Download File - Melrose Veteran Services

Irving Smolens
Melrose, MA
MEMORIES OF MY SERVICE IN THE US ARMY
I have been a resident of Melrose since 1963. I was born in Boston on November 3, 1924. I was drafted and
reported for active duty on April 26, 1943 and sent to Fort Devens in preparation for being transferred to Fort
Bragg, North Carolina for my basic training as an artilleryman.
Having successfully completed basic training I was assigned to an armored artillery unit in Fort Jackson, South
Carolina. The Fourth Infantry Division was stationed in Fort Jackson at the time and they were preparing to ship
overseas for further amphibious training to assault German occupied France. The Fourth Division needed a few
additional men to round out their Table of Organization and because I was the newest member of the unit to
which I had been assigned and because I was a terrible garrison soldier, I was one of the soldiers who was
transferred to B Battery of the 29th Field Artillery Battalion of the Fourth Infantry (Ivy) Division.
Shortly after joining my new unit the division was transferred to Camp Kilmer, NJ to prepare for being sent to
England. We sailed from Brooklyn, NY at the end of December on the Franconia, a converted passenger liner
and landed in pitch darkness in Liverpool, England in early January 1944.
That night, under extreme blackout conditions, we boarded trains to take us to Axminster in Devonshire close to
the English Channel coast. We then began a serious training regimen in terrible weather conditions in places
such as the desolate moors and the English Channel. A terribly tragic training exercise took place at Slapton
Sands. The beach there closely resembled the beach on which we were to land on D-day. As the assault troops
we landed early in the morning and were back in our billets rather early in the day. Not so our support units
such as graves registration and supply. Those units were still on board LSTs (landing ship Tanks) after nightfall.
The British Admiralty was supposed to provide security for our convoy. They did not. The loaded ships were
patrolled by a single British corvette and German E-boats (we call them PT boats) docked in Cherbourg, France
attacked the loaded LSTs and sunk two of them and severely damaged a third. The result was that
approximately 700 soldiers, sailors and coast guardsmen were killed. That exercise was code named Operation
Tiger and a member of my division leads a memorial service for those casualties in New Bedford, MA every
year on the anniversary of that tragic event.
General Eisenhower feared that some of the officers who were killed had the plans for the invasion and
commanded that the bodies of all personnel had to be recovered and they were. That was very fortunate because
eleven of the officers who had been killed had the D-day invasion plans. Eisenhower also decreed that anyone
who talked about Operation Tiger and what had transpired would be court martialed and the families of those
killed were never notified of the nature of their loss until half a century later.
Our battalion commander Lt. Col. “Tommy” Thomason had suggested to the high command that our gun
batteries be given self-propelled 105 mm Howitzers instead of conventional trail drawn artillery because they
would be more maneuverable on sandy beaches. The guns we received were designated M-7s and were
mounted on a Sherman tank chassis but had no turret. Having the M-7s enabled us to line them up on board the
deck of an LCT (Landing Craft Tank) two in front and two in back so we could provide close support fire for
our attacking infantry units. The two back guns were actually firing high trajectory over the men manning the
two front guns. Conventional 105 Howitzers could not do that because their steel trails could not be dug into the
steel deck of the landing craft to cushion the recoil.
After the preliminary part of the exercise many of us were ordered down the front ramp of the landing craft to
wade waist deep into the icy cold English Channel on to the beach. We did that on at least two occasions.
We continued our training from our base in Axminster until about a week before the scheduled invasion when
we were transferred to secured camps practically on the coast. I believe it was on June 4, 1944 when we
boarded the landing craft which were to take us across the Channel. The main component of my B battery and
their four M-7s plus a supply truck and probably a Jeep for the captain commanding the battery were loaded on
to an LCT. The gun crews were stripped down to 6 men so the total number of men on board the ship was fifty
nine As a reserve I crossed the Channel on a much larger LST with reserves from the 101st Airborne Division.
Because of terrible weather the D-day landing that had been scheduled for
June 5 had to be postponed for a day. We crossed the Channel under cover of darkness as the planes carrying
the paratroopers crossed overhead. H-hour was 6:30 AM and as our assault troops headed toward Utah Beach
the LCT carrying my B Battery hit a mine in the water and sunk almost immediately killing thirty-seven of the
men on board 23 of whose bodies were never recovered and their names are enshrined on the granite wall of the
Garden of the Missing, a large rotunda, in the American cemetery in Normandy.
Over the years I have pondered that had one of the members of my gun crew gotten sick so that he could not
make the landing I very likely would have been on board the sunken LCT and would not have survived to write
this account.
I and my fellow B Battery reserve members did not land until somewhat late in the afternoon. We had to
clamber down rope ladders into a smaller landing craft. Had we fallen off the ladder into the surf we would
have been crushed between our LST and the smaller landing craft. The smaller landing craft designated LCVP
(Landing Craft Vehicle and Personnel) had a small truck on board. We piled our bedding and barracks bags
filled with personal items which we did not want to carry into combat into the truck. The coxswain of the
landing craft lowered the front ramp too far from shore and as a result the truck we were on flooded. It was
getting dark and the tide seemed to be rolling in and we were somewhat fearful that we would soon be
inundated but a DUKW, affectionately dubbed a Duck, driver spotted our predicament and pulled alongside and
took us to the beach. My blankets and everything else were still on board the truck that we had abandoned in the
surf. The only things I carried with me were my canteen and my carbine and some extra ammunition clips.
Fortunately I was able to pick up a couple of wet blankets that had been abandoned on the beach. I also picked
up a piece of insulated canvas. It was probably part of the covering for supplies dropped by air for the
paratroopers.
Battalion headquarters had sent a truck to pick us up and bring us to our gun position. When I got there I
received the news of the tragedy that had befallen my B Battery buddies with whom I had trained and eaten
with and shared overnight passes with and slept with were all gone. I was dismayed and it took me quite some
time to get over their loss. Actually I have never gotten over their loss. I wear an Ivy Leaf pin on my shirt collar
and when people ask me what it represents I tell them it is the 4th Infantry Division insignia and it is my way of
keepimg alive the memory of my 37 battery mates who made the ultimate sacrifice on D-day.
People often ask me if I was scared at the prospect of landing on Hitler’s well defended west wall. My reply is
usually two fold. I had pondered the fact that I might not survive the landing but I told myself that many of my
compatriots would probably die but I was determined that I would not be among them. I was only 19 years old
at the time so I was too young to be scared and because of the rough sea I was so seasick and felt so bilious I
just wanted to get off the boat and onto dry land no matter what the dangers that awaited me.
For about a month after the landing A and C Batteries operated with six guns each instead of the conventional
four guns but I was not assigned to one of the gun crews. I was given the duty of providing security for a
battalion agent whose job was to deliver messages between command posts. Wire lines had not yet been laid so
there was no telephone communication and it was too dangerous to reveal positions by radio intercepts.
On D-day plus one or two we were delivering a message after dark. The driver was using a Weasel, a tracked
Jeep, We were driving with headlights almost completely concealed except for about a pin prick of light. We
were riding on a narrow road parallel and very close to the beach and a German bomber was dropping flares in
the area. I told the driver to keep his eyes on the road and if one of the flares lit us up I would warn him and we
would abandon the vehicle to duck into a ditch on the side of the road. Evidently he hadn’t heeded what I had
told him and crashed head on into a 79th Infantry Division Jeep that had just landed. Our weasel was totaled and
I was pretty banged up but we had not driven very far from my fox hole so I decided to walk back and somehow
in pitch black darkness I found my fox hole in the hedgerow where I had dug it.
The previous day we were delivering a message when we came across our first German prisoner. The soldier
guarding him wanted us to mount him on the hood of our vehicle and drive him down to a POW compound on
the beach. We told him that our first duty was to deliver our message so we could not do what he asked.
Subsequently my driver got lost and we wound up with an infantry platoon. The sergeant in command warned
us that we were great sniper targets so we quickly turned our vehicle around and got out of there.
For a few days I had nothing to do but lie in my foxhole at night listening to incoming and outgoing mortar
shells. During the day I sometimes got out of my hole as p 47 planes were dropping bombs on the other side of
the hedgerow in which I had dug my foxhole. Shrapnel from those bombs would come flying through the leaves
on the trees planted on top of the hedgerow. Their force was pretty well spent so that even though a number of
pieces of shrapnel landed close to me I was fortunate and not wounded. I also witnessed bulldozer drivers
clearing a runway for our fighter planes. The noise made by the bulldozers was so loud that the drivers could
not possibly hear incoming mortar shells. I really feared for the safety of the drivers. None were hurt or killed
during the few days I remained in the area and I often wondered if they were fortunate enough to escape injury
or death.
Because our vehicle had been wrecked I was designated to join a group of artillerymen who would become
members of B Battery when it was reconstituted. Air to ground communication had not been well established
and our advance up the peninsula toward the port of Cherbourg was more rapid than the Air Corps realized so
pilots seeing movement in an area that they thought was enemy held territory proceeded to strafe us. We
dismounted our vehicles and ducked under some trees. The lieutenant told us to put out bright orange
identification panels which we did. The pilot of the P-38 fighter plane evidently did not recognize the panels
and continued to strafe our area. The lieutenant, who was later killed in the Hurtgen Forest in Germany along
with Ray Sanders, one of my buddies, thinking that the P-38 might be one that had been captured by the
Germans and was being piloted by a German ordered the panels pulled in. Nobody moved from under the trees.
After repeating his order several times I finally decided to retrieve the panels. After that, the lieutenant treated
me with more respect and would counsel me about situations which might cause me to get into trouble for doing
things that I should not do. When I got the chance I ducked into a hole in a nearby gully that afforded me over
head protection and the P-38 flew over me and riddled the wall on the opposite side of the gully with 50 caliber
machine gun bullets.
After Cherbourg was liberated on June 25 and completely cleared of Germans on the 27th B Battery was
reformed and I once again became a member of the number two gun crew. Because many of the members were
replacements I felt that I was the most qualified to become the number one cannoneer. My job was to set the
elevation, open the breech block, close the breech block after the shell is loaded and pull the lanyard to send the
shell on its way. Because we were the number two gun and B Battery was situated between the other two
batteries my gun adjusted the fire for the entire battalion. Once the forward observer or other officer who had
identified a target and requested artillery support was satisfied that we were zeroed in on our target an order was
given to fire (usually 5 rounds) for effect and we would fire them off so rapidly that captured Germans often
asked to see our “automatic” artillery.
After we liberated Cherbourg our attack bogged down. The hedgerows in Normandy are decidedly not like
hedgerows in our country. They are mounds of earth on which trees have been planted and the roots of the trees
grow into the hedgerows making them resistant to tanks. The Germans dug into the hedgerows and it was very
difficult to get at them. The infantry forward movement was measured in yards. We had to break out of our
small beach- head. General Bradley decided that a massive air bombardment was needed to be followed by
attacking infantry and tanks. Three infantry divisions were to launch the ground attacks to be followed by two
armored divisions and a motorized infantry division. My Fourth Infantry Division was to spearhead the attack,
code named Operation Cobra. The Ninth Division was on one of our flanks and the Thirtieth Division was on
our other flank. The air attack began in the morning with P-47 fighter planes dropping smoke bombs to mark
the targets for the big four engine bombers to follow. The wind blew the smoke back over our own front lines
obscuring the road that was the demarcation line so that the bombers that followed began dropping their bombs
on our own troops. The Lt. Col. commanding the attacking battalion of our Eighth Regiment contacted General
Bradley and asked him to postpone the attack because his troops had been too decimated to mount an effective
attack. General Bradley told him that he had to jump off as scheduled because too much preparation had gone
into planning and executing the attack.
Following the air attack by three thousand planes I was to fire an artillery barrage in support of the attacking
troops. I watched in trepidation as the bombs began falling. Our troops jumped off as scheduled supported by
our artillery and despite the losses suffered in the bombardment they gained about 8/10 of a mile that first day.
An advance of that magnitude had never been achieved in the hedgerows where we measured our progress in
yards. The troops of our 22nd Regiment mounted the backs of the tanks of the Second Armored Division and
proceeded to exploit the breakout. The 30th Division suffered even greater casualties from the bombardment. Lt.
General McNair who was with that division as an observer was killed by our own bombs. He was the highest
ranking American officer ever killed in a combat zone. Over the next few days we kept moving forward and
reached all our objectives and then the rout of the German Seventh Army was on. With the British and
Canadians attacking from the North we surrounded the Germans but because Bradley was fearful of firing on
them a gap was left through which much of the German troops were able to escape. About 50,000 German
troops were forced to surrender however.
On August 7 General Patton’s Third Army was committed to combat and he sent a pincer movement into
Brittany and another attacking force down the Loire Valley. Hitler ordered Panzer Divisions that had been held
back around Calais because Hitler believed that was where our main assault would come to mount a massive
counterattack toward Mortain in an effort to cut off the Third Army from our First Army. Our Thirtieth
Division, despite the heavy losses they had suffered, held off the German attack long enough to enable my
artillery which had been detached from my Fourth Division to come to the aid of the Thirtieth Division troops. I
fired fire mission after fire mission to blunt the German attack. Our artillery position was on high ground
overlooking the battlefield. British rocket firing Typhoon fighter planes were being used to help knock out the
attacking German tanks. The German attack failed and we began chasing the Germans across France. In
retrospect I considered Operation Cobra to be the second most important battle of the war in Western Europe
because it resulted in the liberation of Paris and the rest of France and Belgium and Luxembourg. After the
success of our breakout the Germans could never win the war.
My Division was then ordered to back up the Second French Armored Division which had been ordered to
liberate Paris. They were held up by some German opposition and the French mademoiselles. Bradley got
exasperated and told their commanding general that if they did not continue their advance immediately he was
going to order my Fourth Division to mount its own attack to liberate the city. The French did attack but their
progress was somewhat slower than our high command thought it should be and we were ordered to take Paris.
Advance elements of our Twelfth Regiment actually entered the heart of the city while the French were crossing
the Seine River north of the city. S. L. A. Marshal, a US Army historian who was with a small task force,
accompanied by Ernest Hemingway as a war correspondent, that entered Paris with the first American troops
later wrote that the Fourth Division troops were the first to enter Paris on August 25, 1944. He also wrote that
history doesn’t tell you that but “History is often wrong”. So I was in Paris on liberation day. Andy Rooney who
was with the Fourth Division described the jubilation that went on in the city better than I ever could. There
were some German troops holding out in a building. A French civilian approached me and asked me to give him
my carbine and he would get the Germans to surrender. Of course, that was unthinkable and unnecessary
because the Germans soon surrendered.
Our stay in Paris was short lived. Our job was to continue chasing Germans which we did. We were denied the
honor of the parade on the Champs Elysee because we were too dirty. That honor was given to the Twenty
Eighth Division while we had advanced to liberate Rheims in the heart of the Champaign country. After a
raucous welcome we crossed the Belgian border and liberated Bastogne and St. Vith in early September. Those
towns later became famous in the Battle of the Bulge. We crossed into Germany on September 11, 1944 the
first American Division to do that. We had to stop our advance because we had outrun our source of supply. We
set up our gun position in the vaunted German Siegfried Line and had to wait until the supply situation was
stabilized. We fired an occasional mission but basically we were in a situation where we were in more or less a
respite from combat.
Shortly after setting up our gun positions in the area where we had first entered Germany we were moved north
to a new area. Our previous position was taken over by the Second Infantry Division. That area was then taken
over by the 106th Infantry Division, the newest division in the army, and it had never been in a combat zone.
That is where the great German counterattack broke through our lines in what became known as the Battle of
the Bulge. After the war my last Battery Commander and friend, John Ausland, visited that area and observed
that the 106th had set up their artillery positions where we had set up ours. John felt that had been a mistake.
When we entered Germany we were in an attack mode so consequently it was appropriate for us to be close to
the front line. The 106th was in a defensive position and should have positioned their guns much farther back.
Had they done that the artillery would not have been overrun almost immediately and might have been able to
blunt the German attack. 105mm Howitzers are very effective against tanks. Of course that is hindsight and
speculative but it is well worth pondering.
We were then moved into the Hurtgen Forest where two of our fine infantry divisions had already suffered
terrible setbacks. In the valid opinions of official Army historians and General James Gavin, commander of the
82nd Airborne Division the Hurtgen Forest battle never should have been fought. General Joe Collins, our 7th
Corps commander remembered an incident in WW I where one of his flanks was unprotected and as a result a
large unit of American troops were surrounded and suffered heavy casualties. The main thrust into Germany
was to be made by the First Infantry Division whose objective was to take Aachen. We were south of the First
and consequently on their right flank. By the time we had been committed to the battle the 9th and 28th divisions
had already suffered terrible losses as did our 8th and 12th Regiments. Our 22nd Regiment finally broke through
the forest after suffering heavy casualties. Three members of my division were awarded Medals of Honor (one
posthumously) for actions in that battle. My friend Jim Flannigan was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross
for an action in the Hurtgen Forest. He was recommended for the award by Captain John Ausland who was
awarded a Silver Star. A captured German general told interrogators that the fighting in Hurtgen was worse
than anything he had witnessed on the Russian Front.
My Fourth Division was then relieved and sent to a quiet sector in Luxembourg. It was not quiet for long. On
December 16, Hitler launched his major counterattack and it was up to us to hold the southern end of the Bulge
and prevent the Germans from taking Luxembourg City. Our field kitchen was brought up and we were being
served a Christmas dinner of turkey and all the fixings. After loading my mess kit I looked for a fallen log to sit
on to eat my magnificent meal. No sooner had I settled down when we received a fire mission. I dropped my
mess kit and ran to our gun. By this time our M-7s had been replaced by conventional trail drawn Howitzers.
We had twice burned out the rifling in our guns. The first time the gun tubes were replaced. The second time
they could not be replaced so we were given the conventional artillery pieces.
The gunner corporal was off someplace and I was the only member of the gun crew proficient enough to use the
gun sight. I took over as gunner. The executive pit sent the chief of our gun section the deflection reading. After
setting the reading on the gun sight I started to rotate the gun to line up on the aiming stakes and realized that
we would have to dig up the trails of the gun and rotate it almost 180 degrees in order to line up the gun sight on
the aiming stakes. Before doing that I wanted to make sure I had heard the deflection correctly. I shouted
“Check deflection number 2 gun.” The deflection I had received was repeated so the crew members dug up the
trails and moved the gun around so that I could line it up in the correct location. At the time we were not aware
of the size and force of the German attack but when we received the command “Battery 10 rounds, fire for
effect” we realized something drastic was happening.
Our 12th regiment had thus far blunted the German attack but we also realized that our rifle companies were
down to 40% effectives and there was a danger that the Germans would break through our infantry’s main line
of resistance. I remember pulling guard duty in below zero bitter cold the night after the original German thrust
and was acutely aware of the danger we faced and was determined that I would not surrender if the Germans
were successful in breeching our lines. I would fire multiple rounds from my carbine to alert my sleeping
battery members so that they could resist. Fortunately the German attack was contained enabling General
Patton’s Fourth Armored Division to wheel through our lines and relieve the 101st Airborne Division
surrounded in Bastogne.
After the German counterattack was hurled back we became part of a task force to clear German forces from the
west bank of the Rhine River preparatory to mounting an attack across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany.
As part of that task force we set up our gun positions one field over from the positions we were in when we first
fought our way into Germany in September 1944. Our objective at this time was to clear the German city of
Prum which the infantry did with help from our artillery.
In Luxembourg we were cut off from our First Army so we were made part of General Patton’s Third Army.
Our artillery was sent to bolster the attack of the 7th Army through the Vosges Mountains in south central
France. After that operation was successful we were joined by the rest of the division and became part of the 7th
Army. We crossed the Rhine River in March and proceeded to chase the Germans across Bavaria occupying
such German cities as Bamberg and Nuremberg. When the Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945 we were south
of Munich about 6 miles from the Austrian border. While pursuing the remnants of the German forces across
Bavaria we saw our first German jet fighter plane. Our anti-aircraft unit hit the plane and we saw it trailing
smoke as it headed further south across the Danube River where I presumed that it crashed. A few days later we
pulled into what was to be our last gun position. A German bomber was dropping bombs in our area. It was the
first time during the war that I was truly afraid. It was the night of May 7, 1945 and the Germans had already
agreed to surrender even though the actual surrender documents had not yet been signed. I had read “All Quiet
on the Western Front” and my fear stemmed from the possibility that I might be the last US soldier killed before
the surrender. Our anti-aircraft shot down the bomber and it crashed in the woods behind our gun position. In
the morning we went into the woods to inspect the wreckage and found three young German airmen dead. What
a waste. Their fanaticism had cost them their lives.
We served as occupation forces for about a month before deploying to Calais, France preparatory to returning to
the US in early July 1945. Because we were an assault division we had been designated to lead the amphibious
attack on Honshu, the main Japanese island, in late spring 1946.
After my 30 day R&R furlough I was to report to Fort Devens to be in quarantine for three days prior to being
sent to Camp Butner, North Carolina to begin retraining for the invasion of Japan. As I was preparing to go to
North Station to take a train to Ayer, MA where Fort Devens is located and saying goodbye to my mother a
terse voice came over the radio saying “The US government has announced that it has just dropped an atomic
bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan.” The announcer sounded puzzled because he probably did not realize
the significance of what he had just said. But I knew because when I was around 12 years old my father had
read me an article about the potential explosive power of the atom. At that time the physicists were not sure that
they could control a chain reaction. Upon absorbing the announcement I turned to my mother and said to her,
“If that’s what I think it is you won’t have to worry about me any more.”
I reported to Fort Devens as ordered and after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki we started
hearing rumors that the Japanese were preparing to surrender. My battery mate who was from Brookline said to
me, “What are we hanging around here for? The war is going to end. Let’s go into town and have some fun.”
We did not have any passes so we walked over to another section of the fort and got on a bus with soldiers from
the 10th Mountain Division who were returning from Italy. Nobody questioned us; no MPs stopped us and asked
to see our passes. We were in fact AWOL. The bus took us to Harvard Square where we met my friend’s
girlfriend and the girlfriend had a girlfriend who had a car. She drove us into Park Square where we had no
trouble parking. Few people had cars and gas rations. We went into a fine restaurant and were eating a great
steak dinner when Harry Truman got on the radio and announced that the Imperial government of Japan had
agreed to surrender. So I was in Boston on VJ day. I can’t really begin to describe the hilarity and the
celebration of that night. After catching a few hours of sleep at my friend’s girlfriend’s house we took a train
back to Devens from North Station. I was then sent to Camp Butner and after being there for about two months
I was honorably discharged on October 21, 1945, thirteen days before my 21st birthday.