| Notes |
- Life Story of Edward Joseph Fischer
It All started in November 21, 1920 when I was born on an Indian Reservation in Dunn County North Dakota, to Emannuel Benjamin Fischer and Barbara Kuntz Fischer. I was the seventh child of a family of ten, six boys and 4 girls. Isabelle born in 1909 was the oldest, then Tony, Mary, Clementine, Albert, Caroline, Me (Edward), Roman, John and Charles. Maybe the number seven is a lucky number, as I say I was lucky.
One of the first things I remember was in 1924. We moved to Billings, Montana. I guess my Dad had some bad times because he heard that we could go to Billings to work in the sugar beets. At the time we lived in Dickinson, North Dakota. All I remember about that is we gave our dog to somebody and Roman (my brother who was 2 years old) and I were walking on each side of the dog. I was telling Roman we were going to give the dog away as we were going by train to Billings, Montana.
My older brothers and sisters worked in the sugar beets that fall, so we must have made some money. I remember playing close to a sugar beet dump, where they piled the beets until the factory could take them. They started the factory in October and ran until spring time.
The next I remember was living in Pompey?s Pillar, Montana, which is east of Billings about 20 miles. I remember we had some sugar beets planted in a field there. To get water to the house, we would hook the horse to a weed sled with a barrel on it. Then, the horse would pull the sled down to the Yellowstone River to a spring there and haul the water up to the house. There was a little hill that we had to go up when we came back. We felt sorry for the horse so we gave him a rest before going up the hill. When he started he gave the sled a big jerk and the barrel fell off. We had to go back to the spring again and refill the barrel with our buckets. This time he got no rest before going up the little hill and went all the way home, almost half a mile.
Pompey?s Pillar rock was on the farm we had rented. The rock was vertical on three sides about three hundred feet high. We could walk up it on the back side. There was a crevice there on the one side where Lewis & Clarke had carved their initials in the rock.
My brother John was born in Billings, Montana in 1922. My youngest brother Charles was born November 4, 1926 on this farm at Pompey?s Pillar. Being the first week in November it was quite cold. My mother was still in bed when the house caught fire. I remember looking up in the attic and seeing the fire. My dad told us to bring water but the barrel had six inches of ice on it and was only half full. By the time we got the axe to break the ice the fire was too big to do much good with a half bucket of water. The house burned to the ground.
Since the house burned we had to move. My Dad found another farm for all of us to crowd into. Even though we were very crowded we didn?t mind at all. Finally Dad found another farm to rent and we moved into that house where we farmed for a year.
This is the place where I started school. I remember going to school in a school bus. It didn?t take me long to learn the names of all the school kids because it was a small school.
While we lived there we went to a Catholic Church where we met Charley Altoff, he was very good to us. I remember that we got a lot of real good horses from him.
While we lived on this farm my mother?s father came to visit. He came late at night and I remember him knocking on the door. My mother said, ?That?s Grandpa?. I guess she recognized his voice. We got up and gave our bed to them. It wasn?t just Grandpa it was a whole car load of relatives. We got to sleep on the floor but we did not mind at all because we got to see Grandma and Grandpa.
After a year we moved to Custer, Montana. My brother Roman, 2 years younger than me, started school while we lived there. We also rented a farm there that was owned by a priest, he gave us a five year lease. We tore down an old log barn and built a new one. I guess the priest furnished the money for the barn. I remember my dad asked him for a check for $5.00 to buy enough roofing to finish the roof. He never sent the money so the roof leaked a little. Dad also added one big room to the house. The last time I was in Custer it was still there.
It seemed like we always had a lot of chores to do, like feeding the hogs, chickens, cows, calves and horses. We also chopped wood for the kitchen stove. The house was heated with coal. As we got older we got our turn doing all of these chores. I remember while I was in the first and second grade, the older boys and girls would go out to milk the cows. I would go in and get my cup and go out to get some fresh milk to drink.
I started out feeding the calves and chickens. The calves were hard to get to drink. In order to get them to drink we would put their noses into the liquid, when they got a taste of the milk then they would drink. We always took the calves off of the cows after three days so they got the colostrum to keep them healthy. The chickens were easy all you had to do was throw them a can of grain and they would pick it out of the feeding trouth or off the ground when it was summer. We would save the scraps from the kitchen, called ?slop?, and feed them to the pigs. We would also soak grain in a barrel to feed to the pigs.
The farm in Custer was across the street from the town. It was only two blocks to go to the store. If we got a nickel or a dime we would go and spend it on candy. Once when it was my turn to cut the wood for the kitchen stove and bring it in my dad came out and was helping me. The stump he was chopping had a big knot in it. He worked on it for awhile and finally gave up. Then he said, ?if anybody could cut that stump he would give them a dollar?. I took the axe and worked on it until it went into the heater. I got the dollar!
There was thirty acres of bare land on the farm and it had a lot of Russian Thistles growing on it. My oldest brother Tony raked the thistles up into large piles. That night after supper we went up there and burned them all. When one pile burned down we took the hot ashes to the next pile. When we came to the last pile Tony and I each took a large pitch fork full of hot ashes and raced to light the pile. Tony ran so fast he lost all his ashes so my ashes set the last pile on fire. It was a lot of fun!
Tony had a little mare that he used for a saddle horse and she had a little colt. Roman and I used to play with that colt all the time. We fed her some extra grain. When she was about one year old we would ride her up along the irrigation ditch. Tony did not know that we had been doing this. When the colt was two years old he saddled her up and was kind of afraid to ride her. Roman and I were laughing because we had her broke for bareback riding the year before.
When I got to be about eight or nine I would take Snip, that was the colt?s name, and harness her and hook her up to the a one sec harrow and harrow gardens for people in town. She was very gentle to use. Sometimes I would get a dime or sometimes a quarter. I remember having a dollar and fifty cents. I went to the grocery store to spend my earnings. I really liked oatmeal so when I saw a 25 pound sack of oatmeal I bought it and took it home. We ate a lot of oatmeal.
One day the priest that owned the farm came to see how the farm was faring. It was my job to show him around the farm so he could see all that we were doing there. At that time I was an altar boy in the Catholic church. I took him over the whole farm, some was dry land and some was pasture land. The cemetery was on this land, it was on two acres of irrigated land. There were a few acres across the road and some across the railroad tracks. It was sort of a cut up farm. After the priest left the farm my mother said, ?With six boys in the family one of them should be a priest?.
One day I was irrigating the garden and thinking about what mother said about one of us being a priest. I thought I should be a priest. The more I thought about it I decided not to but I promised myself that I would work for the Good Lord all my life. When I made this decision the biggest sensation came over me from the top of my head to my toes and I didn?t know what happened. After that there was always ?that voice? inside my head that would say, ?you are not supposed to do that?, if we used a swear word. We could tell the priest and he would give us some prayers that would take care of it. But the voice inside said, ?No, you should not swear at all!?. So I quit swearing.
We always had 15 to 20 acres of sugar beets. When I was in the fourth grade I thought I could do as much as an adult. The adults used a short handled hoe to thin the beets. The beets were planted in a single line and we had to chop some out to thin them and leave one plant every ten inches. I had to work real hard to keep up with my older brothers and sisters. It was a big family affair. Years later the freeway went through where we raised the sugar beets.
In 1928 dad planted some Great Northern beans. At Thanksgiving time he got six cents a pound for them. The next year he put in a lot of beans. That is when the depression hit. People came around and offered him ¾ of cents a pound for them. He was hoping for more money so he did not sell but when he got through thrashing nobody would buy them. Dad wrote to the Department of the Farm and asked them what would happen if he cooked the beans and feed them to the hogs. The answer that he received was that they had not experimented with that and so they did not know. Dad took a 55 gallon barrel and cut it in two and filled it full of beans. We let them soak until they got soft and then cooked them for a few hours. That was all the feed that the hogs had that winter. That year we butchered twelve hogs and two beef. Dad knew how to make good sausage, blood head cheese and dried beef for the summer. Our main diet was meat and potatoes. In Custer dad made the root cellar bigger to hold all the potatoes. He dug it with a shovel. The potatoes would keep all winter that way. We always had enough left to plant in the spring. We had to cut the potatoes in pieces leaving one eye on each piece. We plowed which turned the dirt over in a furrow and then we dropped a potato every twelve inches. We would plant every other furrow and when they came up we would cultivate them and hoe all the weeds out maybe a couple of times a season. We would always irrigate them to make them grow in Montana as the rain fall was only nine inches.
In Custer all the trains would stop to get coal and water. Water was pumped out of the Yellowstone River about one mile to the railroad. All the bums would come up to the house for a hand out. All we had to give was some cured ham, ham kept quite well in the summer, along with it mom put homemade bread and with butter. Several of the bums would come and offer to cut wood for food. My mother would never object. She would say, ?They are hungry, we should feed them?.
We traded three and one half bushels of wheat for one hundred pounds of flour. I can remember we had ten to fifteen sacks of flour to play on.
My dad had a butcher shop for a couple of years. I think dad let too much meat out on credit and the people could not pay so we moved back to Billings.
Joe Ruff was a neighbor of ours, his wife was related to my dad, my first cousin. They lived on a farm about a mile from us. Their place was close to the river. We used to walk through his yard to go fishing in the Yellowstone River. There was a little creek that flowed into the river there. One day I caught a 16 inch Pike. On the way home another neighbor saw my fish and offered me 10 cents for it so I sold it to him.
My older brother Albert, who was five years older than me, and I were visiting the Cook family. (They had three boys our age and one girl.) They were having a party at their house when the husband said something to his wife that she did not like. She picked up a small dish and threw it at him. The dish hit him on the ear and broke almost cutting his ear off. Twenty years later my wife Fern and I were on a trip and we stopped by to visit Mrs. Cook who was living in Custer. I teased her about throwing the dish at her husband. She replied that he has been behaving ever since. I thought that was a real cute answer.
One winter a school of Ling fish were real thick in the river, so we set some throw lines with 10 to 12 hooks on them into the river. One of the lines had only ten hooks on it but we caught 11 fish. I guess the hook came out of his gills and another one got caught on it. I remember that we ate a lot of fish that year.
In the winter time we would go down to the river and saw ice by hand, haul it home with the horses and pack it in a shed with cinders so we could have ice until the fourth of July.
I went to school in Custer until the fifth grade. We had some really good teachers. Once in awhile I would get an A, but mostly I did not. I guess if I would have studied more I could have done better. Since I liked math I did real well in that subject. I did not like to read much but I learned in later years that I was almost cross-eyed. After I got glasses I could read much better and I enjoy reading to this day.
I really enjoyed being an altar boy in the church but everything was in Latin so I never could understand what the priest said. I remember moving the Bible from one side of the table to the other so the priest could have some wine and water. I got to pour the wine and water into a glass for him.
My oldest sister, Isabelle, got married in Custer when I was seven or eight years old. What a wedding that was! Dad had made a lot of sausage and bologna and mother made soup in the boiler for the guests to eat. All the relatives came and brought their musical instruments. The neighbors came and everyone danced in our house for three days. That is where I danced my first square dance.
In 1932 we moved from Custer to Sidney, Montana. Moving there was quite a chore. We filled one box car with machinery and our household items. We also took our dog in the box car. Dad went with the train as we also had some cows and horses in there. Tony and Albert hooked one hay rack behind the other and drove one team and led four or five others tied to the wagons. We went right down the highway with all of that about 150 miles. It took them almost two weeks to make the trip. Dad had rented a farm close to Fairview, Montana, that is close to the North Dakota border. The Yellowstone River turned north there and went into the Missouri River. According to history when Lewis & Clarke went through there were lots of deer. We lived in the area for seven years and we would hunt deer on the banks of the river. In seven years I never saw a deer on land that was dry. There was no food for the deer in that area. Today there are a lot of deer there and each person can get two deer.
In Fairview we went to a small country school with one teacher for 8 grades. I was the biggest kid in school so I got elected to go over to the school on Sunday and build a fire in the heating stove. I could never get it to keep a fire until Monday. The school was only one half mile from our house. The Evans boys lived next door to us and we used to go over to see them a lot.
We raised sugar beets and grain. We made a little money on the sugar beets. We had to thin them in the spring and when it was time to harvest we pulled them with three horses and a lifter, which was a piece of equipment that had 2 metal blades that went one on each side of the row. Then we would pile them in rows and cut the tops off. We then put them in piles where we smoothed the dirt out with what we called a ?go-devil?. We had to shovel the tops into a wagon and haul them to the place where we dumped the sugar beets in a big pile. From there they would haul them to the factory. We did this in October for about three or four weeks. Close to Christmas we would get a check from the sugar factory, sometimes it was as much as three or four hundred dollars. Of course we had to irrigate the beets about five times and cultivate three to four times. It was a lot of hard work but it was about the only cash crop we had.
The Evans boys had a mare that had a colt. When the colt was about six months old we started to ride it. We had a lot of fun with the Evans boys.
The school teacher in Fairview was a young woman probably in her early twenties I forgot what her name was but she was real nice. She married one of the local farmers and stayed there the rest of her life. The teacher told us about one of the farm hands that had run away with a team of horses and a wagon. He could not stop them so he ran them into a hay stack.
Mr. Evans had a beet truck and they took us all in the back of this open truck to Williston Park, 40 miles away, for a picnic. There were at least 20 of us in the truck which had three foot sides used to keep the sugar beets from falling out. It was a really great day!! The park had green grass all mowed and looked very nice. It was the first time that I had ever seen anything like that. Then we rode back in the truck. It was a wonderful day! If we rode in a truck that way today they would put us in jail.
We only stayed in Fairview one year then we moved to Dore, North Dakota, which was about ½ mile away. We stayed in Dore for six years. The school was close by there also. I graduated from the 8th grade there. I had to take a state test to pass which I did easily. There were more kids in this school about ten in each grade for all eight grades.
The first year at Dore we had two farms. Later dad let one go so we moved to the other farm. We had to build a house for ourselves and a barn. We bought a 1934 Ford truck that we would use to haul sugar beets in and we used it to carry all our belongings. It was a new truck and cost $11,000. It had a sixty horse motor with a five speed transmission. We would load five tons of beets and haul them to the market a mile away. We had to buy a beet box to put in back of it as it only had a frame back, but it had a nice cab. We drove that truck for six years until 1940. That winter was one of the coldest we ever had, sixty below zero. One day dad wanted to go to town for groceries which was about five miles away. I was elected to start the truck. I used some cardboard to cover the radiator so the water would not freeze going down the road. I built a fire in a wash tub and put it under the motor. When the motor got warm the truck started but it would not shift. I built a fire under the transmission until it got hot and then I could shift it but it would not move. So I had to put a fire under the rear end and when it got warm it would go. Dad made it to Fairview and back OK. When he got back we had to drain the water out of it as there was no antifreeze then (that was in 1934).
It was so cold that winter we kept all the cows and horses in the barn. We would not let them out in the day time at all. After they had been in the barn for about two weeks our pump froze up. We had to haul water for the house again. The neighbors well was working so I asked dad if we should drive the cows and horses up there to get water. He said he didn?t think they would drink. The sun was out bright that day but it was still very cold. I drove them up there, about half a mile; they stuck their noses in the water and headed back to the barn. They stayed in another two weeks before they got water. There was about six inches of frost on the walls of the barn and they licked that for water.
In 1934 work started on building the Fort Peck dam across the Missouri River. It was about 40 to 50 miles west of us. I think they paid the workers 50 cents an hour which was a good wage at that time. My sister Mary and her husband Tony went with my sister Isabelle and her husband up there to work. They lived in tents. They put a wooden floor and side walls in them and heated them with wood and coal stoves. Even though it got real cold that winter they somehow managed.
Since Tony left to work at Fort Peck dad gave up one small farm we had rented and we moved on to the other one. Dad bought us a house in Buford, North Dakota for twenty five dollars. Buford was a ghost town. Later on I learned that it was also an outlaw town. It was only about thirty miles from where we lived.
We took the 1934 Ford truck that we had and went to Buford to get the house. We took it all apart and set it back up on that rented farm. I did not know it at that time but that is where I learned a lot about building a house. With dad?s instructions I learned many things. He showed us how to read a framing square to cut rafters. That is the house where we lived for five years.
During the depression we lived very well we always had meat and potatoes to eat. In the summer we had a large garden where we got vegetables and corn to eat. One year at that place we raised feed for the horses and all we could eat out of our big garden.
Our neighbor wanted his dry land plowed and seeded into wheat. That was the job I got to do. We had a 15/30 McCormick Deer tractor with a 3 bottom plow. I pulled the plow with the tractor with a one Secson harrow behind that. I plowed about 30 acres of his land. Then I took four head of horses on the grain drill and planted all thirty acres. We waited all summer for that crop to sprout but with no rain nothing happened. One year later it still had not sprouted, there was no crop. In later years the government paid them to plant so they started to farm dry farm land every other year. It came back and had a crop every other year. With only eight or nine inches of rain a year it would only grow every other year. History says that when Lewis & Clark came to where the Yellowstone River went into the Missouri there were a lot of deer. When we lived there I never saw a deer but after the crops came back the deer did too. Today everybody in Montana can have two deer.
In 1940 we moved back to the town of Fairview where dad bought a lot. The house we tore down and moved to the farm dad built so we could move it easily. We dug a basement and poured a foundation and set the house on top of it. In those days having water in the house was rare so when we built ours we thought it was real neat because we drove a sand point (which is a pipe that goes down into the ground) in the basement to gravel where we found water and had a pitcher pump (an old fashioned pump with a handle) in the house. We had our horses and machinery in town.
In 1940, the Government opened an irrigation project in Glendive, about 60 miles west of Fairview. Somehow Dad rented a farm there, with a house on it. I think he gave $150 for a year. But we had to put in all the irrigation ditches. The land lord thought that was a lot of hard work. But it only took us a couple of days to do it with the plow and ditcher we had that we pulled with the horses. He came that fall and asked me where the ditches were. I told him all the main ditch was out there. So I guess he was satisfied. That summer we had a nice crop of wheat. I had made about 5 rounds with the binder pulled with 4 head of horses. That night it hailed for 15 minutes and there went one half of the crop!
That summer my mother, who was 50 years old passed away. Mother had sugar diabetes real bad and doctors did not know much about it then. She was supposed to take insulin, but she would not take it like she should have. Her feet had a lot of sores on them. She was buried in Glendive. My sister and John, her husband stayed with us that summer.
In the fall of 1940, after the hail storm, Dad got together with 2 neighbors and bought a thrashing machine. We had to repair it and I got elected to run it. But what a horrible job that was as nobody knew how to run it. I went up to my other neighbor who had a machine and they told me how to set the sieves so it would do a better job. At Kaufman?s place the wheat came out clean. Mr. Kaufman went and looked in the straw pile to see if he could find any wheat in the straw, he did not find any. He never said a word and I knew it was OK.
When summer was over my sister Mary and John moved to Missoula, Montana where John got a job in the round house. Charles, my youngest brother went to stay with them and finished high school in Montana. My two younger brothers Roman and John went to the C.C.C. (Civilian Conservation Corp) for the winter. That left me alone on the farm. It was a very sad time for us. Even Dad made the remark, ?It?s really hard to get along in this world.? So, Dad and I spent the winter together.
Dad?s great grandpa read the Bible a lot. In later years he told them they would live to see the day they would fly through the air with a fire wagon. Dad said grandpa is getting old and that is not in the Bible. Dad and Mom got married in 1909 and the Wright brothers had already flown a plane. Dad started to read the Bible to find out where it talked about the fire wagon. It says in the later days, they will go to and fro? That winter he would read the Bible out loud. I asked why he did that, he said he understood it better that way, but I think now that he was doing it for me, so I would read the Bible too. It worked; today I read it a lot. I read once through the Old Testament every year and more for the New Testament. I really enjoy reading it now.
In the fall of 1940 my Uncle John, Dad?s brother, called us and asked us if I could come with the 1934 truck and haul his sugar beets to the dumping off place. So I hired a man to help me. The Sugar beets were in piled rows, six rows into one row, in between the rows we smoothed the dirt so they cut the tops off the beets and made piles in this row. We had what they called a beet fork approximately 12 inches wide and sixteen inches long with knobs on the end of the tines so they did not stick into the beets. At first, I drove the truck in the field and shoveled left handed. But the hired man was having trouble doing it right handed so I traded with him, as it was also quite a job to jump in and out of the truck. He did OK at driving and I shoveled right handed. We hauled 10 loads a day at 5 ¼ tons to the load which gave us 55 tons a day.
One day the truck made a funny noise going around a corner and the back wheels would slide. I put it in Uncle John?s barn and took the rear end apart. The spider gears were worn out and I went to the Ford garage and ordered new spider gears. They sent me the whole rear end, pinion gear and all. It cost $40; I thought that was a lot of money. Not knowing what I was doing, the two I asked seem to know, so I bolted it in and put it back together and it worked. I didn?t know that the pinion gear had to be adjusted to the ring gear. But in most cases that is true, but in a Ford it was not. That truck lasted a lot of years. When I got through I had $150.00 for my 6 months work with a truck.
When I got home my dad said let?s buy some sheep. So, we bought 60 head of old ewes for $100.00. A lady had some ewes that she wanted to sell so dad went to the banker and borrowed the money to buy 60 more. We all learned how to shear sheep with hand clippers. We all learned about sheep.
That year was the last year we farmed. I asked Dad how come he lived on the farm when he didn?t like it. His answer was ?that?s the only place I could feed all you kids, six boys and 4 girls.
Tony, my oldest brother could not hear very well, so he was 4F and could not join the military. The other five of us boys went into different branches of the service and we all came back home alive. Tony got killed right after the war in California; he was hit by a drunk driver.
Two years later, I went back to sell everything. My brother, John was there taking care of it all. We sold everything. First, I cut out the old ewes and weather lambs. I knew my neighbor fed sheep in the winter. I talked to him and he bought them both. Some man that came to look at the ewes, he wanted 10-12 head. But then he came back and said the banker would not loan him the money for the sheep. I went in and talked to the banker and told him they were all young ewes. I had culled them all. I sold the old ewes to my neighbor and he could call the man that wanted to buy some sheep. In a small town, everybody knows everybody else. The Banker loaned the new buyer the money. I thought that this is the way to make money. Our initial investment was $150.00 and when we sold them we had over $4,000.00. I was going to raise sheep when I grew up!
However, that did not happen, as Pearl Harbor attack came in 1941. I was drafted in the fall of 1942 and was sent to Fort White in Medford, Oregon for basic training.
The first day we were lined up outside and the Lieutenant said we need someone to carry the Company Flag. I was in the middle of the front row. He asked me ?What is your name?? I answered him, ?Fischer, Sir!? I got the job. I got along real good in basic training. We spent a lot of time training in school on the Enfield rifle, a World War I rifle. We did a lot of shooting guns and .22 rifles at home. I did real good, made sharp shooter on the rifle range. Every place we went we walked. A couple of months later my brother, Albert, who was older than me, came to the 91st Division. He said the first time he saw me was when our Company walked by with me in the front.
Later I found out that we were both in the same division. Albert got assigned to the Motor Pool, he drove a jeep while he was in the service. The people in Medford, Grants Pass and all the surrounding small towns were good to us for Thanksgiving and Christmas. There were names on the bulletin board with an invite to peoples? houses for the day. I went to people?s homes all the time; it was a lot of fun. Basic training took about 6 months. We learned to march, to take a rifle apart and put it back together again. We used to take care of our own rifles at home so it was easy for me. The General used to ride by on his horse to watch us train. After about 6 months training they got orders to make some of us Sergeants and sent us to the 70th Division that was just starting north of Corvallis and south of Salem, Oregon. I got elected to go with this group to Camp Adair; it was a new camp just starting. Even though it was new, while we were waiting for more troops to arrive, we did more training. I knew if I stayed here and trained troops I would not have to go overseas and duck bullets.
I got all the books I could get and read them. I learned more from the books so I was a little ahead of most of the others who did not take the time to do this. That helped me a lot. They used to give us a written test once in a while. I could always score high on these as I had also read the books. I spent a lot of time doing K.P. (kitchen police) because the Sergeants had to do the K.P. duty. I always enjoyed working the kitchen at home so it was not difficult. The First Sgt. we had at Camp Adair sure was not very friendly. He always had something bad to say about everything and everyone. They replaced him before we went overseas. He was too old for that work. He had a hard time keeping all the records straight.
The Supply Sgt. we had was a real smart man. One day he asked me to send him a helper in the Supply Room. I sent him a man called Rosen who turned out to be really good in the Supply Room. His duties included our clothes and laundry and also shoe repairs. There was a lot of work to keep all those things straight for 210 men.
Camp Adair was big at one time; we had 50,000 troops with 3 Divisions, plus the Headquarters. In 1945 we went to Fort Lenard Wood, Missouri for some different kinds of training. It was hot down there. To keep us from getting dehydrated they gave us salt tablets to eat. We did a lot of Squad Maneuvers there which I had to instruct. One day Lt. Heck showed up at my platoon, the first help I had ever had. I really enjoyed having some help and he proved to be an enjoyable person as well. Lt. Heck was a very good officer.
One of my Sgt?s, who had been with me since he was a Private, Was supposed to come to me late one Monday morning because the First Sgt. sent him out to where we were. But he never arrived at where we were. We got to talking about it so I got some of the men together; he was last seen between the First Sgt. office and the company where we were. We spread out and walked through the small oak trees. I spotted him by an oak tree. It had already been a couple days and it was hot, he had shot himself. I never had any idea he wanted to do that or was even thinking about it but the other Sgt. said he told him he was going to do it sometime. We left a couple of boys on guard there and went back and reported the incident. The officers sent someone out there to pick him up. It was my job to make an inventory of his belongings. I took 2 more Sgt?s with me and we went through all his belongings. We knew he had a wife, any letters from others besides his wife we just tore them up. We figured his wife already had enough problems and did not want to add to them. His wife had been to camp a few times so I knew a little about her. This was a disappointment for me because I had a lot confidence in him. I was wrong.
One night I was Sgt. of the Guard and we were guarding the camp. I went out to check the guard; I must have had 10-12 men on guard duty, when I came back in my other Sgt. in charge told me this story. The Sgt. said one of the men had talked to the victim about shooting himself. The Sgt. told me he was loading his pistol and gave it to the victim. The victim said ?this will make too big a hole?. He handed it back to the Sgt. I sure chewed him out for that especially since, as I told him, if the victim had used his gun, he could have been tried for murder. He said to me ?I knew he would not do it.? I said, ?You never know what people will do, you were very lucky. Do not ever do that again!?
We used to play a lot of touch football. Lt. Heck would come and play with us. When we had an officer?s & Sgt?s meetings, he and I would not take any notes. We could remember all that was said without notes.
We had a lot of different people coming to our Company at that time. The Air Corp sent us a lot of recruits as they were disbanding the air corps so they sent men to be in the infantry. Hitler invaded Russia and lost over 75 percent of his men during the winter as it was so cold they froze to death. If they walked Guard more than two hours they froze to death. But, there was a lot of difference between the Air Corp recruits and the ones we had because we just tell the air corps guys once and they understood. It was a lot easier to train them. A lot of them came to the 4th platoon and I enjoyed them very much.
We also got some new officers. One was kind of short with a large stomach; he looked like Snuffie Smith (the comic strip character). He was a 2nd Lt., he got his rank in the National Guard. He would make a lot of excuses to go home, he would tell the Captain, ?I have some business to take care of?. The captain would not let him go and told him he was going overseas with us. After we got over seas, I changed my mind about him.
Toward the last of our stay at Fort Lenard, the Gideon?s came out and gave out Bibles to the men. I still have mine. That was the first time I knew about the Gideon?s, I read the Bible while I was in the front lines.
One weekend from St. Lewis a whole lot of the young girls came out to give us a send off as we were going overseas. Everyone was supposed to be with one soldier but there were two left over standing by themselves. As they were supposed to pair up with a G.I., I asked them if they had a partner. They both said no. I told them they could go to dinner with me. I don?t even remember their names or where they came from, some school close by, after the meal they all got on a bus and went home. It was real nice of them to do that.
Next, we were shipped to the port of embarkation. While we were waiting for the train to come to our platform we were playing touch football. Someone kicked the ball high in the air. Sgt Hill and I were running for the ball, watching it in the air and not the other person, we ran into each other. Sgt Hill and I hit our knees together and that knocked a chip off my knee cap. I didn?t know about that until years later when they took it out. I could hardly walk as we got on the train. I showed the medical officers on the train my knee. He said let me see your other knee so I showed him that one, he answered, Yes, it is swelled up and that was all that was to that, then. We waited for the boat to come and get us for about 2 weeks. We got loaded on the USS American which held 14,000 people. Bunks were 8 high with just enough room in between to crawl into the bunk. We went from New York to the Mediterranean in 3 days. It was faster than all the German subs. We went black out (no lights allowed to be on, not even a cigarette) across the ocean. When we hit the Mediterranean we were allowed to turn on the night lights. The Germans had lost most all their air power and all their subs in the Mediterranean. When we got to the Port at Marseille, France we had to disembark on small boats and went to shore that way because their were so many ships blown up in the way. Our Captain got so excited he jumped off the boat. He slipped on a large boulder and broke his leg. We were sure happy about that, as he was always doing something crazy. Like when he called the Company out in the field, ?come on boys let?s go and get some of them medals?. We sure were not excited about that.
Another officer was sent down from Battalion Headquarters to replace him. I know he was out of the action by being in battalion headquarters he did not have to participate in the front lines, but being the captain of the company he had to be with the company, he proved to be a great officer. One of the things he told us to do was what to do when you lost a man for whatever reason. The day you put that boy in the position is the day you promote him, that was a good way to encourage them. We had a lot of trench foot. A lot of pneumonia, also quite a few wounded. As he said the only thing I can do for them for what they are doing is to give them a promotion.
We stayed at Port at Marseille a week or so waiting for a train to take all of us up north to the front lines, all new to us. We had our little tents with us. It rained a lot so we did not like that. I remember going to town one time, they were selling raw oysters. We bought some and ate them raw, you don?t chew them just swallow them whole.
They would give us change in coins; we would not even pick up the coins because they were worth less than a penny. I wondered if our money would get like that. I guess it has now.
In a few days the train came and we got loaded into box cars. They said the boxcars were 40 & 8?s. In other words, they would haul 40 men or 8 horses. It took us 2-3 days to get where we met our own trucks.
We were in the 7th Army, we were Company K275 Infantry with the 70th Division. We stopped on the bank of the Rhine River for about a week, no action just the river between us and the enemy. Then we marched up where the front lines were more or less in a little town called Phillipsburg. We got half way into town and got stopped. They were shooting us with 88. But we had half the little street and they had the other half. The civilians lived in the houses. But we occupied some of them. One day I saw one of our tanks coming up with an officer walking behind it. I walked with the officer for a couple of blocks. The tank got stopped, a little ways in front of our line. That night some Germans came and said they had orders to eliminate that tank or don?t come back. They were right in front of our tank. I saw one was wounded and 2 or 3 others with him. I captured them all. One had to be removed on a stretcher. We started to hand him in through the window. Hall was on the outside end of the stretcher and the Germans started to shoot at us and Hall got 7 holes through the seat of his pants. No bullet ever hit his bottom. We took everybody back inside ok, including the German prisoners. The next day we made a pass on the town. Our machine gunners got mixed up with another company and we did not see them for 2 weeks. They showed up ok. The Lt and I each took one machine gun. We advanced to the end of the town. There was a bakery at my side of the street. The rest was open. All the houses were built alike. Open the door and one long hall way and rooms off of that plus the stairway. I opened one door in a big house and a lady with a big white cloth was waving it. I could understand a little German, she was repeating ?thank you, Lord, thank you, Lord for these Americans?, as she had been in between the fire for a few days. Our side of the street got up to the bakery and that was as far as we went. The LT was standing on the corner of the building and a German 88 shot that corner off the house and killed him. I got a Bronze Star for protecting the Company with the machine gun. The next day we were still in the town. My platoon was with me in the house. I looked outside in the street; there was an abandoned half track. The Germans were shooting down the middle of the street with an 88, that bullet traveled like the M.I. 3200 feet per second. I saw the half track had a 50 caliber machine gun. So I thought if I run out there and up inside, I could take it off the bracket and bring it in the house. The Germans were left after that.
I used to give instructions on the .50 caliber, so I knew a lot about it. Across the creek to our left we did not know that there was a building about 1,000 yards ahead. I started shooting into it, every 5 shells was a tracer, so I could see where I was shooting. A tracer bullet is on fire, when it comes out of the gun it ignites and helps you tell where it lands. All the roofs were shingles and I set that building on fire with the tracer bullets and all the Germans came out. I did not know there were that many Germans in there. They sure took off running up into the woods. The next day we were suppose to advance at night as the Germans had withdrawn somewhat. We moved up over one hill after the other to the point where we were supposed to be. We had to have a password that night so they would know who was with us. We all knew what the password was. It was a very dark night. We stayed there in that position for a few hours. One of our rifle squads got a little far ahead and got captured that night.
When we looked for them all we found was their packs where they had dug in. We didn?t see them till after the war. I got a call to report to the Commanding Officer Captain. As I was walking in, I was halted and asked for the password, which I gave them and they let me in. We had orders to return to Phillipsburg and they were deciding how to go back. They asked me to come as I was in charge of the 4th platoon who was the machine gunners and the motor men of the company and I had to go with them and bring up the rear. All the way back to Phillipsburg we came over one large hill after another. According to the map we had the road that followed the creek back was on the flat. We did not know where the Germans were at that time. So, we were deciding if we should go on the road which was a lot easier than over the hills where we came. Lt. Donahue decided that he and I would go out on the road and stand there, if there are any Germans around they will shoot. He went out on the road and walked around a little bit and nothing happened. The Captain took the rest of the Company out on the road. I had the 4th platoon and it was always last. I was behind everybody and a man by the name of Rosen was with the company, we had stopped for some reason. Rosen and I sat on this big rock, pretty quick I saw a man walking down the road toward us. I expected Rosen to say halt but he did not. I knew a little German, so I said Halt. It sounds almost German. The man stopped and I thought he was a big officer. He answered me in German and said the other Germans went the left way around and he kept right on walking straight. Pretty soon I heard him talking to our guys in German and the Captain said ?shoot the so and so?. Eight or 10 guys opened fire. We just left him there and we returned back to Philipsburg. What a night that was. We never did find out if he was an officer or not. The next day I talked to Lt Donahue about going out on the road and taking that chance. He answered and said that he had talked to a civilian and was told the Germans had retreated. After we got back to Phillipsburg, they put us in the rear for a while. (You are either in the front lines or you are back in the rear) That is when our machine gunners returned to us, they had gotten lost through another company and it took them almost a week or so to get back to our company. We were sure glad to see them. Bob Hoover did a good job of keeping them all together. He told me they put him on a forward hill and when he went back it was a different company, but part of our division. A couple nights after that they moved us up forward where I had set that building on fire. On the way up there in the dark our Jeep got off the trail and tipped over on its? side. I looked it over and I thought with all the men I had, we could tip it back up. The men got all around it and started to rock it back and forth. It went up right and we held it and drove it out on the trail again. When we got where we were supposed to be, we had been eating nothing but K-rations, we made soup mostly. There was a little calf walking around there so I started to butcher it and you should have seen the help I got! There were a lot of the boys who knew how to butcher. In the day time we could build fires as it was quite cold. That day we had barbequed calf and we ate every bit of it. Sometimes it was 10 below zero. That is cold when you have to live in a fox hole. Anyway the Captain walked by and he said ?I wouldn?t eat that if I was you.? When he came back by, he said that sure looks good. We gave him some of the meat. A few days later, Lt Heck asked me if I wanted to be a LT. I said ?No? and he said why not, you will be doing the same thing as you are now and you might as well have the extra money. So, he sent me back with a group and gave us a Battlefield Commission. I was promoted to 2nd Lt. When I got back to camp, I was in charge of the 4th platoon and Bob Hoover was the Sergeant.
We took a few little towns and one day we came up against a town we could not take so they had us back off of it a few hundred yards. I looked across on the other side of the Company and there was Lt Hamilton standing under a tree. The one I thought would not make a good officer. He was in charge of the Company at that time. There was a trench almost all the way across to him. I thought I would go over and talk to him. I stayed in this trench going over. The Germans were shooting a lot of artillery at us. I heard this shell coming in, so I ducked down and the shell went off right close to me because it knocked me to one side of the trench. As the concussion went out I went to the right side of the trench and when the concussion came back in it knocked me back to the other side of the trench. I still kept going and I got over and talked to Captain Hamilton and asked him why he did not get down and dig a fox hole. He said to me, ?See all those boys out there? They are all afraid and so am I. But, if I would get down they would be more afraid than they are now?. The good Lord sure protected him, as he never did get hit.
One day we were sent out on an enemy raid to see how strong they were. We were to go down from our position across a creek; on the other side of the creek was a long row of small scrubs. I took the machine gunners a little ahead of the column and set them on each side of that hedge. The first gun on the right side of the company, when I went to set the gun on the left side, I could hear one German talking and coming right toward us. We got the machine gun set up in time to fire at them at close range. We had to eliminate them as they were too close to the company. The company kept right on going up the hill. I got in line with the company and I saw what looked like a sort of square rock. I had my foot back ready to kick it out of the way, when my inner voice said ?No, don?t?, so I stepped over it. I made it about 5 or 6 steps and I heard a loud bang, looked back and one of the soldiers was 15 feet in the air, he was our medic. We all went on top of that hill and all laid down facing back where we came from. Finally a German machine gunner and his crew came and he started to shoot at us. When the bullet went over my head it was as loud as it is coming out of the gun. I could hear these bullets going over my head and I thought I would rise up and see if I could see him. We were taught to lay down in a depression. I started to rise up and the voice said ?No, turn your head and take a look.? I looked and there was a small branch 4 inches above my head and it was just a dancing. Next, the Captain passed the order down the line to me that when, he gave the order, everybody should stand up and start shooting. I stood up and that German machine gunner was real close to me. He was turning his head this way and that way as there were 110 of us shooting at them and he forgot to shoot. We eliminated them and he never did hit any of us. He was set up too close and he could not traverse low enough to hit us. There were some others with him as Lt. Donahue told me later he tried to take 2 of them as prisoners, but they would not raise their hands so he shot them instead. After this the Col. had us SSgt?s all in his office to give a report as to what happened. All the others said as they were looking at the map trying to pin point where it happened (I never said anything about the map.) I just told the story. The Col. sounded like he was pleased with my story, I knew better than to say his map was not right. When we were setting up the machine guns we crossed that creek; it had about 2 feet of water in it. Two of our men dropped their rifles in the creek and they never did find them. We had to cross back over the creek to get back to where our company was stationed.
One of the medics told me this story. A man along side of him jumped up and started yelling ?let?s kill all the Germans?. Then he turned his gun and said, ?Let?s kill all the Americans, too.? The medic took a hold of his gun and told him, ?There is a little town back here with a bunch of girls dancing. Let?s go!? The soldier answered, ?OK?. The med took the soldier to the aid station. Three weeks later I received a letter from the soldier. He wanted to know what had happened, as he only remembers waking up 2 weeks later in the hospital. I answered his letter and told him what had happened but I never heard from him again.
Later on, we went to a town that the Germans had just left. We started up a hill with a lot of trees on it. It was the Segfert Line between France and Germany. As we were going forward they were shooting at us with an 88 tank (one of the best ones that Germany had). We were getting a lot of shrapnel wounds from the blasts as when the shell hit the trees it exploded and rained shrapnel over us. The pill boxes that the Germans had built there were huge. They could hold 20 men, and with a machine gun slot to put the barrel of the rifle or machine gun through to shoot. Captain Brown got hit there, so that put me in charge. I was the next officer in line. We took the first pill box and about 15-20 enlisted men came out with there hands up. I was standing right there and I asked them if there was anybody else in there and they said the only two left were dead. I went inside and there were two very young officers, both dead. I took a .32 pistol off one of them and brought it back to the U.S. after the war. Later that same day here came Lt. Bob Hoover who was sent back to get a Battlefield Commission, As a 2nd Lt., he reported to me, Lt. Hoover asked me what I wanted him to do. I thought I would protect him so I told him to just stay in the back and keep the men coming. They were shooting over the top of us so we were held down for a while. The Col. and the forward observer for the artillery came up front to see if he could get some artillery fire on the 88 tank that was shooting at us. They were both lying down in front of me and I was standing behind them. I got hit, there sort of in the face; a piece of shrapnel cut my lip and broke a tooth off. Also, I had one piece in my forehead that had to have about twenty stitches. It ripped my field jacket on my right arm. Lt. Diece took over the Company, as I went to the aid station. Latter, when I saw Lt. Diece, I asked him how they got out of that. He said we just dropped smoke on the tank and the tank took off because when the smoke cleared the infantry would be all around the Germans with bazookas to shoot the tracks off. So they took off.
The infantry moved into Saarbrücken from there because the tank left there was no resistance. When I got back to the aid station, here was Lt. Robert Hoover at the aid station. I helped the Doc cut his clothes off and put Halazone powder in his wounds. When I looked for a place to put my hands to turn him over on his stomach, it was hard to find a place. We had to do the same thing to his wounds on his back. We all got back to the hospital ok. The meds just stitched me up, took all the shrapnel out. While I was in the hospital one night I ran a fever of 104. They x-rayed my lungs and found out that I had pneumonia and had to stay in bed for 2 weeks. That sounded good to me as it was so much better than the fox hole that I had been in all winter. I think we had 2 showers all winter. When you do showers in the field you go on one end of the shower line, take off all your clothes, take a shower, and then they gave you all clean clothes. Of course, in the hospital we got a bath every day! After I was released from the hospital, we went to a Repo depot where they sent us back to our units. Somehow, I got elected to assist the Med Doctor as he looked at each soldier. One boy came by, who had been hit by a large piece of shrapnel on his leg, above his knee. The shrapnel had gone in one side of his leg and come out the other side. He had a 6 inch scar on both sides of his leg. The Medic asked the doctor what he could do with him. I answered wouldn?t that wound be very tender in the cold and he agreed. So we decided to keep him back where he can stay warm. We kept a lot of the men back behind. It was kind of fun helping the doctor, I enjoyed it.
. I got back to my company, they were at Koblenz, right on the Rhine River. The whole town was all rubble. One of the men fell through the rubble and ended up in a basement. In that basement for one square block they had stored wine and champagne. Boy did everybody fill up on that! But, there was no way they could drink it all. At that time we were attached to Gen. Patton, all we were doing was protecting his supply line. The Gen. came by one day and asked the engineers how long would it take you to build a bridge across the Rhine River (the river was about ¼ mile wide). The engineers told him about 11 hours. They shot a line across and pulled the cable across, then tied the boats to the cable one against each other all the way across and planked them. We could go across with are trucks and jeeps and all. In Koblenz there was a large statue of Keizer Wilhelm. When Patton went through there they shot the legs off the horse Willham was riding. I wondered at the time if that would ever get set back up again.
Then we moved to the town of Epstein. There was a very large tower there, so Cap. Hamilton had the American flag fly from the top of that everyday. There were 100 and some steps to the top, it was built at least 100 years before. We used it as an observation station, we stayed there for some time.
The Col. came down and made an inspection and he really chewed Capt. Hamilton out as the kitchen was not up to par according to the Col. Standers. After he left I said to him, ?Boy he sure chewed you out for that.? His answer was, ?That?s what he gets paid for. I sure like to see him earn his pay.? What a sense of humor he had. He was a super officer in combat, but, not in spit and polish.
Next, we moved to Frankfurt, Germany, right in town, what was left of it, anyway. The population was about 200,000 but most of the buildings were flat. All the people were living in the basements. While we were there a man came to our headquarters and told us he was an American citizen and got stuck over there in the war. He said ?We were real lucky as only 3 bombs hit our house and they were incinerator bombs, but we were able to put the fire out.?
Since the war was over, they came out with a point system to determine who would be sent home. I got promoted to Lt. but I needed more points to go home. One night, at Frankfurt, I was in charge of the guard. We had turned a lot of Russian soldiers lose and told them to go home. They were celebrating, They had found some rubbing alcohol and were drinking it, they gave one of my guards some to drink. My soldier said he only took 2 swallows and it made him very sick and was temporarily blind. So, I just took him to the Medic and sent someone else to take his position. He came out of that OK and came back to the Company.
I was sent to a different Company that was stationed in Austria, next to the Swiss border. I was in charge of a German motor pool, with German drivers. We would send them every day with the trucks to haul people, supplies or whatever they needed to transport. There was a German Captain in charge. The soldiers were all waiting for their discharge. I asked the Captain why they didn?t just go home. He said they needed the discharge to get a job so they had to stay and wait. The German Captain told me that they went to Russia and had paved a road on the way there. The Russian side was all dirt roads. When it started to rain, it rained so much that we would get stuck in the mud. Being late in the fall, it started to freeze at night and the next morning we were frozen in and could not move. The Captain said that in winter it got so cold, if a man walked guard more than 2 hours, he would freeze to death. It got close to 50-60 below zero.
One day, one of his men jumped off the back of the truck and broke his leg. The captain and I took him to a private hospital where he had to stay for some time.
When I first came to that motor pool, I was walking around and I saw a BMW. I asked the captain if it would run, he told me ?Yes?. He fixed it up and I drove it around in my off duty hours.
Sometimes I would take the Jeep and go to these small towns and give all the little kids a ride in the Jeep. They thought that was a lot of fun.
I was sitting in the office and one of the men I had there said ?I cut my finger a little bit. But look at this black streak that is going up my arm.? I just reached over and picked up the phone and called the Company Officer and told them to send the ambulance to us as we had a man going to the hospital. He asked me who is going to the hospital. I answered him ?you are!? He said to me ?I don?t want to go to the hospital.? I asked him ?Do you want to live until morning?? So he went.
I had a small radio that was left there by the people before and one day it quit. So I wondered if I could get it fixed in these small towns. I took a Jeep and a driver and I went to the small towns around. Nobody knew where to get it fixed. I could talk a little German as I had been over there 1 ½ years. I used the book to study a little and got very good at speaking German. Finally, I got to talk to some people on the street and he told me to go up to such and such a place, that guy can fix it. So, I went. When I got to his house I knocked on the door. He came to the door and I started talking to him in broken German. He answered me in English. He told me to bring it in and let?s check it out. He did and told me that the power tube is burned out. I?ll have to make you a new one. But mine won?t be as small as the one that is in there now. He made one and put it in and the radio worked fine. When I came back to pick it up, he told me ?I am going to America, me and my whole family are going next week.? He said all the other scientists are already over there. They had been working on the atomic bomb and were 6 months from getting the bomb completed. (That is how close we were to losing the war.) He told me Van Buren was his boss and I heard him talk on the TV, after I got back to the U.S. about putting the bomb together.
The Company would bring up our food in mermite cans (big aluminum cans with a tight lid clamped down on them) we would open them and we all would eat. What was left we gave to the little kids that came around. One day a new smaller boy came by and he was looking at the bread, as we had white bread. His eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, he said in German, ?Oh boy cake!? He had never seen white bread so I gave him a piece of bread. One day another boy came to fill his bucket with whatever he could find that was left, it held a quart and he piled some of everything on top of each other. I thought I would follow him home to see if they were going to eat that. I saw him go into an apartment so I just walked right in. The lady already had it on the stove to warm it up. I knew they were going to eat it. I also noticed I had frightened them so I sat down in a chair and started to talk to them in German. I just visited with them for a while and went home. The reason they were afraid was because other people told me later that the German would come into their homes and say ?you and you come with us.? The people would never see those family members again. The people were hungry all the time as they did not have much food left. Hitler had taken it all for the Army, of course. All those little kids thought we were Santa Clause because we had so much food we could not eat it all.
Now, that the war was over here, the people started to take the officers back through the U.S. to go to Japan. I was just about ready to get on a boat to do that, when the war in Japan was over also. What a great day that was! I got transferred to a Company going home.
I got to Bremerhaven in the north part of Germany with this Company. Somehow I got elected to drive in a Jeep. We went from Bremerhaven into Frankfurt, Germany, about 500-600 miles. We started real early in the morning, so we could make it all the way in one day. All the bridges on the freeway were blown out so we had to drive around them. Coming back, we were going around a bridge when the jeep went in the ditch. I was told that the roads were patrolled, when the patrol found us, they pulled us out of the ditch. One of them crawled under the Jeep and said the steering gear came apart. If we would have hit a bump on the road we would not be here now. The Good Lord took care of us!
When I got back to my Company at the boat, they made me pay officer for the 210 men in the Company. I collected all the Army money they had and turned it all in for all U.S. dollars. It was all new paper money, so it was hard to count. I got two more officers to help, as I had about $15 to $20 thousand dollars in new bills. I counted it and each of the other two officers counted it. We came out OK. Good thing math was an easy subject for me even though I only had one credit in high school.
This is the story I forgot, so I will tell it now. When I was in Austria, I was elected to take a bunch of G.I.s from the Company to see one of Hitler?s Castles; it was way up on the mountain. Hitler bragged that he could see 3 countries from his living room window. The fireplace was large enough to sit up in it. The castle had a lot of underground tunnels going all over. Some of it had been bombed out. Going back to the Company, my older German truck quit, the maintenance man came by and could not get it started. He decided to get it home by pulling me with his wrecker loaded with tools. I was sure glad for them.
On the boat, we went through the English Channel. It was 22 miles wide at the narrowest part. When we got into the open, it was very rough. Every time the bow went down it sprayed water over the whole ship. It was a Victory Ship, just a little one. After about 3 days the mess hall was almo
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1920 - 2013 (92 years)