Chapter 12: Worms Germany, War ends then to Salzburg Austria

My next move was from Villerupt France to Worms Germany. I don't remember the trip to Worms Germany. It had to be by truck as the railroads were totally demolished. At least in what turned out to be the American sector of Germany and I am sure the entire part of Germany west of Berlin and a line pretty much south. I don't know if theAir Force bombed train lines east of Berlin very much because it didn't effect supply to the German army opposing the Allies in the west. Now at the end nothing could move over the railroads. In fact I drover officers to Le Harve for transport home for months because the trains in Germany were not running. So it must be pretty obvious that with the destruction of the railroads it would be almost impossible to feed the inmates of a concentration camp with a population of 75,000 as Dachau had. Later with my travels in Germany during the occupation I witnessed the total destruction of the cities of Germany and I must have seen this destruction when I went to Worms from Villerupt France. But I don't remember details of the trip now.

My next memory of Worms was pulling guard duty. As I mentioned before soldiers in a replacement depot are all kinds. Artillery, radio operators like me, infantry, Just all kinds. Heck I am in the artillery I don't know anything about a rifle. We just waited. So they didn't just select infantry who knew an M1 rifle they somehow picked me to pull guard duty. Guard duty consisted of patrolling a post on the periphery of the camp. Being in the army they naturally expected any soldier to know how to shoot so they handed me an M1 and told me your on guard. Well, guard duty wasn't particularly new to me but if I had not been curious about the M1 previously I wouldn't have known how to actually load it. Most rifles load magazines from the bottom but the M1 loads a clip from the top. When the last shot is fired the clip pops out and the chamber remains open. When you reload a clip you had better watch your thumb because when the bolt slams forward you can mess up your thumb. I don't know why they went with this style of loading a rifle. Machine guns that loaded from the bottom. Even the our Thompson sub machine gun did. The carbine M1 that was issued to the artillery loaded a clip from the bottom. Semi automatic hand guns loaded from a clip in the handle. S0 why they didn't make one that loaded from the bottom is a mystery to me. So the technology was there. But it was a powerful rifle in other respects. Didn't jam too easily I guess.
But in any case I did a manual of arms that I had seen the infantry do and I was set for guard duty. I got a laugh out of this.

An incident happened that has stayed with me all these years. Some German kids were playing around my post and one was particularly undernourished, He had spindly legs and gaunt features of the starving. He tried to keep up with the other kids but was handicapped by his physical condition and it was impossible. Starvation in Germany got worse under occupation for many months. Several books have been written about the deliberate policy to punish the Germans. I will get to this later when I describe life in Germany.

I have not been able to locate the picture of me and the some others at Worms who occupied a tent while waiting for assignment.

There were no pictures taken in Worms except this one. We could see the town completely destroyed. Everything was destroyed in Germany that could be destroyed from the air. Seemingly just to destroy. Even a lot of small towns. No other reason. To get a little insight get the movie and see Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Even in those days I think I had a historical perspective. Even in high school I picked what I thought would be easy courses. History being one of them. At the time I wasn't particularly mature in these subjects and didn't resent the senseless destruction of an ancient culture. I just figured that that was just the way things happen. I never considered the politics of countries and the world. We were the good guys the losers were the bad guys. So they deserved a little looting by the victors. Sort of like Iraq I guess. Some say the Germans had it coming. I don't think the country had it coming. Just to mass murder children, old people and women didn't bring the war to an end any sooner. The same as for the British. It only hardened the resolved to fight on. I took a picture of a Greek statue in a destroyed museum in Munich later, I thought the statue quite interesting. The museum had been bombed and destroyed. This statue was in the basement or the level below ground level. So the statue was highlight by the sun down shining on it. So I just pointed my camera down at it and took its picture. I thought myself fortunate to have the right conditions there to take it's picture. Whether it is an original or replica I don't know. Hopefully someone will see it and tell me what it is if it is famous enough.

Chapter 11. France then Germany

The war was winding down. Men were still being killed. Civilians were dieing. The Air Force had run out of targets. Chuck Yeager told how he was down to shooting at farmers in their field for lack of anything better to do. Every large and many small cities in Germany were in ruin from either bombing or combat operations. For myself I was now headed somewhere I found to be Villerupt France. Only when I got there of course. A town on the Maginot line. No longer in use. The army still doesn't tell you anything.
For you wine drinkers Villerupt is in the Moselle district. Not far from Luxenbourg city. Too far to walk however if you are on foot. Infantry excepted.

It was still cold. Not as cold as during the dead of winter. We were put up in old barracks the French occupied during the phony war before the war. The French used a strange way of heating the barracks. There was a pot bellied stove lined with fire brick. The idea was I suppose that when you got the bricks hot the residual heat would keep it going. Great idea unfortunately it took a cord of wood or a ton of coal to get it heated up. And as you know a few feet from the stove you're not likely to feel it. For you vets think of the barracks you occupied being heated by a pot bellied stove. The army had supplied us with the standard sleeping bag made of a wool blanket with a zipper. I was cold until I found that if I kept my feet warm by putting my jacket around them I could keep warm. If my feet were warm I was warm. While waiting for the next replacement depot we amused ourselves by exploring the Maginot line bunkers. The bunkers had been stripped of everything of course but the concrete bunkers were still there. Above is one of me standing in front of a bunker on a trip to Europe in 1984.
The second one is a picture of me and my father in law Frank Brown a ww1 vet. Taken by Kay do doubt.
There were other amusements fortunately besides look at old bunkers. We went to Villerupt some of the time but I don't know how we got there. I think we took a vehicle that happened to be going there. I remember we visited a friendly Frenchman who talked about the war, Nazis, the occupation and before. He'd give us coffee and talk to us. Others visited the army run whore house in the town. You didn't know did you that the military had it's own version of comfort houses as the Japanese called them? The only difference the military didn't have to draft the girls like the Korean girls were. The French girls volunteered.


Villerupt is just south of Luxenburg. One day I and another buddy hitched a ride on a truck going to Luxenburg city. There was a USO there. This is one of the times I almost became AWOL. I forget why but we missed the truck back. Maybe we were touring the city on foot. In 1984 we toured the city by taxi. There is a fine park or place to observe some ruins. Now I cant remember exactly what it was. When we went to Luxenburg in 1984 I took some pictures but sent the entire album to my daughter in Alaska because I didn't have the space to save them in the apartment when me moved. . I did save a very few. During the war a hotel became the headquarters for whatever the army was in control. They were proud of this fact and decorated the lobby commemorating that episode of history. One reason why generals like war so well. They don't have to live in the trenches. Unless they are on the losing side. Here is a picture of the hotel where Frank Brown, Kay and I sat where also the winning generals sat during late in the war. We stayed in a room in the hotel.

I don't think Eisenhower was roughing it here during the war. He was back in London directing from there. Enjoying the war to the fullest with his driver Kay Summersby. Anyway, to get back to our predicament of being in Luxenburg city on foot 20 0r 30 miles from Villerupt. So I think we, as I remember went out a little ways from the USO and stuck out our thumbs to hitch a ride. We lucked out and caught a ride in a jeep driven by a maniac. These guys were in a real hurry. They had come from the front and were in a hurry to get where ever they were going. But it worked out because we made it on time. I believe this was the only time the war really got personal with me. Somewhere along the line I heard the thunder in the distance. Artillery of course. My one battle star. To get a battle star you don't have to be shot at. Just be within a certain distance of the front lines. That is where I got mine. Because the next replacement depot was in Worms Germany and it was further behind the lines as the front lines were moving pretty fast.

Next: Chapter 12. Germany and Austria.

Chapter 6 More basic training then bivouac at Hunter Leggitt

This is written as the thoughts come to me. So it will be pretty disjointed to a professional author. So if you are expecting professional writing you'd better buy a book. Also if you are interested in my entire experience after reading this go to the start by scrolling down and reading up. You've heard of writing from right to left so leave it to google to read from the bottom up. That's a joke son. There will be some pictures. Remember to click on a picture to see a big picture. The next post will show links to the first stories of this blog.

Please leave a comment if you take the time to read this. I'm going to see if google has a page counter. Maybe no one is reading it anyway.

For all you WW2 types whose eyesight is perhaps not too good I will increase the size of the print. Near Camp Roberts is the Military Reservation, Hunter Leggitt, where the trainees go for their final training where they put their knowledge into practice. Somehow I had acquired a camera or had someone else take the pictures. As I said before my memory is/was bad and unless I had a reason to remember it, it is gone. Pictures are a good way to remember what was going on. I managed to contact my friend Burdette Anderson who was in the Infantry at Camp Roberts and as I talked to him it brought back many memories but not of Camp Roberts Basic Training but things in general of army life. Of course he is about my age and considering that he lived through 85 plus or minus years and 90 days of combat on Okinawa I think it is remarkable that we are still around to talk about it.

I don't remember much of Hunter Leggitt but someone did take a few pictures of me there,



Of course they gave us various training in weapons. In the artillery soldiers don't normally carry rifles they carry carbines. So the infantry manual of arms is pretty much unknown to the artilleryman. Later in Germany at Worms when they handed me a n M1 rifle for guard duty I had to do a quick learn of the manual of arms. Not too tough actually as I'd seen them do it a lot of t mes. A real Marine or infantryman would probably have had a laugh if I had actually had to do it. The duty was guarding the perhiphery of the camp. Not too hard as we were a long ways behing the fighting at this stage of the war. This is the first I came in contact with the hunger and starvation going on in Gemany at this late stage. I remember one little kid trying to play and keep up with the other children who had not suffered so much malnutrition as he had. Small spindly legs, very thin, large shoes that kept him from keeping up with the others. I was to see a lot more of this but sheltered in the army with plenty of food, not living in the poplulation at large, the impact on us was less how bad it was for the Germans. Of course we had to know as the women congregated around the post liquor bars, willing to sell themselves for something to eat. But more of this later. But if you are under the impression the the American soldier was popular because of his winning ways you can forget that. I wonder this late date where all the people lived that had occupied Darmstadt and many other cities in 1945. One day late in the war the British or Americans raided the town of Darmstate with a population of around 120,000 killing 30 thousand or so. Take of look at Darmstadt in the summer of 1945. I took this picture Not a soul living here or even a place to stay by the looks of it. where did they go?




Enough for today more on basic before we graduated and sent on to other adventures. A spot of leave then on to the war for some.