Million Miles to Go

By John F. Lebda

When young John Lebda waded ashore on that beach in North Africa during World War II, he had no idea he was walking into the biggest mess the world has ever seen.
All he wanted was to find a way back home, but the road seemed to be a million miles long - across deserts, up mountains, over oceans and rivers, through many countries resembling hell.
He knew he had the right stuff, but he had to have God on his side when the machine guns chattered, artillery crackled and bomb bursts were sent to put him down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 2, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453584378

John F. Lebda

I was born in the coal mining region in the hills of Pennsylvania. Before devoting myself to the defense of the world with the military, I was a hunter, trapper, woodsman, farmer, sportsman and coal miner where I was trained in the use of explosives. I was a pure outdoorsman. I never had the desire to author a book, but during and after the war, I had an insatiable urge to tell the world why so many young men died because of blunders. Inept leadership often put us in situations where we could never win, as in Kasserine Pass, Tunisia. Most generals and staff were good leaders but there were those glory hunters like Clark, Anderson, and Montgomery who had no regard for precious life. History would remember the generals but the sacrificed young lives would only appear on grave markers or perhaps a legend, 'HERE LIES IN HONORED GLORY, A SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD".

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by John F. Lebda.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010914193

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4535-8436-1

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4535-8435-4

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4535-8437-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Author’s Note: Maps are drawn from memory and do not conform to any scale or coordinates. The towns were obstacles on the roads I drove through to get back home.

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Xlibris Corporation

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87040

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

CHAPTER 1

Birth of a Man

CHAPTER 2

Drafted

CHAPTER 3

Indiantown Gap

CHAPTER 4

World War II

CHAPTER 5

TORCH

CHAPTER 6

Tunisia

CHAPTER 7

El Guettar Pass

CHAPTER 8

Nazi Retreat

CHAPTER 9

Victory

CHAPTER 10

HUSKY

CHAPTER 11

Major Blunder

CHAPTER 12

Back to England

CHAPTER 13

OVERLORD

CHAPTER 14

COBRA

CHAPTER 15

Spearhead

CHAPTER 16

Hurtgen Forest

CHAPTER 17

Battle of the Bulge

CHAPTER 18

Siegfried Line

CHAPTER 19

Crossing the Rhine

CHAPTER 20

Victory—Europe

CHAPTER 21

Home Again

CHAPTER 22

Recalled

CHAPTER 23

Discharged Again

CHAPTER 24

Back to Normal

A Return to Normandy

EPILOGUE

No mission too difficult

No sacrifice too great

Duty first

Sgt. John F. Lebda recounts the events of

World War II from the perspective of

a front-line soldier with company D,

26th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division.

From an obscure background in

the mountains of Pennsylvania, he goes on

to become one of the elite players

who destroyed Hitler’s dream.

This is the story of what it took

This book is dedicated to my loving wife,

Caroline, because she never let me give up writing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I want to thank Colonel Rudolph H. Egersdorfer and Major General Francis J. Murdoch, Jr. for their assistance, editing, and encouragement. I also want to thank Tikvah Feinstein, my editor and counselor, for her professionalism.

87040-LEBD-layout-low.pdf  CHAPTER 1

Birth of a Man

I was born October 29, 1919, in Miller Run, Pennsylvania. Miller Run was a small coal-mining town in the northern part of Somerset County between Windber and Central City. The coal company built the entire town, and when all the coal on the lease was mined out, the houses were sold for scrap and lumber. Miller Run does not appear on any maps now. In 1921, Dad moved to another small coal-mining town called Landstreet to work in another mine. He was an immigrant from Poland and was unskilled and illiterate and could only find work in the mines. He purchased a parcel of land and built the house where our family was raised. Our family consisted of Mother, Dad, six boys, and three girls.

The parcel of land consisted of virgin woods, and most of it was boulder strewn. I remember Dad and my oldest brothers removing trees with a crosscut saw and heavy axe. When the trees were removed, we all pitched in and carried rocks and built a stone fence around most of the property. Large boulders were drilled with drilling bits and hammer, filled with dynamite, mud-capped, and blasted into pieces that could be carried or dragged with a team of horses. It was hard work. Dad showed us how to drill holes in boulders and place dynamite charges. Before I reached the age of twelve, I could cut lengths of fuse, crimp into blasting caps, insert into dynamite, and set the charges for maximum effect. When one of us blasted a boulder, we also had to remove it. Sometimes, if the rock was too large, we had to break it with a big sledgehammer. Other times, we drilled and inserted wedges and split the sandstone into blocks to build the foundation for our barn or sheds. We also blasted tree stumps with dynamite.

There were coal mines within walking distance, and when the mines were not operating, we would venture into the underground shafts and borrow dynamite, percussion caps, and fuses. We would take a little at a time to avoid detection, and after stockpiling a large amount, we would take it to a high bald mountain to set the charges, ignite them, and light up the sky for many miles around. Today, fireworks are dwarfed by what we had done. We never got caught.

I have to chuckle when I now hear old-timers bemoan our present younger generation when they compare it with our youthful days. We did not kill or cause destruction, but we were just as vigorous and mischievous.

During my growing years, I attended school in a two-room schoolhouse for the first eight grades. The nearest school was two miles from home, and we walked the distance every day.

The nearest high school was ten miles from home in Ferndale, a suburb of Johnstown. My brother loaned me his 1935 Ford for transportation. We were at the tail end of the Great Depression, and money was scarce. To cover expenses, I recruited five more students who wanted to go to a high school and charged each one ten cents for the round trip every day to pay for gasoline. For extra expenses, I sold scrap iron and trapped animals for pelts.

I remember an evening when I found one of my traps discharged in a crevice among some boulders. I did not know what I caught. I laid on a rock, probed with a branch to remove leaves from the hole, and got my face and eyes blasted with skunk scent.

Some of the urine was in my nose, and I could only breathe through my mouth. I was scared because I was also blind. The scent was like acid; I could not open my eyes.

I was on top of a mountain far from home. I crashed into trees, stumbled over logs, and cried for help. I knew that I had to go downhill. My vision improved as tears washed my eyes, and I was able to squint and go around obstacles.

Mother used most of her canned tomatoes to make me a bath to neutralize the odor.

For my junior year I transferred to Conemaugh Township High School five miles closer to home. We had no buses; we walked, thumbed a ride, or rode a transit bus if we had money.

During those years I learned to swim across swift rivers and long distance on dams. My favorite sports were baseball, hunting, fishing, and all winter sports.

I played small fry, junior league, and Somerset county league baseball with aspirations of some day playing professionally. During the winter when the rivers and lakes were frozen over, I would skate all day. When the snow was deep, I liked to ski on all the big ski slopes in our area. After school, I cut mine timber and railroad ties and felled timber for a sawmill.

On weekends, I roamed the Laurel Mountains searching for ginseng and herbs. When night came, I would make camp, stay the night, and walk the next day. There was no TV, but for a nickel, we could board a train and go to Hooversville to see a movie.

During the winter, I also had a trap line and made some money selling furs. Sears and Roebuck was my best customer for the pelts.

When I was still in grade school, I had a teacher who was a veteran of World War I. During recess, we asked what it was like during the war. He was poisoned with phosgene gas and never liked to talk about it, but we insisted, never giving up because some days he would talk about trench war, how he attacked the enemy position, but he never talked about death or if doughboys were dismembered or wounded. We could only assume that it was a bang-bang, and if they ran you just went after them until the war was over.

During the early 1930s, there was one man who molded me and was the influence that made me the person that I became. His name was Joe Barrow. His tutoring began when he walked home to a shanty that he rented back in the boon docks. Mother baked the best-tasting homemade bread in an outdoor brick hearth, and when Joe walked by on the way from working in a coal mine, he got one whiff of the baking bread and asked Mom if she would sell him some. She had no price on any of her cooking, so she gave him a big loaf that just came out of the oven. Joe was grateful, and on his way home the next day, he dropped off a large sack full of coal. Mother always had a dinner dish full of good things to eat when he came by our house. We became friendly and began spending much time at Joe’s and even slept in his shack if we stayed late. He taught me how to box, wrestle, play baseball, hunt wild game, trap for furs, and shoot a .22-caliber rifle. Above all, he always stressed honesty. He bought all the .22 ammunition and had me practice shooting with an open sight. I still remember how he said, Aim, breathe, hold steady on target and squeezes. Joe was a big man. He stood about six feet and three inches and weighed about 225 pounds. While we boxed, he would get on his knees and urge me to hit him, but I never could. We spent many hours on how to parry a punch. Dad was a good butcher and smoked hams and made Polish kelbassi. He always had a package of his fares for Joe, and they knew we were safe if we were with him. Joe Barrow was a black man, originally from Harlan, Kentucky, with light brown skin, broad shoulders, and always had a friendly smile. One day, Joe disappeared without a word, and I never saw him again. In later years, I always wondered if he was related to that famous world champion, the brown bomber.

Those early years also occurred during the Great Depression, and to supplement the small government relief handouts, we had to hunt wild game for meat. Money was scarce, and bullets were hard to come by, so when Dad gave us a few cartridges, we had to bring home game for every bullet he gave us. I was blessed with good eyesight and steady nerves and seldom missed my target.

During my junior and senior year vacation in high school, I worked on a farm in upstate New York near Oswego. It was hard work farming, and I worked from before dawn until after dusk. I learned to plow with horses, and I did heavy work with a caterpillar. I could make horseshoes in a blacksmith shop, shoe horses, and fix all the farm equipment. The pay was supposed to be a dollar a day and board, but when it was time to go back to school, the farmer had no money, and I never did get paid for a summer of hard work.

After I graduated from high school, my brother, Stanley, got a job for me in the coal mine where he worked. The entrance to the coal mine began at the foot of a mountain and went down a forty-five-foot degree slope for about a thousand feet.

We had to walk down to the bottom where the company provided us with rail transportation to a work place several miles under ground.

The bituminous coal seam varied from two to four feet in height, and for a period of ten to twelve hours, we dug coal while on our knees.

Coal mining is the dirtiest, hardest, and most stressful job in the world. The pay was poor, and from the moment that I entered the mine, my life was in danger. There were pockets of methane gas that would ignite with any spark or flame.

Although the roof was timbered as the coal was removed, there was still a danger of the roof caving in. Timber was not installed to hold up the roof; it was there to give warning. When the posts began to crack and splinter under pressure, it was time to run to a safe place. Sometimes there was no warning, and men were crushed by falling rock. I mined and shoveled coal into rail cars at the rate of forty-seven cents a ton. It was dangerous work; the mine was filled with methane gas, and the slate roof was a threat to fall, injure, or kill a worker. My dad and brother Joe were permanently disabled by falling rock and slate.

The most hazardous danger within a coal mine was dry coal dust that floated in the air. The coal company sprayed and dusted the caverns with lime. The combination of the two elements resulted in a greater danger, black lung. Breathing dust and lime into the lungs filled them with the mixture that could never be removed. The resultant asthmatic condition plagued the afflicted miners for the rest of their lives.

We were slaves to the coal company and the company store. When payday came, there was very little cash left after food purchases and expenses. Miners who rented company houses were always in debt.

Down in the mine, we worked as a team on a conveyer that moved coal from the work face to a head tunnel with rail cars. One of the men on our team was a big fat lazy guy who did about one-fourth of his share of work. We could not get rid of him because he was protected by the union rules.

We shared the tonnage of coal mined equally, but when I did three times as much work as he did, I got mad. I threw my shovel away, grabbed my pick, and began knocking down timber that supported the roof; I rolled in the coal dust and screamed bloody