Speaker 1: Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is Jack Moran, a US Army veteran of
Speaker 1: World War II, serving with the eighty seventh Infantry Division
Speaker 1: in the European Theater. He was cut off and surrounded
Speaker 1: at the Battle of the Bulge for six days. He
Speaker 1: also fought at the Sar Valley the Siegfried Line. An
Speaker 1: saw intense action while crossing the Rhine. We've spoken with
Speaker 1: mister Moran before, but we sat down with him again
Speaker 1: just a few weeks ago to discuss how he and
Speaker 1: his fellow infantrymen dealt with the immense firepower of German armor,
Speaker 1: especially the deadly Tiger tanks, and we discussed how he
Speaker 1: endured the brutally cold conditions at the Battle of the
Speaker 1: Bulge and elsewhere. Jack Moran was born in Superior, Wisconsin, which,
Speaker 1: as you could probably guess, is on the shore of
Speaker 1: Lake Superior. Moran's father served in uniform during World War
Speaker 1: One but was never sent overseas. Moran enlisted in the
Speaker 1: US Army, thinking mostly about the educational opportunities it would
Speaker 1: allow him to pursue, but that plan was quickly ruined
Speaker 1: by the military. Almost as soon as Jack Moran joined
Speaker 1: the service.
Speaker 2: The educational program they were projecting to go to the
Speaker 2: engineering school down at the University of Wisconsin. This sounded good,
Speaker 2: but that got canceled after about sixty days. There were
Speaker 2: universities all over the country that had the ESTP program,
Speaker 2: and every single one got canceled, and all the people
Speaker 2: in those programs all got put in the infantry.
Speaker 1: Where did you do your training.
Speaker 2: Fourth Pende, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina, Fort Jackson?
Speaker 1: And what did they focus on there?
Speaker 2: Just routine, routine infantry, nothing sensational, nothing new.
Speaker 1: When did you get sent overseas well?
Speaker 2: When we were to England and probably November October November of
Speaker 2: nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1: Now, from what I've read, pretty early on after you
Speaker 1: entered combat, you were taking on German eighty eighths and
Speaker 1: tiger tanks. Talk about how you attacked an enemy with
Speaker 1: that kind of equipment.
Speaker 2: Well, the tiger tank was the greatest take in the
Speaker 2: world at that time. It was probably impossible for any infantry.
Speaker 2: You definite a zoo can get a side shot or
Speaker 2: back or we were end shot even slow one down.
Speaker 2: Fantastic piece of equipment. The eighty eighths were deadly. They
Speaker 2: we were going through open farm country, a dairy country,
Speaker 2: and so we could be seen from some distance, and they,
Speaker 2: the Germans, every day they picked us off with the
Speaker 2: eighty eighth. I wasn't in combat for fifteen seconds when
Speaker 2: the first eighty eight e floated about one hundred feet
Speaker 2: of my right and three of our men were down,
Speaker 2: mounded or dead. It was quite an introduction to warfare.
Speaker 2: Scared the hell out of me.
Speaker 1: So how did you combat that? Could you get side
Speaker 1: shots against the tanks? Could you figure out a way
Speaker 1: to get around those ados?
Speaker 2: Almost impossible? Almost impossible? Say, did infantry protecting the tanks
Speaker 2: if they were stationary or fourth or fifty in commed
Speaker 2: I saw one of our one o fives, which is
Speaker 2: a pretty good sized shell, explode on the hood of
Speaker 2: a tiger tank, and I thought to myself, see that's great,
Speaker 2: they knocked that guy out. Well, when the smoke and
Speaker 2: the dust had cleared up, this tiger tank just backed
Speaker 2: into the woods and took off. Because the hood of
Speaker 2: a tiger tank is four inches six solid steel. That's
Speaker 2: what makes them weigh a ton. It's a very heavy tank,
Speaker 2: very difficult to stop. Our Sherman tanks for no contests
Speaker 2: could not fight a Sherman tank and a tiger coming
Speaker 2: in at each shutter. When the tiger got about fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred feet from the Sherman, they could start firing. Against
Speaker 2: eighty eight, the Sherman could not fire at the tiger
Speaker 2: until they got within five hundred feet of the tiger.
Speaker 2: By that time the Sherman is in deep trouble. There
Speaker 2: was a saying in the in the tank order, there's
Speaker 2: a saying, if you want us, if you're going after
Speaker 2: a tiger, send four Shermans and hope to get one back.
Speaker 2: A deadly, deadly combination.
Speaker 1: So how did you make progress against them?
Speaker 2: At first? We didn't make any progress against them. We
Speaker 2: fire a big as heavy air chillern as we could
Speaker 2: at them. Like I said, I saw one and get hit.
Speaker 2: The first month of combat, I never saw a disabled tiger.
Speaker 2: I never saw a tiger knocked out. And of course
Speaker 2: that's a little bit discouraging that if the enemy's got
Speaker 2: to got weapons, that you don't have better weapons. And
Speaker 2: they had better tanks and we did. The eighty eight
Speaker 2: was what's far superior to any field or Childing. We
Speaker 2: had you if you put an eighty eight in position
Speaker 2: on a battlefield, they could dominate that battlefield. It was accurate,
Speaker 2: it was fast, and we had nothing to combat it
Speaker 2: except for the throwing one of fires at them. If
Speaker 2: you if we could locate their battery, you know, or
Speaker 2: they where they were located. Their machine guns was much
Speaker 2: better than ours. It fired twelve hundred rounds a minute.
Speaker 2: Every second, twenty bullets are coming out the end of
Speaker 2: that barrel. That's that's that fantastic rate of fire. Ours
Speaker 2: would fire about four hundred rounds a minute. I don't
Speaker 2: remember the Air Corps being called to fight hit any
Speaker 2: of the tigers. Later, when we got into areas like
Speaker 2: the Rhyine River the Battle of the Balls, there were
Speaker 2: no tanks involved because of the woods. The tiger tanks
Speaker 2: can't operate in the woods, so we didn't see any
Speaker 2: tigers in in in the Battle of the Balls, and
Speaker 2: at the Rhine River was too hilly and the tiger
Speaker 2: tanks couldn't operate in the hilly country. But in the
Speaker 2: Star Valley the tigers were deadly and and hurt us badly.
Speaker 2: And in the thick free line we had the tank
Speaker 2: chassis was the ninety was the ninety millimeter gun on it.
Speaker 2: We took took through the seventy five middle so we
Speaker 2: had a chance to fight a tiger with with a
Speaker 2: ninety that that was more effective that that idiot was.
Speaker 2: Was was was the course. It was a great weapon
Speaker 2: on the battlefield. The tiger tank was a good only
Speaker 2: in the Shar Valley. As far as we were concerned,
Speaker 2: we were surrounded in the in the Battle of the
Speaker 2: Balls six days. That's that hurt us. We were out.
Speaker 2: We were just pinned down tight. We couldn't move. We
Speaker 2: were in the Shar Valley when the when the balls
Speaker 2: broke through. The balls broke through on the sixteenth and
Speaker 2: December about four thirty in the morning, and if youcame
Speaker 2: very serious. I Bradley got in touch with with Patten
Speaker 2: and Montgomery said, tell us, I need some help up
Speaker 2: and Belgium. I need some help here. What can you
Speaker 2: do for me? Patton said, I can be up there
Speaker 2: in two days, and the English general said I can.
Speaker 2: I can be up there in three days. So Bradley
Speaker 2: gave pattern the Java coming up and going up to
Speaker 2: Belgium to help out. And I was involved in that
Speaker 2: we were fighting in the Star Valley and that's where
Speaker 2: we saw tanks involved. When we left the Shire Valley,
Speaker 2: we were trucked up to Belgium and I never saw
Speaker 2: another Tiger tank the rest of the war.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that the tiger tanks were primarily at
Speaker 1: the Sar Valley. What were they presenting you with at
Speaker 1: the bulge? What weapons were you facing at the bulge
Speaker 1: from the Germans?
Speaker 2: A lot of mortars. Well, we were surrounded, of course,
Speaker 2: and we were we were not being aggressive and we
Speaker 2: didn't have any room for any tanks or any mount
Speaker 2: of guns. So we were pinned down and the Germans
Speaker 2: just for days, they just lobbed mortars in us. You
Speaker 2: could hear. We were about a mile west of bass
Speaker 2: Stone and our circle in which we were in was probably,
Speaker 2: you know, two hundred feet long and one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty feet wide, and we had foxholes all around and
Speaker 2: the Germans would fire mortars at us, and you could
Speaker 2: hear the motar going off. You could hear the ping
Speaker 2: as it left the barrel of the mortar, but maybe
Speaker 2: half a mile away, a mile away. It took twenty
Speaker 2: nine seconds for that shell to land on us. And
Speaker 2: when it got up to twenty seven or twenty eight.
Speaker 2: We pulled your help, went down and get tapped down
Speaker 2: deep in the fox and hopeful they didn't didn't guess
Speaker 2: you if they hit the fossil, of course you're gonna
Speaker 2: be you're gonna be dead. But partially they didn't hit
Speaker 2: my fox. They hit hit some others. They they killed
Speaker 2: some other people with the mortar. Siga Free Lion was
Speaker 2: tank destroyers, a ninety elevator weapon on on a tank chassis.
Speaker 2: That was good, that was efficient, but we know there
Speaker 2: were no tiger tanks. That was very hilly country. But
Speaker 2: they were grateful for hitting these cement bunkers, the big
Speaker 2: cement bunkers in the in the Seek Free Lin we
Speaker 2: get to the at the end, we get to the
Speaker 2: top of the hill through all these bunkers. One day
Speaker 2: we get to the top of the hill and looking
Speaker 2: down into a valley, here's a little town called Armon
Speaker 2: down at the bottom of this hill. And it happened.
Speaker 2: Did that want us going down this hill which is
Speaker 2: wide open, there's no trees, nothing hide behind it, and
Speaker 2: have the Germans have tanks or artillery in that town
Speaker 2: and they could slaughter us. So he called for cores
Speaker 2: artillery corner artillery. Each corps has several divisions under each
Speaker 2: division has several artillery regiments underneath it. When you call
Speaker 2: for corn artillery, you're gonna call for every gun of
Speaker 2: these all these artillery regimens to fire, so that the
Speaker 2: shells all arrive at the same time. So about a
Speaker 2: minute after the captain gave the order for the core
Speaker 2: ar chillerry over the horizon, you can hear the rumbling
Speaker 2: of the big guns back ten or twelve miles, big
Speaker 2: big two forties. They throw a big battleship sized shell.
Speaker 2: Two forty rifles fire, then the two forty Hollisers fire
Speaker 2: a little bit later than the one fifty five long rifles,
Speaker 2: then the one fifty five Hollishers, then the one oh
Speaker 2: five long rifles, the one oh five Hollishers. All these
Speaker 2: shells are up in the air at one time. Right
Speaker 2: In fact, looking up, I can see the flickers they
Speaker 2: as they went over, and they all landed on a
Speaker 2: target at the same exact moment, almost to the same
Speaker 2: exact second. Five hundred and forty shells exploded on that
Speaker 2: town in one burst, and that town just erupted, and
Speaker 2: every starting it was the greatest sight of my life.
Speaker 2: As soon as they smoke desks to start to settle,
Speaker 2: we all were all racing down the hill. All about
Speaker 2: seven or eighty of us was firing from the hips
Speaker 2: was our amb once and we had the tank destroyers
Speaker 2: running along right beside us, firing their nineties into the tire.
Speaker 2: We ruined, We destroyed that talent. We knew that there'll
Speaker 2: be no resistance from the Germans. It was just absolutely
Speaker 2: they'd be absolutely shocked. So we got down there. They left,
Speaker 2: taking their wounded with them, left their dead behind, and
Speaker 2: just an amazing, amazing sight. I'll tell you one thing
Speaker 2: about the tiger tank. I had documented report as we
Speaker 2: indeed a plus nts plus three or four. We were
Speaker 2: off the beach and inland, moving inland. Now the British
Speaker 2: anchored one end of our advance line. It is a
Speaker 2: British ar Chillery division, a whole division which consisted of
Speaker 2: a lot of Cromwell tanks, shoop carriers and our support vehicles.
Speaker 2: So there's a tiger tank driver named Michael Whitman. Michael
Speaker 2: spotted this British ar Chiller version division coming through the
Speaker 2: woods and he tanked. He attacked them that afternoon, one
Speaker 2: Tiger tank knocked out fifty four British tanks and tank
Speaker 2: carriers and vehicles, all kinds of He knocked out fifty four.
Speaker 2: He paralyzed that English our chillry division. They had to
Speaker 2: stay there for weeks while England resupplied them with new
Speaker 2: tanks and new new trucks, et cetera. Plus maybe one
Speaker 2: hundred and two hundred men to use that equipment. And
Speaker 2: they're all killed. So it was a real disaster for England.
Speaker 2: But it demonstrated how accurate and how good this Tiger
Speaker 2: tank was, how dynamite it was. It's just very impressed.
Speaker 2: And I think I told you that the tank in
Speaker 2: the tank field, the tanker said, if I think going
Speaker 2: out after a tiger, send four servants and hopefully get
Speaker 2: one back. It was. It was dynamite.
Speaker 1: So you talked about this a little bit when you
Speaker 1: talked about the simultaneous explosions throughout the town that was destroyed.
Speaker 1: But talk about the Allied weapons, the American tanks, artillery
Speaker 1: that was most of.
Speaker 2: Well, well, well that was the first Well that was
Speaker 2: a good example of our our chillry power to throw
Speaker 2: five hundred shells in on one, not one. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's using a lot of tax fairs money, and and
Speaker 2: and but it did the job. Now we used we
Speaker 2: were using the one of fires back in the Saar
Speaker 2: Valley and uh, I can remember we attacked a hill
Speaker 2: three sixty one day and it was a bad, tough battle.
Speaker 2: In fact, we lost. I lost my four best friends
Speaker 2: in that battle. That afternoon and we got to the
Speaker 2: top of the hill. There was there was a rock
Speaker 2: pile up there, and the rock pile had been hollowed out,
Speaker 2: so so I jumped into this rock pile. Was one
Speaker 2: of our guys. The Germans were only about fifty yards
Speaker 2: away from us in the woods. There were woods at
Speaker 2: the top of hill three sixty. So we called in
Speaker 2: our artillery and and our one oh fives started coming
Speaker 2: in very close to us. They were landings right just
Speaker 2: in front of us to keep the Germans away from us.
Speaker 2: But but but in the process they the kid who
Speaker 2: was in the foxhol in the rock pile with me,
Speaker 2: he was he was bleeding bleeding blood. This this the
Speaker 2: concussion and shock was so great. So that was that
Speaker 2: was good protection. I appreciated that. And they did some
Speaker 2: counter counter battery stuff. The Germans from several positions were
Speaker 2: firing at so are our chillery people somehow could determine
Speaker 2: where that where that battery is located and they could
Speaker 2: fire into it and hopefully destroy it. We used no
Speaker 2: artillery in the bulls at all. We didn't of course,
Speaker 2: we were pinned down for a couple of weeks. On
Speaker 2: the Rhine River. We used We also did not use
Speaker 2: any artillery on the Rhyan River. Some are chillery. Some
Speaker 2: artillery have been thrown from our side of the Rhyane
Speaker 2: River over into into the east banks. Uh, but that
Speaker 2: was just random shooting. They were not supporting us in
Speaker 2: the field at all. But our chillar it was good.
Speaker 2: It was good and help when and when we needed it.
Speaker 2: We used more.
Speaker 1: As of course, what did you have on you? I?
Speaker 2: I used an M one, As I told you, it's
Speaker 2: a wonderful rifle. Wonderful rifle. I didn't like the BA
Speaker 2: r is too heavy, It wasn't any more effective than
Speaker 2: an M one.
Speaker 1: Why did you love the M one?
Speaker 2: It was the best rifle in the world at that time.
Speaker 2: Of course it because it because you can fire so
Speaker 2: fast and just reloaded in two or three seconds. Bang
Speaker 2: bang bang fire you can fire. We crossed the Rhine
Speaker 2: River one one night, very very bad battle. We lost
Speaker 2: a lot of the men out in the in the water.
Speaker 2: About seventy of us survived. A one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: left in little tiny wooden boats. About seventy of us
Speaker 2: made at theater side. And we're we're advancing inland and
Speaker 2: we're we're walking in the dark, middle of the night,
Speaker 2: twelve o twelve thirty at night, and we're firing from
Speaker 2: the hip with our M the fire right rounds stick
Speaker 2: a new one in fire right rounds. Seventy of us.
Speaker 2: US were throwing a tremendous amount of lead into the dark.
Speaker 2: Wish I and we captured some Germans. And one of them, nicknames, said,
Speaker 2: you guys made so much noise last night. I thought
Speaker 2: there were at least seven hundred of you, and there
Speaker 2: were just seventy of us. But that was the greater
Speaker 2: belieability of the M one beautiful weapon. I wish I'd
Speaker 2: taken one hole as when I left.
Speaker 1: That's Jack Moran, a US Army veteran of World War
Speaker 1: II serving in the eighty seventh Infantry Division. In just
Speaker 1: a moment, Moran tells us about the intensity of German
Speaker 1: snipers and how he and his fellow soldiers tried to
Speaker 1: cross the Rhine. And then he takes us into the
Speaker 1: inhuman conditions that he and his platoon faced for six
Speaker 1: days surrounded by the Germans and cut off from resupply
Speaker 1: at the Battle of the Bulge, in brutally cold conditions.
Speaker 1: That's all. Next, I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans
Speaker 1: Chronicles sixty Seconds of Service.
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Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is Jack Moran, a US Army veteran of
Speaker 1: World War II. He served in the European Theater and
Speaker 1: saw action at the Battle of the Bulge, the Tsar Valley,
Speaker 1: the Sigfried Line, and crossing the Rhine, among other locations
Speaker 1: in Europe. We'll take a closer look at Moran's service
Speaker 1: at the Battle of the Bulge in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but he also gave us some insight into the difficulty
Speaker 1: in crossing the Rhine in the spring of nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1: He says, deadly German snipers made any movement in the
Speaker 1: towns near the Rhine almost impossible.
Speaker 2: You couldn't run across the street from one building to another.
Speaker 2: You were engagered one of our own tennis running, you know, listen,
Speaker 2: even shorter distancing from here that wall running. He started
Speaker 2: to run. Sniper from six hundred yards away hit him
Speaker 2: behind the air the bullet. The bullet came out here.
Speaker 2: That sniper had to be laying on a firing platform
Speaker 2: with his eye to the telescope and his finger on
Speaker 2: the trigger and just moving his scope looking for somebody
Speaker 2: to do something over there. He couldn't do it any
Speaker 2: other way. Another kid found a motorcycle. We had plenty
Speaker 2: of gasolines, so we got the motorcycle going. And he's
Speaker 2: in the back of a town called Meersbay. The town's
Speaker 2: at about two hundred and fifty yards wide, the river's
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty yards. Then you got another X
Speaker 2: number of yards to the right from the shooter. This
Speaker 2: kid was riding along on the bicycle doing about twenty
Speaker 2: miles an hour, and this sniper knocked him off the bicycle.
Speaker 2: I did a lot of honey. I could ever shoot
Speaker 2: that well. A couple other guys got killed by on
Speaker 2: the river, and of course on the river itself, we
Speaker 2: lost tons of guys. I had bullets go through my
Speaker 2: pants and another bullets skin me here and killed the
Speaker 2: kid behind it. I was number one man in the
Speaker 2: voat My assistant was number two, number three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Speaker 2: Just before we left the West Bank, the captain came
Speaker 2: up and he said, Jack, I want I want to
Speaker 2: radio in your boat, so give me one of your men.
Speaker 2: So I took this number three men, gave him to
Speaker 2: the captain. He gave me a guy from another voat
Speaker 2: ten fifteen seconds later. That kid is dead behind me.
Speaker 2: The bullet just skinned me and you nailed him in
Speaker 2: the heart. That's there's so much luck. There's luck and war,
Speaker 2: good luck and bad luck. It was that kid's bad luck,
Speaker 2: and it was good luck for that kid that the
Speaker 2: captain took. Wasn't because he survived that night.
Speaker 1: Well, let me take you back to the bulge for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm amazed at
Speaker 1: how small the area was when you were surrounding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there always had thirty five foxhols. You could wasn't
Speaker 2: a much choice. The Germans attacked us one we were
Speaker 2: in the woods. They attacked our little of our group.
Speaker 2: We were going through the woods, so we knew we
Speaker 2: were pinned down. So that's a pretty good, pretty good
Speaker 2: piece of real estate. One fifty by two or two
Speaker 2: fifty's that's a pretty good fiece of real estate. And
Speaker 2: to have thirty five foxhold, one foxhold every seven or
Speaker 2: eight yards or six or seven yards. We couldn't have
Speaker 2: two spread up. We had to have some of them,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of bunch up a little bit in
Speaker 2: case that there's a sack from that area. We had
Speaker 2: to have enough firepower to throw at them. So they worked,
Speaker 2: it worked out. We finally finally got out of there.
Speaker 1: How did you push him back? How did you stop
Speaker 1: them from overrunning you?
Speaker 2: Just by killing them? They would they would send patrols in.
Speaker 2: We would kill them. We could see them in the woods.
Speaker 2: We were down on the ground so were they couldn't shoot,
Speaker 2: They couldn't hardly hit us. And we're banging away with
Speaker 2: them and knocking them down.
Speaker 1: Were you getting resupplied?
Speaker 2: We got nothing for the first three days we had.
Speaker 2: You have to have water and rest. You don't need
Speaker 2: you don't need food. Food is not as essential as
Speaker 2: water and rest, and so we had. The snow was
Speaker 2: our water and the rest. You try to get some rest,
Speaker 2: but at night time it's dark from seven three m
Speaker 2: till seven am the next day. So you got you
Speaker 2: got twelve hours of darkness, and so you and your
Speaker 2: partner to each stake. You take two hours on your
Speaker 2: two hours off, two hours on, two hours off. You
Speaker 2: lay in the bottom of the foxhole and try to
Speaker 2: get some rest. But you're exhausted, you're hungry, you're tired.
Speaker 2: So you lay down to the bottom of the fossil
Speaker 2: and try to go to sleep and FI. You're laying
Speaker 2: down there and your cold, nice cold. There's no no blankets,
Speaker 2: no bedrolls. While you're down there, you hear a machine
Speaker 2: gun going off down you know, one hundred yards down
Speaker 2: the street. You're some orders exploding back here. It's not
Speaker 2: good sleep. Will you drag yourself out the next morning?
Speaker 2: You're you're you're wearing, you didn't get a good night's
Speaker 2: sleep at all, and you're cold, and you're tired, you're hungry.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's have to be a good souldier in
Speaker 2: under those conditions.
Speaker 1: Did you have any weapons besides your rifles?
Speaker 2: No? I had all had pistols. Had I had carried
Speaker 2: a looter and I had a P thirty eight.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Some of the boys carried forting fires, which were so ineffective.
Speaker 2: It was just a stupid gun to carry in war,
Speaker 2: and we had light machine guns. We had some machine
Speaker 2: gunners with us. We had some light machine guns, and
Speaker 2: we had some sixty million milliar motors which go short distance.
Speaker 2: That that was helpful. The overcast was so heavy and
Speaker 2: so thick that the air force couldn't The air force
Speaker 2: was grounded, couldn't help us if they were paid to.
Speaker 2: I remember one night a couple of things happened. One night,
Speaker 2: it was so dark you couldn't you couldn't see your
Speaker 2: hand in front of your face. I already mean that
Speaker 2: the guy that was in the fossil was we had gone.
Speaker 2: The captain took half a dozen guys to try to
Speaker 2: get We had wounded in the middle of our circle,
Speaker 2: and he wanted to get the wound. He thought, after
Speaker 2: a couple of days this in that cold water, a
Speaker 2: slight wound can kill you from shock. You've got to
Speaker 2: get some help. So he picked the half a dozen
Speaker 2: guys to take some of the wounded out try to
Speaker 2: break out to a point in the in our perimeter.
Speaker 2: But they couldn't get out. The Germans repulsed them and
Speaker 2: they had to come back. But while he was gone,
Speaker 2: I was I was all alone about eleven o'clock at
Speaker 2: night and I heard noise out there in the snow,
Speaker 2: wag in the snow. I knew it wasn't our guys.
Speaker 2: It had to be Germans. So I got closer and
Speaker 2: closer and closer, and at first I said, well, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna put my and then on the end of my rifle,
Speaker 2: I'll put the butt of the rifle down on the
Speaker 2: gravel and if if the guy folds on it, if
Speaker 2: a resulted folds on it, you'll get them. But then
Speaker 2: I thought, well, but also he'll fall in on me
Speaker 2: and I'll be laying He'll be laying on top of me,
Speaker 2: and I'll be helpless, and his buddies may may be there,
Speaker 2: so I gave that up. Then I said, well, I'll
Speaker 2: just start firing my rifle because the light for just
Speaker 2: a second, the light will be showing what will be shown,
Speaker 2: use will be visible through all the flashing of the weapon.
Speaker 2: But then I said, well that then they'll know where
Speaker 2: I am, so they can come and they can shoot
Speaker 2: at me. So they didn't like that idea. So finally
Speaker 2: I thought, well, I'm going to use a hand gardad,
Speaker 2: but at night, you don't throw hand gard aids in
Speaker 2: the woods, because you might hit a tree and it'll
Speaker 2: come bouncing back at you. So that that didn't work.
Speaker 2: I just took a hander aad, I pulled the pin
Speaker 2: and I just photo out there like that. Took my
Speaker 2: hand off. It's going to explode in four and a
Speaker 2: half seconds, and I pulled my head back down as
Speaker 2: low as I could, and then the explosion current but
Speaker 2: my helmet was sick enough, just a little tiny bit,
Speaker 2: and banged the top of my helmet. Knocked me silly
Speaker 2: for twenty four hours, but it did the job. It
Speaker 2: stopped the people that were there. So we defended ourselves
Speaker 2: pretty good for the six days, and then finally at
Speaker 2: the end of six days, the sky cleared and the
Speaker 2: airport was able to attack the balls. The bows was
Speaker 2: of course, the bows was out like this, and the
Speaker 2: Germans were all in the balls and we were out
Speaker 2: here about Bastone was about here, and then we were
Speaker 2: further the western Bastone. But the air when the air
Speaker 2: Force was able to operate again, started machine getting all
Speaker 2: these physicians dropping bombs. It took the pressure off and
Speaker 2: the Germans, though they were beat at that point in time,
Speaker 2: so they started to retreat, head back to Germany then
Speaker 2: asked about six days. We finally were able to get
Speaker 2: out of there. We had prisoners, German prisoners we had
Speaker 2: taken while we were in there, and we used them
Speaker 2: to carry or theadn't wound it out and get to
Speaker 2: a place where we could have a hot shower and
Speaker 2: you know, a warm, real but heavenly.
Speaker 1: In our last couple of minutes, I want to reflect
Speaker 1: on how the cold impacted you at the Buls and beyond,
Speaker 1: because much of that winter was absolutely frigid. How did
Speaker 1: it affect you and how did it affect your weapon?
Speaker 2: The Buls especially was tough because because we were so
Speaker 2: cold and our weapons were ice cold. Something I wonder
Speaker 2: if it was damply with a firefight, I'm sure it would.
Speaker 2: But the Saar Valley wasn't It wasn't quite as cold
Speaker 2: as the Bulls, but it was, but it was. It
Speaker 2: was sloppy, it was muddy and cold at nights when
Speaker 2: you dug it into a foxel at night. And of
Speaker 2: course there's some buildings available to us down in the
Speaker 2: Sarre Valley, but the Bulls was a tough one. That
Speaker 2: was it. You just when it's below zero, I'm not
Speaker 2: below zero, but down around pushing zero, you know, for
Speaker 2: six days, six days, six nights, and all you can
Speaker 2: do it, All you can do is sugar. There's nothing
Speaker 2: you can do about it. You can't do a damning
Speaker 2: except bit, bite the bullet and and and accept it.
Speaker 2: The sea free line we had, we were we were
Speaker 2: able to have better protection from the elements, and in
Speaker 2: the Ryan River we were very well protected from the elements.
Speaker 2: It wasn't I it wasn't super cold at the Rhyane rivers.
Speaker 2: It's just cool. But uh, winter was a factor. But
Speaker 2: it had to be just as hard on the Germans
Speaker 2: as on us, and maybe even harder because we're we're
Speaker 2: probably better equipped to handle it. But the young Germans
Speaker 2: in in the foxholes one hundred yards away we were
Speaker 2: were just feeling just as bad as we were.
Speaker 1: Did it affect how you were thinking after six days?
Speaker 1: Did it affect your mind?
Speaker 2: The co good question. I wouldn't be a bit surprised,
Speaker 2: but I can't say specifically I remember any instances where
Speaker 2: my body didn't function, didn't hallucinate, but probly despaired at
Speaker 2: times and prayed as that we had to do well.
Speaker 1: We just have a couple of minutes left, Sir, as
Speaker 1: you think about what we've discussed today, any final thoughts
Speaker 1: on your tactics.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay, okay okay. A couple happens. One a
Speaker 2: number of soldiers shot themselves to get out of there,
Speaker 2: put the bullet to the top of their foot. One day,
Speaker 2: my platoon did. That's how desperate people were to get
Speaker 2: out of there. I saw twenty five year old men
Speaker 2: who they were men. We were nineteen year old kids.
Speaker 2: We thought there were men sitting in the corner of
Speaker 2: a barn after a battle, sitting there, twenty five year
Speaker 2: old men crying like a baby, sobbing. I can't stand that.
Speaker 2: I can't take this anymore. You've got to get me
Speaker 2: out here. It was tough. It was tough. One guy
Speaker 2: wrote to our division magazine. He said, I went to Hell.
Speaker 2: I came back from Hell. I hope God remembers that,
Speaker 2: and when I die, I hope he takes me to heaven.
Speaker 2: It was desperate, desperate times. Its just no man should
Speaker 2: have to go through that, what we went through. It's
Speaker 2: so hard on our nerves, on our bodies, on our minds,
Speaker 2: watching own, our own friends die. Some of the wounded
Speaker 2: badly wounded, whose lives were badly affected by the wounds.
Speaker 2: I was lucky, no question about it.
Speaker 1: Do you still feel the frostbite effects?
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I've born and raised up on Lake Superior, and that
Speaker 2: twenty thirty forty one zero stuff up there. I got immune.
Speaker 2: I think there was an immune treatment for me, because
Speaker 2: I I came down off the top of a hill
Speaker 2: lash for one battle into a barn. And here's two
Speaker 2: or three of our guys from my platon are sitting
Speaker 2: there with their shoes off and with a yellow tag
Speaker 2: on their toes, and they got a big shitting grin
Speaker 2: interface they're going to be evacuated to get the frostbite.
Speaker 2: And they're halfy as kids with a new toy. And
Speaker 2: I said, I couldn't get I couldn't get frostbite. To
Speaker 2: save my life, I would, honestly, I think I would
Speaker 2: have welcomed it.
Speaker 1: Jack Moran is a US Army veteran of World War Two,
Speaker 1: serving in the eighty seventh Infantry Division in the European
Speaker 1: Theater of World War Two. He fought in the Sar
Speaker 1: Valley and the Battle of the Bulge, and was also
Speaker 1: involved in breaching the Sigfried Line. And crossing the Rhine.
Speaker 1: I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this
Speaker 1: is Greg Corumbus and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
Speaker 1: a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
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