Duty Calls

Leaving Virginia and Johnny in Lafayette, I returned to Camp Van Dorn sometime late in November or early in December. There I spent my time readying for the ‘bon voyage’. During this time, I was promoted to the rank of Captain and put on flight pay. This was quite a boost to our small pot of riches. At that time, captain’s pay was $210.00; subsistent allowance was $42.00; but flight pay was $500.00 per month. Once I set foot in Europe, I got a 10% increase as combat pay.

All this sounds great financially, but don’t you believe it. Theres not enough money in this world to pay for the effects of combat.

Sometime during December 1944, I and thousands of others arrived at Camp Kilmer, NJ, our staging area. We stayed there about two weeks. The next thing I knew, I was walking the gangplank of the Queen Mary toting my duffle bag. I shared a stateroom with some other officers. Ours was plush living compared to the living quarters of the majority of the men.

*The Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, the world’s largert passenger ships at the time were both converted to troop ships and sailed the seas as ferries all by themselves, that is without escort. It was thought they were fast enough to escape German submarines. Both survived the war intact. Early in December 1944, occurred the Battle of the Bulge which resulted in great infantry losses to Allied troops. Replacements, it was decided were to come from stateside troops which already were scheduled to be shipped to the European theatre. As a result, the 63^rd Infantry as well as some other infantry groups were sent ahead of the Division Artillery to the battlefield. Va. B.

Army trucks transported us just a few miles to a staging area. Here we set up living quarters with the main objective, just to stay alive. My new home was on an open hill covered with about three inches of snow. Furthermore, the snow was still coming down and the wind was still blowing. I pitched my tent before dark and walked to the latrine at the top of the hill. This facility was big enough to seat 15 men at a time. It was a regular army regulation G. I. latrine. It looked and smelling line one. There was a ditch four feet deep, three feet wide, three feet long. Suspended over the ditch and about four feet about it were two parallel poles running the length of the ditch. There was no back rest. This was ‘the throne’. To get to the throne there were sloping poles reached from the group to the throne. Onto this were cross poles so as to make a sort of ladder. At the rear of these setup was a four-foot-wide strip of burlap nailed to upright poles making a sort of fence along the entire length of the latrine. The purpose of the burlap was to keep cold wind from blowing across bare bottoms. It would have worked better if the burlap had been lower. As it was the wind blew under the burlap and got to the hapless user of the latrine. I tried the place one but had to give it up. If you can’t get comfortable, you can’t do nothing.

When darkness came, I crawled in my tent wearing shoes, coat, helmet. With all I was wearing, I slept nice and warm all night.

While we were in the staging area, a plane would fly over a couple of times a day and at a high altitude. I asked someone about that plane. He said it was a German reconnaissance plane taking picture of us. No one seemed to care. It might have been some kind of reverse strategy to get an early surrender.

We weren’t at this place long, just a few days. When orders came to move out, I sure was glad to leave. I was assigned a jeep and a driver. The driver was a young man from Kentucky. At first, I didn’t know it, but his entire driving experience was while training in the army. He didn’t know even how to put the jeep in reverse gear. It was too late not to retain him. When he wanted to reverse the direction of trave, he’d just whip the jeep around using a forward sort of jumping/skidding movement. I liked the way he handled this problem, so I didn’t say anything. We traveled north many miles until settling in a French farm villa about 30 miles south of Sarreguemines (the province of Lorraine and on the border with Germany).

Before our arrival someone had made arrangements for billeting. I ended up in a farm bungalow with attached stable, animal lot and manure pile. The residents, a married French couple, were about 40-50 years old. They couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak French, but we had a common cause. We indicated through our actions that we were friends. They gave me a bit, empty room just inside the font door. There I rolled out my sleeping bag (a large sheet of canvas and two G.I. blankets).

I was soon joined by another officer. We occupied these quarters about ten days. The ground we were going to occupy was now in possession of another infantry division. The general, his staff and other officers would make almost daily trips to the artillery division that we were to replace. I spend most of my time with my counterpart of the division we were to replace. I can’t remember a thing he told me except there generally wasn’t much fighting when all this snow was on the ground. Conditions just weren’t suitable enough to go around killing each other. That suited me to a T, but as I recall it didn’t work out that way. Regardless of conditions, even if hell were to freeze over, the infantry is up on the front line, day, and night, and on the alert, and they will be there until the war ends.

Lucky me, I didn’t have to sleep in a mud hole in the snow or rain. I had an indoor room with an outdoor privy. We replaced the artillery division in place when we had arrived at this place. We used the same facilities they had occupied.