I got to Europe in late 1944, landing at Le Havre, France.  We were transported first by trains through France, then by the most rickety old "8 or 80" trucks, relics still in service from the "Great War" meant to carry 8 horses or 80 men.  We got there near the end of the war so our job was to take over villages and flush out any German soldiers left there.  We’d race from one village to another, ready to fight if we had to,  infantry working with tanks.  We were a pretty intimidating sight.  If we weren’t greeted with a white flag, one of our tanks would just tear through the town, get to some low ground, and then nose around until only the big guns were visible.  It would fire a few rounds into the town, and that made them pretty willing to give up.  We’d call out and ask for the Burgermeister to surrender his town.  Mostly they did. We’d be running all day, hanging onto the transport trucks, 10-50 miles a day, town after town. We’d secure a town, spend the night, live through it and start all over the next day.  We had a few big fights along the way:  New Market and Riegensburg, and Saarlatten on the Saar River. My platoon was the point platoon at New Market, the front line platoon.  Nobody in front of you, the whole 3^rd Army behind you, even General George Patton, that old rascal. He sure was a hellion.

I liked shooting mortars; they were a lot of fun – like shooting basketballs.  It was a big game, trying to knock them out with the mortars.  The Germans had the best damn tanks in the War. Those Panzers scared everyone to death.  They took out 10 of ours for every one of theirs lost. They were something fierce.  So were their soldiers.  Some of them had been in the war since Stalingrad; they were excellent, disciplined, tough soldiers.  We respected them.

We had already whipped the Germans by this time.  We could hear the B-17 and B-25 bombers humming overhead at night, hear the explosions far off in the distance.  They were bombing more as reprisals than any other good reason. The bombs would hit those Panzers sometimes and the soldiers would just fry inside when the top would melt closed.  It was horrible seeing those men who managed to get out, charred black, falling dead out of those tanks.

Our helmets were our bathtubs, sometimes even our cook pots. We had a toothbrush, but little else in the way of personal hygiene luxuries out in the field.  We were stinky, dirty, unshaven and not likely to see clean clothes or have a whole bath for a month or two.  We ate our C-rations and K-rations.  I got so sick and tired of hash.  The chocolate was pretty good.  When we overtook towns we always scouted for fresh food.  We’d been told to steer clear of home canned goods, warned that they could be poisoned or rigged to explode.  Of course we didn’t listen. We gobbled any fresh food we could get our hands on.  I can admit to devouring 51 preserved eggs all at one sitting when we were lucky enough to stumble on some sort of egg preservation production in one town we passed through.  We spent a few days there and wiped out an entire flock of chickens too, leaving the owner with a single rangy old rooster.  I’m not really proud of that now.

After we secured another town we took over a large farm barn for our evening quarters.  We dragged in straw and hay and spread it around to make quite a comfortable place to rest.  The platoon was divided into thirds, two thirds got to sleep, and one third was on the lookout for Germans, and we rotated positions throughout the night.  Come morning someone noticed though the cracks in the floor what looked like boots down under the floorboards.  We pried them up, and were astounded to discover we’d spent the night sleeping on top of a couple of very disgruntled German machine gunners who had hidden themselves underneath the floor boards, then had been trapped by our arrival.

When we got to the Saar River, there were miles and miles of pillboxes, about 100 yards apart, their openings angled to allow for a deadly crossfire.  It was suicide to approach them. We spent quite awhile there.  One day the Major commanded me to take six men out there and draw fire, he had to know if the pillboxes were still manned, or if the Germans had  abandoned them.  I had just been down near there, had seen the smoke that rose from the pillboxes as the Germans cooked their breakfast.  I told him so, but the son of a gun wouldn’t believe me.  Well, we did as commanded.  I was with them, saw the first man get hit.  Two of us reached him and began dragging him back to safety, and as we did, well, they got him again.  We managed to pull him out of range into a culvert under the road.  He died there. Another of my men was hit and killed on the road.  Why didn’t he believe me?  I’ll never forgive that Major to this day, and we remained somewhat enemies throughout the war.  We finally got to those pillboxes by parachuting men in behind them, because they were vulnerable from the rear, just like the French Maginot line.

In officer training school they warned us not to get too close to our men.  They said it could cloud our judgment.  Maybe so.  But I wish I knew the whole name of the man who saved our whole platoon.  He was Sergeant Baker, from Texas.  Had a wife and four kids I know.  We were set to go down some road, and he scouted it out on his own, came back warning of the Panzers and other stuff lying in wait for us.  He told us he had to find another route.  He saved us all.  I wanted to tell his family that.  A sniper got him -- I heard the loud ping as it hit his helmet, knocking it off his head, and I saw him die, a bullet right to the center of his forehead. That’s what made me most proud in the war, how the guys in my platoon protected each other. I was the officer, but they never called me Lieutenant.  It was "Fred", or "Hey Cabbage Head." "Kohl" means cabbage in German.  The Germans would always target the officers first, so my guys didn’t want them hearing me being called Lieutenant and being shot dead on account of it.  Even though officers were issued a carbine, and I had an expert rating with that weapon, I tossed it and took up an M1 rifle as soon as I could.  I didn’t want to be identified as an officer by my weapon.

We had doubts of an Allied victory in Europe during the Battle of the Bulge.  Those damn Germans broke the Geneva Conference Convention (rules governing civilized warfare) and were putting on Allied uniforms.  We thought we might lose it all then.

My platoon was the point going into Linz, Austria on the Danube River,  Patton’s whole 3^rd Army behind us.  A German Colonel met us, white flag waving, and surrendered the former Luftwaffe Air Base there.  We commanded him to bring all weapons and ammunition and place them in a two-story barracks.  Meanwhile we went off, hoping to live through the night. There were about 1,000 German soldiers in Linz, and only a dozen of us.  If they had chosen to fight, we certainly would have been goners.  The next morning the Sergeant asked what we should do with all these weapons and ammunition.  I told him to torch the place.  What a scene!  Like fireworks on the Fourth of July!  Trouble was, the spectacle blocked the only way through Linz, and when the 27^th Army came through they were delayed a couple of hours.  The General was livid.

"Who the hell gave orders to set fire to that?" he roared.

"I dunno, Sir," I replied.  "Germans?"

After we passed through Linz, we reached the Inns River, the sight of a huge hydroelectric dam. The Americans were on one side of the river, the Russians on the other. Though we had liberty to cross, they were under threat of a court-martial if they ventured over to our side.  A black market soon was thriving as the Russians were desperate for anything we had.  I sold my Mickey Mouse watch for $200 and sent the money home to my wife.  Lots of guys sold anything they could get their hands on.  Some made thousands there. When the war was over in Europe, we all expected to be sent to the Pacific, a prospect that terrified us.  We kept up artillery practice and one day accidentally sent a few rounds across the Danube and into the Russian Army. Boy were they hot about it.  We all hated the Russians.  Some guys even wanted to go after them and said we might as well fight them now because we’ll meet them on a battlefield sooner or later.  A lot of us were really upset that the Russians got Berlin after the War.

We had no idea of the Holocaust in Europe until we saw it for ourselves.  We came upon an emaciated Jewish prisoner outside Linz.  He begged the Sergeant to come with him to the hospital.  The poor people were so sick and starving, filthy, dressed in raggedy prisoner garb with dirty white and black stripes and a Star of David on the chest.  We tried to give them some of our rations, but they were so sick they would just vomit it all up.  It was unbelievable. They wanted us to help them, and we had to leave them.  We had to tell them to wait for the medical personnel who were coming right behind us and not to worry, the war was over and their captors had fled.  It was a horrible sight, and we hated to abandon them, but what could we do?

When we got the word that Japan had surrendered I was with the 83^rd Chemical Mortar Battalion training to go to Japan.  We were living in Steyr, Austria in a gasthaus (guest house), a magnificent place, high in the Alps.  They had horses for riding and great fishing.  We’d practice shooting our mortars and then go riding or fishing when off duty.  I got to be a pretty good rider.  We were relieved to know we didn’t have to go to the Pacific.  If you had to go to war, we all preferred Europe.  The Japanese soldiers were incomprehensible to us.  They almost never surrendered, were rarely captured alive, and then there were those crazy kamikazes.

I think the biggest misconception people have about the war is the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor.  The military knew Japan was preparing to attack us.  I’ll never understand why they let it happen.  Why didn’t they get those ships and those men out of there?

A lot of good men gave their lives in the war, but it was worth the price we paid.  Hitler would have taken Britain, then all the rest of Europe.  He had to be stopped.  It was the moral thing to do.

After the war was over, I was assigned to a prisoner of war camp with about a thousand German and Hungarian POWs in Linz, Austria at the site of the old Luftwaffe air base.  I spent the remaining time in Europe as General Robert C. Macon’s Junior Aide.  He was in charge of over half of Austria, and we lived almost like kings in a castle.  We ate well, played cribbage most evenings.  I learned an awful lot being his aide.  One big thing I learned happened when I was the new kid on the block.  A woman came along and asked to see her husband in the POW camp.  So I took her on down there and let her see him.  Boy!  Was the General hopping mad at me, for it was strictly forbidden to do that, but what the heck, I didn’t know any better.  Guess they were worried she could be passing some secret information or helping some former SS officer keep his identify a secret.

I made a good Austrian friend after the war had ended before I came home.  We talk about how we were each trained to hate the enemy, how we desired nothing but to kill each other.  We shake our heads and laugh about it now.  I go to visit him in Austria occasionally, and we’ve been friends all this time.

I returned stateside in late March of 1946.  I finished my degree at Kansas State and became a PE and Health teacher at Central Junior High in Kansas City, KS, then a Science and Math teacher at Argentine Middle and High Schools. In 1959, I became the Director of Physical Education, Health and Safety for the Kansas City, Kansas School District, and am proud to have established the first Driver’s Education class there. I am now retired and live in Shawnee, KS.