Martin E. Logan
[b. 02/ 08/1926]
[Interview starts at 0:06]
Richard Ni: [Today is Friday, October 25th], 2007. I am Richard Ni and I am interviewing Mr. Martin Logan at 1105 Ridge Rd., Carmel, Indiana. Mr. Logan is a friend of a former teacher of mine. He is eighty-one years old and was born on February 8th, 1926. Mr. Logan served in World War II. He was in the 86th Infantry Division and held the rank of Private First Class.
RN: Where were you living when you were drafted, and how old were you at the time?
ML: I was living in Indianapolis, Indiana and I was eighteen years old.
RN: Could you describe the conditions of your household at the time? Did you have any siblings?
ML: I had five brothers and two sisters.
RN: Had any of them already served in the war?
ML: My older brother was already in. My two oldest brothers did not go. My oldest brother had diabetes, and… my second oldest brother had a deformed shoulder, and he didn’t – he didn’t go.
RN: Were you allowed to pick which branch of service you joined?
ML: No. Either Army or Navy at that time – that was it.
RN: So you did not get to choose to join the infantry?
ML: No.
RN: But if you had the option to choose… which branch would you have joined?
ML: I requested the Air Force. Only then, it wasn’t the Air Force, it was the Air Corps then.
RN: Do you recall your first days in service?
ML: Vividly. I got homesick. I got very homesick, and if we hadn’t started the basic training cycle and started – I might’ve went AWOL. But as it turned out, they started the cycle and I was too busy to care.
RN: Could you describe your first boot camp or training experience?
ML: Basic training was at Ft. McClellan, Alabama, which at that time was an infantry replacement center. And like everyone else it was just, I was there because I had to be there.
RN: Could you describe how it felt like, being there, after you got used to the initial homesick stage?
ML: I kinda liked the army. In fact that’s the reason I re-enlisted. I especially liked parades. There’s nothing like marching in a parade, I’m telling you, that’s great.
[1:42]
RN: Could you… describe, in general, some of the basic training that they had you perform?
ML: My basic training was, uh, sixteen weeks. Six weeks of learning military life: how to drill, how to salute, how to march. And then eleven weeks of intensive infantry tactics – rifle range, which at that time was the M1 Rifle, which was a gas-operated semi-automatic weapon. Machine guns, flamethrowers, demolition, and tank run over yore when you’re in a foxhole. We had a very thorough basic training.
RN: So did you feel you were very well prepared?
ML: Yes. Now, later on, when the Bulge broke out, they needed men and they were shipping, uh, guys over there – I understand some of the young men didn’t even know how to use their rifles, how to use the M1. My basic training was very thorough.
RN: Did you use any special methods to get through being away from home? Did you have any really close friends or…?
ML: Well, you… how should I say it? You get close. In the army they had what I call a buddy system. The buddy system worked like magnets, you get kinda drawn to each other. And then you become – you become real good friends. My real good friend in basic training went with me all the way – went with me to the 86th Division, after basic training - by the way we were in the same squad, the same platoon in basic training, and we were in the same squad and the same platoon in the 86th Infantry Division, and he stayed with me all the way during the war until Heyte when his hearing went bad – he lost his hearing and they sent him, sent him home. So he didn’t go to the Philippines with me. He was a very close buddy.
RN: [Interviewer’s fumbled question omitted] After you went through training at Ft. McLellan, did they ship you off to anywhere else?
ML: Yes… I joined the 86th Division because I was eighteen years old. They sent me to the 86th Division which at that time was located at Camp Cook, California, which is now Vanderburg Air Force Base. During the war, Camp Cook was an infantry and armor training center, right on the edge of some desert, I think the Mojave, but I’m not sure. And then from there, we went down to Camp Pendleton San Luis Obispo. San Luis Obispo was one of the seven original Spanish missions, and they built the camp right around that.
[6:10]
RN: Where exactly did you go in the European theatre when you first arrived?
ML: We landed at LeHavre. The 86th Division had extensive amphibious training. We were scheduled for the Pacific. We knew that – nobody told us – because of all the amphibious stuff we were doing, so obviously we were going to the Pacific. And we had just finished… what we called our graduation landing, which was an assault landing on the Marine base at camp Pendelton. After that we were packing to go, uh, somewhere in the Pacific, when the Germans broke through in the Bulge. General Eisenhower needed bodies – needed men, bad. So we were ordered to the Pacific – I mean Europe. We got on a troop train – not a passenger train, but a troop train, which was especially made for the army; they’re not very nice at all, they’re very rough. We went nonstop from California, from San Luis Obispo, California, to Boston, Massachusetts. We had priority, we didn’t stop at all. At Boston we were there 5 days before we got on a converted luxury liner – the John Ericson. There were 5,000 men on that ship. Went from Boston to the LeHavre, France, and loaded. Gone up to, went up to… by the way, they had to have some place to hold you until you got all your equipment back off of the boat. And all the holding camps, and they were all in France, and they were all named after Cigarettes – Camp Old Gold, Camp Lucky Strike, Camp Pall Mall, Camp Chesterfield. From there we got on the 40 and 8, or what we called the 40 and 8, which means 40 men or 8 horses. We went through France, Belgium, Holland, and into Germany down to Aachen. From Aachen down to Durn River, which is where – all the railroads after that were destroyed. Got on the trucks, went down to Köln. Spent my first night out on the Rhine in Köln. The Germans had, uh, had the east side of the river and we had the west side of the river.
RN: Do you remember how it felt when you first arrived?
ML: Where, in France?
RN: Yeah, in France.
ML: It was cold. France is a cold country, and they had little pot bellied stoves but you couldn’t fry an egg on the daggum thing. Wasn’t any good at all.
RN: Emotionally, was it…?
ML: Emotionally, yeah. Also, when we left France to go into combat. You had to turn in all your identification, turn in your wallets, rings, watches – the only identification you had was your two dog tags, and that was all. So that kind of, uh, kind shook you up…? You know, how’re they going to identify me if I get killed or something? Oh that’s what the dog tags were for.
RN: Can you identify the assignment you had in the European Theater? Not you specifically, but the general assignment of your division?
ML: It was an infantry division. You know what infantry is, what marines are…?
RN: Yeah
ML: They’re what you call frontline troops. They’re the killers.
[10:17]
RN: How often did you see combat?
ML: Once we left France, and you have to remember we only got to Europe only because the Germans broke through the Bulge, only because the Germans broke through. Had they not – had the Germans not broke through, we’d have been in the Pacific, we’d have never been to Europe. So we were a late division getting there. Once we got into combat, we were in combat constantly until the war ended, about forty-five to fifty days.
RN: Were there many casualties in your unit?
ML: My particular company was L Company, and the army uses the phonetic alphabetic, so L Company was Love Company. But we always said we should be called Lucky Company because we had less casualties than any of the other companies altogether.
RN: Were you ever shaken up by the casualties of other people you were close to?
ML: Oh yes. You don’t see a dead body that’s all blown to pieces or anything that doesn’t have an effect on you. After a while, you get kind of calloused, it doesn’t bother you as much, but at first, yes, definitely.
RN: Could you recall a couple of your most memorable experiences?
ML: Oh, I’ve got a lot of experiences, a lot of them I remember vividly.
RN: More than a couple is perfectly fine.
ML: Well, you want the funny ones or the terrible ones?
RN: Whatever your decision is.
ML: Alright, I’ll tell you one of the… we were green outfit, we were new to combat and they put us in Köln. We replaced the 8th Infantry Division, and they had foxholes right up on the Rhine River. Right up on the bank of the Rhine River. The bank went down steep, probably fifty feet or better. Very steep. The Rhine River is very wide, I don’t know how wide it is, but it is also very fast. So we were right up on the Rhine, we were there about five days, when the 82nd Airborne relieved us. And now the 82nd Airborne had been in since Africa, they had been in combat quite a bit. So being shot at wasn��t anything new to them, but it was to us. So myself and this fellow I was in basic training with by the name of Dick Leckley; we were in a foxhole at this was about one o’clock in the morning, when the 82nd Airborne came up to relieve us, and the guy said, the sergeant said, “alright, you guys get out of there”. And the two of us started to get out, and just at that time, some German machine gun on the other side of the river just opened up. They weren’t shooting at us, they were just firing intermittently, just – just shooting. And the bullets just happened to be going our way, and a bullet came over our heads going “Zoop! Zing!”, and the guy said “come on get out of there they can’t hurt you! Get out!” The two of us crawled out on our bellies. That was my first experience with combat. I’ll tell you something, that was a little bit nerve-wracking.
RN: Yeah, I can imagine why
[13:44]
ML: Later on, I can’t remember the name of the town, but there was a German mess unit up there. You know, a cook’s cooks, they left a truckload of fresh eggs. Now we haven’t had fresh food since we’ve left the ship, haven’t eaten since we left the camp in France, Camp Old Gold. From then on, we’d been eating K-rations, which was a little box of wheat crackers, dehydrated coffee, little can of jelly, and that’s all. So when we found those fresh eggs, we went bananas…. Oh boy, oh hot diggity dog, fresh eggs! And at that time, the old steel helmet was in two parts, there was the helmet liner and the helmet fit over it. You could take the steel helmet off and use it for a pot. You could wash for your feet, wash your face, or – we were going to use it to cook eggs. So we sat down and started cooking eggs, started and guy lit fires, and soon as the smoke from the fire went up, oh boy the Germans had that truck zeroed in and they blew it to pieces. The artillery came in – oh, before the artillery came in I had a field jacket – it had two, two pockets – two breast pockets, and I had put an egg in each pocket. When the artillery started, I went down on the ground and then went with the eggs flat.
[15:17]
Well, it was alright as long as the weather was cold, but boy in the Spring when it warmed up, pheww, I couldn’t stand it those pockets rotted out. And at that time I had we were crossing the Isar River. And this is a major crossing, we were – the 86th Division was the first division to cross the, Danube, and right after that the ice river. And we had tanks flying up on the banks and we were going in ten men boats. Ten men to a boat. And used rifle butts for a paddle. And the Isar River was pretty wide and also pretty fast. All these rivers in Austria were uh, fed by the mountains and the Alps, all the snow coming down and melting. So the rivers were pretty, pretty swift. The boat I was in, and we were uh, these tanks were giving us covering fire, they were blasting the other side and the artillery and the flares were going pretty hot and heavy. And my boat hit a sandbar. I didn’t know I hit a sandbar because I thought it got hit cause of all the artillery going on, I thought it’d been hit. Nobody said ��� nobody had to say jump, everybody just instinctively jumped. All the water was up to my neck. It was cold, I had to – it had ice on the water. I waded oh, twenty to twenty-five feet before I got up to the – thank goodness the bottom of the river was sand, it wasn’t mud or we mighta got stuck there, because we had all the ammunition, and ammunition was heavy. And the rifle alone weighed nine pounds. So we – I got over there, got out of the water all right, and just as we got out of the water, a snowstorm, a blizzard came sweeping down through there, and there was, uh, something there, to this day I don’t know it was a log or a dead horse, but whatever it was, I laid down next to it to get out of the wind. And to this day I don’t know who got me up, but if somebody hadn’t gotten me up I’d have froze to death surely. And the next thing I knew, I was on the, uh, my platoon also got lost from the rest of the company. We got lost – in the snowstorm. So next thing I knew they were in the backs of uh, trucks, and uh, my uh platoon found a German truck. And we were driving along in the German truck. That’s when I became conscious to what was going on. And I was frozen – and I mean I was blue. And uh – a German plane uh – we were down in Austria now and it was very hilly, not mountains but very pretty high hills, and a German plane came hopping over one of these hills and circled that truck and everybody tried to beat each other to death trying to get out of that truck. Especially with these circles around I thought he was going to come back and strafe us, but he didn’t, he circled he went away. But we didn’t get back in the truck, and it’s a good thing cause I was so cold and I had, walking, and that’s why I got hurt I got frozen feet, had frostbite. And we found, uh, a house. We saw uh, a – this is about five o’clock in the morning – we walked all night. And there was smoke coming up out of the chimney, so everybody – the guys that could run, started running towards the house, and don’t you know it the rest of the company was in that house. And the old man was glad to see us, he gave us enough time to warm our feet – couldn’t dry our clothes, and we had to move on. Moved on again. So, now what do you got?
RN: Were you ever a prisoner of any kind?
ML: No
RN: Were there any really close calls?
ML: Yes
RN: Could you describe some of those?
ML: As we proceeded this particular place was in Austria, it was called uh, Berglin, that’s the name of the town, Berglin. And there was a canal there, you know there was a canal and uh, all the bridges were blown, the Germans had blew out all the bridges. So we had no armor, no supporting armor, and no supplies – no ammunition. So we had uh, a, attack. We were working in conjunction with another company, it was K-Company. K-Company was already in the town and they were having a bad time. And they were getting shot up – they got a lot of casualties. So they, requested help, and L-Company (my company) was sent to help them. We had terrible time on the – that was a real fight. And, this was a little village in Austria – only had one street with food, houses on both sides of the street. And the streets were narrow, you know, fairly narrow. And we – how do you work? You work in a squad, you go– one squad goes down one side of the street, the other side goes down, and you – you capture a house as you go. You shout out, clean that house, and then you fire, and you give the other guy the covering fire, you shoot the heck out of their house as they move up, and then they clean out their house. And then they give your covering fire on the next house, so you move up, and vice-a versa until you get em, get em all…. And we had our house taken care of very well, but they were having trouble with the house, so somebody brought up a German Panzerfaust which was an anti-tank rocket, had an eleven pound warhead on it. And they fired a house and blew that house to pieces. And because the streets were so narrow, it wrecked our house too. And before that, Dick Leckley, my buddy, he found some raw sausage. And he said, “Logan, I got some sausage. You want a chunk of sausage?” I said “yeah!” The two of us sat down against the wall that faced the street, and when that Panzerfaust exploded, it wrecked our house, the walls parted, the ceiling came down, the windows fell in, we had that squeezed like that, squeezed all of it… squeezed it right out of there. That was scary.
When we left Köln, we went down the uh, at that time, they just had a pontoon bridge across a Bonn. So we went across the Rhine on a pontoon bridge. And then we went back north towards Holland. And that was the Ruhr pocket…. They had encircled about 300— to 400,000 Germans in the pocket. And the Ruhr was the industrial heart of Germany, and that’s where all the steel mills and coal mines are. We had to go back north with, it was a big operation. And when we went back north, we became part of the 18th Airborne Corps. We were infantry but we would’ve – if they used us we would’ve been in gliders, but fortunately they never used us. But the Ruhr Pocket involved the British. The British were coming down from the north, and we were coming up from the south, and it was a big major battle. One place in particular I remember was uh, Bonzelle, that was the name of the town. And there was a lot of German artillery there, including railroad guns. I don’t know if you know anything about railroad guns, but they’re large caliber. They’re 8 and 12 inch. When I say 8 inch or 12 inch, I don’t mean the length, I mean the diameter. For instance, an 8 inch shell, an 8 inch diameter, is 36 inches long, and weighs 200 pounds. A twelve inch shell, that’s twelve inches, weighs 48 inches long, and weighs 500 pounds. And they, they just blasted the dickens out of us. Artillery is terrible.
RN: Were you ever injured?
ML: No, I’ve had a rifle shot out of my hands. Had uh, my clothes blown off of me. Had the heels shot off of my shoes – but I never got hit. [Knocks on wood].
RN: Were you ever awarded any medals or citations?
ML: Got the uh, Bronze Star Medal.
RN: How did you receive these medals?
ML: Well, I tell you, it’s funny cause I didn’t get the medal until I was in Korea. And they called me up – for – the captain wanted to see me. He said, “I got your bronze star medal from World War Two.” And that’s where I got it, in Korea. And I didn’t even know it, I didn’t know I got it – was completely unaware of it.
RN: So it came out of the blue, but you deserved it.
ML: Also got the Combat Infantry Badge [takes out envelope]. You know what the Combat Infantry Badge is?
RN: Uh, no, I’ll stop the tape real quick.
[Interview interrupted to take a look at the combat infantry badge]
[24:56]
RN: How did you stay in touch with your family during the war?
ML: Write letters. And my letters were censored. For instance, my Grandmother came from Emsdetten, Germany, which is up near Holland. And when we were in the Ruhr pocket, we were going up – if we’d have kept going we’d have went right into her home town, which was fortunately under a British sector. So I wrote letter and told my mom that it was getting close to grandmother’s home town. It was censored [makes snipping noise], she never – she didn’t know what I was talking about, you know how they censor the letters? They cut em out. So when she got the letter, it was all full of holes [laughs].
RN: How often were you able to send letters and receive them?
ML: Well, writing is a catch as catch can. You don’t say tell you what I’m going to sit down and wrote a letter because –
RN: You never know.
ML: You never know, right. For instances – you go seventy-eight hours without sleep – constantly. When you do sit down, you don’t write a letter, you go to sleep, right now, you just go to sleep. And you go to sleep anywhere – on the ground, in the mud, in the water, wherever. You just get a chance to sit down, that’s it, you’re gone. And also, when you’re in combat, you get uh – like I said you go continuously without sleep and without food. And while the first thirty hours or first twenty-four hours is not bad, but after thirty hours or thirty-five hours you begin to get edgy. By the time your three days is up, you’re dangerous. You’re not only dangerous to the guys around you, you’re dangerous to yourself, because you don’t know what you’re doing. You’d be surprised – after 78 hours, you become giddy. Also, in the infantry, you don’t say, “well oh I’m going to go to bed” or “I’m going to take a shower” or “I’m going to change clothes” – you wear the same clothes. We wore the same clothes from the time we left France to the time the war was over. Never took a bath – ever. In World War II, they had Typhus – two guys in a trench had Typhus, and at the time they found out Typhus comes from body lice. And body lice, when they bite you, you scratch them, and… you smash them. Well, when you smash them, they go in the skin, and that causes Typhus. It’s deadly, Typhus – it’ll kill you. So, about, oh, I’d say probably about the fourth or fifth week, sometime after we left Köln, the medic came around, and you ever hear of DDT? It’s a brand of insecticide now. They don’t even make it anymore because it’s dangerous. And at that time they didn’t know it. It was hailed as the miracle insecticide.
RN: Oh, I do remember that now, yeah.
ML: Well, they came around and you opened up your fly. You ever see the old time fly spray where you pump it? Well instead of food in there, there was ?Alloderm? dust, so they pumped you full of dust. DDT in your crotch – then you open up your shirt, and you raise your – you had on an undershirt, a long john shirt, a wool shirt, a sweater, and a field jacket. That’s was it – what you wore. You raise your arms, and they squirt DDT in your armpits. And opened up your chest – and the hairy guy, they sprayed the chest. And you take off your helmet, and hold your head down, and they – put you full of DDT and rub it in. Everybody looked like ghosts. And that’s the only bath that – never took a bath, never shaved, the whole time. And I had that same experience in Korea, but Korea was a different – it was cold in Germany, pretty cold – cold enough for me to get frostbite feet. But in Korea the temperature went down to 49° below zero.
RN: Oh, wow.
ML: And you couldn’t take a bath if you wanted to because everything was frozen. You were lucky to get drinking water. But that’s another story, we’ll go back to World War II. Anyway… you couldn’t take a bath, so consequently you couldn’t write a letter either. So, once in a while you find a piece of paper, you scratch or scribble down something – and mail it. You didn’t have to worry about stamps, cause all you had to do was write on there “free”.
RN: Did you ever receive letters?
ML: Oh yeah, you get em in bunches. Whenever mail caught up with you, that’s when you get your letters. You might get a dozen or you might not or you might get old newspapers or old magazines, or, hehehe, heh. Their moms or their sweethearts or their wives that sent them cookies or something, by the time they got there they were all smashed and – and you couldn’t go on sick call while you were on the front line, you couldn’t go on sick call if you were sick, you had to have a fever of 102, have that 102 fever, before a medic could send you back to the aid station. We had medics with us – not doctors, but medics – and they were very good, the medics a lot of guys’ lives, did a beautiful job. Life was – it was tough.
RN: Could how the food was? Was that at least bearable?
ML: There was no food. We ate rations. They were outta hot meals until, oh gee whiz – quite a while. Whenever the kitchen caught up with us. You were moving all the time, you couldn’t stop. You’d have to keep moving. So consequently, the kitchen didn’t have time to come up – they couldn’t say, “well, go up there and then we’ll cook,” cause we were gone. Besides that, they pull up there and the Germans might see them and blast them.
RN: That wouldn’t be good.
ML: Yeah
RN: You mentioned earlier experiences with the eggs, and the sausage - did you have many opportunities to sneak food?
ML: No, but I’ll tell you something funny that happened. We were expecting a counter-attack one night… so they brought up all the cooks and bakers, for extra fire power. We had a cook that was – he was about as smart as a box of rocks – he didn’t know right from left, I don’t think. But he was a cook, that’s all he was taught, so there was a chicken running around, if you could catch a chicken you were lucky. This particular time he said “if you guys find a chicken, I found some flower. If you guys get a chicken I’ll fry some chicken for you.” So some of the guys there, they got a chicken, I don’t know where they got it but they got it, and they cleaned it, and he fried it, and he fried it, and he fried. He goes “ok I think it’s done!” Well, when you bit into it you didn’t bite into it. You know what it was? It wasn’t flour, it was Plaster of Paris! He fried a chicken in Plaster of Paris! He’s lucky he didn’t get shot! We were about ready to shoot him, heheheheh! That’s one of the funny things that happened.
RN: Did you have plenty of supplies with you, even though --?
ML: Generally, they tried to keep you supplied, especially in ammunition. Not necessarily food – or clean clothes, but ammunition. Ammunition had priority over everything. Expect that one time in Berglin when they blew the bridges out – but they did, finally, they had an amphibious vehicle called a Weasel. Have you ever heard of it?
RN: No.
ML: It’s just a – like a jeep with treads, small, but they got a Weasel across it – into Holland. And we did get supplies and ammunition. No food, but plenty of ammo. Also, you couldn’t let down and – there were a lot of things sitting in Germany. When you were in an attack, you couldn’t walk down the streets because of, because of snipers. We had bazookas – we’d go through the house, and blow a hole, and shoot the bazooka and blow a hole through that wall and move through the wall [makes walking noise]. And the houses were all close to together, so when you blow a hole through this house, and this wall, and you just keep on going and stay out of the street. One particular wall I remember was in Köln, when we went through the zoo. We had to blow holes through the zoo wall, and one of them was the elephant pens. And the elephants were still there, of course, but they were dead….
RN: Were you under a lot of pressure or stress?
ML: Stress, yes. Especially from artillery. Artillery is nerve wracking. Absolutely nerve wracking. It’s bad enough to be out in the field, with no cover – it’s even more deadly to be in the woods, with artillery, because of tree bursts. You know you get shrapnel from the shell and you get splinters from the tree. So, uh, either way, it’s very, very nerve wracking. And the Germans had a weapon called an eighty-eight. An eighty-eighty means eighty-eight millimeters in diameter – three and a half inches. Oh, probably about that long [gestures using hands]. It was originally, uh, antiaircraft, but they found out it worked beautifully against tanks and infantry – a triple threat weapon. You turn it down and fire it at infantry. And it was a rifle, you know the difference between a rifle and a howitzer – a howitzer shoots lobs, and a rifle shoots flat. And they come in screaming – they go so fast they scream. And when you hear em screaming, you better drop, you don’t think about it, just drop, because when you hear a scream, it was in a second going to explode, somewhere it’s going to explode. If you don’t hear it, then it’s not even close. But when they come close, they really, really scream. And they had another one called uh, Nebelwerfer, which was a six barrel rocket. It was a pretty – pretty good sized shell, about a yard long, only about six inches in diameter. And they came in with a squishing, uh, screaming. And you could always tell that because, the difference between the eighty-eighty, because the eighty eight was – the bursts were – they weren’t close together as they were as a rocket – the six barrel rocket when they fired it, you’d get six at a time – six in a burst. So, yes, a lot of pressure, a lot of nerve wracking.
RN: Did it get better as the war went on?
ML: No.
RN: So by the time you went to Korea, did your experiences… did they help?
ML: I take that back, after you get in combat you get what they call combat wise. For instance, when you hear a shot, just the sound of a shot, you know what it is. You know if it’s an American rifle or a British rifle or a German rifle or a German machine gun – when a shell bursts, you just know. When you hear a motor in the distance, you can tell, “well that’s a German motor, or that’s a British engine”, you can tell. So you get combat wise. So by the time I got to Korea, I was – had been out of service for a while, but you don’t forget it. So life in the infantry in World War Two, was estimated as three minutes. The average life of an infantryman was 3 minutes. So if you lived longer than three minutes, you had a pretty good chance of surviving. Doesn’t mean that every day you’re going “well, I don’t have to worry about it cause my 3 minutes are up, haha.” But, the odds are in your favor. So that’s why I got to Korea – why – I was combat wise.
RN: Was there anything special you did for good luck during your stay?
ML: Praying. I did a lot of praying. As everybody else did. You know, they say there are no atheists in foxholes. Everybody prays. And I’ll tell you something else – did you ever see the movie The Dirty Dozen? Did you ever hear of it?
RN: Uh, no, the title seems familiar, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.
ML: It’s about – the army needed a special group of men to do almost a suicide mission. So they went to the prison, and they took – I don’t know I forget now ten men or twelve men, who were going to be hung. They had a death sentence. And they took them out and trained them, and if they survive the war, then they were free. Well, that’s no joke – [interview interrupted by phone call]. In my platoon, we had two lifers. When the Germans broke in the Bulge – before that, in the marine corpse too, they had a lot of casualties, they needed marines – they needed combat marines, not rear ___, but front line. So the Government went to the prisons. So these two guys were both lifers. One was outta Joliet, for murder. The other was out of some prison in the south, and he killed a bag carter during the heist – during the bag holdup. And both of them had life – and they could either go – and I know this because I got to pretty good friends with this one guy and he told me and he said they could either go in the army, err, in the infantry, or the marine Corps. Not the NL. No airborne, no navy, no nothing – infantry or marine. And if they survived the war then they were free. And they took em – they took em out of em. So that really happened. And they were good soldiers.
RN: How did people entertain themselves during the war? I mean, there wasn’t much time for entertainment, I know, but?
ML: Well, there was the USO if you were lucky enough to be back in the rear, or close enough, but in the front – there was no entertainment. The only entertainment – you know what, we had a, hehe, there was a saying called, “welcome to the Rhine plaza, welcome to Jerry and Bosch and the eighty-eight serenade. Jerry Bosch was the German word for the United States and the British called the Germans the Jerries and the French called them the Bosch. So there was no entertainment.
RN: So there were no entertainers that came up
ML: No.
RN: Didn’t think so.
RN: So did you ever have the opportunity to go on leave, during your --?
ML: No.
RN: Never?
ML: No.
RN: Did you know people in your company that did?
ML: No. Once we got to Europe, nobody got to leave.
RN: So, where did you travel when you were in service – I know you didn’t get to… sight see or anything, but were there any specific places that you went, that you thought were…?
ML: Well, I did do a little sightseeing. Right before, uh, when we were going down into Austria – we were crossing from Germany into Austria. We were in a town called Haag. H-A-A-G. And across the river from Haag is a town called uh –
[Interview interrupted by phone call]
[End of side 1 of tape, beginning of side 2]
ML: They were too strong for us, so we had to pull back and back into Haag. And in Haag, there’s an old castle. So the next day after we pull back, we were uh, just – cooling on a hill, just taking it easy. So myself and another guy said, “Let’s go – let’s go climb that – go in that tower.” So the two of us climbed into that tower. We weren’t supposed to, but we did. That was a very interesting tower. And that was the only sightseeing I did until the war ended. When the war ended we were at Seekirchen, Austria. And because the 86th Division had already had amphibious training – and nobody knew it then, but the invasion of Japan was scheduled in September – of ’45. So because the 86th Division had amphibious training, we were the very first division out of Europe. They took from Seekirchen, Austria clear back up to Heidelberg, Germany. And in Heidelberg there was a little ‘ol big old castle. And of course by then the war was over. And uh, we were able to go sightseeing over there. That’s the only official sightseeing I did. I have to tell you another instance. We were coming back from Seekirchen. Now my older brother was in the Air Corps. And he was there from uh, early ’43 – almost all through the blitz. And when the Germans broke through, Eisenhower needed bodies bad, and they took all the non-essential men out of the Air Corpse and put them in different things. And they put my brother n the combat engineers. So he knew I was in Germany from letters my mom wrote. And he knew I was in the 86th Division. And he was at Nuremberg. And he was talking to an MP – and by the way my brother had blond hair, real jack straw blond. And this guy – we were going by on our truck, we were going up to Heidelberg in our truck. I bumped my buddy next to me and said “hey that looks like my brother Jack, but that can’t be because he in the Air Corpse, in England.” Well I didn’t know they took him out – well it was my brother Jack! He was talking to the MP, he said, “I asked the MP if he knew anything about the 86th Division, the MP said ‘yeah there they go!’” This was after the war when we got home, we were talking, swapping war stories going on. So that one time that really was my brother Jack – I passed him and didn’t even know it.
RN: What were some of the pranks that you guys would pull on each other during the war? Did you ever have – it was too serious for that?
ML: No. No, it was a dangerous thing to do. And after you’re in combat for a while you get edgy. So somebody got up and poked you, you’re likely to get up and shoot him. That’s another thing – you get edgy. So if were asleep – at that time we would uh, sack out. In a barn on the field or something. As soon as somebody touches you, you’re up. Right now, you’re wide awake.
[47:28]
RN: Is that something that stuck with you… – did that last, for a few years?
ML: Yeah it lasted a while, till I got back home. I had a cousin come stay with us for a while. He went to wake me up one morning, and he touched me and I had him by the neck before he knew it.
RN: What did you think of your fellow officers and soldiers?
ML: Well – there are good officers, there are bad officers, there are good soldiers, there are bad soldiers. Our officers were good – especially my, uh, company commander. I thought the world of our – of course I was only eighteen years old, but I thought my company commander – he was thirty-five, I thought he was an old man. But he was a very good officer, very good.
RN: So you mentioned you were extremely close with your buddy – did you keep a personal diary – err, you didn’t have paper or anything. But you do recall a lot of --
ML: unh-huh.
RN: When your service ended, do you recall the day that it officially hit you?
ML: When the war ended, we didn’t know it. I got a lot of places, a lot of big celebration. But we were in Austria; they put us on an M-7. A tank destroyer. [Takes out photos]. By the way that’s me when I first got drafted – I was eighteen years old [stops tape to look at pictures]. They put us on the M-7 tank destroyer, and told us to keep going until we meet opposition, but we never did meet opposition, so we didn’t know the war was over for a couple of days. Fortunately, we didn’t see any you know – if we’d have saw any Germans, we’d have probably shot ‘em. So we didn’t see anybody, so we lucked out that way.
RN: Do you remember the scene when you did find out? Was there any… massive celebration?
ML: No, we didn’t have any celebration till we got back up to Heidelberg. And, in fact we were in Manheim, Wolstock, which was a little town across from Heidelberg. And we had a beer party over there – that’s the only party we ever had in Europe.
RN: During the war, did you ever liberate any concentration camps?
ML: Yes – not the big ones, but we liberated labor camps – big labor camps up in the Ruhr. They used em – they had slave labor up there for the coal mines and the factories. I can’t tell you which one it is, I don’t know.
RN: When your service did end, how quickly were you able to return back home?
ML: Well, like I said we were the first division out of Europe. We came back to the States right away. The war was over, what, May 8th? I wasn’t back in the States until about almost the first of June. They gave us a thirty day furlough, and uh, then we reported – the division reassembled at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, at Tulsa. And we were in there about 5 days, then we went on the train and went to Camp Stillman, California. It was a portable importation – and got on a boat, on the Admiral Hugh Rodman, a brand new navy transport. It was a big ship – there were 5,000 men on that ?dude? too. And it was a fast ship, we went by ourselves. We didn’t go in convoy like we did… when we went to Europe, we were in convoy. But when we went to the Pacific, we were by ourselves. And uh, it was a zigzag course – we didn’t know it then, but the navy did – the Cruise of Indianapolis had just got sunk, just up about a week or so ahead of us. So we zigzagged, and we went to uh – the war was still on, now.
We went to Ulysses in the Caroline Islands. Ulysses is the biggest and the deepest anchor ?unit? in the Pacific. And from – we woulda went from Ulysses to Okinawa, from Okinawa to Japan. It was a stepping stone. By the time I got to Ulysses, I found out the war was over. We went by ourselves, we were uh, blackout – cause the war was still on. When we got to Ulysses, it was pitch black and I couldn’t see anything. The next morning, I never saw so many ships in my life. It must’ve been 10,000 ships there, all ready for the invasion of Japan. We were there about 2 days – we didn’t get off the boat. Then from Ulysses we went to Eniwetok, from Eniwetok to Tacloban Leyte, which was in the Philippines, from Tacloban up to Batang, this was on Luzon. There were no uh, docks, so we had to go down cargo nets, then in the landing crafts – they took us to shore in a landing craft. So we were in a rice patty – set up in a rice patty. We stayed there – oh, I don’t know, a couple weeks. And a rice patty is interesting, it was all mud. And it rained in the Philippines all the time. And then from there we went to Marikina. We got the Philippines, uh, oh, about a week or so, maybe two weeks after the war was over. And there were a lot of Japanese holdouts. But the 38th Division was going home – they had a bad time there. So the 86th Division was taking over all the Philippines. And all the high point men – you had to have so many points to go home. And they were going home, so we got all the fillers from the other divisions in the Pacific, whose guys didn’t have enough to go home, so they sent em over to us. And we were going around and taking around Japanese. The war was over but we were hunting Japanese. Several different places. The last place I was out on Luzon was uh, at a place called ?Mobin te Baez?, which is north of Manila -- about 90 miles north of Manila. And myself and two other guys from the infantry, we went on a landing craft, can you believe that? This was a big landing craft – not a small one, but a big one. I can’t tell you what kind it is, but it had a kanitar on it.
An LCVP stands for a Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel. They were about sixty feet – maybe forty feet. This landing craft we had was at least sixty feet, and a big one. And we were right on the Philippine Anderson Ridge, thirty miles along the coast, and they were hunting the Japanese. Went one trip around there, got in a big, big storm. Big storm – I never thought we���d ever get back. And I get deathly sea sick anyways. On the way there I was sea sick all the way over, and we come back I was sea sick all the way back, and when we went to the Philippines – it took 28 days to get to the Philippines, but I was seasick seventeen days before I got my sea legs. I can’t describe seasick to you, Richard. But I tell you, it’s terrible, it’s terrible, man. The two guys I was with was a Fike Stager and a Jameson Reed, and they stayed there – I don’t know why they stayed there, but they pulled me back, and I was sent down to Mindanao And we had two stockades down there, a Japanese Stockade– a Japanese PW, and an American PW – not PW, but guys who goofed up, who got Court Martialed. And we were there, probably um, oh, couple of months. And this is right down on the beach. And uh, oh, I don’t know sometime in April, I think it was, they sent an LCI – a landing craft infantry, which is a pretty good sized. And they picked up all the Japanese, took em back to Japan. And a couple weeks later, they sent another LCI down and picked up all the GI prisoners. And about 3 weeks they sent another LC down and picked us up. Took us back up to Leyte, that’s Tacloban.
And Taclobanis uh – the water table was very high. You could almost stamp your foot and draw water, that’s how high the water table was. So consequently they couldn’t dig any uh, bathrooms, any latrines. So they had uh, fifty-five-gallon barrels. Steps up the side and appropriate seat. And latrine duty, they give you a five gallon can of gasoline, dump some gasoline in the barrel and torch it, and stand there with a big paddle and stir the contents until it’s all burned up. That was a – talk about sickening. And then uh, oh, couple weeks later we came home. When I came home, I came home. And that big typhoon that hit Okinawa in ’46, we caught that – we rode that typhoon for three days, four days. They wouldn’t allow anybody on the boat, out on the deck. And the ship about drowned – and I mean really about drowned. And after the typhoon, we ran into a tidal wave. At sea, tidal waves are huge swells – they don’t become tidal waves until they get to land. But out in the ocean they’re big, big swells. We had a nice couple of days, and that wasn’t too bad. Came back to San Francisco. Got on a train, and came back to uh, at that time, to Camp Atterbury. Got my first discharge from Camp Atterbury. When I came back from Korea in ’52, I got my discharge at Camp Carson, Colorado.
RN: What did you do in the days and weeks after you got back??
ML: My dad was groundskeeper for the Indianapolis baseball club – the Indianapolis Indians. So I went to work for him, for a couple years. And then uh, I joined the reserves in 1949, and I got activated in 1950, so I went back into service.
RN: Did you ever have the chance to go back to school?
ML: No.
RN: Was your education supported by the GI bill, or?
ML: I didn’t have a high school education – I couldn’t go to college, didn’t have any diploma. And I did take a GED test, I got a GED test – err, diploma. But then, it was something knew, few people even heard for a GED diploma. I went to Eli Lily to apply for a job, and the guy told me, “you don’t have a high school education! I can’t give you a job.” I said, “I got a GED diploma”, and he said, “What’s that?” So I didn’t get the job.
RN: Did you make any close friendships during the service that you retained for a few years?
ML: Oh yes, oh yeah. All the fellows I been in combat with, we have the reunion. They come to it – in fact, I just had mine on uh, September 5th, 6th, and 7th, right here at the Sheridan. And there were 11 of them, 11. Out of the company that’s all that – out of 200 men, that’s all that’s left.
RN: Was there any veterans’ organization that you were able to join?
ML: I belong to the VFW, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and I belong to the American Legion. I do not belong to the Korean – I figure two’s enough.
RN: So what’d you go on to do after the war, after Korea
ML: After Korea?
RN: After the war – err, after Korea
ML: I went to work for the Civil Aeronautics Administration out at the airport. I worked there for ten years, until uh, General Eisenhower became President. And he had a real good buddy from the 8th air force during the war with General Quesada, and they federalized the civil aeronautics – and they changed it from the Civil Aeronautics Administration to the Federal Aviation Agency. And they closed us – it was right here at the airport, there was a technical development center on the southwest corner of the airport – it’s gone now, long gone. And it was a development center – the flashing lights on the airplanes, they were improved out here. Helicopter blades – the bonding wouldn’t stay, they improved that out here. That’s when the jets were starting to come out, and the jets would go to what they called a bird zone, and they hit a flock of birds, the birds would tear the cockpit up… the windshield wouldn’t hold. They developed a… compressed air gun that fired four pound chickens in 1500 miles an hour. They had a big steel plate, and they fire those and uh, Boeings had uh, canopies… just a windshield, till they got the windshield right, so that was – the bird zone was improved right out here. When they… federalized it, they moved it, and I was out of a job. And I had a friend of mine who was selling whiskey – he was a whiskey salesman. And he said, “Logan, you oughta try selling whiskey.” And I said “Well I never sold anything but newspapers in my life”, and he said “Well try it”. Well I did, and I sold whiskey for thirty-four years.
RN: So did your military experience, did it influence your thinking about war or the military or general?
ML: Again, my military experience – I’m a firm believer in the military, absolutely. You know what, there would be no United States if it wasn’t for the military.
RN: You mentioned that you’re in a couple of veterans’ organization. What kind of activities that your post or association have?
ML: Well, I belong but I’m not an active member, so I couldn’t tell you.
RN: So how did your service experience affect your life after the war? Did it play a big part in everyday life or not really?
ML: Well it made me appreciate life, I tell you that.
RN: Yeah.
ML: And it made me appreciate food, I don’t waste food. And it made me appreciate water – you don’t know how thirsty you can get when it’s cold and there ain’t no water. And it made me appreciate a good bath, and a good shower.
RN: All those things that we normally take for granted
RN: Is there anything else that you would like to add that we covered in this interview? Anything --?
ML: No, uh, only one time up in the Ruhr pocket, my uh, squad – we were running point. That is, we were scouting for everybody. And we went – I don’t know where we were, but we went down a hill – on the side of this hill was a wheat field, it was all winter wheat…. And this was about – dawn was just breaking – you could just tell it was winter wheat, it was light enough. And a couple hours later, the Germans started “shoop”, they started blasting everything. Everything. And we moved into a barn – a barn was made out of fieldstone, out of boulders. And they hit that barn a couple times, and we finally got orders to retreat – we had to run back up the hill, back up to the wheat field, and the wheat field wasn’t there anymore, it was all gone – it was all blasted to pieces. Just as I got up to the top of the hill, a shell lit behind me somewhere, and it blew me forward and it blew my clothes off – my pants. And I was laying there, and I was looking at the top of a tree, it was funny – the top of the trees were jumping off – big, big pine trees. What it was, was dispersion shells going through, passing through em, and when they went through the top of the trees just flied off. And also they were shooting uh, impact explosion, and there was some guy under a tank – there was a Sherman tank sitting over there. And some guy under a tank he said, “come on under here, come on under here!” I thought to myself, “bull s*** man, a shell hit that tank, it’s going to be like a Bunsen Burner. So I just picked myself up and kept on running. It was uh, about a couple hours later – I got a pair of pants. But I didn’t have any pants on at all, blew my clothes away – I had my jacket on, but nothing else – and my boots. You’d be surprised how fast you can run. I think I broke a four minute mile, then. All right Richard, anything else?
RN: Uh nope, that was a really good conclusion to the story. Thank you.
[Interview is continued a couple minutes later]
ML: One place in the Philippines – now the war is over, and we’re on… what they call outpost duty. Now this particular place we were there was a big cave, like Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Big cave. So myself and three other guys decided to Spelunking, we’d decided to go cave explorer. And we had a Coleman lantern. And we were going through the cave with a Coleman lantern. And we come into this one room, and there had been an earthquake or something, cause part of the wall was on and it was daylight. And there was a big hole in the center of the floor, probably 5 feet in diameter. I held a light over to see how deep it was, you couldn’t see how deep it was. One of the guys said “Well here’s a rock, let’s drop the rock in there and see, you know, wait for it to hit.” I think that rock’s still falling, we never did hear it. Never did. Now down at the end of room, there was a hole in the wall, but it wasn’t a hole, it was kinda like a church – it came up to an arc, kinda arced up to a point…. And it was low enough, so you had to duck down to go through, and so we went through – the first guy went through with lantern, cause we didn’t want to step off in a hole somewhere. So we got through, he said “come on in”, so the rest of us went in there, and we got in they held a light up so we could see where we were. And the room was full of red dots – there were red dots everywhere! They were bats. A whole lot of bats start dropping, boy I talk about panic. Talk about panic – we about beat each death to get out of there, who was going to get out first. Scared the hell out of me. That was a very interesting thing.
[Interview concludes here 70:11]
