November 11: Veterans Day

My Dad is a World War II veteran. I don't think a day went by at our house that he didn't tell us a story about being in the war. Most of my dad's stories were so humorous and poignant, they brought tears to our eyes from laughing. Even though much of it must have been pure hell, he gathered up the good times and let them live on, as if every time he told a good story it would take the strength away from a bad memory. There were certain tales he told dozens of times, but none of us would dream of telling him we heard it before.....

A couple of years ago Dad wrote a sort of mini memoir for Colgate University, along with several other men who were in the war. I thought I might post an excerpt from it here: 

(Written in the winter of 2006, by Richard M. Hall)

Our graduation in the December snows of Hamilton led directly to time in the service for most of us. About a month after graduation I joined Paul Thompson, Jack Sinn, Charlie Feuerbach and Keith Lyman in accepting Uncle Sam's invitation to attend Fort Dix. We were soon shipped out. I was sent to Indiana for basic. I think I speak for all of us in saying that we were glad to leave Dix and Sergeant Lidak...that guy made drill sergeants seem like kindly old grandmothers.

After basic I went to Slocum near new York City and on August 20th shipped out for North Africa. I was on the former Italian luxury liner the Conti Grande but it had been refitted to something less than luxury. as I recall the canvas bunks were five deep down on F deck. We went for meals twice a day and were allowed out on an open deck twice a day for about twenty minutes each. We were in a large convoy and passed through Gibraltar on September 1, 1943 then into Oran on September 2. about three days later I was put in a replacement battery of the 36th division artillery. We were soon sent out 20 miles or so from Oran to a wild area along the Mediterranean coast that we had to clear of brush before we could put up tents that would be our home for about a month. a steep rocky bank led down to the sea and we swam there almost every day. Long hikes were also the order of the day. The weather was perfect - warm and dry during the day with cool nights. At the time I thought that I would have liked spending all the Septembers of my life along that Algerian Coast.

In late September we boarded amphibious assault boats and headed for Italy. Once aboard we were diverted to Bizerte because the outcome of the battle of Salerno, which started on September 9, 1943, was still in doubt. The 36th was the first American division to land on continental Europe and the Germans were doing their best to push them back into the water. It was a near thing. Counting the British troops that also landed, there were something over 12,000 casualties in nine days. Out artillery at times was firing direct fire at tanks and troops that had broken through. I always remember Dan C. Saying the the Germans were shooting 88's around like small arms fire. 

After Salerno the fighting moved north and when it reached a point above Naples our ship went into the harbor there. The bar there is beautiful with Sorrento, the islands of Capri, Ischia and other small islands and then Vesuvius in the near background. Vesuvius was moderately active at the time and gave the German bombers a good reference point to their bombing of the harbor and Naples in general.

The next day we got on trucks and went down to the Salerno area and joined the units that would be out "home" for the remainder of the war. I was put in the survey section of the Division Headquarters battery. Our job would be to give accurate survey information to all of our four artillery battalions. the head of the survey section, Joe S., greeted me with a handshake, a first for me in the army, and he probed to be a life long friend, as did most of the rest of the men in the section(usually eight in number).

The division was in rest and getting replacements into the ranks after the battle of Salerno, but we soon moved up to Pozzouli north of Naples and did a lot of practice survey work to develop speed that would pay off later on when we were in combat.

In the middle of November we moved up to the Mignano area and into combat. I didn't know what to make of the first shells coming in. in that particular case they were looping way over us to targets in our rear, but it was new to me and it takes a while to get used to the different sounds.

For the next six or seven weeks we were involved with all the fighting  between Mignano and Cassino Places like "Million Dollar Mountain" (the cost of the shells we used there), Purple Heart Valley (made prominent by Margaret Bourke-White's book and pictures of the same name), Venafro, Sammucro, Sam Pietro (John Huston's movie of that name was considered one of the best movies of WWII and shot right during combat there), then more small towns and finally Cassino itself. All that ground between Mignano and Cassino was gained at a high cost to our infantry. The fall rains had turned the land into a quagmire. Rain and incoming shells were a way of life yet the soil was so much of a slurry that many of the shells didn't detonate. Several years after the war I read that over 1400 children had been killed by those shells.

That is the first part of the memoir. I will post more shortly. Thanks for reading!