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.