[Draft and Initial Assignment]

     Received orders to report to the draft board—#2 Ferguson, MO on January 22, 1943—traveled by chartered bus to Jefferson Barracks.  Soon after arriving, we were sworn into the U.S. Army.  Then came the vaccinations.  Made you feel like a pin cushion.  Nothing too exciting happened here at Jefferson Barracks.  We were given the job of taking down many tents and stored them in a warehouse.

     After a few days, they told us we were leaving (there were just 32 of us).  They marched us down to the railroad depot.  We got into a rail Pullman car and then hooked onto a L&N passenger train and we headed east (of course not knowing where we were going). [1]

     Our first stop was Evansville, Indiana.  Then onto Atlanta and then to Miami, Florida.  There we were met by an Army truck which took us to Miami Beach.  That's where we found out we were in the Air Force.  We were here for basic Army training.  All the hotels in Miami Beach were taken over by the Air Force.  These hotels did not have any furniture; that meant sleeping on the floor.  We were assigned to the Floridian Hotel on the southwest corner of the island.

     Miami Beach was not a pleasant place to be.  At night, they had a brown out, which means only necessary light on.  This brown out was for all coastal cities.  Weather permitting, we would march double time to the east side of the island, then do calisthenics and then swim for a few minutes and then back to duty.  This went on for four weeks.  They told us to put on our winter uniforms.  This was unusual for the warm climate we were in.

     They put us on a train and after a three-day trip, we arrived in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  There, it was 48-below zero.  Sioux Falls was a radio operator’s school.  This school operated three shifts a day.  After the men would graduate from here, they would go to gunnery school.  Then they would be assigned to a bomber crew.  I was assigned to the permanent party which meant that we would be there for a while.

     After about six weeks, I came down with lobar pneumonia.  It would be 44 days before they would let me out [of the hospital].  After about a week, my wife, Elva, came up to be with me.  That made us both very happy.  When I finally got out of the hospital, I was given a 10-day convalescent furlough.

     After the furlough, we continued our duty of the permanent part of this air base until about December 15th, 1943.  They told us we were shipping out.  This train came into St. Louis and stopped outside Union Station, but they would not let us get off, even to make a telephone call. [2]  Then we headed southeast through Atlanta, Georgia.  Then north to Seymour Johnson Field, North Carolina which was at Goldsboro, North Carolina.  There, I spent my first Christmas away from home and that was not easy.

​

[Shipping Overseas]

     Then, on December 27th, it was back on a train headed north to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey.  Camp Kilmer was only a one-hour bus ride to Times Square in New York City.  By now we realized that it was a matter of time before we would be shipping overseas!

     We were allowed a 24-hour pass every other day.  The tickets to the big theatres and stage plays were free for the asking.  I got to see several of the big bands, as they were called then.  Also got to see the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.

     On about January 10th, 1944—when they stopped our passes—we had to face reality.  Late in the afternoon one day, they put us on a train and we knew this was it.  The security on this train was very tight.  Every road crossing, there were two M.P's [Military Police] with a jeep which had a 50-caliber machine gun mounted on it.

​     When we got off the train, they took us into a room and we didn't know until this room started moving, that we were on a ferry crossing the East River into the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  There, we went onto a big ship which was a French liner, which had a French crew.  After going to our sleeping quarters, they told us to stay there until they would tell us to come out. [3]

     Early next morning, this ship started moving.  We went past the Statue of Liberty and never got to see it.  After we were completely out of sight of land, we were allowed on the upper deck.  Then, we discovered that we were in a convoy of 28 troop ships.  The battleship Texas, three aircraft carriers, and who knows how many destroyers.  These destroyers formed a defensive ring around our convoy to protect us from the German submarines.

     We crossed the Atlantic on a zig-zag course. [4]  The only communications these ships had was blinker lights using the Morse code.  Also, our ship, being one of the larger ones, also had a stage on it.  After a day or so at sea, they asked everyone if they had any acting or musical talents, they should step forward.  Many guys did and it was surprising the shows they put on to give us some entertainment; they were really good.

​     After 10 days at sea, we finally saw land.  It was the northern tip of Ireland.  We crossed the strait and went up the Clyde river into Glasgow, Scotland. [5]  That's where we docked and low and behold, one of the aircraft carriers that came over with us docked right behind us.  It was loaded with airplanes for us and also the Eighth Air Force which had been in England for some time already. [6]

​

[Deployment through Britain]

     After getting off the ship, we got onto a British train.  After seeing some of the beautiful British countryside, we got off at a place that's called Stoke-on-Trent.  It's a few miles north of London.

     After three days, it was on the train again, through London, to the southern tip of England.  This place was called Ibsley.  After quartering in an old castle named Morton Manor, then our air base was finally ready for us and that's where we formed the Ninth Air Force.  We were in the 327th Service Squadron, 329th Air Service Group attached to the 48th Fighter Bomber Group. [7]

     Our airplane was the P-47 Thunderbolt.  This plane was capable of carrying 500-pound bombs and it also had eight 50-caliber machine guns, four in each wing.  Our planes did their thing, whatever they were called upon to do. [8]

​

[Landing in France]

     Some of the cities around our air base were Bournemouth, Weymouth, Christchurch, and Southampton.  This we did until after the invasion of Normandy on June 6th, 1944.  Then we knew that our stay in England was limited.  Our entire unit was so mobile, that when our orders came early on the 25th of June, by noon we boarded a British liner at Southampton and we were headed for Normandy. [9]

     The water in the English Channel was smooth as it could be.  We landed in Normandy on the blood-soaked beach, then had to crawl up a steep cliff which seemed to be about a hundred feet tall. [10]  There, after walking in about five miles, we were assigned an apple orchard that had hedge rows around it.  We camouflaged our pup tents as best we could.

     Here, we survived on Army K-rations.  This was a ration in a box about the size of a Cracker Jack box.  You got three different boxes, one for each meal.  This we did until our equipment and supplies caught up with us.  Finally, our air base was finished; we moved there and into bigger tents.  Our base was a strip of land a quarter of a mile wide and about a mile long.  The Army bulldozers cleared this out for our airplanes to land and take off on.  Then we were once again operating at full strength.

     Of course the Germans had plans to make things as uncomfortable as possible.  Every evening after sundown, which was about 11 p.m., they would send a few planes over.  These planes did not do too much damage, but our anti-aircraft guns firing were so noisy, it was hard to sleep.  All these shells exploding and with tracer bullets in the air, it looked like the 4th of July.  Every evening it was beautiful but deadly, as all this metal going up had to come back down.  We finally dug a six-foot deep hole in the ground and covered it with timbers and dirt.  We took turns sleeping, so we could all get a little rest.  Our beachhead was only about six miles deep and 25 miles long.  The city of Saint-Lo was on the front line.

     In the latter part of August one day, a squadron of B-17 bombers from the Eighth Air Force from England came over to bomb the city of Saint-Lo.  This was the signal for the Army to start their offensive. [11]  When they started dropping bombs, it was very obvious to all of us that these bombs were dropped too soon, and many of the bombs fell on our own troops, causing many casualties.  But things did start to happen then, as it wasn’t very long [until] Paris was liberated. [12]

​

[Advancing into Belgium]

     We followed the First Army, going north toward Belgium.  Our next move was to an air base in northern France. [13]  We stayed there about three weeks and then we moved into Belgium.

     Our armies were slowed up quite a bit due to more resistance and winter weather coming on.  Our next base was at [Sint]-Truiden, Belgium, as the natives called it, but we called it St. Trond.  There we found a luxury we hadn’t had since we left New York and that was ice cream.  I sure enjoyed that.

     This was a rather big air base, so the Air Force brought in another fighter bomber group. [14]  That was a costly mistake, as I will explain later.  We are now into December [1944].  The weather was very cold and [there was] a lot of snow on the ground.  In fact, the ground was covered all winter long.  We were not equipped to fight a war in this cold weather.

     On December 18th, a heavy fog set in.  That’s when the Germans started their counter-offensive.  Their plans were to get all the way to Antwerp, Belgium, on the coast.  That would cut our front line in two—separating us from the British and the Canadians on the north.  This fog lasted until Christmas Eve; it cleared up and it was a beautiful full moon night.  Of course our planes couldn’t fly because of the fog.  On Christmas Day, every plane the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces had that were flyable, were in the air. [15]  The entire sky was filled with planes.  It was a beautiful site to see.  Then it fogged up again until New Year’s Eve.

 

[Battle of the Bulge]

     Then New Year’s Day, again the sky was full of planes.  That morning, we had to load a damaged wing on a truck to take it back to our supply depot at Liege.  First, we had to put a rack on the truck to put the wing on.  This rack was big, but not very heavy.  It took four men to carry it.  By now, we could always tell by the sound of any aircraft engine just whom the plane belonged to—British, American, or German.  As we were carrying this rack, we heard airplanes flying.  One of our men said the British were out in force this morning.  Then, my hearing told me they were German.  We dropped this rack and ran for this [bunker that was a] former basement.  By then, one of our anti-aircraft gunners recognized them and opened fire.

     That’s when all hell broke loose.  Tracers were flying in all directions.  The 40-millimeter cannons the Germans used, the shell would explode on contact.  One of the shells hit the wall of this basement.  Fortunately for myself, I was not directly below it.  The two men that were below it did not get out on their own power.  We suffered many casualties that day and lost 70 percent of our planes.  What a way to start the new year. [16]

     After a few days, the German offensive was stopped with some help from the British Army.  The main thing that stopped them was that they ran out of fuel.  This was the end of the Battle of the Bulge.  It got this name back in the States.  Our front stretched all the way from the southern coast of France to the North Sea on the north.  After the German offensive was stopped, it put a big bulge in our front.  Hence, the name Battle of the Bulge. 

​

[Advancing into Germany]

     When we left St. Trond, we drove through Cologne, Germany.  We stopped to see the cathedral there on the Rhine river.  We didn’t have time to see the inside of it.  It had suffered very little damage.

     All the bridges across the Rhine were destroyed, so the Army engineers built a bridge by tying many row boats together side-by-side and put boards across them.  We had to drive on these boards with our big trucks.  That was sure scary. [17]

     We had orders to go to Weimar, Germany which was just east of what would later become the border between the two Germanys.  The place was Buchenwald concentration camp. [18]  This was not a pretty site and the stench was sickening.  They had three ovens that were used for their cremation of prisoners.  The stench was terrible.  I saw lampshades made out of human skin with tattoos on them, many partially-burned bones everywhere.  It was quite sickening to see.

     From there we proceeded going south to Munich, which was about 90 percent destroyed.  Our driver stopped at a corner where one of our Army M.P.’s was directing traffic to ask for directions.  This M.P., after giving us directions, asked if we wanted something to drink, [and then said] to “stop where all those Army trucks were stopped”; and we discovered it was a wine cellar.  When we left there, some of their wine left with us.  This was shared with the men in our squadron.  After our stop here, we went out to our air base and two weeks later was V.E. Day (the end of the war in Europe). [19]

 

[Redeployment through Germany and France]

     Now, we were wondering when we would get to go home.  Then came a surprising move.  They moved us back up north to Kassel, near Hamburg, Germany.  Now the rumors were that we were going to the Pacific, where the war was still going on.  All this time since we left New York, all of our letters were censored.  Now that the war was over, they stopped doing that.  We could write whatever we wanted.  One day, I wrote home and said as soon as they would start censoring again, they would know we were going to the Pacific.  I just dropped that letter into the mailbox, they called us and told us we were going to the Pacific.

     That’s when our morale hit rock bottom.  Two days later, I was talking to a former commanding officer of ours and he asked how many points I had towards a discharge. [20]  I said “76.”  He said, “You are not going to the Pacific; everybody with more than 75 points is not going.”  And he was right.

     The next day, they called a man by the name of Tom and myself into the orderly room and told us we were being transferred and they gave us our orders.  They didn’t know where this squadron was or how to get there.  So, by talking to other men, we found out this squadron was in France, 30 miles north of Paris.  They did give us a jeep and a driver to take us to the airport.  We hitch-hiked a ride to Paris.  We spent one night in Paris and the next day, we hitch-hiked a ride to Creil, France.  There, we moth-balled airplanes. 

 

[Shipping Home]

     About three weeks later, it was our turn to go home.  So, back on a train again.  We went through Paris and on to Cherbourg, France.  There, they had a lot of tents.  These tents were divided into what they called cigarette camps.  Our camp was Camp Lucky Strike.  We were supposed to be there only two days, but there was a dock strike on in New York and there weren’t any ships coming over.  So, we were there for three weeks doing absolutely nothing.

     When we got there [to Camp Lucky Strike], we all had to turn all of our French francs in.  Then when we would leave, we would get it back in U.S. dollars; but we could only exchange $75.00.  One of our men had won $1,800 in gambling, so after the first week, we all needed P.X. [post exchange] rations, but nobody had any money.  He loaned everyone the equivalent of one dollar.  This went on for three weeks and that way he got his French francs changed into U.S. dollars.  Finally, the time came for us to head for the ship.  As we came near the pier, we saw a huge aircraft carrier.  It was the U.S.S. Lake Champlain, which was later used for pulling space capsules out of the Pacific.

     We thought that we would get a fast trip back to the States on this carrier.  No such luck.  In front of the carrier was our little bathtub that we had to get on.  It wasn’t really a tub, but not much bigger than one.  It was the John M. Morehead, a liberty ship.  It had four holds on it.  The two front ones were our sleeping quarters and the back two were for cargo but we didn’t have any cargo.  That make the ship so light in the water, so it was like a cork in the water.

     We left about noon on October 20th, 1945.  That evening at sundown, we were going around the southern tip of England and here came the carrier, U.S.S. Champlain.  It passed us like we were standing still.  The carrier had all its light on and it looked beautiful.  It made us discouraged as we were not on it.

     The first night out, the water was quite rough and it seemed like everybody got seasick, but we all got over that.  This top speed for our ship was 11 knots per hour on smooth water.  There was a map on the wall in our sleeping quarters of the Atlantic Ocean.  Every evening at six o’clock, the navigator of the ship would put a mark on this map of how far we traveled in the last 24 hours.  Of the 16 days on the ship, three of those days we traveled less than 100 miles in 24 hours; a person could almost walk that fast.

     In between every wave, the bow of the ship would come out of the water and coming down, it sounded like it was cracking wide open.  Then, as the back of the ship came out of the water, the propeller of the ship would come out of the water and it would vibrate the whole ship.  It was like going up and down in an elevator, 24 hours a day, for 16 days.

     Finally on November 6th, 1945, the told us we would start seeing the lights on the horizon at about 1 a.m., but they missed it because we didn’t see the lights until 3 a.m.  Nobody slept that night.  Just at daybreak, we pulled into New York harbor and a heavy fog set in [21]—and again, we went by the Statue of Liberty and never saw it. [22]

     They did manage to dock our little tub.  After we walked down the gang plank, it looked like we were intoxicated.  We had trouble standing up.  That’s what you call sea legs.  So, after 16 days at sea, we were the happiest men in the world.

 

[Getting Discharged]

     We had a short train ride to Camp Kilmer.  We spent one night there and on to a Penn Central Railroad troop train.  One half of this train went to Fort Sheridan, Illinois and the other half to Jefferson Barracks.  There it took until Sunday, November 11th at 3 p.m., I was discharged.

     There to meet me was my beloved wife and our young son Larry, my parents, and my in-law parents.  What a happy reunion that was.  So, I was in the service for two years, nine months, and 27 days.  It sure was good to be a free man again.

 

- John A. Schubert

 

[1] This was a deliberate omission of information by the Army.  It was how they protected troop movements.  In the military today we call this “operational security” or OPSEC.

[2] OPSEC again.

[3] More OPSEC… so that no one aboard would know (or could leak) the route the ship was taking across the Atlantic.  This was meant to increase the survivability of the Allied fleet, particularly against German submarines (also called U-boats).  The movies The Imitation Game and U-571 are modern dramatizations that demonstrate the significance this threat. 

[4] Again, to avoid or throw off German U-boats.

[5] The port at Glasgow is extremely secure based purely on its geographical location.  As he mentions, they had to go up the Clyde river, so it is not accessible by open ocean unlike most other European ports.  Even German U-boats would have had an incredibly difficult time accessing or attacking the Port of Glasgow without being detected in the more shallow river waters.

[6] The Eighth Air Force was also called “The Mighty Eighth”.  It is best known for it’s B-17 missions.  Well-known movies such as Twelve O’Clock High and Memphis Belle are from units within the Eighth Air Force.

[7] The 48th Fighter Bomber group underwent many iterations as the war progressed and as airpower technology rapidly developed.  While manned vectored flight had been around since the Wright Brothers succeeded at Kitty Hawk, NC in 1903, WWII is considered the era of airpower maturation in terms of doctrine, tactics, and weaponization.  This was not even the final iteration of the group; its name was simplified to the 48th Fighter Group (48 FG) in May 1944.

[8] The P-47 is the great grandfather of the A-10 Warthog.  The “thing” that the P-47 did, like the A-10, was what we now call close air support (CAS).  Meaning, it was specifically designed to attack enemy troops, armored vehicles, and defensive strongholds at relatively close distances, during heavy ground fighting, to protect Allied forces. CAS gave Allied ground forces time and space to maneuver and gain the advantage on the battlefield by capturing or holding key terrain.  I once heard someone say the A-10’s job was to “chew up enemy armor and crap victory” and I like to imagine the P-47 did the same thing in 1944.

[9] This is impressive, even by today’s standards.

[10] I believe this is Pointe du Hoc, a notorious 110-ft cliff on the backside of Omaha Beach.  It has been famous for a long time, but it is most well-known today from its depictions in the series Band of Brothers and the movie Saving Private Ryan.

[11] He is describing the Allied “breakout at Saint-Lo”.  He mentions the beachhead was six miles deep by 25 miles long… the Allies had to secure 150 square miles to bring all of their logistics equipment and supplies to shore.  The military calls this phase of an operation “reception, staging, onward movement, and integration” (RSO&I).  RSO&I requires lots of space (particularly for an offensive as large as Operation OVERLORD), and all of that space must be tightly secured and defended.  Additionally, RSO&I is considered one of the most critical and vulnerable periods of an offensive, because all the heavy-hitting equipment (tanks, artillery, etc.) and life-sustaining supplies (tents, rations, etc.) are present, but consolidated and inaccessible, so the entire operation is effectively a sitting duck for extremely effective spoiling attacks from enemy aircraft, tanks, or artillery.  Once forces are ready for onward movement (i.e. they have enough logistical equipment and supplies to keep the troops that move forward alive), they have to break out of their own defensive perimeter and take new ground to initiate momentum for the offensive.  Breaking out is one of the most difficult tactical maneuvers, arguably right after a wet-gap crossing (crossing a river, lake, marsh, etc).  Finally, Saint-Lo was of strategic importance because it was the nearest developed crossroads… in other words, it was the best place to establish a logistical hub to store and quickly/efficiently send forward supplies.  As I was told many times while at Army Command and General Staff College: “amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk about logistics.”   Without a logistics hub, the offensive would not succeed.

[12] The Germans surrendered Paris on 25 August 1944.

[13] I do not know precisely where this is, but I believe this is the location from which the 48 FG supported Operation MARKET GARDEN, which occurred 17-27 September 1944.  The 48 FG moved to Belgium in late September 1944.

[14] I believe this was the 373rd Fighter Group.

[15] I believe these were the attacks on the Bonn-Hangelar and Wahn airfields that were conducted with the 373 FG.

[16] This was the last major air offensive the Luftwaffe was able to conduct.  From June-December 1944, the Allied air forces were slowly but surely picking off Luftwaffe planes and airfields.  Due to other airstrikes on the German aircraft industry, the Germans had no way of replacing the airplanes they lost.  The Christmas Day offensive he describes was a particularly damaging blow to the Luftwaffe’s resources.  The New Year’s Day air campaign was really an “all in” and last ditch effort by the German army to breach the Allied front line utilizing whatever operational reach they could still muster with the Luftwaffe.

[17] This is wet-gap crossing!  Not the first or last one in WWII, but certainly the most notorious.  The Germans were almost entirely relying on this terrain feature to stop the Allies at this point.

[18] Buchenwald was liberated by the 6th Armored Division, Third Army on 11 April 1945.

[19] V.E. Day was 8 May 1945.

[20] Service members accrued points based on their time in service, service honors awarded, and their number of dependent children.  Each month in service = 1 point.  Each month overseas = 1 point.  Each campaign = 5 points.  Each medal for merit or valor = 5 points.  Each purple heart = 5 points.  Each dependent child (up to 3 children) = 12 points.  Once they reached 85 points, they could be discharged.  After V.E. Day the Army lowered the threshold to 75 points.  By the end of 1945, it was 50 points.

[21] In the weather forecasting world, we call this short-lived (but often heavy, especially in ports) fog phenomena “sunrise surprise”.

[22] Ironically, after deactivation in 1945 and then reactivation in 1952, the 48 FG became part of the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing based in Chaumont Air Base, France, which the French nicknamed the “Statue of Liberty Wing”.  To this day, the unit (now called the 48th Operations Group, based at RAF Lakenheath, England) bears the Statue of Liberty on its crest/patch.