MEMORIES WINTER 44-45 PART3/3

Strange things do happen in a war. Once in the middle of combat a soldier came up to me and requested a prophylactic kit. This was an “Argyrol” (organic silver) solution in a disposable syringe that was to be self administered by injection into the penis after intercourse to prevent VD.

Another time we stopped at a farm house that was still intact although the war had just passed by twice. The farmer’s nubile teen age daughter wanted to show me the space where she had hidden for several days from the Germans. I thought it advisable to decline her offer.

I had gone overseas with two, not my best, briar pipes to smoke. If captured I was not going to let those Nazis have any thing of real value. I had broken both earlier in the Bulge and did not smoke or desire cigarettes. Our men were used to seeing me with a pipe in my mouth. In one village that we had liberated, my men brought the village mayor to me to give me his well smoked briar pipe. The next day he reappeared and wanted it back since it was his favorite. Instead he offered me a highly colored and smoked ‘clay” pipe. Of course I accepted the exchange and that pipe is still in my possession.

Another night we bivouacked, after dark, inside a house in a small village. A shell landed into the building directly behind the one we occupied, causing several severe casualties. Cat life 3 expended. The next morning we discovered that we were on the front side of a hill, facing the Germans.

We had one buck Pvt., listed on the T/O as a litter bearer, who was scared to death and was of no value. We finally made him the section “hot chocolate maker”. We needed warm fluids for the wounded or the aid men when they came in out of the cold. If we halted, even for five minutes when we were moving in column, he dug a personal foxhole. Since he could dig so fast even though there was knee high snow on top frozen solid ground, and because most of those men had come from around Pittsburgh or West Virginia, I thought he was a coal miner.

Prior to being relieved, we were occupying a house along a main road for our aid station and quarters. This two-story house with the basement was about 50 feet back from the highway. A column of 155 mm heavy artillery canon was passing by. I had never seen anything so massive and was out in the front by the road talking to the one of their officers.

Suddenly we heard a strange new high pitched noise. I said “Those are rockets aren't they?" "Yes" he replied. I decided it would be prudent to go back into the house if the guns were the target for the “screaming meenies”. As I entered the front door there was a whirlwind down the steps from the second floor passing me without pausing and into the basement. Our "aid man" had been sleeping upstairs.

The division was sent to an area in Luxembourg overlooking the Our River, and the Sigfried Line. The194th was in reserve in a beautiful intact small hilltop town. Some Italian barbers had set up shop In a nearby school. I decided to have a real shave. The barber stropped his razor, lathered my face and started to shave. He stopped almost immediately and again sharpened the blade first with a stone then the strop. This happened several times. When he was through he shook his wrist up and down, saying that I had the toughest beard he had ever shaved.

While there, I bought some small vases made of some light metal. I packed them in a box which I stuffed with pieces of the Stars and Stripes along with other loose papers before sending it to Helen. Unfortunately, inadvertently, among the papers were some hot love letters to one of the men named Harold. Harold was married but had developed a steady relationship in Tenn.
It was just after Patricia was born that Helen received the box. Apparently she thought I was the only “Harold” in the world and wrote me a furious angry letter. I tried to explain, but by slow V-mail that was difficult. I had no sympathy for “Harold, a truly amoral lecher, when in Germany he reported for sick call with a sore on his penis. It was an obvious chancre, the first stage of syphilis. He stated that a girl had bitten him there.

I along with several other officers from battalion were allowed to the have a few days R&R. A personnel carrier took the ten of us to Maastrich in Holland on the Maas River. It was a beautiful and untouched city but pulled in the sidewalks at 8 PM.

Bored, we decided to go on to Liege. However, it was in another Army's area and we had no orders or business to be there. We had to find our own dining and sleeping accommodations. We found a small private hotel in the center of the city that allowed us to stay for the nights but we had to be out of our rooms by 8:00 am because in the daytime it was used by local business men and their girls. Since we required little sleep, we were really not inconvenienced for the two days spent there, and enjoyed the night life. Incidentally this was the first time any of us had seen much less knew the use of a bidet.

About Feb. 11 the division was relocated for replacements and replenishing to the vicinity of Chalons-sur-Marne. The regiment troops moved by 40 or 8 (Forty men or 8 horses) box cars from Luxembourg to Soissons-le-Petite in France where we encamped in open muddy fields for about 4 weeks, while the allies approached the Rhine. We were now getting real food for our kitchens. Unfortunately, all the good cuts of meat were being siphoned off by outfits in the rear along the supply chain. We received more pork than beef and absolutely no steaks. Since this was champagne country one of our two bottle “monthly” liquor ration was the bubbly. I still am not fond of it.