Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
Verne Staley. He's a US Army veteran of World War Two, serving as
a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division. That division spent nearly ninety days
in combat during the final months of the war in the European theater. And
mister Staley, thank you so much for being with us. Well, thank
you. Well, let's start at the very beginning, sir, where were
you born and raised? Well, I was born in Brainville, Oregon,
and my birthday is three twenty six, nineteen twenty four, ninety nine.
Now, well, that's fantastic. You sound terrific. Happy birthday. Not
that long ago. Was there a history of military service in your family.
Well, my father served in World War One, has did two of his
brothers, and then my brothers that was younger and I than me served in
World War Two at the tail end. Other than that, I had uncles
and what have you that had served in out in the Philippines when there was
an insurrection out there and step way back. And so we have been a
proud supporter of the military. Let's put it that way. It sounds like
a great legacy of service to our military and to our nation. Sir,
if you were born in nineteen twenty four, that puts you about seventeen years
old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. How did you hear the news?
What do you remember about that day? It was a Sunday afternoon and that
was had gone outside and was walking down the street, and then neighbor boy
came out and told me, he said, the Japanese of atap Pearl Harbor.
So I went back home and we turned onto radio and listened to the
news because it was everywhere on the radio, so you can listen to and
it was really chaos because nobody knew what that was going on. Were you
thinking that you'd have to go to Warszoon personally? Oh? Yes, Oh
yeah, I knew that. Everybody I went to high school with, if
they if they could pass the physical, ended up in the Service. Then
the strange thing about it is, or I don't know why it's strange,
but the ones that went to the Pacific, I think we lost six people
from Primeville or Crook County in the Pacific and lost none in the European theater
in a small town. That's a big hit. Yeah, well up there.
Our hero is Dexter Fincher and he was on the Arizona in Pearl Harbor
and he's still there, sir. Were you drafted or did you enlist?
No? I was drafted. My dad wouldn't let me. He wanted me
to finish high school and be the first one to graduate from high school.
And he told me, and he was right. He said, there'll be
plenty of war left as soon as you get out of school, and there
was. So you're drafted into the army. Did you have a preference on
which branch? Were you happy with that? Oh? Yes, I could
have went into any branch, but the family been going into the army mainly,
and my IQ was good enough. I could have went to officers or
been a airplane pilot. Got kicked out eventually and ended up with a rifle
in my hand. Anyways, So where did they send you for training?
Campadare, Oregon. I went to the seventieth Infantry Division, which is sowhere
near Correllis, Oregon. It's north of Corvellis and the seventieth was formed in
Campadare, Oregon in June of nineteen forty three, and so we took first
eleven months of training. Was there, although I went to Denver Seems General
Hospital for to be a medical technician. I was back there for three months
and then came back. And then the next thing we knew this on the
Sevillian workers was telling us that the camp was going to close and we were
going to leave. And that's how you'd find out you're doing things because they'd
been notified their job was ending. Were you assigned to medic training or did
you volunteer for that? Oh? No, no, I didn't volunteer.
People said how did you end up? And see, I've been working part
time in a machine shop, So they said how did you end up being
a medic? And I said, well, I have no idea except that
they had a board there's like about on a piece of plywood f and they
had all kinds of numbers across it and lines across and he took some number
from my tests that take in and went across to it and came down with
the other and then said right there it said two seventy fourth Medical Detachment.
And I said, I don't want to be in a medics And he said
next. Not a lot of dialogue, right, It's just this is what
you're going to do. So what did that training consist of? What were
you taught that a medic can and can't do on a battlefield. Well,
sometimes you can't save a life no matter what you want to do. But
it was basically bandage wounded, you know, take care of them, and
then you had problems with them coming down with diarrhea. Ime, everyone spring
hit and we was pulled off the line for two or three days of rest.
And we went back and the guys drank the water and the house we
stand in and I had diarrhea. An army they called her business subcarbonent was
supposed to take care of it. Didn't do it. So I thought,
well, I wonder what selfa diazne will do. I had a lot of
Zolfa diazine tablets, so I started giving all of nap and had cured the
diarrhea. So you're an innovator too, So that's good to know. And
then hopefully that word got around to other units. What tools and medicine did
you have with you? You mentioned the tablets, but what else did you
have in your kid? Well, you had a pair of bandage scissors,
you had rolls of bandages, you had compressed bandages, you had band aids.
And then I was able to because of my training, that our sergeant
in the age station let me have taketure belladonna, which our doctor didn't like
a lot it was to have, but he knew I'd been trained how to
use it. Then we also had iodine swabs and you had those for to
stop infections. And you just had a lot of compress bandages in your kit
to take care of because you needed that kind of stuff to bandage up wounds
and stuff. And I never had to put an attorney quet on. I
did discover something though, that they gave you a graham up morphine. They
had these in these little uh well, it was like a toothpaste tube and
Neil days. Anyway, there was a needle on a cap over they pulled
it off, and if you gave him the whole chatta morphine, you turned
them in from walking wounded to a litter case. So I discovered it if
they wasn't wounded real bad, give them about a fourth of it, just
a numb it so they could walk to the pickup point and get picked up
and hauled back to the aide station and had a doctor tell me and learned
later years. He said, you was practicing pain management way before we doctors
were. You should have written a paper and I said, yeah, sure.
I said it's a PFC Verne Daley. Would you have read it?
And he said no, Still still at the cutting edge, we're seeing this
all over the place. So you left for Europe in late nineteen forty four.
What was your voyage across the Atlantic like at that time of year?
Very smooth, just glass smooth it was, And the Mariposa was a converted
lectury lner and you need to due thirty three knots, so we sailed across
there by ourselves. So it was really a very smooth, even though with
some guys got sick in Boston and never got out of their bunks all the
way across, and it was smooth as could be. It was an enjoyable
trip across. And one thing you laugh about is we had this here fellow
Breezy Breeze a check breeze us a nick name. Anyway, he was about
six foot four and he wore a fourteen boot, and so they gave him
four pairs and his double bag was full of boots and no room for anything
else, hardly so out in the middle of Atlantic somewhere, he went out
at night and dropped two pairs of boots overboard, so he had more room
and he's double bag. Well, you guys are resourceful. When we come
back from the break in a moment, we'll talk about where you were sent
as soon as you landed. But from what I read, it sounds like
your plans changed once you got there due to the start of the Battle of
the Bulge. What was your original expectation once you arrived in France. We
knew we would end up on the front line. We didn't know it.
It would be that sudden, let's put it that way. But you didn't
You didn't know where yet at that point. No, no, we didn't
know until we got there. Well, we got to Marseilles on the tenth
of December. Of course, the Battle of the Boat started on the sixteenth,
So about on the seventeenth I think we were ordered to back our devil
bags and wait for the trucks, and then went down to the railroad and
get on forty and eight box cars and spent five days going north and ended
up getting off the train of a town called Barmouth, and then we walked
about six miles to Bischweiler, where we spent the night and a couple of
days until they got organized what they were going to do with us. Well,
that's a perfect spot to take a break, because when we come back,
we're going to talk about how mister Staley and seventieth Division first saw combat
and how they would see a lot of combat over the ensuing few months.
I'm Greg Corumbus. This is Veterans Chronicles. Our guest today is Vern Staley,
US Army veteran and combat medic in World War Two with the seventieth Infantry
Division. Please stay with us. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
Our guest in this edition is Vern Staley. He's a US Army veteran
of World War Two serving as a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division.
That division spent nearly ninety days in combat during the final months of the war
in the European theater, and just before our break, mister Staley told us
about his story all the way up to the point of his unit landing in
Marseille in December of nineteen forty four, and then finding out just a few
days later that they were needed near the location of where the Battle of the
Bulge had broken out in more northern France and into Belgium. And so we're
now going to talk about what exactly he ended up doing there. And from
what I understand, Verne, you and some others were attached to the seventh
Division as part of something called Task Force Heron, Is that correct? It
was called Test Force and it was just a three infantry regiments we had.
We had no artillery, we had nothing. We was attached to the forty
fifth Division a lot. And worst of it is, they got credit for
all the good work we did. Well, tell me about that good work.
Well, we after we got the Bishweiler, it was it was close
to the Rhine River, and they scattered us up and down the Rhine River.
Standard guard and our mortars for each company was nine miles apart. Give
the idea how thin it was, and the Germans could walk through. They
went through there anytime they wanted to. We had the Rhine River separating us
from them. And well, the colonel got a bright idea there was a
bunker on the other side. So he decided that we had to take a
fifty seven nine to tain't gunned down there and shoot it. So we get
down there and we're laying on and then there's a nice dike there to lay
on at the Rhine River, and so we was laying on that waiting for
him, and they hit the dirt on a bunk or over across the river,
and then they started firing out of it, and there was limbs falling
all around us, and that was their exposure to a German machine gun.
And we found out how fast they were, and so we got down immediately
got below where we could get hurt, and so then the colonel ordered us
to go and get out of there. So we went ahead and made a
mad scramble and got out of there and went back to our billets where we
were at because we were lucky. We were staying in a house, so
we were at that time no foxholes. Some people was at foxholes, but
I didn't happen to be one. Anyway. After we was there about a
week on the Rhine River, we got orders going to pack up, and
so we went out. It took us to this little town called Pooberg and
we got off the trucks there. They said we didn't have to walk the
rest of the way. So we went down a treacherous because it was slow
at the ground it was icy, and we went down a couple of three
miles, walked down to the edge of this town called Wingins or Motor,
and the Germans captured it. It was the sixth Mountain Division of the Airs,
and they were an SS division, which was like an Army ranger division,
really top notch, and they had been training for two years in Finland,
and so they were dead shots. And like the first day we got
there, they had captured the town and captured a lot of the regiment of
the two seventy sixth Regiment, and their colonel has seen us, and so
he ordered our lieutenant for the rifle, but tune to win and rescue these
men, and like a darned food officer ordered across an open field and we
at one man killed because they opened up with machine guns. And so eventually
we were able to pull back into the woods. And then then next day
we attacked again, and that I was assigned to F Company, and F
Company suffered nineteen men killed the day. At sixth day of January that year's
a lot of people in one day, nineteen plus a lot of wounded,
and it was one of the worst days they were put in. I got
pinned down on an open field and spent the day laying in snow, and
if you moved somehow I didn't get hit. I had dead people on both
sides of me and others that were wounded. And finally it was dusk and
one of her modis come down and yelled at me and he said, hey,
it's safe, you come off. And I said, well, I
need help, come on out, and he said no, and he showed
me it's safe, but he wouldn't come out to where I was. So
it was out an open field, so I couldn't walk. So I got
my hands in the east and I crawled in about one hundred and fifty feet
to the bank where it was safer, and then he helped me up and
we went up and got the litter bearers to get down and evacuate all the
people that was still live down there, and got them headed back to that.
I never didn't know how they come out. I never could track them
down. Today with a computer, I could have done it, but back
years ago it was next to impossible, So I have no idea how they
made out. I wish I knew. After spending the ordeal, they decided
I needed to stay in the age station and recouper it in the next day.
Then the next day Captain Clifford said, Sergeant Clausner and you and me
are going to Wing Andsromoter and tag the dead. And I said, why
do we have to do it? And he said orders. So we went
to wing Insermot and went through every house and it's really hard to take somebody
anew you know after that where it was just kind of routine battle, but
that was one of our worst ones. And now that the second Battalion to
seven four got a unit citation for that, we were the only organization or
unit in the seventieth to get a unit citation, so we're very proud of
that. So and that operation was called it was the southern part of the
Battle of the Bulls. It wasn't recognized for years till an English author really
got to diggon into the records and discovered that it was Operation Nordband and Hitler's
plan was was to go through there because there was a rail through there,
and then there was the Alsatian planes where he'd run tanks on and so his
plan was was to go through there on the southern part, skirt around and
the northern part and bottle up on af A lot of the US army there.
We stopped the Operation Nordband. We captured over nine hundred Germans in there.
We were successful and that's part of why we got this citations with an
outstanding job. And most of those enemy fighters were SS guys, right,
yeah, they were deadly shots. Their sharpshooters were just deadly. And when
we was tagging, I found out that they would lay up and in the
houses there, you know, they all have tiles, so they could move
a tile to one side and put the rifle up through that little triangular hole
and shoot and you couldn't tell where it was coming from. That was the
worst part. The only thing that demoralized the Germans to a degree was we
had no artillery, no support of anything outside of the fifty seven millimeter tank
guns. Ed a tank and so they rigged up away and they they pulled
it by hand, a lot of it. They let it down icy slopes
with a rope and they finally got it down and they were able to shoot
it to Germans with it then, and we found after the war talking the
which we shot that with it, that are scared of them to death.
They said that thing really was We could and now fifty seven was it very
hard? What was a nanitate gun? What you expect? You know?
So it helped us win the battle. So anyway, after that then we
packed up and oh gosh, it was soon one skirmish after another, you
know, and it would just foxhold after foxhole, and people were getting hurt
and wounded and killed, and but we kept plugging away in eventually we won.
Verne, let's pause there one more time. When we come back,
we'll discuss the rest of your story of service during World War two and beyond.
Our guest is Vern Staley. He's a US Army veteran of World War
Two. Served as a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division, which spent
nearly ninety days in combat during the final months of the war in the European
Theater. I'm Greg Corumbus Veterans Chronicles. We'll be right back. This is
Vetter Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is Vern Staley.
He is a US Army veteran of World War Two, serving as a
combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division, and that division spent nearly ninety days
in combat during the final months of the war in the European theater. And
mister Staley, you set us up well for the next part of your service.
But I do want to go back to a couple of things from earlier,
towards the end of nineteen forty four, very early part of nineteen forty
five, and in that part of Operation Nordfind or North Wind in the English
translation, I read in the history of the division that there was considerable hand
to hand fighting at times during that combat. What do you remember about that,
Well, I was pinned down on Nopod field. I could only tell
you what the fellows told me. Yes it was, And one of our
medics was there somewhere, and the Germans to a white phosphorus grenade down said
he was wearing an overcoat, and he shed his overcoat to gave it.
Of course it was will it wouldn't burn, but I'd sure melt, you
know, and stuff so, and there was it was just hand to hand.
They would throw hand garnades in the house into the basement and they'd go
charging in shooting and and that's how part of them got killed around there was
they didn't u and grenade didn't get all the Germans at times and stuff.
It was. It was the toughest fight we had the Old War. Was
William's Sermot was absolutely the worst. We were green troops. We'd never been
in combat before. There was some officers of the other ones that seemed what
we did and they said to him and said, where did you find those
guys? You know what we said after the war we was too dumb to
know that we could. You couldn't do what we did. If we'd been
experienced, we wouldn't have done it as much as he did. They told
us take the town. So we're green, we go take the down,
simple, right, exactly exactly what's going through your mind as you're pinned down
there? You can't get up and help people that you know have probably been
hit, but you know if you get up, you're going to be hit
and then you can't help them anyway. So what's that moment like in your
mind knowing what your role is during a battle. Well, you know a
lot of praying and crawl up in your helmet and hide. At times people
say call your helmet. You said, oh, yeah, you can do
that when you're scared. You know you've been shelled shot at. Normally we
tried to get to them. Some Germans observed the red cross, other shot
at. It was always a risky took I guess, and but that's what
we were trained to do. I know that the Germans did not have a
men that went out in the fighting and helped their people. They waited until
after the battle was over. So we went about it a totally different way.
And what we did, no doubt help save lives. You valued your
own people a lot more than they did too. So did you have a
red cross on your helmet to designate your role as a medic? Yes,
we discovered we needed to do that, so they got white and red paint
and we painted took a coffee can and drew a circle around a coffee can
and then painted it white and then put a red cross in the middle of
that. That'll work. Now. Were you also armed? Oh no,
there was a part of the Geneva Convention stated that medics would not be armed.
So no, you you did not carry anything, but you were surrounded
with guys that had m ones and forty fives and and grenades and all that
good stuff to fight wars with, you know, so you ne were worried
about it. Like when they were just laying down real heavy fire with a
bar. I helped load clips to make sure we had enough full to keep
the guy that was firing him bar to do what we wanted him to do.
When that was silence of Germans, which worked. A bar was a
wicked rifle that we had. The Yeah, I didn't know this until the
last couple of years that all the baars we had were made during World War
One or right after, and then they were you furbished for World War Two.
This Browning that designed that designed all kinds of different guns. He worked
for Winchester and Springfield. And if if you go to og Utah, there's
a museum there of Browning museum. So you said, where was the factory,
There was no factory. He was smart. He designed them, patted
them, and then got a royalty from every gun that the different manufacturers made
that he designed. One more thing I want to touch on before we get
back to your progression during the war where we left off a moment ago,
and that's the cold. You mentioned that when you got there you did not
have to stay in foxholes. Was that the case throughout most of the winter,
And how did you deal with the cold during the day as well?
You shivered a lot. The army did not supply us with good foot gear.
They gave us what they called shoe packs, and that's it has a
right or bottom and a leather sold on sewed onto it. Then you had
half felt insoles and you had four of them. You kept two under your
shirt next to your body to dry them out, and you wore them there
one day, and then you every morning you took in chains to put a
dry pair of felt liners in your boots. And that's that was how you
did it. But I have frostbite, as most everybody that I was with
as frostbite. That my feet do not have the sensation in them they could
have because they were frozen. It was hard because of the fact living in
a foxhold. And then we had dugouts. Mber one place we were and
woke up in the morning and we had a dug out there, and then
you had a blanket over the emptry hole and one of the guys Eddie go
out. And every time we're living a dump, it snowed about a foot
of snow overnight, and so that was what you was living then, was
snow and cold and miserable. And then the Germans wasn't helping you. And
because they'd shoot at year show, you know, so of course we did
the same thing in return for them. And you know, and then Eisenhower
had all these pamphlets, leaflets dropped on them telling them they'd surrender, they
would have a dry bed to sleep in every day and three meals a day
and if they'd surrender, they could live a good life and so they would
never be cold. You'd hear Germans soli or yelling, have his hands over
his head and yelling comrade, comrade, and holding it orange slip of paper.
And we always said, yeah, you're lucky. So and so you
get to go back and get three three meals and caught. But it worked.
So it was it was that now sometimes we were in bunkers. There
was bunkers along there that the between the French and German line, and our
engineers wanted to blow one up, and so they put eight hundred pounds of
T and T in this one we was living in, but it was in
sight, so it could never get hit the walls. Was thinking those bunkers,
and so I talked to one of the engineers afterwards, and I said,
what happened when you blew up that bunker with all that intent? He
said, we put too much in it and turned it upside down. Bunkers
was a safe place to eat, but also they were dangerous if you were
very careful when you come in and out of one. You had to always
listen or make sure there was no income in our tillery or anything, so
you were always on there alert. Well, Vern in our discussion earlier,
you kind of led us up to the point past some of that vicious fighting
that happened early on during your deployment into eastern France. And I believe you
set us up as you moved on from there and got near the town of
Sarbrooken, Is that right? Yes? So what happened then they shelled Sarbrooken.
There was the heaviest artillery put down the heaviest shilling they ever did during
the war, shilling Sarbrooken. So we were scheduled to Gwin like eight o'clock
in the morning and they had built Pontou Bridge across. They had generally had
taken the forty mineralmeter and aircraft guns that normally protected the division headquarters and put
them up on the front line and had them so they chew flat trajectory if
they needed And what was those guys complaining because they'd never been on the front
line before. We went across and was nothing. The Germans had left during
the night, and we went about twenty miles that day and they could never
catch up with the Germans. And then for us the war was over.
They decided that somebody had to be in the Army of Occupations. So we
was living it up and I have fun stories of that. We was in
this town of bat Sawback and there was a big green for door Mercedes in
the garage, so gays don't take long to hot wire one, and so
we we would take it out and drive it. And one day we was
out two lun around and we come to a checkpoint and here's these guys,
these mp standing there not a spot on our uniforms, neckties, tommy guns,
and they said out we got out of that and they take our Mercedes
and do it across the street to a lot or road, and so now
we're going to get back, and he said, that's your problem. We
hammed to end up in the patents third Army and you weren't allowed to be
driving any German vehicles GIS. So they took our big Mercedes away from us,
left us a foot and showed us no mercy. Fortunately, a jeep
from each company came along and we flagged them down and got back to her
where we were blowned about twenty miles away. We got lucky that day.
I also read from the history of the seventieth Division Verne that you liberated a
town called four Bak, and yes, shortly after that you also helped deliberate
more than a thousand Allied prisoners. So tell me a little bit about those
things. Third Battallion actually did four back. We was about a few miles
from there. We was up at Staring Window, which is Towne. They're
just a few miles apart. We went up on Kreisenburg Ridge for a period
of time and then they they drew the detail of doing four blocks. So
all I know is what they told us, But I know that we had
some really tough fighting there on Kreisenburg Colonel Connelly got the bright idea that the
having machine guns out of straits the Mets highways. So so lo and behold
just where we were supposed to start firing on there. He showed up with
his group of tenants and they started straighten the Mets Highway, and then the
Germans started shelling us up there. And it was so I went to jump
on my foxhole and I look, and there's a guy with eagles on his
shoulder in my foxhole. And it was only big for one big enough for
one person, so I didn't try to kick Colonel Connolly out. So another
GI yelled at me and said, I got room over here, and I
jumped in his. Yeah, Colonel Connley could always break. He was under
direct fire up there. The General didn't know. He went up and did
Daddy. He was always doing something like that. He had. He had
six shooters and he carried like Patton, and he had a nickname Senior Raf
Churcher looking for ways to do it, and so he had the name of
Shooting Sam. And he had two ships, six shooters on each hip,
one on each side. He was a neat guy, though he was all
right. Verne. Let's pause right there. When we come back, we'll
conclude your story here on Veterans Chronicles. Our guest is Vern Staley. He
is a US Army veteran of World War Two, served as a combat medic
with the seventieth Infantry Division. I'm Greg Corumbus. Please stay with us,
says Veterans Chronicles. I'm right, Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
Vern Staley. He is a US Army veteran of World War Two, serving
as a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division and Verne. We've talked about
your role as a combat medic in a couple of different ways. Are there
any particular moments as a combat medic that stand out? A particular wound that
you treated, or a person that you treated, or a story that comes
to mind almost right away when when you think about your service as a medic.
The worst ones they got was a shell and hit a full in the
back and he was breathing through this hole in his back rather you know.
And I put a compress bandage on it, but you didn't have a way
to really hold it in place like you'd like to add. But he managed
to get to the age station. I know because I asked him about him
and they said, well, the bandage come off the terror where you put
it, And I said, well, there was no way you could really
hold it because we didn't have any good tape or anything that you could use
on something like that. So that was one of the worst ones. And
then the others that were just it's so mortally wounded that there wasn't anything you
could do for him. When that was ones that always hated, you know.
And I've had people come up to me and said, you remember when
you bandaged me up, and I kind of said, well, yeah,
and I didn't really because you was doing a lot of it at times,
and you just it was hard to remember everything there was. Ones were just
look at the torn flesh and the rest that would just shudder, and I
still do. I don't like to think of it too much now. At
Staring Windel, there there was a camp there were there was political prisoners in
there, and so when we got closer, they broke out and the Germans
shot them in the back as they was leaving. And I never seen anybody
skin and bone, and they had wounds. I'm sure they would gang green
in him. It was just the most pitiful sight that I had I had
ever seen, and nothing like it since then. And it was cotton picking.
Germans was shooting at those poor people and it had hit him in the
back and go through and there was a little hole in the back and a
little hole in the front where it came out. And I ran out of
band aids, so I had to give up on that, and they were
sent back and eventually was taking care of the army, got a deal set
up and Doc Ellis was in charge of getting things straighten out there. He
was first battalion surgeon. It's one of those things that there was a lot
of wounded, a lot of bandages just done, and I'd just like to
think about the fun we had. Understandable, understandable sir. How did you
learn that the Germans had surrendered? Where were you and how did you hear
the news? Oh? We were in Darmstadt, Germany, and we were
in the Saga Battalion Age station was in this big manchion there. The guy
was the director of all the utilities in Darmstadt. So you had electric refrigerator,
electric cookstove, washing machine. Oh, there was all kinds of stuff
in there. It was a fancy place, and so we partied it up
for three days, and there were several false surrenders, and then we got
to word this was the real one, and everybody was shooting her rifles and
just and then we drank a lot of champagne celebrating it, because she was
always a dark cloud. The war wasn't over and with a Japanese yet,
but we lived it up for three days. I got a picture of us
when we're all looking pretty good. Now, your division had seen nearly ninety
days of combat in a little more than four months. That's a lot of
combat. So what kind of a toll had that taken on you and your
division? And I'm sure that played into the relief that went into that celebration
too. It was always very hard. It's like, you know, I
heard it was two sergeants I knew, and they were both in the same
foxhole in a shell, landed the inn and killed both of them at the
same time, you know. And yeah, those kind of things now in
Darmstead, I'll tell you one funny thing that happened though our medical would we
call him anyway? He was a first lieutenant, he was an assistant.
He was supposed to do the bookwork. Anyway, he went had to go
over to secondment day and headquarters, and he was over there and this German
lead comes in waving a piece of paper and saying, docs goot, dosss
goot. So somebody read the paper on it that she had there, and
on it it read this lady has a damn good bitch coming. I took
her bed and it was signed Jack the Ripper. Now you explained to some
poor as a German lady, who Jack the Ripper is? You're doing well
if you can. Yeah, that's gonna that's gonna be a challenge to be
sure. To be sure. Now, after the surrender, you stayed in
Europe for a few months as part of occupation duty. Correct. I stayed
there until March of forty six. Had enough points and six of us that
from the seventieth. We were in the third Infantry Division then and we got
enough points to go home. So we came home and thought of all of
us that came home in that group, I'm the only one still alive.
All the rest are gone. Now what were you assigned to do during the
occupation duty. Well, you was with the companies and your big duty was
is to run operate a pro station. That's a prophylactic. Ah, it's
quite an assignment. Hey, you know you're sound to sleep at two o'clock
in the morning and they shake it. Hey, doc, Doc, I
need a pro Wow. So after you came home, Sarah, what did
you do? I did a whole lot of things. I'd worked in a
machine shop, but I wasn't really settled down to because I've never went back
to work. I had work steady there. So my brother in law and
I worked at a lot of different jobs, just short times a week or
two, and then we get tired, quit and go party for a while.
And then finally, by the end of nineteen forty six, I went
back to the machine shop i'd worked in and got serious about learning the trade
of being a machinist. Well, of course, the guys I went to
school high school with someone in a marine course, somewhere in the Navy and
somewhere in the army, and so we had a standard of guys representing everything
you know, so and we would turned out to be my brother in law,
he was a marine, so we was always picking on him. Now
he did five invasions in the Pacific and never got a scratch out that real
quick, Verne, just a couple more questions before we let you go.
I know that you are very active and have been for some time sharing your
story with students and other members of younger generations, so they're aware of what
your service looked like. In the importance of winning World War Two. Talk
about why that is so important to you well to people know that there was
a price to pay for the freedom that we have today, you know,
and it cost a lot of lives. And now I'll tell you one thing.
I have spoken over in France to schools over there, and also met
German high school students that were very curious about a lot of stuff because they
don't do it. So I've had a lot of chances to explain to foreign
students and then American students. It's amazing. When we were over there,
we'd meet a group of high school students on tour over there, and they
had all kinds of questions. And then one question I always told him was
never ask an XDI if he shot somebody, because nobody wants to talk about
it. But other than that, I was they asked so many gig question
sees. I've met, you know, play I met more of the big
tour groups in Europe than I have here in a way, you know,
So it's amazing. I've been back to France about eight times since the war,
so we know people, or we got acquainted with people and stuff,
and that's always a joy to go over there and see all of them.
At my age now and my problems, I'm not going to go anymore.
I can't do it. What does it mean to you to have organizations like
the American Veterans Center and other groups like ours gather the stories from veterans like
yourselves. They all do a great job of helping, you know, I
get I see all this stuff, and the VFW has helped me a lot
on violently claims to get on injuries I had in the world during the war
and stuff. So there's all these units all serve a purpose and do a
good job. As far as I'm concerned. They're very necessary to help people,
and I guess keep people exposed. It. It wasn't just something that
just accidentally happened. It was a tough fight to get to where we're at
today. Finally, sir, what are you most proud of from your service?
That I served and all the people I met and the things we've done
together, there's nothing like us guys getting together. And like for my birthday
party, none of the originals get maked, but twenty two of the second
third generation was present for my party. That one came far as a way
as Massachusetts and all over the US scattered around my birthday party for my ninety
ninth, and so now we're planning for one hundred. So got that going.
I was going to say, if the ninety ninth got that kind of
a turnout, the hundredth should be a real bash. Well, I got
to find a bigger place to have. We had roughly about one hundred and
twenty five people there and twenty or so got sick. It couldn't make it
for right, you know, Gosh come down with it, and I appreciated
him staying home and not bringing their bugs to me. But my friends and
my family and my big family, the seventieth Division Association, we had a
great time. Well that's outstanding, sir. The celebration, the respect that
you were given at that event is thoroughly understandable given your service and I know
your very active dedication and participation to the seventieth Division Association, and so we
thank you very much for your service, and we obviously thank you very much
for your time with us today. Sir. We're very grateful. I am
so thankful. Let I got a chance to talk to you, because that
everybody has heard my stories, I guess, and so they some will now
anyway. So I really am most appreciative you contacted me and allowing me to
unwind rat along, you know. Thank you, sir very much. Burne.
Staley is a US Army veteran of World War Two. He served as
a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division, which saw nearly ninety days of
combat over the final months of the war in Europe. I'm Greg Corumbus and
this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for
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