IRA T. GARNTO

INTERVIEW WITH SGT. IRA T. GARNTO


2ND Bn. Hq. Co., 121st Inf., 8th Inf. Div. 1st Army





Sgt. Ira T. Garnto enlisted in Co. K, 121st Infantry on Aug. 1, 1940. After was transferred to Regimental HQ in the intelligence section. After 2 more years I was transferred to 2nd Battalion as Intelligence Chief. I enlisted originally for three years. Many of the men enlisted for only year. After Sept. 1941 and especially after Pearl Harbor, the original Co. K broke up. Only about 10% of the original members of the Company K saw combat in Europe in 1944-45.



I enlisted on August 1, 1940 and in a few days went on maneuvers in Mississippi for three weeks. After I graduated high school in 1940, I thought to myself that I should go ahead and join for a year. We knew Capt. Clifford Prince would let us out after a year if we had a hardship, besides I needed the work. My daddy died in 1928, when I was six years old. I had two older sisters and two younger brothers. My mother invested the insurance proceeds in the First National Bank in Dublin, which went bust that year. We lived on a farm just outside of Brewton. Mamma managed to hand on to the farm in 1942 when she moved to town across from Jefferson Street Baptist Church. My brother was shot down in China on the Yangee River. He was in a B-24 and they were skip bombing. I didn't know what that was, but it was where they would come in low and drop their bombs so that they would skip into the boats. They told us that we would be in the army in three more weeks.



We got to come home on just about every weekend from Fort Jackson, if you could afford it. Some times they charged five dollars to bring you home. We used to ride two in the front and three or four in the back. Some of the men bought cars. You could get one for 800 or 900 dollars. I remember E.L. Stephens bought a car. The 121st was at Fort Jackson when they bombed Pearl Harbor. Actually I was at home when they bombed Pearl Harbor. I had come home riding in a car with Capt. Prince.



While I was there, they tried to get me to go to Officer Candidate School. I wanted to serve my country, but I didn't think that being an officer was for me. They selected two of us to take a test to go to West Point. You had to have the affidavits of two officers, pass a physical, and provide a birth certificates. I had the two affidavits, which I still have, and the birth certificate. About that time we were transferred to Ft. Leonard Wood. It was cold there. In all of the confusion in moving to a new place, the chance passed me by. I remained a Sergeant because I had a lot of lateral transfers. I didn't want to go to O.C.S., but I would have gone to West Point if only for the education. It would have taken me out of the war because I would have finished after the war. I would have had to sign up for seven years which would have put me in Korea. I would not have been killed in World War II, but I could have been in Korea. That may have saved my life. They also tried to make me Battalion Sergeant Major.



We trained in old clothes. They must have been from World War II. We lived in tents in the first winter. We didn't have much equipment. We had to use old stove pipes as mortars.



After we left Fort Jackson, South Carolina, we went on maneuvers in Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The army began assigning Georgia draftees into our regiment, which was then part of the 30th Infantry. We went to Ft. Leonard Wood for about six months and then out west to the desert for another six months. After we returned to Camp Forest, Tenn., we went to New Jersey where we left for Ireland in the winter of 1943.



We went to Northern Ireland after leaving the states. I remember General George Patton talking with us. We were originally to be a part of his 3rd Army. Then we were assigned to the 1st Army. We went to Brest. They underestimated what it would take to clean up there. There were fifty thousand Germans there.



We arrived at Utah Beach, Normandy on the 4th of July. There was no fighting there, but we could still hear the guns, probably close to St. Lo. I rode in a jeep. When it left the landing craft it dipped into the war and wet us. That tickled Gen. Walker. He was killed in a few days. We lost a lot of officers in the first few weeks.



In Normandy, our first mission was to straighten out a bulge in our lines. It took us eight days. Then we sat there for eight days waiting on the tanks to show up. I dug a hole next to one of the hedgerows, which had a bush that looked like a redtip, but I don't think it was really a redtip. A mortar shell came in one night through the hedgerow and caved in my hole. It didn't go off. Another one came within ten feet of my position and tore up my raincoat and cut my telephone wire. It didn't go off. I don't think it would had killed me if it had, but the concussion would have jarred me real bad. Our liaison officer was shot. They asked me to take replacements up to the lines which I did two times. We had gotten down to about 50% strength in Normandy by August, 1944. When we got out of the hedgerows, we got into open fields which were bad. Sleeping was tough. In the day, you thought about and hoped the night would come so the Germans couldn't see you. At night, you thought about someone coming in and getting you.



Our unit never got the credit for the job we did in Normandy. In all of the pictures and films I have seen, I have never seen a soldier in them wearing our division's patch, the 8th Infantry. Sometimes we used to see the skies filled with bombers heading toward Germany. Sometimes they bombed the enemy right in front of us. They were so close they jarred us.



We got into some trouble at Brest. The bombers came over and bombed the Germans, but as soon as they left, the Germans came right back out and starting shooting again.



On the Battle of Hurtgen: The 28th Division had been kicked out of the forest. They had lost almost all of their men. We went in to relieve the 101st Airborne Division. We got there about Thanksgiving. The 28th went to Luxembourg where we came from. They really got kicked during the Battle of the Bulge. The trees in the Hurtgen Forest were in bad shape. Every battalion was quickly engaged. They were mostly pine trees, split and splintered. I remember sleeping sitting up some night. I served in the headquarters 2nd battalion under the command of Lt. Col. Henry B. Kunzig. I was in the forward Command Post with Col. Kunzig. He wanted a messenger from each company and wanted someone in charge of the messengers. I took four messengers from each of the four companies in our battalion back to Col. Kunzig's bunker and remained there with Col. Kunzig.



I was walking into the Town of Hurtgen following the capture of the town. I had just come into the edge of town and was standing by a German tank in front of the first building on the left (see p. 35, 121st Infantry History). I was waiting on my next orders when I heard an artillery round coming in. It hit the tank with a strange thud, but it didn't explode. I was lucky.



It started snowing after a few days, but the snow was much better than the sloppy mud. The slop was worse than the snow. It slowed us down. Many of our casualties came from frostbite. The tanks had no way to go in the mud in the forest. I guess we just outlasted them.



Gladstone Daniel (David G. Daniel, Jr.) is the only Laurens County man that I remember being killed in the battle.



On the Battle of Ruhr Pocket (see page 53, History of the 121st Inf. Regiment): That scene (the one depicted in the book) is very real to me. The Colonel asked me to get four German prisoners who spoke English to work KP duty in the kitchen.



Along the Roer we had a lot of night fighting. It was boogerish, but we had less casualties. At Cologne, Emory F. Scarborough was killed in an auto assembly plant. He had been promoted to Second Lieutenant on the Battlefield. He was in Headquarters 3rd Battalion and they were waiting for directions. I believe George Allen Tindol may have been there. They did manage to get a few trucks from there. We stayed in cellars, but when the warm weather came the snow began to melt and it began raining in on us down there.



The 1st and the 3rd Army after they crossed the Rhine came together in a pincer and cut the Germans off. It was one place where there was a right smart bit of trouble when a 74 ton tank with 120 mm guns came out toward us. The army had assigned a platoon of Black soldiers to F Company. There were not actually part of the company, just attached to it. They did pretty good. They fought together. One of them found a German bazooka and shot it at one of those tanks and stopped it. Another man picked up a Browning automatic rifle and shot the Germans as they came crawling out of the tank. The two men were rewarded with a pass to Paris and a promotion to sergeant. One of them was awarded a Silver Star. That was as close as we came to having an integrated unit. There were a lot of Blacks in the Quartermasters. From then on, we didn't get much fight, but there was some in some of the towns.



When the Germans got out from behind their tanks they surrendered. They just quit. They came out the cellars and surrendered. I stayed with Col. Kunzig everywhere he went after the Hurtgen Forest. On our last drive we went to Schwerin near the Baltic Sea. Col. Kunzig said very little. A German captain wanted the Colonel to go with him to the German Headquarters. I followed his jeep. The Germans were still armed. I stayed outside and didn't go in. A Lt. General surrendered an entire corps to us. They came marching in for three days. There were about 214 thousand of them. They didn't want to surrender to the Russians.



We lost about a thousand killed and four thousand total casualties. Our unit met up with the Russians, or that's what they say. I saw one Russian and he looked liked he was lost.



Interviewed by Scott B. Thompson, Sr., November 20, 1999.

DUBLIN'S ADMIRAL

The Story of Admiral Robert Edgar Braddy, Jr.

Robert Edgar Braddy, Jr., moved to Dublin at the age of nine in 1913. Braddy was a son of Robert E. and Neva Eudora Braddy. The Braddys lived on Maiden Lane in Dublin on the site of the First Baptist Church Life Center. After attending Dublin schools, he attended Gordon Military College and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1927.

In 1942 Lt. Commander Braddy commanded the U.S.S. Bernadou, an old four stacker tanker, which was built in 1918. “The Bernadou” was named for Commander John Baptiste Bernadou, a hero of the Spanish American War. The ship was originally designed to combat submarines in World War I. The ship was launched four days before the armistice. After it was commissioned in 1919, the “Bernadou” saw sporadic service in the Atlantic Ocean. In the fall of 1939, the “Bernadou” was re-commissioned and went assigned to the Atlantic Ocean on neutrality patrol. The ship had a maximum speed of 35 knots and was just a little longer than a football field. The usual complement of a crew was about one hundred fifty.

Before the United States declared war on Germany the “Bernadou” carried Marines to Iceland in July of 1941. For the next year the ship remained in the Newfoundland-Iceland convoy in the North Atlantic. The first missions of Braddy’s ship were anti-submarine patrols. On October 25, 1942 Braddy's ship, nicknamed the “Bouncing Bee”, was assigned to carry troops into French North Africa for an attack in November, 1942. Along with the “U.S.S. Cole,” the “Bernadou” was assigned to an attack group heading for the port of Safi, French Morroco. The mission of a destroyer was to provide close-in combat support for landing troops. It was a suicide mission. Braddy’s ship was designated as the lead ship to land the first wave of infantry troops on shore.

The “Bernadou” was a part of the Southern Attack Group of the Western Naval Task Force. On the night of November 7th and 8th the attack group moved away from the main convoy. The ships moved to a rendevous point to await the signal for an attack. Just before dawn the eagerly awaited attack signal came.

The “Bernadou” and the “Cole,” commanded by Lt. Cmdr. George G. Palmer of Charleston, South Carolina, steamed toward Safi.

At 3:30 a.m. the two ships moved out headed for the harbor. H-hour was set for 4 a.m. The ship was filled with troops. All of her smokestacks had been removed to disguise her identity. It rode low in the water and was difficult to identify with her mast down. Through unchartered waters, the two ships moved their shops toward the harbor entrance. Their passage went quietly at first with a scout boat in the lead. With companies of the 47th Infantry aboard, the “Bernadou” was challenged at 4:10 a.m.. A spot light from the hills above Safi spotted Braddy’s ship. A signal from shore was answered by the same signal. The light went out. The shore batteries opened fire with their French ‘75s. The two ships along with others to the rear opened fire on the batteries. The pre-dawn skies were lit up by brilliant streams of tracer bullets and the mouths of the big guns.

Braddy ordered the ship to proceed full steam ahead. At 4:28 a.m. the ship rounded the north end of the mole. Braddy took the “Bouncing Bee” through narrow and difficult approaches to the harbor mouth. The task became increasingly difficult when machine guns began firing from jetties. Lookouts on the bridge spotted a bell buoy at the mouth of the harbor. The ships continued under heavy cross fire. Braddy and Palmer guided their ships through a multitude of vessels anchored in the harbor. Braddy ran his ship at near full speed right into the shoreline, which was lined with rocks. This daring maneuver allowed all of the assault troops to land immediately and avoid small arms fire. Cmdr. Palmer guided his ship to a dock where he unloaded his men. The invaders swarmed the shore and reached their objectives. In the dash for the harbor, not a single life was lost. The resistance from the shore soon ceased to exist.

Braddy’s good fortune continued to hold. The beaching had been eased by an underwater sandbar. It was substantial enough to hold the ship in place while the assault forces unboarded, but was not enough to cause any fatal damage to the destroyer. The “Berndaou” and four other destroyers began providing escorts for tanks and troops for the assault on Casablanca on November 10th.

For his actions in guiding his ship safely into Safi under dangerous night conditions, Lt. Commander Braddy was given the Navy Cross and an award from the Belgian government. The Navy Cross is our nation’s second highest award for heroism in the United States Navy. Secretary of the Navy Knox cited the commanders for their actions “with gallant and resolute purpose, and at grave risk to his own life and the safety of his ship and men, they successfully countered all opposition in the accomplishment of a vital and strategic mission.” Vice Admiral Henry Hewitt, in command of the invasion, cited Braddy and Coles’ ships with a large measure of the success of the operation. Admiral Hewitt nominated the two ships to the Navy’s roll of distinguished ships. The entire crew was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for their actions in the successful operation.

After the landing at Safi, the “Bernadou” returned to Boston where she remained on convoy duty until February of 1943. She made a convoy run to Gibraltar in March and in May departed for Algeria. In July, 1943 the ship took part in the occupation of Sicily. Two months later the “Bernadou” aided in the landings at Salerno. After two convoy trips to North Africa in the first half of 1944, the ship retired to the easy runs from the east coast of the United States to the Caribbean. The Bernadou arrived in the Philadelphia Naval Yard for decommissioning on July 17, 1945. On the last day of November, 1945, the grand old lady, who had served her country so well in earning five battle stars, was sold.

Commander Braddy was also a close and personal friend of deaf and blind American author, Helen Keller. His sister, Nella, wrote a book for Reader's Digest on Helen Keller, and her mentor, Anne Sullivan. Nella Braddy also earned national acclaim for her biography of the author, Rudyard Kipling. Robert Braddy retired as a Rear Admiral on October 1, 1951. Admiral Braddy died on August 14, 1965 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.