More War Stories!

By Murray Coffey

More War Stories! takes the reader to the author’s beginnings in the small town of Myrtle, Mississippi, where his interest in the military and military history was started by his three uncles who were all World War I veterans with many stories to tell. It is the story of a soldier going from ROTC and getting an education to going into the service, and experiencing all sorts of specialized training, to combat in Europe in World War II while serving most of the time in the Eighty-Ninth Infantry Division. There are lots of war stories. After the war came service in the Occupation Army. Later came service in the reserves, a near miss on the Korean War, then completing an education and building a career after the war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Nov 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483461212

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Coffey

Copyright © 2016 Murray Coffey.

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ISBN: 978-1-4834-6122-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6123-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6121-2 (e)

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 10/28/16

September 1, 2015. It’s Labor Day!

T his is a great day to do some more work on my and some family members’ war stories. I am so grateful to my friend Charlene (Cha Cha) McKenzie for helping me organize and proofread this book, and to Suzanne Messer for typing the stories from my handwritten notes, a very time consuming process. These are a few interesting stories in what I refer to as, the Great War or World War I, World War II, and the Korean War that all kept the United States military very well occupied.

My military career was mostly in World War II. On Thanksgiving Day, many relatives and friends were at the home of my mother, Annie Ayers Murray Coffey, and dad, Lee Humphrey Coffey, Sr., in Myrtle, Mississippi.

Their house was a large three story home built years before I was born by my Grandfather Murray. It was built in Myrtle next to the United Methodist Church and close to the Burlington Northern and San Francisco Railroad, commonly referred to as the Frisco, which is now owned mostly by the billionaire, Warren Buffett.

When I was five years old on Thanksgiving Day of 1928, my three uncles, Bill, Tom and George, who were all World War I veterans, along with Mom,

Dad, and my sisters Bet and Virginia were all together. My little brother Lee, who died at four years of age, was not born at this time, so he was not here yet. Uncle George Murray, Uncle Tom Murray, and Uncle Bill Murray all stood up after dinner and said to my parents, "Annie and Lee, we three want to give to your son, Murray, all of our six large war books, because we know of his great interest in the military.

During World War II, I was nearly dead a few times. Later I got my only income from it due to my commission salary of $130.00 a month and the Red Cross ladies got the Air Force to pay me a disability of $117.00 per month in addition to my monthly salary.

When I returned from WWII, I was commissioned to continue at Mississippi State University with the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corp) and anywhere else I went to where colleges maintained the ROTC programs. I continued until about 1952 when I made a Major to take 850 troops to Korea where thousands of Chinese and North Koreans were about to overrun the Americans and South Koreans. But the commanding General of the United States said I was no longer just in the infantry but was primarily an Air Force officer belonging to him and the member of his staff and the Army could obtain another group of soldiers to help General MacArthur fight the invaders of Korea. So I did not have to go to Korea. I stayed in the USA and spent nearly four years with 12 other men, where I was the leader, to do anything General Patton and other military generals wanted us to do. When General Patton was killed in an accident, we 12 men were sent home to the USA and after a couple of years we were discharged from service after a period we had been assigned to several years after World War II and I moved to a city without a ROTC location details of my military expenses. This did not include other expenses paid by my government or others. It was just my own expenses for my torn up body from World War II service.

I was declared dead, and buried December 30, 1944. General Patton sent Corporal Hoft to make sure my poor heart and other wounds had truly killed me. So Corporal Hoft told my three Red Cross Nurses and my three medics of our 89th Infantry Division that my heart at times due to the war truly missed some beatings at time. Hoft and others uncovered the dirt over my head and heart and the Red Cross ladies said, sure enough my heart was beating. The lady head of the Red Cross said she thought she had heard a slight heart beat when they started my burial and just in case she sent into our Government a 10 percent disability request. That was $117.00 for life if I ever had any life. This was in 1944 and today, January 10, 2015, I am 91