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Interviews: Each newsletter we feature interviews with veterans of WWII. The following interviews were made during a reunion of WW2 veterans who fought at the 'Battle of the Bulge', Germany's desperate Ardennes offensive in the winter of 1944. After initial successes the attacks were stopped and then pushed back, ending the hopes of German forces on the Western Front. |
Veterans of the Ardennes
GI's From The Bulge Share Their Stories
Interviews submitted by Neal M., 3rd Para Bde.
John Hess,291st Regiment,
75th Infantry Division
"I got a Bronze Star for taking out a Tiger tank and I didn't find out about it for over fifty years. They sent my records to Philadelphia. I didn't have any records. Let me tell you something. A lot of guys in the war, they couldn't tell you that stuff. How could they lie if they didn't have anything to show you? At the end of the war we put everything in a bag and said let's get out of here. That was it. My son wrote in and I got all kinds of paperwork I never knew about."
"It was in the Colmar Pocket. I had a bazooka that was battery driven. I didn't have an assistant. They charge the battery. You stick the round in there and you can carry it with you. The Germans were in the woods and the GI's were digging in front of them -- a lot of them got hit right off the bat. I crawled into the woods and got around the back of a Tiger. The only way you could knock one of those out was to get the engine. They hit me pretty quick after I fired the bazooka."
"I don't know what hit me. I think it might have been a potato masher that got me. It really threw me just as I was getting out of the woods. I guess I probably had internal injuries, but I never went to the field hospital. I didn't have time. I didn't want to get stuck in some replacement outfit."
"They brought a medic on a regular ambulance to get me. He was a staff sergeant. I remember he said he was from Texas. There were other medics were behind him on a jeep with racks on it. After he took care of me he started to walk over to go with them and he hit a mine and got them all killed, the new guys and everything."
"We loved to see the air corps guys but I'd hate to see them get hit. The oil would get all over the front and they couldn't see. If they were low they'd just go in. It would make me sick. I saw several pilots bail out and their parachutes never open. God, I'd get so sick to see that that I'd vomit."
[John was looking through the history of the 75th Infantry Division and found mention of a man in his company.]
"This guy here would play his fiddle all through war. He carried it on his back. He was amazing. He'd sit under a tree when it was windy and cold and just play away."
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Hank Mossacher, 87th Infantry Division |
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"I was a dogface. I used the Garand. I shot one so much one day that the gas port was all cut out around the bottom. So I just threw it away and got another one."
"We had a colonel who was an unusual shot with one of these [holding a carbine]. It was absolutely unbelievable. I often wondered where he learned to shoot like that. I found out later that he used to do a lot of hunting in eastern Washington."
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Howard Sheinholtz, 345th Regiment, 87th Infantry Division |
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"I was in the Bulge but I don't remember the names of the towns. Most of the time I was in the Ardennes Forest itself."
"The rumor about Kolzeny and his imposters got around fast. The password itself wasn't enough. You'd ask who won the series last year. Who plays 2nd base for the Yankees or the Dodgers. Your name was mud if you didn't know. Except for a friend of mine. They changed the password and countersign one night to 'Fish/Head.' I stopped him when he came in and he said 'Hey, Fish-head.' No German would say that."
"I was a light mortar crewman, 60mm mortar. Quite frequently we did see what we were shooting at. The mortar was used as an assault weapon. Stop, drop in a field, drop a few rounds and run some more."
"I was in Europe from November to May. I stayed for military government duty for a couple of months after that and left in July. I had a 30 day pass and was supposed to report on August 17 to be shipped out to the Pacific. The Air Force dropped the bomb and on August 14 Japan quit. I was in NYC that day; I was supposed to meet my sister. I come up out of the subway. Somebody grabs the hat off of my head and two people put me on their shoulders. "What are you doing, what happened" I asked, then they told me Japan surrendered. I said your crazy. As it happened, I'd also been on a pass in Paris when Germany surrendered. Boy Paris went crazy. The entire 8th AF flew over dropping flares. I don't know how many street dances my buddy and I got dragged into. I quit counting at 10."
"I've got a soft spot for medics. They dug in at the center of the company. We didn't want them too far away if we needed them. I wasn't ever injured, but I did get frostbite in the bulge. They didn't rotate you out if you could still walk. You just stay put. We didn't have much winter clothing. I had snow in my boots for about three days and I reached the point where I couldn't feel when I was walking. I happened to mention it in passing to my squad leader, and he told me 'Scheinholtz, go see the medics NOW.' So I went in and a doctor looked at me and said what the hell's wrong with you. I told him I couldn't feel when I was walking and the expression on his face changed. Take off your boots now. He asked can I feel that? Feel what? He told me he had just stuck my foot with a pin. He told me to stay there until I had feeling in my feet, which took about three hours. When I told the doctor I could feel something he told me to take my rifle and get back out. I had a carbine."
"I couldn't stand myself the first I had to use it, but that's a different story."
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