Travel Day 4:Grown-Up Towns

I wonder if Dad really did expect to see Camp Chicago. That’s where, after the war had ended, he waited out his orders to ship home. Naturally his memories were fond, about relaxation and good eats, “just waiting to go home.” I tell this out of sequence in his stories because Reims is the city we were heading to next, and we hoped that just maybe we would run into this Camp Chicago. Dad remembered that it was “right out of Reims.” More on this later, but this illustrates our method of operation.

We were off again on the hunt, focused mostly this day on getting through France and on toward Belgium. Dad got us up by seven o’clock, and as an unfortunate repeat of the previous day, no options for breakfast were available at or near the hotel. We took off on the road around Paris headed to Reims with an eye for any sign of a restaurant along the way. Again, it was late in the morning before that happened.

Our collective attitudes could have been described as less than chipper, definitely not upbeat. The couple of encounters with haughty Frenchmen the day before somehow had clouded our overall view of the place, enough to question even the whole point of our trip. Well, not in so many words, but Wilt and I for sure wondered just what we had gotten ourselves—and Dad—into. What if the trip was a bust? How much could we hope to accomplish? You just shouldn’t take an aging parent looking for old memories on a road trip without backup. And so much for my expectations of that perfect trip. As for Dad, he was unusually quiet except for a grumble now and then about not seeing any signs for a restaurant. Honestly, a cup of coffee could have made the difference those first hours on the road.

But the mood brightened with the day, sunnier than recent days and slightly warmer. And a stop at a gas station brought comic relief as well as a take-out coffee. Dad was busy looking through postcards to send back home to my sisters and to the employees where he worked at the gas station. I heard him chuckle. “Hey, you two, look at this one,” he said as he headed to the cashier with the cards. The French sure have a way about them, if you know what I mean . . .”

We looked. Then I gasped. “Gee, Dad, isn’t this . . . well . . . too risqué? I mean, especially for a postcard . . . just out there for the Morgan mailman to see, too . . . ?” The cartoon couldn’t have been more explicit with women’s body parts, with something written in French at the bottom.

“No, no, no. This is a really good one for the guys at the station.” Dad beamed as he set the cards on the counter, the sexy one on top so the clerk was sure to take note. “They think I’m half dead anyway. I don’t know what the heck it says, but it will give them something to talk about.” He continued to chuckle under his breath, amused with his clever find.

The clerk didn’t appear to understand English, but she seemed intrigued enough in this old guy and his purchase to give us a grin and a wink.

That stop got us over the slump, on to a café, and into Reims with renewed energy for whatever lay ahead on this history hunt. Europe was ours again—well, maybe not this larger-than-expected city of Reims. As we entered the thickening traffic on the outskirts of town, we rethought our objectives. These cities were daunting enough just to get around. Camp Chicago, we decided, likely was long gone—after all, wasn’t it a temporary American facility during the war? Dad wasn’t sure.

Good thing we didn’t veer off course in search of Camp Chicago. I’ve learned now that it was one of nineteen re-deployment camps around Reims. “Tent camp” is what they were called, all named after American cities. Though temporary to suit the specific purpose of war, these camps offered the soldiers a home base while awaiting their shipping orders. For Dad at least, Camp Chicago would continue to exist through his 1944 snapshots and stories.

Though giving up on finding the actual camp, we did drive toward the center of town looking for landmarks that perhaps Dad remembered when he had day passes from the camp. There we found the famous Gothic architectural landmark of France, the Cathedral Notre Dame de Reims. This Dad remembered. In 1944-1945, the cathedral, still scarred from World War I, was sand-bagged to twenty feet on all sides by the Americans. He told us too that it was Reims where the Germans surrendered unconditionally to the Allies ending the fighting in Europe. That was on May 7, 1945. And here we stood again with a full dose of history.

But, our travel clock told us to get on the move. Bastogne was where we wanted to get by mid-afternoon. Our eagerness to get out of France did seem a bit hasty, now that we were just getting an appreciation for the French flair. Strolling the streets and grabbing fresh fruit in France’s renowned champagne region, where coronations were held for French kings, where world peace was accorded—well, that could be a trip in itself. Perhaps this was how we should leave France, with a desire one day to come back.

The two-and-a-half-hour drive to Bastogne focused us on the Battle of the Bulge, the largest battle fought by the Americans in World War II. During the winter months of 1944-1945, this was the Nazi’s last ditch effort against the Allies. The Ardennes Offensive as it was known became more commonly called the Battle of the Bulge because the initial attack by the Germans created a bulge in the Allied front line. It was on this front line where Dad spent six days and nights in a foxhole on a hill overlooking the Germans. The hill was what we intended to find.

Coming from the south as we were, first would be Bastogne, the center of the battle, there along Belgium’s hilly border with Luxembourg. Then some forty miles northeast into Belgium would be the smaller city of Malmedy . . . and, hopefully, the hill. Being so focused on Malmedy and that hill, we almost neglected to take a good look at Bastogne. Thankfully, we did.

Quaint and charming with its shops and restaurants, modern-day Bastogne also speaks boldly in honor of the American troops who fought in the battle that claimed 19,000 dead, 47,500 wounded, 23,000 missing. Though most of the population in Bastogne are French-speaking, English now is a close second. A U.S. Sherman tank is displayed in the town center, along with a statute of the U.S. Commander McAuliffe. His famous “Nuts!” response to the German commander’s demand for surrender was heard around the world.

An exhibition hall depicts numerous lifelike dioramas from the war, and at the outskirts of town is the stately Mardasson Memorial towering in the design of the five-pointed American star. The Latin inscription on the memorial stone translates to “The Belgium people remember their American liberators.” This is Tribute.

1992 – Mardasson Memorial in the design of the five-pointed American star, Bastogne, Belgium. (Author’s Collection)

Our photo of Dad standing next to the Sherman tank is my favorite from that day. He is smiling, the sun is shining. Finally, he is in his element—this is what he came to see. “Boy, oh boy . . .” he reminded us as we got back in our car, “that McAuliffe really told those Germans, didn’t he? They didn’t know what they were up against with us Americans. That’s for darned sure.”

1992 – Dad in Bastogne, Belgium, at the display of a U.S. Sherman tank. (Author’s Collection)

Heading out of town now, we could feel a momentum building. Maybe we were just getting into the rhythm of this car-trip-across-Europe travel—no matter, the three of us shuffling around in all this history was invigorating. Perhaps we were settling into the ups and downs of our journey. Just maybe, I’d get that perfect trip.

The lateness in the day and the idea that we might find cheaper accommodations veered us off our main road into Luxembourg. Just fifteen miles from Bastogne we found the pretty little town of Clervaux, absolutely a welcome sight after navigating Paris and Reims just that morning.

Clervaux Castle is situated in the middle of town on a rocky spur surrounded on three sides by a loop in the River Clerve—it commands attention. This twelfth-century castle with its history of counts and lords was badly damaged in the Battle of the Bulge. Since restored, the castle now houses a museum from the battle, as well as offices of the local government and a gallery of Alfred Steichen photographs.

Looking up at this castle as we slowly made our way into this mystical town nestled in the Ardennes, we couldn’t help but imagine a movie set. Drama was everywhere with the forest, the river, the rocky slopes, the castle, the quaint buildings—the tightness of everything in this valley. Our earlier concern for economy was quickly out the window with an urge to experience this unique stop no matter the cost. Our dinner at Hotel des Nations was fitting for royalty—wild boar for the gents, trout for madame. And the down comforters at Auberge des Ardennes were nothing less than heavenly. Perfect.

***

November 1944: “The mud, rain, and cold added to the miseries of war, but all of this could have been endured with little thought if there had been any reason to believe that the enemy was whipped. But this he certainly was not. More than one veteran, as he lay in a basement or sweated it out in a foxhole, wondered how much farther his luck would carry him. It was without question a depressing period for our troops. The only way out was to attack, to move forward, to drive even deeper into the unknown fortress of Germany.”

November 1944, History of the 120th Infantry Regiment,

by Officers of the Regiment (Infantry Journal Press, 1947).

Private Albrecht:

THOSE LUCKY TANKERS

We took another town, and the infantry guys, I suppose me included, were all kind of complaining that, okay, we take a town, and then when we get it secured, the tanks come up and act as mobile artillery. That isn’t the way we were taught in basic. Down there they said, “The tanks go first and get any big stuff, and then you guys come and mop up.” But it was just the opposite.

So we were squawking, and finally our officers and tank commander met. The guy in the tanks said, “Okay, we’ve got five light tanks for your outfit here, and we’re not going to go ahead of you, and we won’t go behind you. We’ll go right with you. When your men are going across the fields to attack, we’ll go right with you. But we want four infantry men on top of each tank.”

There would be four men in the tank, and then there would be four of us on top of the tank. So that was twenty men we had to have to go on the tanks, and I got picked as one of ’em.

The four of us sat on top of the tank, and when we would get into a town and come to a crossroad, it was our duty to jump off and take a look and see if there was any heavy stuff down on the streets. If there wasn’t, we would wave our tank through, hop back on and go a little farther. Then if we spotted a group, we’d tap down, and they would notify the gunner and he’d let ’em have it. That first day we took that town, and it worked real good.

It had rained a lot, you know, and there were a lot of beets planted. You walked through those fields, and you’d slip on your fanny most of the time because it was so doggone slippery. So here we were riding! Gee, that was nice. Then at night we would stay in the basement with those tankers instead of in a foxhole. They also had ten-in-one rations which was like a banquet to us.

The next day then we took another town—or were supposed to take it. We got halfway over, and a few balls of fire come tearing across the sky. The five tanks stopped. I was on the middle tank, the third tank, which was the commander’s tank. We stopped, and they opened the hatch and looked around. I said, “What happens if we meet a Tiger Royal up in the next town?” Tiger Royal was the biggest German tank—it had an eighty-eight-millimeter gun on it. Our tanks had thirty-seven millimeter—that was like a pea-shooter compared to them.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “if we see a Tiger Royal, we’re going to turn around and get the hell out of there!”

Okay. Pretty soon we started, and we got near the end of town. There was a hedge down at the end of the town, and our five tanks would come through in a row back there. There was a sunken road there by that hedge, and here was a Tiger Royal sitting down in there with the muzzle sticking through that hedge a little bit, which nobody saw until all of a sudden . . . whoom, and the first tank blew all to smithereens! The four guys on it flew in all directions. It burned right away, and whoom, the second one got it and the same thing there—guys all flew in pieces! I was just gettin’ ready to jump off of ours—all of us were—and then ours got hit!

By that time, the other two tanks had turned and were getting back to safety. Ours got hit, and well, Clarence Dale was sitting next to me—just in that split second, I don’t know how you can explain it any other way, but we were practically touching each other, and I saw part of his neck and his left shoulder and arm all gone—just that quick. Red Degenhardt was ahead of me, and I could see he was done for. The other guy up in the front, he seemed to be okay. We all flew off through the air.

I picked myself up, and I got in back of our tank—ours wasn’t burning—and this other kid from New York got back there with me. We were the only two live ones out of twenty-four men on those three tanks!

Then as we stood behind our tank, this Tiger Royal shot a phosphor shell at our tank. That caught it on fire, and it came in the front end and some out the back, and a chunk of the shrapnel caught me in the hip. There I had that chunk sticking out! I had a jacket on and cartridge belt and pants belt and all that . . . and that’s where the shrapnel went. It stuck out about four inches—it burned because of the phosphorous.

This kid from New York said, “Hey, you’re hit!”

“Ya, but it can’t be too bad.”

There was a German foxhole over there a ways, so we decided we would make a run for it. We did and dove into there. Got down, and pretty soon, the kid, he looked up and said, “Gol, dang, Albrecht, we’re the only two up here. There isn’t anybody else up here!”

There were barbed wire entanglements between us and the safety back there. We had gone over them with the tank, and then they bounced right back up. He said, “Well, you think you can make it? You think we can run for it?”

There was a wall back there which we wanted to get behind—a stone wall. I said, “Well, I’ll try it.”

So out of the hole. We come up to this entanglement barbed wire deal, and he made a jump and made it through. I jumped, and I got right in the middle of it because I couldn’t jump too good with that chunk in my hip. I kind of hung there in the barbed wire. All of a sudden whoosh the old shell came by. I know he wasn’t shooting at me, but he must have been shooting at something right in line, and my helmet flew off and everything. I don’t know how I got my feet out, but I sure got out of that barbed wire!

I got back of that wall, and our medic, he was busier than Sam Hill, you know, with guys laying around—most of them dead, of course, from the tanks, but some other ones getting hit too. The lieutenant saw I could walk, and he said, “Say that farm place we come through just about a quarter of a mile back through the field—some doctors moved into there and some MPs. You think you could make it back there?”

“Well, I’ll sure try.”

He said, “Go ahead.” So I started to walk, and I got near the edge where the field was to start out across, and another American officer, he let out a beller, “Hey! You stop damm it, or I’ll let you have it!” He had the rifle on me.

I thought, “Well, what in the Sam Hill’s the matter with you?”

He come up and said, “You’re not sneaking out of here—get back up there!”

I said, “I’m not sneaking out. That’s my orders. I’m supposed to go and have this tended.”

He looked. “Oh, oh, I’m sorry—I didn’t know you were hit. That’s okay . . . Say . . . how about taking three prisoners with you?”

“Okay.”

So he brought three Heinies over there—blonds, big guys. I got them ahead of me, and I told them, “Mach schnell, hurry up, and keep your hands up and stay apart!”

We didn’t get very far and the big one in the middle, he said something in German which I couldn’t understand, and then they all got together.

I thought, “Oh, oh, they’re going to try something on me here”—me a single guy. I could remember every shell I shot out of my rifle, and I knew I only had one shell left in the clip, and there were three guys there. That didn’t pan out so good. I had the bayonet on, and I hollered to them again to get apart, you know, you get rough with them. They got apart but just for a little ways, and pretty soon that big blond in the middle, he was giving them orders again or something, and they got together again. This time I just ran up ahead with the bayonet on there, and I left a pretty good scar in that big one’s butt, and from then on I had no problem. They stayed apart! We got in to that farm place, and I turned them over to the MPs.

Then I went in where the medics were, and they got me on the table. I took down my britches, and they told me, “Don’t touch that—let the doctor do that.” He pulled that out and then got some stuff and doped it up, powder and stuff that they put on to keep the infection out. He put some bandages on and was gettin’ ready to get a tag and get my name and so forth. About that time a couple of stretchers came in with two guys on, and they were bloody from head to foot. In fact, they looked like they were dead, but the medic he said, “Oh, I got to give them plasma. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

Well, he started working on them, and I thought to myself, “Holy buckets, they are really hurt—what the heck am I doing here taking up a medic’s time when I can walk?’ So I got off the table and got my britches up and looked outside. There was a major just going to get into a Jeep. So I went out the door and went over to him. I said, “Where are you heading?”

“Well,” he said, “I’m going up to the town. It’s secure now.”

I said, “Well I’ll go along with you.” So I hopped in.

Well, you see the doctors didn’t have my name, not a doggone thing so there was no record on that particular time that I’d been hit. That’s the record that I finally got after the war was over, when I saw that you got ten points for it. One reason I didn’t want them—I knew if they got my name, they would send my wife a telegram that I’d been hit, and I didn’t want that. I said I would write to her and let her know. So I just didn’t pay any more attention until of course the war was over.

I had to stay with the lieutenant down in the CP, and I let our medic handle it down there. I told him, “Oh, heck, Doc, you can handle it.”

“Gol dang,” he said, “you’re getting too big a job on my hands.”

I said, “You do a good job.” Well then I had to stay down and tend to the phone in the CP. It turned out that I was there, I suppose, with the lieutenant about, oh, two weeks, something like that.

***

1944-1945: Cartoonist Dave Breger first coined “G.I. Joe”—derived from the term Government Issue—in his 1942 cartoon strip for Yank. The name was in wide use by the end of the war and so synonymous with the everyman soldier that a 1945 movie celebrating the common infantryman, based on war correspondent Ernie Pyle’s columns was called “The Story of G.I. Joe”.

World War II, May/June 2012

Private Albrecht:

HELPING OUT

I had to stay with the lieutenant at the Command Post for about two weeks after I was hit with the shrapnel. One night the phone rang, and I answered it. It was 12:30 to 1:00 at night and the 119th Regiment was supposed to take the next town. The big commander couldn’t get any information. They lost all track of it, and he didn’t know if they took the town, or if they were captured, or what the heck. He was calling our lieutenant to see if he couldn’t send somebody over to that town to see if the Germans had it or if we had it. Well, the lieutenant says, “Heck, that isn’t ours—we are the 120th—that’s nothing to do with us.”

“Ya, but that doesn’t make any difference. You’re Thirtieth and we haven’t any information, and we want to have it.”

“Well, okay,” he said, “we’re going to have to wake somebody up.”

The lieutenant said he’d go. He said, “I’m not going to pick a guy out to do that all by himself. I’ll go, but I should have some fire power.”

“Well,” I said, “heck, I’ll put some bandoliers around my neck”—because I couldn’t wear them around my belt yet or anything like that, pants belt or any of that, “and I’ll go along and give you fire power.”

You know . . . you volunteer for stuff that now you’d think you had rocks in your head. But I did, and so he and I took off on this darned old road for that town. We got fairly close to it, and there was a wheat stack, or whatever it was, out there someplace burning that gave a little light. We got near the town, and nobody stopped us . . . we couldn’t figure what the heck. We stayed probably fifteen yards apart, but then every once in a while we’d get together, and the lieutenant said, “Gol darn, I don’t like this . . .”

That didn’t sound good. We got a little closer, and pretty soon we saw a bunch of American Jeeps all lined up along one of the buildings. “Oh, oh,” he said, “now I really don’t like it. Nobody’s out here to stop us!” You see, they would have this all posted.

We came by a building, and I could see right down near the sidewalk there was like a basement window. It was blacked out, but I could see a crack of light there. So I kind of got down, and I listened, and, gol dang, it was all German! I thought, “Oh, oh.”

So I beat it up and got the lieutenant, and I said, “Come on back here and listen.”

He came back. It was all German talkin’. “Well,” he said, “then the Germans have got it. That’s, I suppose, about it.”

Well, we walked up a little farther. There were two buildings that were a ways apart but they had a wall right along the sidewalk, just a gateway, and then kind of a yard in there. We got just about there, and the shells came in. So we had no choice but to go in there quick. The way they were coming in, we just went up to the door of that building where we heard the Germans talking, and we barged right on in. We were in a hallway when we got in the door, and down at the end of the hallway there was a little light under one of the doors. Down there we went, and the lieutenant says, “Well, here goes, Albrecht!” He just kind of batted open the door.

Here was a bunch of American officers around the table! They looked at us like—“What the Sam Hill’s the matter with you guys?”

Then the lieutenant started chewin’ them out. Here they thought they had all the guards out, outposts all around, everything protected. They had taken the town, and the prisoners were in the basement. That’s why we heard all that German. They herded them all down the basement and just kept ’em down there.

After the lieutenant got done chewin’ them out and everything, well, then he and I headed back across that doggone old road again—burnt-out tanks, trucks and stuff along the way—and back to our guys. We told ’em, “Now when you see a couple guys coming back tonight, don’t get trigger happy!” because our guys would be out in their holes watching. If somebody is coming down the road, you know, you’re apt to get shot. We got back okay.

The next night the intelligence notified us that the Germans were going to come in that night with a tank or two—not the same road, but a crossroad there, a tar road—they were going to be coming in. We didn’t have anything to stop them outside of road mines. We didn’t know for sure just exactly what to do about that. Then they decided we would take some mines, big ones, out by this crossroad and tie ropes on them and leave them on like a shoulder or a little edge off, and then lay on the opposite side of the road. Then, when the tanks would come, they wouldn’t see anything on the road. And when they’d get up there, then we’d yank that old mine out so they’d run over it and blow the tank up. Well, that didn’t sound too appetizing, but that’s what we did.

Just luckily, no tanks came that night. They had screwed up, so we didn’t have to do that.

All in all, that time I spent in the Command Post with that lieutenant was anything but good. It was a rough spot because we did a lot of stuff. Then you volunteer for all that dang junk yet.

***

November 7, 1944: Franklin Roosevelt is elected to a fourth term in office. He remains the only president to have served more than two terms.

www.history.com

Private Albrecht:

SMALL TARGET

Size in the Army doesn’t mean much normally. I mean, you know in civilian life, why if you are a big bruiser, everybody better behave or you clobber them or whatever. If you’re not too big and so forth, you might say you are handicapped a little bit.

In the Army, the little guy is probably the best off of all them. You’re a lot smaller target, and you have that rifle in your hands. It doesn’t make any difference if you’re four feet tall or you’re eight feet tall, when you’ve got that rifle, you do the same damage, only you’re a smaller target. That’s one way you’re even and, I don’t know, you do things that normally you wouldn’t ever think of doing. You’ve got that rifle in your hand, and you’re not worried, you’re not scared. You’d think all the time the stuff you go through that you’d be so doggoned scared you’d be shaking all over, but that isn’t the case. You’re not scared.

In fact, we had a number of fellows . . . well, if you watched Patton, when he visited a hospital, he came to this one guy and he asked the doctor, “What’s the matter with him?”

“Oh, it’s kind of a nervous breakdown.”

And you know what Patton said—“Get that SOB out of here, and get him out now, or I’ll kick him out!” Oh, he called him everything he could think of. You know, coward and everything else. That’s just the way he was.

Some guys will really shake, I mean, I don’t know what makes the difference. I know a lot of times I would even try and shake to see how I could do that, but I couldn’t even fake it. There was no way I could do it so that it would look real. You pretty near had a notion to try it once in a while, you know, to get out of there.

I had one guy in a hole, I didn’t even know him yet—he got in the hole at just about dark, and a German plane came over and dropped a flare. Of course, that lights everything up like day. Then the plane dropped a bomb, and it looked like it was coming right for our hole. It usually does when you look up, but heck that missed us by probably a block or half a block, and he wasn’t aiming at us anyway, I’m sure. That guy with me, he just shrank over in the corner and just stared. He didn’t blink his eyes—that was it. Then the next morning, they came and hauled him out. He couldn’t talk—nothing. It just scared him so bad that he couldn’t move, that’s all.

One time we were in the field and had to just stop and lie there. You lay there and saw the dirt fly around you, and, boy, if you could be smaller yet, you sure would, I’ll guarantee you that. You feel awfully big about that time.

No, you have no objection to being small when you’re in there, that’s for doggone sure.