An Oral History of World War II: Conflict in Europe during the Battle of the Bulge

Interviewee: Lloyd D. Emerson Interviewer: Danny Knauss Instructor: David Brandt

February 11, 2014

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Table of Contents

Interviewer Release Form ...... 2

Interviewee Release Form...... 3

Statement of Purpose ...... 4

Biography ...... 5

Historical Contextualization ...... 7 “Hitler’s Desperate Gamble: The Allied Response to Germany in the Battle of the Bulge”

Interview Transcription ...... 23

Audio Time Indexing Log ...... 63

Interview Analysis ...... 65

Appendices ...... 73

Works Consulted ...... 89

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Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this interview for the American Century Oral History Project is to gain a

better overall understanding of World War II and the role of the Battle of the Bulge in shaping the outcome of the war. Mr. Lloyd Emerson, a solider in the 11th Armored Division, 22nd Tank

Battalion, recounts his experiences to give a firsthand perspective of his service in the European theater during World War II.

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Biography

Lloyd D. Emerson was born in Ritzville, Washington on January 10, 1924. His father was a pharmacist; one brother also became a pharmacist, and his other brother was a Marine pilot, who was killed in a plane crash in 1940 before the United States entered World War II. Mr.

Emerson started college at Washington State College in Pullman. He was first drafted into the

Army in October 1942 but was granted a student deferment. After turning 19 in January 1943, he was drafted and went into the service that February. In 1944, Mr. Emerson was assigned to the 11th Armored Division, a tank division, at a base near Lompoc, CA that became Vandenberg

Air Force Base, to begin preparing for departure to Western Europe. Within the 11th Armored

Division, he was placed in the 22nd Battalion, where he was a cannoneer radio tender with the rank of private.

In 1944, Mr. Emerson traveled by troop train from Lompoc, CA, through New Orleans,

LA, and then to Camp Kilmer, NJ, where he boarded a ship bound for Liverpool, England. From there, he traveled by train to the Salisbury Plain and trained for four months. Traveling across the English Channel in a landing ship tank, he landed at Cherbourg, France in December 1944, six months after D-Day and just before the German offensive, known as the Battle of the Bulge.

Mr. Emerson’s tank division, in General George Patton’s Third Army, crossed France in three days, traveling through Paris on its way to action on the Western Front. The division

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engaged in fighting during and after the Battle of the Bulge, including the area of Bastogne, a

besieged town in Belgium sought by both Germany and the Allies for its strategic importance.

After Germany’s decisive defeat in the Battle of the Bulge at the hands of the Allies, Mr.

Emerson’s division pushed into Germany. During the push, Mr. Emerson’s tank sustained

numerous attacks from enemy fire, and he sustained a head injury from shrapnel. He also aided

a seriously wounded tank-mate, protecting him from enemy fire. Mr. Emerson was in Germany

when the Germans surrendered to the Allies in mid-1945. His division also made contact with

Soviet soldiers on the German-Russian border. In all, he spent 15 months in Europe, seven of

which were in combat.

He returned to Boston in January 1946, having received a Bronze Star for valor and a

Purple Heart for his combat injury. After returning home to the State of Washington, he finished

college at Washington State College and then enrolled at New York University to pursue a

master’s degree in United Nations & World Affairs. Mr. Emerson was then awarded a

fellowship to the Institute of Public Administration. He also attended Columbia University. He

left the Institute in 1950 for a job in Washington, DC in the State Department’s Intelligence

Bureau. In 1978, he went to the United Nations for five years in the UN Population Program.

Married but now widowed, Mr. Emerson has two daughters with families of their own. He

just celebrated his 90th birthday. He lives in Bethesda, MD, near one of his daughters and her

family, where he enjoys good health, family, friends, frequent games of bridge, and a bit of international travel.

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Historical Contextualization

Hitler’s Desperate Gamble: The Allied Response to Germany in the Battle of the Bulge

In 1939 the world became embroiled in another global war just twenty years after the end of the First World War. There were numerous triggering events that led to the use of force to settle political and economic scores worldwide. Some world leaders sought to impose their brand of tyranny and Allied forces went to war to defend against this. The prophetic words of the Roman military writer, Vegetius, “Let him who desires peace prepare for war” were all too true for the

United States, who viewed entry into another world war with great skepticism (Scherman 9).

World War II would be the deadliest war in history with up to 70 million dead, of whom two- thirds were non-combatants; on average, almost 30,000 people were killed every day (Second

World War). The degree of human misery, displacement, economic devastation, and physical destruction were without parallel. The European sphere featured Germany, the principal Axis power in the grip of totalitarian tyrant Adolf Hitler versus the Allied forces, represented by the

United States, Great Britain, and France – all western democracies. Almost six years into World

War II, Belgium’s Ardennes Forest in mid-December 1944 was intended as a cold but quiet place for Allied troops to rest and clean their weapons after the recent ravages of a series of battles near the Western Front. Unknown to them was the furious preparation by Hitler and the

Nazis for carrying out Germany’s last-gasp surprise offensive to rid the European continent of

Allied influence. Hitler found it impossible to believe that any army from a pacifist democracy could defeat the best soldiers and machines a totalitarian government could produce.

Furthermore, once the western Allies were neutralized, he was confident he could mount a successful invasion of the Soviet menace to the east. Allied troops in the Ardennes awoke to the

Knauss 8 thunderous sound of approaching artillery fire on the stormy morning of December 16, 1944 and everything became confusion and pandemonium as the Germans invaded. The so-called Battle of the Bulge, named for the huge bulge created by German forces advancing into the Allied line, was underway and would continue brutally into late January 1945. As the largest and most vicious battle of World War II (Bruning 1), it was a critical turning point in the war that enabled eventual victory of the Allies over Nazi Germany. To understand the critical role of the Battle of the Bulge in the history of World War II, as well as its harrowing fighting conditions, it is important to get a firsthand perspective of someone who fought in that battle.

The origin of World War II dates from events marking the end of World War I, including the Treaty of Versailles that ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers, namely, the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan. Although fighting ended on

November 11, 1918, this Treaty was signed at the palace of Versailles on June 28, 1919. As the aggressor nation, Germany was not included in Treaty negotiations. President Woodrow Wilson described it as a “severe treaty in the duties and penalties it imposes on Germany; but it is severe because great wrongs done by Germany are to be righted and repaired…” (Overy 5). In an unintended instance of ironic foreshadowing of World War II, President Wilson also noted, “It ends, once and for all, an old and intolerable order under which small groups of selfish men could use the peoples of great empires to serve their ambition for power and domination” (Overy

5). Its most controversial provision was Article 231, known as the ‘War Guilt Clause’ (Treaty of Versailles). The Treaty stated that “The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and

Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies”

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(Treaty of Versailles). Article 231 neither placated Germany nor weakened it as intended but left Germany simmering under the surface for a new opportunity to assert itself. Many

Americans correctly foresaw the terms as too punitive, a mistake that might backfire. For one, the Treaty called on Germany to evacuate its troops from Western Europe immediately, significantly demilitarize, leave the Rhineland, and renounce its sovereignty over former colonies. It also forbade German annexation of Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia (Treaty of

Versailles). Harsh conditions set forth in the Treaty for paying reparations to affected nations threatened to cripple the German economy. This created tremendous resentment among

Germans in the post-war Weimar Republic, many of whom denounced the insulting provision that blamed Germany for starting the war. Although Germany reluctantly signed the Treaty, the stage was set for increasing national discontent.

The United States stayed on the international margins by deciding not to join the new

League of Nations, created by the Treaty of Versailles. Another world power, the Soviet Union, had emerged in 1917 with the Bolshevik Revolution, although its political philosophy was communist. It, too, stayed on the international sidelines at first. In Europe, this appearance of nationalism, or “ultranationalist movements” in the extreme, “rejected the peace imposed by the

West and pursued politics of revenge” (Overy 2). The rise of Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini in 1922 was one such example of this. Another was Adolf Hitler, an Austrian who enlisted in the

German Army in World War I. Not yet a well-known figure in German politics at the end of

World War I, he quickly established himself as champion of an extreme German nationalist movement, the National Socialist Party. Motivated by the politics of revenge emanating from the punitive Treaty of Versailles, as well as his anti-Semitic ideas based on racial purity, Hitler sought to reestablish Germany as a world power. The Fascist views of Mussolini and Hitler

Knauss 10 centered on a strong central government and strong military, along with strict control of industry and people. Its totalitarian nature ran counter to democracy and communism. Hitler even demanded that he be made “the Mussolini of Germany” (Overy 10).

Hitler was arrested in November 1923 and imprisoned for his role in the Beer Hall

Putsch, during which he tried to seize power in Munich. Finally free after serving a reduced sentence of one year (Overy 11), he began to preach hatred about the role of Jews in society.

Constantly denigrating Jews, he also exploited economic distress in Germany by inspiring

Germans to reject the Weimar leadership.

Hitler’s popularity rose as he outlined his ideas for returning Germany to world greatness.

While in prison, Hitler wrote a book called Mein Kampf, or “My Struggle.” Paul Hockenos of the Chronicle of Higher Education describes it as “a blueprint of the radical nationalist, pungently anti-Semitic vision that he would put into practice when the Nazis captured power in

Germany in 1933” and Hitler assumed the Chancellorship. Mein Kampf was published in 1925 in two volumes totaling 700 pages and was a best-selling propaganda piece in Germany. Hitler intended to use royalties from the book to cover his legal fees, but his more important goal was to disseminate his ideas about Nazi Party political programs as a means to revitalize Germany as a major world power. In his book, Hitler goes so far as to describe his plans for conquering

Europe, including the taking of France, Austria, the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, and the western part of Poland. He later accomplished all this and more. He even describes the eventual conquest of Russia and its vast territory for use as Lebensraum, or living space, for the German people (Hockenos). Describing the “twin evils” of Judaism and Communism, Hitler also denigrates democracy and monarchy. He “describes international Jewry as a force committed to a global conspiracy to dominate the world and reduce Germans to their underlings” (Hockenos).

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Hitler contrasts the Aryan – Hitler’s perceived supreme form of the human race – with racially

inferior races (Hockenos) and explains his “logic” for controlled breeding to perpetuate a

population with genetically superior characteristics (Hockenos). His ideas in Mein Kampf

provide an unsettling backdrop for his actions before and during World War II, as they explain his desire to avenge the German loss in World War I and to eradicate the Jews and other non-

Aryan minorities. Mein Kampf turned out to be an accurate warning of Nazi Germany’s expansionist plans, but they were largely ignored by those outside of Germany, including France and Great Britain, who would be severely tested by the Nazis before too long.

The period between the two world wars also experienced a worldwide economic crisis.

Initially, a chronic overproduction of food and goods in much of the Western world led to severe inflation. Protectionism reduced market opportunities and restricted global trade. The advent of the Great Depression in the United States produced serious global consequences, including bank failures, huge unemployment, lower wages, much-reduced industrial production, and an 89%

decline in stock prices after the stock market crash in 1929 (Taylor). Germany was not immune

to these economic woes: “600,000 of four million white-collar workers had lost their jobs by

1931” (“The Great Depression”). In Germany, the global economic crisis, along with demands

for German reparations from World War I, created an economy on the verge of collapse and

citizens about to break from the strain.

Hitler seized the opportunity during this time of crisis and vulnerability in Europe to begin

re-militarizing Germany, even though this was directly counter to the provisions of the Treaty of

Versailles. Germany and Great Britain signed the the Anglo-German Naval Agreement on June

18, 1935. It limited Germany’s navy to 35% of the size of Great Britain’s Royal Navy based on

weight (Anglo-German Naval Agreement). It was a British effort to appease the Germans and

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Germany’s under-the-radar attempt to build a navy and begin an alliance with the British against

France and the Soviet Union. Great Britain intended to demonstrate naval superiority over

Germany by signing this agreement, although it actually enabled Germany to build up its navy

significantly. “[Great Britain’s Winston] Churchill” claimed that the agreement was one-sided

and that Great Britain had essentially [sanctioned] Germany’s [violation of] the Treaty of

Versailles” (“The Anglo-German Naval Agreement”). This agreement produced great

international controversy and naturally drove a wedge between war allies, France and Great

Britain.

Germany began to ready its military machine in earnest in the mid-1930s. Conscription

resumed. Hitler began rebuilding the Luftwaffe, or Air Force, banking on German air superiority

in war. He began to assemble the Axis powers for mutual support in military matters. As a

result of Germany’s 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, then engaged in war with China, and

the 1939 Pact of Steel between Germany and Italy, Germany began consolidating its

international support with the help of Italy and Japan (“Axis Alliance”).

Flouting the Treaty of Versailles once again, Germany annexed Austria in 1938 and

followed up with the acquisition of German Sudetenland from Czechslovakia, in the Munich

Agreement on September 30, 1938. Bowing to pressure from Hitler, who justified his request

by focusing on alleged Czech persecution of Sudeten Germans, Neville Chamberlain, Prime

Minister of Great Britain signed the agreement (“Chamberlain and Hitler 1938). Surprisingly,

France and Great Britain appeared to endorse Germany’s territorial annexations, not choosing to see them for the blatant and dangerous military startups they were. For insurance, Hitler also struck a nonaggression pact with Joseph Stalin, President of the Soviet Union. According to Life

Magazine, “After failing to achieve any assurances of collective action against Germany from

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Britain or France, Stalin startled – and angered – them by signing this pact with Hitler in August

1939” (Scherman 44). The magazine perceptively stated, “The high priests of the two great new rival political religions of the 20th century reveal themselves as nothing after all but a pair of hardboiled and practical nationalist bosses” (Scherman 44).

Great Britain and France saw things differently on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland without a declaration of war. Using Blitzkrieg, or lightning war tactics, Germany attacked by land and air and destroyed the Polish armed forces in a month. Hitler and Stalin split the spoils of the Polish conquest as they had promised in their pact. The stakes were suddenly much higher for the Allies, who had repeatedly underestimated Hitler’s desire for conquest. The

Allied declared war on Germany immediately and World War II was born. Hitler had hoped

France and Great Britain would capitulate to Germany and make a separate peace, but in October

1939 both nations refused. Germany then invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and

Norway; Hitler followed this by crossing the Meuse River, where he successfully invaded France using a route through the heavily-wooded Ardennes Forest with the armored Panzer divisions, attacking French forces, and pushing them and the British Expeditionary forces to the sea

(Scherman 49).

The Germans stopped short of a knockout punch on Allied forces, which enabled a massive evacuation of some 340,000 French and British troops from Dunkirk to safety in Great Britain

(Scherman 68). This “galvanized Britain into the force that Hitler had feared it would become”

(Scherman 49). Winston Churchill, “the new warrior Prime Minister” of Great Britain heroically declared, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat” (Scherman 49). Hitler moved the Luftwaffe over London and bombed it constantly during the summer of 1940, inflicting great damage on civilian targets. However, Britain’s Royal Air Force pounded back, defeating the

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Luftwaffe and changing Hitler’s mind about an invasion of Great Britain. On August 21, 1940,

Churchill’s stirring words captured the feelings of all when he praised the role of the RAF in victory over the Luftwaffe when he stated, “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few” (Scherman 72). Germany’s punishing blitz of targets in the

British Isles continued throughout the end of 1940 but eventually faded.

Hitler won the Battle of France and believed he was invincible. Feeling this way, he considered an invasion of the Soviet Union, whose territory had always been his goal. By opening a third front there, the other two being Western Europe and North Africa, Hitler ran the risk of spreading his forces too thin. Moreover, his betrayal of the Soviet Union caused Stalin to side with the Allies. Hitler’s overreach threatened his goals and was a serious tactical mistake.

Great Britain now looked to America for assistance. The United States had been conspicuously quiet on the subject of war. In June 1940, a survey showed that 64% of

Americans wanted to help the European Allies but without declaring war on Germany and entering a full-scale war (Overy 106). In late September 1940, the Axis countries – Germany,

Italy, and Japan – met in Berlin to sign the Tripartite Agreement, with which they divided the world into three spheres of influence, including an Asian sphere (Overy 115).

Japan forced the hand of the United States when its air force and navy bombed the U.S.

Navy base at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack on December 7, 1941 in retribution for

U.S. trade embargoes. It was extremely costly for the United States. Nearly 3,600 people were killed or wounded. All eight battleships, all three destroyers, and all three cruisers were damaged or destroyed. The Navy and Army Air Corps together sustained 328 lost or damaged aircraft (Fact Sheet: Pearl Harbor). The United States declared war on Japan the next day. In describing the attack, President Franklin Roosevelt called it a “day which will live in infamy”

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(Overy 223). Roosevelt also declared war on Italy and Germany on December 11. A war pact was signed and made public on January 2, 1942. It provided that “all twenty-six countries at war with one or more of the Axis powers have pledged…not to make a separate armistice or peace and to employ full military or economic resources against the enemy each is fighting” (Overy

236).

America mobilized for the war effort militarily and on the home front, and production of war materials soared. Military action was once again contemplated on the European continent to confront Hitler and his Axis of totalitarianism. Meanwhile, fighting continued in Europe.

Germany continued to press westward and was simultaneously pressured by British Royal Air

Force bombers. These attacks were designed to destroy Germany’s war industries and civilian housing. It was also during this period that the elite Nazi squads rounded up European and

Soviet Jews and forced them into labor or sent them to death camps.

The Allies were now planning an invasion of northern France to gain a foothold on the continent. From there they would attempt to liberate Europe. Under the direction of the Allied

Supreme Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the secret, amphibious Operation

Overlord, also known as D-Day, was devised to take on German strongholds in France by entering the continent by sea. Historian Stephen Ambrose observes that “Hitler had recognized that his only hope for victory lay on the Western Front. His armies could not defeat the Red

[Soviet] Army, but they might defeat the British and Americans, so discouraging Stalin that he would make a settlement” (Ambrose 43). Thrown off by a British counterintelligence false report that the Americans and British would invade at Calais, Hitler did not amass enough troop strength to counter the actual landings at Omaha and Utah beaches in Normandy. On June 6,

1944, “some 175,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy under the command of

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Eisenhower and Britain’s Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery (Ambrose 25). Protected by

American aircraft and supplemented by United States Airborne paratroopers, successive waves of troops came ashore throughout the summer. Despite pockets of German resistance, the operation was a huge success for the Allies and landed them back on the European continent to do their work.

The summer of 1944 was a difficult one for the Germans. On July 20, Hitler survived an assassination attempt when a bomb in a suitcase exploded. The perpetrators were members of his Nazi regime, including mastermind Count Felix von Stauffenberg (Merriam 1). Only slightly injured, Hitler purged his army to rid it of traitors. There was also bad news on the military front. Danny Parker writes, “In September 1944, the dictator, war lord and self-styled Fuehrer of

Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, was facing almost certain defeat. After six costly years of war, his beleaguered National Socialist state that he called the Third Reich was losing ground rapidly on all fronts…It was a calamity of unprecedented proportions” (Parker 3). The Allies had moved fast throughout France after D-Day, liberating Paris and most of France by the end of August.

At the end of summer they were nearing Germany’s western border, which contained the Ruhr region with its essential industrial components for military use. German forces were being pounded in Italy. In addition, “North Africa had been lost and Hitler had abandoned Greece.

Allied bomber fleets visited death and destruction to German cities on a daily basis, leaving them scarred and in ruins” (Parker 3). Over the years of war, Germany had sustained 4.5 million casualties, and almost a million troops had been lost in the summer of 1944 alone (Parker 4).

Hitler attributed his losses to the Allied mastery of the air (Parker 5). The Allies believed that victory over Germany was in sight before Christmas.

Hitler was down but not out. He knew he had to address the problem of “how to

Knauss 17 regain the initiative lost since the Anglo-American landing in Normandy two months before”

(Merriam 3). He began to develop a plan to attack the Allied forces in the Ardennes region that would rely on adverse winter weather when Allied aircraft were grounded. He remembered the successful German offensive through the Ardennes Forest in 1940 when he began pushing Allied forces off the continent and into the sea. Now Hitler, in 1944, excitedly told his officers, “I shall go on the counterattack…out of the Ardennes, with the objective Antwerp (Parker 9).” Antwerp, on the Belgian coast, was the major supply port for most of the Allied forces in the West, and

Germany wanted to deny the Allies access to it and use it for themselves, even though it was

“over a hundred miles from the front along the German border. Hitler’s audience was stunned”

(Parker 9). The offensive, if successful, “would capture the most important port in Western

Europe…it would cut off an estimated thirty American, British and Canadian divisions from any source of supply” (Parker 12). The plan, Wacht am Rhine (Watch on the Rhine), began to take form against the better judgment of Hitler’s generals. Even General Field Marshall Gerd von

Rundstedt, in charge of German forces in the West stated, “Absolutely all conditions necessary for success were lacking…It was obvious to me that the available forces were far too small for such an extremely ambitious plan…But I knew by now it was useless to protest to Hitler about the possibility of anything” (Parker 12). Hitler insisted that planning begin for Wacht am Rhine.

He was “convinced of his divine destiny in Germany’s future “ (Parker 14).

Hitler envisioned a surprise attack “in a weakly held zone” (Merriam 9), where “the brunt of the attack would be carried by two panzer armies; infantry divisions supported by heavy formations of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons would block to the north and south to protect the flanks of the attacking armor; the Luftwaffe would [be unleashed in] support of the attacking forces. The surprise attack would be preceded by a short, but powerful, artillery concentration.

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Bridgeheads across the Meuse River were to be secured the second day of the attack” (Merriam

11). The German objective was to drive a wedge into the Allied armies and then finish them

off. Speed was critical. Hitler planned to “crush the Western Allies first, then turn and fall on

the Russians with the full weight of its army” (Bruning 9). He saw his overall plan as “history’s

military comeback: a strategy that would wipe out three years of defeats with a single, decisive victory” (Bruning 9).

The attack would take place along an 80-mile front that the Germans had determined was

loosely held by Allies. Hitler’s close friend, General Senn Dietrich, and his strong Sixth Panzer

Army, along with the Fifth and Seventh would launch the first assaults. “Three nights before the

great attack…250,000 men, tanks, assault guns, and heavy artillery moved into position less than

four miles from the unsuspecting Americans” (Parker 18). After fighting commenced, Hitler’s

forces created the significant bulge or indentation in the Allies’ line that gave the offensive its

name—the Battle of the Bulge—in addition to its official Allied name, the Ardennes Offensive.

The situation at Bastogne contributed greatly to Allied victory at the Bulge. The Allies’

success in defending the town of Bastogne, a strategic stronghold for both sides, with multiple

roads leading in all directions, occurred against all odds. Under siege by German forces and

defended by the exhausted and depleted 101st Airborne Division under Brigadier General

Anthony McAuliffe, who held out hoping for reinforcements, McAuliffe is known for

dismissively responding “Nuts!” when the Germans asked him to surrender, having no intention

of doing so (Eisenhower 322-23). Reinforcements came to Bastogne because of the nimbleness

and speed of General Patton’s Third Army, which was able to turn ninety degrees and sprint

north to provide reinforcement to the troops there (Parker 335).

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The Germans were defeated in the Battle of the Bulge. Lack of fuel and a war effort that had been ongoing for almost six years were principal reasons. Tired and outmanned, the

Germans not only lost the battle but lost the war. Planning to make significant progress in the first few days of conflict, German forces were considerably slowed by Allied forces, especially in the St. Vith area. This delay used up many of Germany’s resources and supplies, which accelerated their defeat. Re-supply issues, brutal weather, which grounded their planes, and miscalculations by the German Wehrmacht, added to Germany’s problems. Once the weather cleared, Allied bombers were invincible.

Alexia Jacoby’s oral history project from 2012 focuses on D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and Buchenwald as experienced by narrator, Roy Manning Barber (Jacoby). In it, Jacoby links

Allied success in the Battle of the Bulge with its ability to “advance across Europe and eventually liberate many concentration camps in Germany” (Jacoby 8 [Contextualization]).

According to her report, these death camps were apparently not widely known about until

Germany was defeated. These camps warehoused Jews and other non-Aryan ethnic minorities who were forced into labor or targeted for extermination by Hitler. According to her report, the

United States Third Army liberated Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. This same army helped defeat Germany at the Battle of the Bulge. According to Jacoby and Barber, these battle- hardened soldiers found it very difficult to comprehend what the Nazis had done to the people in these camps. (Jacoby 10-11 [Contextualization]). In coming upon the gruesome scene at the

Buchenwald concentration camp, Barber recounts seeing “hundreds of people who had died in piles and half-nude and it’s just a horrible sight. That’s the only time I’ve seen such a horrible sight” (Jacoby 13 [Transcription]). He went on to say, “I just couldn’t imagine it being as bad as

Knauss 20 what we saw there…I just didn’t dream that it would be so many people killed (Jacoby 18

[Transcription]).

Over one million soldiers fought in the Ardennes Forest from mid-December 1944 to the end of January 1945. Of this million-plus, 600,000 Americans, 500,000 Germans, and 55,000

British were involved in the fighting (MacDonald 618). There were over 180,000 casualties, including 81,000 Americans. 1,400 British, and 100,000 Germans (MacDonald 618). In Danny

Parker’s introduction to his Battle of the Bulge, he writes that the Ardennes Offensive “stands as the greatest Allied intelligence failure of the war” after Pearl Harbor, “owing to serious miscalculations of German capabilities…[that] imposed monumental confusion within Allied ranks (Parker xiii). The element of surprise shared by the attacks at Pearl Harbor and the Battle of the Bulge created panic among the Allies but also a decisive response that led the way to victory over Japan and Germany. Parker believes, “That the Germans could recover from six years of devastating warfare and still respond with the greatest offensive in the West will always stand as an astonishing military accomplishment” (Parker xiii). Still, says Parker, the Ardennes

Offensive “stands out as another example of Hitler’s shortcomings as a military leader…Hitler showed that he had little notion of the relationship between force and objective” (Parker 329).

According to German General Field Marshall Jodl, who was executed at Nuremburg, “It is often said that Hitler’s military advisors ought to have opened his eyes to the fact that the war was lost.

This is a naïve idea. Before any of us, [Hitler] sensed and knew the war was lost. But can anyone give up a nation, particularly his own people, for lost if there is any way out” (Parker

342)? Such justification for putting the world through an event that devastated so many lives could be interpreted as the height of hubris. Fortunately the Allied soldiers’ perseverance at the

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Battle of the Bulge set in motion the end of World War II in Europe in favor of the Allies and democracy.

Historians are essentially united in their belief that that Ardennes Offensive – Battle of the

Bulge – was the “decisive struggle that broke the back of the Nazi war machine” (Eisenhower

457). Some, like military historian, Danny Parker, calls this battle “Hitler’s last desperate gamble for success in a war already lost” (Parker xiii), although the Allies still had to come through after being attacked. At Bastogne – the battle within the battle – the Allies really came through and ensured that German forces would not reach the Meuse, much less cross it. Drew

Middleton’s article in the New York Times on December, 1944 supports this view about the significance of Bastogne. He writes, “The raising of the siege of Bastogne ended one of the most gallant stands in the European campaign, with an equally inspiring advance through an area heavily held by the enemy” (Overy 490).

Several military historians evaluate the manner in which the German army was weakened and how this influenced the outcome of the war in Europe. According to Parker, “historians have long asserted that the Ardennes battle shortened the war [in Western Europe] by months…If the Ardennes did shorten the war in the West, it was not because of men or material—both opponents were gravely hurt. [It was] the severe blow to the German soldier’s will to fight” (Parker 341). Military historian, John Toland, makes the case that “because of

Hitler’s desperate gamble in the Ardennes, the lives of thousands of British and American fighters were spared.” He believes, “If Hitler had not insisted on the ‘Big Solution’ [Ardennes

Offensive] … and had hidden behind the Siegfried Line [in Germany], the Allies would have had to smash through fortifications well protected” by German armies that were devastated in the

Battle of the Bulge (Toland 379). According to Robert Merriam, American soldier in the

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Ardennes Offensive and later Army historian, “Eisenhower later announced the German attack

delayed the [Allied] ground offensive by six weeks…[and] in the air…the relentless war on

German industry was delayed for four weeks” (Merriam 211). However, the effect of this delay

was advantageous for the Allies, despite loss of life in the Ardennes, because “a weaker, more

demoralized enemy was met [by the Allies]…[and] the end was never in doubt after that”

(Merriam 211). Without reserves, supplies, Panzer power, and initiative, the German Army

could not continue.

Parker describes Soviet Russia as the “clear political victor in the Ardennes Campaign

[because] when Stalin’s legions attacked Hitler’s army in January [1945], he found no respectable German forces with which to oppose his multitudes. The Ardennes Offensive had squandered the final German reserve that could have been used against the Russians in the East”

(Parker 341). John D. Eisenhower recognizes the “foresight and wisdom” of Churchill, who, he says, was the “first of the Western Allied leaders to recognize that international Communism had

not really changed its spots, that to the Soviets cooperation with the Western Allies was a temporary expedient only…” (Eisenhower 466).

The principal events contributing to the war in Europe, namely, Germany’s loss in World

War I and subsequent punishment in the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler’s publication of Mein Kampf and rise to power in Germany, Germany’s invasion of Poland, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and the United States’ entry into the war have been looked at a thousand ways. World War II took place on multiple continents and touched millions of lives. In the western world, however, the events in the Ardennes Forest during a frigid winter in late 1944 and early 1945 guaranteed

certain victory for the Allies, but it came at an extraordinarily high cost.

Knauss 23

Interview Transcription

Interviewee/Narrator: Lloyd D. Emerson Interviewer: Danny Knauss Location: Mr. Emerson’s home, Bethesda, MD Date: January 5, 2014 This Interview was reviewed and edited by Lloyd D. Emerson

Danny Knauss: This is Danny Knauss and I am going to interview Mr. Lloyd D. Emerson as part of the American Century Oral History Project about his life and experiences in World War

II, particularly the Battle of the Bulge. I am conducting this interview on January 5, 2014 at Mr.

Emerson’s house in Bethesda, MD. Mr. Emerson, I understand you will be turning 90 next

week. I’d like to wish you a Happy Birthday a bit early.

Lloyd Emerson: Thank you very much, Danny.

DK: Tell me where you were born and what it was like growing up.

LE: I was born in the state of Washington, in a town called Ritzville R-I-T-Z-V-I-L-L-E – 1,700

citizens at the time—it’s in eastern Washington. I lived there through all my growing up years,

attended high school there, and then went to Washington State College until I went into the army

in February 1943.

LE: I received a draft notice in October 1942, but because I was in the middle of my second

semester at college, I was granted a deferment. Just after I turned 19, I went into the service on the 3rd of February 1943.

Knauss 24

DK: Yes. And what did your parents do for a living?

LE: My father was a pharmacist in Ritzville all his life. I had two brothers. One became a pharmacist. The other was a Marine pilot, who was killed in 1940 while on a training flight.

DK: Who were your greatest influences growing up?

LE: Probably my dad. I worshipped my brothers. They were much older than I was. Another influence was a man I played golf with—a Roman Catholic priest, Father Fleur, a Belgian. He was a young man, not a great deal older than I was—actually about 40. He was a good guy. I enjoyed and respected him, but this upset my parents, especially my father, who abhorred

Catholicism. He and my mother both were concerned that I might become a Catholic and so there was a bit of a struggle in the family, but this didn’t influence me much. Generally speaking, other influences were just the people around me. In a little town of 1,700 one gets to know virtually everybody quick. I enjoyed my classmates. I think was a pretty cocky kid because both my brothers had been salutatorian and valedictorian, as I was, and I think I was probably a bit boorish in that sense. I was awfully proud of myself, I know that. I wasn’t much of an athlete because I have one bad eye and I learned quickly that that was not conducive to athletic achievement. I couldn’t see things coming at me well.

DK: Why did your father hate Catholicism?

Knauss 25

LE: There were people who thought Catholics were determined to take over the country or something like this. But I don’t really know why he disliked Catholicism. He never lectured me about it. His feelings became evident by his great interest in what I’d done with Father Fleur. I golfed with him frequently. I’d ride with him; we went to see his flock. He went in without me and then he’d tell me about it as we went along. I sensed that when my Dad knew I had been with Father Fleur, Dad was very concerned about where I’d gone, what did we talk about, what did Father Fleur want me to do. My mother was less concerned with Catholicism. But she had a large, long-term influence by guiding me to read.

DK: In high school were you aware of what was going on in Europe and the Pacific in terms of the aggressive actions of the various Fascist governments?

LE: Somewhat. But I thought that what the Germans were doing was all right. This was before the war started. The Germans had recovered remarkably well from the penalties of World War I.

I paid little attention to their attitude about Jews, feeling what they do is their business. But this was before there was any recognition that the horrors of the Holocaust were actually taking place. We didn’t know or we didn’t recognize it. Books I’ve read indicate that many, many

Americans not only didn’t know at first but didn’t believe it, so I think that was sort of the way I felt. But I was your age, so I wasn’t thinking things through very clearly and I can remember a conversation or two about things the Germans had done, and I think I remember talking—I was a junior, I guess—about 1940, the German triumph in the west and the victory over France. The war is over, the Germans are going to win, that kind of thing.

Knauss 26

DK: What did you imagine yourself doing after high school?

LE: I set off to be a pharmacist, like my father and brother, but I soon discovered that wasn’t my cup of tea at all. I changed to engineering. I had one semester of pharmacy and then two of engineering, but I don’t think I had the slightest idea what I was going to do. I wasn’t really taken with engineering, although I liked figures, I liked engineering drawing, but I didn’t really imagine myself doing something as an engineer. But I wasn’t thinking of things of the future as a kid. I was growing up in this little town in an atmosphere—75 years ago—and the world around me was very different than the world now. Many of the things we see and do today I didn’t know about. I was impressed by some of the guys that caught fish in little pothole lakes— they took me with them sometimes. The farmers—I saw them running their combines. One friend, a kid, took me to his farm home. I stayed overnight and went in the barn and saw animals—hay and hogs. The world outside pretty much went on without my attention. We had a radio which provided long, cracky operas. My dad liked them. We also had some news but not very much. The idea of all this news coverage, CNN and so forth, of course we didn’t have television—no CNN, ESPN, PBS. The newspaper we had was from Spokane, Washington,

Spokesman Review. Spokane is the major city in eastern Washington—it was almost 70 miles away, and we got the newspaper once a week. Otherwise, we had a once-a-week local paper called The Journal Times that reported what was going on in Ritzville—not much else. Ritzville was a county seat. Each county has its own government and runs its own schools.

DK: What kind of engineering did you do?

Knauss 27

LE: Mechanical.

DK: Ok. What got you started with mechanical?

LE: I didn’t know any better. I really, I was at sea in college. I was a good student and I breezed through high school. I never really learned about studying and what I was going to do until I actually got to college. Before college, I was always the number one student; everything kind of hinged around me. Teachers called on me when they wanted an answer. The teachers talked about Lloyd doing this and Lloyd doing that. This was an unfortunate thing as far as my preparation for further education was concerned.

DK: How did you react to Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor?

LE: I was in the fraternity house at Washington State and I heard about this by radio. I remember I wrote my mother and father a note that my brother—who had by then been killed in an airplane accident—won’t get involved in this. What Pearl Harbor meant for me didn’t really register because I hadn’t thought of the army. As far a shooting a gun, I had a rifle and I shot squirrels or something now and then but otherwise my military experience was ROTC. I never thought of myself being in the Army. And when I was drafted, while I knew it was coming, I had absolutely no idea what it was.

DK: How did you follow world-related events closely as World War II got underway?

Knauss 28

LE: Really didn’t. Again, it was far removed, not only 3,000 miles from east coast to west coast and 4,000 miles across the Atlantic, and the other way 10,000 miles to Asia. We were a long way from anything and our population was such that few were going to war. They weren’t drafting very many of us at that time. I remember listening to Edward R. Morrow when he started broadcasting from London. He was a remarkable correspondent for CBS. His broadcasts began, “This is London,” which became famous. He was good. This was the first thing that made me realize that there really is something going on over there that is really very, very bad.

But there was no discussion of the Holocaust or what was happening. All it was is that the

Germans had done this and the Germans had done that and the French had collapsed and the

British were fighting for their lives and that was about the extent of my knowledge of what was going on. I began to think about armies.

DK: What was your opinion about Hitler and the Third Reich?

LE: At first it seemed to me that was a pretty good deal. Somebody had done something in

Germany that was working out—they were really achieving things. As time passed and it became evident that Nazi Germany was ruthless, I think it became clear that this Hitler was getting things done in a way that wasn’t right. But in general, I think Hitler didn’t impact as evil, because I still was reflecting back, there’s something good going on in Germany. The country is prosperous and people aren’t leaving and they’re having a good life. So I think that was my reaction at first. Later on, I never really associated Hitler directly with atrocity. He ordered them, that was perfectly clear, but the actual committing of the things was done by others. Later

Knauss 29 it became clear that this man was evil, there was something the matter with him. But he was an extraordinarily capable exploiter. His speeches aroused crowds.

DK: He was a very good motivator.

LE: As a kid of 18 or 19 at that time, that was all I knew about him. That he was making things happen, bad as they were, and the way he was doing it, bad as it was, never occurred to me. I think we Americans, we still are a bit innocent. We have benefited so enormously here in our country over the years that it didn’t ever occur to us that people could do these things. We did do terrible things in the treatment of the Japanese in the United States during the war. The way the Native American Indians have been treated. Our treatment of Afro-Americans. These are black marks on our society. We have done things rather like the Germans, what Hitler was ordering done.

DK: And what was your reaction to getting drafted?

LE: I hadn’t any idea what I was getting into. I remember the day I actually left my home and got on a bus to go to Spokane. The local draft board was there to see three or four of us who were drafted in that call. One gave me a dollar bill. He said, “good luck.” I thought this is very nice.

DK: Were you eager to join the war effort?

Knauss 30

LE: No, but I hadn’t thought about it. And I think to answer you to be perfectly candid looking back on it, I’ve never had that question put to me before. I think my position about the war rather than being eager was apprehension about what I was getting into but I didn’t know.

DK: And was your brother the only other family member that was in the military?

LE: Yes.

DK: Before World War II?

LE: Yes.

DK: Were any of your family members also in World War II?

LE: An uncle and cousin.

DK: Okay. What was your family’s reaction when you were drafted?

LE: I don’t recall much about their reaction. They tried to be nice and tried to tell me to be careful and that sort of thing, but the emotion that clearly must have been in it, I didn’t really see.

They were very guarded about it so that I wouldn’t, I guess, feel bad about leaving.

DK: Describe the series of events after you were drafted.

Knauss 31

LE: I was drafted in February 1943, and because I had one bad eye I was categorized as limited

service, which meant that I was not going to go into a combat unit. I was sent to Boise Barracks

in Boise, Idaho, which was for limited service people. I happened to have an uncle who was

stationed at a military base there—Corps of Engineers. He lived in Boise, and two days after I

got to this place, my uncle, a major, quite a high-ranking officer I thought, took me to his house

and gave me dinner. I was there for about six weeks. We did a little close order drill, picked up

cigarette butts, cleaned the barracks, made our beds, and began a little basic training. About six

weeks after I got there, I was on the basis of my IQ selected to go into the army specialized

training program—the ASTP. Instead of going to basic training and learning how to be a soldier,

I was sent back to college, first to Stanford for about a month, and then to the University of

Oregon for three semesters. Thus the first year of my army life, with the exception of six weeks,

I went back to college. Coincidentally the courses were in engineering, and that may have

helped me decide at first that I wanted to be an engineer and then realized, no I don’t. Studying

this stuff is no good for me. I was not happy. I was already beginning to sense that I didn’t like the army. The officer that was in charge of this ASTP post at the University of Oregon was a sergeant major in the regular army. And he was obviously a very good army man, but I just detested him. And I resisted him and the system. We had balsa wood, very light rifles with which we did rifle drills. During the drill the rifle flew up in the air and landed all over me. And the major said he was going to get me. I think he meant he was going to do everything he could in reporting my conduct that would get me shifted out of the ASTP program or whatever and into the regular army, but about this time, the army recognized that they couldn’t afford to put that number of people aside. Quite a number of people were needed in the infantry. I’m sure that the

Knauss 32

sergeant was delighted, but as they got ready to move me an order came that shifted me to the

ASTP dental program. I was headed to the 11th Armored Division at what is now Vandenberg

Air Force Base. The base is near Lompoc, California. That’s where the 11th Armored Division

was fitting out for movement to Western Europe. I was a warm body, without any basic training.

I still had never done anything except thrown the rifle over my shoulder. I’d had no army

experience, except a little close order drill. Well, that’s being a bit unfair. At Oregon, this major

was a good first sergeant and a good officer. He did teach us drill and marching one, two, three

four. There was some close order drill—one column walked first squad to the rear march,

second squad to the rear march. It was designed to begin the discipline of following an order

and doing it in a group, learning to be a part of a system. At the time I thought this is the craziest

thing I could ever imagine. Walk up and down the road, first squad to the rear march, second

squad to the rear march, meaning in short, you’d be walking along together and suddenly one squad would turn around and walk back the other way and the other two would proceed.

DK: You stated you were in the Eleventh Armored Division, 22nd Tank Battalion.

LE: Yes, 22nd Tank Battalion, right.

DK: Can you explain what an armored division is?

LE: An armored division is a take-off on the regular infantry division, but an armored division is

made up of primarily motorized equipment—Sherman and Sheridan tanks. These were organized

into three battalions consisting of three companies with three platoons of five tanks each. This

Knauss 33

was the same pattern of an infantry division, but instead of people they were vehicles, tanks,

halftracks, jeeps and all kinds of motor vehicles—a motorized operation. It became, Danny, a

motorized operation. So instead of walking across Europe, we rode across Europe. The armored

division was created because of the way the Germans exploited their Panzer Armored Division.

Some of their leaders—Heinz Guderian was a brilliant leader and Marshal Rommel—they were

both Panzer Division leaders. In the US Army, George Patton got his name by being a tank

leader. The infantry division had a somewhat larger number of people. There’d be a two-star

general, the division commander, and then a one-star general would be the deputy commander.

Each battalion was headed by a colonel or lieutenant colonel, each company was headed by a

captain, and then they had subordinate lieutenants for platoons. This was very similar to the

infantry division.

DK: And were you free to choose your armored division?

LE: No. I was assigned just like, I’m being facetious here, but the 22nd tank battalion needed 18

people, so the first 18 people off the train went there. The division had been training for two

years; the existing soldiers were trying to teach us about the tanks and the many things we were

going to have to utilize—how we would handle the guns, the cannons, and our own personal weapons. Many of us we had never seen anything like it. By that time my attitude that I didn’t

care or think about the army had matured to the point where I disliked it intensely. I wondered

how these people could lead me to battle. Eventually our army was very good, but in the

beginning it wasn’t. Our leaders had to learn a lot, just the way I did. Finally, my attitude

changed after I realized that these 11th Armored people were doing the best they could. There

Knauss 34 were five people in the tank and the commander—he was a great big guy from Wisconsin, a butcher as a civilian, but he knew the tank. He knew a lot more about what was going on than I ever did, although he was a hard guy and he gave me the same kind of treatment because I was a college guy coming here. But he made me learn about the guns and about what I had to do and that sort of thing.

DK: Where were you initially stationed and what kind of training did you receive?

LE: After the ASTP program, I went to Lompoc, California and was trained there. I had to go through an obstacle course and machine guns firing over the head and then grab a rope, pull up, and go over a big board—I rarely did that right, fell off the top occasionally. We did some physical training, recognizing commands, doing guard duty, learning the nomenclature of weapons, taking guns apart and putting them back together, and recognizing the things that the tank provided and required, and what role I had in the tank. In the tank I was what is called a cannoneer radio tender with a rank of private. I sat in the turret. I can show you [Mr. Emerson shows a schematic of the tank]. Here is a turret. Then there was a driver, a private first class.

This is the bow gunner. He manned a machine gun. Both of these positions had periscopes to see out when the hatch cover is down. In combat and for the most part when moving, the hatch cover was kept down. In the turret was a tank commander. He had access to a .50 caliber machine gun. Below him was the gunner, second ranking man on the tank. He sighted and aimed the cannon and machine gun and a coaxial machine gun on the same level as the big cannon. I sat over on that side and I loaded the machine gun and the cannon. Behind me was a radio. It was a, I think, a crystal set. Not a radio like we have today. I was responsible for

Knauss 35 pressing the right crystal locations, pursuant to the channel that was being used that day. One problem was learning to take the coaxial machine gun apart and put it back together. That always baffled me. The coaxial fired tracer bullets from a belt in an ammunition box on the turret floor. The tracer bullets went toward the target. The gunner could see where they were going. If on target, he would fire the cannon. Now and then, that belt would jam. And I was responsible for knowing how to break that jam, often very difficult. I didn’t do that very well.

And the tank commander would be furious. The gunner, “Old Jake,” was 35, an old man for us

18 and 19-year-olds.

DK: So, What army were you in and who was your Commanding General?

LE: I was in was the Third Army and General George Patton was the commander: Pearl-handled revolvers and all. He was very respected by friend and foe, although an arrogant man. The movie Patton is a good movie. Since you are doing this, you might find it worthwhile to take a look at it. He [George C. Scott, who portrayed Patton] won the academy award for a fine performance. He was of the same quality leader as Gudarian and Rommel. The Germans were reportedly afraid of him because he did things that their great generals did and things they never expected.

DK: What were living conditions like overseas?

LE: Let me take you on my route across the county headed overseas.

Knauss 36

DK: Okay, sure.

LE: About training, we had maneuvers in that sand in western California. That was when I began to learn about what’s going to happen in this vehicle when we were actually involved in combat, rolling up and down sand dunes or hedgerows. I learned one important thing: the tank tracks come off occasionally. This tank weighed 38 tons. When a track came off, we on tank crew, aided by a tank recovery vehicle, had to raise the tank up and put the track back on the bogey wheels. That was one tough job.

DK: A little harder than changing a tire.

LE: Yes, the tracks are very, very heavy. After we got through this training and fitted out, the division was without vehicles and we were put on a troop train and went across the United

States, from Lompoc, California, through New Orleans, to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. I was stationed at Kilmer until I was put aboard Her Majesty’s Ship, Samaria. It was one of the most uncomfortable sea voyages you could imagine. We were 7,000 men on this British ship. Our sleeping accommodations were either the top of the mess tables or on a screen mattress from underneath the tables. So three guys could sleep on one table. Hammocks were above the tables, and I got a hammock. I wasn’t so good with a hammock, especially getting into it at night. Many guys got seasick, but I didn’t, so I ended up doing duty because nobody else was able to walk enough to do the duty, carrying the slop from the mess. We thought we were going to France, but Patton commandeered our equipment and gave it to the Fourth Armored division, which for some time had been in combat in Europe. So we ended up landing in England at

Knauss 37

Liverpool. I began my first experience in England. We were greeted by some of the nicest Red

Cross ladies serving us the most ghastly tea out of barrels. They were so friendly, but the tea

was just awful. We were put on troop trains there and moved to Salisbury Plain, which was a

British tank training site. We spent nearly four months there—September, October, November,

and into December. We didn’t have any tanks, so we marched around the hedgerows and I

learned about pubs and darts and chased a few English girls and got a pass to London two or

three times. I heard the bombs come in, experienced the blackout. I’m glad I did it. We began to hear the British describe Americans as “oversexed, overpaid, and over here.” We saw how well-treated and well-fed we were, when the local people would invite us to join them for family dinner. And I went a couple of times and learned they were hard-pressed. We were advised to take these people something in the way of food, so we got oranges. I never thought an orange could be this important. I had a bag of oranges, and there was ecstasy and tears on the faces of people. They hadn’t seen an orange or been able to get an orange for months. And they had two kids, and each kid got an orange. It was one of the most gratifying and moving experiences to see those people grab them. And they were so grateful. It was kind of the answer for why do you fight a war? The British were good people that had fought, their families had suffered. Here we were, their hope. We were going to help them out. I grasped the meaning of why I was there. But I never gave up thinking that the army was a pain. If it moves shoot it, if it doesn’t move, pick it up, if you can’t pick it up, paint it. Then our equipment was finally delivered in

England. We went to a departure port and to a landing ship tank, LST. The tank is driven into

the water and upon the LST platform. Took about 20 tanks. We went across the channel. The

LST was almost flat bottomed and even a slight wave makes the LST rock. Again, many of my

company got sick, but I didn’t. The U.S. Navy people were running these LSTs. They were so

Knauss 38 good. They made us coffee and took our minds off of what we were getting into. I realized that there is something good about this whole business. I was learning about people that I never knew— before I had been number one and most everything I did was praised. Now I realize I was one of many people who were doing the same kind of thing and a lot of guys doing different unpleasant things, just as bad as mine were. Even though I still hated it, my respect for people began to grow and I began the see the quality of a bit of education and intelligence. I met people that were not high school graduates. They came out of slums in Chicago and New York. There were no blacks at that time, but there were Jews and Spanish people. Some of them hardly read.

They were just cannon fodder. And I began to recognize how privileged I was to have what I had. My family and my education—they in turn began to ask me questions about things. Not about the war, but they would get a letter and couldn’t read it. A guy in my tank crew couldn’t read and he got letters and I would read them to him. And I wrote letters for them. And I began to feel I was a pretty lucky guy. This isn’t what I thought it was going to be, as far as the role of people. The preparation I had gone through for almost a year, after the ASTP, was beginning to show as having been worth something. It was a good thing.

DK: What were living conditions like overseas?

LE: Well, my living conditions during the war were in the tank, and around the tank, and everything to do with the tank. The tank was my house—and the care and feeding of that tank and caring for myself. Patton’s discipline required that you shave and you wore a cap and you had to be a soldier. And Patton personally looked into this. If Patton saw a GI or an officer that wasn’t shaved or didn’t have a tie, in the case of the officers he disciplined them quickly. He

Knauss 39 would demote them. On the other hand, if there was a particular soldier who did a very good job, he would promote him. And that was Patton’s way. I remember one memorable occasion it was so cold in Belgium, like today. I looked out and there was Patton in his armored jeep, standing up with a great coat on, and he was looking. He came to where the tanks were, not my tank, but other tanks. He talked to the infantry, and it was quite apparent why this guy was who he was. No question, he was very, very popular. He would direct traffic and swear. He shouted at the tank drivers, “How did you get so damn stupid? You know better than to do that. Now, do this! Now you stop there and wait until this guy goes!” Here the four-star general was giving directions that shouldn’t have been needed, if the drivers had been using care. It was a part of my education. I realized that this guy, far removed from my place, clearly knows about war.

DK: What were your fellow soldiers like?

LE: The tank commander was a big gruff Scandinavian, I think, from Wisconsin. Had been a butcher. He was about 6 foot 3 or 4. He was really too big to be in a tank, but they put him there. He knew the tank and he knew how to take care of it. He knew what his crew was supposed to do, and he was in command of the tank. He shouted a lot. I think he was a high school graduate. Old Jake, the 39-year-old, had kids—very quiet. Didn’t much involve himself with things. Did what the tank commander named Z-A-L-L-S-M-A-N told him to do, argued with the tank commander about what range to such a target, and how many rounds to fire, and what type of ammunition he should use. But generally speaking, you could say was he was a good soldier. I know from talking to Jake privately that he was very, very lonely. He missed his family, and he didn’t like the army, and he didn’t like the crap, he called it. But he didn’t fuss,

Knauss 40 not like me. I fussed a lot. So I think my answer I am describing to you, I knew these people and people in the other tanks and once in a while you got to know—when you were two or three days in the same location—you got to know the infantry people that were there. It was so cold in

Belgium after the Battle of the Bulge, and after Bastogne was freed we spent a lot of time exchanging artillery fire, not much movement. The infantry had to dig their fox holes in the frozen ground. The exhaust from the tank blew down and melted the ground. And these guys, when they could, would tell us to back the tank up, and we would run the engine for a while, warm up the ground and then pull up and they would dig themselves a hole there. If they couldn’t do that they wanted to get under the tank because they were safe from artillery fire. In their foxholes without the cover they were somewhat subject to the artillery, but this is what made us friends. And also, when it was so cold, we could heat inside. We had a little gas stove, a camp stove. We could heat canned rations and that sort of thing. We would warm the rations with it. We had some pretty good buddies. We liked them particularly because in the final analysis, if a determined German or American infantryman is willing to do so, he can beat a tank.

Just stay in his hole and the tank can’t reach him. And if he’s got a bazooka he can do big damage to the tank. So we were glad to have infantry that was rooting out the German infantry that might have been in those holes in the ground that could hit our tank. But that’s the kind of people they were. They were—the greatest generation? I’m not so sure that that’s appropriate but maybe it is. They were just American people from all walks of life. From Wisconsin, from

Chicago, from New York, from New Jersey, and I was from the State of Washington.

DK: Did you make any close friends?

Knauss 41

LE: Not really. I think— I knew these men and I enjoyed them, but we didn’t have much chance to fraternize other than with your tank crew. And you were so wrapped up in the tank and taking care of it and taking care of yourself that except for hello we did not know these guys particularly well. The tank crew—you were friends because you had to be.

DK: Where, when, and how did you enter the European Continent?

LE: We landed in England; later we landed at Cherbourg.

DK: And when was this?

LE: It was after D-Day. It was in December of 1944, just as the Battle of the Bulge began.

DK: And how soon after landing in Europe did you see armed action?

LE: We landed at Cherbourg as the Germans made this breakthrough in the Ardennes and threatened Bastogne. The French population was afraid the Germans were going to come back.

They had just been liberated three months before, and they were beginning to panic. And I understand that General Eisenhower along with the French decided that it was necessary to help raise the morale of the French, so we moved across France in three days. This whole armored division went along the Champs-Élysées in Paris, so that the French could see that they were not being abandoned. An armored division is a pretty impressive thing. Thousands of vehicles. It was not a very nice day in December, but the people in Paris were visibly excited and they

Knauss 42 waved, and the girls ran out and brought a bottle of wine and crawled up on the tanks. We didn’t stop for any length of time. We moved south of Bastogne when I first experienced artillery action. That was at night. We came into a wooded area, and when the tank engine stopped and the gas trucks came to refuel, we began to hear artillery fire in front of us. We proceeded from that location the next day. This was kind of sudden after doing nothing combat-wise from

February ’43 to December ’44. I had not heard a shot fired in anger, but now I heard German guns.

DK: Once in Europe the allies were making their way east toward Germany. How long did it take your division to get to the area where the Battle of the Bulge was occurring?

LE: Three days. By then D-Day had taken place and the battle of Western Europe had been fought, the Germans retreated rapidly, having held us off for as long as they could. Many thought we were winning the war. We might have won then, had we had enough gasoline and support, but here General Patton moved so far, so fast, used up so much fuel that more had to be brought from Cherbourg all the way across France up into Belgium to refuel the tanks. The transport was not sufficient. Also, the Fourth Armored was running out of ammunition.

DK: What do you remember about the Germans’ sneak attack on the morning of December 16,

1944?

LE: That was before we got to combat. We were on our way on December 15. I don’t know that I really thought much about it. The road march was not in keeping with what most of us

Knauss 43 enlisted people assumed or thought was going to happen. I doubt we anticipated being shown off as defending the French the way we were and that it would be so fast that we would get to battle. We left England on a day and five days later we were behind the Fourth Armored

Division ready to fight the Germans. I don’t think that there was much conscious awareness of what the Germans had done other than hearing about the U.S. General saying “nuts” to a German demand for surrender. We began to see some wounded come back.

DK: What was your division’s role in the Battle of the Bulge?

LE: We followed the Fourth Armored Division. The Fourth Armored Division liberated

Bastogne and otherwise broke that portion of the German attack. Then the Fourth Armored needed support—they needed to get some rest. We came in behind them and in some places supplanted their places on the lines.

DK: What was it like in the tank?

LE: Really quite thoroughly uncomfortable, crowded. Noisy, dirty, cold. We didn’t have any heat unless we turned on the little Coleman stove. When sleeping in that tank, which we did a lot, I had a big break with quite a lot of space because all the ammunition was underneath me. I had space and could lie down. We slept out on the ground occasionally when we were not in combat state. We cooked some stuff in the tank. On one memorable occasion after we had relieved the Fourth Armored, we were in a really badly destroyed Belgian village. Zallsman, being a butcher, found a piglet. He slaughtered it and brought it back to the tank. I didn’t know

Knauss 44 what he was going to do with it. Then suddenly we were ordered to move. So this is a true story. Zallsman told me to heat up that Coleman stove and fix that pork and he would tell me how to do it. He sliced up the pig and I sat with it between my legs in this Coleman stove with a little pan. I cooked pork chops, which were a great treat because we hadn’t had anything like that. But I thought, what kind of a business is this? I’m fighting in a war and I’m cooking pork chops, holding the stove between my legs.

DK: What kind of action did your tank experience during Battle of the Bulge?

LE: The day after we arrived, we moved to a location where we were going to attack. It was cold and it had been snowing and we were on a hillside near trees. The Germans were a couple of miles or less away across open ground and on another hill. We attacked that location the next morning. That’s the first experience with losing a tank. We tried to go in with a number of tanks and overwhelm the opposition. However, the Germans had long before that developed an 88mm anti-aircraft gun that they used as an anti-tank weapon. It was very effective. They also had a short-barreled 88. They were dug in on the hill, and as we were coming in the open we came downhill and were absolute open targets. We started up the hill and we lost, in addition to my tank, I think four or five more in that company. That was my first experience with war. I think the round entered the front armor, passed through the turret into the radio area. Of course the tank stopped. Nobody got hurt, oddly, and that night—I think that was Christmas Eve, or it was

Christmas or New Year’s Eve, the platoon leader, lieutenant, whose tank was still useable, sent word that we all should come to his tank and have Christmas drinks. That’s one time I was glad an officer was allowed to have alcohol. He gave us each a drink. It never has occurred to me

Knauss 45 why the Germans didn’t try to interfere. I expect they recognized they had to get away because the U.S. force was too strong. We went back to get another tank and a tank recovery vehicle came and got our tank. I’m sure it was repaired or whatever they did with a shot-up tank. The remainder of the attack division vehicles continued the assault along with perhaps another division.

DK: How did the cold and icy conditions affect the tanks’ mobility?

LE: Not good really. The tracks didn’t get much traction. The tank was really susceptible to sliding on ice, as I learned. The Germans were slowly withdrawing and it was very, very cold.

That was after the pig feast. We were traveling along a Belgian road, following in a column, we started down a hill, and then stopped. The tanks ahead of us, or infantry ahead of us ran into opposition of some nature. The sun was shining, cold but not too windy, and we sat in that tank for a long time—much worse than a long ride in a car. You get very stiff. I got out of the tank, probably smoking a cigarette. I was standing on the ground next to the tank. When the driver stopped, the tank had just slid little bit, maybe 15 or 20 degrees from straight ahead. I leaned against the tank and it started to turn. Just the weight of my body on the tank, and it slowly turned. The tank commander shouted at me, “What the hell are you doing down there?” This did cause a problem because we had to get help to turn the tank back on the road. The traction wouldn’t turn the tank around, so we had to get help from another tank. It hooked a cable, backed up, and pulled us around. I don’t recall an icy handling problem occurred very often.

The tanks were of course better than having to walk; they could traverse pretty muddy ground, go in water.

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DK: Were you in areas that received heavy air or artillery bombardment?

LE: Air, very little. By then, we had virtually complete air superiority. There was occasional

German reconnaissance. Later we saw the first version of a jet fighter. They had two jet fighter types. And they were something else. All of a sudden we heard this typical jet whistling noise and this remarkable aircraft comes by at enormous speed. Something totally unbelievable—we had never seen a jet airplane, of course. But they were not doing anything other than I think reconnaissance. I’m told that at the first part of the Battle of the Bulge there was quite a lot of strafing by German Stuka dive bombers and so forth, but the weather got so bad they couldn’t do it anymore. The same way we could not get air cover because the weather was so bad.

DK: Did your tank keep you and your fellow soldiers safe?

LE: Yes, it did, from rifle fire and some heavier weapons. The thing that got us eventually was the Panzerfaust, the German version of the U.S. bazooka. The bazooka was a deadly weapon, cheap and designed for infantry against tanks. The bazooka had armor piercing ammunition that burned through and exploded inside. It burned its way through the armor. And that proved to be a pretty devastating weapon. Fortunately there were never enough Germans using them.

DK: Were you wounded at any time?

LE: Yes.

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DK: How?

LE: We lost the second tank on a mine. We hit this mine and an enormous explosion took place. Dirt, sand, and smoke came up through the escape hatch on the bottom of the tank. I was in the turret, the tank tipped up 20 degrees and came back down. And all I could think of was to get out! I tore off my radio equipment, got out at the top of the tank, dropped down to the ground, and started to run. We were working at that time with the Red One Division—an old- line division that had been fighting in North Africa. They had seen it all. As I started to run, I passed an old Red One sergeant in the Red Water, who asked me where I was going. I stopped and said, “I don’t know.” He said, “You can’t run away from that tank, there is nobody shooting at you.” Then I just calmed down. Nobody was hurt fortunately, but the tank was totally disabled.

DK: How were you wounded?

LE: After the second tank loss, Zallsman, to the consternation of the rest of the crew, agreed to become, to take a new armor—M4—additionally armored on the front and sides. We would lead the division. So a tank that weighed 40 tons now weighed about 47 tons. One day we came around a corner and experienced anti-tank fire. Our tank was hit at the front. The new armor worked—no penetration. We were very proud of this tank. I was really excited. The adrenaline ran through me when the gunner fired a return round. I saw the tracer going down and hit the tank sight, then the cannon. It was a ghastly thing seeing people get blown up. Horrible as it was, it was a high that can’t be equaled. Some weeks later, we were deeply in Germany near a

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city called Meiningen. We were fighting an occasional little firefight, leading the column. As

we went along the road, two Germans dug into the side of the road and fired two Panzerfausts.

Both went through the armor and exploded inside. At that time I didn’t know I had been hit.

The inside of the tank was filled full of smoke, and the tank driver cried. He was really hurt.

Zallsman was badly injured. I started to get out of the tank—that was the rule—and over the

side, and then I looked back and there was Zallsman, hanging over the hatch cover. He had

been standing up, because we weren’t expecting the attack. The Germans had waited for us. I

went back to help him. I got him down into the ditch by the side of the road. He tried to get up while the firefight was still going on, so I sat on him. I kept him in the ditch. I knew that if he stood up he would be killed. I kept him there until the medics came. I went up to take my bag off the back of the tank, because I knew I was going to be evacuated. I reached back over my head and there was blood. A piece of shrapnel had penetrated the surface of my skull, but because I had on this quite heavy tank cap, that was just enough so that it was not fatal. But it sure bled.

DK: Did you have any other close encounters?

LE: Yes, well, I would have to say no, nothing in comparison to this. We had the time when I went back, I was sent to the hospital for a few days and then came back through the replacement system, maybe a week, ten days, and rejoined my division. By then, another new tank—a new model. I rode in that tank and we bivouacked in a wooded area, where the Germans were using something called a Nebelwerfer. We had a similar weapon. They had six to eight barrels. They were more of a terror weapon than anything else. You could range them to a degree. One of the

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Nebelwerfers landed on the front slope of the tank. There was a huge explosion. The hatches were closed. It didn’t do any damage. The tank shook. But there was no penetration. The rockets were not designed to penetrate armor. That brought us to an alert, I can tell you, but I don’t recall that there was any combat taking place there. I don’t think there was any German infantry or armor.

DK: Did you ever feel like you wouldn’t make it out alive?

LE: No.

DK: Okay.

LE: I was really never frightened. Looking back on it, it’s astonishing. Perhaps it was the security of the tank. I was frightened when I put my hand on my head and saw blood, but I didn’t feel I would die.

DK: What were some of the difficulties that you and your fellow soldiers encountered during the war?

LE: Keeping our composure. Overall I think was the most important thing. Not succumbing to fright. Not grouching too much, I tried to restrain myself. Recognizing that it was a bad situation, but we were going to prevail and we were well taken care of.

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DK: The winter of 1944 into 1945 was supposedly one of the coldest winters on record in that

part of the world. How did the weather affect the fighting?

LE: We were coming through Paris and it was cold and getting colder. It was snowing. From

that point for the next month, the weather was a distinct problem. It was very, very cold and

sometimes it was slick, a lot of snow, and the fighting was very intense. The Germans were

really trying very hard to prevent us from overcoming them. The German was a good soldier

and they were well led. Actually, I don’t think we could point that to any effect on fighting that

we participated in, when it was so damn cold, we didn’t fight much and the Germans didn’t either. So in that sense, yes, the weather affected us. Because it was cold we still ran our tanks and the infantry still dug its holes and they still had to advance. Except for the privations of

cold, like here when it gets, like the street people, it’s so damn cold, we didn’t have quite that but

the infantry suffered, I’m sure, from that intense cold and they had trouble keeping warm. And

there was a good deal of trench foot in the infantry. That was a bad deal that week. And then

Patton had another rule, you change your socks every day if you in infantry, and then keep your

socks clean.

DK: How did you keep from having trench foot?

LE: We didn’t get out of the tank. We didn’t get in the water. Trench foot was the result of

getting your feet wet and cold and you couldn’t change [socks or boots]. The foot would start to

decay.

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DK: Were you involved in a situation at Bastogne?

LE: Bastogne was surrounded by the German armored units. The [U.S.] Fourth Armored relieved Bastogne. The Germans were driven back by the Fourth Armored and we followed.

We took the Fourth Armored’s place when the Battle of Bastogne as such was finished. The

Germans had had to give it up. They couldn’t hold it and they had to back off.

DK: But do you remember our reinforcements coming in?

LE: Our reinforcements were infantry reinforcements. Seeing reinforcements, was difficult because the war front was so vast, it was so much of it and so much going on that you really didn’t know what troop movements were taking place. I was in the tank and didn’t see out much. The weather was pretty grim and the situation was grim and it just didn’t occur to you to know about reinforcements. But they were coming—we knew that. New reinforcements didn’t have the right clothes. There was a kind of scandal about that, because they sent them without the proper winter gear. But these were infantry people. Boy was I glad I wasn’t one of them.

DK: What did you do after the Ardennes battle?

LE: The Battle of the Bulge was part of the Ardennes Battle, and in a sense I was involved because it was part of the battle. But we never went to the Ardennes Forest. Our division was not involved in the Ardennes. The Germans attacked there first. The Ardennes front had been left weak deliberately with a rusty 29th Infantry Division. The 29th was badly beaten up there.

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The Germans overwhelmed them. A big armor attack came through and that’s when they wore white uniforms and wore U.S. uniforms and killed American soldiers and that sort of thing. But we were not involved in that.

DK: Were you a part of the Allied effort that pushed into Germany?

LE: Yes.

DK: What did you do there?

LE: We chased the Germans and tried to capture or destroy them. We drank a lot of beer if we could find it and liberated a few bottles of booze. One pleasant thing with the Germans in the western part of Germany—the people had long canned vegetables and meat and two or three times we got to a village before the carnage had taken place and been looted and we would get into a house and we would find a cellar with canned food there.

DK: So did people treat you?

LE: No, they were not there. We just stole—liberated—it.

DK: When you encountered people in European towns did they treat you well?

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LE: To the extent that we saw them, actually, when all of the fighting was going on, people had either evacuated or they stayed in their houses. They were apprehensive. We would see them, looking out the window. But we never really encountered them.

DK: How long were you in Europe?

LE: About 14 – 15 months, of which my combat began in December and ended with the end of the war, which is about 7 months, I guess.

DK: When did you return home?

LE: In January 1946.

DK: What was it like to arrive back home?

LE: What I had pictures is, I told you about going over on Her Majesty’s Ship, Sameria. Coming back I came out of Marseilles in the Mediterranean and through the Strait of Gibraltar in

December 1946. There was a monstrous storm and again I didn’t get sick. This time we were in a Victory Ship, probably about a thousand of us. And we had bunk beds—about four of them, and the hazard was, one, getting into them and, two, when the ship would rock, now and then, somebody would roll out. But the trip took a long time and hauled to, and they stopped going forward. A U.S. aircraft carrier was ahead and they had the same problem, but this was ten days going from Marseilles to Boston. And in Boston they greeted us returning soldiers and all that. I

Knauss 54 was put on a Pullman with a few other guys and I rode all the way across the United States to

Fort Lewis, Washington—south of Seattle. And it was a pleasure, perhaps because of no other reason the food was better, well, the food was better certainly than coming the other way and it was warm. I was under no pressure, I could stay in my bunk as long as I wanted to, and generally speaking it was an anticipatory thing. I don’t recall any particular highlight except terrible cold when I stepped out in Chicago. In those days the railroad went through Chicago and you always changed in Chicago. So our [train] car was sitting on the side waiting. We went and got on the Milwaukee or the Great Northern, and I stepped out and it was about 15 below zero.

The next day we went to Minneapolis and like it is now, it was 22 below zero in Minneapolis when I stepped out. That made me decide no way am I going to live in this part of the country.

Arrival in Ft. Lewis was to get my discharge and there was a certain tediousness to it—typical

Army requirement—but it was a much relaxed kind. They pretty much didn’t mess with us. We had a pretty active bunch of combat people and they were not going to take a bunch of stuff. So we didn’t have to drill. We ate, then we went through the process of getting out and that sort of thing.

DK: Have you kept in touch with anyone from the army?

LE: No, not really.

DK: What medals did you get?

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LE: I have a bronze star and I am going to show you these [holding up his medals]. And a

purple heart. And here, I think you ought to take this stuff with you; this is a copy of my

discharge [holds up the piece of paper]. And I think it will be useful for you, too, if you have a

display. It gives a listing of the medals and it tells when I was enlisted, and my name, and so

forth, and discharged. In addition to that, here’s the citation for the bronze star and here’s my

letter to my parents that I...this is the citation here [holds up the papers]. I think you’ll want to

take that with you. That tells a reasonably accurate depiction of how I was involved with another

member of the tank crew. I hadn’t mentioned this but in addition to Zallsman, the driver, a man

by the name of Orville Pickett, from Kentucky, was blinded and burned. He wrote me about

needing help from that. He tried to get out of the tank like Zallsman, yet he couldn’t initially.

When he got out he couldn’t see, so I helped him and then there’s a story here about that. I did a

notary. He asked me for a statement about the condition he was in when he was blinded, when

we were hit, so I had made this statement and notarized it. This ties in with the citation—the

language is similar.

DK: Do you think the Battle of the Bulge was the pivotal event in determining the outcome of

World War II?

LE: To the extent that one pivotal event occurred I agree with Winston Churchill that the outcome became certain when the United States entered the war. Like the Stalingrad siege, the

Bulge contributed greatly to Allied victory. But by the time of the Bulge, Germany had lost.

The attack was reportedly opposed by the German military. It was probably aimed at achieving

Knauss 56 a stalemate and negotiation. The result was destruction of much of the remaining quality of

German military strength.

DK: From your perspective today, what do you think the Allied victory in World War II meant to the world?

LE: Well, I think at first it established the fact that the United States was indeed the most vibrant and most powerful in the world. It also established the power of the Soviet Union and the relationship that eventually developed—it demonstrated U.S. and Soviet capability to win a war and later keep peace. It was clearly the last time nations were going to fight a big war, even though we had bombs and rockets were built. Twenty million Russians and twenty million

Europeans and thousands of Americans died and other thousands—the cities were devastated.

This couldn’t possibly occur again because we know it would involve nuclear weapons and that would leave nothing. So even though I don’t think we quite admit even today, I believe that

World War II established that it was the last great war, and for your sake and mine too, I surely hope that that is what World War II accomplished—that, yes, we could win that war, and we did, and if there is such a thing as a just war, it probably was about as close as they come. It was that kind of people—Nazi, Japanese, Mussolini, who were not going to prevail. We could fight and would fight and defeat them. The world learned that two great super powers could indeed stand and shout at one another but did have presence of mind enough to recognize we can’t have war.

DK: So you think World War II changed wars?

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LE: I think so. But we forgot how useless wars are.

DK: Yes.

LE: It seems to me that this is the message: Our ability and the world’s ability to solve things by combat simply isn’t working and it won’t work.

DK: So do you think World War II led to a safer world?

LE: It led to a safer world of the type that we understand. It didn’t lead to a safer world when we found ourselves unable to grasp this Muslim radicalism, and we’re not dealing with that war at all well. We’ve created this anti-terrorist bureaucracy, which is a terrifyingly expensive war office. One of the reasons we’re having trouble with terrorism is that we’re calling it a war and we’re thinking like we did about World War II. Oh yes, we’ll just go in with our tanks, our airplanes, our splendidly trained soldiers—I don’t think we’re making much progress. I think

World War II didn’t help us; we formed an opinion that we can do anything and we’re finding out we can’t, at least the way we’re going about it we can’t. I think somewhere along the line if our type of life, our western world life is going to survive, we’re going to have to do something without a war. We’ve got to do it another way. We do not go in with armed forces and then build on it like we’ve done in Iraq. We’ve got to go and have the people in the country joining in doing what we want to do; if we can’t do that, then we’d better leave them alone or we’d better plan to stay there. It’s one of two things. With all this development assistance and so forth—

Somalia and Sudan are classic illustrations of it. What happened is we went to Somalia with the

Knauss 58 development idea we would give them a lot of money with that oil there, and of course they’re not doing that, and they won’t do it, and then there’s how we can’t do it for them unless we are prepared to stay on the ground.

DK: And then we’re using up a lot of resources and money.

LE: Exactly. Billions of dollars.

DK: How do you feel today about your participation in World War II?

LE: I’m glad I did it. I’m sorry it had to happen, but to the extent that this is appropriate, I’m a better person because of it. I learned about other people that I had never experienced, and as I said, I was spoiled until I got in the army and realized I wasn’t number one. I saw that there were a lot of other people, good people—there were bad ones too—and I saw the life that is real.

I have lived a real good life. I never really experienced bad things because I’ve always been well taken care of—people are nice to me.

DK: What happened in your life after you came out home?

LE: Well I returned to undergraduate—I graduated from college and I went to NYU and got a master’s degree, and then I went on a fellowship to the Institute of Public Administration in New

York and Columbia University. I never went for a Ph.D. It has been a very good life for me. I left the Institute in 1950, I believe, or ’51 and came down to the State Department in the

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Intelligence Bureau, and I spent most of my life therein. I went to the United Nations in 1978, and I was there for five years—had some very good jobs. I was in the security system business, part of the John Kennedy atmosphere—it was fifty years ago, we thought we could do anything if we wanted to. We won World War II, the country was prospering, everybody had been making good money. If we wanted to develop Latin America, we could do that. If we were going to give aid to the heathens out here—we’d do that; we would make them better. Just as long as they’d do things the way we do, fine, everything would be well. That’s the attitude that was in this country that I was participating in, and I experienced that, and I went into the security assistance business, police assistance in Latin America, and again it was a broadening experience.

DK: Did you talk a lot about your war experiences?

LE: Yes, much as in this interview. When you see a guy’s head blown off, it does something to you. People must recognize that this what wars do, and when you start making a decision about sending sons and daughters to war, it’s pretty serious business, and it’s no wonder a parent is horrified. Your dad and mom would be terrified, horrified to think you, the third son, I guess, has got to go off to war. It would tear them apart.

DK: So what advice would you give to your younger family members or youths if they expressed an interest in joining the military?

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LE: Well first I’d say, now, because it’s voluntary, be certain you grasp some of the things I’ve been saying here that can happen, because when you go into the military you must expect to do what militaries do. Don’t think you’re going to go in there to have a good time, going to New

York and so forth, just go to training. No, or fly airplanes. Don’t think because you get to fly an

F-35 hundred million dollar airplane that this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to kill people with that airplane. And you might get killed yourself. They ought to have that in mind before they decide what they’re going to do. I’d say don’t do it, and I’d say if there is ever going to be a resistance to war in this country, it’s going to be the arising of a group of people who will not participate. Maybe it’s conscientious objectors, I don’t know what they are, but they will not join the army, will not volunteer. Now should we be attacked, something I just can’t imagine, yes, we will have to go to war to defend ourselves. But who’s going to attack the United States?

Let’s be real. What is this nonsense? Nobody’s going to attack us. And I think that’s an outcome of World War II. Both the powerful Soviet Union and the United States recognize that this is just not the way you can do business; even though we armed and got ready to do it, we never did.

DK: How important do you think your military service was in your life?

LE: Oh very, very, very important.

DK: How?

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LE: It forced me to grow up. It made me realize that there were many kinds of people in this world doing many kinds of things, which were a part of living. Some of them were good and some of them were bad and there were going to be rich people and poor people in war. That I could get along well if I just used my head and accepted other people. I’m certainly far, far more able to understand and to accept. It clearly made me a better person. I was a better student when

I went back to school. I don’t know that I performed better than I might have otherwise when I went to work at the State Department, but I like to think I did, and I like to think even now that

I’ve got a little broader vision of domestic and international affairs than many people I know.

DK: Well thank you very much for your comments. Before we end the interview, is there anything you’d like to add, like other stories about tank adventures?

LE: These are pictures of my experience in Germany. I thought you might want to look at these things and then if you want to discuss some of them, try and keep them in the order that they are here. I did not take any of these pictures. They were all given to me by one person or another, but they are all the real stuff, the real thing that happened. Anyway, so why don’t you take these.

This thing here is the notarized statement about what I had to do for the boy who was blinded.

[hands me the pictures and documents for use in my Oral History Project display]

DK: Okay.

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LE: And then just bring them back. You can have them if you like. I’m sorry I can’t find the bronze star. That really disappoints me because I don’t know what I could possibly have done with it.

DK: Well if you find it, I’ll just come back.

LE: I’ll let you know.

DK: Well thank you very much.

LE: You’re very welcome. I’m glad to do it. I think that you’re the first person I ever sat down and talked to—gone through the whole war. I’ve never done that. There is a fascination with my experience. If you have any comments then by all means call me.

DK: So thank you.

LE: And then try to translate it [points to a piece of paper written in German]. It will help you grasp the tank, which is not something that every American has a great deal of contact with, and give you some idea of what I was trying to tell you.

DK: So thanks again.

LE: You’re quite welcome.

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Audio Time Indexing Log

Minute Mark Topics Presented In Order of Discussion on Recording

5...... Early life

10...... Germany and Fascist Governments

15...... High school

20...... Following war-related events

25...... Reaction to getting drafted

30...... Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP)

35...... Traveling to 11th Armored Division by train

40...... Tank Leaders

45...... Perquisites between officers and soldiers

50...... Training

55...... What army he belonged to and his commanding officer

60...... General Patton and his divisions

65...... Landing Ship Tanks

70...... General Patton’s qualities

75...... Extreme cold

80...... Traveling through French towns

85...... German sneak attack on December 15, 1944

90...... Losing his division’s first tank

95...... Accidently pushing a tank down a hill

100...... Panzerfaust weapon

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105...... Gore of war

110...... Getting out of the hospital after getting wounded

115...... Problems with cold weather

120...... Reinforcements

125...... Arriving home

130...... Looking through papers

135...... Why WWII was a “Just War”

140...... Hazards of a volunteer army

145...... Need for solving problems peacefully

150...... Life after the war

155...... Effects of war

160...... How he changed after the war

165...... Saying goodbye

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Interview Analysis

In this oral history, Lloyd Emerson recounts his military service in World War II as a private in a tank battalion in Europe. His story, captured in an oral history at age 90, chronicles

the evolution of this worldview, as well as his personal growth. His service coincided with the

final major face-off between the Allies and Nazi Germany in the “greatest pitched battle on the

Western Front” (Merriam v) and, according to Stephen Ambrose, the “biggest single battle ever

fought by the United States Army” (Eisenhower 5). Every war is exceptional in its own way, but

the scope of World War II is unparalleled. This Nazi surprise attack in Belgium, known as the

Battle of the Ardennes Forest or the Battle of the Bulge, was horrific in its casualties but

successful at ridding the European continent of Nazi influence. This victory foreshadowed the

Allies eventual victory over all Axis powers, including Japan. Even though the United States

chose to use the nuclear bomb after Germany was defeated to avoid prolonging the war in the

face of fanatical Japanese leadership, the decisive defeat of the Third Reich was the beginning of

the end for the Axis side. Having the opportunity through a personal interview to measure Mr.

Emerson’s ability to cope with a bad situation, to see the experience through his eyes, is one of

the distinct advantages of oral history over more traditional methods that rely less on an

individual’s personal observations to chronicle history. We are there along with him and

participate in his actions and emotions. Unless war becomes extinct, which is extremely

doubtful, the personal accounts of veterans, like Lloyd Emerson, are critical to understanding the

human costs of war, as well as any positive results that may come from it.

Oral history is considered to be the “process of collecting, usually by means of a tape-

recorded interview, reminiscences, accounts, and interpretations of event from the recent past

which are of historical significance,” as historian Alice Hoffman states in her article, “Reliability

Knauss 66

and Validity in Oral History,” from the Winter 1974 issue of Today’s Speech (“American

Century Project Resource Guide” 41). She believes oral history depends on a subject’s

reliability to recount events and the validity or credibility of what is recounted. As such, those

with faulty memories may be at a disadvantage, regardless of their age. Comments from

interviewees who have endured physical or mental distress may be less reliable. The tendency to embellish or purposely exclude information about past events can also be a problem in oral history. Hoffman notes the importance of validating events and facts gathered via oral history, calling for a “degree of conformity between the reports of the event and the event itself as recorded by other primary source material such as documents, photographs, diaries, and letters”

(American Century Project Resource Guide 42). Oral history can give those without the ability or means to write about their lives a chance to be heard. As such, it is a good way to preserve personal accounts of those who are not in the public eye, who may have worked more behind the scenes than at the forefront of history. Hoffman concludes by noting that “oral history is simply one among several primary resources” (“American Century Project Resource Guide” 42). She believes it is “no worse than written documents” that may be “self-serving… edited [or]

“doctored” (“American Century Project Resource Guide” 43). Hoffman stipulates that having a

“knowledgeable interviewer present [who is] actively seeking to promote the best record obtainable,” is critical to a credible outcome (“American Century Project Resource Guide” 43).

In his interview, Lloyd Emerson, born in 1924, describes a happy childhood in the small

town of Ritzville, Washington with his parents and brothers. His father was a pharmacist and

there was an emphasis in his family on education. He describes being essentially uprooted from

a pleasant college experience at Washington State College in 1943, when he was drafted at age

19, about two years after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered the

Knauss 67

war. Mr. Emerson experienced the death of one of his two older brothers in a plane crash in

1940, unrelated to the war. Unsure of what he would study in college or do in life, he focused on

engineering. At the time, he recalls he was only peripherally interested in world affairs. When

the war intervened, he was drafted and then told his weak eye would prevent him from combat

duty. A student deferment came about and he went back to college until being called again for

service. What emerges from Mr. Emerson’s oral history is his early lack of exposure to different

kinds of people, absence of a developed world view, and ambivalence about the situation in

Europe. His relatively insular perspective changed markedly as a result of his war experience in

Europe.

As a young draftee in wartime, Mr. Emerson experienced the usual movement from base to

base for basic training. At the University of Oregon’s Army post, Mr. Emerson says, “I was

already beginning to sense that I didn’t like the Army” (Knauss 31). He got on the wrong side of

a sergeant there. Mr. Emerson describes him “as a good army man, but I just detested him”

(Knauss 31). Mr. Emerson’s serious basic training began in the 11th Armored Division near

Lompoc, CA. In preparation for tank duty in Europe, he learned drills and “the discipline of

following an order and doing it in a group, learning to be part of a system” (Knauss 32). He

found his tank-mates personable but on average much less educated than he was. He became

more skilled with guns and learned his job as tank cannoneer radio tender, including the critical

task of how to break up a jam in the ammunition box belt.

He traveled by train across the country to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey and then to Boston.

He sailed to Liverpool, England in 1944, spent several months on the Salisbury Plain, and then traveled across the English Channel by landing ship tank to Cherbourg, France. While in

England, Mr. Emerson saw for the first time how much the English valued American

Knauss 68 involvement and support in the war. After giving a local family oranges to thank them for dinner he observes, “I never thought an orange could be this important. I had a bag of oranges and there was ecstasy and tears on the faces of people. They hadn’t seen an orange or been able to get an orange for months…they were so grateful…It was kind of the answer [for] why do you fight a war…we were going to help them out” (Knauss 37).

Mr. Emerson’s fighting in the Battle of the Bulge escalated quickly after first seeing Nazi troops in December 1944 a few days after the German sneak attack in Belgium’s Ardennes

Forest. He saw people blown up: “It was a ghastly thing” (Knauss 47). At one point, his tank- mates were injured and he was hit in the head by shrapnel: “There was blood…a piece of shrapnel had penetrated the surface of my skull…it was not fatal. But it sure bled” (Knauss 48).

John Toland, World War II author, describes other horrific scenes of battle that were commonplace in the Bulge, in one case through the eyes of Lieutenant James Creighton.

Creighton recalls:

Heavy fire broke out, there were screams…[I] saw sixteen GIs sprawling along the fence

in grotesque attitudes. Most were dead…One, his stomach laid open, his entrails

stretched up over a branch—smiled with embarrassment as he tried to stuff them

back…There was [another] burst of fire, several horrible screams, and silence…It was

like looking into the bowels of Hell (Toland 299-300).

Even while facing down the enemy, he claims, “I was really never frightened. Looking back on it, it’s astonishing. Perhaps it was the security of the tank” (Knauss 49). Despite his claim, however, Mr. Emerson describes the difficulty of “keeping our composure…not succumbing to fright…recognizing that it was a bad situation, but we were going to prevail…” (Knauss 49).

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Nearing the end of the war in Western Europe, he witnessed newly-liberated concentration camps with bodies everywhere, and his armored division met Soviet troops on the German-

Russian border around the time of Germany’s surrender in May 1945.

Mr. Emerson returned home in January 1946 after serving 15 months in Europe, including seven months of combat. Asked what World War II meant to the world, Mr. Emerson says, “it established the fact the U.S. is the most vibrant, most powerful in the world” and accentuated

“the power of the Soviet Union and the relationship that eventually developed [between the two powers]…and U.S. and Soviet capability to win a war and later keep peace” (Knauss 56). He also said “if there is such a thing as a just war, it probably was about as close as they come”

(Knauss 56). When asked about whether he was glad he participated in the war, he says he was.

“I’m a better person for it. I learned about other people that I had never experienced…I was spoiled until I got in the Army and realized I wasn’t number one…I saw that there were a lot of…good people…and I saw the life that is real. I have lived a real life” (Knauss 58).

Mr. Emerson’s comments place him in the mainstream of those who fought in World War

II. Historian Stephen Ambrose highlights Bruce Eggar, a staff sergeant who speaks about his experience in the war:

We were miserable and cold and exhausted most of the time, we were all scared to

death….But we were young and strong then, possessed of the marvelous resilience of

youth, and for all the misery and fear and the hating every moment of it the war was a

great, if always terrifying, adventure. Not a man among us would want to go through it

again, but we are all proud of having been so severely tested and found adequate. The

only regret is for those of our friends who never returned (Ambrose 469).

Knauss 70

Historians are virtually unanimous on the significance of the Battle of the Bulge as the

“decisive struggle that broke the back of the Nazi war machine” (Eisenhower 457). Mr.

Emerson believes “the outcome [of the war] became certain when the United States entered the

war…the Bulge contributed greatly to Allied victory…but by the time of the Bulge, Germany

had lost (Knauss 55). Mr. Emerson’s comments are supported by military historian, Danny

Parker, who refers to this battle as “Hitler’s last desperate gamble for success in a war already

lost, this final blitzkrieg was the battle in which, for all practical purposes, the German fighting

spirit was at last broken” (Parker xiii).

At the time of this battle, the German war machine was a battered shell of its former self,

having already fought for six years and severely depleted by a tremendous number of casualties.

Mr. Emerson notes the German’s rapid eastward retreat after D-Day. He says, “[At that point]

many thought we were winning the war. We might have won then, had we had enough gasoline

and support . . . fuel had to be brought from Cherbourg all the way across France up into

Belgium…the transport was not sufficient” (Knauss 42). Historians agree that lack of fuel was a

huge factor for both sides.

After Allied landings in France, starting with D-Day in June 1944, the Germans put up a

feeble resistance. Mr. Emerson was a part of this effort to liberate France. As the Allies moved freely within France, liberating Paris on August 25, 1944, many German troops made a beeline for safety in their homeland. By August, however, General Eisenhower’s most serious problem was supply. He knew that securing the port at Antwerp was key for re-supplying Allied troops

with the “more than 20 tons of supplies [required] daily” (Eisenhower 75). Antwerp was the

Allies’ strategic goal—close to Germany and much closer than the existing supply locations in

Normandy and Cherbourg. Despite the Allies’ success in securing Antwerp, it was unusable

Knauss 71 because of its terrible condition and pockets of German control. German forces wanted to deny the Allies access to Antwerp and use the port for themselves; they had even more urgent supply problems throughout 1944, including a severe lack of fuel. As the year went on, there was a virtual foot race between the Nazis and Allied forces for this port in Belgium, which came to a head in the Battle of the Bulge. Mr. Emerson’s assessment about the importance of re-supply is completely supported by historians; the Allies were able to improvise new supply methods, but the Germans had a much more difficult time with this, and it affected the rest of their war effort.

Mr. Emerson, at age 90, was a superior interview subject. His recall was mostly excellent and his answers were crisp. He had so many stories to tell. In addition to these qualities of his, the most notable strength of the interview was his perseverance and that of this interviewer.

Another interview strength was also a weakness; Mr. Emerson wanted to get his part right but had occasional difficulty retrieving information; this is inevitable in a detailed discussion of events from 60 years ago. Getting it right is always a goal, but equally important are the personality and emotional response of the interviewee that comes through in the interview.

Some of the latter was probably sacrificed by Mr. Emerson’s thorough editing of the transcription of the original interview, which he did in the presence of the interviewer on another day. Still, his experiences and reflections about events appear to correlate well with those written about by historians, and his delightful personality, characterized by kindness, intelligence, wit, charm, and a great deal of personal reflection, does come through.

I have greatly enjoyed the process of conducting an oral history. I could not have found a better subject than Lloyd Emerson. I am grateful for his interest in the project, as well as his insistence that his words would reflect what he meant to say, as evidenced by his desire to clarify and edit them. Learning about the Battle of the Bulge was a fantastic experience for me. As the

Knauss 72 defining moment in defeating Nazi Germany during World War II, I could not have asked for a better time in history to investigate. Mr. Emerson’s firsthand perspective of Allied conflict with

Nazi Germany from late 1944 to mid-1945, is a candid view of the challenging and frequently horrific fighting conditions in Western Europe. He is representative of so many young American men who left homes and families behind and grew up fast on European battlefields, if they survived. His message is universal and timeless.

Knauss 73

Appendix 1

Area of Conflict in Western Europe World War II

Knauss 74

Appendix 2

Private First Class Lloyd Emerson

Knauss 75

Appendix 3 – page 1

Lloyd Emerson’s Honorable Discharge

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Appendix 3 – page 2

Lloyd Emerson’s Honorable Discharge

Knauss 77

Appendix 4

Lloyd Emerson’s Citation of Heroism

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Appendix 5

Lloyd Emerson’s Bronze Star Medal Citation

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Appendix 6

Lloyd Emerson’s Bronze Star

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Appendix 7

Lloyd Emerson’s Purple Heart

Knauss 81

Appendix 8

Lloyd Emerson’s 11th Armored Division Emblem

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Appendix 9 – page 1

Legacy Group History of the 11th Armored Division 22nd Tank Battalion

22nd Tank Battalion

The 22nd Tank Battalion, originally the 3rd Battalion, 42nd Armored Regiment was activated on August 15, 1942, with the 11th Armored Division at Camp Polk, Louisiana. The officer and enlisted cadres were drawn from other armored divisions. Draftees and enlistments brought the battalion up to its full strength of 700 officers and men. The tank battalion was the main offensive striking force of an armored division.

Like the 11th, the 22nd Battalion consisted of a headquarters and Headquarters Company, three medium tank companies, a light tank company and a service company. The battalion trained with the division at Camp Polk and participated in Third Army maneuvers in Louisiana and Texas in June-August, 1943. In September, the division moved to Camp Barkeley Texas.

In October the 11th Armored shifted west again, to Camp Ibis, California, in the Mojave Desert. After desert warfare training, the 11th Armored, nicknamed the "Thunderbolt" Division, headed farther west to Camp Cooke, California on the Pacific coast.

In September 1944, the division moved back east to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey to await overseas shipment. The division boarded a troopship for England, landing at Southampton The men moved inland to camps on the Salisbury Plain and awaited orders for France.

On December 16, the Thunderbolts sailed across the English Channel to France. The division was needed; on December 16, the Germans launched a surprise attack on a 50-mile front in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium. The American lines were shoved back for several miles in what would be called the Battle of the Bulge.

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Appendix 9 – page 2

Legacy Group History of the 11th Armored Division 22nd Tank Battalion

The Thunderbolts were ordered to hold the Meuse River between Sedan and Givet. The 22nd Tank Battalion and the rest of the division raced 50 miles across France to help plug the gap in the Bulge. On the Meuse, the Thunderbolts got new orders. The 4th Armored Division had broken through to relieve beleaguered Bastogne, where troops of the 101st Airborne Division and other Army units had been surrounded. The 11th Armored was ordered forward to protect Bastogne's thin lifeline the Bastogne-Neufchateau Highway. Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Wingard of Lexington, South Carolina the 22nd Battalion was split into companies and platoons in the Battle of the Bulge.

At various times, its soldier and armor were attached to the division's three combat commands: A, B and Reserve. Battalion elements also fought with the 17th Airborne Division and the 87th Infantry Division.

On December 30, the Thunderbolts attacked. Company A of the 22nd Battalion hit the line at Magerot and Acut where it suffered heavy casualties from mines, anti-tank guns and 120 millimeter mortar fire. The weather was cold and snowy: it seemed a question of who would freeze first, the men of Company A or the enemy. Company A and the rest of the Thunderbolt Division hung tough. The Germans would lose the Battle of the Bulge.

On January 2, Company B of the 22nd Battalion was attached to the 194th Airborne Infantry while Company C of the 22nd was assigned to the 513th Glider Infantry, which was ordered to attack toward Flamierge. Company C was ordered to follow the infantry in a supporting role and be available as tank destroyers in the event of a German counterattack. It was cold and snowy and enemy fire was hot. Six Shermans of Company C were hit; three were destroyed. Hubemmont was the objective of Company B and the paratroopers. The attack was delayed four days while the 513th got its forces in place. The delay was unnecessary, according to the men of Company B.

The German drive slowed, then stopped, then was pushed back. The enemy had no choice but to retreat eastward toward the Westwall, a wide belt of German pillboxes and other defensive strong points the Americans and British dubbed the "Siegfried Line." It would be the job of Combat Command R, including men of the 22nd Battalion, to attack the line.

CCR struck before dawn on February 6 and by 8:30 a.m. had seized the objective high ground overlooking the Siegfried Line near Lutzkampten. With flanks exposed, the command had to stay put until February 11. The men of the 22nd Battalion and other Thunderbolts had to watch out for mines and booby traps, but by February 11, they had inflicted almost 400 casualties on the enemy and destroyed 37 bunkers and pillboxes.

CCR resumed the attack with mainly an infantry force and on February 18 broke through

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Appendix 9 – page 3

Legacy Group History of the 11th Armored Division 22nd Tank Battalion the Siegfried Line at Reiff. By February 22, Reiff had been taken and 154 bunkers and pillboxes had been cleared. The Thunderbolts killed approximately 400 enemy soldiers and took 432 prisoners.

March brought spring and some of the 22nd Battalion's hardest fighting in World War II. The Thunderbolts, including tanks and men of the 22nd Battalion attacked across the Prum River. On snowy March 4, the Thunderbolts took Wallersheim and Budesheim. For the next two days, the Germans used standard retreating tactics to slow up the 11th Armored Drive to the Kyll River, the last water barrier before the Rhine. Schwenn, Kalenbom, Roth, Nieder Bettingen, Ober Bettingen and Dohm were centers of resistance that had to be eliminated. The Germans tried desperately to hold the Thunderbolts at the Kyll, but there was no stopping the 11th Armored Division.

On March 7, CCA, including tanks and troops of the 22nd Battalion, swung south and east, caught the Germans by surprise and drove into the outskirts of Kelberg. The Germans fought back with small arms, mortar, nebelwerfer and artillery, but the town was cleared that night. The enemy lost eight tanks.

After Kelberg fell, enemy resistance diminished swiftly. The division began a large-scale breakthrough. Again, the 22nd Battalion was divided among CCA, CCB and CCR. The only question was when the Thunderbolts would hit the Rhine, not if. On March 9, CCB captured Brohl and CCA seized Andemach, both cities on the Rhine. The quick strike netted more than 10,500 prisoners; the Thunderbolts also liberated more than 4,500 war refugees. Seven hospitals, a supply dump and 100 artillery pieces fell into 11th Armored hands. More importantly, the 11th Armored had linked up with the First Army, closing the mouth of a huge pocket and cutting off six German divisions west of the Rhine.

Among the prisoners were a German lieutenant, sergeant and a private who surrendered to B Company of the 22nd Battalion. The Germans, carrying a white tablecloth for a surrender flag, said they were not armed. The sergeant said he would "rather be eating a steak sandwich in Philadelphia than be doing this sort of thing." The lieutenant apologized for his captain's absence, but explained his commander and about 130 German troops were holed up in a nearby town. Almost all of them had trench foot or other foot disorders that had all but immobilized them. They were ready to give up, the lieutenant said.

The lieutenant promised the Americans they were safe because he had collected all the weapons and ammunition and locked them in a building. He handed over the key to his captors. First Lieutenant William L. Harris Jr. led two platoons of tanks into the town; the men and their weapons were captured without a hitch

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Appendix 9 – page 4

Legacy Group History of the 11th Armored Division 22nd Tank Battalion

Tech Five Roben D. Coon of the Service Company, 22nd Battalion, also got a prisoner. He had gone after water for the battalion. He filled up his truck and was on the way back when he saw a man apparently trying to hitch a ride. It was a pistol armed German soldier. Coon feared the worst, but the enemy soldier handed over the pistol and hopped on the hood of the truck in the approved prisoner of war fashion.

First Sergeant Clarence Bowman of Company A 22nd Battalion ended up a prisoner himself. He was driving a wounded GI and five captured enemy medics to the rear when he saw some German infantry scramble off the road ahead. Bowman stopped his truck, grabbed a machine gun and yelled, "Halt."

The Germans were from a column of troops that included 15 vehicles and two tank destroyers Bowman had no choice but to surrender. The German medics were told to take care of the wounded Gl and all left with the column, which was soon under attack from Bowman's outfit.

The Germans retreated, ultimately abandoning their vehicles in the mud then fleeing on foot. They walked all night and at daybreak ran into another American force. He was ordered to hurry but lagged behind in hopes of making a break for it. When his guard's vision was blocked by some brush, Bowman ran for the Americans and made it. He was with the Germans for 20 hours.

On March 16, the division was assigned to XII Corps. Swinging south from VIII Corps zone, the 11th Armored crossed the Moselle east of Bullay, where it met scattered resistance. After pushing 70 miles, the division took its objective, an airfield near historic Worms where thousands more prisoners were taken.

The speed of the drive was apparent in records kept by Ray Buch, a soldier in A Company, 56th Engineer Battalion. There was little time to rest for weary men or machines.

Buch wrote that on March 16, the company left Weibom at 2:30 a.m. and rolled with the battalion to an assembly area near Alfen. The trip took seven hours and covered 45 miles.

At 8 p.m., the tankers were on the move again, arriving around Hahn at 3 a.m. on March 17. They were 27 miles from Alfen. The tankers left Hahn at 2:45 p.m. and reached Laufersweiler, 7 miles away at 4 p.m.

On March 22, the 11th Armored changed to XX Corps control to help maintain a defense line on the Rhine's west bank. The Thunderbolts also were to help support Third Army's

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Appendix 9 – page 5

Legacy Group History of the 11th Armored Division 22nd Tank Battalion bridging operations. Six days later, the division crossed the Rhine at Oppenheim. Units of the 22nd battalion remained attached to the combat commands. On March 30, CCA was defending Gelnhausen against German attacks. CCB was fighting its way north to open a road that would be used by the division on its speedy drive deep into the German heartland.

Next, the division was ordered to seize Oberhof and Suhl. Reportedly, Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy were in the area, having fled Berlin from advancing Soviet troops. The 22nd Battalion tankers surged forward, hoping to capture Hitler and his entourage.

The Nazi brass was not there, but the Thunderbolts reached the Werra on April 2 and found bridges still intact. The men were happy to liberate 400 allied prisoners of war at Grimmenthal Hospital.

On April 3, CCA ran into stiff enemy resistance at Suhl while CCB had a hard time at Oberhof. Thunderbolt artillery, however, softened up the towns which fell to the Thunderbolts, whose final drive of the war would take them through Bavaria into Austria. As the division sped toward Bayreuth, German planes showed up occasionally to challenge the armored spearheads. But there was no stopping the 22nd Battalion and the rest of the Thunderbolts.

The 11th Armored seized Bayreuth and Grafenwohr, home to a huge supply dump and training center. Enroute to Cham, 22nd Battalion tankers saw first-hand evidence of Nazi atrocities. Roads were strewn with the bodies of prisoners murdered by SS men. The division liberated more than 1,700 prisoners, many of them weak and half-dead from malnutrition and mistreatment.

German resistance was crumbling. Cham fell. Next stop for the 22nd Battalion and the rest of the Thunderbolt Division was Austria. On May 5, Linz surrendered to CCA, which included 22nd Battalion men and machines. CCB, also with 22nd Battalion troops, reached Galneukirchen. Contact was made with Soviet troops just before the war ended. For the men of the 22nd Battalion it had been a long, fast haul from Cherbourg through France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria. Victory had come, but at a price. The battalion lost 35 men killed in action and 181 wounded in action. Another 113 men were injured, one fatally.

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Appendix 10 – page 1

World War II Tank Descriptions (in German) Featuring the Sherman M4 Tank [includes reference to "Lloyd Emerson, ein Richtschutze” — a tank gunner who survived in his M4 Tank]

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Appendix 10 – page 2

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