“Today is 10/7/07. I am Willie Griswold and I am interviewing Richard Dennis Alowishus Courtney at 1212 N Ridge Rd. Muncie, IN. Mr. Courtney is a family friend. Mr. Courtney is 82 years old and was born on 6/4/25. Mr. Courtney served in WW2. Mr Courtney was in the 26th Yankee division and held the following rank: PFC."
WHG: what is your full name?
[0:00:01]
RDAC: Richard Dennis Alowishus Courtney, there’s a story that goes with Alowishus too, that will be another story.
WHG: What city were you born in?
RDAC: Altoona, Pennsylvania, A-L-T-O-O-N-A
WHG: In what year were you born?
RDAC: 1925.
WHG: Where did you go to high school?
RDAC: Altoona Catholic High School, a small school.
WHG: Did you enlist or were you drafted in the military?
RDAC: No, I volunteered.
WHG: In what year?
[0:00:35]
RDAC: 1943, May 18th. I enlisted ¾ I was 17 so they put in enlisted reserve until my birthday June 4th so I’d be 18. You couldn’t get in then. Since I had not graduated from high school the 10th, they let me stay and I went into the army officially on the 25th of June.
WHG: what made you want to go into the army?
RDAC: What made me want — well the war was on. Everybody was trying to do their part. We didn’t have it like today where half the people are opposed and descending and so fourth. The whole nation realized we were at war. We had to stop the Germans from taking over the world. So I had two brothers [who] had been drafted they were in the army one was down in Texas, one was down in the South Pacific, and my three sisters’ husbands were in the service, one in the army and two in the navy. So, it was the thing to do— to defend our country.
WHG: Were you still living in Altoona when you went into the military?
RDAC: Yeah, it was my home I grew up at home finished high school and away.
WHG: I what part of the military were you in?
RDAC: Army.
WHG: Which division were you in?
RDAC: 26th. It was called the Yankee Division. It was originally the Massachusetts National Guard Division
WHG: What was your beginning and ending rank?
RDAC: The lowest level is private and after a year, I was made private first class PFC and that was it.
WHG: In which years were you in action?
RDAC: 1944 and 1945, I was in frontline combat for 210 days.
WHG: What were your duties on the battlefield?
RDAC: Fight. I was in an anti-tank gun crew most of the time, If I wasn’t used as a gun soldier; we were supposed to shoot tanks.
WHG: What were the other soldier’s opinions about the war?
RDAC: About the same as mine just get it over with all we wanted to do was win and go home. We were citizen soldiers, we weren’t professionals. We beat the professionals. The Germans were the professionals. They had been fighting for years they were well trained, we just beat them.
WHG: What countries were you in during the war?
RDAC: Well, landed in Normandy, that was France, fought across France into Germany then we came back and went up to battle of the Bulge in Belgium and Luxembourg and then I came across Germany to Austria and Czechoslovakia. So I was in six countries.
WHG: What battles were you in?
[0:03:24]
RDAC: Well, I was in the battle of Normandy, the battle of northern France, the battle of the Bulge, the battle of — I think they call it Central Europe and the battle of Czechoslovakia. We linked up with the Russians at the end of the war. You might like to know that on May the fourth we were going through Czechoslovakia — a pretty day like today and we had lost contact with the Germans. “Where are they?” I’d say. This happens some times. They were moving away. So they sent three privates out to locate.
[0:04:05]
The way you get locate— you go out and if they shoot at you, know where they are. So three of us were walking up this dusty road in the little village of Ebenau, about twelve houses. And they warned us — they said, “You might hear some armor coming. We’re pushing the German against the Russians so you might see some Russian armor coming at you, so oh thanks, you know. So we’re standing there and all the sudden I hear some rumbling coming through — the muldow river goes down the mountains come right down like this through the river valley and we heard this rumbling and looked down the road and “uh oh” coming around the curb right at us was a Tiger Tank. It was a German armor call, we didn’t know they had any left and there coming straight at us see and Shineer says “Courtney what do we do?” and I said “well,” I had a bazooka (I was also a bazooka man over my shoulder and I had three rounds with it) I said, “I can shoot the bazooka. It will bounce off the front of that Tiger like a ping-pong ball and then they’ll spray us down with their machine guns and it will all be over. We had no way of calling for help no walkie-talkie radio or anything. “Lets just stand here look tough and see what happens.” So the three of us just stand there hands on hips and here come rmm rmm rmm rmm rmm your looking right down the barrel of an 88 and just as they got maybe 75 yards away a little green Mercedes Benz, German staff car whipped around the tank came roaring up stopped right next to me the back door open, and this colonel came out, held the door and said, “mein General” (German) and the general came out and he salutes me, not the Nazi salute. He gave me the army salute. And surrendered the 11th Panzer Division to our three guys we didn’t have the heart to tell him we’re not the main line of resistance we’re just three privates, see. So we rose to the occasion and said, “okay, park them over here boys.” The whole call they were real tickled to surrender to us because the Russians were right behind them. They didn’t want the Russians to capture them they wanted the Americans to capture them, because we were more humane, Geneva conventional —that where the Russians would murder them all. So there were very docile like good we’re safe now the Americans got us so I said park them over here and they went down this hill over this big meadow and this whole column came up tanks trucks half trucks, and every thing they rode up very neatly—Germans were always neat, drove up this night row of vehicles. And then they all got out in company formation. And then we said, “Hands hoch” and they all stood. Hands hoch—‘Hands hoch’ means ‘hands up” and then we walked by and liberated all their watches, knives, and pistols—oh, remind me I got a knife in my coat pocket I got that day, and they were quite docile, and we had wrist watches up to both elbows. We couldn’t hold any more, so I said red take off your helmet, so we filled his helmet with watches, and we found a cloth bag and we filled it with pistols and knives, that was one of them, and then we took their bayonets and all. And I said, “What are we going to do next?” About that time an American jeep came up the rear looking for us. The guy looked across and saw us with troops lined up with tanks and every thing and made a u-turn and never spoke to us again and went roaring back down they must of thought we were damned or captured. And about forty-five minutes later we heard them calling from the rear and here they came up with a big staff car big hot staff cars. We hadn’t even seen them in Europe, I’d seen them in America but here are these staff cars and they pulled up in the field, they pulled up with the Germans. And the American officers got out, General Paul our division, they came out and stood there and the German officer came out and they all slowly shouted and then shook hands, you know surrender, and we didn’t care. We had this bag of loot we want to divvy up. We dragged this bag across the field into the Ebenau. And at a bar where they had this big round table, and we dumped it all on the table and we separated it, “you want the black face, you want the Belgian pistol,” I ended up with 13 pistols, and I have amazingly—I have the knife that I took off Adolph Hogrebe—he had his name on it. I’ve carried it in my coat pocket everyday for 63 years. You would think you would loose it or something you know, and here last winter I lost it—I went nuts thinking, “where did I loose it, how have I lost it?” Finally I found it the other day —it was in a kit on top of my dresser and I thought, “how did it get in there?” and I remembered a year ago, when I went over to Belgium when Chris was promoted, they said don’t take a knife with you on the plane they’ll take it, so you see I stuck it there and forgot about it. But I got it back again now. And that’s a quickie story.
And there’s a sequel to it.
I belonged to the Yankee Division Veteran’s Association at the headquarters up in Boston, and every ten years there’s a big controversy and there are people writing articles about who took the surrender, the 96th Division or the 26th Division, of the 11th Panzer Division, they were the first division we fought against in Normandy. And here they were at the end of the war and they had this big fight over who took it, and they, would never resolve it so this time they had this story here months ago and I wrote it and I said okay every 10 years I read this story and nothings happened I want to tell you who took the surrender I did. He got out and surrendered to me, if you want more details on my story read my book. If you don’t have it it’s coming out again get a copy.
WHG: Do you have any other stories as significant as that?
[0:09:57]
RDAC: Well, the toughest battle I was in was the Battle of the Bulge. We had fought across France, into Germany in the little town of Aachen. Not the big Aachen, the little Aachen. And then they were going to relieve us with the 87th Division so we were taken back to Metz. Like, “hey, we survived 60 days.” I remembered shaking hands with Ted Holt, “hey, Courtney, 60 days we’re alive.” We get back there and we were staying at . . . Fort Moselle the French army barracks and I thought this is heaven we had light, we had a ticking mattress with burlap over it, slept on their��we sat at a table and ate food. “Oh, this is heaven. We’re too far back for artillery to hit us and we’re feeling alive. That after noon I went to town and I sat at a pub with these French boys about your age maybe a little older drinking wine. They were so impressed with American soldiers. Well, I could speak French. So we were talking and I was buying the wine so we were all having a good time. And they wanted to see my 45 (so I wore a 45 on my hip). I pulled out the 45 and took the clip out and they were all passing it around then I slammed it in and as I tell in the book, I said in my best John Wayne manner, I said, "jell attorney a le guerre." Well, I got to get back to war, so they all wished me bonne chance, which means good luck. I walked back pretty proud of myself. As I looked forward, it started to rain. I said, I’m going to sleep inside; I won’t be in a hole in the ground and when I got back to the barracks I saw this feverish activity GI's running everywhere and my sergeant said, “Courtney, where have you been? We’re moving out and I said, “What do you mean? We just got here.” “Shut up. Just get it.” So I went in, got my pack and everything, came out and we had trucks lined up and we all got on the truck. Our truck pulled a tank gun so we had a big load of ammo and we had a tarp that layed over that and we sat on that. Anyhow, we sat out there in the rain and then it turned in to freezing rain, our helmet covered with ice and our shoulders covered with ice and everything. I said, “can’t we go in the building to wait?” And they said, “no, we got to be ready to go at a moment’s notice—typical army. We didn’t know what was going on. No one knew what was going on. Typically as a GI you don’t know what’s going on and when it got light enough at about 5 in the morning I could see a jeep and the officer was sitting on the hood of the jeep and they would go up to each truck and yell at them, and then finally he got to our truck and he said, “we’re going north. The Germans have broken through the Ardennes forest and they’ve over run two American divisions and we can’t have any cover from the air because of the fog; the planes can’t fly, they also have guys wearing American uniforms they captured, so be prepared.” We don’t know where we’re going or how far, and I thought, oh, I thought, we were winning the war and all of the sudden the Germans were taking over. So we sat there about another half an hour and finally [got] called and we drove all that day—freezing rain, icy wind just sitting in the back of this truck and we got to Belgium in the little town of Arlon and a woman came out with a pot of coffee for us. She was so glad the Americans were back. She didn’t want the Germans back again and we all got our canteen cups out and got coffee. And when I say “gas the trucks” my family thinks I mean stop at an Esso station. No, we had cans. We came out with 5 gallon cans and pour gas in the trucks. So we went all afternoon and all evening. And we got in the darkness 8 or 9 o clock that night we got to Luxemburg and got out in this forest the Ardennes forest. We said the Germans are out there somewhere, but we don’t know if it’s a mile or 10 miles. So we dug in and they said be alert all night. So one of the guys we had driving our truck, Charlie Campbell he had taken his 5 gallon water can and filled it with wine while we were in France and he’s driving the truck and drinking from his cup all the way up there. So he got drunk of course [and] we are going into the mountains into Belgium and we’re going and the drop off to the bottom was about 500 feet and Char lies up there drunk yelling, “wee wipe” and the 57 mm gun was swinging off the side and we’re about to go off the side screaming, “stop him, stop him!” Finally got the truck stopped and [a] sergeant . . . took over the wheel and Charlie fell asleep drunk next to him. So that night we got into the woods. So now we were thinking, “where are the Germans? What are we doing here? Where are we?” And all the sudden I hear “bang” and Charlie wakes up drunk. And he got his pistol out so he was drunk and he doesn’t know where he is and then he yelled to Robbie [Robinson] who was on guard and said, “Where are you Robbie?” and then boom, boom, boom. He emptied the clip on him and fortunately he missed. Next morning [they] came up and took Charlie away. We never saw him again, and well that’s the funny part. But I got into Bastogne. We were supposed to cut into the Germans. We were taking Bastogne and I was with Patton’s 3rd Army that was us. We came up and blasted into the side of them so they had to pull out of Bastogne, but in Eschdorf, Luxemburg, Eschdorf sits up on a hill I was there last November went to the same church I was in were down there firing at these tanks and the tanks are firing at us and we had 250 something, a German tank and a quad 50 over here. They’re coming down the hill and bam, they knocked out our vex gun direct hit killed half of them. Next, they hit the tank, “bam” and next, they hit the quad fifty and we’re the last gun and we [get] out our gun around the edge of this building just the barrel showing and we were firing away. My job was to slam the shell in and yell up. Telling you the breach block was ready to fire and Robby would pull the lever to fire and I’d turn around to get the ammo and I’d say, “where is the ammo?” and the rest were trying to get the boxes open with the bayonets because the ice has frozen on it couldn’t open it. They were trying to cut it open and when they got it open there were four shells per box—50 some thing mm fit in the cardboard shell normally had they shell—what happened was they opened it up and we had no ammo. Know what we had? Cognac. When we were in Saar-Union, [France], someone realized the bottles of Cognac fit in the shell case. Took half the ammo, put it in the straw of this barn and put in Cognac and [but?] the bottom half of the ammo was Cognac and the top was shells were firing away. It got to the point where it was nothing but Cognac and about this time they were thinking what to do so they figured we’d turn and run over the hill and McGregor came up with an idea. We hook the winch around this big tree and pulled the gun and put it on the truck and Robby took off with the gun and there were four left and we ran up the hill with boots on I and I had galoshes over that and the snow was probably a foot deep you try running up the hill with galoshes and snow and all the way up the hill I felt holes in my back because tanks were sitting there spraying the machine guns at us and all around you going pvvt-pvvt-pvvt all around the snow and the four of us made it over the hill and didn’t get hit but I didn’t realize till fifty years later when I was writing the book, having the Cognac saved our lives. Know how? If we’d have had more ammo, we would’ve kept firing and the German would’ve over run us, but when we stopped firing they saw us run over the hill. Well, we knocked them out. The coast is clear so they went back in, in was Christmas Eve so they went back into Eschdorf for the night. So breaking the rules of warfare we survived in dumb luck, we ended up out of there got into the woods. We were moving out to the woods machine gun fire coming down on us, we've got two replacement, we got behind these big rocks (which I saw a year ago) so we hid behind the big rocks. “Okay,” he said, “okay, move out. We got to go up the road.” And, oh boy, machine gunfire was coming right down the road and these two guys yelled, “Sergeant Biggat,” and he came running up and said, “what do you want?” and they said, “we’re not going up that road” and he said, “what do you mean you’re not going up the road?” Well, I’m telling you, we’re not going up that road. And he said, “Okay, come with me” and I don’t know where they went. We never saw or heard from them again. The rest of us said, “how about us? We don’t want to go up that road, but we did we finally went up the road and a couple of miles we got to a Y in the road. We stopped for a while trying to figure out which way. Where do we want to go? The Germans were right over here shooting at us.
[0:19:35]
So I dug the worst foxhole I dug in the whole war it was a flimsy hole and I took boughs across the trees and layed them on top of the hole. Kept out snow, rained, but didn’t keep the shells out. But I was pinned in that hole for 16 days and nights and the canteen was frozen; couldn’t have a drink so we had to take snow and get your canteen cup and push your fist into it to melt it and then you’d drink that and then we had K-rations in a box like this with a little can in there and it was awful pork and egg yolk or ham salad and then some rye crisp crackers and that was what we lived on for 16 days. Artillery, mortar fire just dropped on us all the time we got in there and we had I company and L company around us and they nearly got wiped out. We lost men there and later we got down to four men left four killed and my best buddy was killed right behind me in the fox hole. His name was Lambert Shamberlini. He was from Wilmington, Delaware. (He and Vic Martin—Vic [is] still living in Latrobe, Pennsylvania and the other guy’s Leroy Unverferth from Finley, Ohio. He was living a year ago anyhow.) And there would be loads of shells and we would just peak out [to] see what was going on. A jeep would come up from the rear make a hasty u-turn, throw of some cases of rations or something, roar back to the rear. One day we heard this jeep come and it really wasn’t in a hurry at all; it came leisurely and he got stopped on a road near us and these 2 officers [get] out and they looked like they just got out of the States. They had beautiful uniforms, they had creases in their trousers, their boot were clean and one was a colonel and I think the other was a captain and all the GIs in the hole said, “sir, you better take cover. We’re due to have another barrage any minute. He said, “that’s all right soldier. We’re just taking a look around up here and they walked up like they were on a parade route; they walked and turned and went up the hill. Just then “boom” we get a barrage of mortar fire and we heard “woom-woom-woom-woom-woom” and just then a head rolled down the hill and the colonel’s head was inside. It rolled past us. I don’t know where the other officer was but the guy who drove them up in the jeep he made a U-turn and he high-tailed in the rear. We never heard who they were, where they came from, but they said, “That’s all right soldier, we’ll just go look around,” and that was their last look. We were pretty lonely as they say. You get pretty depressed. It was dark all the time with this heavy fog and in daytime you didn’t see any day light till like 8 o’clock [AM] and it got dark about 4 o’clock and the Germans would switch sometimes and drop phosphorus shells on you—phosphorus—these sparks of red and they gave you this awful burning pungent in your nose and down to your throat. Ahww, you could hardly breathe and I thought, boy, if that stuff got on your skin it would burn right through, but we took turns being awake at night and one night about one in the morning I was on guard for our squad (what was left of them). And I had a carbine sitting on the edge of my hole so I had a carbine across my lap ready to fire—big flakes [were] coming down, big silent flakes and here we are black night all dark. We couldn’t make a fire even in the daytime because the light would give us away where we were. So we had no heat, bitter cold and all the sudden I dosed off something you should never do. I’m on guard for the others sleeping in the fox hole. I dozed off and all the sudden I woke with a start and sensed rather than see there were men right on the road near me and I yelled, “halt!” and I held my rifle out and a voice said, “stay awake Mac, stay awake!” and they went on down the road. I don’t know yet whether they were German or American.
WHG: When you went into the military did you go with any friends or people you knew?
RDAC: No, I went down had a pay and away, enlisted reserve. They sent me a piece of paper and told me where to be, so I took a train to Harrisburg and then took a train from there to New Cumberland and I got off along the railroad tracks and the guys were going up the hill so I walked up the hill and that was New Cumberland Army’s depot.
WHG: And when you were in the war did any of your friends receive any injuries or were any of them (interrupted)
[0:24:15]
RDAC: Yeah, I started to tell you about my friend Ciancaglini. He was in the ditch behind me maybe fifty seventy steps and this one day when the jeep came up the sergeant came up and ran over and . . . shelling started coming down, so he ran on and dove in my hole right on top of me. He wanted to get down and he just dove in boom, he landed on top of me and we were both pushing our face down into the dirt while the shells are bouncing all around us, and when he had a chance to get his breath he said, he took a direct hit. Sergeant Martin took a direct hit; he and Unverferth are badly hurt, but he said Ciancaglini’s dead—My buddy, see. I had two buddies both got killed. So later on I took a chance when the shellings stopped for a while I ran down the ditch sort of half running and crawling, and got to the hole and pulled up, there was a piece of shelter they had over the hole, and I pulled it up and there he was sitting there where he always sat in the corner of this hole. His glasses were smashed, his face was black from the burning and blood was running out of his mouth and froze on his chin, just a big long red column of blood it was bitter cold, and I said a prayer for him…, then I dove back in my hole. Then I laid there worrying, “how will they find his body in that ditch covered in snow?” Normally, if you had a guy like that, you took his rifle and put a bayonet on it and jammed it in the ground and took his helmet and sat it on top so they would find him, but I thought he didn’t have a rifle he had a carbine and you couldn’t but a bayonet in a carbine. What do I do they won’t find my buddy, his body will be there for years, and then I thought, “Stop this! You can’t worry about those things or you’ll just go nuts you just have to move on.
WHG: Do you know how to spell his name?
RDAC: Yes, c-i-a-n-g-c-a-g-l-i-n-i Ciancaglini
WHG: Do you know if they ever found his body?
RDAC: No, no I have no way of knowing.
WHG: Do you know where he’s buried?
RDAC: One time I went to Wilmington and tried to find him and there were 300 Ciancaglinis in the phone book, and I couldn’t find him, so I don’t know what happened, I guess they did. The other one you said getting killed my friend— there were three of us buddies we stuck together all the way through Tennessee maneuvers, and everything, Fort Jackson—together, the other one was Marty Agnew. He was from Bronx, New York—288 Oliver Place in Bronx is where he lived and I did get to see his family after the war. But what happened to him—we were good buddies all the way through winter maneuvers, and Tennessee and every thing, Fort Jackson the day we were ready to leave we were outside carrying on and we were feeling frisky and wrestling and everything. He got his leg twisted so he couldn’t walk and they took him to the hospital and so they left him behind. They put him in the 87th Division. And we never saw him again although we wrote to each other, because we got the addresses and after the war it was in Austria the 87th Division was right across the river in Germany. So I got in the jeep, went over there went down to Oberamergau, the town where he was and went and found his headquarters and asked for him and the sergeant came out and said, “oh, he’s kaput.” “What happened?” He said, he was killed the last day of the war crossing the Elbe River. He was shot right between the eyes. So both of my buddies were gone. That night I went back to carding and I walked along the river’s edge and said, “Lord, why me?” All three of us—those two are dead, “why did you save me?” And I often think about that and he had something for me to do. I came home and raised 7 children.
WHG: Do you have any of your letters from the war?
RDAC: My mother had saved the letters, but they’re in boxes in the garage with paper and I’d have a tough time finding them, but she saved the letters. I wrote home. We used to write V-Mail. Do you know what a V-mail is? Well, they came up with the idea that you could buy a V-mail form just a page this big and fold it in half and you would address it to them and you would mail it like… they always had a army post office APO 26 meant the army post office for the 26th Division. So you would send that to New York. Every division had an address they would get it in New York and they would photograph the letter, then they would take the real one, all these letters they photographed and fly it over to France then they would print them again. Then they would bring it out and you got a little copy, it was usually so blurred everyone was trying to write small to get a lot of words on it when the photograph wasn’t that good you’d get this little paper you would open it up and there was the letter, but it was so hard to read we thought, “aww phooey, we’re glad to get.” It wasn’t the same as getting a letter with hand writing and every thing.
WHG: How would you get stationary there, how would you get paper to write?
RDAC: We didn’t get any you would use what ever you could find… Christmas night I wrote a poem called Christmas night I can’t tell where. My mother used to write poetry all the time so she would be washing the dishes and say quick get me something to write with I got an idea for a poem. So here I am right after Christmas in the Bubershine [??] area. I had an idea I had to write this poem to my mother. I found the lid of a cracker box and I wrote the poem on there. “Christmas Night I Can’t Tell Where,” was the name of it. And mailed the box home folded it up and mailed the lid home… we didn’t have stationary or envelopes or anything whatever piece of paper you would find to write on, you’d fold it up and you would write your serial number on [it]. They didn’t charge you postage, you put your army serial number on and that was the same as the stamp and that went home.
WHG: Did you receive any special medals honors or awards?
[0:30:30]
RDAC: Well, the combat infantry badge the blue one, you prize that more than any thing if you were a frontline trooper, and live you had that blue medal over there with the disk around it, and if you got that you got paid $10 dollars a month extra. Big deal money was nothing I got a Bronze Star and there were four combat stars and there were some other ones I forget what they all are. Oh, know what happened? This was funny. You see a movie they … lined up all the troops and there are bands playing, they’re passing them out saluting and then the general gives them the medal right. We were in the Argonne Forest in France in WW1 trenches (what was left of them) and they came along with it and said, “here’s yours, here’s yours.” Came to our group said, “here Courtney, here’s yours, here’s your’s.” "What’s that?" Well, we were there long enough to have front line infantryman so they gave us icing glass, they didn’t have cellophane back then so they gave us like wax paper. And I pulled it out of the wax paper and thought, “what the heck is this?” “Oh, that’s a decoration. Put that on you.” Well, that’s how I got my combat infantry badge delivered, “here’s yours.”
WHG: What is your proudest moment or memory from the war?
[0:32:00]
RDAC: Well, —one was the war ended, and the eight of us, we took this town of — there’s a picture laying behind you the colorful folder there, see the folder—Cesky Krumlov over by the box. We captured the town the Germans called it Krumau.
Thomas Bruce Griswold: and this is in Germany.
RDAC: But anyhow we captured this town and we opened this concentration camp.
And in this one they were mostly all polish mostly all women, some older men, they were like slaves, people there use them as slave. They screamed laughing when we opened up the gate, yelling they saw Americans. And that night they asked us to come to this big long hut they lived in. And we went down they had gone and picked flowers and put them in bottles on the table. The eight of us came to this big long table with people on both sides of it and sang the Polish national anthem [he starts singing it], do American do sing it, like you sing your anthem. And I looked around and said, “Any of you guys know the words to the Star Spangled Banner?” and no one knew it. I said, “I’ll tell you what, Kate Smith had a song called ‘God bless America,’ we’ll sing that and they won’t know the difference.” So we sang God bless America, and in the end we all had tears running down our face and here we had freed these people. We felt a great exhilaration, we had freed all of Europe from the Germans and we were alive; we lived through it, the second part, and the third part we felt sad about all our friends we left laying face down in the mud in France or frozen to death in the snow in Luxemburg so that was probably my proudest moment.
WHG: Did you have any German friends?
RDAC: Oh yes, yes, I spent most half of the war in Austria and of course Austrians were in the war they were taken into Germany a lot of them were conscript and they fought in the army. One night in Bad Schallerbach, Austria I was having a beer with a guy, don’t know his name, he doesn’t know my name we were talking. He was conscripted into the German army, and we got talking where he was in the army and the more we narrowed it down when we were in Saarlautern, Germany there was a sail across the bridge. The 95th Division had captured the bridge and we were cross there we were holding this point into their lines and we were living in the rubble of the town, the town was really rubble; we were living in the rubble of the houses. In cobble stone street the Germans were across the street from us in the cellars. We were that close, from here to that house, that’s how close we were. We’re down [in] the cellars, they’re over there, turns out he was one of the Germans across the street. When we talk about where this house was in relation to the pillbox, the railroad station he was across the street from me. I said, “Look at this, one time we were shooting at each other and now were here drinking a stein of beer.” So we both agreed that war was kind of stupid. But I didn’t get his name he didn’t get mine and that was it.
WHG: Do remember where you were when the war ended?
[0:35: 34]
RDAC: Oh’ yes —I told you where they took the surrender of, the 11th Panzer Division surrendered to us, and all that afternoon and all that night … we didn’t know the army had much left to fight against us they came through and two days later they came through and we were still in this little village Ebenau its called and is got a changed name now. The Czechs changed all the names to something. Two days later we looked around and here came a column of Germans walking up, no weapons, just their uniforms marching back where they came from the enemy lines, and we said, “what’s going on?” The same guys we had captured disarmed sent back somebody made the decision to turn them over to the Russians. And they marched them all up, and I thought dirty deal they surrendered to us in good faith. There goes the 11th Panzer Division they’re taking them back and who knows they got shot or sent to Siberia whatever they do with them. We thought that was a dirty deal I remember Lieutenant Walter Coatey said, “I don’t know who made the decision.” And I said it was just easier for someone and he said, “well, get them back, get them out of here, or something off-handed like that.”
TBG: Did they tell you that the war was over?
RDAC: It was the fourth so it was about three or four days later on the day we heard the war was over and we have this big deal, here we are were the farthest most soldiers to the east in Europe. Where we were, the other guys were stopped way back here, were right at the point our little squad was way out at the point. All by ourselves in this town, And I thought we don’t have anything to celebrate with. I bet you in New York and Paris there are these big celebrations, this little pub that was there, and it didn’t have anything to drink in it. Just a building, so here we are at the end of the war and we have nothing to celebrate. We felt cheated, that’s what we were. Eight of us.
WHG: Could you retell me the story about the sword you got?
[0:37:56]
RDAC: That was from Colonel Bacon I got it from his closet, in Meiningen, Germany eastern Germany when we captured the town of Meiningen, good sized town, went up on the hill and here was this beautiful home, good sized home so our squad moved into this home. And three of our guys went out looking for eggs and came back with some German prisoners. Brought three prisoners back. I went upstairs to this beautiful big bedroom and went looking in the closet and found this standing in the closet… I had an offer for $1000 dollars for this and I wouldn’t do it. Probably my son Chris will get it after I'm gone, he’s the one that’s in the army talked to him this morning from Naples. This house—I got that sword. Also next to it hanging on the hook was a big long rubber truncheon, they used to beat prisoners with. I thought “this is that kind of guy look at him, he had this big long leather thong and a — about that long that’s what they beat prisoners with. This is one of the bayonets I took off the 11th Panzer Division when they surrendered to us. We lined up all the guys, Hands hoch. Well, I took a lot of these off them this is one of them. And it wasn’t used; it was in mint condition. He was a fairly new soldier apparently with that outfit because they were replace many times over. It says on here Solingen, Solingen steel was the name of the steel company and we captured that it was the town of Suhl. We were in the town of Suhl and I remember Solingen steel was there and that’s were this was made in Germany. And I got the penknives with the guy’s name on the side for you. This is the German mess kit. Now, if I get it out I’ll see if I can get I back for you, that always been my trouble. This is the German mess kit, knives, spoon, fork see they all clip with steel and I can’t get it out of there now, but if I get it out I always have trouble getting it back in again. This was the German’s so I had my spoon I showed you, that I kept in my shirt pocket. And if I needed to cut something I took my bayonet out and used it. We were issued the mess kit, every GI, and you got a knive, a fork, and a spoon the GI utensils. A knive fork spoon and a two-piece pan like mess kit that clamped together. Well if you put this inside it rattles at nighttime you could hear you coming rattle, rattle, rattle. I remember at Fort Jackson one night in training I had a guy run through the darkness and you could hear him run and rattle. So a lot of guys took their socks and wrapped them around so they wouldn’t vibrate and make sound. Well, I said a lot easier way is get rid of them, you try to lighten the load, you’re always trying to see how little you could carry, because you’re carrying weight all the time. So I through my mess kit and knive and fork away and just kept this in my pocket like that. And any time any body had seen food anywhere I could get mine out and have a spoonful. And I always got a pretty good spoonful. They called it Courtney’s uh —what did they call it bulldozer —steam shovel, steam shovel. This [hat] is a seven it won’t fit now.
TBG: That hat is called a seven?
RDAC: No, it’s a size seven they call this an overseas cap. It was issued to me when I first went in the army and I had it all the years I wore it—you didn’t wear this in combat you know. What you did was you would fold it over your belt like this and carried it. You wore a helmet all throughout the war. And any time after the war I wore that. You can see it in that picture over there. These are our shoulder patch YD is for the 26th Yankee Division. They call it the Yankee division because it was originally the Massachusetts National Guard. When we were in South Carolina, they changed it around and called it the DY, Damn Yankee instead of the YD.
TBG: would you mind describing those medals for me?
[0:43:02]
RDAC: Oh, I can’t even remember all of them. Now here is some of the back of them I’d say. Well let’s see, this one I know is a Bronze Star. Oh, you want to take a [picture] that’s fine. This is a Bronze Star and this is a European, African, and Middle Eastern Campaign. See the four stars, each star represents a battle. Like Normandy, France, Battle of the Bulge, Central Europe and Eastern Europe, those are four. This is a good conduct medal it means I was never in the stockade. This one World War Two I think that’s the victory. I think that’s the one they call the Victory Medal. And what the heck is this one? Uh, United States of America ’41 to ’45. I don’t know what that one is, that blue one. But the blue combat infantry badge that’s the one that really—GI’s prized that more—the metal one. It’s called combat infantry badge. You had to be in frontline combat for so long before you would earn that. That means you had to live that long.
WHG: Do you like to read books about the war?
RDAC: Yeah I like to read them, and write them, I write magazine articles, and I give talks to schools and clubs. I'm scheduled in November to talk to St. Mary School, and also the sons of the American Revolution over at Hazel Wood Christian church, they asked me to come speak there.
SIDE B
[0:00:00]
RDAC: After the Battle of the Bulge they brought us down to the cellars of Saarlautern, Germany and we were in cellars and the Germans were across the street I told you about. And about two blocks behind us was battalion headquarters in a former German pill box, and we’d have to take turns at night to go bring back water or ammunition, or K-rations. I always hated that because you risked your life running back there zigzagging; they had machine guns set up you had to go across this stream on a bridge and if you got caught on the bridge, boy— hot lead you know. But any how this one night I came up with a can of water and I got to the darkness you’re walking through broken rubble. Picture walking through steel concrete and everything picture walking zigzag. Apparently I got in the wrong cellar steps to go down into what I thought was our cellar. And I went down into this cellar in the darkness and fell in top of a big maybe eight or nine feet pile of briquettes, coal briquettes. You know what they are for a potbelly stove they’re about this big and they’re round and smooth. Its packed coal that pressed together real tight. And its round and smooth and you put those in potbelly stoves. Well there’s a big pile there, and I thought this must have been a building for an apartment house they have that much coal piled in it. So, I came in and I was soaking wet, and cold and I threw myself down against this pile of coal and after I while I realized there’s someone on the other side of the coal, I could hear heavy breathing and I thought, “where am I?” These cellars have holes connected to other cellars. Germans could come through the holes. Is that guy German or American? I’m straining to listen for sounds because German equipment made a different metallic sound than American equipment. We could tell whether who had what type of weapon. You learn this in combat not in training. But the sounds any thing their helmet made a different sound so you strain to hear any sound that would tell you is he German or American. And I just lay there as stiff as ice. Who is that? Is he one of our boys, German or an American, who is he? And I’m lying there thinking if that guy hears an American sound out of me he can lob a grenade over coal pile and it’ll get me, but not him. So I’m thinking what do I do, and total blackness see. And I’m laying there and I’m wet and shivering, glad to be out of the rain anyhow. Just hours went by and I didn’t want to dose of or not. But he’s laying over the same way measuring me out for sound. Finally I realize I was starving hungry. I didn’t have any food all day, and I didn’t have any rations. I normally carried hand grenades off my lapels buttons and you put the ring around the button so you need one you just yank it and the ring would hang on to the button then you throw the grenade. I didn’t have any grenades on me; I didn’t have any for him. And I wasn’t sure who he was. But I’m laying over there thinking, “oh, I’m so hungry, what am I going to do?” and I remembered that we had a ten in one ration that had little tiny Milky Ways in it and I got one of them and stuck it in my shirt pocket with my spoon and I thought I’ll get it out and eat that. I thought I got to be quiet so I lay there very slowly fed these two fingers down in there got a hold of that Milky Way and slid it up very carefully. And then I started to tear the paper off and thought, “oh you dummy, kkshhh, it’ll make a sound” so I thought what do I do so I ate it paper and all. So I put it in my mouth chewing it, and all the sudden it hit me. You dummy now you’ve killed yourself for sure, because when you chew it up the smell of chocolate goes up in the air and the Germans never had any chocolate. Whenever we took prisoners they always wanted American chocolate and American cigarettes, they never had any. And I thought he’ll smell the chocolate, he’ll know I’m American, im going to get it. So what ever happened I layed there all night half awake half asleep he’s the same way, on his side. In the morning the blue fingers of dawn were coming down the steps to lighten it up the air a little bit, and as soon as I could see enough I slid down on my hands and knees and I crawled down to the other side of the pile with my 45 in my hand and the I saw where the briquettes were spread out like some one had been there and got away, and look on the pile right where he would’ve layed, and there was a German potato masher grenade which looked and felt just like a briquette and I tried to realize. Maybe he felt for it and he couldn’t find it he felt all these briquettes and he couldn’t find his potato masher grenade. Cause it felt like it in the darkness, or maybe he didn’t smell the chocolate maybe he had a cold and couldn’t smell, I don’t know what it was. But he had to be German because he left his grenade there.
WHG: which books do you like the most about war?
RDAC: …so many books are not true, in my book every word is true, because I wrote it. When I went to southern Illinois university press and spent a week there with them. I made a deal they couldn’t change a single word without my permission; I want to be able to tell people there is no Hollywood stuff in this book. I know it true because I lived it. Have you read about Stephen Ambrose?
WHG: a little
[0:06:24]
RDAC: He uses to gather information from other guys books, he’d take a few paragraphs. Then he'd add his own color to it to make it sound like a better story. Then he put that in, I used to think infect, my son Chris called me and said “he stole your book dad, he stole your book.” And I said, “Why do you say that” and he called it citizen soldier which is a word I came up with in my book when I say were not professionals we’re citizen soldiers. So he had lifted part of my book and put it in there. He had called it citizen soldier. The poor guy’s dead now, but one day I saw his book in a store, The Thunderbird Division, and I said, “oh, they were the 45th; they were in Italy.” So I bought it and I came home and read it and thought wait this didn’t fit, this didn’t happen they didn’t that, they didn’t take this town till later. And I could tell every thing I could tell was phony. And I thought how could they put a book like this out? And I got open clear down on the inside cover clear down on the bottom line said this is all fiction. The whole story made up made it look like the history of the Thunderbird Division, it was all fiction. So there are so many things… I have a way when I watch things on TV like the war story. I can look for certain things of equipment and tell if it’s authentic or not, and one of them is if you can see a shovel with a T handle on it those were early in the war like in N. Africa and so fourth. And some of the South Pacific, the marines had T handles. When we went out to Europe we issued the new shovel which was one handled it was long or had a collar you could turn it like this and tighten it up and make it like a pick. And if you see just a one of those sticking out behind a guy you could wear it on your belt or on your back and you could say, Oh he was in Europe because that shovel tells me. So if you look for things like that or vehicles you can look for things that didn’t happen.
WHG: did the generals do a good job?
RDAC: Some of them did some of them didn’t. Generals were the—the newspaper reporters tried to make them all look like heroes. Thought it was good for moral back home. They had good stories about Patton all the time. I was at Esch-sur-Sûre when I had my family there last fall. Down this gorge, this stream goes along and in the wintertime chunks of ice flows along there. We were down on the edge and the story was that General Patton came up to the place where we were, and there were ice chunks every where and they had blown the bridge the Germans had blown the lone bridge it went across it was an arch stone bridge and he said, “I’ll give a three [day] pass to Paris for any guy who will swim across the river get us information, and tell us and swim back” and everybody’s you wouldn’t get in that river you’d die in the ice. This was just a story made up Patton wasn’t there we didn’t see him. This was some reporter making this story up that was great for the folks at home to read about Patton. ”Well if you don’t swim the river I’ll do it myself” he wasn’t there. I only saw Patton once and he wasn’t up front in the movies he was up front all the time. I stepped out of a building in Charding and I almost ran into [his] jeep. And he looked at me and I didn’t salute him he just went passed like that I’m surprised he didn’t jam on the brakes and scream at me for not saluting. But that’s the only time I saw him up close.
WHG: do you have any good stories about your general?
[0:10:24]
RDAC: no, when we were up when I was pinned down for those 16 days we didn’t have any officers there. They were back in Buderscheid in buildings.
TBG: Who did you take orders from?
RDAC: Mostly sergeants. Or we got down one time we got every one killed, and there were four privates, I was one of the four, no there were five of us. And we were there over two weeks pinned down, no officers or anybody in charge. One night we had an argument we were yelling back and fourth in our holes a couple of them said, let’s get out of here, let’s go back a couple miles down the road and dig new fox holes. And we argued “no, its cold we’re outside we might get a barrage on top of us, and when we get back there we have to dig holes in frozen ground we are going to die. Finally we said we’ll take a vote because we didn’t have any body to decide, just five privates. So we took a vote, two guys said we’d go back two guys said we’d stay and I was the final vote and I said, “No we’ll stay.” Sam Harper was in our squad, Praisey, his name was Sam Praisey Harper. He had done time in a chain gang in the Florida everglades he had been caught operating a still. And he used to tell us how hard it was in the chain gang. And when we were in the Ardennes forest he found a World War One knife with brass knuckles on the blade and he sharpened the blade on that thing like a razor blade. And he’d carry that thing and when he gets to drinking wine or he got mad he would go blood shot in his face almost like an animal. And he was like “Courtney, you killed us now, see, so we’re staying because you voted. So tonight boy I’m going to get you boy, I’m going to get you i'm going to stick this inside of you.” Imagine in a foxhole so I slept with a 45 all night just waiting there. And if his face appeared over my hole he was going to get it.
WHG: Do you still keep in touch with any people from the war?
RDAC: Yeah, Vick Martin about once a year we get together on the phone or by letter always around Christmas, I stopped to see him once and he came out here once. Leroy Unverferth came over here from Finley, Ohio and he had to go to the veteran’s center in Fort Wayne and he came and saw us for about an hour. And the rest of them are all dead. All the other guys and officers and all dead … this is a German— it hung off his belt like this. It’s a signal lamp, you… so you could make signals, and for years the battery was good, not now. I got that off a German casualty I think in France somewhere. I used it for a while until the battery wasn’t good. [Shows the bayonet he got from the 11th Panzer Division.] This one clips on the rifle, see the groove. This it says god with us in German I cut this the first dead German I saw in a fielding rich le petit outside of France. I said “I can’t believe it Hitler was so against god but the German army still had it. But I didn’t think the SS had it on their belts but I never got close enough to see it.” You asked no I have any of the watches left I used this one for years. It had a strap on it and a metal thing and finally I quit wearing it because it was so ragged on the edges it would cut up the edges of my sleeves. If you wind it up it will work.
TBG: did you wear it because it meant a lot to you?
RDAC: no I wore it because I needed a watch, I didn’t have a watch.
WHG: What is this?
[0:15:49]
RDAC: This—that’s a dog tag—When we finished basic trainings in South Carolina they sent a group of us to army specialized training ASTP is what they called it. And they sent me to West Virginia University had a whole group of us there and after a few months they tried to make and engineer out of me but that didn’t work so they sent me back to the infantry. And month later they folded the whole program up, because they needed more troops. Ever heard of dog tags. These are my dog tags. This—It says Richard D Courtney and has my mom’s name and address. It says T43 and T44, Those were my tetanus shots. And my army serial number 13146413 when you see and army serial number starting with one that means you volunteered and three meant you were drafted and two meant you were with a National Guard group that was federalized. And C that’s your religion I’m catholic so that’s the C, P for protestant, H for Hebrew, what ever. The reason you got two was when you were killed one was put in the mouth of the corpse and stays with the corpse, and the other one was in a list for the telegram sent to say you were killed. This is my original —the one I showed you earlier was new. This one had the back broken off it. CIB combat infantry badge … the paper goes with it. General Juin J-U-I-N they gave our regiment this decoration for having liberated ausonze larine province in France. Which our outfit liberated the same from the Germans in World War One… this was the same thing but for Belgium. This is not my decoration. This was given to my son Chris for outstanding soldier in Europe from America, and it says “mom and dad.” I was not raised from parents like you, I would’ve never of won this. Love, Christopher. That’s the guy you know. He said he has talked to you twice on the phone he thinks you’re a great guy. This was a copy he got me of a medal I got for marksmen … that’s the Yankee Division 26th Division Veterans Association. This you wore on your sleeves each bar is six months over seas. 50th anniversary of World War Two I got sent that in the mail one day. I wore that in Washington at the Memorial Day. This is my brother’s pass American division he was in the south Pacific. My brother Bill was a captain in the infantry. And what the heck is this? Oh, there’s my outfit 26th Division, 104th infantry regiment, 3rd battalion head quarters, company Anatine [?] Platoon. World War Two memorabilia courtesy of —Oh they had these signs in the library when they had all the stuff when the library did this. This is a same picture. Here is a miniature Bronze star my son got me. Oh, here’s a story.
[0:21:18]
This might be one of my best moments. This is a military missal for catholic mass when we got on the ship in New York at night time we got on the ship in weehawk and on the boat came on the pier at Staten island and got on the SS Argentina and we walked on the pier to get on a man stepped out in front of me and he had big table bags there. And he said “catholic or protestant.” And I thought, “What kind of question is that going into war.” But I said, “catholic” and he said, “Open your mouth.” Because you’re carrying everything your back pack a big bag on top, rifle, canteen, gasmask, and everything. So you didn’t have any hands. He said, “open your mouth” and he stuck this bag in your mouth. We didn’t know what was in the bag until we got on the ship. Later on you got the bag out of your mouth. Another hundred steps a guy stepped in front of you and says open your mouth and said “see this” he had this orange card with numbers around it. And he said, “lose this and you don’t get fed on the ship. Open your mouth.” So he takes the bag and the card and you bite on it like this. And that’s the way you get on the boat. And when I took the bag out and the card I had my teeth mark in the card but inside the bag was why he asked me if I was catholic or protestant, because this was the catholic and I had this in my pocket all throughout the war in my very first foxhole in France right near Nancy. I dug a foxhole and the next morning I woke up and thought, “hey, this is Sunday isn’t it. I can’t go to mass, what do I do and I took this out of my pocket and read the mass, the prayers of the mass. And when I got here, page 28, where it said, “this is my body a consecration.” These words came off the page and in the air scared me to death, but I thought, okay, Lord I'm your boy. I trust you all the way take care of me. And you know, from that moment on I was never scared. All though out the war people said, Courtney just laughs off everything. I got hit one day—shell landed near me. I was flattened I got up thought, “I guess I’m alright.” Touched my helmet and burnt my fingers a piece of metal went right through my steel helmet and the helmet liner stopped it from going into my head there, those things happened to me so often. And I'm sure the Lord took care of me because I said, “I trust you.” What’s this oh’ channel 13, November19—news, news— November of ‘98 that’s when they came here and we did the thing for Channel 13.
WHG: back to the story about your helmet, When you were in combat did you wear glasses?
RDAC: No, I didn’t need to I didn’t have glasses. Some guys did. It was pretty hard to do. They would get splintered or shattered.
TBG: How tall are you sir?
RDAC: six, three. I had to dig bigger foxholes but I can see better at parades. This was the favorite gift you could give to a guy. Going to the Army, people always had to give you a gift. And what it does is wraps around you. And 80—when you go in the barracks there are usually eighty troops or something in the barracks. And you went to the bathroom the Latrine they call it. And there was eight sinks. So only eight guys could get washed or shaved in there so you put your soap and razor and everything in here. And so that was the idea of this so when you went up and set your stuff on the counter no one else would take off with it. So when you use something else you would put it in your own slot. So it’s for your own protection. I forget what they called this thing. I had my name on it.
WHG: How did you finally get out of the army?
[0:25:59]
RDAC: Well, I came home on the ship to New York and then we were at Fort Dix for a while getting shots and everything and then we got on the train some of us went to different parts of the country, and I went to Indiantown Gap. And there they gave us pieces of uniform we were missing. And then I got discharged. I got out because our whole division came home and I had been in long enough and so I got an Honorable discharge.
TBG: What day was it?
RDAC: January 2, 1946.
