Part 1
Enlistment Camp Wallace
Part 2
Oklahoma Camp Howze
Part 3
Marseille to Maginot Line
Part 4
Siegfried Line to Rhine
Part 5
From the Rhine to Landsberg
Part 6
To Brenner and War's End
Part 7
War Over Home Again
Index
Great Adventure 2000
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On the Cover
The shoulder patches represent the following, left to right, top to bottom:
28th Anti-Aircraft Battalion, Officer Candidate Gunnery School
Camp Wallace, Texas
Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma
The 103rd Infantry "Cactus" Division, Camp Howze, Texas
411th Infantry Regiment, Anti-Tank (AT) Company
and the European Theater of Operations (ETO)
France, German, Austria, Italy
The 45th Infantry "Thunderbird" Division
Dachau, Germany
The ribbons and stars represent various campaigns and battles.
They were never explained to us. In any event, it seemed like
one continuous
campaign and battle to us.
I've since discovered that the ribbons are for the following campaigns: Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central Europe. One of the stars is for the Battle of the Bulge.
The single hash mark stands for the highest rank I attained:
Private First Class (Pfc)
The rifle with wreath is the Combat Infantryman medal.
At Camp Howze I earned the same medal on the firing range
(but without a
wreath) as an Expert Rifleman—the highest rating.
Copyright © 2003 by Wendell H. Hall
ISBN 0-9716324-6-5
Published by
Great Adventure 2000
Induction into the U.S. Army
Fort Douglas, Utah / Camp Wallace, Texas
My niece Sherlene and her husband Dan Bartholomew have chided me for scattering scraps of information about my involvement in World War II in haphazard fashion throughout my novel Miss Universe Alice (available free of charge on the internet at nuspel.org). Also, my virtual twin brother Donald has asked me to prepare an account of some of my experiences for partial inclusion in his forthcoming memoirs of World War II entitled Victory, Where Is Thy Reward? Most important, however, is the fact that grandchildren assigned by teachers to interview a World War II veteran have been calling me from nearby and afar. We WW II vets are vanishing fast and won't be on call for long... so before I have to say So long, I'll leave a brief memento behind.
When at age 19, it was obvious that I was about to be drafted, I opted to enlist in the U.S. Army while at Weber College, Ogden, Utah. I wanted to join the Army Air Force but figured my eyesight was too poor for that. My mind was set on becoming a pilot and my poor brain didn't seem to get that I could set my poor eyes on being a mechanic or something other than an aircraft driver. My two older brothers, H. Tracy and Eugene M., had enlisted in the Navy; Donald, simultaneously with me, signed up with the Army. Later, youngest brother Delbert was with the Army in the Korean War. Father Howard Hall served in the Army in World War I.
On April 9, 1943, at the end of the winter quarter at Weber, all of us enlistees met at the old Union Depot at the west end of Ogden's notorious 25th Street and boarded a train to the Union Depot in Salt Lake City. We were going off to war but you'd think it was going to be a picnic... all the fun and chatter and horse-play going on. One of the guys went to the end of the car I was on with Donald, stood on his hands with his feet high in the air and then did at least a dozen push-ups on one hand only. Can't remember his name, now, but it was well-known that his brain was almost as mighty as his muscles. What a show-off! We were all duly impressed.
From Union Station in Salt Lake, we were bused to Fort Douglas, on the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains above the University of Utah. First off, we were given a quickie physical exam. One after another in rapid succession, bare-arse naked, we had our rectums and genitals checked (The so-called "short-arm" inspection. How insulting!) and if found to be warm and breathing, we passed and were inducted into the Army of the United States of America.
We got our first dose of military discipline in the morning. No bugles blared out reveille. Instead, a sergeant switched on the lights and, foregoing the ritual "Drop your synonym for roosters and grab your socks," he bellowed, "All right, men! Up an atom!"
"Up yours!" a scrawny raw recruit muttered, muffling his daring spark of recalcitrant wit with his pillow."
The groans this brilliant attempt at humor got mingled seamlessly with the moans of young guys not used to getting up so early in the morning.
The first evening there and on following ones, a World War I veteran led us in the singing of songs intended to buck up young inductees who for the most part were away from home for the first time in their lives. I remember some lines from an old British World War I favorite that he taught us.
"So chin up, Tommy Atkins, be a stout fellow, chin up, cheerio, carry on!" (From a poem by Rudyard Kipling.) British soldiers had been called "Tommies" for over a century and Tommy Atkins was supposed to epitomize them. Probably our favorite participation was in rousing renditions of Parly Voo.
Chorus:
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous?
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous?
Mademoiselle from Armentières,
She hasn't been kissed for forty years,
Hinky-dinky parlez-vous.
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous?
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous?
She got the palm and the croix de guerre,
For washin' soldiers' underwear,
Hinky-dinky parlez-vous.
The colonel got the croix de guerre, parlez-vous?
The colonel got the croix de guerre, parlez-vous?
The colonel got the croix de guerre,
The son-of-a-gun was never there!
Hinky-dinky parlez-vous.
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We appreciated that old guy with all our hearts.... that he would come up there every night to cheer us up. We didn't understand half of any of the songs and had no idea what "parly voo," "kwa d'gehr" and "palm" meant or where "Arm 'n teers" was, but they were all rousing good tunes and we loved them. That old veteran was 'there' when we needed him. A volunteer, giving freely and gladly of his time.
From Fort Douglas I was sent to Camp Wallace, Texas, south of Houston, for training in an anti-aircraft battalion. The first morning there I went on "sick call." Had a red rash all over my body. Not scarlet fever, not measles. Turned out it was only the result of sleeping under a typical G.I. (government issue), olive drab blanket in the heat and humidity of south Texas: heat rash. All of us were officer candidates and our preparation was very high level, with day-long courses mainly in math. I thought I was very good at that but the competition was so keen I had to really dig in and study hard. Our instructors were all former math professors, enlisted or drafted into the Army, and very sharp.
All those high-powered courses and no college credit! I decided to sign up for a correspondence course from Brigham Young University in Differential Calculus. I worked hard at it and mailed all completed assignments off in a timely manner. It disappointed me that the professor never once made a personal comment on the returned, corrected papers. A lonely soldier boy far from home and the prof never once made a personal notation. "Good show, fella! Thanks for doing your part for our national security." Would have taken him but a minute.
We had training with various types of anti-aircraft weapons, the most exciting being heavy artillery. Daredevil pilots would cross the firing range pulling targets not very far behind them as we boomed away with live ammunition. I remember, my first time, the range officer bellowed at me, "Not at the plane, you idiot! At the target!" Yes, sir, lieutenant, sir! But aren't we supposed to lead it, according to height and velocity as we've been taught, lieutenant sir! Believe me, brother, I was scared to lead the target at all, but the training was supposed to make experts out of us while not bringing down the super brave pilots. Later on, headed for combat in the European Theater of Operations aboard the Santa Maria (an old freighter that we said was Columbus's flagship converted from sails to steam propulsion), the first thing I noticed on ascending the gangplank was the Bofors antiaircraft guns. Hoped I could be assigned to them, avoiding somewhat the boredom of a long crossing marked mainly by occasional zig-zagging to foil potential German submarine attacks. Not coming within range of German planes way out there in the ocean wasn't a concern. It pains boys to be separated from toys.
At Camp Wallace I had to make a very difficult decision. Continue on in the anti-aircraft, accept an ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program) assignment in Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, or go to Tulane University in New Orleans for an all-expense-paid career in Medicine, the only stipulation being that I'd have to remain in the Army as a second lieutenant for a period of two years after normal demobilization. Since my career plans were to follow the lead of oldest brother Tracy in Chemistry, I decided that engineering would be best. Somehow, I had scored very high on a medical aptitude test, and therefore the Tulane opportunity.
During maneuvers in a barren area of Galveston, off the coast from Houston, I accepted the challenge of a buddy to swim across a channel to a small island with him. Didn't look too far. An excellent swimmer, he was soon out of sight. Before long, about half-way, it seemed, my predicament was either to continue on or turn back. Didn't know if I could make it either way. Decided to go back, knowing I couldn't swim the whole distance twice. Still quite far from shore, feebly stroking away, totally exhausted, facing a watery grave, I prayed as fervently as in all my life up to that point. "Amen"..... and I felt so buoyed up it seemed as though I was being carried along. The tide, the flow, something was going my way, and before long my feet touched bottom. Didn't know whether I was at all worthy of such a blessing, but in thanksgiving determined—as so often in my life—to repent of all my folly and do much better from that moment onward.
A clipping apparently from a Houston newspaper. The "OC" connected with "Gunnery School" stands for "Officer Candidate." Looking at that young fellow on the left makes me feel very old. What a callow youth he was! In there trying to do his best, however. Sure, I aspired to be an officer or non-commissioned officer, a leader of men like my brothers Tracy, Eugene, Donald and Delbert, but since I survived combat as a dogface buck private infantryman, I wouldn't exchange that experience for anything. I have a tendency to exaggerate. I started out as a buck private but ended up as a PRIVATE FIRST CLASS!
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