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World War II
IN THE NEWS
Here are some excerpts from newspapers and other printed media that folks were reading during World War II. To date, the majority of this research material was provided by Butch May of Atlanta.
I apologize (though not too much) for the numerous references to the 3rd Armored Division here. Butch's dad and my grandfather both served in this fine unit. We've got a kinda soft spot for the 3AD here at Dare and Endure HQ.
May 21
Jungle fighters on Guadalcanal and desert scrappers in Tunisia have been smart about saluting; so we have no excuse for our failure of this courtesy. Remember, a snappy salute signifies a well trained fighting man. [The Weekly Howl (3rd AD stateside publication), p2]
Events for Friday May 21 - Thursday May 27...
Service Club: Quiz program, 4 PM. Open dance - Reading Girls, 8 PM.
Lebanon USO Club: 930 Willow St - Square dancing, rhumba, and conga.
Theaters 2 and 4: Crash Dive
Service Club: Open dance - Hershey Girls.
Lebanon USO Club: 930 Willow St - Songs around the piano 7:30 PM.
[The Weekly Howl, p3]The "Men of War" from the 33rd Armored Regiment pulled down their second win in league play in a 13 to 0 gallop over the 67th Field Artillery. [The Weekly Howl,p5]
Camp Wheeler, GA (CNS) -
A brand new lieutenant got his career as an officer off to a good walking start. Ordered to one battalion, he erroneously reported to another just in time to accompany a platoon on a 19 mile hike. Returning from the hike he discovered his error and moved to his correct outfit. He arrived just in time to get in on a 15 mile hike. [The Weekly Howl, p7]
Jan 29
An armored infantry battalion of the 14th Armored Division was cleaning out a town in Alsace when SSgt Carl H. Wymore, Salt Lake City, UT, of one company, startled the armored doughboys by appearing on the street with a squad of 16 men - all in German uniform.
He marched them down the street in column of threes, and one man swore that he could hear him counting cadence under his breath.
It all began when Sgt Wymore led a patrol out to contact the Company which was cleaning house on another street. On the way they stopped to relieve two Nazis of the burden of housekeeping in a French home and were surprised to hear them volunteer to take them to where more enemy soldiers were yearning for the security of a prison camp.
Warily escorting the prisoners up a hill on the outskirts of town, the patrol found 14 more Nazis lying prone on the ground. They seemed almost relieved to see the Americans - but as Sgt Wymore says, were scared half to death.
They got up, docilely enough, and formed column of three without a murmur; and marched into town at the sergeant's orders as though they understood the old Army "Hup, two, three, four."
[Armored News]July 30
It was disclosed officially tonight that the 3rd Armored Division is participating in the great American attack which is sweeping the German army out of Normandy's hedgerows. It was the first time the division had seen combat. [Atlanta Journal]
July 31
The Russians launched a large-scale attack on German positions only eight miles from pre-war East Prussia, making penetrations at some points. [The Stars and Stripes, Continental Edition, p1]
The 2nd Armored Division is now firmly entrenched along the Seinne River. One reconnaissance unit has taken twice its own number in German prisoners. It had to fight every few hundred yards. Little light tanks ganged up on German Tigers to bewilder and hurry them. [The Stars and Stripes, Continental Edition, p1]
St Louis - Betting commissioner James Carroll shortened his odds on the re-election of President Roosevelt today from 1:3 to 9:5. [The Stars and Stripes, Continental Edition, p2]
Pvt Martin Miller writes: "I wrote to a girlfriend in England that I was awarded the Good Conduct Medal. In answer, she wrote her congratulations and best wishes that I may receive the Purple Heart next." [The Stars and Stripes, Continental Edition, p2]
Irvington, NJ - The first thing Marine Cpl Frederick Sochan wanted upon his return from two years in the South Pacific was - a dish of chop suey. Said he didn't get any there. [The Stars and Stripes, Continental Edition, p2]
Camp Van Dorn, MS - One night in the field a whole company of the 255th infantry complained that their coffee tasted like dishwater. Investigation showed that in the darkness the men had been scooping up dishwater in their coffee cups and washing their mess kits in the coffee cans. [The Stars and Stripes, Continental Edition, p2]
The Boston Red Sox climbed over the Yankees into second place, 3 1/2 games behind the St Louis Browns. [The Stars and Stripes, Continental Edition, p2]
Film actress Jean Parker received her final divorce decree from Dowson Sanders, her second husband. [The Stars and Stripes, Continental Edition, p2]
August 7
Correspondents in Churchill's party pronounced the men of the 3rd Armored some of the toughest men and best shots they had ever seen. At that time, they were held to be "almost overconfident", but that confidence paid off in the initial spectacular successes of this division. [Armored News]
October 30
John Thompson, Chicago Tribune war correspondent, writes:
"Almost every vehicle of the 3rd Armored Division needed maintenance desperately. In his long fighting march from the Seine eastward, the division commander, Maj Gen Maurice Rose, had violated every precept of vehicle maintenance. But he'd kept rolling and fighting and killing Germans." [Armored News]
October 23
The Commanding General, Army Service Forces, has accepted an offer of national network time for a series of radio broadcasts involving the preparation of soldiers for return to civilian status. The new series, "Assignment Home," will be presented by the Columbia Broadcasting System with the cooperation of the War Department Army Service Forces as a contribution to public understanding of the complex situation confronting the Nation upon the return of the veteran, and of the part ASF will play in resolving it. [Armored News]
The first Transportation Corps WAC group to be sent overseas as a unit has arrived in Paris by air after a six-day stay in England. [Armored News]
November 27
One of the great tragedies of the campaign on the German front happened recently.
Lt. Col. Sam Hogan, of the 3rd Armored Division lost the war's biggest hangover, and the 1st Infantry Division found it.
Hogan, a Texan, accepted the surrender of seven German half-tracks and thirteen horse-drawn vehicles and sent them to the rear without bothering to see what they were hauling. Later doughboys from the 1st Infantry Division stopped the convoy and found it consisted chiefly of vast quantities of liquid refreshments - but hard!
Hogan swears to look at the loads of any future vehicles he captures, according to correspondent Hal Boyle.
[Armored News]
December 4
On the plain west of the Roer River, the Germans threw in 100 tanks, including 42 of the new 70-ton King Tigers. This heavy counterattack was smashed, the enemy losing 60% of his tanks. By last Wednesday, 2nd AD tankers, with the Ninth Army's infantry, had established themselves firmly along the west bank of the Roer River, last serious water barrier before the Rhine. Knee deep mud made tank operations extremely difficult. [Armored News]
Pots and pans which had been used only a moment earlier by Pvt Earl R. Roark, of Henley, MO, near his kitchen truck in northern Italy, were destroyed by a direct hit by a German shell recently. Roark, a cook in the 1st Armored Division, had helped serve the noon meal and had moved the truck out about four minutes before the shell landed. The utensils had been left behind. It was the first shelling Roark and his kitchen comrades had been in since the days on Anzio. [Armored News]
Sgt Morris A Koland, of Karlstad, MN, and the 3rd Armored "Spearhead" Division, looks under his cot before he goes to sleep at night, and no wonder. When the "Spearhead" division was bringing the blitzkrieg back to the land of its birth recently, Koland and his crew pulled into a French village, after traveling a mere 70 miles, and after posting guards, hit the sack in a handy ditch. Up at dawn, Sergeant Koland began to waken his crew. There seemed to be an awful lot of them, he thought sleepily. There were. Sergeant Koland had routed four German soldiers from their slumbers in the same ditch with his own crew! [Armored News]
December 11
The new recruit's first assignment was guard duty at the ammunition dump. The officer of the day found him sitting down with his gun taken completely apart.
OD: "I take it you're the guard here?"
Guard: "Well, I'm sort of a sentinal."
OD: "Well, I'm sort of an officer of the day."
Guard: "Well, if you'll wait 'til I get this gun together, I'll give you a salute."
[Armored News]In the drive through Belgium, Sgt. John W. Bell, of Chandlersville, IL, tank commander of the 3rd Armored "Spearhead" Division, found himself in the middle of a column of German troops followed by armored half-tracks and trucks.
Bell opened fire, although it appeared that he was surrounded. As his first round caught the leading half-track and set it afire, the German troops ran for covers. Systematically, Bell raked the enemy vehicles until they were all destroyed. The foot soldiers surrendered.
When Bell left he had five enemy vehicles to his credit and 65 prisoners.
[Armored News]
Jan 8
The Allied high command reported solemnly today a tug of war between the Americans and the Germans on a battlefield 10 miles south of Bologna. An American patrol was returning to its own lines, trailing telephone wire behind it. A Nazi patrol grabbed the wire and started pulling. Headquarters failed to say which side won.
[Atlanta Constitution]Maj Gen Willy Brandner of the Nazi SS Elite Guard, has been killed in action, the German DNB agency reported tonight in a domestic broadcast heard by the FCC.
[Atlanta Constitution]Jan 14
Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt's German armies continue to fall back through their Ardennes salient Saturday night as the US First Army - in a grand attempt to cut off from the Reich these retreating enemy forces - scored gains of up to two miles in a general assault all along the Germans' 30 mile northern flank. [Atlanta Journal]
20-inch round Venetian mirror at this low price: 99¢. Plump cotton mattress; all felted cotton mattress, will not get lumpy or bumpy: $16.95 [Atlanta Journal]
Jan 22
"Keep moving and keep attacking," says Brig Gen Bruce C. Clarke of the 7th Armored Division. "Don't let the enemy know where you are, or what you intend to do." The general's favorite feat is to mount a cub plane to survey enemy territory before engaging in battle. His theory of winning: "plan deliberately but make your execution violent." [Armored News]
The 2nd Armored Division teamed with infantry, less than seven miles due north of Houffalize, and captured the village of Petites-Tailles in a flanking sweep around the difficult marshes. [Armored News]
Jan 30
At SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces - MK] last week, an appeal was made to headquarters men for contributions of Type O blood, needed immedaitely at the front.
A couple of days later, volunteers were lined up in the dispensary. No one paid much attention at first as an officer walked into the room. He lay down on a litter and a nurse bustled over to wrap a tourniquet around his arm.
A soldier on the next litter looked over idly, looked back, then did an astonished double-take. The guy next to him was Gen Eisenhower.
"It was just like any other GI," said T4 Conrad J. Segrin, one of the dispensary's medics. "He wasn't a special case at all. Ike came in, they took his blood, he got a cup of coffee, and he left. Just like that."
There was a private in the waiting line who saw the Supreme Commander on his way out. He turned to the man beside him and said, "Hey, that'd be the blood to get. Maybe I could make general with it."
Ike overheard him, turned around and grinned. "If you do," he said, "I hope you don't inherit my bad disposition."
[London Daily ?]Feb 2
American and French troops broke into the northern end of Colmar, Provincial French capital 40 miles south of Strasbourg, at noon Friday, after clearing 30 miles of the left bank of the Rhine and laying siege to the Neufbrisach Bridge from a mile away.
[Atlanta Journal]Feb 5
The Jerries are probably still wondering where, in a small French town, all the mortar shells were coming from and they probably would not believe it if you told them that a half-track driver threw most of the hellish fire single-handedly.
But the truth of the affair is that Tec 5 Augustine Bojorquez, half-track driver, manned the six-man mortar himself and fired 70 rounds into the enemy positions before getting aid.
Cut off in the center of town by a German counter-attack, Bojorquez decided to put the mortar belonging to his squad into action. Running behind his half-track, he set up the 100 pound weapon and let go with the first round.
To do his observing, Bojorquez would run to the front of his vehicle, see where the round landed, and scramble back to his weapon to change the range and throw another shot home.
The Krauts weren't going to let this go on without doing something about it, so on occasions the one-man mortar crew had to climb into his half-track and drive the enemy to cover with a burst from his 50-cal machine gun.
All in all, Bojorquez let go with 70 rounds, and when help arrived on the scene he finished his supply of 142 rounds.
After the one-man barrage had quieted down, thirteen Jerries dazedly surrendered, saying that the fierce mortar fire had killed their captain and most of their outfit.
[Armored News]It happened in Africa, Sicily, and Normandy. It always happens. And recently it happened in Belgium on the 84th Division front.
Sgt Philip Garliardi, Lindsey, CA; Pvt Everett Blackert, Hooppole, IL; and Pvt Ross Himegaugh, Hartville, OH heard a noise. Certain it was a German party trying to slip through their line, the three Yanks dispersed, surrounded the noise, and moved in for the kill. They had three pigs on the spot.
[Armoreed News]First Lt Henry D Wellington of Long Island City, NY, recently was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action on the Fifth Army front in Italy.
He serves in an armored field artillery battalion of the 1st Armored Division.
Wellington observed a German counterattack, composed of infantry and three tanks, advancing toward his observation post on the top floor of a house. Approaching within 200 yards, the enemy began firing. Bullets peppered the walls and several direct hits were scored by 88mm guns.
Wellington remained in his insecure position and called for artillery support, fully aware that he and his unit were well removed from all friendly troops, with no flank or rear protection, and were in danger of being cut off. However, he directed the barrage which scattered the Nazis, causing tanks and infantry to withdraw. His quick action allowed Americans to hold and consolidate the lines, prevented unnecessary casualties, and saved Yank troops from possible capture or annihilation.
[Armored News]Tankers of the 14th Armored Division's tank battalions like the infantry - but they want the doughboys to know it's against the Articles of War to pilfer chow - especially after it's nice and hot.
Jerry was shelling pretty heavily near Baar, France, when Tec 4 Peter Soloman, Johnstown, PA, tank driver, decided he'd brave the enemy artillery long enough to heat a few "C" rations for himself and the rest of the crew.
After he'd dismounted from the tank, got his stove going, and had some stew on to broil, a Jerry 88 began to bracket in on the tank, so Soloman decided to move it out of the bracket.
When the 88 ceased firing, Soloman went to get his food, which would have been warm by then, only to find that some doughboys of an armored infantry battalion had walked away with his dinner - and the stove.
[Armored News]Feb 12
Shells do strange things sometimes. Sgt Harold Bowman of the 16th Armored Division, who fought with the 1st Armored Division in Italy, is one who will vouch for that statement.
Bowman was in the turret of his tank while waiting to take nine German prisoners back to headquarters. He and his crew had just captured them near Anzio in the push toward Rome.
"The prisoners were in front of the tank when a German 105mm shell came over," the sergeant recalled. "It landed only a yard from the tank, killed five prisoners, turned my steel helmet around and sent me reeling to the floor of the tank. All I got out of it was a broken boil on my forehead."
[Armored News]Sgt Lawrence H. Middlecoff, Somerville, TN, recently was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action.
He is serving on the Fifth Army front with the 11th Armored Infantry Battalion, 1st Armored Division.
When Middlecoff's company was attacked by a large enemy force and its positions partially overrun, he and a comrade remained at their machine gun, delivering a withering crossfire that inflicted many losses upon the enemy and stopped the attack on that position.
During another attack, accompanied by heavy shelling, Middlecoff stayed at his gun until his assistant was severely wounded and the gun knocked out by an enemy shell. Middlecoff reconnoitered the other gun positions until he found an unmanned machine gun which he cleaned and repaired. He set up the weapon and continued firing a devastating fire upon the enemy until the engagement was concluded.
[Armored News]Feb 19
SSgt Frank Altuvilla, of Chisholm, MN, became platoon leader twice in one afternoon before he made it stick. Manning around block position on the Houffalize-St Vith highway, which his 83rd Reconnaissance Battalion unit had set up, Altuvilla assumed command when his platoon leader was wounded. Shortly afterward, a second officer was sent to lead the platoon. He too was wounded, and for the second time, Altuvilla assumed the command and successfully held the position. Battalion officers praised the Chisholm soldier for his cool efficiency in a hot spot. [Armored News]
Mar 12
During a recent action of the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment in the small Belgian town of Rettigny, Pvt Charles D. Greene, of Pulaski, TN, and the medical detachment of his unit, was sent forward with five other medics to establish an advanced aid station.
From the rifle company's command post, set up on the outskirts of the town, Pvt Greene travelled nonchalantly down the main street, looking for a prospective aid station. Finding one, he calmly tacked a "Reserved for 36th Medics" sign on the door.
About an hour later, infantrymen armed with tommy guns and carbines proceeded to clear the town of Nazi elements.
Pvt Green was advised to refrain from billet hunting in the future until sectors had been cleared of the enemy.
[Armored News]Apr 8
Sgt Edward L Ellsworth, a veteran medical aid man from Wyoming, was almost killed by a wounded young SS trooper he was attending. As the American turned to adjust a bottle of plasma, the German grabbed a knife from a scabbard on the sergeant's belt. Capt Edgar Crowe, of Mechanicsville, VA, blocked the blow which would have plunged the knife into Ellsworth's back. [Atlanta Journal]
Apr 9
Maj General Maurice Rose, brilliant and dashing leader of the 3rd Armored "Spearhead" Division, was shot down in cold blood as he attempted to surrender to a German tank crew near Paderborn, Germany on March 31. His victories in France earned him the Distinguished Service Medal, the nation's third highest military award. He was the 19th general officer killed in action since Pearl Harbor. He was 45. [Armored News, p1,15]
During a 58 hour drive, the 4th Armored Division captured 6,000 prisoners, captured or destroyed 444 motor vehicles, 417 heavy duty vehicles, 13 Tiger tanks, 12 Panther tanks, 9 Mark IV tanks, 29 self propelled guns, 36 105mm guns, 125 20mm guns, 6 Nebelwerfers, 7 75mm guns, 17 Volkswagons, 42 half-tracks, 16 anti-tank guns, 39 88mm guns, 21 motorcycles, 3 artillery batteries, 2 ammunition dumps, 2 armored cars, 80,000 rounds of 88mm ammunition, 4,000 rounds of 20mm ammunition, 460 enemy killed, and 240 wounded. [Armored News]
German V-bombs have killed 8,436 persons and seriously injured 2,510 others since the attacks began June 15, it was reported today. [Atlanta Journal]
Jun 11
Lt General J. Lawton Collins, commander of the First Army's VII Corps paid tribute to the 3rd Armored "Spearhead" Division, saying: "We could never have made the great swinging marches without the 3rd Armored Division. Your men have been privileged to serve not in an ordinary division, but in one of the very great divisions. I want to tell you how happy and proud I have been to have the honor to command you."
[Armored News]
Aug 20
When snakes slip past ushers at a certain theater at an advanced base in the Philippines they bring the audience to their feet quicker than the national anthem, reports a combat correspondent. Servicemen sitting in the front row thought this was the case recently when a roar was heard from behind them. Getting on their chairs they saw the cause of the commotion. A young Filipino girl, a la Lana Turner, had entered the theater wearing a yellow sweater. [Armored News]
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