| OCR Text |
Show PAGE 18 THE ZEPHYR JANFEB 90 Ed McCarrick: A WWII Oral History remembering the war and the Battle of The Bulge, 45 years later (a recorded interview with the zephyr) was In a store In Newark, NJ. buying candy when the news of Pearl Harbor came across on the radio. I was already registered for the draft. I'd done It the I decided I'd rather previous July, and so I knew I was going to be In the Army. get In the Marines. I probably liked the uniform or something. I was a kid. But my draft board wouldn't release me because they had to meet their quota. Maybe they did me a favor; If I'd been In the Marines, I might've been knocked off at Guadacanal. Who knows? "So on February 10, 1942, I was In the Army. First I went to Camp DIx and then to Camp Polk, Louisiana. I had basic training with the Third Armored Division. After Basic we were getting different assignments and they were putting us in lines. The other lines had hundreds of men In them, and one line had about five. We thought maybe they were Just going to ship us home. But it turned out to be a medical detachment I had no background In It, but they decided to make me a medic. They sent us to a reconnaissance battalion, and as soon as we heard that, we thought thats a suicide battalion. We figured we didnt have a thats It chance. "We stayed at Camp Polk for 13 months, and then went to the California desert for desert training for 5 months. We went there because of the fighting In Africa, but when that ended, they sent us back to Ft. Bennlng, Georgia. It was Interesting 1 exhaustion., He said there was no such thing as combat exhaustion. All you had to do was be tough on them, and they'd come out of IL Next Sunday, the chaplain mentioned the atrocious language of a certain general; later at medic school the doctors explained that in spite of what a certain general said, there was such a thing as combat exhaustion. "Anyway we started moving fast across France. There was no front at all really because we were moving so fast Usually, wed hear there were some Germans In a town, and we'd go In and blast the heck out of them and theyd take off. The next day wed do the same thing.' At one point we went 700 miles In 21 days, which was unheard of In combat. In fact, In the Fall of 44, we thought the war would be over by Christmas. We were knocking the hell out of these guys. But the first think that slowed down was we ran out of gas. We were moving so fast that we outran our supply lines. It gave the Germans time to recoup. - meeting different guys from different parts of the country, but we were all doing the same thing, eating the same food. When we went to town, It was different youd go to a restaurant, and In New Jersey, youd never see fried chicken or hushpup-pi- es or stuff like that "From there we went to Camp Miles Standlsh In Massachusetts, which was an embarkation place. That was the most chicken outfit I ever saw In the Army because they made us walk In formation to go to chow. But usually you stayed there for four or five days and then got on a ship; but we stayed two weeks, and we wondered: What the Hell is going on? The Army Is screwed up as usual. Id finally gotten a pass to go to Boston, but when I hit the gate, they said our outfit's been alerted. Youve got to go back. They stuck us on trains and shipped us to Camp Shanks, New York. At Camp Shanks, nobody stayed more than 3 or 4 days, but we were there for a month. So again we all complained that the Army was screwed up as usual. "Finally, we got on the Queen Mary In New York Harbor on June 6, 1944 Tbe Normandy Invasion. It turned out the reason our departure had been delayed was because the Invasion had been delayed. There was actually no room over there on the British Isles to put us, until the Invasion began and our soldiers started moving onto French solL So really, the Army wasnt as screwed up as we D-D- thought ay. "Anyway there was about 15,000 of us on the Queen Mary. I was In a cabin made for two with about eight guys In there. It took six days which really wasn't too bad; we could outrun any German submarine. We got to England and stayed at a place called Tldworth Barracks which was near Andover and Salisbury. Meanwhile hedgerow fighting was going on In France, and none of us wanted to be a part of that crap, although we didn't have much choice about IL We were In England less than a month when they took us down to South Hampton and put us on the LS.T.S (landing ship tank) and that was when they made the breakthrough out of the hedgerows at SL Lo and we got off the boat and exploited IL We landed there on the Normandy Beaches where the Invasion had taken place. We were to follow the breakthrough. "When we got to France, we became a part of Pattons Army the 7th. unfortunately. We knew thaL When we were In England, he came and gave us a speech. I never heard anybody talk In front of 10 or 15 thousand guys like he. did. Every other word was a curse word. Of course In the Army we all talked like that, but not In front of ten thousand guys. Most of us thought It was disgusting even If we said the same stuff. He was explaining the Incident In North Africa when he got relieved of his command for hitting a soldier that had combat was in Chartres where I finally got close to the action bombs going off, one of the towers of the cathedral got hiL Right after that we were supposed to lt take Metz, which Is right on the FrenchGerman border. A corps reconnaissance outfit had gone in and thought it was clear, but the Germans were watching. We thought Itd be easy to take. But Instead we got blasted with everything. For some reason I wasnt with the line troop, I was with HQ Co. about 3 miles back. My captain, a doctor, got, killed there. "This Is where I saw Patton. We were stopped In this convoy, and I was In a half track. I saw these three vehicles come down and as they got closer I saw the 2 stars Its got to be Patton I thoughL Patton climbs out and yells, 'Wheres an officer? Meantime, this French vehicle comes flying down the road, and Patton yells, Stop that vehicle! The Frenchman gets out and makes a real snappy salute, and Patton smiles and says, "Bon." If he hadnt saluted Patton like that, he wouldve been chewed out. "By this time, somebody found an officer, Captain Newton, and Patton yells, 'What outfit Is this?' The captain responded 87th Reconnaissance 7th Army Division, sir. Patton says, If this Is reconnaissance, why the Hell arent they at the front?' After a few more questions he says, 'Wheres the communications vehicle?' I was In the next vehicle back, and I ducked down because I didnt want him yelling at me. Besides, I was a lowly PFC. So he goes back to the vehicle and yells, 'If there Isnt some audacity shown around here, some officers are going to be busted! He went back to his Jeep, and which way did he go? He turned around and went back the other way. The next day In Stars A Stripes, big headlines read 'PATTON VISITS TROOPS AT FRONT. This Is the kind of publicity crap that went on about Patton; Hell, he was five miles from the frontl He was such a glory hound. Anyway that was my major encounter With General Patton, that Jerk. My captain got killed at the front and Patton got the glory, five miles away. "Back to when we were trying to take Metz, I remember the 5th Infantry Division was assigned to take the town and we all knew It was going to be a slaughter. The Germans controlled this hill and you had to go up it to attack. There were guys crying because they knew there were going to be killed! we went Metz. around Eventually,. "As a medic In Troop C, we went In to get the Injured, 4t as Interesting to note that we never went in there under fire. We had the Red Cross on bur helmets of course, and the Germans wouldnt shoot us. There were times when I went out and I knew the Germans could see me, but they left me alone. In that case they were observing the rules of warfare. Of course, they had medics too. It was pretty rough seeing guys hurt and killed, sometimes guys you knew, but not as rough as |
