel reports from French resistance and aerial photographs showed that the guns had been removed. The information was available to the higher echelons but perhaps was not passed on to the rank and file. I'll see what I can dig up.
Steve
Man,.....this is waaaay outta hand. I wuz just trying to make polite conversation at the bar...........
Hi all,
Here are some facts for you. Guillaume Mercader, part of the Resistance network in the Bayeux region was informed about the removal of the Pointe du Hoc guns on April 17th 1944, two days after a bomb raid at the site. The information was sent via the usual radio network and was decoded in London on April 26th. Then in the last week of may Guillaume whilst cyling along the coast road noticec two German sentries guarding a track inland. This is when he came to the conclusion the guns had been moved inland. It is uncertian whether this update was also sent to London
Exactly when the D-Day commanders were informed about any of this remains unclear. However a new book being written about Pointe de Hoc is probably going to state that Rudder WAS told the guns would may be in the casemates, but may be nearby. This does not tally with Lomell's recollections, but it seems more than likely that even if Rudder suspected the guns would not be on site he did not believe it necessary to warn his men, for fear of damaging their confidence.
There is much more to this story, I'm just lucky enough to be privvy to all the current research. But do not get distracted by the Maisy claims, that is a seperate story about a totally different location. Whatever was or wasn't there has no bearing on Pointe de Hoc, which was always the major threat to the American beachs. Whether there were 3, 4 or 5 operational 155mm guns in the hedgrerow south of PdH they were still a massive threat to Utah beach until destroyed by Len and Jack.
Here is a photo of one of the 155mms in the hedgerow
Here is a photo of a tour group with me there last May
Paul Woodadge
Here are some facts for you. Guillaume Mercader, part of the Resistance network in the Bayeux region was informed about the removal of the Pointe du Hoc guns on April 17th 1944, two days after a bomb raid at the site. The information was sent via the usual radio network and was decoded in London on April 26th. Then in the last week of may Guillaume whilst cyling along the coast road noticec two German sentries guarding a track inland. This is when he came to the conclusion the guns had been moved inland. It is uncertian whether this update was also sent to London
Exactly when the D-Day commanders were informed about any of this remains unclear. However a new book being written about Pointe de Hoc is probably going to state that Rudder WAS told the guns would may be in the casemates, but may be nearby. This does not tally with Lomell's recollections, but it seems more than likely that even if Rudder suspected the guns would not be on site he did not believe it necessary to warn his men, for fear of damaging their confidence.
There is much more to this story, I'm just lucky enough to be privvy to all the current research. But do not get distracted by the Maisy claims, that is a seperate story about a totally different location. Whatever was or wasn't there has no bearing on Pointe de Hoc, which was always the major threat to the American beachs. Whether there were 3, 4 or 5 operational 155mm guns in the hedgrerow south of PdH they were still a massive threat to Utah beach until destroyed by Len and Jack.
Here is a photo of one of the 155mms in the hedgerow
Here is a photo of a tour group with me there last May
Paul Woodadge
Awesome, Paul. I was hoping you would have something definitive to contribute here. I remember some of the stories you told on your tour. Without talking to the vets, this history is lost to us. Thanks for this post. BK
QUOTE(reccewoody @ Feb 3 2008, 01:08 PM)
Exactly when the D-Day commanders were informed about any of this remains unclear. However a new book being written about Pointe de Hoc is probably going to state that Rudder WAS told the guns would may be in the casemates, but may be nearby.
Paul Woodadge
Paul Woodadge
Thanks Paul. That kind of tallys with my statement above. Do you have any information on this new book?
Steve.
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