Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Military a WWII story

Thanks for posting. I enjoy reading all of those stories. Since you started I'll tell my dad's story.

Dad graduated HS in the spring of 1942. He helped my grandfather and great grandfather get their 80 acre farm plowed and planted right in the SW tip of Kentucky. The closest town of any size was across the border in Union City TN. Unless I'm mistaken their property line was also the state line. They still used mules instead of tractors.

Late in the summer dad, a friend and a cousin hopped on a bus for Detroit and got jobs in an anti-aircraft gun factory. It had been converted from a car factory. They got a 1 bedroom apartment and worked all 3 shifts at the factory, sleeping in the same bed in shifts.

All 3 were drafted within a few months, dad is the only one that came back. His friend killed in a tank in the Pacific, his cousin was a crew member on a B-25 that crashed during training.

Dad was assigned to an Army hospital at a bomber training center in New Mexico at first, later in Louisiana. He worked as an orderly assisting doctors.

By the fall of 1944 dad was transferred to the infantry and went through training in Paris TX. Most likely in preparation for the invasion of Japan. They had just finished training when the Germans attacked at the Battle of the Bulge. Dad was put on a train for NYC, a fast ship across the Atlantic, a train ride across England and a LST to France.

He arrived the 1st week in January while the fighting was still pretty intense. They were placed in box cars for the train ride to Belgium. By the time he got there he was exhausted from 2 weeks of being constantly on the move and with very little food.

Dad had been issued a brand new Garand in France and had spent an entire day cleaning the cosmoline out of it. When he got to Belgium they took it away from him, painted a red cross on his helmet and attached him to a mobile hospital.

He spent the rest of the war just a couple of miles behind the front and driving an ambulance back and forth with wounded. When not driving he assisted in the hospital.

Dad's said driving across the Rhine on a pontoon bridge while being shelled was the scariest few moments of the war for him. He never could swim at all.

When the war ended the guys who had been there the longest got home first. Dad didn't get back home until April 1946.

We lost dad about 2 1/2 years ago, he was 1 week shy of his 90th birthday. I still miss him.