One Man’s Story
1945
Chief Warrant Officer Eugene Lincoln Chase was a medical administrative officer in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, and later served overseas during the Korea and Vietnam conflicts. Of his time in Europe, he wrote a brief memoir, his second after My Adventures as a Wanderer (1934). It follows.
Somewhere in Germany
V-E Day plus 5
O N E M A N’S S T O R Y
A synopsis of personal and general highlights of an infantry division's travels from training camp to V-E Day.
EUGENE L. CHASE
1st Lt. MAC
99th Inf. Div.
We had been sweating out our destination for months. The division had reached the point where it was fast becoming over-trained. Nerves were taut and everyone was fed up on the 'chicken' which goes hand in glove with garrison life. At last we knew to which theater of war we were to be sent—the European.
The camp became a beehive of activity. Units were pulled off their problems in the field and orders were issued twenty times faster than they could be carried out. The Engineers' pneumatic saws were heard twenty-four hours a day as they cut the wood necessary for the crating of material accompanying us overseas. Packing lists were made, revised, and remade. It was a case of too many cooks spoiling the soup, and much unnecessary work was done.
The men of the division were 'shown down' time after time to determine the serviceability and completeness of their equipment. Officers were given lists of equipment they were to purchase. The lists were compiled with and much money spent only to have them revised and their pocketbooks further depleted.
Supply crews worked night and day segregating and packing the material that was to accompany the troops. Before the unit was ready to leave, everyone seemed to be snarling at one another. Such was the strain under which they had been working.
Goodbyes were said several days before we were due to leave, for we were to be restricted to camp. Many a wife and sweetheart, not to mention a few of the boys, shed a sad tear that day. There were no doubts in their minds as to the lengthiness of the coming separation: years, and an eternity for many.
The trains began pulling in and the troops piled on. All of us were pleased to note that we would have a place to sleep in the horizontal position rather than the vertical, as had been the case in many instances when we were on leave.
It was an uneventful trip to the staging area adjacent to our port of embarkation. The interior of the train was a series of twosomes, threesomes, and foursomes engaged in the soldiers' favorite sport—gambling. There were a few that were richer when they stepped off the train, but many more who were poorer.
We were greeted at the staging camp by the blare of martial music coming over the loudspeaker. The Transportation Corps was on the job. The place seemed overrun with second 'louies' of the Corps. Everyone had his job and was doing it.
We were marched to our area and assigned billets. More show downs, requisitions, orientations, and chicken before the men were allowed on pass to the nearby cities. Many of them had their last fling during those few days, for they were never to see God's Country again.
We sailed, a short while later, in Victory ships and a couple of converted luxury liners. What a voyage it was! Those who weren’t at the rail retching were too weak to climb out of their bunks. It would be safe to say that seventy percent of the men heaved their 'cookies' during the trip.
The officers ate well, but the men were unable to enjoy their food due to the foul odor in the hold.
As usual, we had a training schedule. Have you ever tried doing calisthenics on the deck of a rolling ship? You don’t know whether you'll land on your fore or aft or even on the deck when you come down out of the air doing the side straddle hop.
In a bit over a week, we pulled into Glasgow, Scotland. Before leaving the ship, a British general gave us a welcoming speech. Then came a long train trip the length of Britain. Every stop we made on the way, we were met by groups of kids with the same question on their lips—"Any gum, chum?"
It was quite cold and raining hard when we arrived in our area in South England. We scurried about trying to find blackout shutters and stoves for our Niesen huts. Rumor had it that we would be there all winter, but we received orders to move to the front three weeks later.
We crossed the channel in LSTs, which had many more comforts than I had expected. The LST sailed into the harbor at Le Havre and, after much weaving about sunken hulks, landed us on the beach. We were the first infantry division to land in the harbor since the Germans had occupied it.
We were awed by the complete destruction dealt to the city by the Allied planes. It seemed every building was hit and most of them leveled.
The next leg of our journey was a very cold two-hundred-and-fifty-mile trip through France and on into Belgium. The rear end of an Army two-and-one-half truck can be very cold and uncomfortable when the weather is at freezing.
After reaching our assembly area, we marked time until the remaining parts of the division arrived.
It was in this area we saw our first buzzbomb. It had a distinctive sound all of its own and left a trail of flame its length as it traveled along.
The Belgians were very nice to us during our stay in the assembly area. Invitations to supper with them were frequent. They would give most anything they owned for a package of American smokes or a bar of soap. We hated to leave them when orders arrived to replace another unit in the Siegfried Line.
Our unit went into the line on November 11th. A bleaker day I have never seen. It was getting dark as we took up positions in the mud- and snow-filled forest. The time had come for all of our training to be put to the test for which it was devised.
The first casualty in our regiment was a bullet wound in the thigh. Trench foot caused many, burns from exploding improvised gasoline heaters gave us a few, men shooting each other by mistake and men shot by the enemy gave us the remainder.
Ack-ack outfits were moved up to shoot at the buzzbombs, the number of which were increasing daily. The concussion caused by their explosion was terrific. One was shot down and exploded not three hundred yards from our group, knocking us all flat.
A Mosquito bomber crashed in the little village in which our collecting station was set up. I heard the zoom of the motor, but thought it was one of our artillery planes. Seconds later, we heard the sound of the crash and rushed out to find the sky ablaze. Live ammunition was going off in every direction and no one was able to get close enough to the plane to see if the pilot was in it.
A few hours later, an RAF flight sergeant, the pilot of the plane, was brought into the station with a fractured ankle. He seemed very happy to have landed in friendly territory.
Life became very cheap as the death toll mounted. Mines blew off many legs and blinded a few of the boys, but the weather was our toughest foe until the memorable "Battle of the Bulge."
All of us woke up simultaneously that Saturday morning in December. The shells were whistling in about five per minute. We lay there in our bed rolls arguing whether it was incoming or outgoing 'mail' until one of them definitely made up our minds for us and sent us scampering to the cellar.
It was the beginning of the most nightmarish month I ever hope to endure. Burp guns, tanks, shells, Jerries, rockets, buzzbombs, strafing planes, snow, mud, blood, the dead and dying all formed a kaleidoscope that is hard to separate to give a coherent account of our part in it.
Units were cut off and no one seemed to have a complete story of what was taking place. It was one of the costliest single engagements the American Army has ever been in. Massacres took place that were unforgivable. The Jerries seemed to be doped or drunk and many of them paid for it with their lives.
Our route of evacuation was cut twice by enemy tanks before we were able to get all of the casualties to the rear.
A shell hit in the back of a truck not twenty feet from me, hitting the sergeant to whom I was talking. It killed a wounded doughboy who was entering the station for treatment.
We slept in the cellar that Saturday and Sunday night as the doughboys and Jerries fought in the streets for possession of the town.
We had packed and were ready to move until we found the road had been blocked by enemy tanks. My little bottle of spirits was wrapped up in my bedroll and out in front of the station in a trailer. About one o'clock Sunday morning, I decided a little snort might go good about then. I proceeded to the trailer with a great deal of caution, but not enough. A Jerry opened up on me from the church across the street. The ground came up to meet me very fast. There is something very spine-tingling about the chatter of a burp gun. However, after an hour of creeping about and rolling my bedroll in front of me, I managed to get the whisky into the cellar where it would do the most good.
One of the lieutenants snored so loud we were afraid he might give away our position, so one of the fellows was appointed to keep him awake. I slept on a mattress half the night before I found it was being used to cover a dead doughboy.
Our outfit fell back four miles the next day to a position we held for the remainder of the bulge battle. The winter was spent there with no ground gained by the enemy despite his desperate offensives.
Many of the men received bronze and silver stars for the heroic things they accomplished during the engagement. One battalion received a presidential citation, which they richly deserved. We later found that we had fought four German divisions for five days and nights before falling back, which was an excellent showing for a green outfit.
In late February, we were drawn from the line for a few days' rest before the big push to the Rhine.
We were assigned the task of mopping up behind the armor. The spurt to the Rhine was made with a negligible loss of life and a great deal of speed. We travelled just as fast as the boys could walk.
About this time, the Ludendorff Bridge was seized at Remagen by an armored outfit. We made a quick jump down around Cologne and crossed the bridge three days after it had been taken. Things were really hot in this sector. There wasn't a day that passed that Jerry didn't send planes over trying to bomb out the bridge. Not only that, but the shells were coming in at the rate of three per minute. When the bridge finally did collapse, there were several pontoon bridges across, so the Ludendorff was needed no longer.
The first day after crossing at Remagen, I found the bodies of the German Captain who had been delegated to blow the bridge alongside and his wife. He had committed suicide rather than face the fury of his superiors.
Linz continued to be a very hot spot until pressure was applied up and down the Rhine, forcing the German High Command to spread their troops more thinly.
The doughs fought over the mountainous terrain to the Wied River, and after we crossed that, the 'rat' race began. The armor went wild and communication with them was lost. We went so fast that our boys had to be motorized and the regiments were leapfrogging each other. This kept up until the pincers were closed on the Ruhr Pocket. Our division was one of the outfits assigned the task of cleaning the pocket in which the remnants of three German Armies were supposed to be trapped.
The first week was very tough. Each village and hamlet had to be fought for. It seemed Jerry would throw everything he had at us until he felt certain annihilation was inevitable. Then, and only then, would he surrender.
In one of these small towns, I was sent to pick a spot for our station. As I came out of the woods and onto an open stretch of road, three German tanks opened up on me from a hilltop. They had perfect observation. I drove like a bat out of Hell and they didn't get too close. However, on the way back to get the company, the shells hit right behind the jeep all the way into the woods. There was a driverless jeep sitting in the road at the edge of the woods and it could not be passed without a few minutes' delay. That was not the time nor the place to delay, so I jumped out of the jeep, ran for a hundred yards or so, hit the ground and began digging a foxhole with my teeth. The shells from the tanks knocked down trees all about me and the shrapnel 'felleth as a gentle rain from Heaven.' In moments like these, a man wouldn't give a plugged nickel for his chances of survival.
The battle of the pocket drew to a close with the wholesale surrender of some three hundred thousand German troops. On that day, a buddy of mine and myself went out to collect some Jerry equipment. We came back with a new Jerry jeep, two Lugers, four P-38s (the new German sidearm) and a generator for electric lights. We were very well satisfied with our haul. Everywhere we had gone in our search for this equipment, German soldiers stopped us to inquire as to where they should go to surrender. Many of them were carrying slips of paper stating they were discharged from the army. This was one of their cute stunts to avoid becoming a prisoner of war.
Our job done in the pocket, we scooted down to Roth, south of Nuremberg, which had just fallen. This was the front again, and again we made fast advances down the Danube. Lack of bridges held us up for a few days at the Danube, and we lost quite a few of the boys trying to cross in assault boats.
On a trip for a new collecting station site down in this section, we ran into a company of Jerries in the woods. Of course, there was a pitched battle for several minutes before we were able to retreat. On the way back to report the situation, we saw a group of Jerries crossing an open field. The jeeps fanned out to encircle them and forced them into the woods. A fifty-caliber machine gun was put on either side of the clump of trees and the woods were raked with slugs. It wasn't long before the Germans decided to give up, though they were outnumbered two to one. The only casualty for the entire day was one of our captains, shot in the leg by one of our men in the excitement.
It was smooth sailing for our outfit after we crossed the Danube and on down to Moosburg on the Isar River. It was here that thirty thousand joyous Allied prisoners were liberated. We were mobbed by them when we rode into their camp. They wanted anything we could give them, but were mainly interested in V-mail forms, food, and souvenirs to take home. I met several air corps boys from my hometown and the story they had to tell me was a repetition of many I'd heard before. Long forced marches without food, unsanitary conditions, and the cruelty of the guards. It is surprising that some of them pulled through the ordeal.
We crossed the Isar at Moosburg and were ready for a push into the Southern Redoubt when unconditional surrender was signed.
What's in store for us next? No one seems to know. Maybe army of occupation. Perhaps Japan. In either case, it will be several years before the bulk of us see the good old U. S. A. again.
V-E Day plus 5
O N E M A N’S S T O R Y
A synopsis of personal and general highlights of an infantry division's travels from training camp to V-E Day.
EUGENE L. CHASE
1st Lt. MAC
99th Inf. Div.
We had been sweating out our destination for months. The division had reached the point where it was fast becoming over-trained. Nerves were taut and everyone was fed up on the 'chicken' which goes hand in glove with garrison life. At last we knew to which theater of war we were to be sent—the European.
The camp became a beehive of activity. Units were pulled off their problems in the field and orders were issued twenty times faster than they could be carried out. The Engineers' pneumatic saws were heard twenty-four hours a day as they cut the wood necessary for the crating of material accompanying us overseas. Packing lists were made, revised, and remade. It was a case of too many cooks spoiling the soup, and much unnecessary work was done.
The men of the division were 'shown down' time after time to determine the serviceability and completeness of their equipment. Officers were given lists of equipment they were to purchase. The lists were compiled with and much money spent only to have them revised and their pocketbooks further depleted.
Supply crews worked night and day segregating and packing the material that was to accompany the troops. Before the unit was ready to leave, everyone seemed to be snarling at one another. Such was the strain under which they had been working.
Goodbyes were said several days before we were due to leave, for we were to be restricted to camp. Many a wife and sweetheart, not to mention a few of the boys, shed a sad tear that day. There were no doubts in their minds as to the lengthiness of the coming separation: years, and an eternity for many.
The trains began pulling in and the troops piled on. All of us were pleased to note that we would have a place to sleep in the horizontal position rather than the vertical, as had been the case in many instances when we were on leave.
It was an uneventful trip to the staging area adjacent to our port of embarkation. The interior of the train was a series of twosomes, threesomes, and foursomes engaged in the soldiers' favorite sport—gambling. There were a few that were richer when they stepped off the train, but many more who were poorer.
We were greeted at the staging camp by the blare of martial music coming over the loudspeaker. The Transportation Corps was on the job. The place seemed overrun with second 'louies' of the Corps. Everyone had his job and was doing it.
We were marched to our area and assigned billets. More show downs, requisitions, orientations, and chicken before the men were allowed on pass to the nearby cities. Many of them had their last fling during those few days, for they were never to see God's Country again.
We sailed, a short while later, in Victory ships and a couple of converted luxury liners. What a voyage it was! Those who weren’t at the rail retching were too weak to climb out of their bunks. It would be safe to say that seventy percent of the men heaved their 'cookies' during the trip.
The officers ate well, but the men were unable to enjoy their food due to the foul odor in the hold.
As usual, we had a training schedule. Have you ever tried doing calisthenics on the deck of a rolling ship? You don’t know whether you'll land on your fore or aft or even on the deck when you come down out of the air doing the side straddle hop.
In a bit over a week, we pulled into Glasgow, Scotland. Before leaving the ship, a British general gave us a welcoming speech. Then came a long train trip the length of Britain. Every stop we made on the way, we were met by groups of kids with the same question on their lips—"Any gum, chum?"
It was quite cold and raining hard when we arrived in our area in South England. We scurried about trying to find blackout shutters and stoves for our Niesen huts. Rumor had it that we would be there all winter, but we received orders to move to the front three weeks later.
We crossed the channel in LSTs, which had many more comforts than I had expected. The LST sailed into the harbor at Le Havre and, after much weaving about sunken hulks, landed us on the beach. We were the first infantry division to land in the harbor since the Germans had occupied it.
We were awed by the complete destruction dealt to the city by the Allied planes. It seemed every building was hit and most of them leveled.
The next leg of our journey was a very cold two-hundred-and-fifty-mile trip through France and on into Belgium. The rear end of an Army two-and-one-half truck can be very cold and uncomfortable when the weather is at freezing.
After reaching our assembly area, we marked time until the remaining parts of the division arrived.
It was in this area we saw our first buzzbomb. It had a distinctive sound all of its own and left a trail of flame its length as it traveled along.
The Belgians were very nice to us during our stay in the assembly area. Invitations to supper with them were frequent. They would give most anything they owned for a package of American smokes or a bar of soap. We hated to leave them when orders arrived to replace another unit in the Siegfried Line.
Our unit went into the line on November 11th. A bleaker day I have never seen. It was getting dark as we took up positions in the mud- and snow-filled forest. The time had come for all of our training to be put to the test for which it was devised.
The first casualty in our regiment was a bullet wound in the thigh. Trench foot caused many, burns from exploding improvised gasoline heaters gave us a few, men shooting each other by mistake and men shot by the enemy gave us the remainder.
Ack-ack outfits were moved up to shoot at the buzzbombs, the number of which were increasing daily. The concussion caused by their explosion was terrific. One was shot down and exploded not three hundred yards from our group, knocking us all flat.
A Mosquito bomber crashed in the little village in which our collecting station was set up. I heard the zoom of the motor, but thought it was one of our artillery planes. Seconds later, we heard the sound of the crash and rushed out to find the sky ablaze. Live ammunition was going off in every direction and no one was able to get close enough to the plane to see if the pilot was in it.
A few hours later, an RAF flight sergeant, the pilot of the plane, was brought into the station with a fractured ankle. He seemed very happy to have landed in friendly territory.
Life became very cheap as the death toll mounted. Mines blew off many legs and blinded a few of the boys, but the weather was our toughest foe until the memorable "Battle of the Bulge."
All of us woke up simultaneously that Saturday morning in December. The shells were whistling in about five per minute. We lay there in our bed rolls arguing whether it was incoming or outgoing 'mail' until one of them definitely made up our minds for us and sent us scampering to the cellar.
It was the beginning of the most nightmarish month I ever hope to endure. Burp guns, tanks, shells, Jerries, rockets, buzzbombs, strafing planes, snow, mud, blood, the dead and dying all formed a kaleidoscope that is hard to separate to give a coherent account of our part in it.
Units were cut off and no one seemed to have a complete story of what was taking place. It was one of the costliest single engagements the American Army has ever been in. Massacres took place that were unforgivable. The Jerries seemed to be doped or drunk and many of them paid for it with their lives.
Our route of evacuation was cut twice by enemy tanks before we were able to get all of the casualties to the rear.
A shell hit in the back of a truck not twenty feet from me, hitting the sergeant to whom I was talking. It killed a wounded doughboy who was entering the station for treatment.
We slept in the cellar that Saturday and Sunday night as the doughboys and Jerries fought in the streets for possession of the town.
We had packed and were ready to move until we found the road had been blocked by enemy tanks. My little bottle of spirits was wrapped up in my bedroll and out in front of the station in a trailer. About one o'clock Sunday morning, I decided a little snort might go good about then. I proceeded to the trailer with a great deal of caution, but not enough. A Jerry opened up on me from the church across the street. The ground came up to meet me very fast. There is something very spine-tingling about the chatter of a burp gun. However, after an hour of creeping about and rolling my bedroll in front of me, I managed to get the whisky into the cellar where it would do the most good.
One of the lieutenants snored so loud we were afraid he might give away our position, so one of the fellows was appointed to keep him awake. I slept on a mattress half the night before I found it was being used to cover a dead doughboy.
Our outfit fell back four miles the next day to a position we held for the remainder of the bulge battle. The winter was spent there with no ground gained by the enemy despite his desperate offensives.
Many of the men received bronze and silver stars for the heroic things they accomplished during the engagement. One battalion received a presidential citation, which they richly deserved. We later found that we had fought four German divisions for five days and nights before falling back, which was an excellent showing for a green outfit.
In late February, we were drawn from the line for a few days' rest before the big push to the Rhine.
We were assigned the task of mopping up behind the armor. The spurt to the Rhine was made with a negligible loss of life and a great deal of speed. We travelled just as fast as the boys could walk.
About this time, the Ludendorff Bridge was seized at Remagen by an armored outfit. We made a quick jump down around Cologne and crossed the bridge three days after it had been taken. Things were really hot in this sector. There wasn't a day that passed that Jerry didn't send planes over trying to bomb out the bridge. Not only that, but the shells were coming in at the rate of three per minute. When the bridge finally did collapse, there were several pontoon bridges across, so the Ludendorff was needed no longer.
The first day after crossing at Remagen, I found the bodies of the German Captain who had been delegated to blow the bridge alongside and his wife. He had committed suicide rather than face the fury of his superiors.
Linz continued to be a very hot spot until pressure was applied up and down the Rhine, forcing the German High Command to spread their troops more thinly.
The doughs fought over the mountainous terrain to the Wied River, and after we crossed that, the 'rat' race began. The armor went wild and communication with them was lost. We went so fast that our boys had to be motorized and the regiments were leapfrogging each other. This kept up until the pincers were closed on the Ruhr Pocket. Our division was one of the outfits assigned the task of cleaning the pocket in which the remnants of three German Armies were supposed to be trapped.
The first week was very tough. Each village and hamlet had to be fought for. It seemed Jerry would throw everything he had at us until he felt certain annihilation was inevitable. Then, and only then, would he surrender.
In one of these small towns, I was sent to pick a spot for our station. As I came out of the woods and onto an open stretch of road, three German tanks opened up on me from a hilltop. They had perfect observation. I drove like a bat out of Hell and they didn't get too close. However, on the way back to get the company, the shells hit right behind the jeep all the way into the woods. There was a driverless jeep sitting in the road at the edge of the woods and it could not be passed without a few minutes' delay. That was not the time nor the place to delay, so I jumped out of the jeep, ran for a hundred yards or so, hit the ground and began digging a foxhole with my teeth. The shells from the tanks knocked down trees all about me and the shrapnel 'felleth as a gentle rain from Heaven.' In moments like these, a man wouldn't give a plugged nickel for his chances of survival.
The battle of the pocket drew to a close with the wholesale surrender of some three hundred thousand German troops. On that day, a buddy of mine and myself went out to collect some Jerry equipment. We came back with a new Jerry jeep, two Lugers, four P-38s (the new German sidearm) and a generator for electric lights. We were very well satisfied with our haul. Everywhere we had gone in our search for this equipment, German soldiers stopped us to inquire as to where they should go to surrender. Many of them were carrying slips of paper stating they were discharged from the army. This was one of their cute stunts to avoid becoming a prisoner of war.
Our job done in the pocket, we scooted down to Roth, south of Nuremberg, which had just fallen. This was the front again, and again we made fast advances down the Danube. Lack of bridges held us up for a few days at the Danube, and we lost quite a few of the boys trying to cross in assault boats.
On a trip for a new collecting station site down in this section, we ran into a company of Jerries in the woods. Of course, there was a pitched battle for several minutes before we were able to retreat. On the way back to report the situation, we saw a group of Jerries crossing an open field. The jeeps fanned out to encircle them and forced them into the woods. A fifty-caliber machine gun was put on either side of the clump of trees and the woods were raked with slugs. It wasn't long before the Germans decided to give up, though they were outnumbered two to one. The only casualty for the entire day was one of our captains, shot in the leg by one of our men in the excitement.
It was smooth sailing for our outfit after we crossed the Danube and on down to Moosburg on the Isar River. It was here that thirty thousand joyous Allied prisoners were liberated. We were mobbed by them when we rode into their camp. They wanted anything we could give them, but were mainly interested in V-mail forms, food, and souvenirs to take home. I met several air corps boys from my hometown and the story they had to tell me was a repetition of many I'd heard before. Long forced marches without food, unsanitary conditions, and the cruelty of the guards. It is surprising that some of them pulled through the ordeal.
We crossed the Isar at Moosburg and were ready for a push into the Southern Redoubt when unconditional surrender was signed.
What's in store for us next? No one seems to know. Maybe army of occupation. Perhaps Japan. In either case, it will be several years before the bulk of us see the good old U. S. A. again.