Recollections: World War Ii Memoirs of Twenty-Eight Who Served

By Northern Neck Chapter-Military Officers Association of America

Recollections is the result of many meetings with the twenty-eight veterans interviewed, and many hours of editing. The veterans’ names appear in the Contents section of the book. Their stories and their enthusiasm in telling them took me back to those years of uncomplicated patriotism, of courage, honor and glory, and, yes, of loss and suffering. We are proud of them still.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 27, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469103723

Book preview

Recollections

World War II Memoirs of

Twenty-eight Who Served

Northern Neck Chapter

Military Officers Association of America

MGEN James R. Harding, President

LTJG Franklin T. Birdsall, Jr., Editor

Copyright © 2008 by Northern Neck Chapter - Military Officers Association of America.

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.

Rev. date: 03/07/2019

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

562465

CONTENTS

To all who served our country in World War II

Captions for cover illustrations

Front Cover; clockwise from top

Commander Thomas Denegre in simulated submarine attack, 1950.

USS Brownson DD 518 enroute to decommissioning.

Army Private Eugene Small in a jeep, November 1941, Ft. Eustis, Virginia. He would later be commissioned.

Here is the fabled Hawaiian Wahine as she never was, albeit famous in song and fiction, in her little grass shack.

Lieutenant James Rankin on the indispensable identification card, 1950

Second Lieutenant Ray Warren standing at ease, waiting for orders

Unidentified carrier (possibly USS Yorktown (CV 10)) getting under way

Japanese man with walking stick. Sasebo, Japan, 1945

Back Cover; clockwise from top:

F6F Hellcat from Ensign Floyd Van Etten’s squadron. This Grumman product was designed for the navy as a fighter/interceptor to be flown from aircraft carriers. Its replacement in1942 of the slower F4F Wildcat marked one of the turning points of the war with Japan. Once the F6F was in combat, the Mitsubishi Zero ceased to be the dominant fighter plane in the Pacific Theater.

This German V1 rocket-powered flying bomb was launched in France and aimed at England. As it flew, it made a putting sound. When it stopped putting, it came down (as in this picture) and exploded. It caused a lot of damage. The British called it a Buzz Bomb.

Smoke over Guam. In August 1944, American forces took possession of Guam after fierce and bloody fighting. Fourteen hundred Americans were killed; the Japanese lost ten thousand.

Ensign Richard Ward in 1945 on Guam where some Japanese held out for decades despite efforts to bring them in to surrender.

The Messerschmitt-109 (ME-109) was the primary German fighter for the entire war. The long-nosed Focke-Wulf (FW-190), introduced later in the war, was its equal; some said its superior. The ME-109 had a short range. In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, it was successfully met by the British Spitfire and Hurricane fighters.

Second Lieutenant Bob Willis with his wife and daughter

The German FW-190 was a radial engined fighter plane—better armed, heavier and faster than the ME-109, but less maneuverable. It saw a lot of service during the war, especially in Western Europe.

USS Ringgold (DD 500) collided with the destroyer USS Yarnall (DD 541) during night exercises. This is the Ringgold’s bow after the collision.

Subchaser 450 was a vessel similar to the one on which Sonarman Galloway served.

FOREWORD

Welcome to this selection of our oral histories.

In December 2002, the Northern Neck Chapter—Military Officers Association of America (NNMOAA) decided to capture from its World War II members vignettes of their service and publish them so that others would be informed and, to some extent, entertained. The timing of the project coincided with the development of the World II Memorial that now graces a section of the National Mall at Seventeenth Street in Washington DC.

It was thought that untold tales of valor, patriotism, suffering, and simple living during the time before, during, and after World War II needed to be recorded and shared. If the stories were not captured now, they would be lost with the passing of the generation that lived them. Thus, this book took form.

LTJG Franklin T. Birdsall Jr., accepted the challenge of conducting interviews, editing transcriptions, and leading the project as historian. It took almost six years to complete the initial work, and during this time, several of the veterans interviewed died, which further reinforced the objective of the project.

Some of the interviewed veterans were in the front lines; some were staff officers who planned strategies and directed its tactics. Others provided valuable training at home and abroad. Others led army occupation units. One was master of a merchant ship, two aviators were Aces; all served to protect our country. To them we are grateful, and we know that you will appreciate their stories.

MG James R. Harding

USA (ret) President of the Chapter

On behalf of the Chapter’s Boards and its

Officers who patiently supported this work

Fall 2008

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This collection of World War II memoirs began in 2002 when BGEN Ward M. LeHardy, then president of the Northern Neck Chapter—Military Officers Association of America (NNMOAA), appointed me historian of the chapter. When asked about the assignment, I said I would interview our WWII veterans. Judge for yourself how well we did.

Recollections is the result of many meetings with the twenty-eight veterans interviewed, and many hours of editing. The veterans’ names appear in the Contents section of the book. Their stories and their enthusiasm in telling them took me back to those years of uncomplicated patriotism, of courage, honor and glory, and, yes, of loss and suffering. We are proud of them still.

Tom Denegre helped me with the interviewing and obtaining signatures. Jim Charboneau interviewed George Barton; David F. Winkler, PhD, of the Naval Historical Foundation interviewed Duke Bayne; and Porter Kier interviewed Tom Denegre. The military editing team of Dick Allen, Tony Blackstone, Tom Denegre, Wes Edwards, Jim Harding, Mike Kenna, Jack Reavill, Bill Stackhouse, George Van Sant, and Richard Ward was prompt and thorough in its work. After the editing had been completed, we turned our attention to publication. George Van Sant recommended Xlibris as a publisher, which we hired. An oversight committee comprised of Frank Martin, Wes Edwards, Bill Kelly and Tony Blackstone guided the project to its conclusion; Mike Kenna handled publicity; Tony Waring advised on decorations and awards.

A special and deserving note of gratitude goes to those who exercised their powers of attorney to release documents that otherwise could not have been included in this book.

We are greatly appreciative to those who gave NNMOAA money it needed to pay the publisher. NNMOAA had no budgeted funds for this project. All our expenses were paid from donations.

Others helped along the way. Carmen Kilduff transcribed the interview tapes. Tammy Revere helped me solve myriad and opaque computer problems.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the coaching I received from Xlibris. In this regard I will exercise a presumed prerogative and tell you a story about globalization. When I first spoke with Eva Montecillo, Submissions Representative, I thought her English very good, but there was this accent I couldn’t place. I asked her if she were calling from company headquarters in Philadelphia. She said she wasn’t. She said she was calling from a beautiful island in the Philippines. Luzon? I asked. She said no. I made a shot in the dark, Cebu, then? Eva laughed and said yes. I cannot tell you how pleased I was with myself. It was my first personal experience, in my seventy-seven years, with globalization. Overall, the service from Xlibris has been prompt, courteous, patient and thorough. No question went unanswered.

If I have egregiously overlooked others who have helped us complete this project, I thank them now and apologize for the omission.

Franklin T. Birdsall Jr.,

Editor

PROLOGUE

World War II in Europe began when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. On September 3, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. The United States remained neutral although it did provide aid to Great Britain and its allies. American neutrality came to an end on December 7, 1941, when Japan launched a surprise air attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. On December 8, the United States and Great Britain declared war on Japan. On December 11, the United States declared war on Germany and Italy, allies of Japan. World War II now really was world-wide.

World War II engaged more people, left behind more casualties, and caused more damage than any other war in history. Our veterans, whose stories comprise this book, were there. Some of them were in uniform before the attack on Pearl Harbor, but most were not. They fought, often at bayonet point, on islands in the Pacific, in Africa as newcomers to the Allies’ land offensives, and in Europe on ancient battlegrounds. Some shipped out on the sea, and some under it, hunting U-boats in the Atlantic and the Japanese fleet in the Pacific. We took islands from the Japanese. American planes joined British allies in combat with the German Luftwaffe in the skies over Europe. American war production soared, and so did enlistments. The spirit of the affronted nation might be expressed as, who do they think we are?

By September 1942, nine months after declaring war on Japan, we were on the offensive. On April 18, 1942 Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle led sixteen Mitchell B-25 bombers off the flight deck of the USS Hornet (CV-8) to bomb Tokyo. In May we stopped a Japanese invasion fleet at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Japanese navy never again got that far south. In June we stopped another invasion fleet at the Battle of Midway and sent four Japanese carriers to the bottom in the process. In August we landed on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, which was defended by the Japanese Army. Our losses were great, but by December, we had prevailed. The United States never flinched and, after Guadalcanal, never looked back.

In the North Atlantic we joined the Canadians and British in a great U-boat hunt. The U-boats had had their way in the early years of the war but by the end of it the Allies had sunk nearly every U-boat ever built. The North Atlantic in winter is fierce. The crews of the destroyers, corvettes, and destroyer escorts that protected the convoys to Great Britain stood their watches on open bridges, ate cold food, and sometimes lost their lives over the side in rough weather.

On June 6, 1944, Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. It was the largest amphibious landing ever made. The Germans had fortified the beaches well, and the Allies took heavy casualties. It was bloody work, but the Allies pressed on through France and Belgium and into Germany. On May 7, 1945, an exhausted and beaten Germany surrendered. The Japanese surrendered on September 3, 1945, after the United States had dropped two atomic bombs on them.

World War II was over, and our veterans came home victorious.

Here are their stories. Some of them continue on after World War II into Korea, Vietnam, and retirement.

Franklin T. Birdsall Jr.

Editor

MEMOIRS

U.S. ARMY

George Lloyd Barton, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army*

Active Duty: Jun 15, 1941-Mar 1955

Decorations and Awards

Silver Star

Bronze Star (three battle stars)

Good Conduct Medal (Army) American Defense Medal

American Campaign Medal

European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal

World War II Victory Medal

Army of Occupation Medal

National Defense Service Medal

Korean Service Medal

United Nations Korean Service Medal

Fourragere (France)

Over the years, my children and some of my friends have urged me to write down the important events of my life. Until now I have not done so because I have found it difficult to write about myself. But now, at age eighty-four, with the help of a friend, I have tried to set down on these pages the story of my life.

I was born on September 9, 1917, in Charlottesville, Virginia. My paternal grandfather was George Lloyd Barton, who was born on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. He married Marianna Prentis Causey. George was a railroad superintendent in Suffolk, Virginia, and was a businessman in that city. He died in 1921 when he was fairly young. I was about four years old at the time. My paternal grandmother Marianna was a real Southern lady and very much in charge, very much in command, all the time. She spent her final days in Newport News and died in 1954. She lived to be eighty-eight years old and was quite a character. Both Marianna and George are buried in Suffolk.

My maternal grandmother died in 1912, and my maternal grandfather, John Malachai White, who served with Mosby’s Rangers in the Civil War, died in 1914 before I was born.

My father attended the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. After he graduated, he stayed on at the university where he taught Latin and Greek. He remained in Charlottesville until 1918; that is, for about three years. In 1914 he married Joan Malachi White in Charlottesville. Her father, the Civil War veteran, was a circuit judge in Albemarle, Greene, and Madison counties in Virginia. He also founded the Peoples National Bank which later was acquired by Bank of America.

My father was a gifted teacher, and shortly after I was born, he moved the family to Lexington, Virginia. He taught Latin, French, and English at Virginia Military Institute and was acting head of the History Department. He was a classically educated man who could teach nearly anything including mathematics, physics, and chemistry as well as languages.

I grew to manhood in Lexington and Lynchburg in sight of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. I was no scholar when I was a lad. Each school day from 1924 to 1931, I walked to and from a nearby little brick elementary school in Lexington. I did manage to skip the eighth grade. My father taught me to be dedicated to whatever I undertook. My father was always on time, always fulfilled his obligations, and to the best of his ability, always saw to it that I did the same. My role models were my father and the Southern heroes of the civil war: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and John Singleton Mosby.

In 1931 my father sent me to the Virginia Episcopal School (VES) in Lynchburg—a boarding school. I took a bus from Lexington to the Country Club in Lynchburg. I got off there and, carrying a heavy suitcase and a guitar, walked the two miles to the school. My father knew what he was doing when he sent me to the boarding school. The school turned me around, and I was a pretty good scholar when I left there (after five years). I had to take Algebra I three times before I got through it, but after that, the math got easier, with the exception of trigonometry.

After graduating from the Episcopal School, I moved on to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, that is about twelve miles south of Utica. Shortly before I finished my studies at Virginia Episcopal School, my father accepted the position as headmaster of a boy’s preparatory school near Niagara Falls, New York. The location of his new position was the reason I chose nearby Hamilton College. I graduated from Hamilton College in 1940 with a BA in English Literature, Modern Languages, and Ethics.

In 1939, the year before I graduated from Hamilton, I had become a postulant for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York State. I had first experienced a calling to the ministry in 1931 at a communion service. I was fourteen at the time. But when I finished college at Hamilton, the draft was about to begin, many people thought a war was brewing, and I decided to postpone my religious training.

In the fall of 1940, following graduation from Hamilton, I attended the University of Virginia to work on a Master of Arts degree. But for a variety of reasons, including too much partying, too much horseback riding (which I first learned to love while Father was teaching at VMI), too much fox hunting and some arrogant professors, I quit.

I then took a job with the Peoples National Bank. On March 15, 1941, after working at the bank for three months, I went to Fort Meyer and enlisted in the Third U.S. Cavalry. I told my parents about the enlistment afterward. I have never regretted enlisting. I was just floating at the time, and it was one of the best moves I ever made on my own.

When I enlisted at Fort Meyer, they saw that I knew horses. They would bring in remounts from Reno, Oklahoma, and I would go through them and pick out the best one for myself. They were about half broken. I would school the horse and have it going good, and an officer would come along and take it away from me. So the last horse I got was #274a, Cocoa, the meanest damn horse you ever want to find. Now nobody took that horse away from me. But that horse was tough. He could go all day long and then you’d tie him up on the picket line at night, and he’d still be trotting. Once I was trying to clean out his hind feet. I was a corporal at the time. My platoon sergeant came along and said, Corporal, move aside, and let me show you how to do this. I was laughing. He went over and tried to pick up Cocoa’s hind foot to show me how to do it, and he wound up against the side of the stable. So he said, Corporal, let’s don’t worry about that horse’s hind feet. To shoe Cocoa, we had to lift him up in a sling. But it was a lot of fun.

Then they brought in the draftees, and they had to move all the privates in the troop out. By this time Price, Cain, and I were corporals; and we did everything. We pulled KP, we pulled barracks duty, and we did all the dirty work till they brought the draftees in. I remember one evening, it had been a hot day, and we had been exercising the horses. You would ride one and lead three, one on one side and two on the other. You’d do that twice a day, and it was good hard work. That night the first sergeant came in to our barracks, we called him the Beam because he had a big red nose. He just dropped a case of beer between our bunks and left. Those were great days. Washington was just a sleepy little place then.

I went from private to corporal to sergeant pretty fast. I had two tours of duty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as an enlisted man. I started the first tour in June 1941, and at the end of that, I was promoted to corporal. I started my second tour at the tomb as corporal of the guard in August, and in September 1941 I was promoted to sergeant and sent off to OCS at Fort Reilly, Kansas.

I attended Officer Candidate School at Fort Reilly from September until December 1941. The intensity of training increased after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7. I met Cecelia Holmes Wahl at the Officers Club. She was working at the Post Exchange at Fort Reilly at the time. We were married on March 15, 1942, but didn’t tell our parents until afterward. After we were married, we lived at Junction City, Kansas, in a very, very tiny apartment owned by a wonderful couple who were schoolteachers.

Right after we were married, Cecelia’s parents came to Junction City to check me out and spent a day with us. And whenever I got time off, we would take a train to Kansas City to visit. My folks met Cecelia in October 1942. We came down here to Christ Church School, near Urbanna, Virginia, where my father was headmaster. I had gotten ten days leave.

I was stationed at the Cavalry Training Replacement Center at Fort Reilly, training draftees. It’s what they called down at the flats. They stopped training men on horses in about late 1941. In August 1942, I was transferred to Camp Hood, Texas, where I trained on tank destroyers. The tank destroyers carried 75-76 mm guns or 75 mm howitzers.

After initial orientation, I spent most of my time building North Camp Hood and ranges for rifles, machine guns, and artillery. I had to leave the drilling of troops to other officers in the company. I was a first lieutenant for the first six to seven months I was at Camp Hood. I was promoted to captain in March of 1943.

At first when I was transferred to Camp Hood, Cecelia and I lived in Temple, Texas. After I moved to North Camp, we lived in a one-room apartment in Gatesville and then we were able to move into a house in Waco, Texas. We moved in with another couple, the man was a friend of mine. We were able to make the move because my friend had a car. It was not always easy, the living conditions were not ideal, but Cecelia and I were determined to stay together.

Toward the end of spring 1943, I had a battalion commander and regimental commander who were old National Guard officers. They were impossible to work for. I was told to conduct an inspection of my company. But I was building the ranges at the time, and so I had my lieutenants and first sergeant conducting the inspection and signing the required paperwork. When the paperwork was turned in to the battalion commander, he threatened to court-martial me for not conducting the inspection myself. I said fine but went to my regimental commander and told him that rather than create problems for everyone, I would like to be transferred to the parachute school at Fort Benning, Georgia.

I was transferred to the Fort Benning Parachute School near Columbus, Georgia, in May 1943. At the same time, my friend from Camp Hood, Herb Mansfield, also transferred to the Parachute School. We have kept in touch through the years. Cecelia moved with me. I experienced no fear during the first jump. The training was much harder than jumping. I graduated from parachute training on June 30, 1943. I was assigned as the commander of Company A, 542 Parachute Regiment, Fort Benning. I was in the airborne infantry.

In about September 1943, we knew that Cecelia was about six months pregnant, and so she went home to her parents in Kansas City. Cecelia was born in Kansas City, Kansas, but they moved across the border to Kansas City, Missouri, while she was very young. My son George was born in January of 1944. I was commander of company A at the time, and I couldn’t get leave to be with her. But I got two to three days leave about two weeks later and brought her home from the hospital. I was tickled to death. I was really pleased with George. The hospital where Cecelia gave birth was a terrific place.

In early 1944, I got orders for overseas. I was to report to the 506 parachute infantry regiment (506 PIR) of the 101st Airborne Division at Hungerford, England, about forty miles west of Redding. The regimental headquarters were at Littlecote Castle. I trained there until D-day.

All during this time, especially during my army career, Cecelia’s folks were absolutely wonderful. Before I left to go overseas, Cecelia was pregnant again; I called her mother from the port of embarkation. I can’t say what she said to me over the phone when I told her Cecelia was expecting again. But they were great all the way through. They were fantastic, they took care of Cecelia and the children, and when I went to Korea years later, they did the same thing.

From April 1944 until D-day, 6 June 1944, I was in charge of the 506 PIR base camp. The whole regiment had trained together, and it was ready to go. I was a replacement, and they had no place for replacements—additional baggage in other words. So I stayed and took care of the base camp in England as the regiment, and the rest of the 101st went over to Normandy. So I did not make the invasion of Normandy. I did not make that jump.

The first time I went over to the continent was in August of ‘44. We were to jump in front of Patton’s army. At Rennes, I believe. I was the company commander of the service company of the 506th. The service company handles all the supply, maintenance and personnel for the regiment. The beaches, of course, were secure by this time, and they put me in charge of the division service units and sent me on ahead of the jump. It took seven landing ship tanks (LST) to get us over to the beaches. When we got there, Patton had already overrun the jump area. So, we had to turn around and go back to England.

We had already unloaded everything on Utah beach. I had to locate another seven LSTs. And after I found them the navy didn’t have the faintest idea of how to load them. I told the navy to go play softball on the beach and I would load the LSTs; which I did—from memory.

After we got back to England, there was a period of intense training for whatever jump would come up. A big airborne invasion of Holland and the Netherlands was slated for the 20th of September. I very much wanted to make that jump, but Colonel Sink, our regimental commander, said I had so much experience handling the service elements that once again he put me in charge of all the service elements of the division for operation Market Garden. Colonel Sink was one of the most fabulous characters I’ve ever known. I kept track of him almost until he died.

And we landed; I believe it was the 20th of September, the day the jump was made. And the mud, in the area where we assembled all the division service elements, was so heavy we had difficulty getting out of it and on to the road. A Limey, a British officer, was leading us, and he took off down the road at twenty-five to thirty miles an hour. Our convoy, the 101st service units, stayed pretty much together, and we got up into upper Belgium and Holland without too much trouble. We had trouble getting gas along the way because so many people didn’t know what we were doing. Once, I went into a British petrol dump which was filled with American GI gas cans, but they didn’t want to give us any. A British colonel was in charge of it. So I pulled out my .45 and said, Look, my unit needs gas, and we’re going to get it. I said this is the 101st Airborne Division, and he went right on and gave us the gas to get us out of there.

We got to Eindhoven in Holland where the troops had landed. Eindhoven was a little country town, with a lot of cows in the fields. The jump itself was a parade ground jump. There was no enemy fire, no nothing, and everything went fine until we went to connect up with the Eighty-second Airborne Division which jumped near Nijmegen and the British—Polish airborne group which jumped at Arnhem. The allied forces had not listened to the Dutch underground. The Dutch underground told us that the Fifteenth German Army was over on our left. And we didn’t buy it. Consequently that long axis from Eindhoven all the way up to Arnhem, which was just a single thread, was cut continually by the Germans as they were going east, trying to get home.

Going up the road was very slow work because the British Second Army could never get their tanks in gear. The 101st was supposed to take the road, and the tanks were supposed to roll. We were supposed to be in Holland three days, and we were in there seventy-two days. Gradually we moved through Nijmegen onto the island we called the muddy, bloody island, which was between the Waal and Neder Rijn. The Germans, of course, had high ground on the north side. But we stayed there about sixty days until we pulled out on about the 2nd or 3rd of December. It was just nasty, dirty hard work, defensive work, for which we hadn’t been trained, but it didn’t make that much difference. We were trying to keep the troops supplied down this thin supply route which was constantly under fire. We were also trying to bring out equipment, the wounded and the dead. We were always under fire and strafing from the German air force.

We landed our service elements on the beaches; I think it was Omaha beach, at the start of Market Garden. In some ways Market Garden was more difficult and nasty than Bastogne. At Bastogne you knew what you were doing; there was no question. Market Garden was a failure. It was under British control. Monty (Montgomery) was in charge. I’m sorry, but I don’t have much use for him. I realize he did a great job in Africa. But he botched the Market Garden operation. At the Battle of the Bulge, where our troops were having such a hard time, he wanted Eisenhower to let him go in and tidy the situation up, this following Market Garden, is the reason I say that.

At one point in Market Garden I had my whole service company together in one place because we were getting ready to move. The whole regiment was getting ready to move. But as I said, the road was cut by the Germans many times. I had a real sharp lieutenant, Trotter. And so I told him, Stan, you go see if that road is cut, and if it is, you come back and let me know. I’m going to give you forty-five minutes, and if you don’t come back in forty-five minutes, I’m going to bring all this stuff down the road. Well, he didn’t come back, so we took off. I was riding a motorcycle at the time, leading the whole shooting match.

We were tooling along making good time, and all of a sudden, man, everything came in on us, and we had no way of deploying for combat since we were loaded for an administrative move. So I parked the motorcycle and dove into a foxhole by the side of the road. What happened was there were woods all around us and the Germans let the whole column get in there and then cut down on us. And so I hollered back to John Garvey, my exec, John, this is not place for us to be. I won’t use the language I used then, but I said let’s get out of here.

What we’ll do is drop the trailers from the trucks and get them turned around. Then we’ll hook them up again. They were one-ton trailers, but I’m sure they had two to three tons loaded on them. Where we ever got the strength to do that, I’ll never know. But we unhooked the trailers from the trucks, let the trucks turn around and then we hooked the trailers back on the trucks. The last thing I remember seeing as I looked back as I was moving out of there—I was leaning forward and kicking that motorcycle as hard as I could kick it—was a Tiger tank with an 88 mm gun pointed right at my back. But he never fired. I lost two men that day, Harin and Scappino. These weren’t the only ones I lost, but I remember these particularly. They were captured. We overran them later on in the war, and they looked healthy and bronzed and everything. We looked terrible compared to them. Stan Trotter did not come back because he came under fire and had to keep going.

George’s Service Company was commended for meritorious service after this action. The commendation said:

The following named Officers and Enlisted Men of the 506th Parachute Infantry are commended for meritorious service in action. On 26 September in Holland, their supply convoy of twenty-two vehicles was halted by enemy fire from both flanks, forcing all personnel to seek cover by the roadside. All movement was restricted by enemy small arms fire. Enemy artillery fire began destroying vehicles forward of the convoy. Immediate appraisal of the situation prompted these men to leave their protective cover, return to their vehicles, turn them around and take them to safety. As a result of their actions twenty of the twenty-two vehicles were saved. The remaining two were cut off by enemy tanks and destroyed.

Captain George L. Barton III

Second Lieut. John C. Garvey

Pfc. Max Bulger

Marijan Derencin

John Fadrosh

Joseph A. Gorick

Ephrian E. Kreitzer

George Reppert, Jr.

Howard E. Rodgers

Michael Scappino

Wilmer C. Strahl

William Turberville

Pvt. Foster M. Bateman

Webster P. Bailey

Steve J. Barney

James D. Deist

Edward DePalma

Frank Harin

Howard Heaberlin

Warren E. Hentry

Donald Lancaster

William D. Sherron

Edward Southworth

Luther Turner

By command of Major General Taylor

On the way back from the ambush, some British were alongside the road having tea. And they said, Well, just like the bloody Yanks, run and turn tail when the going gets hot. But we got back down the road and reassembled. John Garvey, my exec, was a Roman Catholic, and he said, after we got reassembled, Captain, you and I have got to go to church. I said, John, my church isn’t over here, and he said, That’s all right, you can come with me, and mine will take care of you ‘till yours gets here. And so we did. The next day we came back up the line, and all those Limeys who had been giving us the hard time were alongside the ditches dead and all their vehicles beat up. There had been a real skirmish in there.

We evacuated from that area back to Mourmelon in France—Mourmelon-le-Grande, a WWI army camp. We were there about sixteen days. The 101st and the Eighty-second, because we both were in Holland, we were back there together. And that was Eisenhower’s reserve; that was all he had. We all came out; we were stripped, our weapons, our clothes, we were all grimy and nasty. We all needed a break after seventy-two days in action. While we were at Mourmelon-le-Grande, about a third of the whole division was always on leave, in Paris usually. So we weren’t training, we were just cleaning up trying to get organized. All my troops were gone, and several of us decided we would go to Paris for a weekend. It was December 16. We had followed a field hospital from England all the way into France and to Paris, and we knew all the doctors and nurses and they were good to us. They’d always give us a good meal and something to drink. While we were there the hospital people came and said we had to get back—all of the 101st and Eighty-second had to go back.

So I got back about nine o’clock and was well sacked out when the first sergeant came and woke me and said there’s a meeting at regimental headquarters. It was the Bastogne alert. And so the next day we had to get together what we had and, after that, load up to go to Bastogne. We were short everything; we were short of ammunition, and a lot of the weapons were in tractor trailers. Once again I was leading the whole convoy, troops, and all. All night on the way up, we kept seeing stuff going the other way. My company exec, John Garvey, was in the backseat of my jeep, and he kept saying, Captain, are you sure we’re going the right way? All these big guns and things were going the other way. I said, John, here’s a map. Every place we came to an MP would look at the map and say, Keep going. We drove all night, and the traffic was just unbelievable. Our convoy was going up to the front and all the beat up, defeated troops were coming out; the ones who almost had been demolished.

When we hit the Bastogne area, it was almost like breaking through a crust. All of a sudden it was real quiet. In the distance we could hear some gunfire. But we had to go find the enemy. And when we found the enemy, he was all around us. Anyhow we got in; and the four regiments (three parachute regiments: the 501st, 502nd, 506th and the 377th glider regiment) fanned out and made their circle. We had some tanks in there and they were good. We settled down to really go at it. We were in Bastogne.

My service company handled munitions, food, blankets, equipment and whatever else the troops needed. I moved it up to battalion, and the battalion supply officers moved it out to the line companies. We were short of ammunition. And so my job (I just took it on myself because no one was telling me anything) was to round up all the ammunition I could get. I found an ammunition dump and loaded up a 2 ½ ton truck so heavy that it bent in the middle. When I got back to the regiment, I told Colonel Sink where I had been and what I had done. He said, You didn’t come in that road. I said, Yes, I did. He said, Well, that road’s cut; in fact, all the roads are cut. How did you get through? I said, I didn’t know, but I came in that road.

So we established a supply dump and got the ammunition out to all the battalions in the regiment. It was touch and go for a long time. But of course the thing was the Germans were always so well organized. It was really the first time that they had come in close contact with a U.S. trained airborne division. We were trained that the enemy is always around you; as an individual, when you jump, he’s always around you, he’s waiting for you. It was chaos in a way, but the paratroopers loved it, and the Germans couldn’t understand it because it was chaos—total chaos. One of our troopers said of the Krauts, The poor bastards, they’ve got us surrounded. So of course we held, and they kept saying, General Patton is on the way to save you. We told them to tell him to stay back there, that we’re handling this all by ourselves. Well, he came anyway. I think it was the 26th of December when he broke through and we fought on with him into January. They loaded us on tanks, and we attacked with Patton’s army. We really cracked a hole in that salient. Then we were pulled out. I think it was on the 10th of January.

Colonel Sink was a real character. One time in Bastogne he rolled his cap around the top of his head and said, goddammit, all these people have Bastogne signs, and we don’t have one. Why don’t you go out and get me one? All the signs had been taken off the roads, so I took some motor pool men, and we went down to the train station in the center of Bastogne. We got some of the most beautiful Bastogne signs you ever saw. We had to cut them off with a welding torch. Colonel Sink was a lieutenant general when he retired. Casualties from Normandy through Bastogne had been heavy, but not bad when one considers the devastation brought on the Germans.

In Market Garden we were fed British rations, and for a U.S. soldier that wasn’t very good. But they did have a good rum ration. Getting clean was—to be truthful it was hit or miss. During Market Garden I got one good shower. We came back from the muddy, bloody island to Nijmegen and got a good shower and clean clothes. One of my officers, Scoop Robler, had to do something at division headquarters. So we parked at division headquarters, and he went in and I stayed outside. All of a sudden this German plane came strafing, and so I dove under the jeep into three to four inches of mud and there went my shower. We also took spit baths. You take a helmet, try to get some warm water, and wash yourself. It was an absolutely miserable existence. Dirty, cold, wet, most of the time—there was nothing happy about it. In Bastogne, our mess sergeant made snow ice cream and that was a big treat.

I got a telegram from the Red Cross while I was in Bastogne telling me that my daughter Cecelia Quiett Barton had been born. I don’t remember whether or not we had picked out a name for her before I went overseas. But if we didn’t, Cecelia and her mother took care of that. And of course, in those days, you didn’t know ahead of time if it was going to be a boy or girl.

I wrote to Cecelia as often as I could, but back in WWII you couldn’t say much. Everything was cut out, censored. So basically all I could say was everything was going fine. Or I’m pretty busy right now, but my health is good. I got letters from her regularly, about family life. We got mail pretty good, but sometimes we would get a lot at one time. I don’t know if I wrote enough for Cecelia to get a lot at one time. I think she got a reasonable number of letters. But there were many times that she didn’t know where I was.

When we were relieved, we filled in where Patton’s army had left, down around Haguenau and Strasbourg.

One the way there I was leading the whole convoy and we were strung out. The convoy was one of the most pathetic things you every saw—dirty, nasty, all types of vehicles, captured vehicles, you name it and we had it. I remember I looked back over the convoy and said how we ever did anything I’ll never know—except for the people in it. When we got to the Third Army area there was an MP on duty and a big sign that said, You’re now entering the Third Army Area. Another sign said, Summary Court Martial offenses; no tie, etc., and a whole list of other stupid things. So the MP held me up and said, You have to wait here, Captain. He made a phone call, and pretty soon this spit and polish major came up and said, You can’t come in here. I said, That’s fine. Here’s this big field. I can turn this whole division around in it and we can go back where it’s nice and warm. He said, What outfit is this? I said, The 101st Airborne. He said, Follow me. And so we stayed there. I can’t remember how long, probably into March.

And then we went back again to Mourmelon-le-Grand and then to the Rhine River between Cologne and Dusseldorf on the west bank. We were just sort of patrolling as U.S. forces were driving up on the other side of the river thru Cologne and Dusseldorf. We were there when Roosevelt died.

One of the dumbest things I ever did in my life was when I took a plane trip out of Landsburg. There was an airstrip there and some kind of a plane factory underground. Also unassembled light planes were stashed around. Some of my officers and noncoms were pilots and aircraft mechanics. They proceeded to assemble a couple of twin seaters that looked like trainers. These men said that we were so strung out along the autobahn that we could use these planes to help communications. Stupidly, I thought it was a great idea. As we prepared to leave the area, I climbed in the seat of an airplane behind Sergeant Hand, and we took off over the autobahn. There were streams of POWs going west as we went east. All seemed to be in order. The weather was beautiful. Then all of a sudden I noticed a flight P-47s buzzing around overhead. (I was sorry at this point that I had put my wife’s name on the fuselage.) Then it dawned on me that we had not blocked out the Nazi swastikas on the top and bottom of the wings! So up I stood in the open-air cockpit waving a white handkerchief frantically. They turned and flew off, no doubt thinking the army had truly lost it!

And then after that, we went on a run through Southern Germany into Berchtesgaden and down into an Austrian village, Zell am See, which was a health resort, a ski resort and just a real swanky place. We stayed there through VE Day and the rest of the summer.

There was little combat on the route south. We were rounding up SS soldiers in hidden spots, primarily, and getting all the weapons piled up; just tons of German weapons. Got the German soldiers put into prisoner of war camps. There wasn’t too much combat going on.

I think one of the terrible things in Landsburg was a displaced persons’ camp. I don’t believe it was a Jewish camp, although they were so emaciated it was hard to tell anything about them. I just turned loose all the people who were able walk into the town and just told them to be back there by nine o’clock at night. They did come back, believe it or not. Then I started through the buildings. We started into one which looked like it might have been part of a greenhouse at one time. The bed was lower than the ground, and there was a glass top and a glass front. I knew there were still people in there, and the German camp commander, said, Look, you don’t want to go in there. I said, Yes, I do. So I walked through. There were human beings in there just barely moving, and you wouldn’t believe it—the filth, the stink. And when we got out, I told him, man, I just want you to know, you’re lucky to be alive, I could just kill you on the spot. He was just terrible. So we cleaned that up and took care of all the people who were capable of being cared for and made sure that the remains of the others were properly taken care of.

When I said taken care of, I meant a frontline soldier does what he can, and then our graves registration people take over and they know what to do next. Like in Bastogne, for instance, we were surrounded and we couldn’t get rid of our dead who were frozen, which was good. We just stacked them up. And then, when the breakthrough came and we could get transportation out, we loaded the dead, like cordwood, in the trucks, and the graves registration people took care of them and did the proper thing. You can do only just so much servicing in the front lines. My company clerk Private First Class David Philips was an eighteen-year-old paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division at the time. The removal of the dead like this inspired Philips to write the following:

In Memoriam

We have only died in vain if you believe so;

You must decide the wisdom of our choice

By the world that you shall build upon our

Headstones and the everlasting truths, which have

Your voice. Though dead, we are not heroes

Yet, nor can be, ‘til the living, by their lives that

Are the tools, carve us the epitaphs of wise men

And give us not the epitaphs of fools.

Pfc. David Phillips

Bastogne, December 1944

After VE day, we spent the summer down there in Zell am See. It was on a lake. There were plush hotels. It was great. I had two boats: a motorboat and a sailboat. My company was billeted in a big hotel. There was a ski lift where you could go up on the mountain and ski and come back down and swim. So we spent the summer there at Zell am See, Austria.

Soon after our arrival at Zell am See, our regiment overran Hermann Goring’s summer estate. It was indeed lavish. Colonel Sink took Goring’s captured silver and made cups for his officers. Our name and the 506th Parachute Infantry were inscribed on the side of the cup and all the campaigns printed on the bottom flange. My son George IV now has my cup. Also some of my men managed to acquire Goring’s beautiful Mercedes Benz touring car, which I naturally took over. That did not last long, of course, as the car went up the chain of command and resided with General Maxwell D. Taylor, the division commander.

During our time in this beautiful resort area my first sergeant Walter Neiton fell in love with a Polish displaced person. Sgt. Nieton was one of a kind: a former rum runner on Lake Erie, engineer on the New York Central Railroad, and a former New York State Trooper. He was as wide as he was tall and could move like a cat (a good man to have on your side). He decided to get married. With typical 506th and 101st élan, gallantry and pageantry, we put on a great wedding. The Roman Catholic Church overlooked the Zee, and it was beautiful. We imported a forty-voice men’s choir from Warsaw. I gave the bride away, and the sung mass was absolutely beautiful. Twelve of my troopers served as honor guard. General Taylor relinquished his Mercedes Benz touring car for the bride and groom to use on their honeymoon. That evening, in the auditorium of the hotel where my troops were billeted, the polkas went on long into the night. I flaked out about midnight, but the party swirled on. The next morning we loaded the choir up in two ten-ton trailers and they were singing beautifully as they left Zell am Zee. A wonderful contrast to what we had been through.

Then 101st went back to the little town of Joigny south of Paris, and I came home on the boat in December. I arrived in Brooklyn about December 26 or 27, 1945.

I went overseas in a British ship Scythia—why I remember that I don’t know. I guess it was a cargo ship. It had built in bunks. I left from Ft. Dix and Brooklyn. I came back on a ship, which was the next one up in size from a Liberty ship. I think the name was Thomas, a Victory ship. It was not very big, and we were in a terrific storm. I didn’t get sick, but our commanding officer did, and I was in charge while he was in sick bay.

The only person I keep in touch with from those days is Colonel Herb Mansfield, my friend from Camp Hood, the guy I went through jump school with. His first wife died, and he asked me to come down to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for his second marriage. That was in 1989. I performed the service. Cecelia and I knew his children, and they knew ours, so it was nice. Fort Bragg had changed a lot from the old days.

I came back to the States in December 1945. My son was just under two, and my daughter was an infant—she was toddling. I got out of the service at Fort Meade. From there, I went down to Lynchburg to see my parents. From Lynchburg I went to Kansas City to Cecelia and the kids. I had gotten out of the army, and the trains were very crowded. It was a long trip. You go to Cincinnati, then to St. Louis, then to Kansas City. Cecelia’s mother met me at the train station in Kansas City. And I saw Cecelia for the first time at their apartment. She had to get dressed and get the children ready for me. I was twenty-nine years old at the time.

In 1946, I got the call to come back into the army. The business in my relatives’ rock quarry, where I was working, was pretty slow. The coal strike slowed the railroads down, then the steel strike slowed things down, then the railroad workers strike slowed business down even more. And the quarry was dependent on the railroads. I was working as a laborer, and I had to support my family, so I went back into the service in August of 1946.

I was assigned to the University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana. It was ROTC duty. It was a Land Grant University, so all the freshmen and sophomores were required to take two years of ROTC. And so we had a cadet corps of five thousand or six thousand. The juniors and seniors who were in ROTC were the officers. I taught them military history, and I taught the freshmen and sophomores basic military training. We lived in a little village, Ogden, Illinois, in a big farmhouse about fourteen miles from Champagne-Urbana. Cecelia had to cook on a wood—coal range. We had one hard coal stove downstairs and a soft coal stove for heating. And how we got through the winter I’ll never know. That was the only heat we had, and it was a big house.

Then we moved into WWII housing in Champagne. This was great because it was all GI Bill students. Most of the men had been prisoners of war. It was just a great little community. At that time, I applied for Regular Army because they were going to integrate people into the regular army. So I applied in 1947, and I was given a commission in the quartermaster corps. I was TDY to the Transportation Corps. The Transportation Corps was not a full-fledged branch of service at the time, but that’s where they ultimately wanted me to go.

So we left Champagne-Urbana and went to Fort Eustis, Virginia. I went to the Advanced Officer course at Fort Eustis, and we lived in Williamsburg. I graduated from Advanced Officer course in 1948, and they assigned me to teach highway traffic engineering at the Transportation School. We lived the first year in Williamsburg and then we moved to Yorktown. During this time I had been a lay reader in Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg. They put me in charge of Grace Church in Yorktown as a lay reader in charge of the church. Bishop George Pernell Gunn, who was bishop of Southern Virginia, called me the lay vicar of Yorktown. David Michael Barton was born at the Station Hospital, Ft. Eustis, Virginia, on September 8, 1949.

In early 1950 we got orders for Okinawa. Cecelia and the children had to take all the shots for Okinawa. At that time the rector of Bruton Parish Church had been leaning on me to resign from the army and go to the seminary. And so we took a trip up to the seminary. There was one space available at the seminary, which they gave to me. When we got back to Fort Eustis, we found Korea had been invaded, and I was frozen in the army. So the orders to Okinawa were cancelled. Orders to Korea replaced them in June 1950. I had to send Cecelia and the children back to Kansas City.

When I landed in Japan, I was slated to go with MacArthur’s invasion at Inchon, and at this point, I was going to be in charge of loading and unloading the supply ships out of Yokohama. As I was walking up the gangway to go on this mission, somebody pulled me off and told me I was to go to work in the Octagon Building for the Japan Logistical Command because they needed a highway engineer. That upset me because I didn’t want to go back. But I had to go to work in Yokohama in the Octagon Building, which was just a paper mill. I had problems keeping physically fit, and I was not really happy there at all. There was a church there up on a hill, Tagati Ridge, Christ Church Yokohama. It was a beautiful church, but it had been bombed. They were using beer cans as candleholders because that was the best thing they could find. The church was a source of help to me when I was in Yokohama. I missed the family terribly while I was there, and I was very homesick.

Then right after the first of the year in 1951, General Ridgeway took over and of course he had commanded all the airborne corps in Market Garden and was originally a paratrooper. When he took over command of the Eighth Army in Korea, he found out that there were a lot of paratroopers floating around in Japan. So he ordered all qualified