The series: Struggle
Interviews with 16 Wisconsin veterans hailed as members of America’s greatest generation. They recount their experiences from Pearl Harbor to D-Day. Noteworthy is the involvement of Wisconsin’s own in benchmarks of the war, such as Pearl Harbor.
Jim Magruder: I’ve been wanting to tell this story for years and years, you know. But, you know, I’ve kept quiet about this thing for 40-some years. It’s just something I didn’t want to talk about. And the longer I didn’t talk about it, the easier it was for me to put it back there and leave it.
C.A. Van Selus: I think we’re all pretty much the same way. Jim and I were roommates at the University after the war. I don’t think we ever talked about our war experiences.
Tom Lucas: I got a smell of that cordite and everything just flashed right back, just flashed back.
Jay Parish: The only problem I had was after I got out, I had dreams. I had dreams, dreams, dreams. It was awful.
Walter Klunk: But to talk to you about it? You know, for 20 years, I don’t think, you know, it was in the mind; but you just never, you just didn’t want to talk about it. I really don’t know why.
James Underkofler: Because it’s difficult to talk to people about something like that that weren’t there.
Lyle Hougan: But at first, you know, we didn’t, we just – That part of your life, we knew we’d never forget it, but we didn’t want to dwell on it, either.
Liz Baehr: You know, people never talked about it for a long time. But now, they’re talking more about it.
Larry Kubale: But it was the craziest thing, because all these stories that they had had came to a head. And then it started coming out. They started talking about it.
Ernest Tresch: I wouldn’t do it again for a million dollars; or, I wouldn’t take a million dollars for the experience.
Narrator: There is not just one story of World War II. There are as many stories as there were men and women who went to fight. More than 8,000 never returned to Wisconsin to tell their stories. These are some of the 324,000 who did.
Pearl Harbor, 1941
[Editor’s note: Visit the “In their own words: More stories” section of this Web site to learn more about the kamikaze attack on Will Lehner’s ship, the USS Ward, three years to the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.]
Will Lehner: I was 17 when I joined the Naval Reserve. It was a little extra money. Back in ’38, times were pretty tough. Then, in ’41, things were getting pretty hot and war was coming on, it looked like it. And the reserves were called up in January. Went out to Pearl Harbor. And that was really good, because when you were in the Navy in 1941, and you asked for duty at Pearl, that was a good job. Honolulu!
Our job was to patrol the entrance to Pearl Harbor. [On] December 5th, we got a new skipper aboard, a young guy, first command. I wonder how he’s going to be.
December 7, 1941, 3:00 in the morning, general quarters. What is going on here? We’ve got a new skipper and he’s drilling us already? Well, then we found out that it wasn’t a drill. About 6:30 or so, we see a Japanese well, we didn’t know it was a Japanese. We saw an unidentified submarine on the surface. And it was a small one. We had never seen anything like that.
“Load the guns. Be ready to fire.” So, they loaded number one gun, took a shot at it. It went over the conning tower. Then, number one gun was out of range, so they had number three gun fire on it. And I was watching. And I saw it hit right at the water line. That was it. And the skipper radioed in that we had sunk an unidentified submarine in restricted waters. And this was about quarter to seven in the morning. So, that was an hour and 20 minutes before the attack.
Bob Feller: I was up with a message up in the skipper’s office, and we heard these planes close by. We looked out the porthole and we saw right away the Japanese came in the way the ships come in. Our planes never did that. So, we knew right away what it was.
We don’t call them stairways, we call them ladders. They’re just about like a stepladder steep. I think I fell halfway down, grabbed the railing. I scooted out and didn’t hit one step on the way down. Coming down, I saw a plane coming right at me. And I knew he was gonna either use his machine gun or get us some way or other. He came in and dropped a torpedo and took off; never fired a shot at me. The torpedo went under our ship and hit the Helena cruiser. And the concussion broke the seams in our ship. And we abandoned ship at 8:15 [a.m.]
Richard Thorson: We were the first ones that was hit at Pearl Harbor with the torpedo. And then we got a great big bomb; it was about 16 inches across. It was just a shell. It was set to detonate after a certain depth. Geez, we looked up and I could see that, boy, that thing is coming right for us. You could just see the bomb drop. And they passed the word for all hands to take cover. And so, I stepped in there and I thought, we can’t very well shoot a gun taking cover. So, anyway, I went out on the outfit there, and here was this hole, just about like that, just where I’d been sitting.
Will Lehner: We happened to look over at Pearl Harbor, towards Pearl Harbor, and we saw a lot of planes diving. And we thought, oh, God, now the army is practicing this morning, too. And two planes came over us, one on each side. And they dropped bombs on each side of the ship. And then we could see, because they were low enough, we could see the pilots in the plane. I said, “Oh, God, those aren’t our pilots.” And then I saw the big red ball [the Japanese rising sun emblem] on there. I said, “Those are Japanese planes.” And then we knew that hey, we were in trouble now.
Richard Thorson: We were one of the first guns that had ammunition at the guns. And we did a pretty good job. We got down five planes. We knocked two friendly planes that were off on an aircraft carrier that they didn’t tell the ships that they were coming in.
Bob Feller: We were on the dock there for maybe 45 minutes. I could look around and see the whole thing then. I could see the water burning. The oil was on the water, burning. I saw sailors swimming through that stuff. It’s kind of frightening.
Richard Thorson: The Utah was behind us. They got a torpedo. It must have been about the same time as we did. And they started to tip over, like that. And they had a bunch of big timbers, 20-foot-long timbers. Then, when this ship started to go that way, then the guys all run to the high side to get away from it. Then, the thing got there and then she went over like that. We were all right real quick. And you could see them old guys get them old timbers hitting them. And there were a lot of bodies floating around out there that day.
Bob Feller: I was kinda glad I was there to see it in a way. And in a way not. I wouldn’t want to see it again.
Will Lehner: The extent of the damage, we had seen the ships that were burning and the suffering there. But we really didn’t know until I think it was Tuesday, that we finally went in for supplies, and that. And then we went right in there where the ships were and then we saw the Arizona, the Oklahoma, the Utah, the Cassions and the Downs that were in the dry dock; all the ships, the Oglala, and different ones. That’s when we really saw the damage. Those fires were still burning on the oil. The oil was in the water. And we saw some bodies in the water yet. And you know, I saw the first shot of the war. And I never got any big medals. I was never a hero. I was just there.
Buna, 1942
Narrator: The 32nd Division was Wisconsin and Michigan’s National Guard. As war approached, they were among the first to be called up. When war arrived, they were among the first to fight. They were called the Red Arrow Division because they had never failed to pierce an enemy line.
Claire Ehle: January of 1942, we were shipped to Massachusetts. And we were supposed to go to Ireland, but somebody changed their mind and MacArthur decided he wanted the 32nd in the Pacific. So, we traveled by train across the States.
Lyle Hougan: Put a couple of flags on the locomotive and let us go. We got a big kick out of watching some of the big fancy railroad cars sitting on the siding, waiting for us to go through. MacArthur had been chased out of the Philippines, and he was getting excited. So, he wanted somebody to come over there and help him. And evidently, we were the only outfit in the country that was ready to go, you know.
Claire Ehle: We didn’t receive any jungle training, none whatsoever. We didn’t have any jungle equipment. We just had regular leather shoes, canvas leggings, heavy canvas fatigues. We didn’t even have new helmets. We had World War I helmets. So, we were not prepared.
And we landed in the bay at Port Moresby. That was the capital in New Guinea. That’s where MacArthur had his headquarters.
Lyle Hougan: MacArthur wanted this island for an airstrip, for a jumping-off spot to go up toward the Philippines. And the Japanese wanted it, so they could go down to Australia. So, it was kind of a critical point.
Herb Smith: And the Japs had already built up a station over around Buna. They had been in there for six or, golly, maybe nine months. And they had it pretty well organized. MacArthur had been told that there were just a handful of Japs in Buna. And he was so wrong. So wrong.
Lyle Hougan: Get the Japs out of there. We said, “How about mail?”
“Oh, you’ll be back. It might take you a week at the most. You’ll get your mail when you come back.”
It was about four and a half months later, why, when we finally started drifting back.
Claire Ehle: We flew from Port Moresby to Pongani, which is 65 miles from Buna. And we had to carry everything, single file up the trails. No roads, no vehicles. And by the time we got to Buna, everybody was sick with malaria, jungle rot and Denge fever.
Lyle Hougan: Part of the outfit had to climb over this Owen Stanley mountain range. They had a tough time of it. It was nasty.
Herb Smith: Well, when I started over the mountains I weighed pretty close to 200 lbs. When I was wounded and back in the hospital I weighed 135 lbs. These kids, they were 18, 19, 20, 21. After we got to Buna, they were all old men. And me, too.
Claire Ehle: Japanese marines, they were in bunkers. And they had excellent fields of fire. The only place we could attack would be in their line of fire.
Lyle Hougan: It was all camouflaged, you know. From 20 feet away, you wouldn’t know it was there. We’d send out a few scouts, you know, and they’d try sneaking up. But the first time a few leaves wiggle, why, the machine guns would start puttering away, so they’d sneak back. We spent an awful lot of time just trying to stay alive.
Claire Ehle: They also had smokeless powder, so you couldn’t see where they were. Our ammunition, it would be a big puff of smoke and a blast of light. So, if you stuck your head up and fired off a shot, you gave your position away. It got to the point where guys didn’t even dare stick their head up. They just laid there.
Lyle Hougan: Didn’t know what to do, and we’d dig a foxhole. But up in that country, you couldn’t dig too deep, or you’d drown. One of the fellas kept track of it, and he says it rained every day for 90 days. So, we were never dry. That was probably the worst. We all were running fevers. A guy with 103 [degrees] stayed on the line. But when you got up to 104, then they said, “Well, you might as well go, you’re no good anymore.” One company commander had his whole company checked by the medics. And every man had a fever every man.
Claire Ehle: We were up against a stone wall, and MacArthur did not realize this. To make things worse, the commander of the Australian forces said the 32nd was not a fighting unit. And of course, that upset MacArthur. So, he called General Robert Eichelberger.
Lyle Hougan: And he said: “Bob, run up there and get that island. And if you can’t take it, don’t bother to come back.” And that’s exactly what he told him.
Herb Smith: Which was very unfair. Very, very. MacArthur was at the safe house down in Port Moresby.
Lyle Hougan: Eichelberger, he come up to the island. But he was a different type of man. He recognized it needed some doing, so he really shut off the war for a couple of days and let us get reorganized. From then on, it went a little better.
A real gung-ho soldier happens when his buddy gets shot. Then he’s mad. Then he’s good. And if he’s learned his lessons, why, that’s the kind of people that finally won the war over there.
Herb Smith: I think we did a really good job. We were the first ones, in the Army, that had any contact with the Japs. They were experts and we were, we were novices. But we learned. We learned.
Claire Ehle: But later on, MacArthur apologized to the 32nd Division for being so critical, telling them that they couldn’t fight. But one officer said, “The same unit that wouldn’t fight at Buna won the victory there.”
Merchant Marine
[Editor’s note: Visit the “In their own words: More stories” section of this Web site for Ed Boettger’s story about being in London during V-2 attacks. ]
Edwin Boettger: Draft all the people you wanted, and march ’em and fly ’em, roll ’em around the country. But when they got to New York, they could go nowhere. They needed a ship. There was no flying the ocean. We hauled all the planes, all the people.
The Roll of Drums campaign Hitler was thinking that he could actually prevent us from getting our military forces into the theater of war. The first year, loss of ships amounted to one a day. And the second year, loss of ships amounted to .8 ship a day. And the grand total for those two years was well over 700 ships.
We were sailing alone. And we were ordered to join this convoy that consisted of two lines of ships. We were on the outboard line, third position from the rear. The outboard line would be the furthest from shore. That was the side that always got attacked.
On one night, the last ship got picked off. And the following night, the next ship got picked off. And we were then on the corner “coffin corner,” it’s called. And then the third night, we got picked off. A large explosion followed by a devastating explosion, which we thought that possibly that all the ammunition exploded it. It blew everybody off the deck. It blew the lifeboats off. The life rafts and everything was blown all out. And the ship rose up and then went straight down.
About the time that most of us surfaced, the submarine also surfaced. And they played a searchlight on the 31 survivors. This was misunderstood by a lot of people to mean that the submarine had surfaced to machine gun the survivors. Not true at all. The submarine people observed the Geneva Conventions. And this spotting of the survivors, we saw where we were all at in relation to three rafts, which were right in the same place. And being the black of night, you wouldn’t have known that there were other people close to you.
And then we drifted on for about 19 hours. We were rescued by a destroyer. The destroyer was not searching for us at all. They accidentally stumbled on us. We were badly bruised up. But we were quarantined to the point where we would be presentable on the street. We were then ordered to report back to New York.
We arrived in Pennsylvania Station right about 5:00 in the evening. And if you know anything about the railroad stations in New York, you realize that that’s a wall-to-wall people. So, as we were coming through, the stationmaster requested for a gangway to be made for us survivors. So, the people pressed, made a pathway to walk through to the street. People were very emotional. Word of all these sinkings was in and about New York. It was just the most terrible thing, a terrible time.
Into Africa
Narrator: The front door to fortress Europe was heavily guarded by the Germans. So, the first Allied invasion was not onto the shores of France, but into North Africa, and then fighting their way up through Italy.
Dick Lundberg: We were in it a year before it even started in Europe, I think. We were called that we were going on a secret mission. And I went on the British cruiser, HMS Sheffield. And it’s kind of ironic that, I think, that 60 years ago yesterday, we left Ireland.
We were to take the harbor of Algiers, secure the boats and keep them from doing any damage to the harbor. We went off nets onto the little destroyers. We were laying shoulder to shoulder on them things. They had a metal plate about two feet high all around, supposed to protect us from small arms fire. All of a sudden, the lights went out and searchlights come on sweeping the harbor. They locked right on us. I heard a shell go screaming over the bow; the next one hit the boiler room and we stopped almost in our tracks. Then one went through that armor plate right next to me; about one guy over from me, killed him, and exploded in the funnel right amongst a bunch of our guys.
And then they said, “Prepare to abandon ship.” And we didn’t have no life jackets or nothing. Then they rescinded that order. Then when it come daylight, the British took all our casualties and put them in bags and slid them over the side. One of the officers said a few words. But I never forgave the British for that, because I thought they could have waited a few hours, and we could have taken them with us then. I don’t know why. I had some good friends went over there.
Urban Sippel: You were busy from morning till night. And when you got to bed, you were tired. And that was one thing I liked about being in the First Special Service Force. We got parachute training, mountain training, ski training, demolition training, hand-to-hand combat.
I could speak German. My grandpa couldn’t speak English, so if we talked to him, it was all German. But where I was from, it was probably 90 percent German. But I didn’t tell the Army because they were looking for people to talk German in headquarters. And headquarters wasn’t my thing. (chuckles)
When we got prisoners, I talked to them. And they talked just like my Grandpa. When I talked with them, I was more interested in how Hitler cold control these people, like the S.S. Troopers. They were soldiers. I mean, you didn’t take those prisoners. You had to kill them.
Dick Lundberg: I woke up one morning and there was snow on the ground. I didn’t believe it would snow in Africa, but it did. Then, a few days later, we head for Fonduke. They were trying to get through there to cut off Rommel coming up from the south. The Germans really resisted there. And I counted over 20 tanks knocked out around me.
They hit so many mines. And then after the battle was over, the colonel insisted on moving us on the other side of the road. And he sent a runner across; he tripped the mine. They sent the medic to help him, and the chaplain went with him. They tripped the mine. We lost three men for some just because he wanted to move us over there.
Urban Sippel: They landed in Italy. That’s when we started getting into it. I learned one whole lot. You can tell when the bullet’s over your head how high it is above you. You can hear it. If somebody shot at me twice, the third time I could pinpoint it. If he shot one more time, that was it.
If you came up in back of somebody, you talked to them. Nobody snuck up on you. If you’d have touched me on the shoulder, very good possibility you wouldn’t have walked. That’s when I decided I was not going to be an officer. If you saw somebody giving orders, that’s the first one you shot. You made sure you got that one.
Dick Lundberg: You could see Monte Cassino real plain from our positions up on the hill. And then the 36th was going to try to make a crossing of the Rapido. We were supposed to give them supporting fire. It was doomed before they started. I don’t know why they ever done it. They were right out in plain sight there, going to try and cross that river. They picked ’em off. It was terrible. We fired all night long on that trying to help, but it didn’t. They couldn’t.
Urban Sippel: Anzio, that was different. In fact, we had foxholes where we could sit in. And we had covers over the top, because they strafed us a lot. We had one, you never knew when he was coming. That one, we finished him off, because one time he strafed our hospital. And that’s when we decided we’re gonna get him. We did. Everybody sat with rifle and when he came over, everybody shot. And that did it.
Dick Lundberg: I don’t know how you can describe it. You’re scared scared and hugging the dirt. And machine gun fire sounded like a bunch of firecrackers over your head. And artillery is the worst. Anzio, they’d cover everything with artillery; there was no safe place there. I know one night they just brought us up our rations, and we heard the incoming mail, and we all dove in our holes. And the shell hit the edge of my hole and buried me. And I don’t remember, even all I remember there is that I couldn’t move my arms or legs. And the dirt was drifting in my helmet. And I was [having] an awful time breathing. I couldn’t breathe. I don’t remember anything more. The next time I was out with the guys, and they had dug me out, and that was it. If that shell had been one foot over, it would have been right in the hole with me.
Urban Sippel: Then in the morning, you could hear ’em coming. They started firing, and all of a sudden a guy hollered, “Outpost, come on in.” When he said that, the gun behind you stopped shooting and you came in. That’s when I got hurt [by] mortar shell. And I had shrapnel all over. I still have shrapnel in my lung. All of a sudden, [I thought,] hmm, hey, there’s something wrong here. I wasn’t breathing. I took the bandage and I held it over the wound to stop the air from going in and out. I was going to get up and walk. I was getting kind of weak. And a guy grabbed me and carried me back to the first aid station. They came with a jeep, took me to the hospital.
When I got out of there, I said, “No, I’m going back to my outfit.”
And the sergeant says, “You have to go to rehabilitation.”
I says, “No, I don’t.”
So, I called our lieutenant. He says, “I’ll have a jeep for you there, right now.”
He came and got me.
Dick Lundberg: They sent a guy up to help me. And he just got up to me and then he got hit. I got him to the medics. I stopped to talk to one of my other buddies, and a shell landed beside us and he got hit. And the funny thing about that was the next day we were in Rome. I mean, you’d think you never would see the city of Rome. But all of a sudden they just the Germans cut off and took back and we were in Rome. I would never have thought I could survive all that, but you live through it.
Warriors
[Editor’s note: Visit the “In their own words: More stories” section of this Web site for more stories from Gilman Lincoln Sr.]
Lyle Hougan: We were short of people, and an outfit up in central Wisconsin had too many people. They were up in the Winnebago Indian country. So, they sent them down to us. But actually, they turned out to be real good. We got along fine.
Walter Klunk: And the thing there is we had a big Indian from Wisconsin who was our squad leader. We had different Indians fighting with us all the time.
Gilman Lincoln: Fourteen years old, I left. I went to Madison. What was I going to do down there? I didn’t even know anybody down there, but I went and enlisted. And I walked up to the post office there; they had the Marines, Army and Navy. I remember that guy in the Marine office. That guy looked at me and said, “Hi, kid, what are you up to?” Well, I guess, he knows what I am. I better get out of here. Went over to the Army and [they said]: “Hello there, young fella. You wanna join up?” And that sailor was standing over there. Hey, I liked his uniform a lot better. This Army fella, he had a necktie on. Geez, I never did like neckties. I still don’t!
I got as far as Milwaukee and somebody found out, and they kicked me home. I got a train ride out of the deal anyway. So, 15, I went up and enlisted again. Again, they caught me. “Out!” Now that I think about it, it was kind of funny.
Finally, they finally took me. Tell you the truth ain’t that awful? I didn’t know what the heck a Japanese looked like. I didn’t know what they were like. Same way with a German, ’cause I did see some German prisoners of war. And I was kind of surprised to see it was just another white guy coming down there. (laughs) Well, anyway, same way with the Japanese; I didn’t know what I was expecting. All I knew is we’d gone out in the South Pacific.
We was out about three days and [the announcement came]: “Now hear this, now hear this. We are now in enemy waters. If anybody falls overboard, we cannot and we will not stop for you.” And I realized, hey, this is for real. I’m too dang young. I should be in school. And I happened to think, what the heck am I, chicken? Am I scared? Yes, I was scared. And I realized what was really going on then. Well, to heck with it. I volunteered for it; dang it, might as well make the best of it. So I got over that.
Never stayed in one place too long. Island hopping. The guys were fighting, seeing some bad times, combat and everything. And here I was wondering, looking for it. I never saw it. Maybe that was the good Lord’s way of taking care of me.
I came back home. And here’s a hard part for me. My people, the Ho-Chunks, they uphold their warriors very highly, and rightly so. I do, I feel just the way they do. But them guys, the real veterans, they really had it rough. They saw battle. I didn’t get to see none of that, but I got the same treatment when I got home. The hero’s welcome they give me, I didn’t deserve.
But in my own language [speaks his native language]. I followed the footpaths of the boys that were ahead of me in the war.
My people weren’t even citizens of the United States at that time. And they were willing to defend it. But thank God we have them here. They’re still here. I’m mighty proud of them. Mighty proud that I could follow their footsteps.
B-17, 1944
[Editor’s note: Visit the “In their own words: More stories” section of this Web site to learn more about what happened to C.A. Van Selus and Jim Magruder.]
Narrator: Allied bomber crews out of England suffered higher casualty rates than any other combat force. Less than one out of three reached their full tour of 25 missions.
C.A. Van Selus: When a crew is shot down, and the crew is from your barracks, by the time you got back to your barracks from that mission, there are already new personnel in those bunks. They never wanted us to see empty bunks.
Jim Magruder: The first casualty we had was in the back of the formation. It wasn’t from our group, but it was another group way back there. And all I saw was a burst of flame. And you know, it’s a B-17 that got a direct hit. And it went right on, straight on down. And till I lost sight of it, there was no chutes come out. Of course, that means you lost 10 men.
C.A. Van Selus: There are 10 men on a B-17. Starting up in the nose, you have the bombardier. Right behind him is the navigator. And right above him is the pilot, and to his right, the co-pilot. Right behind them, you have the engineer, and there’s the radio operator. And right behind the radio operator is the ball turret gunner and two waist gunners. Open windows, and the machine gun is mounted on a post, and then, the tail gunner in the tail. And I wanted to be a ball turret gunner.
Jim Magruder: Well, the ball turret gunner, it’s different than anything else. First off, you can’t wear your parachute in the ball turret. And when you’re in combat, it’s very helpful to have your chute on.
C.A. Van Selus: When you get in the turret, you actually step down into it, because more than half of it is sticking outside of the plane.
Jim Magruder: If anything jammed in the turret, and you crash land, it’s over. I mean, you’re gonna, that ball turret is going to hit the ground first.
C.A. Van Selus: The guns were all .50-caliber, fired 750 to 850 rounds a minute. It will hit a target at 1,500 yards. And I had two of them. One on, right about here, and that’s why I don’t have hearing today.
Jim Magruder: But I didn’t mind it too much. I got used to it pretty quickly after the first mission. Scared me half to death when the flak started hitting the ball turret.
C.A. Van Selus: I don’t think there was ever a mission that I flew that we didn’t come back with holes, lots of holes, in our plane.
Jim Magruder: We flew 12 missions prior to being shot down on the 13th, on the 25th of February, 1944.
C.A. Van Selus: February 8, 1944, on a mission to Frankfurt, we took a direct hit on number two engine. And it just a ball of fire wrapped right around the ball turret that I was in.
Jim Magruder: And I immediately got a hold of the pilot on the intercom and told him our situation. And he said something to the navigator. And that’s the last word I heard from the pilot. And at that point, I swung the turret around and I picked up three Foche Wulf 190s coming in. And by the way, when they come in like that, they’re on you so fast that you only get a short burst, that’s it. And then I swung the turret around to follow them, because I knew they were going to circle back and come back again. And when I did that I saw two chutes open up below me. And somehow or another, my mind clicked and said, “My god, they’re bailing out.” And I immediately got the turret up. And sure enough, there wasn’t nobody in the plane when I got up there.
C.A. Van Selus: We all bailed out. We didn’t have experience with that. The Air Force told us there was no sense in practicing for something that has to be perfect the first time. Well, the reason they told us that was because they didn’t have anything to train us with. When you remember that we carried either 12 500-pound bombs or 51 100-pound incendiaries, plus our wings were loaded with 100-octane gasoline, we didn’t have to decide whether or not you wanted to bail. You’re sitting in a pile of dynamite.
Jim Magruder: I got to the back door; it was already kicked out. And I bailed out pulled my ripcord, came down. And if you haven’t experienced the bailing out thing, which that was my first time, it just takes a long time. It seems like you’re never going to get down, and you don’t hear anything. Everything’s cool. There’s no breeze blowing by you or anything like that. It’s just like sitting in a rocking chair. And so, as I got near the ground then, then it frightened me, because the ground starts to come up real fast. And I tipped the chute and struck the back of my head on the frozen ground when I hit the ground.
C.A. Van Selus: When I hit I went over backwards and hit the back of my head, and that knocked me out.
Jim Magruder: And then, I spotted this fellow coming out of the woods. And he had, it looked like to me a rifle aimed at me. And he’s waving it like that. And I put my hands up, and he kept talking in German. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. And as he got up close to me, then I saw that it was a single-barrel shotgun. And at that point, you The shock of being shot down in the first place is no picnic, in the first place. And having this guy, you don’t know if he’s going to pull the trigger or what he’s going to do.
C.A. Van Selus: So, I put my hands up and said, “American aviator,” and surrendered. He put his hand out slowly, and came to me, “Comrade, comrade.” And he grabbed me and kissed me on both cheeks.
Jim Magruder: And the next thing I know we got over to the hard-surface road, and there was a truck up there. And this truck had the rest of our crew on it. And I was the last one to be put in the truck. And they took us to this here place, and that’s the first time I got out of the back of the truck. And the first thing I saw was this great big Nazi flag. And that’s a strange feeling to see that thing flying.
C.A. Van Selus: And then he pulled his hands out of his pocket and he had a gun in each hand. And that wasn’t very comfortable. But then, all of a sudden, he just smiled and he put them away. He said, “Who plays Bob Hope in the movies?” And he was very serious. I knew then that I was being interrogated by the Underground.
Jim Magruder: And this woman, with my hands over my head, she walked up and she just took a pistol and punched me right in the middle of the face. And I went down. And this woman was really, really laying it on me. And she took my wristwatch and my identification bracelet.
C.A. Van Selus: They told me that I was going to leave, but I was going to get married first. And they arranged a fake wedding, not the actual service. But down at the train station there were lots of people there to see us off on our honeymoon. We traveled all night. Changed trains at St. Bruce. And the place was just crawling with Gestapo. And if it hadn’t been for this girl, I would have never gotten through. You have to remember that every time that my papers were checked, if they had spoken to me, I’d have been caught.
Jim Magruder: They marched us down to a holding camp, about a mile out of town, in Frankfurt. And then, the next day they put us on boxcars, and shipped us to a main prison camp of the Stalag VI.
C.A. Van Selus: She gave me a hug, kissed me on both cheeks and had tears in her eyes. And that’s the last I ever saw of her.
There was an English PT boat out there. I went back to my home base. And the F2 intelligence officer, he was excited, because I was the first one to ever escape and get back to home base.
Jim Magruder: Now, you have to draw a picture up in your mind. The first thing you get is a message at home that you’re missing in action, as number one. It may take two or three months before they find out that you are a prisoner. This happened in my case. Now, your loved ones at home, they’re sick with grief over the whole thing. Finally, they get a notice that you are a prisoner of war. They know about the Geneva Convention, so they figure that you’re in good hands. The fact of the matter is, you aren’t.
C.A. Van Selus: I found out there that I had also been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. I also got a promotion. So, you know, all in all, those things really were not important to me. I was so happy to be back and alive.
Jim Magruder: In the European theater alone, there was 93,951 POWs, American and British POWs.
Island Hopper
[Editor’s note: Visit the “In their own words: More stories” section of this Web site to learn more about Wally Klunk’s baptism of fire while landing on Bouganville, the largest of the Solomon Islands.]
Walter Klunk: Did a lot of landings, island hopping.
George Miller: Tarawa.
Robert Botts: We went up to another little island, Emeru.
Walter Klunk: I’ll never forget New Caledonia.
Robert Botts: We made three assault landings.
George Miller: After they were through in the Solomons
Walter Klunk: That was in Guadalcanal.
Robert Botts: This was back on New Georgia, again.
Walter Klunk: Bougainville.
George Miller: Then the landing at Saipan.
Walter Klunk: Then Guam came.
Robert Botts: But we never stayed anyplace very long.
Walter Klunk: I was just from a little town, you know, never been outside of Wisconsin. It was a big change. When I got to New Caledonia, I was chosen to be in the Raiders. Well, the Raiders were the top troops of the Marines, so we got extra training in every area. I mean, they’d take us out with life rafts, and roll you over with all your gear on in the ocean, and then you had to get yourself back on. But all type of things for doing midnight raids and that type of thing.
George Miller: I was the number one gunner on a machine gun crew. I was supposed to shoot the gun when the time came. It almost always started with a landing of some sort. Carrying it would be broken down into three parts. The barrel weighed, I think, about 40 pounds, and the receiver weighed 60 pounds, and the tripod maybe weighed 20 pounds or something. So, when we got it all together, it weighed a lot more than I weighed. It was a big piece of machinery.
Robert Botts: They always transferred our whole unit as a unit, because it’s kind of hard to put people in tanks if they don’t know what they’re working with. We had the driver, the assistant driver (which he was also a machine gunner in the bow), a loader and a tank commander. Everybody had their own stuff to do.
Walter Klunk: We were on the initial landing of Bougainville. We had to set a line up about four miles in. And we still hadn’t hit the resistance of any sort on the ground. But, then, for some unknown reason, they put me and another guy from Hollywood out in front of our lines, the first night. Now, this is the first time I’ve been in combat. But [they] never told us what to do, you know. So, we’re there. And all we had was each two grenades. And we were told not to fire, because the minute you fire in the jungles, they’re going to see your flame, and they’ll be right on you.
So, no sooner were we situated when here they came, you know, right down the trail. They were no more than 20, 30 feet from us. We thought, well let’s get them with a grenade. Well, I threw the first grenade; it hit a tree and bounced back, right on the edge of my foxhole. God, we ducked and missed. Then they knew we were there, you know, and we had them crawl right up to our foxhole. I had dirt going into my neck. And I had put on my bayonet; I had my knife in my teeth. You know, I thought if they come in, we’re going to go at it. And it was the longest night in my life. There’s no question about it. There was fighting going on there and screaming. But the next day, they thought we were dead. They didn’t even go out to look for us.
Robert Botts: I went up to answer the call once, and this guy come walking over there and he said, “Hey, Sarge, you got a cigarette?” And I said, “Sure.” I gave him a cigarette. And we sat down on a log right there a little bit, and I knew he was hurt. And I got to watching him. He had a little stream of blood coming right down each side of his head in here. So, I motioned for a corpsman to come over there. And that guy got shot right through the head, right below the rim of his helmet in there. And as far as I know, he’s still living today.
George Miller: Once you get involved, you see, you’re down flat on the ground and you can’t see anything. You have no idea what’s going on around you. And that’s troublesome. Ammunition is coming your way. Why, of course, it’s snapping by you all the time. It doesn’t go by with a whoosh. It goes by with a snap. And you hear it go by before you hear it fired, because it’s traveling faster than sound. And so, you have the snap, snap, snap, and then boom, boom, boom. And you can’t, you have no idea where it’s coming from absolutely none.
Robert Botts: The army was in trouble over on Rundle Island. So, we loaded our tanks up and went over and made another landing over there. That’s where I got mixed up with a 47 mm. It punctured one of our fuel tanks. And the way it hit the fuel tank, that thing come right through the front of the tank it went right between my driver’s feet. And they had the axle laying there, you know, like this, up. And it hit that and that branched it up and went in the fuel tank. I got the fire out once.
And we knew with the last one was how you getting those guys out of there? And, oh, they was burning up. The thing was small-arms fire, trying to get us all. When I found my gunner, he was scared to death. We all were. And that’s where I got my Silver Star, that night. The skipper’s tank, he was heading in the wrong direction. And I run out and got in front of him and flagged him down and turned him around, and got him going in the right direction. That gun would have made a heyday out of him.
George Miller: The Japanese liked to attack at night. And so often, you wouldn’t really see them until they were very close to you, particularly if it was a moonless night. And they would be practically on top of you before you could react. Often you’re just firing into the dark, praying that the sun will come up.
Walter Klunk: We had a firefight. And I stepped over my best buddy. He’d gotten machine gunned down and he was laying there. And not like the movies, you don’t wait, you don’t just I saw him, stepped over him, and just kept fighting, because if you would, you’d be gunned down as well. And that was a real tough deal, when the first real good friend got killed.
I got back, and then my other real good We were like a threesome, there were three of us. We were together all the time. And the other guy, he said, “Just forget about it.” He slapped me in the face, in fact. He says, “Just think like he’s been transferred out.” But it was something you never forget. I can remember every detail, the whole bit. Then, my other buddy got killed. That was 20 days apart. So, my two best friends were gone. And thereafter, I never made a real close friend again, because there was too much of a change for me. And from then on, I got to be what I call a professional fighter.
Robert Botts: We cut off a whole bunch of them on a peninsula. And they took a notion that day that they were gonna break out of there. You knew when they was gonna attack, ’cause they get all psyched up on sake and everything. And the way it started is a full color guard of about 20 come right down the road. You couldn’t believe the number of people that was killed. Those guys was crazy.
George Miller: They decided they wanted to leave, which meant they had to come through us. They were rushing our position over and over again. And they’d get thrown back, and then they’d come again. And one of them got into our position, threw himself into the position, and he caught me in the shoulder with his bayonet.
Walter Klunk: They’d always charge with more people than we had, and then you’d have to mow them down.
Robert Botts: That day, we pulled each tank out to reload with ammunition. Each tank carried about 125 75s [and] 15,000 rounds of .30-caliber ammunition times five tanks, that’s a lot of stuff in there. And those people [the Japanese], they just kept coming, just kept a-coming. It got to where it didn’t bother you as much. But, oh, a lot of the guys, they just cracked up.
Walter Klunk: They bombed me, they strafed me, they did everything. And I was always one of the lucky ones. And that’s the part that you just don’t And [the question] most every veteran I’ve talked to [asks] is why did we make it and our other friends not make it?
George Miller: It’s still the big thing in our lives. It changed things for us so much. I mean, to have been through a situation like that. Maybe that’s good, maybe not. But it absolutely re-made your life.
D-Day
Milo Flaten: And they put me in the 29th Division. Their job was to invade France. The day I graduated from high school was June 6, 1943. And the day we hit the beach in Normandy was June 6, 1944 exactly one year to the day afterwards. When they gave us maps of Normandy, they were in French. And me and my big mouth mentioned to the company commander that I had taken French in high school. And immediately, they gave me a map and made me the scout, and told me, “Just think, Flaten, you’ll be leading eight million men all the way across Europe into the heart of Berlin.” And I thought We had a big laugh about that. And I didn’t know it was really true. I did. I led eight million men across Europe.
For three days we’d been hearing the engines of that damn troop ship. All of a sudden, the engines stopped. And the engine shut down on the other ships. And there were ships as far as you could see. And we climbed down the Jacob’s ladder, got into the Higgins boat. And as we crossed the line of departure, all the guns in the world opened up. And they kept playing music on a public address system; [they played] two records: Glenn Miller’s “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” and “String of Pearls,” or something like that. I couldn’t figure out why they had those records playing the popular music when we were all going, literally, to our deaths. But we didn’t know that.
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