MEMORIES OF WWII

By

Ed Kittner

courtesy of KD0SGM

Have you ever wondered how the 18% of GI’s in Europe during World War II handled the ordinary things that you take for granted? Things such as sleeping, eating, bathing, brushing your teeth, changing your clothes, and bathroom necessities.

During World War II in Europe only 18% of the troops were under sustained enemy fire and a total of 21% were in hazardous areas. Having been a 18 percenter during the European campaign, I can tell you it isn’t like the Rambo movies. It is hours and days of mind-numbing waiting, much heavy work, miserable conditions and continual fear. You become emotionally detached, desensitized to your conditions, and fatalistically accept the inevitable death.

My experiences under fire started in late November of 1944 and lasted until May of 1945. I was with the 10th Armored Infantry Battalion and the 55th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 4th Armored Division and the 11th Armored Division. Both divisions were part of the Third Army under the command of General George Patton. I was a light machine gunner. This is not a very desirable job, but I was very lucky and was always in the right place at the right time.

My first thought while stationed in England was a curiosity of what actual combat would be like. In September of 1944 we all thought that the war was nearly over. Little did we know.

When you first come under enemy fire, the fear of dying hits you like a fast railroad train. As time progresses this fear changes to deep depression and resignation. You know that you are going to get wounded. It is just a matter of how bad and when. When the fear of dying leaves you, then a new fear usually takes over. The fear of a serious, crippling, painful injury becomes your concern. We had several men who would put their arms out of their foxhole to try to get “a million dollar wound”. This was a wound that would get you out of combat but not so serious as to be crippling.

We had some men reach their breaking point and shoot themselves just severely enough to have “a million dollar wound”. Some soldiers would take off their shoes and put their bare feet up against the side of the tank to quickly freeze them. We didn’t have ill feelings against these people because most of us had the same thoughts. Eventually you become emotionally detached and resigned to your fate. All of us were worn down by the sheer stress of continually waiting for what you know is coming- the pains of severe injury or death.

Whenever additional soldiers were sent as replacements, we wouldn’t try to get very close to them because we knew they probably wouldn’t be around long. Most new men had nicknames and that was the extent of our intimate knowledge of them. Generally if you lasted past the first battle, you would survive for quite a while.

I believe that I owe my life to a scoutmaster whom I knew as a boy. This scoutmaster had us scouts spend considerable time camping under all sorts of conditions- even in the winter. Then when the Belgium winter hit I was better prepared for the cold than many of the soldiers in our outfit. This scoutmaster also had us play a game called “Capture the Flag” whenever he couldn’t think of anything for us to do. This game prepared me for night patrols similar to going behind enemy lines only it was much safer. My hunting experience as a boy also helped me survive. Some conditions we encountered were difficult.

Take sleep for instance. Most of our sleeping occurred while sitting up in a foxhole. Sometimes we had a blanket but much of the time we didn’t. My assistant gunner and I would dig a foxhole through the frozen earth and we would huddle together under a blanket if we were lucky to have one. If we were really lucky, we might have what we called a mummy sack. It was a sleeping bag. We would take turns sitting on the other’s feet to keep them warm, but not long enough to let your feet get numb. The winter was bitter cold- the coldest in Belgium’s history up to that date.

At night we would take one pair of socks off our feet and put them on our back next to our skin. The pair of socks on our back was moved to our stomach, and the pair of stockings from our stomach was put on our feet. This ritual was done to dry out the stockings and prevent both frostbite and later in the spring, trench foot.

Early in the winter several of us discarded our combat boots which were nine-inch leather boots. We put on several pairs of stockings, cut strips of our woolen blankets and wrapped them around our feet, and then put on our overshoes. This caused difficulty in walking but did prevent our feet from freezing. We did have problems when we had a long march and our feet would sweat. Then when we stopped for the night, our feet would get quite cold. Often the woolen overcoat we wore would be very stiff with ice in the morning because it would have gotten wet the day before and then froze at night.

Whenever we were lucky to get near our halftracks, we could usually get dry stockings and more blankets that the driver had scrounged up for us. We really looked forward to getting the blankets and stockings.

There is a misnomer in the label “Armored Infantry.” The only difference between us and the regular infantry was that we traveled in an assigned halftrack rather than any available truck. A halftrack is a vehicle that has wheels on the front and tracks on the back and can go over much rougher terrain than a truck. The only armor on them is a thin plate that will deflect some small arms fire. Usually when we got near to the front lines we would get out of the halftracks and either walk or get on the back of a Sherman tank.

Whenever we drew any kind of enemy fire, we would have to get out in front of the tanks to protect them from infantry men with panzerfauces. These are small throwaway tank-killing rockets. They were like our Bazookas but were disposable. Tanks are extremely vulnerable in towns or woods because their visibility is limited, and a single man with a Bazooka can disable a tank. In one small Belgium town a GI dropped a five-gallon GI gas can on the top of a Panther German tank. He dropped the gas can from the upstairs window of a house. Another GI shot the can and set fire to the tank. That is the reason for putting men out in front of the tanks. We were not very fond of walking near a tank for two reasons. First, they drew artillery fire and second, they were heavy enough to set off land mines near us.

There isn’t a good time of the year for war. Winter is cold, spring is wet, and in summer and fall the trees have lots of foliage on them and seeing the enemy is difficult. Frostbite and frozen feet were serious problems in our outfit. Just think of yourself as homeless and out in a strange country in the winter and not able to make a fire. That is the kind of weather in which the Battle of the Bulge was fought during the winter of 1944.

Another difficulty was that usually one-half of us were supposed to be awake and watching. It was hour after hour of endless watching and nothing happening.

European warfare wasn’t non-stop fighting like the movies. It was endless waiting and ducking artillery or mortar fire. The vast majority of casualties are not from small arms fire but from artillery, mortar, mines, booby traps and bombs. Shrapnel (shrapnel is the metal fragment of the casing of a grenade, artillery shell, mine, or other explosives) caused most of our wounds, not bullets.

The most heroic thing that I saw was a Medic (our first-aide man) treat a soldier who had stepped on a shoe mine. These mines had been designed to blow a foot off. We were walking single file in the snow to keep the odds down of everyone hitting a mine. This medic made a fresh path in the snow where no one had walked, knowing that he would probably hit a mine. Fortunately, he didn’t. Then there were offset-castrating mines. We had three men injured by these mines that set off a small charge between your legs when you stepped on them.

Once we were pinned down in a snow storm somewhere in Belgium by a German tank. The tank had run low on fuel and was being used as a stationary fortification. We couldn’t move because when we shook the snow off our overcoats we then became a visible target for their turret machine guns. I started shaking from both cold and fright and couldn’t control the shaking. My body was shaking so badly that I was afraid that the snow would shake off me and I would become a target. However the snow didn’t fall off me and we lay there till darkness came, then crawled back up the hill.

As for bathing and showers, you don’t get any on the front lines. We went seventy- two days without a shower. It was humorous in that we all walked in the temporary shower tent looking like huge guards on a football team. Then after taking off all of the layers of clothing we were wearing, we then were very thin. You could count all the bones in our bodies. We wore several layers of clothing to keep warm. It wasn’t uncommon to be wearing three pairs of long underwear and three pairs of pants to keep warm.

As far as brushing your teeth, you didn’t. We ate K-rations mostly. These meals were in a box the size of a crackerjack box and they contained one meal. As I remember the K-rations included a small can of food about the size of a small tuna can. It had either scrambled powdered eggs, a meat loaf type of food or a cheese meal. The rations also had a small packet of toilet paper, a packet of cigarettes, a high-energy tasteless candy bar, and a powdered drink. The powdered drink was either lemonade, coffee, or bouillon soup. We also had C-rations that were two small cans comprising a complete meal similar to the K-rations. After we went into Germany we would confiscate blueberries from the farm houses that we came to. This we considered a delicacy.

We weren’t very sanitary in how we ate or how we existed. Our helmets were two units, one a plastic liner for normal use, and a steel outside unit for combat. Near the Siegfried fortifications in Germany I had to use the steel liner as a toilet because if I got out of the hole, I was dead. I rinsed out the liner with water from a canteen then put the two helmets together and put them back on my head. Then several days later at a resupply area I used the steel liner to cook a mixture of cheese and meat to eat. This may sound gross, but when your life is on the line, you adapt. Looking back I realize that our sense of humor was also very gross and vulgar, but it was appropriate for the conditions.

The first time we drew small arms fire we all started shooting at everything in panic. Later that night I realized that the only ammunition that I had left was half a clip of carbine ammunition. After that I carried ammunition in all pockets and was very careful in how much I fired the machine gun or carbine that I carried. On my birthday in March we ran into a fanatic group of very young German soldiers who decided to fight. We were caught out in the open next to a small river that we had to wade across to get to a safe place. I remember worrying because with all the equipment and ammunition that I was carrying there was the thought that if I fell, I would drown.

In the movies you always see a machine gunner firing long bursts of ammunition, but it just isn’t so. First, if you fire a long burst it gives the enemy time to locate your position and eliminate you. When all the ammunition that you have is being carried by the riflemen in your squad, you have a very limited supply.

Just surviving was work mainly because of the weight that we were carrying. I carried the light machine gun that weighed close to 38 pounds, a full canteen of water, a 30-caliber carbine, lots of carbine ammunition, several hand grenades, our rations and several layers of clothing. Most of the time I would have part of a belt of shells in the machine gun. The ammunition for the machine gun came in a cloth belt that had 250 rounds of 30 caliber ammunition in it. The shells were armor-piercing, tracer, and solid jacket types. Tracers were to show you where your bullets were going. The fallacy of that was that it also showed the enemy where you were. It didn’t take long to take the tracers out of a belt and replace them.

After we crossed the Rhine River we would only hit pockets of severe resistance so we spent much of our time in our half tracks or on the back of a tank, and didn’t dig quite as many foxholes. When the rains came, digging a foxhole and sitting in it wasn’t fun.

An armored division was divided into three different combat commands. Two commands normally did the fighting and one command was in reserve and did the mopping up. These combat commands rotated duties and I hated being in combat command reserve (ccr) after we crossed the Rhine because we would have to clean up the pockets of young German fanatics. Usually these pockets of resistance were in towns or woods and had mostly very young soldiers fighting in them.

A most difficult time of my army career came at the end of the war at a concentration camp. I am the son of a Polish immigrant and am proud of my father’s accomplishments. I didn’t mind letting anyone know that I was an American first and Polish second. The only problem was that I didn’t learn the Polish language. The officers in our outfit didn’t know that I couldn’t speak Polish, they just knew that I was Polish. When the 11th Armored Division liberated Mauthausen Concentration Camp, I had been recruited to help with the Polish prisoners.

There is a misconception that all the prisoners in concentration camps were Jewish people. There were extermination camps in Poland and Czechoslovakia where the Jewish people were sent for extermination. Then there were the camps like Mauthausen where political prisoners and people of influence in the conquered countries were sent to do work, such as dig an underground petroleum refinery. These people usually lived longer but eventually they died of starvation.

Much of the memory of my army career overseas was blocked out of my mind until about 12 years after the war. This was no doubt due to the shock of seeing so many bodies. It was also many years before I realized that I was selected to help because there were many Polish people at this camp. Somebody thought that I could speak Polish.

My father told me that his mother, my grandmother, had died in some German camp, probably because she had several sons in the Polish army and one son in America. I have always wondered if she were a body at this concentration camp.