The channel voyage on D-Day

The 474^th’s half-tracks left Bridgwater early on the morning of May 8, 1944, and began the all-day ride to the invasion assembly area. They arrived about 5 p.m. and moved into tents that would be their homes for the next few weeks.

Preparation for the invasion stepped up at this point. The half-tracks were waterproofed for their cross-channel journey, guns were made ready, and cartridge belts that had been empty for a year and a half were finally filled. In addition to M-1 rifle ammunition, each man was given two bandoleers, a supply of hand grenades, puke bags, sea-sick pills and toilet paper. The food improved as well, as Jack recalls. “We knew it was getting close when they started giving us steak three meals a day.”

The outfit moved onto LST number 47 in the marshalling area near Dartmouth in the early days of June. For the assault on the beaches, they were attached to the VII Corps of the 1^st Army, under the immediate control of the 11^th AAA group.¹⁵ Capt. Herlihy, who hailed from Beechurst, Long Island, NY, recalled those last few pre-invasion hours:

The plan was for me to precede the battery (with A Battery, as I remember) and reconnoiter for positions before C Battery came in. We rode ot Darmouth with A Battery [Jack’s battery] June 3 and loaded into an English LCT [landing craft tank]…We went up the beautiful Dart River a mile or so and spent a beautiful night at anchor, wondering how much THEY knew. If you remember, for a few days before we left the camp in the marshalling area, Axis Sally kept telling us on the radio that they were waiting for us in France. Naturally, we figured that they already knew what we knew. The next morning we were in an endless column of craft, four wide, that went up and back as far as one could see. Then we spotted similar columns on both flanks. It was staggering and sobering—HOW could THEY miss all this activity?...We had each been issued $4 in French invasion currency, but as the cards and dice came out, the money went from many small piles of $4 each to one or two piles of many, many francs each…At 5:30 a.m. [now June 4] we slipped our moorings and eased down river, passing LST 281, with C Battery aboard but few awake…The countryside was beautiful and soon we met the swell of the channel. Laterthat day we rendezvoused in Torquay with many other craft. The next day [June 5] saw us in the channel, joined now by destroyers, cruisers and battleships…It clouded up rapidly, and a strong wind blew up. Now all the guns were covered up, and the spray reached back to the bridge, all the way astern, as waves broke over the bow. I huddled there with the English lieutenant and wondered what an artilleryman was doing in this clamshell which barely floated even with nobody shooting at us. As the waves grew, water sloshed back and forth on the deck, where the half-tracks were. As the men lined the rails, a trail of mails floated behind us. The thought struck me—if all the ships are like this one the subs need not see us, they could smell our trail. As the day worsened, I felt that practically nobody would be ready for action if it came. I guess the same thought hit others, for an American patrol ship hove to, and an officer yelled over, “D-Day has been postponed 24 hours until 0530 June 6^th.” Several at our rail who were then losing supper volunteered advice on what he could do with his bloody invasion, but he ignored them as if he handled all his invasions this way…At 0430 [June 6] I awoke, put on my shoes and went to the bridge. It was dark, and we were barely moving in a slight swell. But on the horizon, hordes of bombers droned, tremendous bursts of flame and tinted smoke were all over; flack burst and tracers arched all over the sky. It was staggering. Then all the naval craft opened up. You’d see the muzzle flare, the tracer round arch into the coast, a tremendous burst of flame, and finally the roar of the shots would roll across the water. It seemed impossible for life to survive ashore. As dawn came, our fighters strafed targets ashore. We began to head in now, and as we passed in front of a battleship, the old Texas [Ambrose identifies it as the Arizona but Jack remembers it as the Texas, too], she let go a broadside that must have pushed us sideways several feet. Screaming and cursing at their lack of consideration, we inched shoreward. Shore fire must have been effective, for suddenly one of our P-38 twin-hulled fighters dove down and began to lay smoke just off the beach. We could see the enemy tracer creeping up his tail while he held the steady course he had to, in order to make the smoke effective. Finally, he blew up in a tremendous ball of fire, as a second P-38 resumed, and other fighters handled the ack-ack units. We were speechless at the fate of the unknown hero.¹⁶

Col. William A. Stricklen Jr., commanding officer of the 474^th, was nearby in another LCT with his own set of thoughts and concerns as the bombardment continued. He saw a billow of smoke 100 yards away from an LCT that had been hit by German fire. Stricklen helped pull a wounded soldier from the craft out of the water and took him to the dispensary. At 6 a.m., Allied fire subsided and his LCT moved forward again.

Then, about 6,000 yards offshore, Stricklen’s LCT, which carried about 75 people, was hit by enemy fire. Since the colonel had to get to the beach to establish his command post, he stopped a small Navy boat carrying only a crew of two and hitched a ride to shore. They let him out about 75 feet from dry land. At one point he stepped into a shell hole and was submerged, but got out of it. The water was no more than waist high the rest of the way.¹⁷ 


The video included below begins with the channel crossing and ends with the liberation of Paris:

On to St. Lo with the VII Corps

Gen. Omar Bradley,
"The Soldier's General"

Gen. Omar Bradley’s plan was to have the VIII Corps move 20 miles down the coast to the cathedral town of Coutances while the VII Corps moved toward St. Lo. With this accomplished, he expected all of his troops to be out of the marshlands and on firm ground where they could launch armor toward Avranches, the entrance to Brittany.

Once again attached to the VII Corps, the 474^th provided its supply line with ack-ack defense and engaged the Luftwaffe in six raids involving nine enemy planes on July 18-19 near St. Jean de Daye. The 474^th received credit for one Cat I and four Cat IIs, with four of them being Me 109s and one a FW 190.

July 15-20 the battalion’s mission was to defend the VII Corps field artillery of the 18^th and 188^th Field Artillery Groups. As the batteries moved toward St. Jean de Daye, they could tell that the 1^st Army was preparing for a big battle, with ordnance depots, hospitals and all manner of supplies spread along either side of the highway. Jack’s battery, A, ended up at La Nicollerie with the 91st Field Artillery.

The buildup they’d seen along the way, they would soon learn, was for a battle referred to as Cobra. Cobra called for a massive air bombardment on a narrow stretch along the Periers-St. Lo highway. Situated near Le Desert, just 3,000 yards way, most of the battalion had front-row seats for the action:

St. Lo

About 9 a.m. some of the men were watching a squadron of P-47s strafe, when they heard a rumble behind them. Turning around they saw three triangular formations of Flying Fortresses, and behind them as far as the eye could see were such formations. They seemed to go all the way back to England, as indeed they did. As the planes droned overhead at 8,000 feet, the men could see the bomb doors open, and then some could see with the naked eye the bombs falling while others watched with field glasses. German shrapnel came up to meet the planes, and the men could hear it whistling down around them as the bombardment went on. It was too entrancing a sight to leave.²⁶ 

The statistics were overwhelming:²⁷

• 1,500 Forts and Liberators led the raid, each carrying 40 to 100 bombs; enough to create 60,000 craters.
• 396 medium and 350 fighter bombs followed with 500-pound general purpose bombs and 260-pound fragmentation bombs.
• Planes bombed the 3.5-mile by 1.5-mile area with 5,000 tons of high-explosive, jellied gasoline and white phosphorous bombs for more than two hours.
• 111 Americans were killed and 490 wounded by “friendly fire” when bombs fell short.

 “I remember that day the American planes dropped the bombs and killed so many American soldiers,” Jack adds. “You never heard such a loud roar when the bombs started down. We didn’t know what to do. We finally ran for a nearby stone farmhouse that was unoccupied, and still we didn’t feel safe.”

From July 28 to July 31, A and B Batteries gave anti-aircraft protection to the 2^nd Armored Command Post, division trains and armored field artillery battalion, and the 62^nd Field Artillery, a 105 outfit. “As the day broke on July 30, hundreds of destroyed vehicles and wagons, innumerable dead horses, and the miscellaneous wreckage of defeat lay scattered over the countryside as the battle of the Cotentin ended,” The Maverick Outfit concludes.²⁸

But it wasn’t over yet. A and B Batteries reverted to battalion control. Some of the men dug in the half-tracks while others prepared foxholes, when just at twilight a lone German plane flew low over the battleground.

As soon as darkness arrived, a second German plane appeared and dropped a series of beautiful flares, which were misleading by their beauty because they always preceded an air raid. Sure enough, within minutes the air was filled with the rumble of many German bombers, and seconds later the dreaded whistle of falling bombs filled the air to be followed by the crash and roar of the explosions. It was like a Fourth of July celebration at the fairgrounds at home, what with the pretty flares and the noise of the explosions, except that everyone had to fight a feeling of panic and desire to get up and run, just run and run and run. But there was no place to run to, except to the nearest foxhole or, if this was filled, to find a little fold in the field. Some panicked and jumped out of the foxhole and ran across the field to a bridge abutment which was made of concrete and afforded more protection. But one couldn’t run as far as he would have liked to, because it was raining death. Most were content to clutch the dirt and didn’t care if several others were on top of him. They didn’t seem heavy…For an hour a dozen bombers combed the area. Through a minor miracle the road cleared of traffic just before the bombing began, and although it was pockmarked by anti-personnel bombs, none of the convoy troops was struck, although A Battery suffered several casualties…And strangely enough, with all their efforts, the Germans missed the bridges.²⁹  

The Three Faces of Jack: Cocky, Determined, Pensive

Although The Maverick Outfit gives the date as July 31, Jack’s Army discharge papers say July 29, and the diary of Dr. Louis Small, who checked the wound the next day, says July 28, this seems to be the same scene Jack describes when he explains how he was wounded. “It was sometime during these events that we were bombed and strafed by enemy planes at night. I was standing behind the half-track while two other fellows were firing at the planes. The Germans had dropped flares, and at times you could catch a reflection on the plane’s body. The enemy dropped several series of anti-personnel bombs, and a small piece of metal made a razor-like cut on my left hand—very superficial. When the medic came around in the morning, he treated it and put me in for a Purple Heart.

“We drove through the area several days later at maybe five miles per hour,” Jack continues, “but the dust hadn’t settled. There were huge craters, wrecked enemy tanks and plenty of junk. A complete elite Panzer division was destroyed. Stories were told of enemy troops walking around without weapons or helmets, wondering where they were.”

From July 20 through Aug. 25, the 474^th’s gun crews engaged the enemy in 11 raids involving 46 planes. Claims were submitted for the destruction of 11 and the possible destruction of six. Officially, the outfit received credit for 5.5 Cat Is and six Cat IIs. While with the 2^nd Armored Division, A and B Batteries had two raids involving seven aircraft, destroying two for sure and two others possibly.³⁰ 

Past Paris and nearing Belgium

Jack at Belleau Wood, the site
of a major WWI battle.

Although some of the men may have taken a detour to Paris on the sly, the 474^th officially bypassed the capital city, still following the VII Corps as it drove northeast from Melun to Meaux on the Marne River. “There was a canal in Meaux that flowed toward Paris, and our gun section was positioned alongside it,” Jack says. “Some Frenchmen were fishing in the canal, but with little success. I suggested to them that I use some TNT to stun the fish and bring them to the top. I did, and a lot of French people ate very well that day.”

The battalion continued moving along with the 1^st Army, away from Paris but along the route of World War I battles. On the way from Meaux to Soisson, it passed Chateau Thierry, Compiegne and cemeteries from WWI. “We were positioned at the edge of Soisson when someone started a rumor that enemy soldiers were in the tower of the old church near the middle of town,” Jack says. “Everybody and his brother were firing at the tower. When the firing finally stopped, it was discovered there were no enemy soldiers in the church. I think several civilians were killed and not a few wounded, though.”

By Sept. 1, the entire battalion ended up near Hirson, just a few miles from France's border with Belgium. On Sept. 2, shortly after dawn, A Battery spotted its first buzz bombs in the east, traveling west toward England at speeds of 200 to 250 mph. “At first we shot at them,” Jack says. “But if you knocked them down they could do a lot of damage, and they did. It wasn’t too long before we were told not to shoot at them."

Mookie, the littlest Ack-Ack gunner.

Somewhere near the Belgian border, a woman who’d been keeping company with a German officer who’d fled gave the officer’s dog to Jack’s gun crew. The Pomeranian, named Mookie, would stay with them through the remainder of the war, and she and her puppies would go back to the states with various members of the battalion.

Capture and casualty

Meanwhile, an important battle had been fought at Mons, where the VII Corps ran into the elements of 20 German divisions that British troops had flushed from the Normandy beachhead and the Pas de Calais. The VII Corps took 30,000 prisoners and killed 2,000 Germans—part of the last reserves of the German 7^th and 15^th Armies. This left the roads through Belgium virtually unblocked all the way to the German border and enabled the American 1^st Army to take Aachen within six weeks.

Jack catches a train for Paris and a much
needed furlough in Verviers, Belgium.

Jack made a capture during this time as well and probably saved the lives of the German prisoners in the process. “Townspeople nearby had told us there were some German soldiers hiding in the hills and woods outside of town, so we went looking for them,” Jack says. “The guys I was with were looking in a stone house, shooting the doors off rooms with their machine guns. I figured no one in their right mind would be in there, so I started back down the hill.

“In a grove of trees, I knelt down and looked up and saw a bunch of Germans hiding up there. We just stared at each other until one, a very tall, thin soldier said, ‘Ah, comrade!’ I replied, ‘Comrade!’ and he came down out of the trees, followed by the others. They were all young, some of them probably no more than 15 or 16 years old. They hadn’t been eating well and had boils on their faces.

I called to my buddies, ‘Hey, they’re down here,’ and one of the guys in my group came down and started cursing at them and acting like he was going to shoot them. ‘For God’s sake, calm down,' I said. 'They could’ve shot me if they wanted to and they didn’t. They’re just kids.’ When they realized we weren’t going to shoot them, a couple more came out of the bushes. One of them gave me his watch out of gratitude, I think, for saving his life. I also got to keep one of their pistols and sold it and the watch later to a soldier on one of the other gun crews.”

Jack on leave in Verviers, 
Belgium, at the Chicago Bar.

On the way to Germany, the unit experienced its first casualty since the invasion. 

The 474^th engaged the Luftwaffe in three raids and engaged four planes, downing one of them, during this time. Battery A moved to Theux and a few days later joined the rest of the outfit as they convoyed to Eupen. It was near Theux that A Battery’s John P. Cairo was shot in the stomach. As they carried him away he said, “Don’t worry fellows, I’ll be back later.” But a few hours later, word was received that he died in a field hospital.³²

Jack knew John well, and although it doesn’t say so in The Maverick Outfit, John was killed in a gun accident by another member of his gun crew. “The other soldier was adjusting the headspace in a 50-caliber gun,” Jack explains. “If you get it too tight, it will fire automatically, and that’s what happened. John had just eaten breakfast and was going out to check on how the other guys in his crew were doing. The gun barrel was depressed, which it shouldn’t have been, when it fired and it blew John's stomach and its contents out his back.

“John and I were good friends,” Jack continues. “When he was on our gun crew, he and I usually dug our foxhole together. We would have lots of friendly discussions and only a few loud ones. He was raised near Altoona, PA.

John was buried in a temporary cemetery at Fosses-la-Ville, Belgium, as were 2,198 other American soldiers from September 1944 through May 1945. His temporary interment there became, decades later, the basis of a long-distance friendship. Follow the link to read more about Fosses on a supplemental page to this blog, "Belgium Connection."

Cpl. John P. Cairo

“About nine or 10 years after I got home, I went to look up John's family," Jack said. "His only remaining relative was a stepsister. Needless to say, she was very happy I came to visit her, and we both cried. No one else from the unit had ever written to or visited the family. But she knew how John had been killed through a friend of hers who had worked in the Pentagon. I promised to send her some pictures of John and me, taken in the states, and I did," which explains why there were no pictures of John in Jack's photo collection. The photo of John shown here was found on his Fosse #1 virtual cemetery profile.

Jack adds that John and he discusssed prior to the invasion about whether they would go home again or not. “I always felt I would,” Jack says, “but John didn’t think he’d make it.”

Around the time of John's death, Jack and some members of his unit became friendly with an Army mess unit made up of African-American soldiers, who were interested in the guns Jack's group used. He and some of the other guys would go down later to eat and sit and talk with the cooks as they ate. “One member of our gun crew asked me to bring him back some chow, that where he came from they didn’t eat meals with blacks,” Jack recalls. “He was from Pennsylvania, same as me, so I called him on it and told him to get his own food or go hungry. The sergeant brought him back something anyway.”

The Battle of the Bulge

The Ardennes-Alsace Campaign, which would later become known as the Battle of the Bulge, began Dec. 16 at 5 a.m. when German Gen. Von Rundstedt attacked five different places along the 1^st Army front in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium.

Members of Jack's gun crew brave the snow and cold in the Hurtgen Forest.

When Jack’s group pulled back from the Hurtgen Forest, just over the border in Germany, for reassignment to the Ardennes, they had to endure a long trip in very cold weather. “This  was one of the coldest winters on record in Europe, and I believe it,” Jack says. “I almost froze my legs and had to have help to get the circulation up to par.”

But it wasn’t without its humorous moments. “About halfway through the trip, we stopped at a refreshment center set up by the Army with bathrooms, hot coffee, snacks, etc.,” he says. “Other units had preceded us at this stop and had built a log fire inside a small stone house that had the windows knocked out. Everything seemed to be stone, mortar and plaster, and the ceiling was very high. I decided to use the bathroom, and when I opened the door I discovered the bathtub had been used as a commode. It was at least 80 percent filled with ‘honey.’ I have laughed many, many times about that sight.”

The Germans were making their final rally in the Ardennes, and some of the gun crews burned out gun barrel after gun barrel, firing every few minutes that day. Jack confirms this. “At one point we were told to keep our anti-aircraft guns depressed in order to help stop a possible enemy breakthrough.”

 December brought more enemy air actions for the battalion than any other month since the unit went into combat. There was a total of 19 raids, involving more than 100 enemy aircraft…As the German counter-offensive continued to penetrate deeper, the truth dawned on the men that they were in trouble and could be cut off.³⁸

Jack remembers this sense of panic well. “Our half-track got lost at one point, and it was the next afternoon before we found our outfit.”

Along about Dec. 18-19, the 474^th was reassigned to follow the 957^th Field Artillery, a howitzer unit. Capt. Herlihy relates: 

We started in two jeeps with them on a cold, snowy, sleety day, back down the hard-won roads towards Stolberg, below Aachen, Verviers, and Liege. We went back to the Meuse Valley, purported to be the objective of the German push, went through Huy, and headed south toward Marche and Bastogne. The general idea was that the VII Corps would pull back from the Rhineland, swing to the rear of the hard-pressed V Corps, and try to hold the right shoulder of the Bulge, as it was now called. Since the arrow-shaped penetration split the 1^st and 3^rd American Armies of the 21^st Army group under Gen. Bradley, it made good sense for the 1^st Army to pass under control of the British Army Group, which now ran from the Bulge up to the North Sea. It was misinterpreted at home, and also by some of the British troops who came down to join us. They advised us that they had come to save the Yanks. When the Battery caught up to us, we were advised by the field artillery to whom we were attached that C Battery had its own mission now, and was given a small part of the Ourthe River to hold, and that we were not to fall back from this position. Against an armored force, this would be a tall order, but all along the recon route, we had passed 90mm guns, put at isolated crossroads, with the same orders. The German push had to be slowed until the sides of the Bulge could be beefed up. It was cold, icy and miserable, but we already knew of many American units that had been cut to pieces while holding similar crossroads in the path of the attack. We passed many fields of American mines just strewn on the ground, with no time for concealment or burial in the frozen ground. Anything to slow down the push. In the rural areas we were defending, there were few houses, so a typical night was spent on the frozen ground, with the snow scraped off the ground, and pine branches under the sleeping bag, waiting for the sounds of tanks or vehicles. Is there anything colder than an outdoor latrine, behind a tree, in the snow?...Life in the gun sections was just plain miserable, for a good gun position had to have a field of fire, and that meant no wind protection. A fire was a problem. Seats on the guns were the coldest places around, but the guns had to be manned all day. At night, the best move was to pair guns to reduce the need for guards. The weather was miserable. Finally, on Christmas Day, the overcast broke and the Allies put up everything that could fly. What a wonderful sight to see contrails all over the sky. We yelled like kids as the rumble of bombings came from just over the horizon, in Germany, and on targets within the base of the Bulge.³⁹

In a conversation just a few months before Jack passed away, he and son Jack Jr. talked about these days. Jack Sr. was by then living in a nursing home, and Jack Jr. had come to visit, found him asleep and sat in a chair reading until his dad awakened. Jack Jr. was reading No Silent Night: The Christmas Battle for Bastogne by by Don Cygan and Leo Barron. 

"He asked me if the book was about the Bulge, and I said yes. He asked if there were any maps in the book. There were several, and I picked out one that showed the Allied and German lines around Christmas 1944. He studied the map a minute and then pointed to me where his outfit was near Bastogne.

"On the map, he pointed out the importance of Bastogne. It was the rail and communcations center for southern Belgium and Luxembourg. The German's goal was to cut off the Allies from the port of Antwerp, Belgium, now the Allied major supply center. To do that, they had to have control of Bastogne."

In spite of what The Maverick Outfit reported (referenced earlier), Jack told his son they had no winter gear and limited supplies and ammunition. They were also being shelled multiple times a day by German artillery, and their orders were to hold the line, meaning that if the Germans attacked and they ran out of ammunition, fighting would be hand-to-hand. 

"He smiled a bit then and said, 'If you could get over the fact you were in a war, the shelling was the greatest light show I ever saw,'" Jack Jr. related. "He said he and two buddies alternated spending an hour in a burnt-out halftrack to keep warm since it was the coldest winter in Europe in a century. On Christmas Eve night they could hear the Germans singing Silent Night, and the Germans could hear them. 

"On Christmas morning, he said the weather cleared and the Allies were able to air-drop supplies to their armies in the field and bomb the German positions. Also, General Patton's army broke through and attacked the German left flank, thus breaking the siege.

"His remembrance of the details was awesome," Jack Jr. continued. "I felt like I was there. The whole thing was a very special moment."

The Battle of the Bulge reached its climax a few days after Christmas 1944 when the American 2^nd Armored Division blocked the path of the German 2^nd Armored, and the two groups hammered each other for three days. The Americans left 81 panzers smoking in the hills and halted Von Runstedt’s advance. On the third day, the enemy began to fall back, and the 1^st Army launched its drive to wipe out the bulge in its lines that had been caused by the initial German successes.

"Dad's recall of this situation was clear and precise, too," Jack Jr. adds. "He even remembered they had to capture the town of Foy, which had been held by the Germans. They assaulted Foy across an open farm field while the Germans held the town and controlled the field of fire. Surviving that is a miracle in itself.

"Even though dad's health was failing at the time he shared all this with me, his mind was not. He particularly recalled not only the terrible cold and low supplies but also the great courage of his fellow soldiers during what seemed like a hopeless situation. In spite of it all, he said they believed 'everything would work out,' and it did. These guys and their comrades never gave up or gave in. When I think about this, I do know how special this discussion was and how special our dad and his comrades were."

The weather continued bitter cold in the first week of January 1945. Snow fell steadily, piling up on tree branches and covering over those who’d died earlier in the campaign. The half-tracks had to be moved every so often to keep them from freezing in the ground. The 474^th was moving with the 109^th AAA Group and giving protection to VII Corps artillery, so it made a wide circle to the east, then headed southeast toward Bastogne, which was already surrounded.

Jan. 25, 1945, is recognized as the end of this most bloody battle of WWII. This color footage does a good job of showing the conditions our soldiers had to endure.
.

To Bastogne and the Ruhr region

Jack is the soldier kneeling in the foreground. This photo must have
been sent home because it's stamped by censors Feb. 7, 1945.

Battery A moved successively to Ereze, which was a winter resort, La Josse, Malempre, Collas and Mon le Bon. During this period the battalion experienced several casualties and A Battery had two fatalities. On Jan. 17, the day after the VII and VIII Corps finally linked up, Charles C. Cowart and Paskel Harris were killed when a tank mine exploded near them.

As the VII Corps assembled near Ochain, Belgium, for a much needed 12-day rest period, the 474^th moved back to familiar surroundings between Namur and Dinant. A Battery was in Hamois, and each of the batteries took turns taking its half-tracks to Namur for maintenance. During this period the men were billeted in private homes, living with normal Belgian families—a rare treat! Mail and packages that couldn’t be delivered for the past month began arriving, and it was like Christmas a month late.

However, by the end of January, the 1^st Army was back up against the Siegfried Line, holding a front between the Hurtgen Forest and St. Vith. The VII Corps returned to sectors on the west bank of the Roer River, and the 474^th ended its brief respite by moving to a position behind the VII Corps’ 104^th division on Feb. 3-4. The entire battalion went as far as Stolberg on Feb. 3, then branched off to assignments, with A Battery going to Heistern with the 172^nd Field Artillery.

The end of February found the Allies fighting at the Roer River dams. As part of these engagements, the 474^th took down some enemy planes. Six raids of 21 enemy planes were counted and claims entered for three Cat Is and five Cat IIs. River crossings began to take place by the Allies, and A Battery traveled with the 172^nd Field Artillery from Tosdorf to Binsfield.

At 10:45 on the morning of the 25^th, A Battery spotted six Me 262s circling at medium altitude and preparing to attack their convoy with the 172^nd. As the convoy moved along at 35 miles per hour, the gunners fired at the Luftwaffe, damaging one of them and driving the remainder off. It was tricky shooting as one gunner put it. “We were traveling in the same direction as the planes, so we actually cut off 35 mph from speed of the targets…There were five more raids by Me 262s, when the Luftwaffe attacked with nine planes on March 2. A Battery bagged two of them.⁴⁰

The 3^rd Armored Division reached the Rhine River March 4 and, with the 104^th Infantry, fought its way to Cologne, the largest German city to fall to the Allies. After guarding the Erft Canal, the 474^th moved near to Cologne, and A Battery went to the Cologne suburb of Junkersdorf.

As the VII Corps moved toward Bonn, A Battery was sent to Paulshof. The 1^st Infantry Division was added to the VII Corps on March 8 and given the job of capturing Bonn, which fell after stubborn resistance. All totaled, the VII Corps cleared 84 kilometers along the west bank of the Rhine and captured more than 18,000 prisoners.

Meanwhile, on March 7, elements of the 9^th Armored Division had seized intact a crossing over the Rhine—the Ludendorff railway bridge at Remagen. The 78^th Infantry was attached to the VII Corps to continue to clear more territory north of the bridge sites, and the 474^th joined in the fray mid-month. Both A and C batteries were ordered to Rolanseck on the west side of the river, but then C Battery was told to remain on the east side at Honnef to protect a floating treadway bridge 1,176 feet long, the first bridge the VII Corps engineers had completed across the Rhine. These troops then had to live in an eerie smokescreen put out for added protection.

“We were down river a few miles from the bridge,” Jack explains, “right along the Rhine, where they were bringing supplies in. We were there to protect the supply lines in case the German aircraft tried to molest the supply planes, but I don’t remember any action. I do remember the planes coming down real low and dropping the supplies instead of landing.”

The lack of action left time for some visiting. “My close friend from home, Jim Fair, was in an anti-aircraft group command and was in a position to know where my outfit was assigned. He looked me up while we were at the Rhine, and we had a nice visit.”

There were also some opportunities for exploring and having fun. Jack remembers one such incident, and Ray Bilicki, his buddy, remembers another. “At Rolanseck, some of the guys found a dachshund and gave it some beer. It got drunk and was walking sideways,” Jack says.

Ray tells of a safe they found in Remagen. “We had visions of becoming millionaires,” he says. “We shot at it, used hand grenades and everything else in order to get it open. But to our misfortune, we never did. That should tell you the kind of soldiers we were. I maintain to this date that if the Army had more like us, the world would be speaking German today.”

On March 25, the 1^st Army launched its attack out of the Remagen Bridgehead, advancing 20 km in the first day’s drive. Three days later, Batteries A and D of the 474^th were sent to Altenkirchen to provide ground defense for the VII Corps, but they returned to the field artillery just two days afterward. Battery A’s next assignment was with the 980^th Field Artillery at Lippe.

The trap was closing on the highly developed Ruhr industrial region of Germany. Inside its 5,000 square miles, more than 350,000 enemy soldiers of German Army Group D were completely cut off from supplies and reinforcements.

As the armored units of the VII Corps vaulted along from Marburg toward Paderborn, the 474^th kept right up with them in making jumps of 20 and 30 miles. One day B Battery convoyed 72 miles. The countryside with it storybook houses once more became pretty much of a blur as the armored columns thrust into the Hessian Hills past small decentralized industrial plants that had been scattered outside the Ruhr. Near them stood the ugly barbed-wire stockades that had been used to cage the slave labor who now roamed the streets, some pedaling bicycles taken from the Germans. As the convoys moved down the roads, there were streams of refugees from France and Belgium taking the long walk to their homes, which they hadn’t seen since the early 1940s. They were a pitiful sight, just skin and bones in tattered clothes, some with pots and pans hanging over their shoulders. In the twilight they cooked soup from scraps they picked up along the way. It seemed so difficult to believe that these men, now reduced to animals’ level, had once been respected heads of families and wage-earners in their communities. Stories which had been read when the GIs were school teachers, clerks, salesmen and students popped into mind. These stories told how Hitler’s men pulled people out of their homes and away from their families and shipped them east to work for the Third Reich. It was then we realized that our trip was worthwhile. For without the fanfare and flag-waving it felt good to make men free again. This is what the war was all about.⁴¹

Because the 474th moved around a lot, it didn’t use much of its TNT supply. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, Jack found an alternative use for his stockpile—exploding it in the river as a fishing aid. He used his technique again here, but the refugees had to grab the fish quickly before the fast current carried them away.

During this period, B Battery had several successful encounters with the enemy. During the afternoon of March 29, while in convoy with the 183^rd Field Artillery Battalion, supporting the 3^rd armored division, a German ammunition flak train made up of a locomotive and seven cars was spotted heading toward Lelbach.

Waiting unit it was within 500 yards of the convoy, the tank commander attempted to fire a shot from his gun, which was jammed. He then opened up with a 30-caliber machine gun, but the train continued on. Immediately behind the tank was one of B Battery’s M-15 half-tracks, commanded by Corp. Willis S. Lancaster, of Richmond, VA. Lancaster ordered his guns turned onto the train, and after zeroing in with 50-caliber tracers, he opened up with his 37mm gun. One of the first shots hit the locomotive boiler, which went up with gratifying effects. The engineer jumped from the cab as two other M-15s…and one M-16 half-track with quad-mounted 50s opened up…All the tracks racked the entire train with fire so effectively that two carloads of 20mm ammunition blew up. The other cars were armed with 20mm flak guns for the protection of the train. However, caught unawares, the soldiers manning the guns jumped off and the entire train was destroyed within a period of 20 minutes.⁴²

Early in the morning the next day, while forming for convoy on the outskirts of Giershagen with the rest of the task force, an FW 190 on a reconnaissance mission flew low over the area. The majority of the battery’s half-tracks opened up and knocked the plane out of the sky. The pilot bailed out, and the plane crashed in the vicinity of Hespringhausen.

Later that day, while trying to clean out snipers in a town, T/5 William Scott, of Canton, NC, located a sniper and stepped out from the protection of the tank to direct fire at him. Instead, the sniper fired at Scott first and killed him instantly. All totaled, B Battery killed 75 Germans that day, including the one who killed Scott, and took 175 prisoners, most of them SS troopers.

Starting April 7, the 1^st Army opened the drive that was to be its last operation of the war—to advance toward Leipzig and Dresden and connect with Soviet forces advancing from the east. On April 8, the VII Corps crossed the Weser River. A Battery was relieved of its role with the 980^th Field Artillery and ordered to the vicinity of Denke to make contact with the 238^th Engineer Battalion and move the bridge site across the Weser River with it. Later, elements of A Battery protected bridges at Rheder, Beverungen and Blankenau. When it was relieved of its Weser River crossings, it went with the 951^st Field Artillery to Katlenberg, Schwiegerhausen and Horden.⁴³ 

Nordhausen and the beginning of the end

The capture of the city of Nordhausen, where a Nazi concentration camp was located, had a sobering effect on all in the 474^th. Thousands of displaced men and women labored there—prisoners from Russia, Poland, France and other conquered areas were kept at Nordhausen to operate the huge V-bomb factory built deep into a hillside just outside of town.

Every member of the 474^th was ordered to visit the camp so that he could see with his own eyes the inhumanity and appalling living conditions people had to suffer. The dead far outnumbered the living. Thousands of bodies were discovered in the partially destroyed barracks, lying in the fields or stacked at the crematory, waiting to be burned. Bodies were found lying where their owners had died or were crammed into rooms set aside for the dead and so full that the bony remains tumbled out when the doors were opened. It was not a pretty sight. Most of the dead had died of starvation. The living were practically dead, too weak to move. Even the ones with strong stomachs could not finish the tour of the camp without getting sick. As each GI passed through these rooms and surveyed the scene of so much suffering and tragedy, the stench of rotting bodies and the smell of burning flesh seemed to rise to his nostrils, and as he came out into the clean fresh air, he raised his eyes toward the heavens to clear away this haunting vision of evil. Troops seeing this hell-hole needed no urging to get back into the fight against a race that could care so little for human life. In retribution for their parts in this awful crime, whether their parts consisted of active support of those who directed such horrors or merely of passive acceptance of the regime, all the women citizens of Nordhausen were made to dig graves on a hillside overlooking the city. All the male citizens were made to carry the dead by hand and bury all the bodies in this cemetery, which will always bear evidence to the brutal sadism of the Nazis.⁴⁴

“Our gun crew was stationed at the airport, which was at the edge of town,” Jack says. “Even there, you had the terrible smell from the dead bodies in this concentration camp. When we found out what caused the smell, we were horrified! We were told to keep with our position, and that we were not allowed in the camp. Rumor was that some soldiers, upon witnessing the camp, started shooting some of the German townspeople, and that’s why they didn’t allow any more to go in. Now I find out after all of these years that we were supposed to observe the horrible results. I would have gone to see it had I been allowed.”

A Battery was still stationed at the Nordhausen airport when word reached the troops that President Franklin Roosevelt had died. But the war wasn’t over yet, and the 474^th would suffer still more losses in the war’s final days. April 15 brought with it some casualties, and April 16 saw three fatalies—Capt. Gordon Potter, Sgt. Albert G. Algeier and PFC William J. Ouseley. Ouseley, along with A Battery’s Mort Daroff, painted the pictures and names on the half-tracks. These three men were on a scouting mission when ambushed by a German machine-gun crew.

“The Germans weren’t too resistant from here to the end of the war,” Jack comments. “They didn’t have many planes left. And if they did, they didn’t have fuel for the planes and probably not too many pilots to fly the planes All the units became involved then in keeping the natives and displaced persons in line.” By April 23, all resistance in the VII Corps sector had ended. A Battery went to Hoym, then to Bruanrode. Many prisoners were picked up in this period right before the cease fire called on May 8.

“When the Germans surrendered, we were occupied with getting the workers from a lot of farming camps back to their native lands,” Jack explains. “One woman refugee asked me to hold her baby while she loaded her belongings onto a boxcar. Her husband was standing nearby but wouldn’t lend a hand to help. My officer wondered why I was holding a baby, so I explained the circumstances. He made the husband take the baby, and we made certain the family got on the train, all three of them.”

This video details the liberation of the Nordhausen concentration camp:

Homeward bound

In the midst of the shelling of Duren, Mookie went into heat and had a 
bit of a mating mishap. She and her partner got stuck together, and their 
squealing in the middle of the night woke up the gun crew, who had to pour 
cold water on the hapless pair to part them. Nine weeks later, Boots and 
Joker were born. All three dogs went home with members of the gun crew.

At the cessation of hostilities on May 8, 1945, it was D-Day plus 336. Three days later, the 474^th’s various batteries were assigned to new areas, with A Battery and Jack going to Hettstedt.

At midnight June 11, the VII Corps became nonoperational and was relieved of its command by the XXI Corps of the 9^th Army. Not long afterward, the 4^th Cavalry relieved the 474^th, and the outfit started on a long trek back to an area south of Frankfurt.

On July 2, the 474^th moved again, this time to Burstadt, and then 10 days later to Sandbach. Even though part of the Army of Occupation, there was little soldiering to be done. “For the next month or so we played a lot of ball,” Jack says.

It was in Sandbach that Gen. George C. Marshall announced every soldier with 85 points was eligible for discharge—one point for each month of service, with an extra point for each month overseas and five points for battle stars and medals. Soldiers with 80-84 points were sent to replacement centers, and new recruits with no experience would be brought in to replace the “old” guys.

Jack didn’t have 85 points, but he was one of the first to be sent to a replacement center. “I ended up in Chateau Thierry, just outside of Paris,” he recalls. “Those months were the nicest months I ever spent in the Army: no discipline, no ‘chicken,’ all kinds of passes to Paris and other nearby towns, etc. I worked sometimes for a master sergeant, usually doing some typing, especially when the regular clerk got drunk.”

Early in August, word came over the radio that the United States had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. And on Aug. 14, Japan surrendered. “The war ended and wow!” Jack says. “We knew we’d be going back to the states pronto. Everyone was on their good behavior now and had everything packed and ready to go. The Army has its own speed, though. But looking back, they did pretty good.”

The group Jack had been placed in at the replacement center had 30 to 35 men and was sent to Camp Lucky Strike in LeHavre. “We boarded the train in the evening and arrived at our destination the next day,” he recalls. “I had to sleep on a steep stairway in the caboose but didn’t care because I was going home.”

Jack outside his tent at Camp Lucky Strike

The camps set up for soldiers in transit were named after cigarettes, and German prisoners of war were used to staff the chow lines. “One day one of the German servers flicked the mashed potatoes into the mess gear of one of the guys in our group,” Jack says. “The American soldier hit him in the face with the mess kit and then took off. Later, the major in charge of us called us together to inform us that the German would be going amongst us to see if he could point out the soldier who hit him. We were told that if we snitched, we would never get back to the states, ‘Is that understood?’ ‘Yes sir!’ The German soldier never pointed to anybody! I wonder why?”

A 23-year-old Jack left for the states from LeHavre on a Liberty ship on Oct. 24, 1945. The ocean voyage back to the states brought yet another storm at sea, pushing the boat off course and down near Spain. “But after that it was smooth sailing,” Jack says.

He met a soldier on the ship who was an accountant, and the talks they had got Jack interested in pursuing accounting as well. Also on board were guys who had been MPs in Paris, breaking up the black market rings and hanging deserters. They talked about how they treated American deserters worse than any enemy prisoner. “They used to put them in dug-out pits and spray water on them in cold weather,” Jack recalls.

The ship arrived in New York City Nov. 5, and the soldiers went on a troop train to Camp Kilmore, NJ. "After a few days there, we went by train to Indiantown Gap, PA, near Harrisburg,” he says. “It took about five days before we got our discharge and pay.” The maximum discharge pay allowed was $500, and Jack received a claim statement for $445--$10 for each of 13 months of domestic service and $15 for each of 21 months of foreign service. He wouldn’t receive the actual check until six weeks later. His discharge papers are dated Nov. 9, 1945.

Not sure where this
was taken, but judging
by the big smile, maybe
he just learned when
he was going home.

“They gave the Pittsburgh area soldiers a train ticket, put us on a civilian train, and we were homeward bound,” Jack recalls. “The train stopped in Greensburg, PA, so I got off, thumbed a ride to New Kensington, and walked several blocks to my home at 316 Fourth Ave. Dad was in the kitchen, so I knocked on the window and told him to unlock the front door. I’ll never forget that moment: Home at last! There are moments in your life when you know that your family really does love you, and this was one of mine!”

It was love of family, along with faith, that kept most of the men—including Jack—going during their months overseas. “I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the personal reliance on the many silent prayers made by myself and many other soldiers,” Jack recalls. “At one time, there were three faiths represented among the seven guys in our own gun crew. I don’t remember having any deep or extended discussions on religion, but I assure you that none of us missed a chance to attend services with the chaplain when such services were available.

“There were many times that faith alone seemed to be the only reliable protection available. I mention all of this because God was a constant thought of each of us, especially under severe combat conditions. This story would be incomplete without noting that.”

This "home movie" clip shows conditions at Camp Lucky Strike near LeHavre, including an unbelievable chow line: