Mississippi Oral History Program

World War II Veterans National WWII Museum/103rd Infantry

Oral History Project

An Oral History

with

Lucas C. Martin

Interviewer: Cecilia Henderson

Volume 1272, Part 6 2015

©2016 The University of Southern Mississippi This transcription of an oral history by The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage of The University of Southern Mississippi may not be reproduced or published in any form except that quotation of short excerpts of unrestricted transcripts and the associated tape recordings is permissible providing written consent is obtained from The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. When literary rights have been retained by the interviewee, written permission to use the material must be obtained from both the interviewee and The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. This oral history is a transcript of a taped conversation. The transcript was edited and punctuation added for readability and clarity. People who are interviewed may review the transcript before publication and are allowed to delete comments they made and to correct factual errors. Additions to the original text are shown in brackets [ ]. Minor deletions are not noted. Audio and transcripts are on deposit in the McCain Library and Archives on the campus of The University of Southern Mississippi.

Kevin D. Greene, Ph.D., Co-director Heather Marie Stur, Ph.D.,Co-director

The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 118 College Drive #5175

The University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS 39406-0001

601-266-4574

An Oral History with Cranston R. Rogers, Volume 1272, Part 9 Interviewer: Aslin Clements Transcriber: Stephanie Scull-DeArmey Editor: Stephanie Scull-DeArmey

THE CENTER FOR ORAL HISTORY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE of

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI

Recording Log

Interviewee: Lucas C. Martin Interviewer: Cecilia Henderson Date of recording: October 8, 2015 Recording format/notes: Digital Recording length: Part 1 of 1, 1 hour, 12 minutes Time stamps made by using: Express Scribe Location: McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi Subject terms: Great Depression, CCC, Pearl Harbor, WWII, Army Air Corps, basic training, ASTP, 103rd Infantry, Camp Howze, Marseilles, Rhone Valley, 3rd Infantry, wire section, 409th, 3rd Battalion, weapons, wounds, foxholes, St. Die, Battle of the Bulge, SS, Russians, Selestat, tank warfare, liberating death camp Kaufering in Landsberg, atomic bomb, return to civilian life, learning to ski at Zermatt, Bronze Star, Occupation Army, backpack radio SCR-300, Nordwind, rations, race relations, Siegfried Line, Maginot Line, strafing, Me-262 German jets. Time/ Counter

Topic

Part 1 of 1 0:01:51.9 Personal history 0:03:03.5 The Great Depression, Los Angeles, California 0:06:19.5 Work in CCC 0:07:17.7 Fighting forest fires 0:10:12.0 Work at Lockheed Aircraft 0:12:32.0 Bombing of Pearl Harbor; enlistment in Reserves 0:13:36.7 Army Air Corps 0:13:36.7 Basic training, Florida 0:14:58.2 ASTP 0:17:03.8 Joining the infantry 0:18:06.5 Field exercises, Camp Howze 0:19:06.0 Marseilles, Rhone River Valley, Alsace 0:20:11.1 103rd Infantry relieves 3rd Infantry, Mountains of Alsace 0:22:38.0 Into the wire section, Headquarters Company, 409th, 3rd Battalion 0:23:44.2 First attack 0:25:24.2 Armaments 0:26:12.0 Observation post seen, shelled by Germans 0:27:56.1 Wounds in war, foxholes 0:29:04.9 St. Die 0:29:04.9 German’s 80 mm mortars 0:29:37.0 Chemical mortars, rifle companies 0:31:09.5 Rhine Plain, Battle of the Bulge

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0:32:38.1 German and American communication wire 0:33:29.9 6th SS Mountain Division 0:34:09.7 Russians 0:34:35.2 Selestat 0:35:23.6 German tanks 0:35:47.7 Death camp at Landsberg, Kaufering 0:37:06.2 End of war in Europe 0:38:06.9 Russian troops 0:40:15.1 Black-market schillings go home to America as dollars 0:42:34.9 Atomic bomb is dropped on Japan 0:43:12.9 College life in the States, ex-GI football team 0:44:28.0 Teaching high school in LA 0:46:12.4 Biological father 0:48:21.4 Hitchhiking on leave 0:50:27.8 Trip to Zermatt, Switzerland, Matterhorn, skiing 0:51:40.2 Bronze Star 0:52:55.3 Military point system for discharge 0:53:57.3 Occupation Army in Vienna 0:54:41.3 Cemetery in Russian Zone 0:56;02.6 Nordwind Offensive; restoring communications 0:58:06.2 Backpack radio SCR-300; walkie-talkies 0:58:42.3 409th Regiment 0:59:44.7 Claudius Lloyd, WWI cavalryman serves in WWII 1:00:47.5 Lone, dead, German soldier in France 1:01:44.6 Battlefield Thanksgiving, whole chicken, pound of butter 1:03:11.8 Purloined spirits, Schnapps, Calvados 1:04:59.9 Rations, cigarettes 1:06:07.6 Race relations 1:06:50.4 Black antitank battalion 1:07:14.2 Siegfried Line 1:07:14.2 761st Tank Battalion was all-black 1:07:34.9 Maginot Line 1:07:34.9 Patton’s “jive:” Shoot everything that moves 1:09:04.0 Terrified German civilians hide from bloodthirsty black tank battalion 1:09:43.5 St. Die, Amerikan Museum 1:10:18.2 Strafed by Me-262s

Table of Contents Personal history ........................................................................................................... 2 CCC......................................................................................................................... 2-3 Fighting forest fires ..................................................................................................... 3 Working for Lockheed Aircraft .................................................................................. 3 Bombing of Pearl Harbor ............................................................................................ 3 Enlisting in the Enlisted Reserve Corps.................................................................. 3-4 Radio school................................................................................................................ 4 Army Air Corps basic training .................................................................................... 4 ASTP ....................................................................................................................... 4-5 Put into 103rd Infantry ................................................................................................. 5 Camp Howze, Texas ................................................................................................... 5 France .......................................................................................................................... 5 Put into wire section, communication ......................................................................... 6 First attack in Europe .................................................................................................. 6 Casualties, fatality ................................................................................................... 6-7 Weapons ...................................................................................................................... 6 Mortar, artillery barrages ............................................................................................ 6 Allies take St. Die ....................................................................................................... 7 High fatalities in K Company ..................................................................................... 7 Battle of the Bulge ...................................................................................................... 7 Rolling communication wire....................................................................................... 7 6th SS Mountain Division stopped .......................................................................... 7-8 Battle at Selestat .......................................................................................................... 8 Liberation of Landsberg (Kaufering) Death Camp, subsidiary camp of Dachau ....... 8 Wartime food .............................................................................................................. 8 K-rations, C-rations............................................................................................... 8, 15 Innsbruck, Brenner Pass.............................................................................................. 8 Russian troops ......................................................................................................... 8-9 Black market ............................................................................................................... 9 Dropping of atomic bomb ends World War II ............................................................ 9 Discharge, civilian life .......................................................................................... 9-10 College .................................................................................................................. 9-10 Teaching school ........................................................................................................ 10 Father .................................................................................................................. 10-11 Memorable leave ....................................................................................................... 11 Skiing in the Alps................................................................................................ 11-12 Bronze Star................................................................................................................ 12 Military system of points .......................................................................................... 12 Occupation duty in Vienna ................................................................................. 12-13 The Nordwind ........................................................................................................... 13 Backpack radios ........................................................................................................ 14 World War I Army Cavalryman in World War II .................................................... 14 Dead German ............................................................................................................ 14

Memorable Thanksgiving in a foxhole ............................................................... 14-15 Liberation of Schnapps factory ................................................................................. 15 Cigarettes .................................................................................................................. 15 Race relations ............................................................................................................ 15 Segregated military ................................................................................................... 15 Black antitank battalion ...................................................................................... 15-16 Bloodthirsty tank battalion ........................................................................................ 16 Strafed by jets ..................................................................................................... 16-17

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AN ORAL HISTORY

with

LUCAS C. MARTIN

This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program of The University of Southern Mississippi, National WWII Museum/103rd Infantry Project. The interview is with Lucas C. Martin and is taking place on October 8, 2015. The interviewer is Cecilia Henderson. Unknown voices are Mr. Martin’s wife B. LaVonne Martin, his eldest son Larry C. Martin, his daughter-in-law V. Carole Martin, and his youngest son Gary C. Martin. Time stamps are recorded in the manuscript and the recording log using Express Scribe. Henderson: OK. So first I’m going to record an ID [identification] tag for the interview, so it knows who you are and what we’re doing. Martin: OK. Henderson: So this is an interview for the University of Southern Mississippi Oral History Program, and the interview is with─ Martin: Lucas, L-U-C-A-S, middle initial C, Martin, M-A-R-T-I-N. Henderson: Thank you. And it’s taking place on October 8, 2015. And the interviewer is Cecilia Henderson, and that’s C-E-C-I-L-I-A, H-E-N-D-E-R-S-O-N. And first I’d like to thank you for taking the time to come talk to us and giving us this interview. Martin: OK. Henderson: We appreciate it. Martin: That’s fine. Henderson: All right. And we’re going to be focusing specifically on your military service in World War II, but feel free to share anything you want to share with us. And any time you don’t want to answer a question or you’re not comfortable with the topic, just let me know. And we’ll move on. Martin: OK.

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Henderson: And we will send you a copy of your interview, so you’ll get to hear it. So this interview is taking place in the McCain Library in conference room 203. And I believe we’re ready to get started. So can you tell me a little bit about yourself, where you were born? 0:01:51.9 Martin: Oh, yeah. I was born in Clovis, New Mexico, April 15, 1922, in the second floor of the only hotel in town. And my mother was Willie Mae Jones(?). My father was Sterling(?) Martin, and I was the second child of that marriage. My sister Genevieve(?) was born in 1919 to the same two people. I don’t remember much about my early life except that the family moved to Los Angeles, California, in order to find work. This was beginning of the Depression, which was what, 1929, [19]30. 0:03:03.5 And my father got on the L.A. Police Department. And my mother was a housewife with the two children, my older sister and me. And we lived in various locations in Los Angeles or L.A., as we called it. And the first time I remember anything was living next to a railroad, and the kids in the neighborhood, including myself, used to take pennies and stick them on the rail, and a freight train would come by and mash them out. And we thought that was a lot of fun. The neighbor next door was a follower of Amy Semple McPherson. Have you ever heard of her? And she used to save tin foil from gum wrappers. They used to wrap gum in tin foil, and then cigarette packages had tin foil around them to preserve them. That’s what I remember when I was younger. Then we moved again, and I went to grammar school in South Central L.A., and that’s where I found out that I had poor eyesight. And I couldn’t see the blackboard where the teacher wrote stuff on it, so my mother took me to the eye doctor, and I was prescribed glasses. So I wore glasses all through elementary, junior high school, and high school. Went to high school at George Washington High School in South Central L.A., about 131st Street towards the south, and my two best buddies were named Browne, B-R-O-W-N-E, and my last year of high school my parents moved to the San Fernando Valley. And since I didn’t want to miss out on graduation, they let me stay in Los Angeles. And I stayed with the Browne brothers. Their father was, what they call now, mentally incompetent. We didn’t know it at the time. But he said he worked for the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], and he had cases and so forth. So we kind of laughed at that and went from there. After graduation, which was in June of 1940, I went into the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps]. Do you know what the CCC is? 0:06:19.5 Henderson: I’m not for sure. Martin: Civilian Conservation Corps. And that was the Franklin Roosevelt, FDR, program to help unemployed youths. So I went there, and I signed up for six months in the latter part of 1940. And what we did was fight forest fires. In six months we fought three forest fires, and they were in the San Bernardino Mountains and Mount San Jacinto, which overlooks Palm Springs, California, where my [granddaughter] now lives. Unknown voice: Granddaughter.

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Martin: I’m sorry. Unknown voice: My granddaughter, not niece, granddaughter. Henderson: Did you enjoy fighting fires? Martin: Well, there were three tools you used, and I didn’t enjoy it. 0:07:17.7 In fact when I was eighteen at the time, and the first time I ever got really tired was fighting the forest fires in the San Bernardino Mountains. And you tried to pick a tool, and you wanted an axe, number one. You wanted a brush hook, number two, and three, you wanted a shovel. You did not try to get a shovel because that was hard work, and you had to clear a path with a brush hook and with the axe you cut down trees. And so we’d build a firebreak, and the fire would come up to that firebreak. Anyway that went on for six months, and then I went out of the CCC. Well, the CCC was run by the U.S. Army at the time. FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] told the Army they would run the CCC camps, and they were all over the company. And usually they built roads, revetments on the roads to try to keep cars from going off the cliff, and so forth, and fought forest fires. And we had the Army there, and we had to salute the lieutenant who ran the camp. And I remember Thanksgiving I wasn’t that hungry, but everybody ate Thanksgiving dinner, which was turkey, dressing and so forth, and they all got sick that night. And they were running out of the barracks to the head, and I didn’t because I didn’t eat the dressing, which was (inaudible). They had forgot; the KPs, kitchen police, had forgotten to wash the GI soap out of the pots that they cooked the meal in. Henderson: So they poisoned everybody with soap. Martin: Yeah. So after the CCC, which I got out in December of 1940; early [19]41 I tried to find a job. They were very scarce at the time, and I ended up: my mother’s aunt had a son who worked as an engineer for Lockheed Aircraft. 0:10:12.0 So he got me a job at Lockheed Aircraft, but that’s the first time I found out I was color blind. And I took the test, and the test was a bunch of little dots of various colors. You had to find out the figure in there, the two or the three. And I couldn’t do it. So they didn’t put me on the assembly line because everything was color-coded, all the parts. They gave me what they call a crib where all these tools were, which was automatic, electric, and power-driven tools that the people on the assembly line used. So I had a cart, and I would get these fixed by another shop and put them in the crib and then take them around to the people working on the assembly line, if they wanted this tool or that tool. Then I would take them back to the crib, so I didn’t have to worry about color codes. After that, in middle of [19]41 I was still working at Lockheed, and I heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor on my car radio, where I was going over the Santa Monica Mountains from the San Fernando Valley to my buddies’ the Brownes, who lived over the mountains in South Central L.A. That’s when I heard about Pearl Harbor. Then later, searchlights came on, and there were antiaircraft guns going off because some civilian pilots didn’t know what to do, and we thought it was Japanese

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bombers. And it wasn’t. So we got through with that, and I enlisted in the Enlisted Reserve Corps in the middle of [19]42. 0:12:32.0 And I was able to go to radio school, and I went to a Wiggins(?) Trade School in L.A., Compton Junior College, and San Jose State University in that order. For nine months I learned to build, repair, and operate radios for the Army. I was in the Army, but I was in civilian clothes. So I was then called to the colors, you might say. I was told to report to Fort McArthur, which is near Los Angeles, and then I was sworn in and given a uniform and other essentials and put on a train, and the basic training for the Army Air Corps 0:13:36.7 at the time, which I was in, was at Miami Beach, Florida. So I was on a train from Los Angeles to Miami Beach, Florida. And then we did basic training, and some of the little houses, two-story houses are still there on the end of the island, which was Miami Beach. Henderson: Well, that’s really cool. Martin: So very easy basic training. We just marched down the street, singing patriotic songs (laughter) like Give My Regards to Broadway, [You’re] a Grand Old Flag. Unknown voice: Were you ASTP [Army Specialized Training Program]? Martin: No. This was the radio training program. ASTP came quite later. And anyway, when we’d finished that, which was about three months basic training, I saw on the bulletin board a ad for Army Specialized Training Program, and since my IQ [intelligence quotient], the test they give you, was higher than that for officers, I signed up for ASTP, which is Army Specialized Training Program. 0:14:58.2 Then I was sent by train to Oklahoma A & M University; now, it’s called Oklahoma State, same one. And I was taking classes, regular classes in the university to try to be a engineer officer, and the whole class was there to be engineer officers after we finished the courses at A & M. Then that was like July of [19]42, yeah. Then in March of [19]43, the secretary of war sent out a notice to all the ASTP programs in the country, and they were all over Texas, Illinois, California, and so forth; they were all college oriented. And he sent out a notice saying, “I see fit to eliminate the ASTP program and send all the cadets,” which we were called, “to the infantry,” which of course I had tried to avoid by prior stuff. Henderson: Yeah. I’d read in your bio that you had said, “Regardless of your poor eyesight you were put in the infantry as a rifleman.” Martin: Yes. Henderson: So I was wondering if that was part of why you tried to switch out of the infantry. Martin: Well, I knew I had bad vision, and that’s one reason why I signed up for ASTP. I was going to train in the college and become an officer of engineering. Well, they didn’t need officer engineering; they needed bodies for riflemen because the

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Pentagon at the time had miscalculated how many people were killed or wounded in Italy. 0:17:03.8 And then I was sent to the 103rd Division, which was at the time in─ Unknown voice: Camp Claiborne, Louisiana? Martin: No. I wasn’t sent there. Other guys were sent to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. Unknown voice: Camp Howze. Martin: Yeah. But when the ASTP was disbanded, I went to Camp Howze, Texas, me and several other ASTPers. And from all over the country, they were sent to various infantry divisions, including the 103rd. So then we had to do field exercises, similar. 0:18:06.5 We had war games, blue against red, and so forth, in the hills of Texas. Prior to that other people had been training in Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, which I never got there because I have (inaudible). They trained in the swamps of Louisiana, the hill country of Texas, West Texas, and we ended up in the mountains, as mountain troops. Anyway so after the training at Camp Howze, we were sent overseas and landed. It took two weeks to get from New York to Marseilles, and we went up the Rhone River Valley, which was from Marseilles towards the frontlines, which were in the middle of Alsace-Loraine. 0:19:06.0 Well, actually it was Alsace, which is bordering France and Germany, between them, and the Alsatians, most of them spoke German, not French. And Alsace has been traded back and forth between Germany and France. It was the Prussian War? Unknown voice: Franco-Prussian War. Martin: Franco-Prussian War. Unknown voice: World War I. Martin: Yeah, and World War I. And the American forces and the French forces had been stopped by the Germans in the Mountains of Alsace. So our job─well, going up to the─actually I was in a Jeep, driving a Jeep up a firebreak into the mountains, and we picked up a 3rd Infantry Division soldier, and we were relieving the 3rd Infantry with the 103rd. 0:20:11.1 When this guy got out, when we got to the 3rd, they were in Reserve, and he took my brand-new M1 rifle. He left his old, rusty, beat-up one for me. Henderson: That’s not very nice of him. Martin: No. But he stole it, and I didn’t notice until we got to where I was supposed to go. And prior to that, at the camp─I forgot to tell you─Camp Howze, I was washing out garbage cans, doing KP duty, and one of the guys in the ASTP came by and said, “You ought to tell the personnel officer at Regiment that you’ve had radio training and you know how to build, operate, and repair radios. You don’t need to be

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a rifleman.” So I asked the first sergeant of L Company, 409th Regiment, for permission to see the personnel officer at Regiment; he was a major. And he cussed me out because he and the commander of L Company were both jerks. They were. And the commander, who was a captain, had been a regular Army staff sergeant. Somebody made him a officer, and he knew how to rule by fear. That’s all he knew. So if you got out of line or did something wrong, you had to exercise with a rifle over your head, walk back and forth, or paint rocks white and that kind of stuff. And he and the first sergeant were brutal guys. So I finally then, the first sergeant went in to the captain, and he had to give me permission to see the guy. That was in the Army regulations. So I went to the major at Regiment, 409th, told him, and in two weeks I was transferred to the Headquarters Company, 409th, 3rd Battalion, and I was put in what they called the wire section. 0:22:38.0 But it was not only laying wire, it was operating radios, also, and we had a switchboard, and you had to operate that. So anyway I got into that, and fortunately the sergeant in charge of the wire section asked for and got four more people for the wire section because he needed it, and when we got to France, in Marseilles, after two weeks, we were on a converted Italian luxury liner. And when we got to the Vosges Mountains, we went up to relieve the 3rd Division, and that’s where the guy stole my rifle out of the Jeep. So on November 16, [19]44 we had our first attack. 0:23:44.2 We’d had mortar and artillery fire before that, and the wire section sergeant told my buddy, which was James A. Cerretani, a little Italian boy from New Jersey, and we became buddies. And we went; he told us to go down to the OP, observation post, where the battalion commander was along with the artillery spotter and two or three other enlisted men. And the battalion commander had been wounded by mortar shells hitting the trees and shrapnel coming down after the trees. And they killed one buy, one enlisted man and wounded like three others. And the battalion commander got wounded in the finger. So he was replaced by his executive officer, who was Major Reynolds(?), and he took over the battalion. And then the battalion commander, his job was to make the line companies, which was I, K, L and M; I, K, L, no J in Army lexicon, they were rifle companies. M was a heavy weapons company. They had the water-cooled machine guns and 60 mm mortars. 0:25:24.2 So they were always a little back from the line rifle companies, who were on front. He told us to go, take a new wire down to the battalion commander, which we did, Cerretani and I. And when we got there, they started mortaring us again and artillery. The Germans knew where the observation post was. They could tell because when our engineer platoon created the observation post, they were seen by the Germans in St. Die. So they mortared and artillery directed towards that. 0:26:12.0 Anyway, Reynolds took over, and while we were there, they started shelling us again. So we jumped in a hole, and in the hole, square hole was a small, what you might call small, rifle. What do they call those? Carbine. So I threw my old, beat-up M1; picked up the carbine, and my buddy Cerretani, he threw away his M1 and picked up what they call an American machine gun. It was a submachine gun; wasn’t worth anything because it jammed all the time. So he finally, later, he threw that away and got a carbine. Henderson: So were the M1s just bad?

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Martin: [No. M1 rifles were fine weapons, but clumsy when laying wire.] Well, when we were there, as I say, anyway, two medics came by, and they picked up the wounded guy. And they came by us; we were in a hole. And he had blood; his pants had been taken off; his Army pants had been taken off, and he had long-johns on, but blood was streaming down from his hip, down to his leg, and excrement because when you get it, if you have to go to the bathroom, that’s when it happens. 0:27:56.1 So they came by, and he told us, “Dig your hole deep, deep.” Well, what he meant was you had to have a cover over your foxhole. And he didn’t have any; that’s the reason he got wounded. The other guy with him got killed. So we went to where they were, and we exchanged the carbines and rifles, and we went back up the trail─this was on a mountain─and told the wire sergeant and the communication sergeant that we’d done the job because there was only one wire, which was the artillery spotter’s wire. So we gave two. So that was the first attack on St. Die. And after that we kind of stabilized after we took St. Die and tried to force the Germans out of little valley roads. 0:29:04.9 And they had blocked all the roads and put machine guns on each side, and they had mortars. And the Germans had 80 mm mortars, which were bigger than 60, which was our heavy weapons. And then in back of that were what they called chemical mortars, which was a separate battalion. 0:29:37.0 And they were 4.2 inch mortars, bigger. And they would use those on German troops because they were heavier and bigger, and they were actually better than artillery because they would explode in the air and distribute shrapnel all over. Anyway we drove the Germans out of St. Die, and then we went on and had other towns we had to take. And the rifle companies were always in front. They kind of rotated I, K, and L. And it turned out that K Company got the worst jobs because their commander, who was a captain, was gung ho, and he wanted to make a name for himself. So he, in effect, got more people killed in K Company. Henderson: Were people trying to get out of K Company? Martin: No, not then. And the only way they got out was wounded or killed or injured. A lot of people got injured, Jeeps overturned on firebreaks. Actually went up firebreaks that the French or Alsatians had made. So we ended up on the Rhine Plain, out of the mountains. 0:31:09.5 And then the Germans counterattacked. The Bulge was going on, and they were going to cut three divisions off who were out in a point in Alsace, which I learned later, we were one of them: 103rd, the 3rd, and the 36th, which was a Texas National Guard Division. So anyway we finally got on the plane and the Germans were doing the Bulge. So we were trucked 100 miles west to block the Germans, and they didn’t come that far. So Cerretani and I were rolling wire out of a Jeep. We had a reel on the back of a Jeep, and we were rolling communication wire, which Americans’ were two wires wrapped together. The Germans used one wire, and they used the ground as the ground. We had a ground and a regular wire. Yeah. So at times we had to use German wire. We learned how to use the ground as a ground and so forth. 0:32:38.1 So anyway, then they tried to cut us off, and they came back; they retreated. Well, then, after the Battle of the Bulge, they attacked one of our green divisions, 42nd Division, which was the all-American division in World War I. They attacked them and pushed them back, and the attackers were the 6th SS

8

Mountain Division, who were primarily Austrian, and what’s the name of that where Munich is? 0:33:29.9 Unknown voice: Bavaria? Martin: Bavaria. They were Austrians and Bavarian Mountain Troops, and they had been brought from Finland all the way down to Germany in order to do this, lead this attack to cut off three American Divisions. And so they did push back the 42nd Division guys because they were gung ho; they were really Nazis, is what they were. And they’d been fighting the Russians for three years. 0:34:09.7 Now, they were fighting Americans. And they pushed back the 42nd, and finally three divisions stopped them, and then we went across the Rhine. Well, before we went across the Rhine, we had a big battle at a town called Selestat, which was on the Rhine Plain area. 0:34:35.2 And they controlled, and the Germans were feeding troops and ammunition and stuff and supplies to Selestat from farther north. And our 409th attacked Selestat, and B Company got cut off. There was a river in front of Selestat. They went over the river, small river, and then they got cut off. The Germans counterattacked with tanks and almost wiped out B Company. 0:35:23.6 There were only normally, say, 127 or so, and they ended up with like twenty-eight. Henderson: Did you guys have any tanks? Martin: They were all captured by the Germans and sent to POW [prisoner of war] camps. And in the albums that we have, that particular incident is repeated in interview to Larry and Carol. And it’s in the album, A Remembrance, which is in the hospitality room. 0:35:57.7 Then from there we went inland, and we went to Landsberg, which was a subcamp of Dachau. And it was a murder camp. And the 411th Regiment liberated it. And we all got to see it. And it was terrible. And these guys were skeletons, and actually we tried to give them K-rations and C-rations and bread, which had come up from the rear. And they were so hungry that a lot of them died from overeating. Then after Landsberg we went across the Rhine in assault boats and down Bavaria towards Austria. And we crossed the Danube and went to Innsbruck. 0:37:06.2 And that’s where we were when the war ended. And one of our regiments, the 411th, went over the Brenner Pass and met troops from the Italy campaign, the 88th Division, coming up the boot of Italy. And then we garrisoned a few small towns in the Inn River(?) Valley, and that’s where we were when the war was ended. And the albums that we have collected, seven of them, they’re in─and it tells you all this stuff, the guys who were in it, and so forth. Unknown voice: How about the Russian that you (inaudible) his appearance looked like. Martin: Opposite us were the Russian troops because they had come up and captured Vienna and came up to another river, which ran into the Inn. 0:38:06.9 And they hadn’t been paid during the whole war, the Russian troops. And in Austria they had

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schillings, which was like our dollar. So the Russians had stacks of schillings like that because they hadn’t been paid all during the war. Henderson: So they got paid as soon as the war was over? Unknown voice: How did they get the schillings? Martin: Well, from their officers, from their paymaster in the rear. And so Cerretani and I loaded up a three-quarter-ton truck with blankets, K-rations, C-rations, carry-cans, we called them, of gasoline; went across this other river, and I was driving. And this Russian steps out from behind a tree with submachine gun, pointed at us. So I stopped, and he (laughter) came up, and we talked. We pantomimed to him that we wanted to go to his company, and we had all these goods in a three-quarter-ton truck, and of course they had nothing. They had their ammunition, their guns, and that was about it. The only one in the company─there was about ninety men in a Russian company─who had a wristwatch was the lieutenant in charge. So we traded all those goods for schillings. And when we got back to Innsbruck, the Western Union at the time, you were able to send money home. So we sent some money home from these schillings because that was the Austrian dollar. 0:40:15.1 Well, then the payroll for all the troops in the Inn River Valley was less than the amount of money going to the United States by the GIs. So the higher-ups figured, “Something’s wrong.” And they cut out Western Union: “No more money orders going to the States.” So then we sent flowers. So I sent flowers to every woman I knew, which was two grandmothers, a couple aunts, sister, and we sent like fifty dollars’ worth of flowers. Well, in 1945, that was a lot of money. So later when I finally got to see the relatives after we got back, they still remembered the room full of flowers that they got from Martin; that’s what they called me, or L.C.; southwest it’s L.C. That’s what my half-brother still calls me, L.C. Unknown voice: Did the Russian have metal teeth? Was that the one? The Russian had metal teeth? His teeth? Martin: Oh, yeah. The Russian who stepped out from behind a tree had metal, stainless steel, metal front teeth. And he told us a German had knocked his teeth out with a rifle butt, and he escaped from a German prison camp, and he got these stainless steel front teeth. He was really weird looking, but that’s what he was. Then when the war was ended I was assigned to a chemical mortar company, slated to go to Japan. 0:42:34.9 Well, fortunately Harry Truman dropped a bomb that ended the war, and we were all happy as hell because we didn’t want to go to Japan. And my mind’s a blank. Unknown voice: You came out and went to school. Martin: Oh. Well, anyway I got discharged in April of [19]46. 0:43:12.9 And the GI bill existed at the time, so I applied to Pepperdine College in Los Angeles and was accepted, and a lot of the students who were ex-GIs. And I remember we had a

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football team all ex-GIs. And they played in a bowl game in Oklahoma City and beat the team that they were against. Anyway, it was a small-college Superbowl is what it was. Well, they cut out football a few years after that because it was too expensive. But I went to Pepperdine; I went three years steady. I went to summer school, so I got my degree in three years, my bachelor’s. Then I went to USC [University of Southern California] to get my master’s, two classes in a semester, USC. And then I applied for and was accepted to become a teacher in the L.A. school system. 0:44:28.0 Well, my worst subjects were English and─ Unknown voice: (Inaudible) Martin: What was the other? Unknown voice: Civil rights? Unknown voice: Math? Martin: No, it wasn’t math. It was English. What was it? Anyway another study. And that’s what I got when I got to the school system. I got English class and this other one, which was─ Unknown voice: Science? Martin: I think it was. Unknown voice: Yeah. You said science. Martin: Yeah, science. I hated both. Henderson: So you were teaching your worst subjects? Martin: Yeah, my worst subjects. But I had to try to teach, and the kids in the class, they were pretty good kids. They were tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-graders. Well, actually they were eleventh-graders is what they were. And so I had a couple of real rowdies, and they were trying to break out the windows to the class, but I stopped them. And I ended up being a policeman. I couldn’t teach. So I thought, “This wasn’t for me.” I should tell you that my oldest son was a principal. Yeah. (laughter) Martin: I was going to ask. You had said that your father was a police officer. Right? Henderson: Did that encourage you to become a police officer? 0:46:12.4 Martin: No. Well, he was my real father. He abandoned his family. Well, he abandoned my mother, sister, older sister, and me. He went back to his relatives in New Mexico because he was fooling around with women, and my mother found out,

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told the captain of the police. And he was going to get disciplined, so he took off. I never had any love for him because I hadn’t seen him since I was five or six years old. Anyway he had another family, and he had two boys and a girl, yeah, Odema(?). I had a half-sister and two half-brothers with this other family. And my youngest, older half-brother is still living in Missouri. My older [half-]brother just died this year, and my sister died, what? Five years ago? Unknown voice: Yeah, it’s OK. Martin: Six or eight years ago, of leukemia. Henderson: I’m sorry to hear that. Martin: Yeah. And in fact we plan on seeing the half-brother when we take a trip to Palm Springs because we can go by Missouri where he lives. I kept in touch with him by Christmas cards and notes and phone him once in a while. Unknown voice: Hey, Dad, you got any stories about on leave? 0:48:21.4 Martin: Oh, yeah. Well, anyway, going back, while I was in Camp Howze on leave, I got a leave, and me and Bob Burdette(?), who was another buddy, and he had a relative in Tulsa. And we were at Gainseville. So he had this relative in Tulsa, which is what? A hundred miles away. And he said, “Let’s go.” So we hitchhiked, and a woman in a brand-new Cadillac stopped and picked us up. She [was] by herself. Picked [us] up and told us, “Where you guys going?” We said, “Tulsa.” She said, “OK. I’m going there, too, so I can drop you off.” But halfway there she stopped, pulled in this building parking lot, and it was a bar in Oklahoma, and this county at the time, Oklahoma, there was no liquor. It was a dry state. But the bar was there, and she took us in. Said, “How about a drink?” I said, “OK.” Me and Bob Burdette, we went in, and the sheriff was in there with his buddies. So he knew about it, and he was (laughter) in there. And so we had our drink and got back in the Cadillac. She took us to Tulsa and dropped us off right at the house where his relatives lived. So we stayed there a couple of days and then hitchhiked back to Gainesville. Unknown voice: (Inaudible) skiing? Martin: What? Unknown voice: Skiing? Unknown voice: Skiing in the Alps. Martin: Oh, skiing. Yeah. Well, in the Alps after the war, there was still snow. 0:50:27.8 So I got a pass to Switzerland, and a group of GIs got, and we were able to go up to Zermatt and the Matterhorn, which you’ve seen. And we got to go up in a

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cog railway, and we had a skiing instructor. So we skied down the Zermatt, down to the building where everything started, yeah. And what else? Unknown voice: How many times you been skiing since then? Martin: (laughter) Probably once or twice. Yeah, with our friends Charlie Young(?) and (inaudible). But I learned how to ski down to Zermatt (laughter) and fell down a couple of times. But that was an experience. Henderson: I also saw in your bio that you got a Bronze Star. 0:51:40.2 Martin: Yeah. Well, actually our regiment got a Bronze Star and battalion. Actually we had a battalion commander the first day of combat, name was Snyder(?); he got wounded in the finger, and he disappeared. And his major executive officer took over; his name was Reynolds(?), and he was a real good guy. He did well with the company and with the line companies, the rifle companies, and the heavy weapons company. And so he was promoted to lieutenant colonel as head of the 3rd Battalion, 409th. Henderson: Was there a lot of promotions that happened that way? Martin: Not that many. Snyder got wounded in the finger; we never saw him again. So he got his Purple Heart, I guess, yeah, which added points for your discharge. 0:52:55.3 If you’re wounded it added, I think it was five points to number of months overseas, number of months in the Army, and so forth. Henderson: What did those points mean later? Martin: Well, they meant that if you had so many points, you could go to the States and be discharged. Henderson: OK. So yeah, I had heard that after the war, people who had, I assume, points got to go back, and others had to wait a while? Unknown voice: Yes. Martin: I don’t remember that. Unknown voice: If you didn’t have enough points you had to stay. Martin: Oh, yeah, yeah. Unknown voice: You went to─ Martin: Like I didn’t have enough points. You had to stay, and I was on occupation duty in Vienna at the time, and that was interesting because it had four zones, just like

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Berlin: French, English, Russian, American. 0:53:57.3 So my buddy and I went in the Russian zone once with goods, bartered. Henderson: And that’s when you got those schillings. Martin: Anyway, a cemetery in Vienna, went there, and here was gravestones and everything, and here was a grave, a fresh grave, of a Russian soldier, who had been killed taking Vienna, and at the head of his grave was a stick or banner, and a big, red star. He was Russian, so it was a red star. 0:54:41.3 And they buried him between the Strauss brothers. “Blue Danube?” They buried him between Strauss and his son. And they put the Russian right between them as a sign of, “We got you!” So that was interesting. And at the time it was in the Russian Zone, so Germans couldn’t─the Austrians couldn’t do anything about it. Unknown voice: How about you were in LeWalck, and you and Cerretani got shelled? Martin: What? Unknown voice: How about when you were at LeWalck and you and Cerretani got shelled at the bridge at LeWalck? Martin: Oh, LeWalck, yeah, well, that was machine guns. We were holding a defensive line against the Nordwind, the German offensive, and there was a little creek, called a river, and the bridge had been blown. It was all a jumble of concrete. 0:56:02.6 So we were told, Cerretani and I were told to take a wire up to one of the rifle companies across the river because they didn’t have communication. So we went over this bridge, and soon as we got on the road, machine guns started coming down; bullets started coming down and hitting the side of the road and the cobblestones, sparking. So we went against the wall, as close as we could. Finally the machine guns stopped, German, and we were able to get to the company─I think it was I Company─and get the wire hooked up to their phone so they could communicate with the battalion. Henderson: Were there many other wiremen overseas with you guys? It sounds like you guys were laying wires everywhere. Martin: Yeah. Well, we had, as I said, the wire chief before we went overseas asked for and got four or five new, different guys because he knew─and he was a little guy; we called him Shorty. He was the wire chief, and he became wire chief in Louisiana when they were there. He was one of the first ones in. He was drafted out of Wisconsin, and he went to the 103rd at Camp? Unknown voice: Claiborne?

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Martin: Claiborne. So he had enough, and then we also used radios, backpack radios, big backpacks called SCR-300, which was a good radio, and then the little, handy talkies, like they have now, which were worthless in the mountains because anything in the way, it would stop the transmission. 0:58:06.2 And we were in the mountains with pine trees all over the place. So that was interesting in a way, but I remember one time we were supposed to advance, and the spur of a mountain came out, and this tank, this [American] tank went around the spur, and he got shot at by an antitank gun. So he backed up real quick around this spur, which protected him. 0:58:42.3 And my colonel, who was an old, Army cavalryman who’d been in World War I, Claudius Lloyd(?) was his name, and his picture is in the left side of the hospitality room. You can see the 409th and Claudius Lloyd, who was the regimental commander. And after the war he gave us a book about the 409th Regiment. Each person who was in got a book; I’ve still got it, and he signed it. Henderson: Well, that’s really cool. Martin: Claudius Lloyd, he wasn’t too old for World War II, but he had been in the horse cavalry until he got this job. He took over and did well. And this tank went around. 0:59:44.7 And here comes a Jeep, up, and I happened to be there with a backpack radio. Screeched to a halt; Claudius Lloyd jumped out and went to the tank, beat on it with his riding crop; he always carried a riding crop, like he was on a horse, but he wasn’t. He beat on it till the sergeant of the tank popped up. And he said, “What’s holding us up? Get around there. Let’s go.” Claudius Lloyd said to the sergeant in the tank; he said, “But sir, we’re getting shot at.” And he said, “That’s what you’re supposed to do.” So he beat on it, and the guy went around, slowly around, and he wasn’t shot at again, so the tank─but that was one thing I remember about Lloyd, and there were other incidents. 1:00:47.5 Oh, going up the firebreak the first day before we were going to relieve the 3rd Division; we went up a firebreak, you might say, and next to the firebreak was a dead German, and he was laying there on his back, vacant eyes, and his arm over his chest; I’ll never forget that, over his chest. He’d been killed, and it was just before Christmas, and I wondered at the time, and I still do, whether his mother knew where he was and that he was dead on the mountain by himself in France. I often wondered about that. Unknown voice: Tell her about that Christmas or Thanksgiving where they gave you a chicken, a live one. 1:01:44.6 Martin: Oh, yeah. Thanksgiving, Cerretani and I were in a foxhole on top of a mountain, and for Thanksgiving they threw us a dead chicken with his neck and everything on him, and a pound of butter. (laughter) That was Thanksgiving dinner. Henderson: Not cooked or anything, just threw it at you. Martin: Yeah. He just threw it in the foxhole. (laughter) We were supposed to cook the chicken; couldn’t.

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Unknown voice: How was the weather? Martin: Oh, it was snowy and rainy, and snowy, snow all over, cold. Henderson: Did you have any problems with the grease for your guns or anything getting jammed because of it? Martin: No. No. Some of the riflemen did with their M1s, but you needed an M1 if you were a rifleman. With wiremen, which I got, as I say, I stole a carbine. Unknown voice: Tell her how you stayed warm, and what you and Cerretani, what you drank. Remember the big─I don’t know what it was─full of Schnapps? Martin: Oh, yeah. In the Jeep we liberated a Schnapps factory. (laughter) And a great, big bottle, about that big around, with wicker basket up to a thing. 1:03:11.8 Unknown voice: Half a gallon. Martin: And down. And we set it between the seats of a Jeep, and we drank on that. Well, we had our drink with us. So I often figured later, if the Germans had poisoned all the booze, they’d have won the war. (laughter) They would have. Henderson: Was it very common to─ Martin: It was common to drink Schnapps, Calvados, whatever you could get, and wine. In Alsace they had wine; still do. Have vineyards. But Schnapps they made out of potato peelings, and it’s not good to drink; it’s not like wine. And then when I was in Vienna on occupation duty, somebody in our outfit got several bottles of White Horse Scotch, gave us a bottle, me and Cerretani and Burdette. And we drank that scotch; it was a full quart. Didn’t know what we were doing after we drank it; ended up in a schoolhouse, in a urinal, in a schoolhouse. And the other guys took us out and sobered us up. But that’s what happened at the time. Unknown voice: You didn’t smoke cigarettes, right? Martin: Oh, yeah. My K-rations always had, I think four, cigarettes in them. 1:04:59.9 And we lived on K-rations. And I didn’t smoke, so I traded these for food. And occupation duty you could trade K-rations, C-rations, which were the canned hash, pork and beans and so forth. Oh, and in this book that Claudius Lloyd signed and sent to everybody in the 409th before the 103rd was broken up and sent overseas, there’s a picture─I told them about it─of a black guy frying pancakes with a couple white guys and two black guys, frying pancakes, off the line, and sharing pancakes. There was no discrimination at all because when you’re in combat, you take what you (laughter) can get. 1:06:07.6 And then later we had a black antitank battalion stand out in front of─was it Climbach(?)? I think it was. And shelled this town where the Germans were, and they got shelled, and they lost ten or fifteen guys right out in the

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open. And then their truck brought up ammunition for their guns; three-inch naval guns is what they were and very powerful. 1:06:50.4 But the Germans saw them and killed a lot of them, and then when we broke through the Siegfried Line, we were led by a black tank battalion, Sherman tanks, 761st Tank Battalion was all-black. 1:07:14.2 And they had been with Patton before, and they led us through the─what was the French line? Unknown voice: Maginot? Martin: Maginot Line and the Siegfried Line, and I think it was Climbach [and Reisdorf]. 1:07:34.9 And we captured that town and broke the Siegfried Line, and these guys, tankers were in front of us, and they shot everything in sight, guns, machine guns, .50 calibers, 76 mm guns, everything that moved in towns and villages they went through; didn’t matter whether it was civilian, German, whatever. Anything that moved, they just shot. And I asked one of them; I said, “Why do you do that?” And he said, “Man, we learned this jive from General Patton.” That’s what he said: “This jive from General Patton.” So that’s what they did. And the Germans were scared to death of them because of that. So later on they ran into a supply wagon of Germans, supply horses and wagons and stuff. They just went ahead and crushed the wagons and the men and horses and everything in them, just ran over them, and horses screaming on the side, injured─I’ll never forget that─and Germans coming out of the hills, surrendering. But after the black tank battalion got by, not before, because they saw what was happening. 1:09:04.0 Henderson: Yeah. They’d hide from the black tank battalion and then come out after. Martin: Because they were shooting everything that moved. But St. Die was where there was an American Museum there prior to World War II, and the guy who named America was there, in that building, in St. Die, and he was the first one to name America in the fourteen something, 1470 or something. 1:09:43.5 And he spelled it with a K rather than a C because that’s the way the Germans did. And when the Germans retreated from St. Die, they burned that down, and the city hall, and a few other buildings, and shot thirty civilians prior to the breakthrough. Unknown voice: How about the jets? Martin: Oh, yeah. 1:10:18.2 When we were in Austria, [we] were strafed by German jets, jet planes, Me-262s, and we went by several airfields where they were parked, just setting there, no pilots. And they strafed us a couple of times, and they had 30 mm cannon in them, so you could hear them coming, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then when they went by you heard the jet. So scared the hell out of us. We knew they had jets, but being strafed by them was─ Henderson: There’s not much you can do on the ground.

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Martin: Not much you can do, and we were in a column. Fortunately they kind of missed our part of the column, yeah. Anyway, I guess that’s─ Unknown voice: That’s it. You have to sign your name here. Martin: I have to sign my name? Unknown voice: Um-hm, right here. Unknown voice: (Inaudible) if Cecilia has any questions. Unknown voice: Yeah. If you have some more, go ahead. Unknown voice: She may have questions of you. Henderson: You’ve covered so much. I don’t know a lot about your personal, individual experiences outside of what you’ve already told me, so─ Martin: Well, the first day, I told you about that. And I often wondered why the wire chief sent Cerretani down there on the first day of combat because they were getting shelled and mortared, and he knew it. But if he hadn’t sent us, he’d have sent two other wiremen, so. Henderson: Yeah. It had to happen one way or the other. Martin: Yeah, it had to happen, yeah. Henderson: Thank you very much for doing an interview with me. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate your service. Martin: If I can─ (end of interview)