MALCOM DUNN

Tales of a G.I.



Malcom Dunn was just your regular G.I. He got his daddy to go down and sign for him to enlist in the National Guard in 1940. Malcom trained in camps across the country and boarded a troop ship for Europe. Fighting from hedge row to hedge row and from river to river, Dunn's division traversed the span of western Europe in less than nine months. There were good times and bad times. With the war in Europe over, Malcom had enough of death and dying. He came home and began a new life, a life of building and not destroying.



Dunn got his first taste of military service at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. The taste was good old fashioned dirt. "When we drilled in the dust bowl, you could stand on the edge and not see the soldiers," Dunn said. Malcom tried to re-enlist in the Guard, but was forced to join the regular army instead. At Fort Custer, Michigan, Dunn was assigned to M Company, 3rd Battalion, 376th Regiment, 94th Infantry Division. The young man from the coastal plains of Georgia found out what a real plain looked like. At Camp Phillips, Kansas, the land was so flat that he could see 20 miles in every direction. It was cold too. The 18 to 20 degrees below zero winds whipped unimpeded through the barrack's fabric walls. "After a while, you would have icicles on your moustache and eyebrows ... when the snow was on the ground, you had to guide yourself by the telephone lines," Malcom reflected.



The following spring Malcom was sent to McCain, Mississippi, which was located on the edge of a swamp. When it rained, water would rise into the camp. As the water rose, so did the ground worms. Malcom picked them up, put them in a can, and waited for the water to rise to the edge of the barracks, from where he would fish out the back door for a good mess of catfish. "The mosquitos were real bad. We had to rub mud on our faces to keep them off. When the water got high, we would get on a knoll and wrap ourselves in our rain coats to fend of the mosquitos," said Malcom, who was sure with conditions like that, he was going to be sent to the Pacific.



Malcolm's division was crammed like sardines inside the hull of the Queen Elizabeth bound for Europe. Under the watchful eyes of their B-26 and blimp escorts, the ship managed to evade the German Wolfpack submarines and made it to Southampton, England. His regiment was commanded by Col. Thurston, a cross-country walking champion, who wanted to arm himself with a rifle instead of the standard issue .45 caliber pistol. "I came here to kill Germans, not to scare them," declared the Colonel.



Malcom was a tech sergeant in one of Col. Thurston's mortar platoons. When the requests for laying down fire came in, Thurston's men went into action. The men called them "Thurston Shoots." The Germans were enfiladed with synchronized fire of 81mm mortars and artillery. Dunn quickly learned to let the big guns go first so as to disguise his mortar battery's location from the German 88 mm gunners. In their zeal to protect their friends in the regular infantry, Dunn's men often "double-loaded" their mortars for maximum efficiency. When some division officers complained that fighting in the hedgerows was "penny-anny," Malcolm retorted, " Go out there and try it yourself."



From Paris the 94th was sent to the point where France, Germany, Luxembourg, and Belgium come together at the Saar River. The fighting was bitter. The weather, even more bitter. The division was promised support from the armor divisions. It was slow in coming. Meanwhile, General Patton kept ordering, "attack, attack, attack!" "I would lie awake at night listening for the clinging of their tracks. I listened so hard that I imagined I heard them when I really didn't," Malcom remembered. Finally the armor units arrived. One of them was Sgt. Lester Porter's outfit. Porter and Dunn found out while talking at the VA Hospital one day that they were in the war together, really together.



The 94th broke through and raced to the Siegfried Line. A regiment of black engineers superbly repaired a downed bridge. Just as the division approached the river, German artillery units pounded the engineers and the front elements of the division. A combat patrol neutralized the enemy guns, and the division poured across the bridge. Then, it was a race to the Rhine River. The Germans continued to fight back and hard.



One night a group of truckers came into a town where Dunn and his men were. "We were completely exhausted, lying on the porches of the houses and buildings. We were so tired we couldn't hardly talk to each other. One of the truckers lit a match to take a smoke. His sergeant came up to him and cussed him out for endangering the men around him. He told him he was at the front lines. He really wasn't. At the time, it was funny. We all laughed. I must have laughed for at least 30 minutes. I laughed so hard that my belly hurt. It was good to laugh. I hadn't laughed in a long time," Malcom fondly remembered.



Another night, while standing in the chow line, Malcom noticed German soldiers were standing in the line waiting for something to eat. "They were chilled to the bone and were hungry too," Malcom said. When the light came, the Germans returned to their guns and fired on their hosts once again. Eventually the firing stopped and the Germans stacked their arms and offered their support to fight against their most feared enemy, the Russians.



As Dunn's regiment approached the street fighting going on in and around the outskirts of Ludwigshafen, the report of a 9mm "burp gun" resounded throughout the town. Malcom and his squad discovered the shots were coming from the top of a house. They eased up a narrow staircase. The first man kicked the door in. Malcom saw an old man shooting from the window. His wife was handing clips to him. "We had to kill them," Malcolm said.



The division was moved to Czechoslovakia. "It was kind of like Kansas, but with rolling hills," Malcom remembered. German soldiers came through the lines at night to surrender and were sent back behind the lines only to be returned to the Russians. Eventually, they quit surrendering. It was in Czechoslovakia where Sgt. Dunn was offered a battlefield commission as a 2nd lieutenant. Fearing that he would be sent to the Pacific, where the outcome of the war was still strongly in doubt, Malcom declined the honor, saying that "I am sick of war and I just want to go home, and I have a daughter that I have never seen."



Sixteen days after he left, Malcom was back home, laying brick for the expansion of the U.S. Naval Hospital in Dublin. He took a security job there, but eventually made his living in the masonry business, while dabbling a little in raising hogs and livestock.



Tech Sergeant Malcom Dunn was one of the millions of our veterans who left their homes and families to accomplish a single mission. The mission was freedom, freedom for you and me. On this Veteran's Day, let us pause to thank them for their sacrifices and service to preserve the freedoms we have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy for the rest of time.



Interview with Tech. Sgt. Malcom Dunn,

HQ Co. 121st Infantry Regiment;

Co. M, 3rd Battalion, 376th Inf. Reg.,

94 Infantry Division.



I joined the National Guard in 1940. I wasn't quite 20 years old so my daddy signed for me to enlist. I enlisted for a year and we went to Camp Jackson, South Carolina. When we got there, there were only a few buildings. We built many more. It was the first permanent barracks I stayed in. We built a drill field we called the "dust bowl". If you stood on the edge you couldn't see the soldiers, but you could see the dust we raised. The country started a draft and we trained the new drafted. After a year I was discharged and sent home. I came back home but it was a dead time for me. All of my friends were up there. I decided to register for the regular draft. Nineteen days later I turned 21. They told me I couldn't re-enlist in the National Guard and that I had to join the regular army.



The army created a new division, the 77th. I was taken and became part of the cadre in the new outfit. At first there was a captain, and first lieutenant who was the executive officer, a mess sergeant, a company clerk, and four or five platoon sergeants. Then they started bringing in officer from O.C.S. at Fort Benning. The draftees came in until we filled the division at Fort Jackson, S.C. and went into advanced training. Then they left half the cadre and took the other half to Ft. Custer, Michigan. That's were they sent me.



We formed the 94th division. After three months, we found out that the area was too small. There was not enough space and the runs in and out were too small. We were sent to Camp Phillips, Kansas. It was flat and you could see for twenty miles in each direction. It was about 20 miles from Smokey Hill Air Base, but I never went to see the planes. We had plenty of space there. They sent draftees to form the 94th division. Most of the boys were from up north. I don't know why they sent boys from the north down south and boys from the south up north. I guess it was to keep them away from home. It was cold. Sometimes 18 to 20 degrees below zero. The barracks didn't have wooden walls. They were some kind of fabric dipped in tar. There were no ceilings. We had three pot-bellied stoves for heat. It was a dry cold, not like here. After three breaths it would take your breath away. After a while you would have icicles on your moustache and eventually on your eyebrows. When the snow was on the ground, you had to guide in the middle of the telephone poles unless there a rut for you to follow. We stayed there that winter.



Then we were moved to Camp McCain, Mississippi. It was on the edge of a swamp. When it rained the water started to back up to the barracks. The worms would start crawling out of the wet ground and I would pick me up some and when the water got underneath the edge of the barracks, I fished for catfish off the back of the barracks. The mosquitos were real bad. The men had to smear mud on their faces to keep them off. When the water was high we would get on a knoll and wrap ourselves in our raincoats to keep them off. We just knew that they must be sending us to the Pacific. The sweat was also real bad.



I went to POE at Camp Shank, New York. They let part of the division go to New York City at a time for one last fling. A lot of the boys got sick from over-drinking. We went down to the Hudson River docks and got onboard the Queen Elizabeth. Once we got out into the open sea, we had a B-26 or a B-26 to shadow us. There were U-Boats off the coast. We called them "wolfpacks." The following day we had a blimp. After the third day, we were on our own - no nothing, no convoy. We were right by ourselves. The ship was unfinished. All the fixtures weren't there. Some jokers wrote "Kilroy was here" all over. Others carved their initials into the wooden panels. We were on E-Deck. I know how a sardine feels in there. The bunks were stacked on top of each other. You had to be laced up. If the canvas was loose, you were laying on the belly of the man below. They had to pump air down to us. On the upper deck there were Russians, Red Cross people, French officers, nurses. E-Deck was half under water and half above water, but I never saw a "Joe" sick. One time I got woozy when a wave came over the bow. They said it would take twelve torpedoes to sink that ship. Each compartment had airtight doors.



Early one morning the call for battle stations came over the loud speaker. My first thought was that it was a drill. The captain kept yelling for us to go below deck, but we stayed. We had been trained to survive, but not in the water with life jackets. There was a Marine detachment on board and a pop gun on the deck. The spotted a periscope on the starboard side. I didn't know what side the starboard was . We saw a periscope. I learned the difference between starboard and port. When they called out what side it was on. The Captain ordered "full speed ahead." I felt the back end of the ship go down. We were zig-zagging, changing courses to throw them off. We kept looking for a wolfpack. It seemed like thirty minutes, but it wasn't that long. When the submarine came to the surface, I was shocked. I had seen one in movies. It made a loud sound and about the front third of it went up into the air and then came down. I was shocked at the height of the periscope. I could see the sailors on the deck. Our ship flashed signals to them. We were relieved to find out it was an American sub. We kept looking around for others. We really thought we were in trouble, because we were right by ourselves with no escort. We were afraid of the U-Boats because it would be a real feather in their caps to sink a ship with a whole division plus everyone else on board.



After seven days or so we arrived in Southampton, England. They opened the steel net across the harbor and let us in. You could see in the water. Then they closed it up. They towed us with tug boats. We debarked and they took us to a big park. They had dummy planes there with different insignia. They created another squadron to fool the Luftwaffe. We got re-supplied and new equipment in England. We got in landing craft that had been used before - in the invasion. We crossed the English Channel where there were U-Boats trying cut our supply lines. It was one sick bunch of Joes. The water was very rough. The waves made the boat go up and down. There was vomit all over the deck, then the water would come in and wash it away. There was a steel cable around the boat, but the waves washed a few of the men off, but there were men on the side that grabbed them and pulled them back in. We had Poles, Swedes, and Italians. They made good soldiers, once you understood them.



We went inland to St. Lazaire, Lorient, and Brest. Brest was the big sub bull pen. We relieved another outfit on the main drive up the peninsula. There were about thirty five thousand Germans cut off on the peninsula. They raised a racket until they couldn't break out and then they began to settle down. We had a Col. Thurston, who had been a cross-country walking champion. When we began to settle down in our military duties he got upset. When we landed in France he had a .45 pistol. His assistant had a rifle. Col. Thurston asked the man to trade weapons. The puzzled man asked the colonel was he sure he wanted his rifle. The colonel said "Hell man, I came here to kill Germans, not to scare them." Before long you could find any kind of gun. The Germans had captured some American troops and we had some German prisoners. They had a son of an English general or diplomat. We traded prisoners and got him back.



Col. Thurston saw what was happening. He thought we were getting dull. He took us on what we called "Thurston Shoots." I had an 81 mm mortar . They would send an overlay of the target in the German area. The artillery took the back half and I took the front half. In the first "Thurston Shoot" we moved in between the lines to reach the Germans. I moved out to where we could reach them. We synchronized our watches so that we could open and close fire at the same time. I opened first a split second or two before the artillery. The Germans heard my mortar "coughing." I learned something because they zeroed in on top of us. We pulled back to our lines. On the next "Thurston Shoot," I waited until the artillery began firing and then I started. I closed a second before the artillery closed. I never had any trouble after that.



Sometimes we "double-loaded" our mortars. It was dangerous, but we only had one accident. We would get one man on each side of the mortar. We pulled the pin on the rounds and stacked them like firewood. You had to get a rhythm. One man put one in and then the other man. You had to be quick and careful. We had interrogation officers. One was an s.o.b. and the other was kind. They would throw off the German prisoners. One would holler and scream at them and the other was kind to them. He pretended to be his friend. He asked if there was anything he could do for them. They wanted American cigarettes and coffee. He gave it to them and asked them if there was anything else he could do for them. One of them said to the kind one that our new kind of artillery weapons would end the war. He was referring to our double loading. It sounded like an automatic mortar. That gun would get awful hot. The interrogator told him that it was a highly secret weapon and that we didn't advertise too much. We were straightening out our lines in the hedge rows. A big field was five acres. Along the hedge rows the dirt was three feet higher than the rest of the ground. The Germans would dig under the rows and leave holes for their guns. If you got caught in a field you had it. Col. Thurston wanted a flame thrower. I suggested we use phosphorous on the opposite side of the hedge row. It worked, but not one hundred percent. It allowed us to get right on top of them. One time "double-loading" the mortars hurt us. They had an 88 on top of a hill which denied us the use of the road. We moved to no-mans land in the hedge rows. We couldn't see where the 88 was. We put out a decoy on a hill where they could see it. They fired on it and we saw it. We moved over with a mortar and shot up there. One man accidentally had his fingers cut off when he didn't pull them out quick enough. We got the 88.



The division officers and generals around were not satisfied with the fighting in the hedgerows. They thought it was "penny-anny." I finally told one of the officers to get out there and try it himself. We were relieved by another outfit and we were sent to Paris. It was very cold. It was during the time of the Battle of the Bulge. We were transferred to the Third Army and sent to where France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium come together at the Saar River. We relieved another outfit. I think it was a cavalry outpost. It was the only river I ever saw without a bank. When the water rose it spread out. There was a railroad. It was the only railroad I ever saw without a bed. The farm houses were made of stone or brick, or some kind of dried mud. The Nenning school had three to five foot thick walls. We began the attack on the area called Nenning-Berg-Wies where the Germans had dragon teeth - concrete structures to stop our tanks. They called it the Siegfried Switch. It was there outer defensive line. Our 3rd Battalion went to the river at night and began the attack at the railroad. Past the railroad was a bid open space. They had tank mines, anti-personnel mines, trip wire mines and others. You could see them through the ice. It had rained and the water had frozen around them. They didn't work anymore. Our division artillery opened with a thirty minute barrage. The artillery had spade to take up the shock and so the guns wouldn't rock back. The shells were hitting on the other side of us, but every time they hit you would almost bounce of the ground. We knew if the spades didn't work and the guns rocked back, that they would fire on us. Some of them did. There were some casualties. All of the houses seemed to have pillboxes with holes in them. One German soldier was smoking and a piece of shrapnel hit him. He fell out and his clothes were set on fire. The houses had basements and the Germans were hiding in them. The stones were crumbling into them. Some of the Germans dug out to surrender. We kept easing around to see if they would come out. We would asked them in German to come out with there hands out. If they didn't respond, we would throw a hand grenade in the hole. If there was still no answer or if we didn't here anything moving, we would fill up the holes with stones and hope they couldn't get out. The dragon teeth kept the tanks out. We went back and forth. They chewed us up and then we chewed them up. We gained some ground and then lost it. They had Panzer tanks and the dug in Tiger tanks. We could only see the turrets and that's where the armor was the thickest. The most vulnerable part of the tank was along the boogie wheels and the tracks. If you get a shot and mess up the wheels and throw the tracks off, you could stop them. We were promised armor from the 3rd Army, but Gen. Patton kept saying "attack! attack!" It was flesh against steel.



They had something called a shoe box mine. It had a lid on. When you stepped off the pressure would set it off. It wasn't like the mines in the ice which didn't work. They replaced them every day. At Nenning they had a group of N.C.O.s from Berlin who were sent to retake Nenning. They would come out at night and holler "Come you American's give up!" There were about forty or fifty of them. There was a B.A.R. (Browning Automatic Rifle) man on guard. He heard them coming. They would get as close as they could before they started hollering. Once you started firing a B.A.R. it would go up. The man turned it side ways and held it with a strip and began firing. The next morning they could nineteen of them dead or wounded. The colonel said it was the finest shooting he had seen in his twenty nine years in the Army.



We jumped off early in the morning and late in the afternoon. We finally got armor. I would lay awake a night listening for the clinking of the tracks. I listened so hard that I imagined I heard them when I really didn't. There were two armored units. One of them was Lester Porter's outfit. We got to talking about it one day at the VA hospital in Dublin. His unit lost thirteen tanks one day. The Germans caught them going around a hill. They shot the first one and the last one. Then it was like shooting fish in a barrel. I told him the story about the armored unit. He said, "I know, that was my unit."



We broke through and raced to the Saar River and the main Siegfried line. They had blown the bridge there. There were pill boxes on the other side. There were even pill boxes at the edge of the water. A black engineers regiment was sent in to build another bridge below the blown one. You had to have a gentle slope on both sides of a bridge to get the men across. They did a superb job. The Germans were in the hills looking down on us. They waited until the engineers were almost through and then began shelling. They shot rounds up river from the bridge and broke the ice into floes. The floes struck the bridge and knocked some of the engineers into the war. Someone hollered for another company. They started again and the same thing happened again. We tried smoke bombs, but they didn't work when the wind shifted. We knew that we had to have the bridge and we knew we had to knock out that artillery. They sent out a combat patrol up there at night. We were promised boats, but they were late. They combat patrol got up there and knocked out the artillery. They put the bridge and the men and armor poured across. I had been to the river bank and them went to a village where there was a bunch of officers. Rex Brantley, a friend of mine from back home, had been given a battlefield commission. He was stranded on a knoll. Lt. Daley was with him. The Germans surrounded them and wanted to wipe them out. We couldn't get them ammunition or food. They took the packages and padded them and dropped them from a liaison plane. About two-thirds of them fell on German positions. They had snow to eat for the water. They would throw the grenades down the hill and they would roll on the Germans.



The 11th Panzer division is what they called Hitler's Ghost Division. They were sent into trouble spots to break the stalemates. They would pull back and hit another spot. They would zig and zag. Our artillery began taking a toll on them. We got in bad shape with the tanks and the grenadiers. I was said that the two sides then became ineffective. Col. Thurston wrote a book about it. I haven't seen it. We got a citation from Gen. Patton.



We broke through the main Siegfried Line and raced toward the Rhine River. We went day and night. They were flying us maps. By the time we got them, they were obsolete. The Germans were doing anything they could to slow us down. They shelled us and attack our flanks. In the 376th Regiment, we used the leap frog method. The attacking battalion would meet its objective and pull back, while the supporting battalion moved forward through their lines without stopping.



One night a group of black truckers came into the town where we were. We were completely exhausted, lying on the porches of the houses and buildings. We were so tired we couldn't hardly talk to each other. One of the black truckers lit a match for a smoke. He shielded it pretty good. His sergeant came up to him and cussed him out. He told him that he was endangering the men by lighting the match. He told him that he was on the front lines. He really wasn't. At the time it was funny. We all laughed. I must have laughed for thirty minutes. I laughed so hard my belly hurt. It was good to laugh. We hadn't laughed in a long time. It relieved the tension.



One morning the chow truck finally caught up with us. We were standing in line in the dark waiting for the food and we noticed German soldiers in line with us. They were chilled to the bone. They were hungry, too. When it got light they had gone back to their lines and were shooting at us. We captured some prisoners. There was one whole battalion in uniform with their weapons stacked. The German officers told the men that they were to join us and fight the Russians. We circled them around and sent them to the back of the lines. Some of them spoke pretty good English. When we reach a super Audubon highway we crossed and set up a position. I had a German Jew in my outfit, whose family had left in 1935. His name was Swab. He was smart. I told him to make an overlay and he did a good job.



While on a drive, we hit a village. We were checking out all the houses. They had manure piles near the front door. The rooms had hard packed dirt floors and the animal rooms were next to the other rooms. In one of the houses the animal urine would run down through a hole into a well. One our man was walking by the house when he completely disappeared. He fell into that well. He was one stinking soldier. It was not funny them, but later we dubbed him "Old Stinky."



The division commander had a 300 radio like ours. He tried to get in contact with the 3rd Battalion, but the Colonel wouldn't answer. He finally got the Colonel to answer. He told him if moved another inch that he would relieve him of his command. We were running wild. Our maps were obsolete. Our Colonel wanted to be the first to get to the Rhine.



We hit the Rhine at Ludwigshafen. There was street fighting on the outskirts of town, which was on the banks of the Rhine. The Germans had managed to destroy some of our supply warehouses. We caught four Germans who had been using some of our uniforms to fool us. We sent them back to the rear to a tank crew. They said they didn't want them and tried to give them back. We were told that the tank crews later shot them. We ran into the armored guys and jawed at each other on who got there first. We had orders not to shoot any bullets into the buildings. I found out later why. There were some kind of war gases in them. They began shelling us. They came in kind of slow and you could see them. I have never seen anything like them before or since. They hid the ground and bounced toward us. They were luminous. We didn't lose a man. They kept bouncing.



Early the next morning I saw a man dragging a Joe had been shot. I heard that "burp gun." It was a 9 mm gun. It was the fastest thing. I'll never forget that sound. You heard the first and last of it. I saw a fellow sergeant in a whole near a house. He was in the back yard. We believed that shots were coming from the top of the house. We started up the stairs which were wide enough for one person. We eased up the stairs. We heard the gun tear loose again. We kicked the door open and saw an old man shooting out the window. There was an old lady handing the clips to him. They were quite aged. We killed them. I looked out the window and saw German civilians just standing there in the street. They seemed to think they were impervious. We were relieved by another outfit and pulled back to reduce the strong points we had by-passed along our way. We got them reduced.



They shot us to Czechoslovakia. It was more like Kansas, but more rolling. There were a few trees. We were ordered to dig in. We wanted to know why. We wanted to know what was going on. We were told that the Russians were coming. Our division command post was in Prague about 30 kilometers away. The Russian lines and the American lines were a mile and one half to two miles apart when we stopped. The German soldiers would come over from the lines at night to surrender to us. We put them in trucks and sent them back through the lines. We later heard that they were given back to the Germans. I don't know, but the Germans quit surrendering to us.



I wasn't but a couple of days, two or three, before Russians troops came into our lines. They would use hand signals to tell us they wanted a cigarette. When we handed it to them, they would take the whole pack. They began to ask us for gas. We would give them five gallons or so. They seemed to get upset with us when we started handing them only one cigarette. When they got too mad, we pointed our guns at them. Later I was told that they didn't have any quartermasters, that the lived off fat of the land.



I saw a funeral in Czechoslovakia. It was the first one ever done that way. I was sitting in a barber chair. I always kept my weapon with me, no matter what. I had a .45 under the hair net. I heard a bugle in the distance. I said what is that? I snatched off the hair net and went toward the window. You just didn't run out the door and look to see what was happening. I saw a crowd of people. There were two horses pulling a wagon. I heard a brass band. I thought what was going on - a funeral with a brass band? I kept watching. They (the Germans) would pull anything. You couldn't trust nobody. As it got closer I notice the pretty black horses. The were plumes on the bridle. They had a completely black harness except for the shiny brass on the end of the hames. There were coachman driving the wagon. I kept observing. Behind the band was the family of the corpse, singing, hollering and drinking vodka and schnaps. It was a celebration. The hearse was drawn by two horses with glass on each side. I could see a make-shift coffin. I questioned the Chec barber. He told me that we rejoice at death and mourn at birth. He told me that the dead man did not want for anything, but a child who is born wants for all of his life.



I wasn't there a few days when I got word that I was going to be rotated back to the states for discharge. Back then I was offered a battlefield commission by the 3rd Army Headquarters. A lot of the troops that had much time in the ETO were being sent to units in the Pacific which had little time there. I told them that the only way I would accept was if I could stay there. The captain told me that it was better for me and the men to leave. I told him that I had trained many of them since they were recruits and that I would have no trouble from them. The Captain asked the Colonel and the Colonel asked the Regimental Commander. The officers were furnished liquor and the enlisted men had to scrounge for it. The Captain offered me a drink. The company clerk came in and told me that in a few weeks that I would be a "shaved-tail" lieutenant. I was going to be sent back to the states and then if I didn't have the points, I would go to the Pacific. The Captain pulled out the order and laid them on the table and told me to sign them. I told the Captain to tear them up. He said, "What do you mean, tear them up?" I told him that I was sick of war and that I just wanted to go home. I had a daughter at home who I had never seen. I also had a son, but I had seen him. It took three months for the telegram to get to me that I had a daughter. He said, "that's just scuttlebutt." I took a drink of the cognac and then I tore them up. He said, "What would the Colonel say." I said that I would talk to the Colonel. He then told me, " I don't blame you. I wouldn't take it if they made me a General. I am sick of war too and I want to go home."



In one or two weeks they sent me home. I went to Paris and flew back home. I was discharged at Fort McPherson. I was the second man in my company to be rotated back home. Sixteen days after I left Czechoslovakia I was home, laying brick for the expansion of the Navy hospital in Dublin. The men kidded me that I didn't even get a vacation. I was just glad to be back home. They offered me a big construction job up North, but I said no. I had drug my wife and son from camp to camp and I wasn't going to move again. I took a job in the security section at the Navy Hospital. After the war I got into the masonry business and also raised a few hogs and livestock.



Interviewed by Scott B. Thompson, Sr., November 26, 1999