FOREWARD

 

The material contained in this autobiography was derived solely from memory and no events were knowingly embellished.  The only exceptions not dependent on memory are exact figures such as battle casualties that were obtained from historical data of the 30^th Infantry Division and from other historical documents.

 

Because my working career kept my immediate family distanced from relatives my children had very little contact with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  Being the son of immigrant parents, I likewise was denied these treasured relationships.  The purpose of this personal discourse has therefore been to provide some meager ancestral data and recollections of personal events for my family.  However, other readers who have lived during this same time frame as I might find pleasure in relating to the reported events.

 

When I attended a 50^th high school reunion I was asked to say a few words about our small senior class of 1942.  I mentioned how fortunate we had been to have lived during such an interesting period in our nation’s history.  We were born approximately midway between the end of WW I and the beginning of WW II. In between these two 20^th century, world events the great depression of 1929 provided youthful hardships but gave us character for the upcoming war. I entered kindergarten in 1929 but this beginning of my academic career was in no way responsible for the great depression!  My age group spent our school years during these trying times and graduated as the first June class following the beginning of WW II for the United States and just in time to enter military service as 18 year olds.  I didn’t refer to us as the “Greatest Generation” as Tom Brokaw later coined the phrase but we certainly fit his definition.

 

Although the recorded data trend to be in chronological order there are digressions relative to the subject.  Basically, the discourse consists of general information on ancestors, early youth, military service, family and professional career.  It was 50 years after WW II that veterans of the war were encouraged to relate their experiences.  It was this request for individual accounts that created the interest for me to pursue this endeavor.  Consequently, a large portion of this autobiography is devoted to WW II, a short but most important time period in my life.

 

 

THE BEGINNING

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According to my birth certificate signed by Dr. John F. Miller, I entered the 20^th century on October 4, 1924.  With my first breath of air at 9:15 AM, I sensed the smell of sweet rubber that impregnated the air at 622 Sumner Street, Akron, Ohio.  At this time I believe that every tire manufactured in America was made in Akron, at Goodyear, Goodrich, Firestone, General, Seiberling, Mohawk, Miller and other smaller plants.  This birth event coincided with a little known birthday, that of our 19^th president, Rutherford B. Hayes, also born in Ohio but a few years earlier in 1822.  Also, born on October 4, 1924 is actor Charlton Heston.  A brother, René, born on Present Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, 1921, preceded me in birth. 

 

HERITAGE

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Parents were George Schneider and Rose Marie Raccordon Schneider, both having emigrated from the French part of Switzerland.  At home we spoke French and English.  Dad insisted that we were American and we were to speak English.  An explanation is required here to account for our claim of French heritage with a name like Schneider.  My father’s father was one of six brothers living in either Colmar or Mulhouse, Alsace, then a part of France.  During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 three of the brothers fought with the French and three fought with the Germans.  The French lost and Alsace and Loraine were assimilated by Germany.  Almost overnight schools began teaching German as the official language, street signs were changed to German and the overall atmosphere of the area became Germanized.  Grandfather had been on the French side and found the changes more than he could take so he moved to the French part of Switzerland to the city of Delémont where father was born on June7, 1892.

 

After the First World War the areas of Alsace and Loraine reverted to France but were conquered in the invasion of WW II and came under German rule again only to be returned to France at the end of the war.

 

Today, many of the cities and villages in Alsace have German names such as Strasbourg. Mulhouse, Colmar, Riquewihr, Selestat, Kayserberg and Koenigsbourg to name a few.  The typical French provincial cuisine is notably absent in this region and consists of sausages, cold cuts and smoked meats with emphasis on German dishes.  Almost all citizens of any nation who have German names and claim French heritage can trace their roots to Alsace or Loraine.  Among some notable ones are Albert Schweitzer and the Schlumberger brothers, Conrad and Marcel, the founders of the Schlumberger well surveying company, the world leader of electrical, mechanical, sonic and nuclear devices used to examine drilled holes in search of oil and gas.  Their first log was run in a small field in Pechelbrun, Alsace around 1927. 

 

The largest munitions maker in France before and during the First World War was Schneider Munitions in Alsace.  This was the French equivalent of Germany’s Krupp Works.  The most famous weapon produced during WW I was the French 75, a 75-millimeter cannon and howitzer.  Also produced were larger, 105 and 155 guns.  Many of these are on exhibit in French military museums and carry the Schneider nameplate.  The first French tank constructed during WW I was the Schneider tank.  Unfortunately it was poorly constructed and did not perform well in battle.

 

Other evidence of French Schneiders can be found in Paris.  Engraved in the Arch of Triumph are numerous names of French heroes and you can spot a Schneider among them.  My wife Elaine and I have a favorite bridge in Paris.  This is Pont Alexander, which crosses the Seine from the right bank to the entrance to Les Invalides, the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte.  On the upstream side near the left bank end there is a plaque indicating that the bridge was built by Schneider.  Another Schneider influence is found in the Eiffel Tower where a plaque on the superstructure of the elevator system identifies the Schneider Company.  Today, one of the largest, aggressive French companies called Schneider Electric, operates in Europe and throughout the world.

 

     Another location for many Schneiders is in Normandy.  Unlike the French Schneiders, at this site we find German Schneiders.  In the German Military cemetery at La Cambre, Normandy, there are buried 21,222 German soldiers.  Many of these are unknown and simply identified as ein Deutsche Soldat but of the remaining known dead I counted 69 Schneiders cataloged in a directory located in a small pagoda at the entrance to the ground.  This cemetery is quite different from the American cemeteries, which mark the graves with either a white Christian cross or a star of David.  The Germans are identified with a flat plaque and the cemetery is decorated with irregularly spaced black granite crosses.  Although the area is much smaller than the American cemetery only a short distance away overlooking Omaha Beach, the La Cambre cemetery contains more than twice the number of bodies - 21,222 versus 9,386 Americans.  The casualties of both countries are from the Normandy campaign.  Visits to both of these revered sites will never be forgotten.  I highly recommend visits to both. 

 

ANCESTRY

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     Little is known of my ancestors on both sides of my parents.  My father had two sisters, Maria and Cecile.  Maria married a Yugoslavian civil engineer and moved to the city of Split on the coast of the Adriatic Sea.  Her husband’s name was Ivo Girgic.  I’m not positive of the spelling of his last name.  He was a very ambitious and competent engineer.  He constructed an electric plant and supplied the city of Split with electrical power.  Consequently, he became quite wealthy and invested in two ocean freighters and a sumptuous villa overlooking the city.  This affluence came to an abrupt halt at the end of WW II when Tito confiscated all of their possessions.  Tito’s officers shared in the booty of the villa.  One chopped the crystal chandeliers from the room ceilings, another rolled up the tapestries and another helped himself to Maria’s fabulous stamp collection.  One of the ships had been sunk during the war but the other was in port and duly confiscated.  The Lloyds of London insured the ship that was sunk and it’s possible that he eventually collected for that loss.  Besides depositing profits in New York I believe Ivo had a large cache in London. The power plant under Tito’s regime began generating electricity to the city with no revenue for Ivo.  The couple was given a small apartment in town.  Earlier in the war, in the early forties, dad’s father died of natural causes during an American air raid on Split.  He had been staying with Ivo and Maria.

    

In 1948 my parents decided to take a trip to Switzerland.  This was to be their first return trip since emigrating after WW I.  While in Switzerland Maria had a serious operation in Split and, learning that my parents were about to visit she requested a visa to Switzerland to recuperate.  The government agreed only with the condition that Ivo remain as a hostage so that she would return.  The visa expired before my parents arrived so she requested an extension, which was granted.  Ivo then got word to her that she should remain in Switzerland while he made plans to flee the country.  He had buried some jewelry and other valuables that he retrieved and paid to a fisherman to take him to Italy.  How he entered Italy I don’t know but the voyage was successful and he had a rendezvous with Maria.

    

Their next move was to immigrate to America.  I wrote to our congressman and asked if he could obtain entry for them as displaced persons.  This was not possible since displaced persons were those from other Balkan countries and Yugoslavia was not one of these.  However, he said that because of Tito’s freeze on exit visas no one was getting out of the country and since they were already in Switzerland they would have no problem entering under the immigration quota for Yugoslav citizens.  The only provision was that we sponsor them and attest that they would not be a drag on American society and not take on work thereby denying an American worker of employment.  None of these restrictions was a problem.  In peacetime, freighter trips had been made regularly to the states, notably to the port of New York.  It was on these trips that some of the shipping profits were deposited in New York banks.  Either the Chemical Bank or the Hanover Bank harbored a nest egg of $80,000.00 in Ivo’s name.  My parents learned the amount of this deposit when they returned from Europe in 1948.  They had been instructed to report to the bank in New York and inform the bank that under no conditions should any funds be released to anyone except to the legitimate depositors.  Ivo was afraid that Tito would try to recover the money.  This was a sizable amount of cash in 1948 and entitled the owners to live comfortably.  After living on the farm in Sterling, Ohio with us for a short period of time Maria and Ivo moved to Wooster where they would be more comfortable associating with instructors at the College of Wooster.  They portrayed a certain aristocratic aura, which my mother detected and called Maria “The Duchess”.  Although Ivo was to refrain from taking employment he wanted to work on American bridges and he received approval to work for the county designing bridges.  After three or four years they became restless and returned to Switzerland where they settled in Montreux.  They eventually returned to Split and we heard no more from them.

    

Dad’s other sister, Cecile was an interesting character.  By today’s terminology you could classify her as the original hippy.  She was a kind-hearted soul who played the guitar and apparently didn’t have too many cares.  She married someone called “Grillon”.  It’s the only name I have for him and I assume that it was his last name.  Having heard of Dad’s adjustment to the American way of life Grillon and Maria joined them in Akron where Grillon got a job with Firestone.  He developed some mental or emotional problems, which climaxed one day when he announced that he was going to return all of his earnings to Mr. Firestone.  This unusual decision necessitated a commitment to the asylum in Massillon. Apparently he stayed there for a while because I am told that he was still there when I was an enfant and I would accompany the family on visiting days.  Many of the inmates got to know me and they would play with me. Both eventually returned to Switzerland.  For the next few years Cecile would send us French children’s books for Christmas.  They were usually about Becassine, Matresse d’école, a bungling schoolmistress.

    

Dad was born in Delémont, Switzerland on June 7, 1892, the only son of Jean Schneider.  I don’t know his mother’s first name but her maiden name was Montavon.  Jean was not wealthy but he made a comfortable living as a wine maker.  He was not a big operator but he had barrels big enough for Dad to crawl inside to clean them.  For part of his advanced schooling Dad commuted by train to a nearby town where I believe he received the equivalent of a high school diploma.  While in school I believe he received instruction in the German language.  He never had any great love for the Germans and in my lifetime I heard him speak German only once.

    

When he was eighteen years old he left for America to seek his fortune.  He arrived in New York all alone without an English word in his vocabulary.  He sat on his solitary suitcase and wondered what to do when he heard two women speaking French.  He approached them and when they realized that he needed help they told him to pick up their luggage and follow them.  The carriage took them to their apartment where they gave him some kind of accommodations and found him work in a hospital that was run by French nuns.  He worked as an orderly until the day he was carrying a block of ice that slipped from his grasp and went sliding down the corridor and upsetting a cart loaded with sterilized surgical tools.  The nuns came running after him calling him an imbecile.  He took off running and never returned to the hospital. This episode terminated his career in the Big Apple.  He managed to take a train heading west and stayed in the Akron area of Ohio where he worked in machine shops in Akron and Alliance.  Seeking more adventure he headed farther west with a stop in Illinois where he searched for a cousin who had a large farm somewhere in southern or central Illinois.  After a short stay he headed farther west and stopped in South Dakota where he found work for a rancher.  He was a part time cowboy and farmer, rounding up cattle, mending fences and planting and harvesting wheat.  The rancher liked dad and offered him a section of land (640 acres) at a few cents an acre.  He offered to loan Dad his mules to plow the land and plant the wheat and he wouldn’t have to pay for the land until he harvested the wheat.  Dad missed trees which were notably absent and wanted to return east so he declined the offer and left.  That year there was a bumper crop of wheat and the profit he would have made would have paid off the land.  He went to Ohio where he found trees and rolling hills that satisfied his image of America.  He found work as a machinist in Alliance, a village southeast of Akron.  He loved working metals on the lathe, the milling machine and the usual machine shop tools.  This was to be his working-career profession except for the depression years when he lost his job.  The machinist job in Alliance was not meant to last.  The First World War had now begun and Dad wanted to serve his new country even though he was not yet a citizen.  He joined the U.S.Army and in doing so he automatically became a US citizen.  He spent most of his army career in Camp Gordon, Georgia where he was a bugler and cook.  He wanted to go overseas and fight in his ancestral country but the army would not send him because of his recent citizenship.

    

After the war he returned to the shop in Alliance and resumed his machinist trade.  While here he met a fellow worker who kept drawing cartoons on the shop wall.  This fellow machinist was an artist and he would soon move on to become one of the best-known cartoonists of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.  His name was Williams and he produced several different cartoons at the same time alternating them daily.  These were The Willits, Born 30 Years Too Soon, Out West and The Bull of the Woods. The Bull of the Woods was about a machine shop and depicted typical relationships between workers and the boss who was the bull.  Out West was about a cowboy who I believed was called Curly.  The cartoons by Williams were American classics and until recently I saw shop calendars with Bull of the Woods cartoons.

    

Meanwhile in Switzerland Mom was maturing as a teenager in the village of Porrentruy.  Mom was born in Courgenay, a small village near Porrentruy on April 4, 1895, one of three sisters and two brothers.  These villages are located in the extreme northwest portion of Switzerland in the Canton of Jura.  Her maiden name was Raccordon and her mother’s maiden name was Petterman.  Mom’s early life was harder than Dad’s and her father had a rough time supporting the family.  I don’t know what he did for a living.  Because of the near-poverty conditions at home Mom had to leave school early, probably around the 4^th grade and worked in a knitting mill making stockings.  This must have been close to slave labor conditions as the supervisor walked behind the knitters and cracked a whip imploring them to knit faster.  As a teenager she worked in the fields and it was while making hay in 1918 that a most interesting event took place in the hay field.  This unusual story deserves a deviation from the current subject.

    

First, a geographical setting must be visualized.  In the northwest portion of Switzerland there is slight protrusion from an otherwise fairly regular border. Located in this extreme protrusion is located the village of Porrentruy, the home of mom during her childhood.  During WW I the front between Germany and France, running essentially northwest to southeast terminated at the Swiss border near Porrentruy.  During the war, the nighttime volleys of artillery could be seen in the night sky and on occasions wounded from either side would find their way to Switzerland.  On June 29, 1918 while making hay with other friends Mom recalls seeing a German aircraft having engine problems and loosing altitude.  When it was apparent that the pilot could not return to his base he made an emergency landing in the hay field bringing his craft to an abrupt stop in a haystack.  The workers including my mother rushed to the downed plane and essentially took the pilot prisoner until the local police arrived and took him away to be interred in neutral Switzerland for the remainder of the war.  Upon disembarking with slight wounds the first question the pilot asked was,  “ Is this Switzerland?”  Upon learning that he was in Switzerland he did not hide his satisfaction.  The plane was a biplane, number N 62 N, a two-seater with the pilot in the front and a gunner-observer in the rear. The plane was equipped with four machine guns.  The observer was not as fortunate as the pilot and had taken six bullets in his body.

    

During a recent visit to Switzerland my brother René and a Swiss cousin developed an interest in the story and researched the archives of local newspapers and retrieved many details of the following:  The aircraft had flown from Habsheim near Mulhouse and had departed at 7:30 AM with the mission to attack and bomb the cities of Belfort and Montbéliard.  On the return of the mission a group from the French Escadrille, which included some American volunteers, attacked them.  A fierce battle ensued and one of the German planes was shot down in Alsace and the other was the one in the haystack.  The actual location of this downed plane was in Vendlincourt near Porrentruy.  The killed observer-gunner was on his 68^th mission, which was to be his last before returning to Germany to get married.  His body was brought to the church in Bonfol and was later carried to the German border where the transfer took place.  During the body transfer a German plane flew 50 meters over the group honoring the body. It was learned that the pilot who shot down the plane in the haystack was a lieutenant Ashenden from Chicago, an American flying with the 147^th French Escadrille.  Lieutenant Ashenden was flying a large French biplane

    

This story does not end here.  During the school year 1949-50 I was doing graduate work in geology at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and, for the master’s degree, participation in a two-week field trip in Western Maryland was required.  Most of us attending had been in military service and in the evenings the bull sessions invariably led to war stories.  The professor conducting the field camp was Dr. Ernst Cloos, an internationally recognized structural geologist from Germany.  His brother Hans Cloos was also a well-known European geologist.  During one of the evening sessions someone asked Dr. Cloos “Dr. Cloos weren’t you a German soldier in WW I?”  He acknowledges that he had been a pilot but didn’t want to talk about it.  It didn’t take much prodding to start him reminiscing.  This is his story.  “ I flew a biplane with a gunner-observer and had flown many missions without any problems from the enemy.  At first it was a sporting war with the enemy.  If one of our planes was shot down by the French or the British, honor was bestowed on the enemy by the victor the next day by dropping a wreath near the downed plane and the flying craft would tip its wings in salute.  We performed the same acts of recognition.  Then one day in June 1918 while over France I was attacked from above by the French Escadrille with American pilots.  The war was no longer sporting and the Americans wanted to fight!  My plane was shot full of holes, my gunner was killed and I began losing altitude.  I knew I couldn’t make it back to my base in Germany and I didn’t want to crash in France.  I was familiar with the area and realized that I could probable put down the damage plane in a narrow band of Switzerland between France and Germany.  This I did successfully terminating the flight in a haystack.” I responded with “Dr. Cloos, what was the name of the place in Switzerland?”  Whereupon he responded “It was some little place you never heard of.”  I then said  “I think I’m familiar with the village.  Was it near Porrentruy?”   A shocked expression appeared on Dr. Cloos’s face and he responded “How in the hell would you know that?”  My answer was “My mother was one of the women in the hayfield and she saw you shot down 32 years ago.  She was one of the teenagers armed with pitchforks and guarded you until authorities arrived.” 

    

Dr. Cloos was quite taken back by this “Small World Tale” and added additional comments.  While interred he signed an affidavit stating that, as a German officer, he would not try to escape and he was able to pursue his studies in geology. A copy of the affidavit was part of the material brother René recovered from the newspaper archives. He added that, as far as he knew the plane was still located in a Swiss museum somewhere near Basel where a plaque identifies the plane and the conditions in which it was shot down.  It had something like 150 bullet holes in the fuselage.  This could represent one half the number of bullets penetrating since the plane had a thin shell and each projectile made an entry and an exit hole.  This incident proved such an interesting event in the life of Dr. Cloos that, upon his death, the US Geological Survey under the Interior Department published his biography and the incident is included in the report.

    

Back to my mother’s family.  Other than knowing her family name of Raccordon and her mother’s maiden was Peterman I know little else except for some information about her siblings.  She had two sisters and two brothers.  The Petermans can be traced back to the thirteenth century.  One brother, Joseph became a watchmaker and an accomplished musician.  He was once the director of the Swiss Army Band and the lifetime organist of the church in Delémont.  He maintained his watch repair shop on Rue de L’Eglise and for many years he could watch his old childhood friends walk past his bay window fronting the cobblestone street.  He was not the only musician in the family.  Most of the other members were quite talented and played an instrument.  Mom played the base violin and younger brother, Able played the trumpet.  Able was a handsome young man but he was sickly and eventually died at an early age from tuberculosis.  His family thought it would not be particularly helpful for him to play the trumpet because of his lung problem.  He wanted to play so much that he would hide under his bed so that the sound would be somewhat muffled. 

    

Mom’s sister Jeannine became a nun and eventually the mother superior of the hospice in Delémont.  We visited her in 1964 while Elaine was pregnant with our last daughter and we were so impressed with the old nun that we named our last child Jeannine.  Third child, Jeannine was born on April 24, 1965 while we were in New Orleans and eleven years after Tom was born.  One week before going on a three-week motoring vacation through Europe we discovered Elaine’s pregnancy.  Considering the problems Elaine had experienced with the other pregnancies we were hesitant to take a lengthy, potentially hazardous trip.  A doctor who confirmed the pregnancy advised canceling the trip and, if we didn’t, he didn’t want to see Elaine again.  We disregarded his recommendation and the pregnancy was probably Elaine’s best.  We had planned the trip for more than a year and the itinerary covered the entire route of the trip but made hotel reservations for only the first night in London and the first night in the Netherlands.  At any time whenever physical stress appeared we could revise our schedule.  Only one revision was required, an extra night in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany and the elimination of one night in Paris at the end of the trip.  Our trip included a visit with the  nun, who was the mother superior for a hospice in Delémont, Switzerland. This aunt and a small group of additional nuns cared for almost one hundred elderly persons.  Our trip was so well planned that we arrived at the exact time we had advised her of our arrival.  We found the nuns on their “recreation” period, which meant that they were relaxing, knitting or conversing among themselves.    It is coincidental that the nun Jeannine was in charge of a hospice and more than thirty years after our short visit, our Jeannine would be in the process of establishing the first pediatric hospice in the United States.

 

The old nun had never seen any of her nephews and proudly exhibited the two of us to the rest of the nuns.  A modern, government hospital was located nearby and she gave us a tour of the facilities.  A lab technician wishing to show her proficiency in English addressed me as Mister and Elaine as my Mistress.  That night Jeannine insisted that we not spend our money on a hotel so she made arrangements through the nuns’ secret little underground to smuggle us into the hospital after all of the doors were locked for the night.  What we didn’t know was that we had been given accommodations in the maternity ward.  Early in the morning I almost got a rectal thermometer inserted by the duty nurse checking on the progress of my pregnancy.  All was resolved and we were served breakfast in the room.  The old hospice dated back to the 15^th century.  We paid another visit in 1994 but the hospice was no longer there as modern hospital facilities assumed these ends-of- life cases.

    

The other sister was Cecile who married a railroad worker and, because of economic problem, did not have an easy life.

    

The only other relative of historical interest was my mother’s great grandfather.  I don’t know from which side of the family he came.  He served with Napoleon Bonapart when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812.  He was wounded near Moscow and died in a hospital fire near the front.

 

EARLY LIFE IN THE US

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Back in America Dad found a machinist job in Akron, Ohio while Mom was in Switzerland.  It was now time for Dad to return to Switzerland and find a wife.  With this objective he returned to Delémont and approached the Raccordon home.  At the front gate he was confronted by the man of the house and immediately ask for permission to marry his daughter.  The father asked “Which one, Cecile?”  Dad said, “I guess that’s the one” whereupon Cecile came from the house but she was the wrong one.  Dad said, “No, it’s the other one.”  Upon the appearance of Rose Marie he was satisfied that she was the right one.  He then explained to the father that he had a job and a home in Akron and two steamship tickets to New York and wanted to marry Mom and take her to America.  The father told Mom, “You heard what he said.  Do you want to marry him?”  Mom simply replied,  “I guess so.”  A quick wedding was arranged and the couple left for America not to return until 1948.  It was now probably 1919. I find this truly amazing.  They didn’t come over on the Mayflower but they were every bit the stereotype immigrants that would help found this great nation!

    

I don’t know the steamship line or the name of the ship but it wasn’t a luxury cruiser.  I believe that sleeping accommodations were dormitory style with separation of the sexes.  Mom spoke no English but Dad had picked up quite a bit of the language.  Mom told Dad that there was a nice English gentleman who always greeted her with a tip of his hat and some English greeting.  She wanted to learn a few words so that she could respond to this kind person’s greetings.  Dad tutored her until she had the greeting well memorized.  The next morning on deck the encounter was right on schedule as the gentleman greeted with a warm good morning.  Smiling and proud of her new language she responded in her strong French accent, “Go to hell you SOB”.  The Englishman doubled up in laughter and my mother turned the color of her name. 

    

The last night at sea the newlyweds stayed on deck until they saw the distant lights of New York and by early morning they saw the statue of their liberty.  In Akron they set up housekeeping in a rent house on Sherman Street then bought the house at 622 Sumner Street, a little three-bedroom bungalow that backed up to the rental house on Sherman Street.  The area was quite nice with red paving bricks on the street.  Bricks were used as a common paving material and all of the streets in the area were covered in this manner.  These streets have now been blacktopped which is a shame because the bricks added a certain charm to the community.  Directly across from the home was a red brick grade school covering the best part of one half of the block.  This was Legett School, the school where I would begin my American education.  Since the couple was still childless they both went to work in the machine shop where Dad had established his job in Akron at the Akron Selly Gear Company a private shop owned by the Howard family, an affluent, Akron family. The Howard matriarch and her sister lived in a large estate near the University of Akron.  The house resembled a typical, Hollywood, haunted house with a tower capped with a four-sided roof, each side containing an elliptical window. In the 1930’s all houses in the entire block were razed leaving only the Howard mansion.  The Davey Tree Company then landscaped the property with gardens and full-grown trees.  The only remaining outbuilding was a large garage with a loft that connected to a house for the chauffer. The chauffer had a son a few years younger than brother Jim.  Jim and I would sometimes visit with this friend and in exploring the property we found a door on the upstairs landing that led to the loft over the garage.  Here we found piles of antiques that the Howards collected and below in the garage there were old electric cars dating to the turn of the century.

 

The Akron Selle Gear Company was located one block off of Exchange Street near the north end of the B.F.Goodrich Rubber Company.  Several families in the Akron area had emigrated from Switzerland and found work in the rubber plants and machine shops.  This relationship provided a common bond among the group.  There was an active Swiss Club and a smaller Alsace-Loraine Club.  The chauffer and gardener for the Howard family was French-Swiss and became my Godfather.

 

Mom got a job as a punch press operator and became quite dexterous as she pounded out stampings on a piecework basis, being paid for the number of pieces produced.  The machines had a safety harness, which strapped on to the arms and when the die came down the traps would jerk the arms away from the table.  This action was brutal on the arms and none of the workers used them.  As Mom was going through the ritual of inserting stock, punching and removing the stamped article she made a slight miscalculation and lacked about one quarter of an inch from complete withdrawal.  This error neatly removed the tip of the middle finger of her left hand.  Remembering the harsh treatment she had experienced as a young girl working in the Swiss knitting mill she feared being reprimanded by the boss.  She shoved the removed digit to the side of the machine and continued working.  A small number of pieces were punched before the girl at an adjoining press detected a faint condition in my mother, came to her aid and stopped her press.  Unlike the treatment she expected she was cared for immediately.  With the loss of only a small portion of a finger, healing was normal and she soon returned to work.  The surgeon that treated her at the hospital made a slight mistake in repairing the severed finger.  The amputation was at the base of the nail.  This left two slight remnants of nail at the cuticles that grew as protruding horns of nail.  Mom had to keep these filed the rest of her life.

 

Only a few English words were in Mom’s vocabulary and she felt embarrassed at lunchtime when the girls would unwrap their sandwiches from the newspaper wrapping and chat while they read bits from the paper.  Mom began carrying her lunch in newspaper like the rest of the girls and pretended to be reading the paper.  She began associating words with dialog of the cartoon characters and with pictures in store ads. This was the beginning of her English education.  She learned to read and write English and could speak fairly well but she never lost her strong French accent.

 

While both parents were working they were saving all that they could to pay off the house and managed to also buy the old farm in Sterling, Ohio that proved to be our refuge during the depression.  The house mortgage was with an Akron Savings and Loan bearing the name Dime Savings and Loan.  Mom must have taken the name seriously because she would apply ten cent pieces (dimes) to the mortgage every chance she had!

 

Sterling was approximately 20 miles west of Akron and bisected by the main lines for the Baltimore and Ohio and the Erie Railroads.  An additional spur of the B & O cut across the Erie from south to north and continued to Cleveland.  This made for a treacherous crossing right in Sterling and would contribute to a serious train wreck sometime in 1953 or 1954.

 

FAMILY BEGINS - THE ROARING TWENTIES

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With the beginning of the decade that would come to be known as the Roaring Twenties the family began to develop.  René was born on February 12, 1921 and Mom’s factory days were brought to an end.  For a few critical minutes it appeared that she might return to work without having her firstborn.  René was not breathing at birth and he was not expected to survive.  In an effort to restore life the doctor carried him outside and rolled him in the cold, February snow.  The shock worked and he is still breathing after more than  80 years, thanks to a primitive technique by Dr. Miller who delivered all of us.  René began kindergarten at the age of five or six.  Legett School was directly across the street so he needed only for Mom to escort him to the street curb, look both directions for vehicles then make a dash.  Although Dad spoke English at home Mom was quite restricted to French so, when attending school René spoke very little English and was ridiculed quite a bit.  One of his first great accomplishments in kindergarten was to color a squirrel purple, which drew laughter from the other kids and a comment from the teacher.  Playing with neighborhood kids helped develop the English vocabulary.  Next door at number 628 lived the Rohner family with two boys, Herbert and Martin About the same ages as René and me.  Other playmates could never pronounce his French name so they called him Raymond.  Another younger playmate was called Raymond so he became Baby Raymond.

 

On October 4, 1924 it was my turn to make an entry into the world.  Another addition to the family at the same time was our first vehicle, a 1924 Model T Ford purchased for $495.00 brand new.  Dad was real proud of his Model T and I am told that I likewise took a great liking to the vehicle.  Whenever I heard the engine start up I would run to climb in even if it meant only riding from the drive into the garage.  On one occasion dad did not see me and I was almost crushed against the side of the garage.  This Ford would be the instrument for several more narrow escapes before it went to the junk dealer.  While still an infant we went for a Sunday drive with my godparents and while descending a steep hill in Akron called Sherbondy Hill, falling snow caused the Model T to begin sliding, hit the ditch on the side of the road and rolled on its side.  My godmother hung on to me and all escaped without any injuries

 

Although I spent only about five and one half years in Akron before being forced to move to the farm in 1930 I have managed to retain vivid recollections of much of that short, early period of life.  To this day I could draw an accurate house plan of 622 Sumner Street with even a recollection of the furniture and its placement in the house.  I especially recall the location of the gas water heater in the bathroom.  I was suspicious of this contraption and I was sure that someone was hiding behind it waiting to do me great harm.

 

One of my favorite recollections is waiting for dad to come home from work.  He usually walked to and from work, as the distance was probably less than a mile.  If inclement weather prevailed he could catch a bus that traveled Sumner Street with a stop at the corner. In the winter he wore a large black overcoat and when he entered the house we would rush to him and reach into his coat pocket because he always had a piece of pastry, which he bought at lunch time to treat us.  We called it a “Machin a la crème” which translated from this colloquial expression meant “something with cream.”  It didn’t take us long to discover that the whipped cream occupying the inside of the delicacy was concentrated near the center so we had to take turns for the center.  Younger brother Jim was born in 1926 and now shared in the three way split.  They don’t make these long johns or cream horns like that anymore!  The same overcoat pocket also provided the means of transport for our first pet, which was a tiny, abandoned kitten, that dad rescued at the shop and brought her home.  The only name she ever had was La Veille which means the old one.  The name didn’t make sense for such a young animal but she didn’t mind the name and lived a long life with the handle.  She was a good old cat and provided the nucleus for the cat community that would eventually attempt to control the rat and mouse population on the farm

 

When the proper time came I was enrolled in kindergarten across the street.  One recollection is the overwhelming size of the urinal we had in the school.  It was only three feet tall and looked like a vertical bathtub.  It looked like it was just waiting to swallow me.  We even had show and tell in those days.  I had two favorite toys that I brought for two separate occasions.  One was a fire engine that had a crank-up extension ladder, which extended to what seemed like the tremendous height of six feet even though it was more like three feet.  The other was a black steam shovel with a bucket you could raise, swivel the cab on the base, then trip the bucket and drop the load wherever you desired.  During one show and tell the steam shovel stayed in school overnight and I spent a good part of the night staring at the classroom visible from our home.  I had to make sure that no one was stealing my prize and that the school was not on fire. 

 

As my first Christmas in kindergarten approached we began making vases for our mothers.  Mine was a real piece of art.  It consisted of a glob of clay molded into a donut shaped base painted green with a glass test tube inserted in the center.  When dry, the teacher provided a Christmas seal to paste on the clay base to finish the decoration of the masterpiece.  I believe that the Christmas seal depicted Santa Clause carrying a Christmas tree.  When I presented it to my mother I sang “Silent Night” for her.  She cried as she hugged me and for years she wondered why we sang “Silent Night Oh Flash Light.”  To this day I cannot listen to Silent Night without strong emotional recollections.

    

I quickly developed friends and, living directly across from the school our home was a natural rendezvous on the way to school.  Every morning three or four friends would come to the kitchen porch, stop their feet on the porch floor and holler my name.  After we left for the farm in 1931 I never saw these friends but I still recall some of their names.  One insisted that his full name was Richard Dick O’Harry.  Others I recall were Robert Goudy and one I knew simply as Julius.  I hope these guys are still around and have enjoyed as blessed a life as I.  I once read in the Akron Beacon Journal an article about a Robert Goudy who was a singer.  Maybe exercising his vocal cords on our kitchen porch helped his voice.

 

Sometime before we left Akron, Goodyear entered the lighter-than-air dirigible program and was to become the only builder of these giant airships in America.  During WW II many “blimps” were built and today others are still being built for use mostly to cover sporting events.  These are single inflatable bags filled with helium and are much smaller than the dirigibles that had several bags enclosed in a rigid skin attached to a large gondola.  The word dirigible comes from the French word “diriger” which means to direct or steer.  Plans were to build airships even greater than those already built by the Germans who already had the Graf Zeppelin among others.  The disadvantage for the Germans was that they had no access to helium, a non-combustible, light gas.  They had to use hydrogen, a lighter gas but highly combustible.  To build an airship of such a magnitude that could rival those the Germans had, it was necessary to build a large hanger.  This was at the site of the Akron airport where we often picked mushrooms before construction of the hanger began in the late 1920s.  While driving in this area one raining day during construction the Model T ran out of gas on the main road to the hanger.  We pulled on to the shoulder of the road but it was not enough for the constant truckers who complained for blocking their way.   While we endured the insults of the truckers Dad walked to a gas station and returned with a can of and we were soon one our way.

 

The completion of the hanger constituted the largest building under one roof in the world being 1,175 feet long, 325 feet wide and 200 feet high.  By definition, under one roof means no pillars or any other braces to interfere with or interrupt the overall volume of the building.  This record fell with the advent of domed sports stadiums, the first being the Astrodome in Houston.  During WW II Goodyear Aircraft was formed to construct navy fighters and to house these facilities a plant was built near the hanger.  An attempt was made to utilize the hanger but it was so large that the atmospheric conditions could not be controlled.  Under conditions of high humidity and a quick drop in temperature clouds could actually form within the hanger and rain would fall.  Still determined to make use of the hanger, large tents were pitched over shop equipment.

 

It was in this hanger that the Macon and the Akron were built, the Akron being the largest American airship built.  Seeing one of these monsters floating overhead was a sight to behold.  After the hanger was built the German Graf Zeppelin paid a visit to Akron and flew directly over our house as it approached the mooring mast at the hanger only three or four miles away.  One of our neighbors was an old German widow and she was almost hysterical as she ran down the street in pursuit of the Zeppelin.

 

A few years later after we had moved to the farm the Akron was still flying and we often got glimpses of this large silver fish hovering in the distance near the hanger.  One night shortly after bedtime on the farm our mother awakened us to see the Akron only a few hundred feet overhead on its descent to the hanger.  All of the lights were on in the gondola and it looked like a passenger train in the sky.  Seeing the blimps of today can’t compare to such a sight.

 

Near our home there was a bakery on Kling Street that specialized in French bread.  The baker and owner was Burry and he had a brother elsewhere in Akron who was also a baker of French bread and competitive.  Both baked excellent bread and supplied the finest restaurants in town.  They were maybe Swiss in origin and it’s possible that Dad knew them from the old country.  Dad would often walk to the bakery on Sunday morning and buy a loaf of French bread and some hard rolls.  Our breakfast would consist of these rolls with butter and jam.  I’m sure that Burry’s are no longer in Akron, but I have noticed that individually wrapped biscuits and crackers found in trays in restaurant dining rooms are baked by Burry’s in Florida.  I suspect that these are the same Burrys who escaped the northern winters in favor of Florida

 

A special memory of the short stay in Akron is that an old family friend and fellow Swiss named Charlie.  His last name was something like Voegly.  He was a big-hearted clown and a bachelor.  Every Christmas he would deliver gifts to all of the kids he new; however, I always thought that he favored us.  A few days before Christmas we would be on the lookout for his old car, a Maxwell or a Dodge that he called the coffee pot.  He did his shopping at the M. O’Neil Company whose store bags were a bright green.  Charlie disembarking from the coffee pot with green bags told us that Santa Clause was here.  He once gave me a set of ceramic building blocks that were still around when I got married but are now lost.  René once got a real fine erector set.

 

The two social clubs in Akron that the Swiss and the Alsatians belonged to were appropriately named the Swiss Club and the Alsatian Club.  Charlie belonged to both of these clubs and at all of the various events that were held such as picnics, the October Fest, Christmas Parties etc. he would always distribute tickets that were exchanged for ice cream, pop corn etc. After we moved to the farm Charlie would hold an annual event for his friends.  A couple of weeks before the big event Dad would make a batch of home brew beer and on the Sunday of the party Charlie would show up early and begin preparing the meal.  He insisted on being the chef and had the same menu each year, consommé, meat loaf and noodles.  He ground the meat himself and baked a fine meatloaf.  When Charlie was cutting the meat the family cats stood by for a handout.  He would trim off undesirable slices of meat and tossing them to the cats he would say, “Pour le chat” and we would all laugh.  The consommé was basically dissolved bouillon cubes and the noodles were homemade by Mom.  Most of the guests were more interested in the beer and in playing cards and tossing horseshoes than in the food.  The most distinguished guest we had was Mr. Isaly who had a chain of ice cream parlors and now makes the famous Klondike bar.

 

In the late 1920s we were about to usher in the great depression but we were too young to realize what was happening.  In fact we had just bought our first radio, a Stromberg Carlson.  We were to enjoy it for only a few months before we had to leave for the farm where there was no electricity.

 

Around 1929 the member of the Howard family in charge of the Akron Selly Gear Company where Dad worked was hospitalized and his replacement was someone Dad didn’t like and didn’t trust.  He was dishonest and while in charge he tried to get the employees to produce fewer pieces of product from a given piece of stock.  This resulted in a greater percentage of scrap and he had a side business going on with a friend who was a scrap dealer.  Most of the metal was brass and commanded a good price in the scrap market and a nice profit for the boss who was in effect stealing from the firm while the owner was in the hospital.  Dad would have no part in his scheme and finally got in a fight and slapped him in the face with his oily, machine-shop hand.  Although the depression was about to cause his dismissal the slap hastened it.

 

Now unemployed Dad exhausted all means of getting any income for the family.  One short-time job was a pick and shovel job at the school across the street paying ten cents an hour.  When this short project ended he sought work with a friend who owned a tavern on Exchange Street on the approach to the railroad viaduct.  There he washed dishes, waited on tables and attended bar.  His meager income from this job could not meet our basic needs and it was evident that the depression was taking its toll.  The decision was made to move to the farm where we could at least survive.

 

At the beginning of the winter semester of 1931 I began first grade at Legett School.  The school system was apparently feeling the effects of the depression and additional classrooms that were needed could not be added to the school.  To solve the problem two wooden shacks were moved on to the school grounds to house first grade students.  Each unit had a pot bellied stove for heating and there were desks for all.  The students were slowly evolving from coloring and pasting to serious learning but I don’t remember doing anything except kindergarten work.  I had not learned to count numbers or the letters of the alphabet when the time came to flee to the farm.  The lasting emotional experience I recall from first grade occurred on Valentine’s Day.  There was only one black boy in the class and he sat next to me.  For a week before Valentine’s Day we would deposit valentines addressed to friends in a decorated box on the teacher’s desk.  On the final day the box was opened and the recipients were delivered their greetings.  All of us had several valentines except for the black boy who received only one – from the teacher.  How hurt that poor kid must have felt!

 

 

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In March 1931 the time had come to make the move that would provide a chance for survival.  A scene from the “Grapes of Wrath” would best describe the 20-mile journey.  The caravan consisted of the Model T loaded with the family and a few possessions while a Model T stake truck held the rest of our possessions.  Prior to the move Dad had done what he could to make the farmhouse habitable.  There were none of the city amenities such as running water, electricity or gas.  Electricity and water were not available; however, a natural gas line had been laid along the country road adjoining the farm property.  The problem was that the house was at the end of a long lane measuring approximately 200 yards. Dad hand dug a trench this distance and laid a pipeline all by himself so that we could have at least one convenience and Mom could cook with gas.  The house was badly leaning to the west and Dad jacked it up as best he could by using timbers from around the barn and tree trunks from the property.  The floors never reached perfect level but were level enough so that we never developed sea legs. Our lost marbles could always be found on the west end of any room.

 

 

The gas connection provided lighting in two rooms, a double globe in the kitchen and a single globe in the living room. Water came from a broken pump outside the kitchen.  Only the handle connection was broken and a makeshift repair enabled pumping for excellent fresh water.  A second pump at the barn also provided excellent water even though it was located next to the barnyard.  Testing of this well revealed no contamination from the barnyard.  The reservoir for both wells was a sandstone formation only about 40 feet deep with an intake for the formation probably many miles away.  The water was soft in contrast to water from wells one mile downhill where the wells were completed in glacial fill and the water was hard.

 

My brothers and I went about exploring our new home and the surrounding out buildings but my mother sat down and cried.  The inside of the house was filthy.  Most rooms had wallpaper that had mostly peeled away and behind the remaining strips of faded paper bedbugs waited for nighttime when they would feast on the new city slicker arrivals.  The most pressing job was to sanitize the house by fumigating the entire house with sulfur.  To insure an effective fumigation all cracks around doors and windows were stuffed with newspaper.  A canister of sulfur with a wick was lighted and the burning sulfur produced toxic gas that killed all of the critters.  The gas was probably hydrogen sulfide, a most deadly gas.  After 12 hours we entered the house that was free of bugs thereafter.

 

None of the doors fit tightly and the kitchen door was supplemented with a screen door that fit worse than the kitchen door.  It served no purpose since the bottom panel had a large hole through which children of the previous tenants crawled through.  The screen was replaced in time to deter some of the flies that would swarm in the summertime but the fit didn’t improve.  At the top of the screen there was a gap of one half inch on the far side from the hinge.  The old family cat was pretty smart and figured how to take advantage of this defect and enter the house.  She would climb up the screen to the gap, pry at the gap with a front paw increasing the opening enough to get her head through, then swing the rest of her body inside and lower herself to the floor.

 

One of the first priorities after getting rid of the house pests was to get us enrolled in school.  Dad had met some of our neighbors and we were invited to meet them and get some advice about enrolling.  After supper we took an old kerosene lantern and walked through the fields to our neighbor, Emile Wald.  Their son, Ralph was older than any of us so he sold us some of his used books that we would need.  I think that the amount paid was $0.10 for a spelling book and an  arithmetic book

  

DEPRESSI0N TO WAR

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To get started Dad borrowed $300.00 from and good friend and with this amount he bought two horses, one named Barney and the other Daisy.  Both were real plugs and were not capable of doing much work.  The remainder of the loan went toward the purchase of two cows, one called Jersey the other was Patsy.  I don’t know how Jersey got her name because she was definitely not of the Jersey breed.  She was as solid black as Barney.  Patsy had some Holstein blood in her and after a short life got something else in her - some green apples from which she bloated from the gas and died.  Needless to say we were definitely not in the dairy business with only one cow.  I guess the good friend came through with another loan and two more cows were purchased. The milk supply from this herd was not enough for any milk company to bother with but Mom managed to skim off enough cream every week to sell at a local creamery.  After much persuasion Dad managed to get the Averill Dairy in Akron to buy our milk.  Since the dairies didn’t need the extra milk they would grant the farmer a base price for a maximum amount of daily milk delivery, say 20 gallons a day, then a lesser amount for the surplus.  We barely made our base amount and were constantly threatened to have the base reduced.  This highly technical farming we had entered into was now bringing in about $3.50 a month.  The local farmers eventually banded and built a cheese factory near Rittman.  All of the members of this cooperative venture could sell their surplus milk to the cheese factory at a price higher than the price paid by the dairies for surplus milk.  The factory produced an excellent swiss cheese that shareholders could buy at a slight discount. Our neighbor, Emile Wald solved his surplus milk problem by making his own cheese.  This was a new experience for him but he soon learned to make an excellent cheese.  The operation began with his wife stirring a large copper kettle of milk on the kitchen stove.

 

An attempt to get extra cash by selling some baby pigs at a weekly auction netted us the obscene sum of $0.50 per pig.  Mom kept the receipt for this capitalist transaction among her faded memoirs for many years

 

I was now enrolled in the first grade in Sterling school but since the school was not on a semester basis like the one in Akron where I had just begun the first grade, the first grade in Sterling was finishing when I joined them with only three months of first grade.  The first three months in Akron had not been very productive since all I did was to color and draw pictures.  No one had told me that I was supposed to be learning my numbers and letters.  I must have passed on condition because the next September I reported to the second grade.  I sat next to an older boy who had probably flunked the second grade a couple of times.  His name was Herman and he was not going to be a particularly good influence on my education.  The entrance to the gymnasium had two doors leading from the basement hallway, one leading to bleachers and the other on to the gym floor.  The one to the gym floor was in a small well surrounded by a railing.  Some of the older boys found it a great sport to run down the hall, grab on to the rail, slide under it and drop to the door opening on to the floor.  One day Herman conned me into attempting this gymnastic maneuver just in time for the Principal, Simon Miller to catch us and escort us to his office where we were given a stern lecture and displayed a large paddle with air holes to reduce friction when wielded on a backside. We were asked if we would like him to apply it to our rears whereupon we replied in the negative.  He excused us and we refrained from any more of these gymnastics.

 

Tolerance to religion was more prevalent than now and every Friday we held “Chapel” in the auditorium.  By high school time this session was changed to “Assembly.”  Other than a short reading from the Bible, which was usually a Psalm, this gathering of the entire school body had no religious implications.  Each class would have a turn during the school year to put one the program.  These usually consisted of songs, musical solos or skits.  While in the second grade the teacher wanted me to sing a French song.  I was to wear a leather beret and announce that the beret was brought to America by my mother. The program began on schedule with me sitting somewhere in the audience with classmates.  When I thought it was about time to sing I got up and walked toward the stage.  Approaching the stage I upset a music stand being used by one of the band members.  At this point Mr. Miller placed me on his lap until the current performance was completed and I took my turn.  After making my announcement about the beret I rendered a flawless version of  “C’etait une  bergère et rond et rond petit pataploon; C’etait une bergère qui gardait ses mouton mouton.” Although grammatically incorrect this is what it sounded like.  So much for my singing career. 

 

Meanwhile back on the ranch things were not improving.  Dad bought two or three hundred peeps (baby chicks) and housed them in a dilapidated old summerhouse we called the shack.  It had also been fumigated and seemed like a respectable home for our new feathered friends.  When morning came Dad checked on his newly acquired flock and found that a weasel had entered the shack through a hole in the floor and had killed almost all of the chicks.  Mr. Mast who operated a hatchery in Sterling felt badly about the hard luck and gave Dad some replacement chicks that he was preparing to destroy because they were mostly roosters and all he could sell were laying hens.  Some of these survived until we needed meat for a Sunday dinner.

 

In a desperate move to save some of the chicks from the weasels it was decided that new quarters would be necessary.  The only solution was to move them into the house.  The upstairs bedroom over the kitchen was selected as the new indoor henhouse and the remaining chicks were moved to their new quarters.  This worked fine for the chicks but proved embarrassing for the rest of the family.  Fortunately they were removed before the roosters began crowing and the hens began laying.  René recalls having a school friend comment that he thought that he saw a chicken in an upstairs window.  René assured him that he had only imagined such a sight and, surely there were no chickens in the house!

 

Summers were not too bad because we always had a nice garden and there were many fruit trees on the farm.  One side of the lane was lined with sour cherry trees, two sides of the garden were lined with concord grape arbors and a third side had five plum trees, three were purple and two were the yellow variety.  There were also numerous apple trees, some peach trees, one pear tree and several sweet cherry trees.  We gave names to the apple trees we could not identify.  Our favorite apple was the Baldwin, a hard, delicious winter apple that provided part of our school lunches for a greater part of the winter.  Others were named “Early Apple,” “Snow Apple and “Rohner Apple” named after our Akron neighbors who liked them.  We always had more apples than we could keep through the winter or for canning applesauce.  These surplus apples were collected from the ground and taken to a local cider press.  The operator of the press would take part of the cider in payment if the service could not be paid in cash.  We enjoyed all of the cider stages from apple juice to cider with a little bite to hard cider and eventually vinegar.

 

Mom spent many summer hours canning vegetables from the garden and fruit from the trees.  We also picked many wild blackberries that grew in the woods to the east and adjoining our property.  We would later acquire this wooded area.  Cabbages were always plentiful and we made a large crock of sauerkraut each year.  Dad mashed the sliced cabbage in the crock as he rolled up his sleeves and attacked the cabbage until juice appeared, occasionally adding salt and caraway seeds.  Ask any sauerkraut maker about curing the cabbage and he will agree that the mixture must be weighed down with only a certain rock.  The weight had to come from one or more rounded glacial boulders.  We followed this tradition. The farm was within the bounds of the glacial fields and many glacial boulders were available

 

In the spring and summer there were always plenty of dandelions for salads. The best place to find the most tender ones was on the shoulders of the cinder roads.  Because of the coal-burning factories in the area there was always an abundance of cinders.  These were spread on the unpaved, country roads instead of using gravel.  A dandelion on top of the ground is tough and dark green but if one is found partially buried in the cinders the buried part will be a pale yellow and quite tender.  I found it hard to eat even the most tender ones.  Mom would fix them with onions, hard-boiled eggs, vinegar, oil and salt and pepper.  The eggs were good.

 

The grape arbors provided a sufficient amount of grapes to make a 55-gallon barrel of wine each year.  Dad had learned winemaking from his father and was quite talented in coaxing a full barrel out of a lean crop by adding some sugar water.  The grapes were ground into an open-end barrel and stomped with a steel disc attached to a rod and handle that dad had made in the machine shop when the boss was not looking.  After allowing the grapes to work they were pressed and the pure juice was poured into the final barrel.  After proper aging the barrel was capped and in a few days the wine was ready for consumption.  The wine served as a magnet to bring card-playing friends to the house at least until the barrel ran dry in the spring.  We also made root beer and on one occasion concocted a brew based on a vague recipe in Mom’s memory. It consisted of lemonade to which was added a few raisins to each bottle and capped.  The batch was stored in the cellar for aging; however, instead of a quiet aging period we were greeted with loud explosions as bottle after bottle exploded day and night.  No one dared to venture into the cellar for several days for fear of being cut by flying glass.  After the bombardment had subsided we mustered enough courage to sample some of the remaining bottles and were surprised to find the brew sparkling and similar to champagne.

 

We always had two or three pigs that were ready for butchering in the fall.  The first butchering was done on the farm.  Large kettles of water were heated over an open fire to provide hot water to soak the pigs’ hair so that it could be scraped off.  After gutting them, we would strip off the fat, cut it into small cubes and render it in a large kettle.  When all of the liquid was cooked out of the fat the mass was placed in a lard press and liquid was collected in a lard bucket.  When cooled the product was a snow-white shortening that would provide 100% cholesterol for all of our frying needs.  The other parts of the pigs were cut up into hams, shoulders and loins.  Other meat trimmings, kidneys, liver etc were ground into sausage meat.  This was mixed with salt, pepper and garlic and stuffed into casing that consisted of the pigs’ intestines.  Before filling, the intestines were soaked in salt water then scraped on the outside before being turned inside out and scraped again.  This was no easy job turning an eight-foot intestine inside out but Mom was very proficient at this task and the resultant casings were clean and sanitary.  After being stuffed with a sausage stuffer some was kept for use as fresh sausage and the rest was wrapped on poles and hung in the smokehouse for smoking.  There was no refrigeration so what could not be kept in the prevailing weather was smoked for preservation.  The hams and ribs were salted for several days either by rubbing salt over and into the meat or soaked in salt brine before smoking three or four days.  The hams were some of the best I have ever eaten.  When I graduated from the eighth grade Mom baked one that was served with fresh-baked bread.  My godparents from Akron, the Albert Landrys were invited as well as my best friend, Walter Graber whose mother had died recently.  My godparents gave me a white shirt with green stripes and my parents bought me a very nice gray and white striped suit.  We feasted on ham and bread.  This in 1938 was a sign that things were getting better.

 

The butchering was not a pleasant job to watch or perform.  In subsequent years Dad made arrangements with Andy Hostetler who ran the local slaughterhouse to pick up the pigs, kill them and dress them.  I don’t know why we speak of dressing animals when they are prepared for cutting up.  To me they get undressed!  On Saturday when the slaughterhouse was not being used he would allow us to use the facilities to make our lard, sausage etc.  Andy and Dad got to be good friends and later server on the school board together.  The snout, knuckles, feet and ears were boiled then the meat was picked off the bones and placed in a bread pan to cool and solidify so that the meat could be cut into slices and layered in shallow plates.  The juice from the boiling was then poured over the meat and the final mixture was allowed to cool and solidify.  The resultant dish was hogshead cheese, a dish I never liked.  We once tried butchering a calf and canning the meat but something went wrong with the process and all of the meat spoiled.

 

When I was in either the first or second grade Dad decided that it was time for one of our sows to be bred so that we could have more pigs.  The old sow was loaded in the back seat of the Model T with me as her companion and we took off for a neighbor’s farm where the breeding was to take place.  By the time we reached the end of our property the sow decided that she was not in the mood for any pig love or maybe had a headache. Regardless what was on her mind she decided that she would attempted to exit the moving Model T.  There was nothing I could do to restrain a 300 pound, determined pig.  Dad reached back from the front seat to settle her down and promptly ran off the road into a deep ditch.  The pig and I slid freely from the vehicle and, once free, Miss Pig ran home through the fields to the safety of her pigpen.  René sat in the front seat and we never found why he wasn’t assigned as the pig’s escort.  My biggest concern was how we were going to get out of the steep ditch.  The recovery was accomplished with neighbor Fred Eshler’s mule team.  I think that Miss Pig eventually made her final trip to the slaughterhouse as a virgin.

 

SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS

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Because of established school boundaries we were supposed to attend a one-room school called “Lancetown.”  Lancetown was on the other side of the hill (Ridge Hill) bordering the east side of our property and was as far away from our property as the central school in Sterling.  Dad wanted us to get the best education possible and would not send us to Lancetown.  The boundary for the Sterling School stopped at our property line.  We could go to the Sterling School but we were not entitled to ride the school bus that came as far as our property then turned around to continue the round picking only the entitled students.  This situation gave us no choice but to walk to school taking the most direct route cross country for two miles through the fields.  This means of traveling to school was in effect for me from the first grade through the sixth grade.  The biggest obstacle we faced on our chosen route was the crossing of the main lines of the Erie and Baltimore and Ohio Railroads.  These were heavily traveled main lines for these two carriers from New York and Washington to Chicago for freight and passenger trains.  There were four tracks for this traffic plus additional sidings for the steam engines to take on water and two spurs of the B&O crossing the Erie to connect lines to Cleveland.  There were no diesel engines then and it was common for the long freight trains to stop in Sterling to either take on water or wait for a safe passage on the crossover.  The watering process would often leave the long freight trains blocking our way and rather than waiting for the engine to take on water and move on we would listen for the clanging of the cars as the engine started up and if no sound was audible we would quickly crawl under the freight cars to the other side.  René and I did this until we felt that I was big enough to climb onto the cars then cross between them rather than below them.

 

If the train was heading east and stopped off to take on water the engine was positioned in our path so that we could walk in front of it.  As long as the tender was hooked up to the water tank there was no fear that the engine would move.  One day as I walked in front of this monstrous engine I was looking up at the front end and almost stepped into the path of a passenger train moving at top speed on the main line.  The old depot for Sterling was near where we crossed the rail lines and was positioned between the two sets of tracks.  On some occasions the clerk would invite us into the depot while a fast-moving train passed.

 

I still miss seeing these steam engines go roaring by and blowing their forlorn-sounding whistles.  I tried to imagine where all of the freight cars came from and where they were going.  At night I would stare out of my bedroom window and listen for the passenger trains I could hear in the distance.  The irregular levels of the window shades gave a jagged appearance of light as they sped by and I envied the passengers on their ways to interesting places.  While we still lived in Akron I would hear the train whistles and I visualized what these workhorses must look like when they leave the factory in brand new condition.  I pictured them as finished in gleaming gold.  It was after I finally saw one up close that I concluded that the difficult work they performed among the coal and smoke had finally taken their toll and the gold was now tarnished.

 

We always tried to get to school regardless what the weather was.  One winter morning we got as far as our property line where the snowdrifts were more than I could handle and I turned around and returned home.  René continued and shocked the teacher when he made a frosty appearance.  He was one of only a handful of students who had made it in the foul weather.  On another occasion a cinder road we had to cross had washed out during a rainstorm in the night.  Water was flowing through the washout like a small, fast-moving stream and René successfully jumped across.  From the other side he assured me that I could likewise maneuver the jump and I landed midstream.  Soaking wet I returned home.

 

Our clothes were adequate if not in fashion.  Our prize piece of clothing was probably the sheepskin coat and the “longear” cap.  The longear cap was a World War One aviator- type cap that buckled under the chin and kept the ears warm.  I also had a royal blue stocking cap Mom knitted.  It had a blue pom-pom with white yarn mixed with the blue.  This was to distinguish mine from my brother’s that had a solid blue pom-pom.

 

The friend who had loaned Dad the cash for the farm move was a heavy man, a Swiss named John Vuilleman.  He often passed on to us some of his used clothing that Mom could sometimes alter to partially fit us.  One rainy morning we had no rain gear to wear so Mom gave us some of John’s not-yet-altered clothes.  Remember, he was a large Swiss fellow and I was in the second grade.  René and I each sported a suit coat that was to serve as a raincoat.  My hands were completely covered and I kept tripping on the coat tails.  We successfully crossed the railroad tracks then stopped to hold a conference.  We were both ashamed to wear this ridiculous gear to school so we decided to hide the coats in a field and we would pick them up in the evening on the way home.  Between the railroad tracks and the school there was only a long hayfield that was in the process of being plowed for the spring planting.  Adam Bachman, René’s future father-in-law, owned the field.  Due to the rainy weather we didn’t think that he would be plowing during the day so we decided to bury the coats under some newly turned-over sod.  So as to locate our burial spot upon our return in the evening we located Adam’s sulky plow, a riding plow that was now unhooked from the team of horses and left standing until plowing could resume.  At this location we duly buried our coats and continued to school.  Lucky for us the rain persisted sufficiently during the day to prevent any additional plowing that could obscure our hiding place.  We retrieved our soggy coats and no one ever knew our secret.

 

About the time I was in the third grade I noticed that some of my friends wore a two-piece underwear now know as shorts and undershirts.  The underwear we had was a one-piece probably better known as a union suit.  Maybe it’s what John L. Lewis wore!  The leader of the miners’ union often spoke of a “union suit”. The summer style had short sleeves and legs and the winter version was the common long john.  Both had the convenient slit in the rear to facilitate Mother Nature’s call to the outhouse.  I was envious of the friends and their two-piece jobs and asked Mom if she could buy me a set.  There was no money for this large purchase, but she promised that she would make one for me.  She went to her old Singer sewing machine and tailored a two-piece underwear that could never have been matched by the couturiers of Paris.  The top piece was made from an old dress and sported a white background with purple violets adorning the entire shirt.  The shorts were a masterpiece of style also.  They were made from a 100 pound salt sack, the trade name being “Colonial Salt.”  Great care had been taken so that none of the lettering appeared on the creation; however, it was impossible to avoid the colored trademark of the company which was the face of an American Indian with the traditional feathers in his head.  Careful tailoring positioned the trademark perfectly centered on the rear end of the shorts.

 

Whenever the weather was especially bad, Dad would try to pick us up after school.  He would wait at a friend’s house about a quarter of a mile away on the far side of the “prairie” a name we had coined for an open field between the school and Dad’s friend, Albert Rastofer.  This field ran parallel to the hay field where we had buried our coats.   He would park the old Model T next to the barn so that it could be seen from the classrooms that I occupied from the third grade through the sixth.

 

SOME DEPRESSION STORIES

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Times were especially rough in the early 1930s and Dad decided that he would make some extra money by peddling eggs to his friends in Akron.  The grocery stores were not all equipped with proper refrigeration as they are today and transportation from farmers to the market was not as rapid.  Consequently, eggs were not always fresh when purchased.  Customers were willing to pay a few cents more a dozen to get relatively fresh eggs.  I say “relatively fresh” because Dad made the trip only once a week.  An egg could conceivably be one week old when delivered to the customer.  Before long he had established a route in Akron that demanded more eggs than our hens could lay so he began buying eggs from other local farmers.  He would check the morning paper and pay them the going Cleveland price for the day.  Soon customers were asking him to bring a chicken, some lard or other farm products.  For the return trip from Akron he would sometimes bring back a five-gallon jug of bootleg whiskey that he would pick up at one of his contacts.  The local farmers knew when he returned and they would show up at night with their bottles to be filled.

 

 

About the time he had established the egg rout a local farmer, another old Swiss by the name of Gus Giet died and the farm items were auctioned off.  Dad returned from the auction and proudly announced that he had purchased a truck for his egg route.  We were quite excited and I imagined something like a big dump truck or a large stake truck.  When he drove home he was sporting another Model T, this one a roadster with a converted truck body no more than four by six feet and occupying the space formerly held by a small trunk.  The price was $5.00 so it wasn’t a bad buy.  Gus had bought it new, converted it into a truck and proceeded to drive into the barn’s haystack when he confused it for a team of horses and it failed to stop when he hollered “whoa.”  It was like new and purred like a kitten.

 

The Model T had the gas tank under the driver’s seat and reached the engine by gravity.  There was no fuel pump.  Our farm was on the west side of Ridge Hill and Akron was to the east.  This meant that the first lap of the Akron trip was uphill.  Sometimes there was not enough gas in the tank to go up the hill because of the gravity feed so Dad solved the problem by backing up the hill and the remaining gas flowed to the engine.  From the top of the hill it was mostly downhill and he could make it to Rittman or Wadsworth where he could buy a gallon to hold him over until he sold a few eggs.

 

One of the biggest thrills at the time was the chance to accompany Dad on the egg route.  Whenever it was my turn to go I would sleep very little the night before the trip in anticipation of the adventure to the big city.  An occasional cookie from some kind old lady customer supplied additional rewards.  Once I received a leftover, dried out waffle that I didn’t really appreciate but I gave thanks to the donor.  The route ended in the evening at the restaurant where Dad had worked after he had lost his job only a couple of blocks away.  A stop at “Schilli’s” was always the highlight of the trip because Dad would splurge with some of the egg profits and we would each have a hot pork sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy.

 

On one special occasion it was Christmas Eve and all three of us boys had gone along on the egg route because the Swiss Club was holding their annual Christmas party for children of the members.  The event coincided with the day of the egg route and the timing was such that we would make the party at the end of the day.  The building where it was held was the “Liedertafel”, which was only a short block from Schilli’s restaurant.  We were each given a toy and a small box of hard candies after following Santa Claus in a procession around the hall.  When the party was over it was dark and we still had 20 miles to get home.  As we were driving past the corner where the Akron Selly Gear Company was located Dad stopped at a Pure gas station to gas up for the trip home.  In front of the gas station there was a small pile of left over Christmas trees with a sign from the benevolent owner of the station reading “FREE TACK ONE.” He wasn’t much on grammar but his heart was in the right place.  We selected the best looking tree, threw it in the Model T and off we went.  We surprised Mom with the tree and immediately set it up while Mom went through a box of ornaments.  We had two sets of lights but no electricity.  This didn’t deter the decorating and we strung them, electricity or not.  Mom also found a few ornaments and some small candleholders she had brought from Switzerland.  No matter how bad times were our parents always had our stockings filled on Christmas morning even if it meant stuffing it with an extra orange.  The orange was a special treat because Christmas was one of the few occasions when we saw an orange, one other being when we were given an orange half to suck on after receiving our spring tonic of castor oil.

 

When I was in the third grade I saw in the Chicago Mail Order Company catalog what I wanted for Christmas. It was an Uncle Wiggly game.  It was played on a board printed with various paths along which one moved depending on instructions found on a drawn card.  One evening Dad saw Mom making out an application for a money order for the sum of $0.39.  When questioned she told him that it was for the Uncle Wiggly game.  He gave his approval but asked that she not spend too much money.

The lack of any money was a reality that can be illustrated with the following story.  In order to feed the horses, chickens, cows and pigs it was necessary to get our grain products ground into feed at the mill in Sterling.  Dad would load a few sacks of corn, wheat and oats in the Model T and with $0.10 he could get it ground into feed.  One day he was all loaded but didn’t have the cash.  He was confident that the milk check for two or three dollars would be in the mail due any minute.  When the mailman stopped at the mailbox at the end of the lane Dad cranked up the Model T and headed for the mill only to return and unload the sacks.  The check had not arrived and there was not ten cents in the house.

 

Our monthly gas bill arrived in the mail in postcard form and usually indicated only a few cents for our monthly consumption.  We had no checking account so the bill was paid at one of the two grocery stores in Sterling.  Ours was paid at Krabill’s, a market about the size of a living room and operated by Mr. Krabill and his wife.  He impressed me as being a big, tough man.  He played the tuba in the town band and was a very friendly person after getting to know him.  He and Dad eventually became good friends and he got our grocery business when times improved in the 1940s.  Before we began patronizing his business Mom was always embarrassed to enter the store to pay the gas bill without any purchase so to avoid any embarrassment she would send Jim in to make the payment and she would give him three cents to buy a cake of yeast that she needed for her bread baking.

 

    One of my favorite tricks whenever Dad went to the mill was to hang on to the Model T’s spare tire as Dad drove from the corncrib to the house where he would pick up the $0.10 for the grinding charge.  One day he changed his routine and he already had the money so that he didn’t have to stop at the house.  As he drove past the house and accelerated up the lane I had to make a quick decision while hanging on to the spare tire.  I released my tight grip from the spare tire and dropped to the ground where I proceeded to roll with the momentum.  Realizing what happened, Dad stopped and after dusting off the cinders and dust I joined him on the inside this time and we continued our trip.

 

Entertainment outside of the home consisted of the free movies shown in two neighboring towns, Creston and Seville.  The movies were sponsored by the local merchants who contracted the owner of a movie house in Akron to present shows on Fridays and Saturdays during the summer.  The idea was to lure the local community into town to spend some money.  When times were good we were each given a nickel to spend.  This was payment mostly for collecting eggs and keeping the hen house clean.  I usually spent mine on a nickel’s worth of freshly roasted Spanish peanuts from the dime store or on a Popsicle.  The movies were shown on a vacant lot where a screen was hoisted onto a frame and the movies were projected from a truck equipped with two regular movie-house projectors so there was no time lost in changing reels and, except for being outside and standing up, it was like being in a regular theater - well not quite.  The location in Creston was between the same mainline railroads that passed through Sterling, the Erie on one side and the B&O on the other. And it seems like a freight train would highball through town just at the critical part of the movie.  The other negative factor was the unpredictable weather.

 

For additional income the promoters set up wooden benches in the “orchestra” section of the lot and roped off the area.  If you wanted to sit you paid five cents.  Times must have been getting better around 1936 when Dad told Mom, “If things keep improving we might be able to sit down next year.”  Apparently our finances did improve because the next year they were sitting on the benches and even enjoyed a pre-movie beer with their friends, Eli and Bell Pernod. 

 

After the movies in Creston the return trip of two miles back to the farm often presented some navigation problems.  Upon leaving Creston there was a direct county road leading to the farm; however, the direct route was not complemented with a good surface.  It was a gravel road with a corrugated surface.  The jarring of the old Model T would sometimes cause the headlights to go out.  This driving danger was corrected by placing René over one of the front fenders while he dangled a dim kerosene lantern to light the way.  This was a far cry from sealed beam headlights but we always managed to make it home.

 

Maybe times were improving but we were not witnessing any dramatic changes on the farm.  Improved finances resulted in 1937 when Dad was called back to work at his old machinist job in Akron.  This pleased him because he never liked farming.  Brother René says that he must have been the worst farmer in the state.  He had now bought a 1933 Ford V-8 and was able to commute comfortably to Akron, a distance a little over 20 miles.  At that time a commute of that distance was unheard of in our area but Dad managed well.  During any extreme winter weather he would spend the night with friends from the old neighborhood.  Mom and the three boys now ran the farm.  None of us liked the farm work and looked to the time we could leave.  We didn’t realize that the upcoming war would relieve the three of us of the farm duties.

 

Depression hardships were widespread in our small community.  Within an area defined by a circle with a one-mile radius there were six suicides in one short period.  Out of my senior class of twenty-four the parents of three of my friends were among the six.

 

TIMES IMPROVE

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In 1936 we were still walking to school and the old one-room Lancetown School was still operating.  A new superintendent of the Sterling School became aware of the situation and suggested to Dad that he could circulate a petition among the residents of the Lancetown School District to shut down the school.  If the one-room school could be shut down, busses would cover all homes in the area and we would get transportation.  Dad got an official document drawn up and began soliciting signatures.  Most of the old timers wanted to keep the school and could not see the advantages of the centralized school in Sterling.  Some were adamant about the issue and Dad received some threats but he continued his campaign and eventually got enough signatures.  One farmer got physical and began chocking Dad but the confrontation was cut short and Dad left without the signature.  This person later befriended Dad and all was forgiven.  We were now entitled to ride the school bus.  The diehards would still not capitulate and hired a teacher to continue their school on a private basis.  This lasted a year or two then they gave in.  Eventually they realized the benefits of the central school and some apologized to Dad for their behavior when he circulated the petition

 

In 1937, the year Dad returned to the machinist job the local electric company offered our area electricity.  The government-run Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was in operation by this time; however, for some reason we were not included in the program.  Since we had such a long lane the electric company had to install two extra utility poles along the lane and to cover this additional expense we were required to pay a total monthly electric bill of  $3.50 This charge entitled us to use up to 44 kilowatts per month.  To illustrate the increase in electrical consumption since then, we never used the allotted amount and today we use more than 44 KWH in one day in our present condominium.

 

Dad contracted an electrician in Sterling to do the wiring, which included the house, barn and pig shed.  Included in the contract was a string of five wires running from the house to the barn, a distance of about 200 feet with a pole light in between.  Total cost was a staggering $92.00!  All fixtures were minimal but adequate.  If I remember right, the electrician complained that he had not made any money on the deal and Dad gave him a few extra dollars.  Mom brought out her electric iron, the only appliance we had.  The first electrical purchase other than light bulbs was an electric motor for the water pump at the barn.  Next came a refrigerator.  With electric power we were now in a position to install indoor plumbing.  The old outhouse with a four by four on the east side to prevent tilting from the strong west winds was about to become history.  An old room next to the kitchen used mostly for storage was the room selected for this modernization.  Dad found an old retired plumber who had a bad case of arthritis to do the job. This must have been around 1939 and I was a high school freshman.  René was in college by now so I was selected as the plumber’s assistant.  Because of the physical condition of the old plumber his job was mainly to direct the work that I did.  I cut the pipes to his specifications, made the connections, leaded the sewer joints etc.  A new water well was drilled next to the existing one and an electric pump and storage tank were installed.  This pretty much completed our plumbing.

 

With plumbing and electricity in the house the electricity gave us a new tool for conducting experiments.  One of my first experiments was to build an electric motor.  I thought that this would be an easy job.  I reasoned that if a generator produced electricity the wiring in a generator could be reversed and I would have a motor.  I performed the wiring on an old Model T generator, put an electrical plug on the end, plugged it into a socket and proceeded to blow our first fuse.  The next big thrill was the construction of a projector.  When we moved to the farm we found an old railroad lantern in the cellar.  On one side of the lantern there was a large magnifying glass and on the opposite side a red lens.  I found that if I held an electric bulb behind the clear lens and move the lens in front of the bulb I could project the image of the bulb on to the wall.  It could be projected clearly enough so that the wattage printed on the glass could be read.  A cigar box contraption was then constructed so that a postage stamp could be positioned between the bulb and the lens and the stamp image was projected.  We collected stamps so there was a large supply of projection material for viewing.  This doesn’t sound like a great innovation to today’s computer generation but to us it was like the first step on the moon.

  

We must have been rolling in money from Dad’s job in Akron because at this same time we built a new garage where the old shack had stood.  Fred Rastofer, a local contractor, did this work and again, I helped with the construction.  I screwed up on one of our first jobs when Fred and I cross cut a four by four to be used for a corner post.  I didn’t follow the line very well and we ended up with a beveled post we corrected with a shim.  The garage was quite nice consisting of space for two cars and a work area that was actually large enough to accommodate the tractor that was also purchased about then.  The floor was not paved.  We three boys eventually paved the entire floor, mixing all of the concrete by hand.  The cost of the garage was $310.00.

 

The tractor was a Ford-Ferguson that was a new concept in farm tractors.  Ferguson was a British company that came up with the concept of a hydraulic system for operating the associated implements attached to the tractor.  The concept worked very well and the Ford-Ferguson marriage produced a good, affordable system.  I think that the final price for the tractor and the attached plow was around $350.00 with the two horses and harnesses thrown in on the horse-trading deal.

 

 

WORK AND PLAY

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     In the summer time we three boys earned our own spending money by working for a neighbor, Almond Brando who operated the “Hilltop Fruit Farm”, a small fruit farm at the top of Ridge Hill.  His main crop was strawberries that we picked for about four weeks in May and June. We would pick on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and Brando would take the berries to a farmer’s market in Kenmore, a suburb of Akron on Saturday.  He paid us $0.015 a quart and the baskets had to be heaped up.  He had inherited an old 1924 Maxwell touring car from a friend and upon approval from the friend’s widow he converted it into a small truck.  The truck was parked at the end of the berry patch where Brando would sit under a tarp and wait for us to bring our trays of six full boxes of berries to him.  He would punch our personal card with the corresponding number of quart baskets then, after we left, he would proceed to level off our heaped baskets and pack a few extra baskets for which he didn’t have to pay for picking.  He would sometimes feel generous and have a container of lemonade and a box of graham crackers for our refreshments on hot days.  During the peak of one season I picked 92 quarts and Jim picked an even 100.  We picked for about four or five years until around 1939 when the Schneider brothers showed Brando the meaning of “solidarity.”  René began college at Kent State in 1938 and was spending some of his summer vacations working at jobs more strenuous than berry picking.  One day he came along to Brando’s to make a little extra money and while picking he threw a rotten berry at one of us.  Brando caught him and fired him on the spot.  One of his strict rules was that throwing berries, rotten or not, was strictly prohibited and grounds for immediate dismissal.  René was paid for his day’s work and Jim and I kept working.  The way Brando paid us was to pay for the previous picking.  In this way he could get the cash for the picked berries before paying for the picking.  Jim and I didn’t like the treatment René got so we spent the rest of the day making plans.  At the end of the day we presented our punched cards from the previous picking and I told Brando that I was quitting and wanted to be paid in full.  Jim followed with a “Me too.”  This visibly upset Brando who proceeded to inform us that we would not get recommendations from him when the next owner took over the farm.   He was about to move to Arkansas and was completing his last year on the “Hilltop Fruit Farm.”  The next year the new owner asked us to work for him.

    

When strawberry season drew to a close, cherries and raspberries were generally in season.  For these we were paid $0.03 a quart but we could never make as much money as picking strawberries.  I kept a record of my earnings and remember one entry which read, “Picked gooseberries today; made $0.07.”

    

When I reached high school age I was ready for more strenuous work.  I would shock oats and wheat and help during threshing time for $0.10 an hour. These were hot, dirty jobs, especially threshing.  The older men would get the easier jobs in the field, usually pitching the bundles of grain on to the wagons that would then haul the loads to the barn area where the threshing took place.  My job was usually catching the grain in sacks or in iron baskets and carrying it to the granary or loading it onto a truck.  One time after working for 24 hours at a neighbor’s I returned home to a mother who didn’t recognize me.  The wheat grain had suffered from a black mold that filled the air when it was threshed.  All that my mother could see was two eyeballs.  That night I had a bad nosebleed.  Besides being a bad workday I didn’t collect any pay.  We had an agreement with this neighbor that we would help with his threshing and his bull would service our cows when breeding was required.  The bull made out better than we did and I don’t think he ever got a nosebleed!

    

Around 1940 we were demanding and getting the obscene sum of $0.20 an hour for the same work.  One of the last jobs René and I had was just before René went into the army when we shocked oats for an old miser named Joe Wurgler.  His son drove their John Deer tractor and Joe sat on the binder.  Joe’s job was to catch the bundles on a carrier until he had a decent load then drop them in a pile so that they would be concentrated with other bundles thereby making it easier for us to gather them for shocking.  In theory this works pretty well; however, the binder did not live up to its name and loose stalks would go flying in all directions.  These loose stalks of oats had to be gathered by us and hand tied.  When lunch came we were looking forward to a good hot meal.  Instead we got lukewarm boiled fish and leftover vegetables.  We were treated to a week-old pie for desert.  This was about the time we decided to tell the local farmers to shove their slave jobs.  We had to wait another month to get paid for the oak-shocking job.

    

I don’t want to leave the impression that we were miserable and hated our home.  It was a loving home and, considering the economic conditions of the depression, it wasn’t a bad existence.  I guess we just had too much adventurous blood   to remain on the farm. 

    

Most of our recreation we created ourselves.  When we were in grade school we spent much of our leisure summer time playing with our toy cars.  Just beyond the garden there were two large sweet cherry trees about 30 feet apart.  At the bases of the trees we set up our individual areas we called factories.  We built underground garages and used drainage tiles standing on end for silos that were filled with sand to load into the trucks.  Between the factories we built roads out of mud and troweled the surface that hardened into smooth roads.  After every rain shower we had major road repair jobs.  One of the curves along one road was called “dead mans curve.”  The business end of our entertainment consisted of trading loads of sand or the swapping of vehicles.

    

Of course, another sport was playing war games or cowboys and Indians, sometime with cap guns and at other times with homemade rubber band guns.  My favorite gun was a cap gun with a yellow grip and the name “Tony” stamped on the side.  I believe that Tony” was Tom Mix’s horse’s name.  Rubber band guns were made with a block of wood 1” by 4” by 8” with an eight-inch trigger attached on one end against the grain with rubber bands stretched around the eight-inch length.    The rubber bands were cut from discarded Model T inner tubes.  The ammunition consisted of another rubber band pinched between the trigger and the body and stretched to the far end where it was looped over the end.  Firing was done by releasing the trigger.  Another favorite homemade weapon was the slingshot that was easily made from a Y-shaped tree limb Model T inner tube bands and a pocket made from the leather tongue of a shoe.

    

We always had plenty of marbles that were usually kept in cigar boxes.  The larger ones were called shooters.  The pretty ones were called crystals but were seldom used for fear of chipping them.  The most inferior ones were called combonies.  I have no idea where this name came from.  René was especially good at shooting with marbles and would play for keeps at school and would always bring some home.  Packing cinders into a nice flat surface made the best courts.  All of the local factories generated plenty of cinders from the coal that was used for steam generation that in turn powered the engines and the machinery.

    

One of our winter sports was our version of bowling.  Each player would arrange a group of spent shot shotgun cartages in any pattern he chose but confined to a given area at one end of the room.  The object was to upset the opponent’s pins before he got yours.  Turns were taken rolling a large marble toward the opponent.  We always looked forward to the first day of hunting on the 15^th of November.  This was for rabbits only and the hunters would leave a trail of empty cartages in the woods and in the fields.  It was always a thrill to find a fresh shell that still had a hard shell and the smell of gunpowder.  The most common size was the 12 gauge.  Other sizes were the 16 gauge, the 20 gauge and the 410.

    

Our most dangerous activity was playing in the barn.  The barn was a bank barn which means that it had two floors, the access to the upper floor being through doors at the top of a slope or bank.  Large sliding doors allowed large wagons of hay to enter easily.  Once inside the hay was unloaded with a system of pulleys and rope attached to a large hook.  Directly above the parked wagon and at the peak of the barn there was an assembly called a frog.  The frog locked at this position and the hay hook was pulled down from the frog and onto the wagon and fastened into the hay.  Fingers in the hook assured a good grip so that a sizable load could be lifted.  In the peak of the barn there was a steel track that ran along the peak to the haymow at the end of the barn.  At the far end of this rope and pulley assembly the end of the rope was attached to a horse in harness. When the horse pulled, the hook would rise vertically until it latched into the frog then move along the track to the mow at which time the horse was stopped to avoid knocking out the end of the barn.  The load was released with a pull on another rope attached to the finger mechanism and the load fell to the haymow.  When there was no wagon in place we would hang on to the hook and someone would pull on the rope hoisting the person hanging on to the hook into the air, up to the frog then a swift ride along the barn peak to the haymow where a long drop ended in the soft hay.  This was pretty scary and required a tight grip on the long trip to the peak that was several feet above the barn floor.

 

Most other activities were the familiar pastimes such as snowball fights, ballgames etc. outdoors and card games, puzzles, lotto etc.indoors.  As we grew older basketball and softball dominated the sports.   The shop in Akron where Dad worked dad a contract to make steering wheels for one of the major truck companies.  The outer ring of the wheel was almost the same size of the official basketball hoop.  One of these rings fastened to a backboard provided a fairly good contraption for the sport.  At first, the hoop was fastened to the corncrib located on the north side of the pigpen.  We eventually moved it to the inside of the barn on the upper level.  Many years were spent shooting baskets in the barn.  René was a very good player and in 1937 or 1938 he broke all county records by scoring 44 points in one game.  I recall watching the game in the old gymnasium.  The ceiling was especially low for a basketball court and the visiting teams were at a disadvantage because their long shots would usually hit the ceiling and would be judged out of bounds.  René specialized in the hook shot and on this night he couldn’t be stopped. The game was a league game with Marshalville and Sterling scored 92 points.  Scores of this magnitude were unheard of in those days even in the pros.  The rules at that time required that the ball be returned to the center court for a jump at center after each basket was scored.  This resulted in a slow game and low scores.  The rules were changed shortly after 1938 so that the return to center was eliminated.  René’s total scoring for the season remained unchallenged in the county until around 1943 when brother Jim broke it.

 

In between these superstars I played a less than mediocre game and presented no threat to these outstanding records.  My fifteen minutes of glory in sports occurred when I was a freshman and we were playing a non-league game with Seville.  All of the freshmen were on the reserve team and we played before the varsity game.  Seville had just built a new gymnasium that was twice the size we were used to and we were running ourselves ragged.  At the end of the game we were tied and had to go into overtime.  After the designated period of overtime each team with single foul shots had scored one point.  This meant a second overtime.  The referee ruled that the first team to score two points would win.  One of the Seville players got fouled after a considerable amount of time and we called time.  We had no special plays so we decided that as soon as the single foul shot was taken I would run as fast as I could toward our basket.  Hoping that the shot would be missed and we would get the rebound I would catch the ball over my shoulder and make an easy two-point shot.  I remember the words of our captain, Bill Kerstetter, “When Seville shoots, Schneider will run like hell toward our basket; I will get the rebound and throw the ball down court.”

 

To our amazement all worked out as planned.  The shooter missed, Kerstetter got the rebound, I was on my way down the court, caught the ball over my shoulder, took one dribble and went up for the shot when all of a sudden one of their guards jumped on my back.  This constituted a two-shot foul.   The first shot swished through the net then after taking careful aim up went the ball, hit the backboard and through the net.  The game was over and I was the hero - my only great moment in sports.  René and Jim both made all-county and I believe they also made positions on the all-state teams.

 

The late 1930s were bringing many exciting changes in our lives.  In 1937 I had an interesting tooth problem.  As a result of being hit in the mouth during a football game during recess I developed an abscessed tooth that was so painful I could not even allow a drop of water to touch the tooth.  In school I would fashion a funnel out of a paper towel and channel drinking water down the throat past the tooth.  Dad took me to a dentist in Rittman who diagnosed the condition and performed a root canal.  Several trips were required during the treatment and I would hitchhike to Rittman after school and Dad would pick me up on his way home from work.  I mention this event because it occurred in 1937 and I don’t’ think root canals were yet a common practice especially by a small town dentist.  The dentist said that he didn’t know how long it would last and predicted anywhere between six months and a few years.  It lasted over fifty years until the tooth broke and required a cap.

 

On one of these trips to the dentist I had hitched a ride into Rittman and was dropped a few blocks from the dentist.  It was a cold day and I was wearing my blue stocking cap and my sheepskin coat when I approached two teen-age girls and as I passed them they giggled and made fun of my clothes.  To this day I don’t find anything funny about what some poor person must wear. 

 

 

HIGH SCHOOL DAYS

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In 1938 I graduated from the eighth grade and René graduated from high school.  Through his determination and Dad’s encouragement he made plans to enter college in the fall.  There was not much money for college but Dad found enough to pay for tuition and books.  René enrolled in Kent State which is not far from Akron and majored in chemistry with the intention of teaching.  Under a government-sponsored program he got occasional work grading French test papers at $0.10 an hour.  His friend and fellow basketball player, Eddie Graber who was one year ahead of René in school was already attending Kent State and worked part time in one of the local dime stores.  René got a part time job at the same place and picked up a little extra money.  He rented a room that had a hotplate and the landlady allowed him to cook meals in the room.  On Friday he would take a bus to Akron and Dad would pick him up after work and bring him home.  During the weekend Mom would make soup, spaghetti etc. seal the food in jars and on Monday René’s suitcase was loaded with some clean clothes and several jars of food.

 

Around 1940 we bought a second car be used for school events, basketball practice etc. as well as for running errands on the farm.  This was a 1934 Chevy coupe, green with a fair motor but pretty poor brakes.  I learned to drive in this vehicle and took my driving test in it after only a few test runs on the local country roads.  My friend Walter Graber accompanied me to the State Police Barracks in Wooster where I took the driving test.  The examining officer had me drive around the block then enter the police station through a rear entrance at the bottom of a steep hill.  I descended the hill in second gear and the officer complemented me on my choice of gears to descend the steep hill.  What he didn’t know was that if I had not geared down the brakes would not have stopped me.  In the winter we didn’t keep antifreeze in the radiator so we had to add water when we made a trip and drain it at our destination.  On very cold days we could drive all the way to school with nothing in the radiator although the engine would sometimes get quite hot and it could not be turned off because the engine would diesel.  No spark was needed to ignite the gas.  It would combust from the extreme heat in the cylinder.  This situation proves quite scary and the motor would eventually stop by placing the transmission in third gear and braking at the same time.  This surely wasn’t good for the engine.

 

At the time I was in high school Jim was two years behind me.  Finances were improving and we were able to eat occasionally in the school cafeteria.  The cost of the meal was $0.10 and on Thursday the special was a hamburger on white bread and on alternating Thursdays we had hot dogs.  With this specialty there was the option to purchase an extra sandwich for  $0.05.  Thursday was our weekly treat and we always enjoyed the extra sandwich.

 

While René was in college and Dad was working in Akron the farm chores were in the hands of Mom, Jim and me.  We hated the job but managed to get things done.  Winters were pretty miserable but the summers were much more pleasant.  In the wintertime when we finished our chores in the barn we would seal cracks around the doors as best we could with clumps of straw.  In the morning the poor cows would have frost on their whiskers.  Ice had to be chopped from the watering trough so that the cows could drink.  In the summer the cows would be left in the pastures for the night.  A constant fear was to find some of them missing in the morning.  When located, the cows would usually be in a neighbor’s cornfield.  The neighbors were more tolerant to these episodes than we deserved.

 

One advantage of having ice on the watering trough was that it provided one of the ingredients for making ice cream.  We had the milk, the eggs and the ice.  All we needed to buy was sugar, cornstarch and vanilla.  We always had a 100-pound sack of salt to feed the cows in the wintertime when they had no access to a salt block in the field.  The old crank-type ice cream freezer made many delicious tubs of ice cream. Mom always cooked the mixture to a custard stage.  This resulted in ice cream much like the French Vanilla currently offered in our super markets.  I seldom run out of this flavor!

 

Winters were generally harsh enough by Thanksgiving to provide the ice we needed for ice cream; however it was not necessary because Mom always had some specialties on this day of thanks.  She made jello and a cream custard called “Boule de Neige.”  White sugar was caramelized over heat and at the proper time cold milk was added.  This caused the caramel to harden and further cooking with egg yokes made the creamy custard.  Before all of the sugar was hardened Mom would fish out a piece and we would enjoy a delicious piece of caramel.  When cooled the “Boule de Neige” (snowballs) would be floated on the top.  These were either whipped cream or simply whipped egg whites.  Every Thanksgiving we received a coupon in the mail for a six-pack of coca cola that we would redeem at Krabills.  We each had a bottle with our dinner.  These ice cold drinks were a real treat and satisfied me until I could afford cokes in Army camps.

 

I did well in high school and concentrated on available science courses.  In spite of not having all of the facilities of a large metropolitan school we had good dedicated teachers and a good basic curriculum that included four years of English.  The English grammar proved especially beneficial.  In my professional career I had a reputation of composing well organized and grammatically correct scientific reports that were often used as examples for employees in Texaco’s  worldwide company operations.

 

When in the seventh grade I was approached by Mr. Sprunger, a newly hired music teacher who asked me if I would be willing to learn to play the baritone horn also known as the euphonium.  He was starting a new school band and already had enough trumpets, clarinets, trombones etc but he needed a baritone player.  One subtle reason he needed a baritone player was that someone had donated an old baritone horn to the school.  I accepted but I never practiced like I should have.  I never knew the scales but I could recognize the position of the note on the sheet music and relate it to the proper valve position on the instrument.  My friend Dick Rich played the trumpet in the relatively strong trumpet section so he switched to the baritone section to help me.  His music was in the treble clef and mine was in the bass clef.  As long as Dick played I could follow along but if he stopped I was in trouble.  We played in the county contests in Wooster and even went to the regional contests at Kent State.

 

Other activities in high school other than sports consisted of participation in annual school plays, concerts occasional parties etc.

 

While in junior high I constructed a crystal set with the help of one of our teachers, Hr. Haight.  It was a rather fancy model with a coil and a variable condenser, two components not required for a basic crystal set.  Dad laughed when he saw my radio in a wooden Kraft cheese box and wondered how it would work without electricity or batteries.  I strung a long antenna from a large oak tree about 100 feet from my bedroom window, borrowed an old set of earphones from a neighbor and I was in business.  I would pick around in the crystal until I got a strong signal.  The main station I picked up was WTAM in Cleveland, an NBC affiliate.  On rare occasions I would pick up Akron and Detroit.  It was a special thrill to lie in bed in total darkness and listen to something originating miles away.  In order to get better reception I tied in the antenna to an electric fence that circumscribed a four-acre pasture and turned off the current in the fence but there was no improvement in the reception.

 

On Saturdays and Sundays I would usually go out with my friends, Walter Graber and Dick Rich.  On Saturday we often went to the movies in Wooster where the movies were rather expensive at $0.25.  Walter had a 1934 Chevy coupe that accommodated the three of us nicely.  Dick’s mother was a staunch Mennonite and at first she didn’t really approve Dick going to ball games on Sunday but when she realized that we were not a bad influence we had these days quite free.  Next to the theater in Wooster there was a small ice cream parlor run by an old couple named Kaltwasser.  The old man popped corn for theatergoers and the wife prepared ice cream dishes.  The Sundays were enormous and cost $0.10.  Every week a particular flavor was offered for only $0.07.  Needless to say which one we indulged in.

 

When Elaine and I moved to New Orleans on my first professional job we met a young geophysicist and his wife living in the same apartment complex as ours.  They were both from a small town somewhere in central or west Texas.  I think it was Sweetwater.  When they found out that we from Ohio they told us that an old retired couple from Ohio had moved to their hometown.   The old couple had told them that they had operated an ice cream parlor in Wooster and their name was Kaltwasser.  It’s a small world.

 

OUR WORLD CHANGES

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On Sunday, December 7, 1941 while I was a senior in high school I was listening to the big band of Sammy Kaye when the program was interrupted to announce that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.  At this moment many of our young lives changed.  We had been following the war in Europe and anticipated our possible involvement in a European war but the Japanese attack initiated a new dimension in our thinking and involvement by us suddenly became a reality.  There were no classes for us the next day in school even though school was held.  The senior class received permission to remain in our homeroom where we listened to the radio that constantly broadcast developing news about the attack.  None of us had heard of Hickam Field, Wake Island Pearl Harbor and other Pacific areas that were to become common names in the daily news.  We referred to maps and I drew a map of the area of interest on the blackboard on which we plotted data as events were reported.  We listened to President Roosevelt make his famous speech wherein he spoke of the “Day of Infamy’ and the declaration of war.  As we heard these events make history our destinies were etched in granite

 

I was 17 years old and distinctly remember meeting our superintendent, Mr. Roy Sinclair at the bottom of his office steps and he asked me how old I was.  When I told him that I was 17 he said, “Before this is over all of you will be involved.”  There were twelve boys and twelve girls in our senior class and almost all of the boys wanted to sign up that day.  Walter Graber who was now eighteen was the first to go.  He joined the navy right after graduation in May.  We were the first war-time graduation class and of the twelve boys eight entered the service

 

It had been traditional for the graduating class to take a trip to Washington, D.C.  Since war had begun all school trips to the capital were either discouraged or restricted.  It was decided that we would take an alternate trip to Detroit by way of a Great Lakes steamer from Cleveland.  The class had made some money by performing some class plays but the balance of the trip had to be paid individually.  Our total cost was about $10.00 per student and somehow Dad came up with the money and I made the trip.  With a teacher chaperone we drove to Cleveland in three or four cars and took an overnight steamer to Detroit.   The passenger ships sailing the great lakes were named after cities on the lakes.  We had either the City of Cleveland or the City of Detroit.  There was also one named the City of Buffalo.  These vessels were quite nice and had been elaborate in their time that dated probably to the early 1920s.  We set sail in late evening and most of us stayed on deck until the lights of Cleveland disappeared then retired to our staterooms where we doubled up with a friend of the same sex.  In early morning we entered the Detroit River and we passed under the Ambassador Bridge that connected Detroit with Windsor, Canada.  In Detroit we visited the Henry Ford Museum at Greenfield Village and the zoo on Belle Island.   We had lunch at the Greenfield Village restaurant and it was at this meal that I had my first frozen green peas.  I was impressed by the emerald green color.  We returned to Cleveland on the same ship and in Cleveland we visited the zoo before returning home to face our adult futures.

 

About this same time René graduated from Kent State.  It was June 1942.  He tried to enlist in the Air Corps but he failed the colorblind test and instead of the Air Corps he was assigned to the Medical Corps and sent to Camp Grant located near Rockford, Illinois.  He never got a furlough and, with about four months of training he was in the first wave to hit the beaches of North Africa in November 1942.  He brought his D-Day landings to four as he was in the landings at Sicily, Italy and Southern France.  He survived all of these plus the associated battles.  I believe his worst experience was at Anzio.  He witnessed the blunder of the Navy as they shot down our own transport planes loaded with airborne soldiers.  Earlier, German planes had come in low and undetected as they bombed and strafed while the Navy was asleep at their guns.  This event shook up the Navy gunners and when the American planes came shortly after the Germans they were prepared to gun them down.  René wrote me a letter and said that he hoped that I would not join the Navy but he didn’t say why.  It was after the war that I found out his reason.

 

I wanted Dad to sign for me so that I could volunteer but he wouldn’t sign.  Farming was considered an essential occupation and I could get deterred if my draft came up.  I was approached by a county official one day and he took a survey of the number of cows, chickens, pigs etc. we had on the farm.  When I asked him the purpose of the survey he explained that I would soon be drafted but if we had enough livestock I could be deferred.  He said that we were close to having enough.  All we needed was one more cow or a couple of pigs.  I wanted to get in the service so I never told Dad because I knew he would meet the requirements with a cow purchase.

 

On a spring day, 1943 I checked the mail and was elated and excited to find “Greetings” from my draft board with a request to report for my physical examination and subsequent induction.  I ran all the way down the lane waving the notice and cheering at the top of my lungs only to find Mom in tears for she knew the source of my excitement.  She was about to lose son number two.

 

 

IN THE ARMY NOW - BASIC TRAINING

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The next era in my life covers a period of less than three years but these years were such exciting and meaningful times that quite a bit of space is devoted to this period.

 

On May 6, 1943 I reported for induction into the Army.  I had already passed my medical examination in Akron so all of the preliminaries prior to swearing in had been handled.  Mom and Dad went with me to Orrville where a short swearing in ceremony took place in a building next to the train station.  After the ceremony I boarded a train for my first train ride.  Mom and Dad had already sent off one son less that one year earlier and now the second was leaving.  Before the end of the war the last remaining son, Jim would leave for the Navy.  I can’t say that it was a happy occasion, and after being a father myself, I can understand the anguish they were experiencing at that time.  Reminiscing about events like this reminds me of how wonderful my parents were.

 

Only those who have lived during these war years can understand the patriotic feelings that prevailed.  I mentioned earlier that of the twelve boys in my senior class, eight were in the service during the war.  The last words I heard from a friend who was leaving for the Navy at the same time as I was departing were, “See you in Tokyo.”

 

My first train ride took me to Fort Hayes, a permanent Army installation located almost in downtown Columbus.  The only recollection of the ride is that, as we entered Columbus, we passed next to the Ohio State Penitentiary.  It seemed like we could almost have touched the dark gray stones of this fortification.  The next week or so was spent getting uniforms, shots, doing some close order drill, KP duty etc.  While marching to the clinic to get shots “veterans” who had been there a few days earlier would encourage us with shouts like, “You’ll be sorry” and “watch out for the needle with the propeller.”  After receiving our ill-fitting uniforms and our shots we were given passes into town where we exercised our new manhood by having a couple of beers and returned to camp.

 

Near the end of the week, after a full day of close order drill, I was put on night KP.  The mess hall in Fort Hayes was a large structure that provided meals for the entire fort.  This KP turned out to be easy duty as the work consisted essentially of preparing food for breakfast.  All I remember doing was stirring a large kettle of dried apricots.  When reveille was sounded early in the morning I was off duty and could report back to our barracks where I would be excused from duty that day.  The barracks was a large brick, two story building and I was bunked on the top floor.  As I was tying a towel to the bedpost to indicate that I could sleep in, someone told me that I should check the bulletin board because he thought that I was shipping out.  Sure enough, my name was posted.  This meant no rest today.  For a farm boy to have gone twenty-four hours without sleep this would be a day with heavy eyes.  As was standard for the Army, we packed our two duffel bags then waited in the hot sun for several hours for some action.  Near the end of the day we were loaded on to a train for my second ride and by nightfall we were on our way to somewhere.  We had a Pullman car and I had a bed at the front end of the car.  We moved westward and by now I had overcome my need for sleep and spent much of the time gazing out of the window for fear of missing something.  There had been some heavy rains in the area and as we passed through Indiana I could see people in boats in flooded areas.  As we passed over a swollen river the water was almost to the tracks.  The windows of the train could be opened so I lay in bed with the windows open as we rode along.  There were very few diesel engines at that time and we were being pulled by a steam engine.  By morning I was scrapping cinders out of my ears.

 

I was abruptly awakened by someone shaking me and informing me that I was on KP.  I told him that I had just been on KP in Fort Hayes and he said that the only reason he had chosen me was because I was the first one in the car and if I didn’t want the duty I could decline; however, he said that KP on the train was good duty. There was very little to do and I would have access to any food I wanted.  I had not yet learned that you never volunteer in the Army so I got up and followed him to the mess car.  It turned out that he was right; duty was as he had described.  The kitchen facilities resembled a WW I facility rather than one would expect in 1943. in 1943.  The troop train was quite long and the kitchen was situated in the middle.  It was an old boxcar that had gasoline stoves set in a sand box in a corner of the boxcar. At feeding time the front half of the train would move to the rear with mess kits in hand then do an about face and move back to their seats in the front.  As they passed through the kitchen we dished out the food.  The process was reversed to feed those in the rear half of the train.  My job was to place a couple of fingers in a tub of cold water with floating pats of butter and with a twist of the wrist deposit a couple pats on each mess kit.  The feeding process went quite smoothly except that not much thought had been given to the food inventory.  We had piles of ice cream and no refrigeration so the melting ice cream could not be served.  We ate all that we could and the rest was thrown out of the car.

 

Judging from the position of the sun and the increase in temperature we were now heading south.  There were two by fours nailed across the open, sliding doors of the boxcar and we spent most of the day leaning on the two by fours enjoying the southern countryside.  As we traveled farther south we kept passing many obviously poor kids along the tracks waving to us.  The cooks had several large jars of jam that they didn’t care to serve so they would throw them at the telegraph poles as we rode along.  I thought this was a terrible waste as we observed these underfed kids along the tracks.

 

Late in the evening we arrived in camp that would be my home for the next ten months.  This was the infamous Camp Shelby located near Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  Training grounds and maneuvering grounds were extensive and extended southward almost ninety miles to the Gulf of Mexico.   Much of the camp had been constructed by the Ohio 37^th Division soon after their activation at the beginning of the war and, except for a few brick buildings in camp headquarters, the buildings were wooden or tarpaper shacks.  Our facilities were shacks raised a few feet on piling.  There were no windows but openings were screened and covers of plywood could be lowered during rain or cold periods.  Each unit housed about one half of a platoon of men and the units were grouped into sections.  Each company had its own kitchen and one latrine.  There were two little coal stoves in each hut and these provided the comfort we needed in cold weather.

 

I was assigned a bed for the night and soon fell into a deep sleep.  The next morning I awoke and discovered my new home, a tarpaper hut.  A sergeant by the name of Poley showed me how to roll a full field pack and informed me that I was now in the infantry, more specifically in the I and R  Platoon of Headquarters Company, 273^rd Regiment of the newly formed 69^th  Infantry Division.  I learned that I and R stood for Intelligence and Reconnaissance and I was to be a scout with an Army spec. number 761.   I don’t think that intelligence was a requirement for the assignment but my youth and knowledge of French were certainly some of the consideration for the classification; however, I was too naïve to realize the significance of being an infantry scout.  The 69^th Division had just been formed and, except for a small cadre, was staffed with inductees mostly from the north, mostly from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan and Indiana.  Our quickly adopted moniker was “The Fighting 69^th” named after the famous “Fighting 69^th “ of World War I.  This was a misnomer because the Fighting 69^th of World War I was the 69^th Regiment, and not a division.  It had no connection with the newly formed division.  Our newly designed division patch was a red numeral six intertwined with a blue nine.  The insignia gained popularity after the war when it was the unit used in the Sergeant Bilko TV series.

 

I immediately made friends with most of the platoon.  Out of twenty-four in the platoon I disliked only four.  I quickly learned to distrust these four who turned out to be screw-offs and not soldiers you would want at your side in combat.  Our platoon leader was Lt. G.W. Clark a fairly decent fellow.  I think he had been a schoolteacher in New York.  Other non-coms were Sgt. Orton and Sgt. Zoss, both nice guys.

 

The following months were fairly routine infantry training with special training in areas pertinent to intelligence and reconnaissance. Three months of basic training were followed by  advanced training and maneuvers.  Various infantry weapons were fired on the rifle ranges and we all had to qualify as either marksman or sharpshooter with the M-1 Rifle.  The M-1 Rifle was the name for the more common lay name of” Garand” The official name of this weapon was “The US Rifle Caliber 30 M-1” Reference to this classic weapon by any other name could earn you a double time around the block.  During a training session on the M-1 the instructor, Capt. Craig asked anyone to name the best rifle in the world  which, of course, was the US Rifle Caliber 30 M-1.  I knew the answer but I was not about to chance a run around the block.  Someone in the platoon finally stood up and said, “Sir, the best rifle in the world is reported to be the Italian 30 caliber."  Capt. Craig interrupted him and said, “Double time around the block.’  The next person correctly identified the world’s best rifle and the session continued.  Before long we became to depend on the M-1 and regarded it as a friend that could some day save your life.  We learned to keep it clean and could take it apart and reassemble it blindfolded.  Before qualifying with the M-1 we practiced dry shooting with 22 caliber weapons.  This was a unique training method in which three persons worked together. 

 

The shooter would lie prone with a partner lying next to him.  About fifty feet away a third person sat on a crate on which was fixed a blank piece of paper.  This person handled a small center-punched bull’s eye attached to a stick.  The shooter would then take a sight on the target and through hand signals to his assistant he would have the bull’s eye moved until it was on target.  When the shooter was satisfied the position was marked through the hole in the center of the bull’s eye.  The bull’s eye was then moved and the procedure was repeated two more times.  The three marks were then evaluated for proximity.  A good show was to cover the three dots with a dime.

 

On one of these training sessions I was lying next to the shooter giving instructions to the target man.  It was a very hot day and the sun was bearing down on my steel helmet.  I saw no reason to make eye contact with the target and had my face down as I relayed the hand signals.  Suddenly I heard Capt. Craig shouting at someone.  I soon realized that I was his target.  He didn’t approve my casual position and I was ordered to double time around the block.  Capt. Craig was our G-2, the Regimental Intelligence Officer.  I think he had been a schoolteacher in Tennessee.  He was well qualified and I liked him.

 

The I and R Platoon also had training in hand to hand combat, map reading etc pertinent to scout training.  The most strenuous exercise was bayonet training.  This was done with a partner a few yards away and facing you with his rifle-mounted bayonet.  This fixed weapon weighed 10½ pounds. At the command you would charge your opponent and perform a long thrust, short thrust, jab or butt stroke as instructed.  Other commands were “ On your opponents rifle, on your own rifle” back and force as you double-timed and quickly became exhausted.  The obstacle courses were good tests of our stamina.

 

Near the end of our advanced training we noticed times of less strenuous training.  After a particular rough night, Lt. Clark would instruct a Sgt. Miller to take the troops out and give them calisthenics.  Upon Lt. Clark’s departure, Sgt. Miller would assemble us under some trees and we would be given finger and eyeball exercises.  These goofing off times were rare.

 

We really screwed up on one occasion while in unfamiliar camp territory doing motorized reconnaissance exercises.  It was late in the afternoon and our platoon leader decided that we could find a short cut out of the area.  As we navigated through the campgrounds we came upon some red flags that indicated a rifle range in the vicinity and currently active.  We paid little attention to these warnings and continued on uncharted paths.  Suddenly we were being fired upon as bullets whizzed overhead.  We made quick exits from the jeeps and took prone positions on the ground.  Dragging ourselves to the jeeps we reached for the horns and signaled with blasts of SOS.  In the distance we heard a whistle and a command to cease firing.  We proceeded toward the origin of the firing and found that we were entering the main street of a mock village where troops were engaged in an exercise in street fighting.  The officer was duly chewed out and, embarrassed, we passed through the village among hoots and hollers.

 

We learned to recognize the smell of various gases and had gas mask drill.  Unmasked, we had to enter a building filled with tear gas then open the bag containing the mask and place the mask over the face and begin breathing.  Gases we learned to recognize were mustard, phosgene and chloropicrin.  Either phosgene or chloropicrin smelled like new-mowed hay and the other smelled like fresh-cut corn, two smells readily recognized by the farm boys.  These smells were created for identifying purposes by impregnating a small specimen in charcoal and covering it with a cotton swab in a test tube.  These samples would then be passed among the soldiers to sniff and record the odor in their memories.  While sniffing mustard gas, someone in our platoon was not satisfied with only a sniff.  He removed the specimen from the test tube and examined it between his fingers.  Shortly thereafter we were given a break and allowed to go to the latrine.  This curious person immediately experienced a burning of the penis and was taken to the hospital where he had to be circumcised because of burned skin from the mustard gas.

 

Much of our platoon training consisted of what we would theoretically be doing in combat. This was to scout ahead of the rest of the troops during an attack.  We had three or four jeeps and the idea was to drive on the advancing road and whenever we approached a curve or a hill we would dismount the jeep and reconnoiter on foot around the curve or beyond the hill.  The jeep driver would hide the jeep along the shoulder of the road then when we signaled an all clear he would pick us up and we would proceed to the next area to reconnoiter.  Luckily, this is not how the operation was conducted in combat.  If we had operated in this manner we would probably not have survived the first curve or hill.  A waiting 88 zeroed in on the curve or hill would have picked off the first jeep in sight.

 

The greatest deficiency in our training had to be the lack of emphasis on artillery.  In combat, artillery and mortars killed far more than small arms fire and I don’t recall getting any training in this potentially deadly danger.  I was to learn this during the first exposure to combat.

 

On one training session I was able to apply a simple mathematical solution to a problem in the field.  I remembered that in high school my science teacher Mr. Haight had shown us a trick to estimate distance to an object.  It involved stretching the right arm full length before you and, closing one eye, placing the forefinger on the object.  Without moving the arm do the same operation with the other eye.  In doing this the fingertip moves across the objective.  The distance moved is estimated and multiplied by 10 to get the distance.  The distance you see your finger move gives a good estimate if there is reference material of known dimensions such as bricks on a wall. The multiplication by 10 is general and dependent on the length of your arm and the interpupilary distance between your eyeballs.  On a training mission in the woods we were fired upon by a machine gun that was visible at an unknown distance.  Our problem was to estimate this distance.  Estimates ranged from lows of 50 feet to highs of a couple hundred.  While we were estimating the distance our lieutenant sent someone out to pace the distance.  I applied the secret eyeball maneuver and came up with 145 feet.  I endured laughter and howls from my comrades until the scout returned to announce that according to his pace the distance to the machine gun was 145 feet.  I then had to explain the technique to the platoon.

 

Sometime in February, 1944 while I was in Camp Shelby I was called to the orderly room to see the first sergeant who had a confusing message.  I was to report to a certain building in camp at a certain time that evening.  There were no other details.  Not knowing what this was all about, he assigned a jeep and driver to deliver me to the designated rendezvous and wait for me.  Upon entering the building I recognized someone I had seen in Fort Hayes.  He was of Serbian background and spoke a Croatian dialect.  We noticed a couple of Orientals and before we could deduce what the rendezvous was all about a Major entered from a back door and we were all called to attention.  He was wearing a garrison cap (cap with a visor) that was not standard gear in Camp Shelby.  We were called at ease and he introduced himself as a representative of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) that was later changed to the CIA.  He explained that each of us present had been thoroughly investigated and all had been summed because we qualified to be under cover agents in a foreign land.  This meant that we could work as spies or with friendly underground forces in an occupied country.  There were about fifteen of us.  Each was young, in top physical condition, had completed advanced training, had an above average intelligence and spoke some foreign language fluently.  Out of the entire camp of approximately 45,000 soldiers I was the only chosen one who spoke French.

 

He made it clear after giving us a few details that the assignments were strictly on a volunteer basis and in a short time he would turn his back and anyone could leave the room.  What had transpired was to be kept secret.  He turned his back and about half of those present left the room.  I decided to stay and get more details.  Being a scout in the infantry I didn’t have too much to lose.  His answers to questions were as follows:  If you volunteered you could be on your way out of camp in the morning.  The training would consist of commando training, hand-to-hand combat, parachute jumps, map reading, and instruction in the latest slang expressions, songs, sport figures etc. to the country of your assignment.  After your training you were given an assignment in the states as a test.  You might be asked to find out how many medium tanks were being produced daily in a certain factory in Detroit and where they were being sent.  If you were caught the OSS would do nothing to expose your cover.  Instead you would be arrested, booked and when checked through the FBI you would be identified as an agent and cleared.  The overseas in my case would originate in England and I would be dropped in France at night by parachute or be brought to the beach in a little rubber dingy.  Contact would be made with the French underground and I would have only one assignment at a time.   The mission would be to destroy or impair enemy facilities such as blowing up a bridge, ammunition dump or train.  I would have civilian clothing and fake identification and if caught I would be shot on the spot.  These were not particularly encouraging words.  The more he answered questions the less attractive this high -risk job sounded.  I was still interested but when he said that the OSS would even try to provide names of members of the underground I might not be able to trust I made up my mind to pass up this wonderful opportunity to die young.  The questionnaire he wanted filled consisted of seventeen pages that had to be completed by morning and contained such questions as “Did any or your grandmothers have a nickname and if so what was it?”

 

I often wonder what would have happened if I had volunteered.  Actually, had I been given the complete training that the OSS promised I could never have been prepared for a drop in France before D-Day.  I suspect that the training would have been curtailed and I would have been dumped out of a plane with a parachute, civilian clothing with a French dictionary in one pocket and a cyanide pill in another.  This was before the expression “Have A Nice Day!”  Fewer than four months later I would get a taste of work with the underground when I made contact with the resistance in Normandy.

 

While in Camp Shelby I applied for the ASTP program.  This stood for Army Specialized Training Program and was intended to train specialists at colleges and universities in disciplines useful to the Army.  While waiting for something to develop in this area, combat units were getting desperate for more foot soldiers so most of the ASTP programs were discontinued and those enrolled in the program soon found themselves back in the infantry.   This opportunity and an application for the Air Force were hopeless attempts and I was destined to be an infantryman or a dead spy.

 

In March 1944 plans were made to break up our division and send us overseas as replacements.  Officers and non-commissioned officers remained to organize and train our replacements that were coming mostly from the discontinued ASTP program.  When our replacements arrived we shared our barracks for a short time.  Some of these were to be recognized later in a famous picture of my old platoon, the I and R Platoon of the 273^rd Infantry Regiment, 69^th Division shaking hands with the Russians at the first meeting on the Elbe River in Germany.  I recognized some of the Americans exchanging handshakes with the Russians.  The 69^th Division entered combat in Europe shortly after the Battle of the Bulge and their main claim to fame is the encounter with the Russians.

 

Regular duties in Camp Shelby were KP and table waiter.  KP involved a full day’s assignment but table waiter required regular training for the day then a quick shower and cleaning to wait on supper tables.  As food platters were emptied at the tables the table waiter had to collect them and get refills in the kitchen.  After supper they had to clean up.  KP was the choice assignment because it was a full day’s job and many leisure minutes were enjoyed if only while peeling potatoes.

 

Another duty that was not universally enjoyed was latrine orderly.  After the troops of the company had done their morning toilet and gone out for the day’s training the orderly had to mop the floor, clean all of the commodes and sinks and heat some water for the cleanup before retreat.  I didn’t get this assignment very often but on one occasion I had trouble getting a fire going in the coal-fired boiler located in a separate little room adjoining the latrine.  I tried starting a fire with a few pieces of crumbled paper and coal but the coal would not ignite.  I got a wide-mouth glass jar from the kitchen and went to the motor pool where I filled it with gasoline.  With a few glowing embers in the heater I heaved the gasoline on to the fire and ignited an explosive blaze.  The fire backed up to the jar that I was still holding but the jar quickly and instinctively dropped from my hand. The jar broke and flames covered the floor.  The floor was concrete and I managed to stomp out the flames.  By now I had the coal burning and a roaring fire.  That evening, steam was notably emitted from the faucets and no one complained about cold water.

 

Except for occasion night problems we were free for a couple of hours after retreat and supper.  After training all day we had to get cleaned up for retreat and at our young ages this refreshed us for the evening.  I was free to go to the PX (Post Exchange) and plank a nickel on the counter and get a large Payday candy bar or for a dime a bottle of 3.2 beer.  Each company had a day room that contained a table and chair for letter writing and a coke machine.  For a nickel we could get an ice-cold bottle of coke.  These cokes were especially welcomed when returning from the field and before showering for retreat.

 

Camp Shelby usually had two infantry divisions plus other units housed in camp for a total of approximately 45,000 men.  Passes were usually Sunday passes to Hattiesburg.  A camp bus would take us to town to a bus station that was next to a dairy.  The first thing we would do was to get a milk shake or some ice cream.  The rest of the day was spent going to a movie or visiting the USO.  The USO was a nice building where we could buy snacks and write letters.  The building is still in Hattiesburg and is used as some kind of a civic center.

 

I don’t recall when, but I did get two furloughs, one sometime after advanced training and the other in March before going overseas.  On furlough I would catch a train around 11 PM in Hattiesburg at the Southern Train Station.  Others going to more central areas of the nation would leave from the Illinois Central Station.  The Southern train originated in New Orleans and, in anticipation of a record crowd in Hattiesburg every available car was used.  As the train approached, the object was to grab a rail at a door and jump on while the train was still moving otherwise you might not get a seat and end up standing all the way to Chattanooga where arrival was the next afternoon.  When the sun rose the first morning we would be pulling into Bessemer, Alabama.  In Chattanooga a few hours later I changed trains for Cincinnati.  Those going to New York and other destinations on the east coast took a different train.  On both trips that I took the conductor got off at his home in Somerset, Kentucky in time for supper.  Arrival in Cincinnati was late evening and at 11 PM twenty-four hours after leaving Hattiesburg the train departed for an overnight trip to Akron arriving around 6 AM.  The train in Ohio was never crowded and the cars were newer.  From Akron I would take a bus to the shop where Dad was now working or hitchhike home.

 

GOING OVERSEAS

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After ten months in Camp Shelby we were leaving our comrades.  At our last retreat our company commander Capt. Rice and his staff reviewed their troops for the final time and bid us farewell.  Capt. Rice was a fine gentleman and regarded his young troops as his children and his farewell was emotional as he shook hands with each of us.

 

We boarded the train in camp and headed north arriving the next day at Fort Meade, Maryland located midway between Baltimore and Washington.  While in camp for a week or ten days we were kept guessing what our overseas destination would be.  One day we would be issued summer khakis suggesting the Pacific then the next day we might exchange this gear for winter ODs (Olive Drab).

 

After a week in Fort Meade passes were issued so that those whose homes were no farther than New York could go home.  One provision was that your hair had to be very short and pass inspection before you could leave.  One of the soldiers from New York didn’t want to take a chance of being turned down so he shaved his head.  His name was Savalas and with his shaved head he looked like the Telly Savalas who we would later see on television in the role of Kojack.

 

A fellow scout named Goebel and I decided that we would use our pass and go to either Baltimore or Washington.  We walked out of the main gate and on US Route 1 we waited for the first bus coming from either direction.  The first bus was heading south so we flagged it down and boarded for Washington.  Neither of us had ever been there and we had only a few hours to spend before returning to camp.  We bought tickets for our return trips to camp and with the change we had left we got on a streetcar and told the conductor to remember where we got on.  We would ride to the end on the line on our improvised sightseeing trip then return to our point of origin where the conductor would remind us to disembark and we would again get our bearings.  While riding the streetcar an older couple spoke to us and when the lady found that we were about to go overseas and had come to get a last look at our capital she felt sorry for us and offered us $10.00 to enjoy our final days.  Goebel had fed her a big line about us being scouts and that we would probably not return from overseas.  We appreciated her generosity and thanked her but refused the offer even though we were broke and had only our return tickets and a few coins of cash.  As the kind lady proceeded to show us pictures of her son who had just received his 2^nd Lieutenant bars from Fort Benning her gentleman made a remark that suggested that they were not married.

 

From Fort Meade we boarded the train thinking that we were headed for a port of embarkation only to find ourselves in a swampy-looking camp in Virginia.  We arrived at what we learned was Camp Patrick Henry in early morning.  Some of the soldiers from Virginia had never heard of the camp that was isolated from the countryside.  The barracks were set among large trees so that the camp was probably difficult to detect even from the air.   Several German prisoners were enjoying a leisure life of captivity in a portion of the camp.  As we went on forced marches past their enclosures they would be playing volleyball.  During the week we were here the same uniform-exchange routine took place.  In summer khakis we moved again, this time north to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey.

 

In Camp Kilmer we were organized into companies of 200 men.  These companies were further broken down to convenient units of 50 men each.  We went through the usual training sessions including abandon boat drill.  After a week we had a repeat of Fort Meade.  On a Saturday afternoon after a morning of routine drill we were granted passes for the remainder of the day.  These would be available for departure at 1 PM, 2 PM and 3 PM.  A friend and I were ready to leave at 1 PM but another friend in a different barrack across the street was not ready so we waited for the 2 PM group.  Just before 2 PM we were ordered to fall out and it was announced that all passes were canceled because we were shipping out.  MPs were posted so that no one could leave and we were marched under guard to the mess hall for supper.  We were being treated more like prisoners who might make a break.  After dark we were asked if we were short of any clothing or other supplies and were given a final physical - a short arm.  Trucks then stopped in front of the barracks and we were ordered on.  Our duffel bags filled a trailer in tow.  All of these activities were conducted under the watchful eyes of the MPs.  We later learned that a ship in New York was ready to leave and still had room for a few more soldiers and those of us remaining after the 1 PM departures were just the right number for the complement.  Two MP jeeps with flashing red lights and sirens wailing escorted us down the Pulaski Highway to New York City.  Although the highway had some limited access routes there were some roads crossing the highway at traffic lights.  The MPs would get in advance of us and stop all of the cross traffic at the lights and we had the right of way.  The jeeps would leapfrog the column so that there was always one ahead of us to stop cross traffic.  We drove right through New York City up to the docks where our ship was waiting.  On the way through the city, civilians in cars would pull up alongside, wish us good luck and try to shake our hands.  We boarded the ship and found ourselves in the hold of an old British ship called The Highland Brigade.  The friend who we had waited for at Camp Kilmer did not leave with me and he was later killed in Europe.  He was Lou Proietti, a fellow member of the I and R platoon.  He was from Bellefontaine, Ohio and surprised us upon the return from his final leave when he produced a marriage license confirming his marital status.  Had he been able to join us for a 1 o’clock leave his destiny would have changed; however, mine would have been different too.

 

As SOP (Standard Operation Procedure) for the Army, we waited tied up at the dock for a couple of days after rushing from Camp Kilmer to catch a departing ship.  We finally set sail on May 19 and joined a large convoy destined for England.  While sailing out of the harbor we were not permitted on deck where we could be observed and provide information to the enemy who might keeping a tally on numbers of departing soldiers.  In the convoy we regularly changed position with other ships and at times when we occupied a rear position in the convoy the rumor would soon circulate that we were having engine problems and we were being deserted and would become a good target for the U-Boats.  Our small group was below the water line in a hold that I suspect had been a compartment for hauling beef from Argentina.  There were hooks in the rafters and a pile of dirty hammocks piled up in a corner of the room.  We made individual claims to the hammocks that were then stretched between selected hooks overhead.  In the morning we would gather the hammocks and pile them up in the storage place.  We could then congregate around the picnic tables placed below the hammocks.  We quickly organized into clans claiming territorial areas of tables and overhead hooks.  Each morning two persons would be designated to provide the food for the day.  A set of greasy aluminum pots located at the end of the table was carried to the main kitchen on an upper deck where the kitchen crew would fill the containers with the meal rations. This gourmet English food consisted of fish and cold oatmeal for breakfast.  I don’t recall what any of the other meals were as I was too sick to eat.  I was seasick for the entire 12 days it took for the crossing and I survived on bread that was baked daily, apples that were plentiful and a box of Hersheys Bitter Sweet Chocolate Bars I bought from a PX on board.   In the evening of May 31 we docked in Liverpool.

 

The sun was setting as we approached Liverpool and I recall the orange rooftop tiles reflecting the golden sun.  Because of the northern position of Liverpool and the time of the year there was very little nighttime with darkness occurring only between 11 PM and 3 AM.  We boarded our first double deck busses and rode a short distance to a waiting train that took us through the English countryside.  Leaning out of the windows we could see pheasants flying away from the railroad right of ways.  A few miles southeast of Liverpool we were billeted in what we called a castle but which was really a large country estate.  The village is called Adderly Hall and until recently the estate in which we stayed appeared on detailed road maps as Adderly Hall Farm.  I searched for the estate on a trip with grandchildren Tiba and Kevin O’Connor in 1994 but could not locate it.  A kind lady living in a house on the property informed me that the main building in which we had stayed had been demolished.  She showed me a photograph of the building as I recalled it.

 

Large rooms were assigned to groups and we were given mattress covers that we carried to the barn and stuffed with straw.  These primitive accommodations were very adequate and luxurious compared to conditions we were about to experience on the continent.  At Adderly Hall we underwent extensive physical training, in some cases assuming darkness as we maneuvered in daylight during hours that would normally be dark.  Forced marches were the order of the day and the number of soldiers finishing the march was noticeably smaller than the number that had begun.  On the night of June 5 we heard an unusually heavy amount of air activity and in the morning, as we sat under a large tree near the sewage disposal system for the farm, we were told of the D-Day invasion.

 

After a week at Adderly Hall we were moved to another camp that was a tent camp in open fields near Wrexham, Wales.  The camp had a name like Plast Power.  It was enclosed with a wire fence in an effort to contain the troops but the fence served only as a temporary deterrent and was easily breached to enjoy a few hours of freedom in Wrexham.  Camp authorities soon recognized the futility of their attempt to restrict determined soldiers and issued blanket passes.  A friend and I visited Wrexham, had a few beers, took in a carnival and, as darkness set in, headed for camp.  There was now a slight problem.  A total blackout prevailed and we had no idea which direction the camp was.  A Bobby walking his bicycle while on patrol came to our assistance.   After describing the camp he properly recognized it among several surrounding the area and walked us to the road leading to our destination.

 

From the camp we could see large slag piles from the coal mining industry in the area.  It was one of these slag piles that sloughed off and buried a schoolhouse full of children several years later.  Except for taking hikes through the countryside we did nothing much in camp.

 

One week seemed to be a magical time span to spend at any camp so we were again on the move.  This time it was to the southwest of England on the plains of Salisbury.  A short stay at Hinton St. George was much like the last.  There was an old church nearby that was still in use.  I entered it and climbed to the steeple to observe the countryside.

 

One more final move relocated us in the United Kingdom.  This was farther to the southeast to a large, permanent British camp with red brick buildings and large, paved parade grounds in the center.  It was here that we heard our first air raid sirens that prompted us to abandon our huts and take shelter in pre-dug trenches.

 

On a warm, drizzly morning we fell out with raincoats and mess kits to march to the large, central mess hall.  While standing reveille we heard the clang of a mess kit striking the pavement and one of the men passed out.  At the time I felt a little woozy but I gave it no thought.  We marched off to the mess hall and as we entered this muggy structure with its institutional food odor we heard another mess kit hit the deck indicating that another had passed out.  The next thing I knew, voices began fading into dreamland and I felt the mess kit slide from my grip and I lost consciousness.  We were so tightly packed that I had a hard time falling completely to the floor and those next to me thought that I was joking.   I came to shortly after being prone on the floor and everyone gave ground so that an officer could survey my condition.  Before I was allowed back on my feet another mess kit clanged nearby.  All of the casualties were hauled off to the infirmary for observation but nothing could be found to have caused the fainting spell.  The problem was simply attributed to bad food in the mess hall and we were given light duty for 24 hours.  The next day I felt well enough to run around the parade grounds with a friend.  This bit of conditioning was cut short when we were called to our hut and told to pack up because we were moving out again.

 

 

NORMANDY - COMBAT

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This time it was to the port of Southampton where a British ship was docked and building up steam for a short trip to Normandy.  There were ships as far as one could see, most flying a barrage balloon tethered to the ship.  These balloons and the suspended cables were for protection from low-flying enemy planes.  The English Channel is very choppy from the currents of the North Sea and the crossing to France can cause seasickness especially for someone who couldn’t even sit in a porch swing!  I was not the only one leaning over the ship’s railing.  We anchored some distance from Omaha Beach and were lowered to the water below in a small assault boat that deposited us on the dry beach.  Although the enemy had not yet been driven very far from the beach we were well removed from any action.  Our Air force now dominated the air and only an occasional German plane dared to venture into the conquered air space.

 

I don’t recall being transported by any vehicle to our next area.  I think that we walked to a field where we dug foxholes in the field across from a partially bombed out church.  The church priest was still performing his duties in the church and judging from his complexion his wine supply was still intact.  Next to the church the country road took a ninety-degree turn and at the turn there stood a small schoolhouse that was still intact but was not operating.  Desks and books were still in place.  While here a few days awaiting our next move we saw Edward G. Robinson drive by in a jeep.

 

I have no idea where we went from here.  All I recall is digging a foxhole along a hedgerow and spending a few days here.  Some of my friends from Camp Shelby were occasionally recognized, as was John Woods from my old platoon. 

 

One last move would take me to a replacement camp near the French city of St. Lo.  By now the Army had been successful in splitting us up so that each soldier was almost entirely among strangers.  This must have been done to avoid any close friendship in combat.  An impersonal relationship might be better in the case of a wounded buddy although I don’t think any close relationship was any different toward a wounded buddy than toward a stranger.  A fellow scout that I had known in Camp Shelby was now with me and we pitched our pup tent on the side of a small hill and settled down for the next move.  On this hillside we were at the extreme edge of the replacement camp.  Most of the troops were in the uphill direction.  This buddy was Tom Sneezak, a real nice guy from Amherst, Ohio.

 

We had landed in Normandy the first week of July and it was now July 12 or 13.  In the valley just beyond our tent there was a French farm that we had visited and met the farmer.  He had a son named André with whom we quickly struck up a deal to get our canteens filled with cider in exchange for a few cigarettes.  I was still carrying a pair of brown dress shoes that I had no use for and gave them to André.  Why I was still lugging these around I have no idea.  On July 15, André’s father mowed some hay with a scythe until he struck an unexploded German artillery shell.  This incident put an abrupt halt to the hay making and seemed insignificant at the time but was instrumental in creating panic throughout Normandy the night of July 15.  There was a small stream running through André’s farm and an American Engineering unit had set up a portable shower on the stream.  Water from the stream was heated slightly and pumped into overhead tanks that provided showers by gravity feed.  The night of July 15 was a clear night with fairly bright light provided from a partial moon.  The Germans lobbed a large phosphorous artillery shell that landed near the shower unit and the Engineer sentry on duty saw in the moonlight the white smoke from the shell and smelled the newly mowed hay.  His imagination prevailed over any analysis of the situation and immediately screamed “GAS” and fired three shots.  The signal for gas was to shout “GAS” and fire three shots, ring a bell three times or create and sound in a series of three.  The sentry’s training to recognize either phosgene or chloropicrin as smelling like newly mowed hay was too well imbedded in his mind.

 

When Sneezak and I heard the alarm for gas we quickly donned our gas masks and covered our uniforms with chemically- impregnated clothing.  The clothing was very stiff and it was with much effort that we were able to cover ourselves.  The impregnated clothes were discarded soon after this incident.  We cleared our masks by pulling the mask slightly from the cheek and blowing out any gas that might have entered, then we went to normal breathing.  Sneezak kept saying that he was going to die because his mask was leaking and he could smell the gas.  He finally calmed down and we both fell asleep with our masks on.  Hours later I was awakened by a chomping sound outside our tent.  I pulled a flap back and in the moonlight I saw a horse eating grass.  The horse appeared very much alive and he was not wearing a gas mask.  We reasoned that the horse had lungs and a respiratory system similar to ours so there must not be any gas in the air.  Thanks to this profound scientific reasoning we removed our masks and concluded that the alarm had been false. 

 

When we heard the alarm it quickly radiated from the sentry to all parts of Normandy.  We could hear the three shots getting dimmer as the alarms penetrated into the countryside.  Years later I mentioned this July incident to acquaintances who were in Normandy at he time and they recalled the event.  It caused panic near the front where many had discarded their masks and as a substitute were urinating in handkerchiefs and using the substitute as a mask.  For the remainder of the war I tried to keep my mask handy.  The German soldiers we took prisoner were extra sensitive about their gas masks and always wanted to keep them.  This was an item a captured soldier was permitted to keep according to the Geneva Convention.

 

Much of the other clothing and equipment I had were discarded.  I cut off the portion of the field pack that held any bulk like a shelter half and kept only the canvass straps used as suspenders.  The pouch holding the mess kit was retained on the pack and held necessary items like toilet paper and extra socks.  The suspenders held the ammunition belt on which were attached a small first aid kit of a bandage and a syringe of morphine, a canteen and canteen cup, the bayonet and ammunition pouches.  A lightweight raincoat was folded and held in place looped over the back of the belt.  An entrenching tool completed the equipment on the harness.  The gas mask was looped over the shoulder and carried on the side.  The bag for the mask was also good storage for other items.  The breast pocket of the OD shirt served as storage for a toothbrush and a spoon with a bent handle.  Our underwear was a two-piece long john and the outer uniform was the winter OD.  A field jacket sometimes was worn for additional cover.  The M-1 Rifle and the steel helmet completed the accoutrement of the well-dressed American soldier.

 

The American troops were now at St. Lo and were not advancing as rapidly as expected.  Progress was measured in yards from hedgerow to hedgerow through the Normandy pastures and apple orchards.  The hedgerows had marked boundaries between fields and property for centuries and were covered with trees, shrubs and mounds of dirt accumulated over many years.  Breaking through these barriers was not only difficult from a physical standpoint; the Germans had any opening zeroed in with their tanks and 88s.  Machine guns positioned on the opposing hedgerow provided crossfire to cover any advancing troops moving across the open field or orchard.  Orders to “Advance” were orders for suicide.  The high command of the Allied Forces made a decision to attempt high-altitude, saturation bombing of the front lines to completely disrupt the Germans and open an Allied drive across France toward Paris.  Such a concentrated air operation along front lines had never before been attempted.

 

The plan was to fly American bombers from England to the drop area flying in along the American line.  Unknown to General Omar Bradley the Air Force changed the approach path to fly over the American troops rather than parallel to the front where the planes would be subjected to enemy antiaircraft fire.  On July 24,1944 the 30^th Infantry Division that I would later join was occupying the most critical position in the target area.  The division withdrew 1,200 yards before the bombing began.  From an altitude of 30,000 feet this narrow corridor was a vulnerable ribbon of protection.  The bomb drop by heavy bombers was preceded by 350 P-47s that dive-bombed the antiaircraft positions and other German front units.  Our lines were marked with smoke and colored panels but the P47s were hitting some of our troops as the drone of 1,500 heavy bombers could be heard approaching over the French countryside.  Bombs from these heavy bombers were also falling short and landing on our troops.  The blunder was quickly recognized and the bombing mission was scrapped.  The 30^th Division had 24 men killed and 128 wounded.  Those in good foxholes survived but others receiving direct hits were buried alive or scattered in pieces so that burial was impossible.

 

In spite of the disaster of the 24^th, there would be a repeat on the 25^th.   The same precautionary steps were placed in operation.  Troops were withdrawn 1,200 yards and the identification panels and smoke were in place.  General Lesley J. McNair who was Commanding General of all of the Ground Forces in Europe had come to the front lines with the 30^th Division’s Assistant Division Commander, Brigadier General William K. Harrison to witness the bombing.  General McNair had survived the previous bombing but returned to boost the moral of the division’s troops.  The 25^th of July was a repeat performance of the 24^th and the bombs fell short again this time killing General McNair who was with my Regiment, the 120^th.  In this blunder the 30^th Division suffered 662 casualties - 64 killed, 374 wounded, 60 missing and 164 cases of battle fatigue.  The two-day total was 814, all from friendly fire. Other divisions at the front suffered some casualties but their losses were much smaller than ours.  The total casualties suffered by all of the American troops had to represent the worst case of friendly fire in WW II.  Many of the missing were later found buried alive. The Germans were heavily fortified and suffered very few casualties.  Kenny Bedford, a runner for I Company, 3^rd battalion, 120 Infantry, who later became a good friend, experienced the bombing.  He said that at the first bombing he noticed a little bird perched next to his foxhole and the bird was chirping loudly just before the bombs landed.  On the second day he watched the planes approaching from England and noticed that the same bird was perched nearby and chirping wildly.  The bird’s  prediction was accurate.

 

I watched the entire bombing operations from the hillside where Sneezak and I were awaiting assignments to our units.  On July 25, over 2,500 planes eventually participated in the operation.  The sky was black with aircraft streaming from England.  Before the day was over I believe that some of the early flights returned to their British bases, reloaded and made a second bomb drop.  The first wave of bombers I recall were B-17s, the large four-engine planes known as Flying Fortresses.  The German antiaircraft were not all eliminated by the P-47 dive-bombers and the bursts of flack at times were very heavy.  I saw several bombers receive direct hits and the loads of bombs exploded with a large orange flame.  Only pieces of the aircraft could be seen falling to the ground.  The Luftwaffe did what they could to stem the attack but they were greatly outnumbered and did no damage.  While the bombings were still taking place the P-47s continued to attack land positions until antiaircraft activity ceased.

 

Later in the afternoon when the bombing was over a German plane flew over our area; it was trailing black smoke as if it were hit.  It was suspected that the smoke was a decoy so that additional firing to bring it down would not take place and the pilot was actually photographing our troop placements.  Most of the troops in the replacement pool had not dug good foxholes and were probably photographed as vulnerable targets.  That night a German bomber flew over, dropped a flare and saw hundreds of unprotected soldiers below and dropped a load of small antipersonnel bombs.  I learned later that as many as 150 men were killed.  Fortunately, I was not there because I had been called to join my unit that afternoon.  Replacements following me could not tell me anything about Sneezak; however they were certain that the field we had been in was at the extreme of the camp and was not badly hit.

 

Several years later while traveling in Northern Ohio I visited the post office to inquire about Sneezak.  The postmaster knew him and directed to his home.  He was working for the Norwalk Trucking Company so I went to the truck terminal and waited for him to return from his truck run.  He was as shocked to see me as I was to see him.  He said that by leaving that afternoon I might have saved his life.  After I left him on the afternoon of the 25^th he felt uneasy and began deepening the shallow hole we had begun.  We had become discouraged when we struck a layer of shale after penetrating only a few inches.  The shale was weathered but difficult to remove.  Sneezak had sufficiently deepened the hole so that his body was just below ground level when the antipersonnel bombs fell and the shrapnel flew above him.  He said that we both might have been killed if I had stayed one more night and our only protection would have been a shallow hole.  He was assigned to an outfit in Patton’s Army and he confirmed some of the stories of Patton’s wild exploits.

 

In the late afternoon of July 25 after the bombing at St. Lo I was ordered to report to someone in a Normandy apple orchard.  About ten of us were lined up and given the most negative pep talk I have ever heard.  It was one of the shortest but most profound lectures I have ever heard and vividly recorded in my memory.  It was delivered by a 2^nd Lieutenant walking back and forth before us and shouting these memorable words. “Alright you sons of bitches you are now going into combat.   I want you to take a good look at the bastard standing on your left.  Now take a good look at the one on your right.  Take a good look because after tomorrow you my never see him again because in 24 hours some of you sons of bitches will be dead.”  I was not too interested in getting a good look at the “SOB” next to me but I was shocked into the realization that this was for real and suddenly I visualized my little old bedroom on the farm. I would now have gladly exchanged an arm and a leg to be miraculously transported to that secure bedroom in the southwest corner of the old farmhouse overlooking the Baltimore and Ohio and Erie Railroads. The inspiring lecture continued with a vivid description what it would be like when you are on one side of a hedgerow and a Tiger Tank is on the other side.  He described how you would be in shit up to your ankles as you hear the rumble of the tank.  As he verbally advanced the tank closer and closer he kept piling the shit higher and higher.  He then climaxed his pep talk with the concluding statement, “When the 88 muzzle comes over the hedgerow the shit will be up to your chin.  This is the time to pull it down.”  This was his way of saying that you better get hold of yourself.  Fortunately, I never encountered a Tiger Tank under these embarrassing circumstances.  He should have concluded his lecture with “Have a nice day!”  I bet that this officer had never seen any combat.

 

Before getting into more of a shooting war, this is a good time to define some of the terms that will be commonly used.  The Tiger tank was a large formidable German tank that our Sherman 35 ton tanks could not match.  Besides being sometimes equipped with an 88 gun the armor was so thick that shells from the 75s on our tanks would bounce off of the Tiger.  The only way to knock out a Tiger was with a bazooka fired between the bogy wheels so as to hit a less armored section of the belly or to maybe get a hit on the engine in the rear.  Attack planes could knock one out with a direct bomb hit or if caught on a paved road by firing 50 caliber machine gun bullets behind the tank so that the ricocheting bullets would penetrate the under belly.

 

The 88 was a versatile weapon and probably the most respected and most feared in the German Arsenal.  The notation “88” stands for the caliber of the projectile in millimeters.  Different guns used the 88 from different mountings.  Most were on tanks and field pieces for ground warfare.  The antiaircraft guns also used 88s.  They reached great elevations these weapons that could fire straight up. The shell casing would be four feet long and tapered in increments from a large-diameter base to the 88mm projectile.  With this configuration the shell could pack a large supply of gunpowder to project the 88 to a great height.  Several of these guns could be found in “Gun Cities” in open fields located along allied air runs to major cities.

 

The feature that made the 88 such a lethal weapon was its high velocity.  When flying through the air it made a distinctive sound you immediately learned to recognize.  Near the end of the war our tanks were bigger than the ones in Normandy and were equipped with a 90 mm gun to be a more even match with the Tiger.  Other German weapons were equal or superior to ours except for our M-1 Rifle.  Our semi-automatic M-1 was a faster-firing weapon than the German infantryman’s bolt-operated weapon.

 

From the apple orchard a small group of us marched toward the front near St. Lo.  In combat zones you never march close together like they do in the movies.  The expression was, “Spread out.  One mortar shell would get all of you.”  Another expression I never heard except for the movies is “Get down.”  No one has to tell you when to get down!  We walked with about 50 feet between men through the smoldering ruins of St. Lo. And past dozens of dead cows.  The smell of dead bloated cows soon was identified as the “St. Lo Smell.”  It was now  near dusk as we marched through St. Lo. The only visible remaining structures were chimneys that were silhouetted against the western sky among wisps of smoke from the smoldering ruins.  By dark we reached our destination where I was informed that I was now a scout in the Intelligence Section of Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 120^th Infantry Regiment, 30^th Infantry Division.  This had been a North Carolina and Tennessee National Guard division but was already replaced mostly with Yankees.  This was a fine division with a heritage dating back to the civil war where the 120^th Regiment had fought.  In the First World War the division fought in France in some of the same areas we would pass through in a few weeks.  Our shoulder patch was an oval oriented with the long direction vertical, trimmed in blue and with a blue H in the Middle and three Xs enclosed in a double horizontal bar of the H.  All of the blue was on a red background.  The lettering reflected an O and an H standing for OLD HICKORY, in honor of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the US and nicknamed “Old Hickory.”

 

It was very dark now and I heard voices but saw no one.  Someone took my hand and told me to go with him.  He took me to his foxhole and introduced himself as Joe Cavalaro from California.  In a short time we were told that there was hot food from the kitchen.  Joe and I joined a line in the dark and felt food being dumped in our mess kits.  We never knew what the food was but we ate.  Joe then suggested that we get some rest and confided in me that he had two peculiarities he hoped I wouldn’t mind.  Before going to sleep he kissed his wife’s picture and said his prayers.  I had no objections to this practice and we settled down for a rest.

 

Only a few minutes elapsed before we heard the command that we were moving out.  By now I had learned that all of our equipment was too much to carry. This was the time I again  redesigned my equipment by stripping it to the necessities that were concentrated in a stripped pack, gas mask and ammunition bell supporting other items.  The best friend I now had was my trusty M-1 Rifle, Number 449066.

 

As a result of the intensive bombing the St. Lo breakthrough was now on.  We boarded trucks and slowly began moving out.  After a few miles we heard planes so we abandoned the trucks and fled to the shoulders of the road.  The moon was full or nearly full this night and in the moonlight that had broken out from the patchy clouds I saw one of our Black Widow airplanes fly by very low.  It was a modified P-38, the twin fuselage fighter, and was designated the P-61 B-1-NO.  It was equipped with the latest electronic and radar equipment and was painted black to make it less visible at night.  We moved farther by foot and scattered in open fields and orchards and dug in.  When morning came I reconnoitered the immediate area and found a nice abandoned German foxhole on the other side of a hedgerow.  It was much nicer than the one I had hastily dug the night before in the dark so a friend and I decided to take it over.  There was no action and all was quiet so I removed my shirt and was enjoying the warm sun when we spotted about 20 planes flying very low toward us.  We thought that they might be P-51s until we saw the black Maltese crosses on the wings and the swastikas on the tails.  These were ME-109s and FW-190s and were strafing and bombing our area.  We new owners of the German foxhole dove into our new home and two or three friends who were still working on uncompleted holes piled on top of us.  The only problem was that we had not adequately examined the hole that was full of ants that quickly feasted on my bare chest.  After a quick strafing and bombing mission without any German losses the Luftwaffe headed home and we emerged from our hole.

 

While living in New Orleans in 1969 we were entertaining guests from foreign countries at the request of the State Department and on one occasion our house guest for dinner was a Mr. Heinz-Winfried Sabais from Germany.  His biographical sketch that we received from the State Department prior to his visit indicated that he had been in the Luftwaffe during WW II.  At the dinner table I questioned him about his wartime activities and accused him of perhaps bombing me, an American ground soldier.  His immediate reply was, “On no, I flew only defense planes.”  I asked,  “Like ME-109s and FW-190s?”  He said that yes, he flew an FW-190.  After recounting my story about the attack by 20 German planes on a late July day in 1944, he immediately recalled the incident and said that he had been on that attack.  He was able to describe the attack exactly as I recalled it.  His family name suggested some French heritage but he had been born in Poland.  At the end of the war he was in the Russian zone and fled to Western Germany where he began his civilian career.  He was well liked in his hometown of Darmstadt and later became the city mayor.  When he visited us he was the head of the school board of Darmstadt and wrote a column in the daily paper. He did well in politics and I learned that, if he had been willing to play politics he could have made Chancellor of West Germany.  He gave us a book of poems he had written.  It is in modern prose and speaks mostly of death and the futility of war.

 

After this brief aerial attack I was summoned to the farmhouse where we had set up headquarters.  Our staff officers had already learned that I spoke French and they wanted me to question the farmer about the attack.  They suspected that he had mowed a patch of grain in a field behind the farmhouse and in so doing he had fashioned an arrow pointing to the house.  This was interpreted as a signal for the Luftwaffe to target the farmhouse in which our battalion headquarters were housed.  I questioned the farmer and his wife and examined the suspicious cut in the grain field and could find nothing to incriminate the farmer.  There was no reason why he would want his house destroyed.  As I was leaving the house the Luftwaffe returned and I ran to an adjacent orchard and found an empty foxhole that I promptly occupied.  As I was lying face down I looked up and found myself staring into the glassy eyes of a big toad.  He cursed the Germans in toad language and we shared the hole until all was clear.  We pulled out of the area that same afternoon and it was here that I saw my first American casualties lying along the road, having been killed by the air attack.

 

We walked to a French village named Barenton and learned quickly that during the last couple of days the Germans had allowed us to advance relatively unopposed then closed in behind us.  We were now cut off from the rest of the Army in Normandy.  On an adjacent hillside stood the village of Mortain where our 2^nd Battalion was positioned.  From here, the battalion had a commanding view of the terrain that flattened out to the east.  The Germans pounded them continuously with artillery and tank fire in an attempt to capture this commanding position.  After running low in ammunition, food and medical supplies the Germans approached under a white flag to offer surrender terms.  By now most of the battalion had been destroyed but there were still enough Americans to remain and control our artillery fire on the enemy tanks and artillery on the plains to the east.  The batteries for the forward observer’s radio were now almost dead.  The American in charge was Captain Kerley from Texas who asked a dying soldier what to do.  The soldier told him that we should not surrender whereupon Capt. Kerley told the German, “You heard what he said.  Now get your ass off of this hill.  We won’t quit until our last round of ammunition is fired and our last bayonet is stuck in your bastard Kraut bellies.”

 

In the meantime relief was attempted by firing artillery shells into the area, these shells being loaded with medical supplies, radio batteries and small arms ammunition.  None of the first salvo of shells reached the besieged troops but five of the next six reached their destination.  The final attempt scored a perfect three out of three.  Our Division Artillery’s light liaison planes tried to fly in some supplies but they ere hit by enemy flack and were not successful.   Airdrops by C-47 cargo planes were attempted but these were only partially successful with half of the relief supplies falling into enemy hands.

 

The heroic stand taken by the 2^nd Battalion resulted in victory and the German offensive was stopped.  Many excellent accounts of this battle have been written, but military historians have failed to recognize the significance of the Battle of Mortain.  The entire 2^nd Battalion received the Presidential Unit Citation for their stand on the hill coded Hill 314, the figure 314 indicating the elevation in meters.  A German captured sometime later stated that the stand of the 2^nd Battalion on Hill 314 was the turning point of the war.  Had the Germans succeeded in their drive they could have perhaps driven to the channel and isolated all allied troops on land.  A detailed account of the Battle of Mortain can be found in a recent book, Saving The Breakout, the story of the 30^th Division’s heroic stand at Mortain, August 7-12, 1944 written by Alwyn Featherston.

 

While the attempted siege of Mortain was taking place we were at the neighboring village of Barenton.  The local postman, proudly attired in his postal uniform, came to see me and asked if I would accompany him to his home.  It was a little cottage nestled in the woods and surrounded by a white picket fence.  He carefully leaned his postal bicycle against the fence and opened the gate.  The setting looked like a picture from a child’s book of fairy tales.  The inside of the house reflected a different view.  It had the typical appearance of a looted home.  The Germans had dumped all of the dresser drawers on to the floor looking for valuables that I doubt this modest couple ever owned.  After he had showed me what the “Sale Boche” had done we retired to the kitchen and sat at the kitchen table for a glass of cognac.  He proceeded to pour two water glasses half full of a clear liquid and hoisted his glass with the typical toast, “Vive La France, Vive L’Amerique.”  I downed the drink and immediately drenched the kitchen table with tears from the potency of the drink.  I later found out that it was Calvados; the closest drink the French have to the American White Lightning.  After this toast my host asked his wife, Mart, to bring on the cognac.  This time it was the real thing.

 

While we were in a Barenton farmhouse I had the French underground working for us.  There were six or seven members of the underground from the village staying in some of the farm buildings.  We used them to locate the positions of the Germans surrounding us by using various means.  On one occasion we loaded a small one-horse wagon with hay and sent one of the young Frenchmen down the road.  He returned shortly thereafter and reported that the Germans had stopped him and would not allow him to continue on his journey.  This is what we had anticipated would happen.  We spread out a map on the farmhouse table and he located the German position.  Our encircled position was taking shape on the map and the German positions were targeted for our artillery.   Another technique was to send one of our ambulances on a different road to the rear with two casualties, one badly wounded and the other less seriously wounded.  When stopped by the Germans our medic who was accompanying the driver and the casualties told the less-severely wounded soldier to act sicker than he was.  The fake moans and groans didn’t fool the Germans.  They took the faking soldier prisoner and told the medic to return with the other casualty and driver to wherever he had come from.  Actually, the Germans were quite humane about the incident by allowing the medic and the other two to return.

 

Many years later I read that the Frenchman in charge of this small group of underground fighters from Barenton was a famous member of the underground.  While working with him I knew that he had been the police chief in town but I didn’t know of his reputation in the underground.  The rest of the group were all young men in their late teens.  One of our sergeants asked me to give one of them his trench knife but the recipient had to kill a German in return.  The young man smiled, took the knife and said that he already had six of them to his credit.

 

While still in Barenton we lost almost all of our wire section, the group responsible for laying telephone lines to the various battalion units and for providing radio communication.  They were laying a line to an observation post at the top of a hill.  They had been warned to drive their wire-laying jeep only as far as a knocked out German 88 then continue up the hill on foot because the road was mined.  They apparently ignored the warning and continued laying the line with their two jeeps.  The second jeep detonated a mine then the first jeep tried to retrace the path taken on the way up and set off a second mine.  Most of the wire section crew was killed by this stupid maneuver.  The only one to escape any serious injury was the driver of the lead jeep that had tried to retrace his path back down the hill. 

 

In 1984 our division was invited by the citizens of France, Belgium and The Netherlands to return to Europe to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of their liberation.  As part of the tour we held a ceremony on Hill 314 and unveiled a black marble monument dedicated to the stand the 30^th Division took forty years earlier.  Hundreds of Frenchmen including women and children were there for the ceremony and a French Military Band provided the music and led the procession to the top of the hill that is now a park.  The little chapel, Saint Michel that overlooks the valley to the east from the highest point of the hill was used as an aid station from August 8 to the 14^th while the battle took place.  After the ceremony we were invited to a reception in the town hall where the local citizens had souvenirs of 1944 on display.  We were served cider, wine and apple pie.

 

From Barenton we pushed on to the village of Domfront.  I don’t remember much about this area except that there was a large church on a small cliff on the edge of town.  Another scout and I dug a foxhole under a large tree and learned a lesson almost too late.  That night the Germans fired quite a few rounds of 88s at us and after each detonation we could hear the shrapnel whistling through the air.  One piece generated a sound that kept getting louder until it struck the other fellow on the heel of his boot.  We learned from this experience that a foxhole should never be dug under a tree unless a strong covering can be built.  A shell exploding in a tree showers shrapnel downward.  I was surprised that in all of our training we had never been told of this danger and what steps could be taken for protection.  Artillery and mortars killed far more troops in our units than small arms and aircraft.

 

It was at Domfront that one of sentries killed the farmer where we were staying.  The old farmer walked out of the house during the night to relieve himself and when challenged in the darkness he responded in French.  The sentry didn’t know the difference between French and German and shot him.  His family laid him out on his bed and waited until we left to bury him.

 

From Domfront we began moving faster liberating one village after another.  Because I spoke French I would often be on a patrol or on an advance party to contact the underground and, for our comfort, try to locate buildings for the night instead of digging foxholes.  This desire to avoid nature’s elements in favor of more comfortable housing facilities often placed me in precarious positions mostly in the hands of Capt. Prichard who I believe was trying to earn more medals.  Some of these incidents I will mention in this discourse are humorous and others are more serious.  They my not appear in proper chronological sequence but I stand by the accuracy of the accounts.

 

One of the larger cities we liberated on the way to Paris was Evreux.  Our company located in a wooded area overlooking the city.  While here an old Frenchman and a friend approached us and I was asked to help him.  He had received information that his son who was in the underground had been shot by the SS and was buried in a field adjacent to the woods we occupied.  Joe King and I accompanied him to the spot he believed to be the execution site.  We found a shallow grave piled with fresh dirt with a foot protruding from the dirt.  He recognized the shoe as that of his son and as his friend placed his hand on the father’s shoulder they removed their caps and stood in silence for a few moments.  His friend consoled him with the statement that he had died for the glory of France.  Next to the grave we found several empty 9 mm shells from a Luger or from the more common German sidearm, the P-38.  The SS had made the young patriot dig his own grave then shot him. 

 

On a lighter note, a member of the French Red Cross who had fled Paris came to us in the woods.  Apparently one of the cabins in the area belonged to him and he made himself at home.  He had with him a donkey on which was strapped two small kegs filled with a sweet-smelling honey liqueur that was quite good.  He filled a wine bottle for a few cigarettes.  All through France we drank very little water since wine, cider, cognac and other various liqueurs were plentiful.  I had the bottle of liqueur uncorked next to my foxhole when Joe King inquired as to what it was.  I described the drink and invited him to have a drink.  Joe took one swig and let out a holler as he spit the contents out.  Among the discarded drink there was a honeybee.  The bee had been attracted to the liqueur and had become part of Joe’s sampling of my delicacy.

 

Our first sergeant who generally asked me to help in French affairs decided to reconnoiter Evreux with one of the jeep drivers.  As they approached town a crowd came their way chasing a civilian who had apparently been a collaborator.  When the collaborator saw the Americans he ran toward them but he never made it because the crowd opened fire on him and riddled him full of holes as he fell dead at the sergeant’s feet.  Sergeant Presnell was visibly shaken by this incident.

 

A Lieutenant King who was in charge of our ammunition bearers asked me to accompany him to either Evreux or a neighboring village.  We threw a couple of water cans in his jeep and set off on our adventure.  In case someone wondered what we were doing the answer would be that we were looking for water.  We did in fact find a water hydrant and while we left the driver to try and recover some water from the hydrant Lt. King and walked toward town.  There was a large crowd gathered at the town square that resembled an old western US town.  Facing the town square was the town hall and outside of the hall a set of stairs on each end led to a balcony overlooking the square.  As soon as I spoke French to some of the crowd they pushed us to the front of this mass of people and we realized what the commotion was all about.  They were holding trials for women accused of sleeping with the Germans.  The penalty after being found guilty was to have the guilty person’s head shaved in shame and to run her out of town as everyone shouted insults at her.  I wondered who threw the first stone.  While I was talking to the people in the crowd Lt. King was escorted to the balcony where he raised his arms in triumph while the crowd cheered.  This sign of victory was in no way in recognition of the trials but for the liberation of the city.  The crowd kept pushing me forward and wanted me to shave the head of the next victim.  I declined saying that this was their affair and not mine.  A trial for the next accused was held but before order could be restored the prosecutor in true western style pulled a revolver from his belt and fired a shot into the air.  With order restored he then stated that Mademoiselle so and so was accused of sleeping with the Germans.  Also, she was accused of sleeping with anyone, implying that she was a prostitute.  He asked if there was any proof of this accusation and a few hands were raised.  She was guilty and her head was shaved.

 

One afternoon I was with two others on patrol.  I don’t recall why I was with them because they were with a rifle company.  We approached a French village on a small stream and there was a tiny shop on the bank making wooded bobbins for thread.  While checking out the area two women came running toward us.  One was a good-looking blond and the other was an old snaggletooth woman.  While I was looking at the blond the old lady grabbed me and kissed me saying that she had vowed that she would kiss the first American in town.  The reward for liberating the village was hardly adequate.

 

Another village I recall is St. André.  Of the many villages in France named St. André this one is located near Evreux.  The interesting thing for us about St. André was the location of a German airfield contiguous to the town and on the side from which we were approaching.  At regular intervals along the runways the Germans had placed bombs that were supposed to be detonated to destroy the runways and prevent our use upon capture of the airfield.  Apparently we had advanced too rapidly and whoever was responsible for detonating the bombs left in a hurry without doing so.  The main obstacle for us was crossing the open field to get to the village that was still in the process of being taken by our rifle companies.  Captain Pritchard wanted to be one of the first there so that we could get a choice house for our headquarters.  As soon as the rifle companies enter the town and began street fighting Captain Pritchard, his driver and I drove across the field dodging the planted bombs.  As we attempted to make our way down one of the village streets tracers went streaming in front of us so we stayed put for a few minutes until the shooting stopped.  We then moved on and spotted a nice big private home.    While I stayed on guard to stake our claim for the evening Captain Pritchard went looking for the rest of our company.  I checked out the house and found a dozen French people in the cellar hiding from the Germans and seeking protection from the fighting going on at street level.  They were happy and relieved to find out that I was an American and that the Germans had been driven out of their village.   I was immediately the center of attraction as they all gathered around me with a hundred questions.  While I was talking to them a young girl out of breath and full of excitement came running up to the crowd and announced that she had seen an American and had kissed him.  As the crowd surrounded me she failed to see me.  One of the older women told her that there was an American here and that he could speak French.  Somewhat embarrassed she kissed me and ran off.  In a few minutes she returned with a bottle of wine.  We spent one night in the comfort of this private home and moved on the next morning.

 

One of the most memorable episodes of the war occurred in a very small village called Miserey.  For many years I had forgotten the name of this village and kept thinking that it was called “Joyeux” which phonetically is the opposite of “ Miserey.”  I searched for Joyeux on detail road maps and could find no place around Evreux that fit the description.  Then in August 1978 two American balloonists, Ben Abruzzo and Maxie Anderson flew the Double Eagle II across the Atlantic from Presque Isle, Maine to Miserey, France a total distance of 3,107.61 miles for a world’s record.  When I heard about this record-breaking flight I immediately realized that this was the village I was trying to recall.  Any psychologist would probably enjoy analyzing my thought process in trying to recall the name Miserey.  Since I had a near-tragic experience here I apparently didn’t want to associate the event with a word like misery and mentally chose an opposite word, joy.   The event that took place here culminated in my capturing my first German prisoners and almost getting killed by some SS troops.  SS stands for the Schutzataffel who were Hitler’s personal bodyguards and the best of the German troops.  These are the ones who wore black uniforms with black leather boots and a garrison cap with the insignia of a silver skull and crossbones.

 

We were encountering very little German resistance and moving on foot so rapidly that  we were bypassing small pockets of Germans.  While moving through the village of Miserey our First Sergeant Presnell called back to me and told me to talk to the handful of civilians congregated near the center of this tiny village and find out what I could about the Germans - how far behind them we were, what kinds of weapons they had, how many troops they had etc.  As soon as I began talking to them they all mobbed me with hugs and handshakes.   An old lady approached me and said that there were three Germans up a little alley to my right.  I stopped Mike Jacobs, one our ammunition bearers and asked him to help capture the Germans When I told him that there were three of them he thought that we should make it an even match.  The column was moving along and sergeant Vargas was the next soldier to appear and was selected as the member to complete our trio.  I had my M-1, Jacobs had only a 45 pistol because he was an ammunition carrier and Vargas had a Carbine, a 30-caliber weapon but smaller than my M-1 and less powerful.

 

In order to appreciate the event about to take place one must have a visual picture of the lay of the area.  As the main road on which we were traveling passed through town it curved to the left at about 10 o’clock  (relating directions to hands on a clock).  Right where the road turned, and where we were standing another narrow road went off to the right.  This was the road on which the Germans were supposed to be.  Approximately 100 feet up this road there was a tall stone wall on the right that obscured another trail coming from the right.  At this intersection, on the far right side there stood a small two-story house.

 

As we made our way up the road a few Frenchmen and one French woman joined us.  The only ones I remember were a young man next to me and the woman, a cute blond who was carrying two buckets of cider she planned to empty in our canteens.  Before we reached the intersection with the stone wall we spotted the three Germans in the roadway.  We aimed our weapons at them and ordered them to throw up their hands.  As they complied with our commands we motioned them to walk toward us.  We quickly searched them for weapons and found them clean.  Whenever a German wanted to surrender he would usually discard his weapon and his helmet, two pieces of equipment that gave him the appearance of being belligerent.  The only times you could capture the enemy with weapons and helmets were when you caught them by surprise or if a firefight took place immediately before surrender.

 

As we turned around to march the prisoners back to our company that was passing through town I heard the sound of a vehicle behind us.  I wheeled around and there, just clear of the wall was a big, camouflaged touring car with three SS soldiers.  There was the driver, another in the front seat and an officer in the back seat.  The officer, wearing his black uniform and leather boots stepped out of the car and began looking at a map as if to determine his location.  Apparently they had become lost or detached from their unit.  To our surprise they didn’t notice us among the Frenchmen and their own three we had taken prisoner.  My first thought was that some of our troops were still concealed behind the wall and that the SS had been taken prisoners.  All of these thoughts had transpired only a few seconds when the German in the front seat stood up, put an automatic weapon to his shoulder and began firing.  I was looking right down his barrel. I was fewer than 50 feet away when I saw puffs of smoke from his weapon.   Fortunately I still had the safety off of my M-1.   I began firing from the hip in true western style while running backwards and trying to get a glimpse of what our prisoners were doing.  They were running away from the action with their hands still in the air and the civilians were screaming as buckets of cider flew in all directions.  I was the only one of our group firing.  Jacobs later said that, with his 45, he had drawn a bead on the German in the front seat but when he pulled the trigger he realized that the safety was still on.  He dropped down while trying to release the safety and rolled back and forth to deny the German a good target.  Vargas had tried to fire his Carbine but it misfired.  Thanks to my trusty M-1 the firepower we needed was provided.   The Frenchman next to me was shot in the shoulder and went down.  While I was firing, the German who was firing from the front seat went down.  The officer calmly stepped back into the vehicle while the driver took the best cover he could by sloughing down.  All I could see was the top of his helmet.  The driver threw the car into reverse and with a cloud of smoke backed behind the safety of the wall and out of view.  By now we were back at the main intersection in town looking down the barrels of our own men who were reacting to the shooting up the road.  One of our officers - I think it was Lt. King - came running up to find out what was going on and after we gave him a quick rundown he said, “Those are the same sons of bitches I ran into just a few minutes ago.  In addition to the touring car they have a motorcycle and some foot soldiers.”  We went back to the wall where the action had taken place and scaled the wall to observe the other side but there was no sign of the SS.  After a few minutes we hear some machine gun fire and the next day the vehicle was found at another location with all three occupants dead.

 

Vargas later admitted that it was his fault. Instead of being more alert while the prisoners were taken he was busy watching the blonde’s boobs bounce up and down as she carried the two pails of cider.  We never again saw either her or the cider or the Frenchman who got shot next to me.  I guess he found our medics who patched him up.

 

Fifty years later, in 1994 while on a two-month tour of Europe with Elaine and two grandchildren, Tiba and Kevin O’Connor, our daughter Barbara’s children, we paid a visit to Miserey.  I found the village mayor and introduced myself to him.  During the war he had been a 15-year-old boy and recalled the liberation of his village by our outfit.  He said, “In the center of town you bore to the left and left town going through a valley and you spent the night at a farm on the hill.”  I assured him that his recollection of the events in August fifty years were exactly as I recalled.  He then added, “Do you want to see the farmhouse where you spent the night?  My sister lives there.”  We couldn’t pass up this invitation so we piled into his little car and drove to the farmhouse.  It was still the same as I recalled. 

 

Our host then asked if we wanted to see where the balloonists had landed in 1978.  Unless you are a balloon enthusiast you wouldn’t know about this historical balloon crossing of the Atlantic by Abruzzo and Anderson so we felt privileged to get this first hand tour.  There is a plaque in the village commemorating the landing there of the “Aeronauts.”   After showing us this plaque he drove us down a dirt trail between two fields where a memorial stands.  This is a modest structure consisting of a stainless steel pyramidal structure about eight inches wide on each of the three sides at the base.  The structure rests on an inclined, circular base containing words that describe the landing.  The steel spire is inclined in a direction opposite to the direction of the base and terminates in a point eight feet in the air.  Behind the memorial is a two-foot stone wall separating it from the field where the balloonists actually landed.  The mayor said that it was his field and the sightseers and the landing itself had trampled much of his grain crop.  The balloonists promptly paid for the damage.  This modest site is worth a visit.

 

We joined our column and proceeded through Miserey and down a valley and up the other side to the farmhouse on the hilltop where we stopped for the night.  Each day when we were on the move we had a target for the day.  This objective on a map was called the phase line.  I was cleaning my rifle the next morning when Capt. Pritchard said, “Come on Schneider, we’re going on a patrol” I finished assembling my M-1 and we organized for the patrol.  The patrol was for the purpose of investigating the killing of an American officer that had taken place about the same time we had run into the SS.  The officer and his driver from an anti-tank unit had been assigned to us.  They had captured some Germans at a French farmhouse nearby and the officer had told his driver to return to our unit and get some help while he stayed guard on the prisoners.  When the driver returned with help the officer was dead and the prisoners were gone.

 

We used a diamond formation in our patrol.  As the name implies, four men formed a diamond formation and a fifth was in the center of the diamond.  I was at the rear of the formation which is supposed to be the worst position because, if detected by the enemy, the one in the rear would be picked off first.  We proceeded down the hill and veered away from Miserey to the farmhouse where the anti-tank officer had been killed.  We cautiously advanced outbuilding to outbuilding until we reached the farmyard where the officer lay.  He was lying face up and upon further investigation we found a small hole below one of his shoulders. The Germans had left a horse cart full of supplies and among these we found several artificial arms that belonged to one of the soldiers that had been captured.  To some of these arms there was attached hands and on others various types of hooks or stilettos.  Some of the hooks were like those depicted in fairy tales and worn by Capt. Hook.  We concluded that even though the prisoners had been disarmed the German with the artificial arm had somehow maneuvered behind the officer and attacked with one his lethal arms.  Since the prisoners had been disarmed, this was the only logical conclusion we could reach.

 

A Frenchman who was not the local farmer appeared and spoke to me.  He had a crumbled piece of paper on which was written the names of American airmen.  Their bomber had crashed in his nearby village and all of the crew had been killed.  The civilians had buried all of them in the local cemetery.  The stranger wanted to know whom he could notify about this crash.  I told him that rear units would be passing through later and he could contact them.

 

The French farmer told us that there was a German soldier near his barn and he would surrender without any problem.  He had asked the Frenchman for a glass of milk earlier in the morning.  Capt. Pritchard told me to take someone with me and go after him.  I chose Kenny Bedford, an I Company runner, and started up a densely covered trail looking for the German.  If someone had been in the area and had wanted to, he would have had no problem picking us off from the dense foliage.  We spotted the German standing in the middle of the trail and while I aimed my M-1 at him and ordered him to surrender Bedford ran to him and disarmed him.  He was wearing a sling on his right arm and the hand of his wounded arm rested next to a pistol tucked in his belt.  I had seen enough western movies to recognize this as a possible trick so we took no chances.  I kept my weapon aimed at him until Bedford removed his weapon.  He was wearing a Luftwaffe belt buckle that I removed from him and which I still have.  We suspected that he had been transferred from the Luftwaffe and was not too happy with his assignment in the infantry.  I doubt that he had any intentions of giving us any trouble.

 

When we returned to the farmyard we found one of our men tramping on a Nazi flag with his muddy boots and the farmer was trying to convey a message to Capt. Prichard.  He told us that there was a wounded German in his house but he was not one of those who had killed our officer.  The German had been there several days and the farmer’s family had been nursing him.  We checked this out and found him in bed, wounded as described.  He was not going anywhere.  I told the farmer to continue caring for him and he would be picked up later and cared for by our people.

 

We took our prisoner and proceeded back to the farmhouse on the hill.  When on a scouting mission you try to return by way of a different path in case you had been spotted earlier and the enemy was now in wait for an ambush.  We altered our route slightly by swinging to the left and approaching the farmhouse from the opposite direction from which we had left.  As we approached the house we were aware of an unusual silence.  We were motioned out of sight because some Germans were coming toward us from the valley below.  Apparently they were lost or separated from their unit otherwise they would not have been approaching us so unconcerned.  Before they got very close they spotted us and began running back to the woods in the valley.  Someone from our anti-tank section took a shot at one of them on a bicycle with a 37 mm gun and hit the bicycle.  I don’t know what happened to the poor cyclist.  We then realized that, on our patrol, we had walked right through their area and were not detected because they were probably asleep.

 

I guess Capt. Prichard was not satisfied with the activities of the morning so we went on another patrol.  This time it was in another direction to a very fine estate nearby.  The only thing I remember in addition to a beautiful home was a two-car garage littered with empty binocular cases.  There must have been hundreds of them and not one set of binoculars among them. 

 

NORTHERN FRANCE

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As we moved across France in a direction toward Paris the military campaign became officially called the “Battle of Northern France” and we now encountered less resistance.  This consisted largely of German elements left behind to slow us down while the majority of the Germans were retreating.  One rainy afternoon we reached our objective that was a large farm estate on the east side of a hill.  What we didn’t realize was that the Germans were on the next hill separated from us by a shallow valley.  They allowed us to get settled in the farm complex then began to bombard us with heavy artillery.  The farm was well zeroed in and they had no problem laying shells directly on us.  When the first barrage landed I was in the main farmhouse with our staff officers.  During a lull in the firing I ran to a large garage constructed of stone and crouched against the inner wall that was between the artillery source and me.  I felt quite safe with the surrounding protection as shells exploded all around.  After the Germans had fired their quota they either moved on or decided that they had done enough damage.  I then emerged from my safe place in the garage and checked the other side of the wall against which I had taken refuge.  I was surprised to find that on the other side of the wall the Germans had left live 88 shells stacked from the floor to the ceiling.  If one of their rounds had landed against this stack every building in the farm complex would have gone up.

 

That night was one of the darkest I have ever seen.  Before dark a French teenager came to the farmhouse carrying a letter from an American General addressed to the German Commander offering surrender terms.  It was too late for him to proceed in search of the Germans and the Germans were probably more interested in retreating than in surrendering so I told him to spend the night with us.  Any stranger wandering in the night without the password would surely have been shot.  He and I bedded on the kitchen floor and fell asleep.  During the night I heard some commotion outside and arrived just in time to prevent the teenager from being shot by the guard on duty.  The teenager had gotten up to go to the bathroom and had been confronted by the guard.

 

In the morning some French civilians emerged from a shelter dug beneath a haystack and sought help for one of the older women.  I found our medical officer who diagnosed her aliment as pneumonia and gave her some medicine.  We moved on.

 

It is said that an army marches on its stomach.  So far I haven’t mentioned the rations we ate and what occasional hot meals we had prepared by our kitchen.  This might be a good place to describe our food.  There were very few meals prepared by our kitchen.  Most of us didn’t even have mess kits anymore and if a hot meal was prepared we would scrounge around for a plate, a broken piece of pottery or even a piece of cardboard that might hold the food.  I can recall even sharing a plate with someone else.  Once while in a German barnyard the kitchen prepared some pancakes with watery syrup.  I found a plate in the farmhouse, wiped off the dirt and got a stack of pancakes.  Before I finished a friend asked if he could borrow my plate.  He shook out the scraps and syrup and got himself a hot breakfast.  These were not the most sanitary conditions and we violated Emily Post’s rules of etiquette.  We each carried a spoon with a bent handle in our shirt pocket so at least we had our own private eating utensil.

 

The regular daily rations in Normandy were mostly C rations.  The C ration meal came in two cans each about the size of a Campbell’s tomato soup can.  The main course was pork and beans, stew or hash.  Later on, near the end of the war, other varieties like spaghetti and sauce became available.  The other can contained hard biscuits, hard candy and a powdered mixture to make instant coffee, lemonade or bouillon.  If the cooks could, they would heat the main course in hot water so we had a hot meal.  Of the three varieties the pork and beans was the most edible.  The cold stew and hash were consumed only for the purpose of staying alive.  Since the war I have not eaten any hash.

 

The K ration soon took precedent over the C ration and was definitely an improvement.  This ration also came in three varieties, breakfast, lunch and dinner.  The complete meal came in a wax-coated, cardboard box about the size of a Cracker Jacks box and the box contained enough fuel to heat the main ration and drink.  Each box contained a main course tin the size of a tuna can and a packet of biscuits, candy and powdered drink.  Breakfast consisted of egg yolks and ham in the tin, powdered coffee, a fruit bar of prunes and other dried fruit and biscuits.  This was my favorite of the three.  Lunch was a tin of cheese, powdered lemonade, candy and biscuits.  Supper was a tin of “corned pork loaf with carrots and apple flakes” (how could I ever forget that!), powdered bouillon, biscuits and hard candy (charms).  The lunch candy was not bad and was usually the toffee-type marketed under the trade name Walnettos.

 

There was another ration called the D Bar.  This was taken mostly as an emergency ration or to supplement the others.  This was an extremely hard, bitter chocolate bar supplemented with vitamins and minerals.  One block of chocolate  stuck in the side of the mouth lasted a half hour.  A choice ration was the Ten in One.  This package was mostly for tank crews and the contents were quite good.  This was not a regular ration for us and the only times we had any was when we could get some from a tank crew or if we found some.  The best part of the package was a large tin of smoked bacon.

 

Moving across France we could hear the sound of the village church bells as they announced their liberation.  When the villages in Europe were liberated, the first recognition of their liberation was the ringing of the church bells.  On a late afternoon as we neared Paris we reached our objective without encountering any resistance.  Our phase line placed us in a relatively open area with a few apple trees and an oat field.  It was raining slightly and we were looking forward to a miserable night in the rain.  There were no buildings around to offer any shelter from the rain and we were not anxious to dig foxholes in the wet ground.  A check of our maps revealed that there were no farms or buildings of any kind except for a village on our left flank several hundred yards away and out of our area.  I began questioning a local civilian who was wandering in the area and he assured me that we could find some houses nearby.  I showed him our maps and he assured me that the maps were not updated and that he could come up with accommodations nearby.  Capt. Pritchard was willing to try anything to avoid a night in the rain, so he, his jeep driver, the Frenchman and I set out to find this sought-after shelter that took us in the direction of the village shown on our maps.

 

We proceeded down a dirt trail that became progressively impossible to navigate with the jeep because of the overgrown shrubs on the sides.  At this point we abandoned the jeep with the driver and the Frenchman, Captain Prichard and I continued on foot.  I kept asking the Frenchman how much farther our destination was and the answer was always the same.  “Only a few more meters.”  Finally the trail opened up to what appeared to be the dead end of a cobblestone street.  We continued cautiously past a few houses that remained shuttered and appeared abandoned.  There was not a sound anywhere, not even the barking of a dog or the meow of a cat - total silence.  As we moved along we began hearing the creaking of shutters opening and partially visible faces stared at us in shock.  After passing only a few houses we reached the center of the village through which a blacktop road passed.  The Frenchman pointed out a house across the street and declared that it was ours.  The French always considered a great honor to house American soldiers.  We checked out the house and found it to be ideal for the night.  Suddenly the bell from the church next to the Frenchman’s home began to ring.  I asked the Frenchman why the church bell was now ringing and he replied that it was because we had liberated them.  I said, “Do you mean that this village has not yet been liberated?’  He said that there was nothing to worry about.  The Germans were retreating along the highway through town but they had only foot soldiers and small vehicles.  There were no tanks.  This was hardly a match for my M-1 and the captain’s Tommy gun.  When I relayed the message to Captain Pritchard his eyes doubled in size, he grabbed his Tommy gun and said, “Let’s get the ---- out of here!”  We looked up the highway for Germans then ran across the street, up the back alley to the jeep and left the Frenchman standing bewildered in his doorway.  The bells were still ringing as we made our way back to our legitimate objective and spent the night in a wet oat field.

 

I don’t remember why I was with one of our rifle companies one day in the French countryside.  There were four of us moving down a country road when I was approached by a Frenchman who informed me that some Germans were sleeping in a clump of trees only 150 feet away in a field to our right.  We approached them slowly and caught them by surprise. There were six of them and they were all armed with side arms   I disarmed one of them who had a Russian pistol that he had apparently taken from a Russian on the Eastern Front.

 

We were now heading for Paris and crossed the Seine River from south to north at the city of Mantes located approximately 54 kilometers down stream from Paris.  The crossing was not too difficult and it was either here or farther upstream at the city of Meulan that we were held up for two days by German rear guard action and snipers in church steeples.  Mantes was an important stronghold for the Germans because of the proximity to Paris and also because they knew it would be an ideal location for our crossing of the river.  The higher ground to the north provided good defensive positions if needed by the retreating Germans.  An antitank gun knocked out one of our tanks on the main street parallel to the river.  The tank was burning and one of the crew had tried to escape and was draped halfway out of the turret.  While the tank burned and the snipers were being cleared out someone else and I squatted patiently behind a stone wall that led from where we were to the River Seine.  A glance toward the river revealed a tavern on the bank.  Loud voices were coming from the tavern indicating that some Frenchmen were already celebrating their freedom.  We made our way along the wall to the tavern and joined them in a few toasts to our respective countries and moved on after the resistance had been neutralized.

 

From the high ground in the vicinity of Meulan we could see the Eiffel Tower in the far distant.  At this point we allowed the Free French to take Paris and we swung to the north, stopping in an area northwest of the Foret De Chantilly.

 

On the morning of September 1, 1944 we received orders to pursue the enemy in a northerly direction toward Belgium.  This was to be a concentrated effort consisting of three divisions simultaneously on individual routes.  The 30^th Division was in the center with the 2^nd Armored Division under the XIX Corps on our left flank and the 28^th Division on our right.  The Belgian border lay more than 100 miles away and the order was not only to pursue the enemy but also to get to Belgium in record time.  This meant an unprecedented rapid drive against an opposing force. 

 

A task force commanded by our Assistant Division Commander, Brigadier General Harrison, led the thrust of the 30th Division.  This force consisted of various units of the division and support units of the 743^rd Tank Battalion and the 823^rd Tank Destroyer Battalion.

The 120^th Regiment moved out of the area around Cramoisy proceeding to Mello, Clermont, St. Dennis and on to Roye.  From Roye we pushed on to Cambrai, Anzin, St. Amant and then to Hollain, Belgium on Sept 2, 1944.  On this drive we traversed areas in which the 30^th Division saw action in WW I.  Our Regimental coat of arms symbolizes the crossing of the San Quentin canal some 26 years earlier.    

 Although our 3^rd Battalion of the 120^th Regiment was not officially part of the task force our S-2 decided that we should be represented so S-2, Capt. Pritchard and S-3 Capt. Hill commandeered a jeep and I joined the task force.  I accompanied these two so that I could contact the French underground and eventually the Belgian underground (L’Armée Blanche).

 

We began our drive in late afternoon and sometime during the night we were around St. Quentin.  Perhaps it was in Peronne that we had no problems finding comfortable beds in French homes.  This was the first occasion I had to completely remove all of my clothes since sometime in July.  We all giggled like silly kids as we lay in the dark on our feather mattresses.  An amusing incident occurred the next morning.  As we passed through villages we dropped off MPs to direct the rest of the column.  There was some fog and visibility was somewhat impaired.  At one point there was a gap in the column until the first evidence was the sound of a motorcycle.  The MP recognized the sound as that of a German vehicle but assumed that some crazy American must be riding it in the column.  He assumed his traffic-cop posture and directed the approaching vehicle along our route.  To his surprise a German appeared out of the fog and rode hurriedly past the MP directing him toward his Fatherland.

 

Our battalion objective was to reach the Brussels-Tournai highway at a point east of  Tournai and north of Antoing.  It was a dark, rainy night in late evening when we three crossed the border at Maulde just south of Antoing.  Dark rain clouds hid a full moon.  Occasionally a break in the clouds would provide enough light to distinguish land features and buildings.  We invited ourselves into the home of an elderly Belgian couple and heated some rations on their kitchen stove.  After pleasant conversation we listened to their secretly-hidden radio and we moved on.  We were poorly oriented but Capt. Pritchard decided that we would reach our objective and be there to welcome the rest of the advancing battalion.  We had proceeded only a few yards in a northerly direction and along a canal when the noise of an approaching vehicle brought us to an abrupt stop.  Capt. Pritchard was driving and Capt. Hill was in the front seat behind a 30-caliper machine gun mounted on the jeep.  I was in the back with a large dog that had decided to join us.  The moon produced enough light for us to make out a panel truck in our path.  Capt. Hill pulled back the bolt on the machine gun and was prepared to begin firing.  I dismounted the jeep from the right side and challenged the occupants of the truck.  The response immediately identified them as Belgian and I barely had enough time to prevent Capt. Hill from opening fire.  These members of the underground told me that they had just encountered the Germans a few yards up the road we were traveling. 

 

They showed us a casualty in the back of the vehicle and when I asked for help in locating our objective they said that we were on the wrong road.  We had to backtrack to a drawbridge and cross to the other side of the canal.  This we did, but as we approached the drawbridge the underground guarding the bridge challenged us.  They had raised the bridge about 2 feet so that traffic from either direction would be halted abruptly.  I identified us as Americans and there was an immediate clatter of chains as the span was lowered into position.  On the far side of the bridge a Belgian eating a salami sandwich identified himself as the leader of the local underground and said that we were right behind some Americans in a halftrack, an armored car and two jeeps.  This description fit forward elements of our Division Recon Troop.  Our friend with the salami sandwich sat on the right front fender and directed a couple of blocks through town to a circle where five roads merged at the circle.  He got us on the proper one and departed.  This road would lead us to our objective on the Brussels-Tournai Highway only four kilometers away.  After traveling near the end of the four kilometers we approached a sharp bend to the right and at the bend the road passed through a road cut with mounds of dirt on each side.  We stopped the jeep and in the moonlight we could see a halftrack taking cover behind the mound on the right side.  An American with the halftrack challenged us but before we could answer us a hail of gunfire came down the road.  Capt. Pritchard turned the jeep to the right and into a ditch as I slid out with the big dog on top of me.  We abandoned the jeep and ran for cover with the halftrack soldier while tracers went flying overhead and on both sides of the mound.  Most of the firing down the road was going just past the jeep although we later found one bullet hole in the radiator.

 

By now, burning vehicles of our Recon Troop lighted the sky.  In the light we saw a jeep fleeing with men hanging on and tracers hitting the pavement directly behind them.  An elevation of only a few degrees by the gunner would have hit them.  In this incident our Recon Troop lost two armored cars and a jeep and three men were killed and six were wounded.  A German rear guard was sitting directly on our objective.

 

When the shooting subsided we made our way back to the jeep and managed to turn it around, crank it up and perform a hasty advance to the rear.  The first person we encountered in town was the salami-eating friend who now insisted that we set up our headquarters in his tavern across from the Antoing train station.  It was now near midnight and as our troops arrived the entire battalion was housed in the train station for the night.  Other members of the Armée Blanche appeared at the tavern mostly to try to con us into giving them machine guns.    They were not satisfied with small arms.

 

By crossing the Belgian border at Maulde at 6:30 P.M. on September 2, 1944 the 30^th Division became the first American Infantry Division to enter Belgium. From our original location near Paris we made the drive in record time advancing on a 118-mile stretch in 30 hours.  This was believed to be one of the fastest, opposed advances over a similar distance in the history of warfare.

 

Colonel G. Bauters, a retired Belgian Army colonel learned about my account of the first night in Belgium and contacted me for personal information I could give him to incorporate in a book he was writing about these first hours in Belgium.  He was able to relate my story in several pages of his book and in doing so he provided additional information we in the American army were not aware of.  The bridge that we crossed in Antoing across the canal (l’Escaut) was a more significant military target than we realized.  According to Bauters there was an allied plan to drop a parachute team to secure the bridge before the Germans could detonate the explosives planted on the bridge. 

  Before the drop could be initiated the Armée Blanche had a firefight with the Germans guarding the bridge and they were successful in securing it for our safe passage.  In the skirmish with the enemy a Belgian fighter named Lucien Delrue from Bruyelle Belgium was badly wounded.  By a most strange coincident Lucien was the casualty we had encountered in the back of the panel truck.  He later joked that he almost got shot by the Americans after being badly wounded at the canal bridge by the Germans.  He eventually was treated in an American hospital in Paris then transported to England for more treatment. 

 

By daybreak the Germans had abandoned our objective that they had occupied the night before.  With our host from the tavern sitting on the right fender of the jeep we proceeded to lead our troops to the area we had failed to occupy the night before.  All of the local citizens lined the streets and showered us with flowers and greetings.  Our jeep was completely covered with flowers.  When we reached the spot where we had encountered the roadblock the dead Americans were lined up on the sidewalk and covered with flowers.  The local chief of police greeted us on the outskirts of town and offered us the town hall for our headquarters.  The villages in this part of Belgium were dense and almost contiguous so that I was not sure of the name of our location.  I have recently learned that it was Gaurain.           

 

I have corresponded with some Belgians who research WW II and they contacted me because I was one of the first of their liberators.  These men are extremely dedicated to their research and they develop amazing information.  After reading a story I wrote entitled “First in Belgium” Mr. Jean-Jacques Derycke found the town hall I mentioned and the tavern in Antoing and sent me photographs.  These buildings have not changed in over 50 years except that the town hall is boarded up and not in use.  Mr. Derycke also researched my account of our first night and the encounter with the underground with the wounded soldier in the van and actually found out who this person was.  This story is recounted in Bauters’ book previously mentioned.  After the war Lucien Delrue farmed in the region and he was still alive in 2004.  I had sent Mr. Derycke a sketch map of the area I remembered around Antoing showing the canal and the route to the German roadblock.  I showed the bend in the road and the mounds on both sides of the road cut.  He sent me a map of the area of the same vintage as the war and it was almost a perfect overlay of mine.  It even showed the two mounds of dirt! 

 

The highway between Tournai and Brussels was the main street of Gaurain.  Along the highway there was a rail line or streetcar line used for local commuters.  On the opposite from our headquarters there was a large pit from which limestone was mined for the production of cement.  The town hall contained a group of small jail cells in the rear.  The day after we were there the chief of police was incarcerated in one of the cells and accused of being a collaborator.  As soon as we set up headquarters a nurse from the Armée Blanche appeared in search of medical supplies to treat their wounded.  I was the only one able to communicate with her so she was turned over to me.  Her name was Odette Fountain, was about my age and very pretty.  I took her to our medical unit where she was loaded with aspirin, bandages, iodine and other miscellaneous medicines.  Shortly after delivering the supplies she returned with a bottle of wine for me.  The village had not been damaged during the war and daily life was fairly normal.  She took me home to meet her family and other relatives.  From then on for the next three or four days in Gaurain Odette was usually accompanied by her boyfriend Leo who probably didn’t appreciate his girlfriend associating with an American.  Leo was also in the underground and usually carried a German hand grenade (potato masher) in his belt.  My friends would kid me saying that they had seen Leo with a potato masher and he was looking for me.  In my correspondence with Mr. Derycke I had mentioned Odette and Leo and he was able to locate them.  Leo and Odette had been married for more than fifty years and still lived in Gaurain.  We have written and exchanged photographs. Unfortunately Leo died in 2005.

 

During our short stay in Gaurain the local Catholic Church held a special service in thanks for their liberation.  Many of us attended.  The only recollection of the service is listening to the organist stumbling through our national anthem.

 

Our division was often the northernmost infantry division in the American Army.  This gave us a neighboring location with the British forces on our north flank.  While in Gaurain for about four days the British moved through Gaurain and swung north.  We were then to move to the east and northeast.  An interesting observation was made as we traversed Belgium from France to the Netherlands.  Near the French border good French was spoken but as we traveled eastward the language blended into a patois or a local dialect of the Walloons.  I began to have difficulty with the Walloon patois and my contributions as our primary source of contact with the underground began to wane only to be reestablished in the Battle of the Bulge after the war in France.  Farther into Belgium we encountered Flemish-speaking people then Dutch-speaking.  For having liberated Belgium and subsequently participating in the Battle of the Bulge the Belgian government awarded us the Belgian Fourragere, a red and gray, braded strap worn through the left epaulette.

 

There was very little resistance across the rest of Belgium as we advanced faster than the Germans realized.  On the southern outskirts of Brussels in the town of La Hulpe we spent the night in a castle on the edge of town.  Just as we had experienced in Gaurain, the civilian activity was fairly normal.  A friend and I decided to explore the town in the early evening.  We stopped off at the first bar we saw and had a drink with some of the locals.  We then moved on and came across a hospital that we entered and found a large ward.  We were invited to inspect the facilities and found a wounded German soldier the Belgians were caring for.  We gave him a few cigarettes and went back on the street.  The next stop was to talk to a Belgian standing in front of his butcher shop.  He invited us in for a drink, showed us his hiding place for his illegal radio and made conversation.  He invited us to return the next day for a steak dinner and we accepted.  We didn’t know where he planned to get the steak since there wasn’t a piece of meat in the shop.  Many of the German artillery were horse-drawn and when these animals were killed the civilians would carve a nice piece of meat out of the horse’s rump.  I suspect our steak was to be a horse.  We pulled out early the next morning and we never got our horse steak.

 

The next area of any interest was at Fort Eben Emael on the Belgium-Dutch border.  We reached this objective in record time and caught the Germans by surprise.  Fort Eben Emael was a kind of miniature Maginot Line built inside a small mountain or hill with the east side overlooking the Albert Canal and Holland.  The Albert Canal is south to north flowing and is parallel to the Maas River.  The Maas is the same as the Meuse River to the south in Belgium and was a major German objective in the Battle of the Bulge that we would experience three months later.  The Maas River continues parallel to the canal toward Maastricht where it flows through the city, hence the name of the city - it straddles the Maas. The canal has steep concrete sides in the vicinity of the fort thereby providing excellent protection from the east.  With this configuration, the fort had all of its guns on the east side so as to face the most likely invaders.  Inside the fort there were quarters for the soldiers, machine shops, a hospital and all other amenities for a self-sufficient establishment.

 

We first saw the fort from the west side where we had entrance capabilities.  I immediately remembered that, in training, I had seen a captured German film showing how the Germans had captured this heavily fortified facility.  They built a replica in Germany then practiced the attack until each man knew his job.  In the actual attack they laid down a smoke screen over the Albert Canal then crossed in rubber boats.  At the same time airborne troops landed on the fort.  Entry into the fort was through air vents with the help of fifth columnists on the inside.  Once inside the Germans overpowered the Belgians and captured the fort.