My basic training took place at Camp Wallace, Texas. In addition to the usual stuff, I was trained as a cannoneer, the guy who loads the guns in a tank. I was rated expert in carbine and submachine guns. These were skills I actually used after the war when I took up hunting. I haven’t hunted in many years, but I am still a good marksman and enjoy sport shooting to this day.

In September 1944, I shipped out to England and was temporarily at Tidworth Barracks before crossing over to Calais, France. There I joined the 7^th Army, and occasionally was also with the 1^st French Army. My job was tank loader, but I also sometimes worked as the radio operator or the gunner. Our job was to kill as many Germans as we could.

We wore an olive drab jumpsuit in the tank, kind of like overalls. We also had a short windbreaker with knitted cuffs and collar and a knit cap that we would wear if we weren’t wearing our helmets. These uniforms were so nondescript that when I was captured, along with my tank driver, the Germans didn’t seem to recognize us as American soldiers. Instead of being put in a POW camp, we were placed in a compound of some sort with other displaced persons, civilians actually.

A typical day for me was worry, fear, and concern--just trying my best to stay alive. When you’re engaged in battle you are almost devoid of feeling. You are just too busy following orders, doing your job. The fear is in the back of your mind, of course, but you just ignore it. I think I became an existentialist during the war. That is, I learned to live outside myself. I followed my orders, I did what I had to do.  But I was hiding within myself, I really wasn’t there. I think that’s how a lot of guys handled the fear during war.

The saddest memory of the war for me is what we found one day in the wreckage of a smokestack. We had pulled back from the front line to rest, refuel and rearm. We were in a quiet town. There were medical corpsmen there, with red crosses on their helmets and they were ministering to the wounded. All of a sudden, one of them keeled over.  A bullet had pierced the center of the red cross on his helmet. Within a few minutes, another corpsman was hit, once again in the center of that red cross on his helmet. We looked around; determining that the only place for this sniper to be was in a smokestack, all that remained of a factory that had been destroyed in the town. So we turned our guns on it and blew it up. When we searched the wreckage we found the body of a teenage girl, 16 or 17 years old, and her rifle with a sniper’s scope.

I’ll never forget my first battle. Our tank pulled up to the top of a hill. We had just stopped when an 88mm cannon hit us. The tank was immediately disabled and caught fire. One of our gunners was killed outright, and our tank commander was killed when he tried to get out the top turret. Our driver managed to open the trap door escape hatch under his seat and he and I, along with the other gunner managed to get out. The gunner had been stuck between the seats and the wall of the tank, but I was able to grab hold and pull him out with me. The side of my face was pretty badly burned, but I was lucky to be alive.

I got first aid treatment before being taken by ambulance to a hospital. My face and hands were covered with bandages from my shoulders to the top of my head. There was a small opening for my mouth and an opening around my nostrils. I had to drink three 46-ounce bottles of fruit juice every day in addition to regular meals. I was given lots of penicillin. My urine was collected in a large glass bottle and then it was processed in some way to recover and recycle the penicillin that hadn’t been absorbed by the body. After several days, the doctor came in and told me he was going to unwrap my head, and to not be alarmed because the room had been completely darkened. He told me that I wouldn’t be able to see until he had washed the debris from my eyes, but not to worry, that my sight would gradually return. He was right. Slowly, after about fifteen minutes, things began to come into focus. I was really happy. He did tell me my lenses were somewhat scarred, but it hasn’t seemed to hurt me that much. I was sent to another hospital to recuperate and after I did I returned to the front to participate in the Battle of the Bulge, sometimes with Patton’s 3^rd Army, sometimes with the 7^th Army and sometimes with the 1^st French Army.

We were even luckier when during the Battle of the Bulge our tank came around a corner to find a German antitank gun staring right at us. I shot first and blew them all away before they could fire.

My luck ran out when we entered Bachsburg. There was a steep hill and stone wall on one side of us, about 10 or 12 feet high. On the other side were steep steps. The Germans let five tanks enter this area. Then they took out the first tank and the last tank. We had no escape and got hit with panzerfaust, a German bazooka. Three men in our tank died instantly.  Only the assistant driver and I got out.

I was at the radio at the time and it partially shielded me from flying shrapnel when our tank was hit. Nevertheless, I took quite a bit of shrapnel from my hip to my shoulder on the right side of my back. The assistant driver and I escaped though the trap door and while I was lying under the tank I buried a German luger gun and a watch that I had picked up. We went up the steps to the one side and entered the first building we came to. Inside was a German soldier, who pointed his weapon at us. We raised our hands and surrendered. This soldier took us up the hill and into the building at the top. An SS Lieutenant took our valuables, my knife that I kept tucked in the back of my pants, a penknife from my boot, my comb, but left me my Zippo (cigarette lighter). He wanted my wedding ring too, but I told him it wouldn’t come off. He threatened to chop my finger off, but just then an artillery barrage started so he hustled us off into a jeep. We spent three days traveling with this Lieutenant; no sleep, nothing to eat, getting water only occasionally where we could find it. Finally an old woman gave us prisoners a loaf of bread which we broke in half. We ate half and I kept half hidden.

We were taken to some compound, a large fenced in area, probably five to ten acres. It was full of people. After our trip we were exhausted. I took the half loaf of bread, wrapped it in my jacket and made a pillow of it. I fell instantly asleep for a couple of hours. When I awoke, the bread was gone, but my jacket was still wrapped up under my head!

I was worried that my shrapnel wounds would cause blood poisoning, so I started raising some Cain. I knew that I was entitled to medical care per the Geneva Convention. I was insistent. Finally a Sergeant took me out and put me in a line of German soldiers. There was a man examining each soldier, and another man putting tags on them as he finished. I showed the man my back, they tagged me and sent me off to an ambulance.

I was taken to a hospital, a former TB (tuberculosis) sanitarium. It was full of German soldiers, I was the only American. The German soldiers were friendly, and I was a novelty to them. I soon learned, "kommen sie hier, Garrett, mit der fier" meant, "come here Garrett with the lighter." I was given an injection of some kind and clean pajamas. A nurse who I came to know as Sister Else came in every day for four days and picked shrapnel the size of BBs out of my back.

After I’d been there about a month the SS Lieutenant on the ward was listening to the radio and he said, "Bad news. Roosevelt is dead." I told him, "NO!, that’s propaganda." Then he told me it must be true because he was listening to the BBC. I was disheartened. I highly respected FDR and the way he fought the war.

Not long after that some guys shouted that the Americans were coming and all SS should leave immediately. Some fools on the roof of the hospital started firing bazookas at the approaching American tanks. They of course returned fire and we all scattered, looking for protection from the barrage. I picked a wall in the basement. It had a window over my head, but I could see out. All of a sudden a GI jumped over some low bushes right in front of me. I tapped on the window…

"Got a cigarette?" I asked.

Boy, was he surprised! "Yes!" he replied, "Are you a POW?"

"Yes," I answered.

So he had me crawl out the window and he escorted me back to the command post.

While I was in the German hospital, I had free rein around the place, and that included going up on the roof. We’d go up there to sunbathe. You could see all around the countryside from up there. I knew where the Germans had tanks in the area, and I knew where they kept their weapons. I told the Colonel in charge all about it. Colonel Wood engaged the Germans in battle and he was awarded the Silver Star. I kind of wondered why he was the one who got the star since it was me who gave him all the information. Oh, well.

I had lost about 40 pounds while I was a captive. We only had cabbage soup and black bread to eat. At the command post someone gave me some K rations. I wolfed them right down, and they came right back up. Too much concentrated food for my weak stomach.

I got sent to a hospital in Rheims where I recuperated. I was given a ticket to Paris, with instructions to go to such and such train on such and such track when I got there and it would take me to Camp Lucky Strike. I met a Sergeant on the train and we decided to go AWOL in Paris. We figured, "What could they do to us?" So we did just that. We went to a finance office, told them we’d been POW’s and asked for an advance on our pay. We got it. Really we got quite a lot of money for the time. We stayed a whole week in Paris, drinking, carousing around and having a good time. When we finally went to Camp Lucky Strike we discovered that they didn’t even miss us!

I was offered a battle commission during the war after I successfully showed our Captain how to set up for an artillery barrage with our tanks when he did not know how to do it. If you accepted a battle commission, you were in the service for the duration of the war plus another six months, and once the war was over, you would be placed on reserves for six years. You could be called up at any time. I had had enough of war already, and so I declined. I’m glad I did, because I would have had to go to Korea too.

I was most proud of helping to rescue and take to safety a French family of five who had been hiding in their basement from the Germans. Noncombatants endured great suffering during the war. It was not just the holocaust. Nearly 50 million people were killed as a result of that war. It started with the Japanese in China. It was absolutely horrible.

My unit was just a piece of a huge puzzle during the war. We filled our gap, we did our job and I think we did it well, especially during the Battle of the Bulge. I think we really excelled then. Of course, the Germans were running out of supplies and ammunition by then. I never had a doubt that we would win the war. We were super-confident. We had the attitude, "Ain’t nobody as good as us!" We had the best government, the best people, and the best technology. We STILL do. Sure we made some mistakes during the war. All humans make mistakes, but nothing was done capriciously.

I don’t think people today truly understand the sacrifices the American people made back then. How they endured at home. I don’t think they comprehend the sheer horror of that war. I don’t think they really care and I don’t think they’ve learned much from it.

I got drunk, pure and simple on V-E Day. I was home and at a repo depot in preparation of going to the Pacific Theater when V-J day came. That was a relief.

When I got home from the war my family was really excited. I had been reported MIA (missing in action) and they had come to the conclusion that I was probably dead. Boy, were they surprised! Not too much had changed while I was gone. Things seemed pretty much the same except that there were a lot more working women.

When I returned from the war my hopes for the future were pretty dim. I think I was suffering what they called battle fatigue then, post traumatic stress syndrome in the current jargon. That first summer I spent sitting on my in-laws porch swing and swatting flies. I killed files and I went downtown every week to pick up my allotment. After awhile I snapped out of it and got a job first doing door to door sales, then driving a bakery truck, and finally with the railroad and steel mills. In a few years, I was enticed to go to college and I became a teacher, a school principal, and education administrator.

In hindsight, the war taught me that I was resourceful, that I was fully capable of taking care of myself, that it was up to me to capitalize on my abilities. It made me self-confident. I am 78 years old, and I still am that way. I travel everywhere, and if I hadn’t had those experiences, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do what I have done. The best thing the Army gave me was an education. I went to college, earned my Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees and I wouldn’t have been able to afford that without the GI Bill.

Yes, fighting World War Two was the moral thing to do. We were headed for domination by two totalitarian governments. If America hadn’t stopped them, nobody could have. We were the last hope for the world. It was also necessary to punish those two dictators, madmen in my mind. They were responsible for millions and millions of deaths.

Hiroshima? In my opinion, we didn’t do it soon enough. I think the German people could have stopped Hitler, had they really wanted to. The Japanese however, had a totally different way of life. They were raised to revere the Emperor, to look upon him as a god, they lived by their Bushido creed. I don’t see how they could have stood up to him. I despise the Japanese to this day and refuse to buy Japanese goods if I can get around it any way. As far as the Germans, well, my mother’s family was German. I can only say that I am ashamed and embarrassed of my German heritage.

There is an old movie that I think gives the most accurate portrayal of the day to day life during World War Two. It’s called, "A Walk in the Sun." As far as a movie showing a specific well-known battle, "Saving Private Ryan," gave me a chill when I saw it, but even it did not completely convey the horror of witnessing men dying in battle.

I couldn’t go back to war.