After basic training our names were thrown into a pool of men headed overseas. We knew we were being sent to Europe, but we didn’t know where. We did know we were now combat military personnel. Our ship was the Thomas E. Berry.

After we sailed out of New York Harbor and passed beyond the Statue of Liberty, we were immediately served a meal. Lucky me. For whatever reason, I didn’t eat. The meal consisted of tainted meat, which meant lots of guys spent the next few days puking, which led to complete chaos.  

We each had a bunk and were allowed to sleep eight hours a night. Other activity was just roaming around the ship conversing with other guys who were also assigned to the infantry. We were on the ship about a week, and I resigned myself that I was about to face combat.

We arrived in Marseille and went by train up the Rhone River until we arrived at the replacement depot in Epinal, France, where we were assigned to our unit. Our housing was primitive barracks. When we arrived permanent cadres lined up outside the barracks and kept repeating the rules. It was raining, and we were getting very wet, but a sergeant droned on and on. Suddenly, somebody in the back row hollered, “You’ve got one more minute!” The sergeant looked around and shouted, “Who said that? Who said that?” Nobody acknowledged his question.

He started up again, and a voice from the back row hollered, “You’ve got thirty seconds.” Again the sergeant looked around and queried us. Again, nobody acknowledged him. Finally, the voice said, “That’s it.” And two hundred of us newbies dispersed. That’s the only time I saw a sergeant lose control of his men.

After a couple of days, we were told that we were joining the 35th Division, which was basically a Kansas-Missouri National Guard Unit that had been activated several years before. It had been fighting in Normandy—not the initial landing, but shortly thereafter at the crossroads in Saint Lou, a key city at the end of Normandy.

Saint Lou was where the U.S. Troops broke out into France after they contested against the Germans in Normandy. My company was very involved in Saint Lou. Then we were sent into the rest of the war.  

Incidentally, the 35th Division was the division Harry Truman was in during World War I. So when Harry Truman became president at the end of the war we became known as “Harry Truman’s Division,” and were very proud of it.

Before long we were transported from to Metz, France, which is in Alsace-Lorraine. There I was assigned to guard duty. It was perilous to think Germans might sneak up on us and our very lives were at stake. It was even more perilous to realize my job was to protect us from adverse consequences.

As a guard I was instructed to challenge anyone who moved. I was given a different password every night. When somebody approached, I said, “HALT! Who goes there?” and then ask for the password. Admittedly, as an eighteen-year-old kid I was scared.