Interview of Thor Ronningen
Transcript Number 002

Interviewer: Joseph James
Videotape Interview - July 1, 1998
Randall Library -SENCC

Joseph James: Welcome and greetings to you from the friends and veterans of "World War II Remembered," as they share their lives with you during the tumultuous years of 1937 to 1947, years that changed forever the political and economical thinking and structure of practically every nation on earth. Today the program concerns veterans who served their country with pride and distinction during World War II. In any branch of the service, either in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, or Merchant Marines, they all have stories to tell. Our purpose today is to inform the American public of the sacrifices and experiences of those gallant men. The interview today is on videotape so their military duty and experiences will always be remembered by citizens of the United States. My name is Joseph James from Wilmington, North Carolina and this is Thor Ronningen, from Scotts Hill.

Thor Ronningen: Right.

JJ: Now we'll get on with our interview. Well, I ask you, what is your current address, Thor?

TR: Three seven zero, Scotts Hill Loop Road.

JJ: And the branch of service that you served in?

TR: I served in the Army, generally.

JJ: Your highest rank and grade held in the service?.

TR: When I went in the Army, I was inducted on the 15th of July, 1943 as a Private and was discharged on September 26th, 1945 as a Sergeant.

JJ: When you were inducted, the first three or four days of the service, what did you think? Actually, what was the camp you were inducted into?

TR: Well, number one I was inducted at Camp Dodge, Iowa, which at that time won an award for the best run reception center in the country. So, that part was great. I was eighteen the last week in April of 1943. I tried to enlist several times and the recruiters all told me to go home and finish high school. I graduated from high school in June and I was in the Army in July. In other words, I could hardly wait to get there. I was afraid they were going to get the war over before I got my share. 

JJ: No chance. Now, locations served in stateside, what camps and posts did you serve?


TR: From Camp Dodge, I went to Fort Benning to take basic training. I was in the Army Specialized Training Program. Some people decided, early on, that the Army needed a whole lot of trained engineers, more than they needed foot soldiers, so they established the ASTP. After basic training, we went to college instead of going to a camp. I went to Arkansas State College in Jonesboro, Arkansas from December of 1943 until March of 1944. In March of '44, the Army realized that they were running short of men in the battlefield and they could not afford the luxury of the ASTP program, so it was closed down. I was in a group of 220 at Arkansas State and we were transferred to the 99th Infantry Division at Camp Maxie, Texas, near Paris, Texas along with about 3000 other ASTP guys from other college campuses around the country.

JJ: Why did you enlist? Or why were you drafted, I should say?

T.R.: I was drafted because I didn't have time to enlist. We had a strong family history of military service. My father was on the Mexican border with Pershing in 1916 in WWI. Both of my brothers had gone into the service in WWII before I did. My brother-in-law was a Canadian and was on a Canadian mine-sweeper doing convoy duty in the North Atlantic, and I felt a strong obligation to pick up my end of the load. It's something I owed.

JJ: Excellent. What did you think of the equipment the Army issued you during the time of service?

T.R.: We were the best equipped army in the world. There's no doubt in my mind about that. But there were a lot of deficiencies. We had the M-1 rifle, which was far and away the best military rifle in any army. Our artillery was superb although the German 88 was a far more versatile weapon. It was only near the end of the war that we got in 90mm guns that could compare with them. I served in Europe and it was cold and wet and we were cold and wet. We didn't have proper footgear and we didn't have proper gear to keep us warm, and that was a big deficiency. 

JJ: What about the food and chow that they had in the service?

T.R.: Contrary to what most people believe, I thought the food was good. During training, our company was put on, as all companies were put on regularly doing duties around the camp. One of them was delivering the food. Not every company mess got exactly the same quantity and the exact same quality of food. Our company ate a whole lot better than a lot of the other companies because our cooks were so good and our mess sergeant was so good. When we were on-line in Germany and there were only one or two days during the Battle of the Bulge that we did not have a hot meal. We would turn in our mess gear and the cooks would stand guard all night and were literally shooting Germans right outside the kitchen. They'd get up in the morning and cook a meal, load it in the mess gear, put it on a jeep, drive it around, distribute it, and we'd eat it. We'd put the dirty mess gear back and they'd take that back, scrub that up, and do it again all the next day. Many units didn't have that and many units went days and days without any hot food. 

JJ: What did you think the first time you ever went on KP duty?


T.R.: KP is one of those things that civilians make fun of. KP is not bad at all, depending on what you're doing. If you really screwed up, they would give you the job of cleaning the ranges, and these were coal-fired iron ranges and they were still hot. Now, that was a dirty job and so was cleaning out the sump. Peeling potatoes and washing dishes, you had a machine to do that, and it was a breeze. 

JJ: What about the quality of your leadership? The non-coms and officers in your unit?

T.R.: I was very, very fortunate -- plusses and minuses. The sergeants generally were good. The platoon leader I had in combat, was completely incompetent. The sergeants, and I was later one of the sergeants, ran the platoon. The platoon leader thought he was running it, but he wasn't. My company commander was excellent. My battalion commander was absolutely outstanding -- just a giant of a man. The regimental commander was worthless when the chips were down, and the division commander was not worth his salt, either. 

JJ: What about the discipline in your outfit?

T.R.: Well, discipline goes with leadership. If you have good leaders, you don't have any discipline problems. The times you had discipline problems was when you had a leader that was not leading, and I didn't have that problem.

JJ: I always said the non-coms were the leaders of most of the outfits.

T.R.: That's right, They run the Army.

JJ: Any kind of off-duty recreation? What did you do when you were off-duty?

T.R.: Well, when we were training in Texas, we had bowling alleys and we had first-run movies at the service clubs. The USO would show up there. When we were overseas in combat, there were no off-hours -- period. 

JJ: How about military slang. The songs we used to sing during the service?

T.R.: Again, that's Hollywood. Our guys didn't sing -- the infantry does not sing. We did in training, yes. Occasionally we'd come marching back in completely beat and we'd pick it up, sing, and pretend as though we were all refreshed and raring to go again. But overseas, there was no singing.

JJ: It just didn't happen, huh?

T.R.: There wasn't any slang as such. There was a tremendous amount of profanity -- just common language. Ernie Pyle said in one of his columns, that "men talk as hard as they live" and he had been with the Navy units and with the Marine units. The first time he went with an Infantry outfit, this happened to be in Italy, he said he was astonished. He said he had never heard people talk that tough. I had to watch it when I got home. I told my parents, "Now, don't worry," because I'd catch myself in the middle of a sentence using the language we had used in the service. 


JJ: All service men appreciate Ernie Pyle. There's no question about it.

T.R. Right.

JJ: And also 'Sadsack' and 'Willie & Joe'.

T.R.: Right.

JJ: What date did you go overseas?

T.R.: We shipped out of Boston Harbor. Our POE was Camp Miles Standish right outside of Taunton, Massachusetts. We shipped out of Boston Harbor at the end of October, 1944. Incidentally, our ship was the USS Marine Devil. It was a banana boat owned by United Fruit Company, converted to haul troops. If you haven't been on one of those, our bunks were pipe frames with canvas slung between them. Roughly seven feet by two feet. They were about 7 or 8 high but there was only about 18" maximum between the layers. On your bunk, you had not only you, but your barracks bag, your rifle, your helmet, your overcoat and everything you owned. Ventilation could have been better. The guy on the top was right under a ventilator and he almost froze and the guys on the bottom could chew the air. 

JJ: I'm sure there are many interesting stories as you crossed the sea. Do you have any?

T.R.: No, that was largely just boring -- just passing time. One of the things that was a real revelation to me was ship life, because I hadn't been around this kind of life. Our battalion was on there, the Army, and we had Navy gun crews. We had 5" deck guns and the Navy crew running that. Then, there were civilians that were running the ship. A crap game and a blackjack game started before we got out of the harbor and went 24 hours a day, around the clock, changing people. I had played blackjack -- nickel, dime, or maybe, if you get real dangerous, you go to a quarter. The blackjack on ship, the smallest bet they'd take was $20. The crap games were often throwing the dice for $2,000 or $3,000. I watched those games and I enjoyed watching them, but I sure didn't get in them.

JJ: When did you arrive over in Europe?

T.R. We landed at Plymouth, England which is on the southwest corner of England. We got on trains and rode across to Dorchester in Dorsett County at Camp Marabout, which was one of the camps that had been built to hold the invasion troops in June. This was the first week in November and we spent the entire month in England. Usually, we had athletics of some kind in the morning to keep us fit, and then in the afternoon we marched -- five, ten, fifteen, twenty miles to keep us physically fit until we were ready to go into combat. 

JJ: How was the morale of your unit?


T.R.: Morale was very high. While we were in England, some guys did get leave and went to Edinburgh and to London. It was a real revelation. Dorchester is a pretty good size town and at one of the main intersections, there, was about a 60 watt blue light hanging over the intersection. That was the only light you could see at night. We asked one of the citizens "when are they going to lift the blackout?" and he said "Oh, yeah, they have. Didn't you see the light?" One thing I've got to mention, too, people don't really appreciate what goes on. A young English boy came to one of the barracks just to visit -- he was curious to meet the Yanks. That morning, we had some oranges that were going bad, so the cooks had given each of us two oranges with our breakfast, just so they wouldn't have to throw them out. I saw this young fellow looking at it, so I said, "Would you like an orange?" and he said, "Oh, yes, please, thank you very much." He put it in his pocket. I said. "Aren't you going to eat it?" He said, "Oh, no. I'll take it home and share it with my parents and my sister." This kid was twelve years old. I asked him if he'd ever had an orange. He said, "Oh, yes. I had an orange once." Being Americans, we tied both of his pant legs at his ankle and filled his trouser legs with oranges. The poor kid could hardly walk when he left.

JJ: That was a generous thing to do. What about news from home or letters from girlfriends?

T.R.: Letters from home were, of course, always welcome. I can't say enough about that. Mail service was generally pretty good, but it all depended on how much transportation was available, because ammunition, food, and petrol had to come ahead of letters.

JJ: While you were over there, what did you think of foreign women -- English women?

T.R.: Well, women are women. You've got to understand we were 18, 19 and 20 year-old kids and 99% of us were not married. That's an entirely different outlook than a married guy whose been around some.

JJ: What about the Army news, the 'Stars and Stripes', did you like that paper?

T.R.: Yes, we liked 'The Yank' better, I think. Of course, you mentioned 'Sadsack,' everybody enjoyed Mauldin. 

JJ: Now from Dorchester, you took a boat across the channel to France.

T.R.: Right. We took a boat out of South Hampton. We landed at LeHavre, France, and that was the first time we had fully realized the devastation. LeHavre had been bombarded by the British fleet, bombed by American planes, and was just a total shambles. There were masts of ships sticking up all over and warehouses and piers had been bombed into rubble. Our ship couldn't get up to a pier because there weren't any piers. We loaded down with the landing nets, just like the invasion guys did into landing boats, and went onto shore that way. But, we could tell the war was going good. On the boat going over across the channel, the English crew was very adamant that we couldn't light a cigarette aboard deck, because of the blackout. We got to LeHavre, and there was Army 6 by 6, lined up -- a great row of them. The headlights were on full and we knew the war had passed that part by, at least.


JJ: What was your unit now? What division?

T.R.: I was a member of I Company, 395th Infantry Regimen, 99th Infantry Division. Much of my experience, I wrote about in my book about our battalion. The battalion is 3 rifle companies and 1 heavy weapons company. The rifle companies have basically M-1s, Browning automatic rifles, air cooled 30 caliber machine guns, and 60mm mortars. 

JJ: How many men were in a rifle company?

T.R.: A rifle company is about 220 to 250 men. There were three rifle companies and one weapons company to a battalion. A battalion is roughly 900 men and that's really the basic fighting unit in the infantry.

JJ: Now I'm going to ask you to describe your 'baptism of fire.'

TR: We went on line the 9th of November 1944. Out battalion was the first in our division to go online. We were in the little town of Hoffen in Germany, which is just a little tiny village. One thing you've got to realize is that it is 50 degrees north, which is as far north as Winnipeg. Night comes early, 4:30 in the afternoon is dark, and it's nine o'clock in the morning before it gets light. It was getting dusk as we moved in and we were relieved this other outfit was holding the area. All of us wondered what in the world was going to happen. None of us had ever experienced it. We could hear artillery fire in the distance. We had no idea really where we were, what our surroundings were, or anything else. The next day the sun came up and we were still there. I don't know how much you want me to elaborate on this, but our battalion had about 6,000 yards of coverage frontage facing the enemy. That's almost four times what a battalion normally has. Our battalion commander, an excellent commander, Lt. Col. McClearnan Butler, who incidentally, had ancestors who were generals in the Civil War, one of whom won the Congressional Metal in the Indian Wars, had a long military background, too. Col. Butler could see that we could not possibly defend the whole area, so we had to set up a series of strong points. We called them holes and we built holes. People hear of holes and they think of fox holes, which are basically just a round hole in the ground that you stand in. The holes we built, because we had the time and we were fortunate, and were about 6 feet wide and about 6 feet deep and about ten feet long. We had an aperture out to the front, we had a trench coming in from the side, and we'd roof them with logs, doors off buildings, and dirt. They're big enough for three men, so that at night, two guys could sleep and one guy be on guard. They were strong enough that they'd take anything except a direct round of artillery. 

JJ: What about your unit's performance in combat.


TR: We went on line the 9th of November and this area was fairly quiet. It was in the west wall area which some people call the Siegfried Line. We had pill boxes in front of us, in fact, part of our battalion was sleeping in pill boxes. There were enemy patrols that would come in to see us; we'd go out to visit them, sometimes to get prisoners, sometimes to start a fight, and sometimes just to get information. We exchanged artillery on an irregular basis. They'd fire a few rounds and we would exchange some mortar fire. There was no great hand-to-hand combat, just small patrols, ten to fifteen men, maybe, but no large assaults. Our first real baptism of fire was on the 16th of December, 1944. At 5:30 in the morning, I was asleep at the time, in one of these holes, Gus was on guard, and Raleigh was sleeping. I woke up and the ground was shaking just like I was in a bowl of jelly, and I have never been so scared in my life. I had no idea what was happening, because I came out of a sleep, but I laughed about it afterwards. My home training came to mind immediately because the first thing that went through my mind was "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." I was fearing evil. German artillery of all sizes, and the worst were what we called 'Screaming Mimi's.' -- they're rocket propelled, fired in batteries, you've seen them in newsreels, and they go 'whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.' When they come in, they come in with a tremendous scream that will almost split your eardrums. They're fired in batteries of ten, twelve, or fifteen, so it's one after the other. They're not real accurate and there's not much shrapnel with them. They've got a tremendous concussion when they explode. Our communication between these holes and between our outposts were land telephone lines. In other words, we took the telephone line and just laid it on the ground. Of course, when the artillery came in, it would cut all those wires and we were completely out of communication with anybody. The three of us in the hole could not see anyone and we could not talk to anyone, except ourselves. We figured that we were dead, everybody else was gone, and we were due to go. We would sell ourselves as dearly as we could. In talking to a lot of other fellows afterwards, fellows in other holes felt exactly the same way. They were all cut off and they were all alone. "Well, I'm going to fight as long as I can and as hard as I can." One of the things that happens in combat, you soon learn, you can identify sounds. Incoming artillery sounds completely different than outgoing artillery. Outgoing artillery doesn't bother you. The American machine gun sounds a whole lot different than the German machine gun and the rifles were the same way. During this time, before it got light, this is 5:30 in the morning and this went on for over half an hour, we received the heaviest barrage the German's ever fired in the history of World War II. We could hear some rifle fire, we knew there were some of our guys over there, then we heard some machine gun fire, and we knew our guys were over here. We heard our mortar fire, so we knew that we had some help. We still didn't have any idea what, and really didn't realize what had happened or what was going on until it began to get daylight, about nine o'clock in the morning. One of the German ploys that they used for the first time, and it was new to the Americans, they took these high powered searchlights and shone them off the low hanging clouds, and the light would reflect. They thought that would give their soldiers a better view of things and make their job easier. It did help the German soldiers, but it also helped the American soldiers. You asked how our unit did, that was the start of the Battle of the Bulge, which was the biggest fight that the U.S. army has ever engaged in. There were over a million men in that thing, German and American. The Germans attacked on a 70 mile front. To the best of my knowledge, the only place that they did not penetrate was Hoffen, Germany, where the 3rd Battalion was. Our battalion was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for the stand we made there; three of our guys won the Distinguished Service Cross. The Battle of the Bulge went on until the end of January, until it was declared completely over. Our part of it really lasted only about three or four days. The Germans hit us largely with infantry, and we destroyed them, we killed them, and we injured them. In the Presidential Citation, it states we were outnumbered up to eight to one and we inflicted casualties at the rate of twenty to one. Our battalion was given credit for destroying 75% or three German regiments. A couple of tanks did come with the infantry one day, but when the infantry was driven off, the tanks left because they didn't have the infantry protection. The whole "Bulge" area is heavily wooded, it's very up and down, there's lots of streams, there's very few good roads, there's no big cities to amount to anything, and it really favors the defense. The American troops were so thin and the German surprise so complete, that they did penetrate far farther than a lot of people thought they could. One other thing we had to content with, the Germans, as a part of their attack, had dropped some paratroopers back behind us near Eupen. That's a story in itself and it was a complete fiasco. These people didn't know what they were doing. The pilots had never dropped troops before. It was a complete disaster, their operation fell apart, and Col. Vonderheit told his men to make it back home if they possibly could. They split up in twos and threes, so we had them coming through us from behind. Some of them we killed and some we captured. I'm sure a few got through.

JJ: Was your unit completely isolated?

TR: Yes, we didn't know it at the time, but we found out afterwards. Yes, there were Germans behind us as well as in front of us.

JJ: You actually just had small arms, mortars, machine guns, and rifles?

TR: Yes, but we did have artillery and that American artillery saved us -- the 105's and the 155's. Those guys were absolutely amazing. I was in the house, across the street was another house, maybe 35 to 40 feet away. Before the Bulge came, I asked the artillery observer "How good are you?" He said "You see that house over there? I can put that house in the basement and never touch you." He did with just pin-point accuracy. Again, remember we had about five weeks there of rather quiet times. The artillery could fire their concentrations, get their coordinates, and we could not have survived without the artillery. At one point, about a hundred Germans got through us. The artillery literally laid down a wall of steel. These Germans wanted to retreat and they couldn't, because there was just a solid wall of artillery shells. They ended up being killed and captured. One other thing about that, six times Col. Butler called in five minute concentrations on us. He knew that we had good holes, but he felt to stop the Germans, he had to have his own guns fire right on us. 

JJ: How close?

TR: How close? On top of us!

JJ: Right on top of you?

TR: Yes, sir, that was a real thrill. Again, we didn't know, at the time, that Col. Butler had ordered it. It made sense, because we were in these good holes, and the Germans were out in the open, between buildings, or something like that. 

JJ: Thank God for those holes you dug.

TR: Oh, yes, and Thank God for Col. Butler. He's the one that insisted and decided the positioning of them. 


JJ: We're going to take a short break now.

TR: Sure.

TR: One of the things I forgot to mention, Joe, that I thought you might find interesting, was when we went on line, the line was quiet. We got there the 9th of November. On the first of December, that's payday in the Army, the first of the month, and they paid us. They paid us in occupation currency. The amazing thing was, we didn't have a use for the money. The only thing you could do with money was to either pay off debts or gamble. There were no stores and there was no place to spend it. It is really a unique experience to be in a place where money is completely valueless and it means absolutely nothing. The fellows were gambling, since we were using occupation currency in foreign denominations, and would bet by the amount of paper they had in their hand. I mean, each piece of paper was worth as much as the other. Often, they betted far more than they wanted to. I thought that was interesting.

JJ: Very interesting. Now, continue on with your . . .


TR: Again, you understand I'm relating the experiences of me and my battalion. Near the end of December, I had gone overseas as a sniper. I carried a 1903 Springfield rifle with a scope on it. I never had occasion to act as a sniper, I just acted as a rifleman. Near the end of December, I was promoted to assistant squad leader, the 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, I Company. In early January, my squad leader, Harold Lang, got a field commission as 2nd Lt., so I took over as squad leader of a rifle squad. A rifle squad is 12 men including me. Eleven of them carrying M-1 rifles and one of them carrying a Browning Automatic Rifle. After we left Hoffen, they moved us down the line several points, where we set up and were there for a short period of time. Then we finally got relief about the middle of February. When we left the line, the 69th Infantry Division relieved us. When we left the line, it was snowing, and 50 degrees north, it was the coldest winter they had had there in fifty years. There was snow and ice. We lost a tremendous number of men from trench foot, which is freezing feet when they're wet. Wounded men, often times, would die if the medics couldn't get to them soon enough, just because it was that cold, particularly when something is happening like the Battle of the Bulge. We came off the line and it was snowing. We had quite a distance to march. We were going across a ridge line, the snow turned to sleet, and we were literally holding our helmets on the side of our head to keep the sleet from cutting our face. Then it turned to rain, a cold rain, 35 degrees, and of course, it was dark. We ended up spending the night in holes that some other outfit had dug. These were just sleeping holes, only about three feet deep, meant for two or three men, and we'd crowd eight to ten guys in there, sitting up, smoking cigarettes, and talking while the rain dripped down. I was so wet that my billfold was soaked all the way through; every piece of paper and every photograph in it was sopping wet. We used heaters that soldiers make. You take a small can and fill it with sand and pour gasoline in it. Then, if you strike a match to it, it'll burn like a candle. It gives you some light, but really doesn't give you much heat, but you have the illusion of heat. It also gives you a lot of soot, so by morning, we were filthy dirty. We really looked like a bunch of bums. Understand, we had taken baths last in England, at the end of October. This was February and we had not had a bath since. We had had sponge baths and baths out of our helmet. My wife is often a little repulsed when I talk about it. We had the two piece Army woolen underwear. When we took a sponge bath, we'd just turn it inside out, figuring that the other side was always cleaner. Everybody got dirty at the same rate, so you really didn't realize how filthy everybody was, until we got back and we met some of these 69th guys. Their uniforms had creases in them and their non-coms all had their chevrons on. They were clean shaven, just bright and polished. Willy and Joe looked like real dudes compared to what we looked like. A lot of people think that Willy and Joe are funny because they're caricatures, but they're not caricatures at all. They're absolute images of an infantryman. 

JJ: That's right.


TR: We then got to spend a week in Belgium. We were living with civilians, and they split us up among the houses and they just can not do enough for the American soldier. They will go completely out of their way and give you anything they've got. They are so grateful. The first night, there were three of us in this one house. There was a double bed, so we drew lots to see who slept in the bed and who slept on the floor. I got the bed, and I told the guys the next morning, you guys sleep in the bed, and I'll sleep on the floor. The bed was too soft and I wasn't used to sleeping in that kind of comfort. After a week in ______________, Belgium, we were back on the trucks and started back to business again. On the first of March we attacked the town of Bergheim. Bergheim is a city of, I would guess, 35 to 40 thousand. It was the first city of any size we had seen. We crossed the ___________ canal, which was a natural barrier to tanks and it was vital that we get across there. We started the attack at about 4 o'clock in the morning, in the dark. By noon, we had taken the town. There was not a tremendous amount of resistance in the village. There was some in the woods outside that 1st Battalion hit, but we only lost two men and they were not killed until after the fighting was over. They went out to investigate a burned out German tank and a sniper got them. We did have several guys injured and then we started off across the Cologne plain. We had been in this hilly area with woods, trees, and creeks up and down. The Cologne plain is almost table top flat for a tremendous distance, all the way from there to the Rhine river which is about 35 to 40 miles. Cologne is a big city on the Rhine river. The Germans were drawing back. There was no natural obstacle between them and the attacking Americans, except the Rhine river. They were drawing their troops back behind the Rhine river, determined to make a big stand at the Rhine. Occasionally, small units would stop and put up a fight that would last for a while, but then they would withdraw. We moved pretty rapidly. When we talk about these little towns that are very common in that part of Germany, Belgium, and Holland, there's a little community of maybe a hundred people every couple of miles down the road, any direction you go. So, when I say, we took a bunch of towns in a day, that's what I'm talking about -- we didn't go that far. Most of the time, there was no fighting or anything, it was just a question of getting there. Of course, being the infantry we got there by foot. I never did get to the Rhine river and I didn't see the Rhine river until 1990. Around noon, on the 5th of March, we were in the little town of Kukouf (SP?). Now Kukouf had a population of 200 or 300 and was basically a farming community. Again, very common in the architecture there, is the farmhouse with the barn attached to it, sometimes in an "L" shape. We were in this barn in Kukouf and it was around noon. They had brought up some mail and some food for us. We were getting organized because we were going to attack that afternoon, going toward the Rhine. Two of the fellows were loading a bazooka. A bazooka is a three and a half inch rocket designed to penetrate tanks. They were loading it, and there is a friction catch on the back that fits on the veins of the bazooka round, that holds it. You've got a small battery in there and an electrical charge that sets the spark that ignites it and fires. The round is not supposed to be live until it's fired. They were loading the bazooka and the friction catch did not hold. The round slipped through the bazooka, hit the concrete floor, and exploded. Tanner and Snorson were both killed. Tanner lost both his legs and Snorson, his middle was just torn right open. I was standing six or eight feet from it. Something that people are always curious about, although sometimes hesitate to ask about it, is what does it feel like to be hit. When there is an explosion, the instinctive reaction is to get away from it, as far as you can, and as fast as you can. So, I turned around and ran for the opening in the barn. My left leg held fine, my right leg didn't hold, and I fell down on the garage floor. I was laying there not knowing what had happened, of course. Gene Womble came rushing up and said "Are you hit?" I said "Yeah, I'm hit." He said "Where?" I said "How the hell do I know." I didn't have the slightest idea. I knew I was hit, but I didn't know where or how bad. There were four or five of us in the doorway and we were not vitally injured, not in danger of dying, and not in danger of loosing a limb -- nothing that serious. The medics were working on these guys right away, almost instantly, including a battalion surgeon who was the most forward, full fledged doctor the infantry had. They stuck us on litters, put us on a jeep, and headed back to the clearing station where all the casualties go. I didn't find out about this until afterwards, but, about five minutes after we left, German artillery came right into the barn. Some of the fellows that had been hit, were hit again. Some of the medics, working on the wounded men, were also hit. The carnage was really awful and we ended up with 14 men killed and 40 some wounded in the period of about ten minutes in that barn. As I say, I was the rifle squad leader. The only man left in my squad was George Nothwang, and he was in England on a pass at the time. Every other man was either dead or wounded and that was the end of the fighting war for me. I thought I would be back and I told the guys I would be back, but I didn't make it. I went back through the Army hospital system by jeep, by Army ambulance called a meat wagon and rode a train from Liege to Paris. They just took out litters and hung them in racks on the French train. In Paris, I was in a gray, huge hospital, 4 or 5 stories tall with 3 or 4 buildings. It was a great hospital plant that the Germans had used when they were in Paris. When they wheeled me in there, the first voice I heard was Gene Womble, the guy who had asked me if I was hit. He had been hit when the artillery came in. In the Army hospital system, they tried to code you on how long it would take you to recover and be fit for service again. If it was going to be 30 days, they'd move you back as far as Paris. If it was going to be 60 days, then they would move you to England. If it was going to be 120 days or longer, they Z.I.'d you. Z.I. is the 'zone of interior' or the United States. I was in the hospital in Paris for a month or so and had several operations. They sewed me up and really didn't see anything. Patients in the hospital, who felt well enough and felt up to it, could get passes and go to town. I couldn't walk, so I couldn't go to town. They were going to fly me to England, and I figured I would get to look out the airplane and get an aerial view of Paris. The meat wagon driver went out of his way to go by the Arc De Triumph. There were two windows in the back of that ambulance about 6" by 12." I saw the Arc De Triumph through the window and I got to the airport. They loaded our litters five high and I was on the top one. I could only lift my head about 4" or hit the top of the airplane. I, of course, saw absolutely nothing.


JJ: How was the medical care?

TR: Absolutely outstanding. I can't say enough for the medics on the line. Each platoon of 40 men had a medic, who actually worked for the battalion surgeon, who was in battalion headquarters. Most of these guys were not medically trained and they were not interns, but many of them became doctors afterwards. They were just assigned that duty and they didn't carry a gun. Holland was killed -- a German shot him three times. The third time he couldn't get up and he was working on a wounded man. He had the red cross on the front, both sides, and the back of his helmet. Many of them were shot. They would do absolutely anything to go after a wounded man to help him. The people in the Army hospitals were treated with excellence, and the care and compassion was unending.

JJ: That's great. You were not able to rejoin your unit?

TR: No. I was in the hospital in England on V.E. Day, May 8th in 1945, and just a couple of days after that, they began closing down the replacement system. By that time, I was down to just a small bandage on my leg. They had no channels to send replacements, so they sent us back to the states.

JJ: What was your reaction on V.E. Day?

TR: Oh, it was great, but I was in the hospital. We were wearing pajamas. I played golf at that time and there was a beautiful golf course there. The patients were free to use it for free, clubs and everything, but we could not play in our pajamas. They would not give us any clothes. On V.E. Day, we were sitting around the hospital in our pajamas, listening to everybody at the camp, the doctors and nurses carrying on, playing their radios real loud, dancing, singing, and having a ball.

JJ: How about the awards and decorations you received during your service?

TR: We got the Presidential Unit Citation, which I'm very proud of. The one I'm proudest of is the Combat Infantry Badge. The Combat Infantry Badge, in my opinion, is as high an honor as you can get -- it has to be earned. I got a Bronze Star because I got the Combat Infantry Badge -- they gave them in combination. I did not win any medals as such, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Service Cross or the Congressional Medal. It has always been my opinion, that all of the medals that the guys on the line won, every medal they got, they won. A lot of guys won medals but didn't get them. I mentioned George Nothwang being in England when we all got hit. George was a B.R. man and he stacked up twenty-one Germans in front of his gun in one fight. Col. Butler tried everything he could to get George a medal, but he couldn't get him a medal because the only people who actually saw what he did, were PFC's. The toughest medal in the world, of course, is the Victoria Cross, and I actually saw a guy walking down the street in England wearing a V.C. ribbon. 

JJ: What is your opinion about the enemy soldier? The German Soldier?


TR: The German soldiers were good. Their company grade officers, lieutenants and captains, probably were considerably better trained than ours. The individual soldier, the American, was far superior to the German. They had several pieces of equipment that were superior -- their machine gun was far superior to ours and their light machine guns. They were way ahead of us in automatic weapons. The German temper is such that they are rather regimented and were used to being told what to do. In most instances, most German units lost their fighting effectiveness, if they lost their leaders. If you got their lieutenant and their sergeant, most of the guys didn't know what to do. Of course, with the Americans, that didn't work. The Americans were used to taking the initiative. One other thing I want to mention about these A.S.T.P. guys, besides being young, single, and in good health, they were very bright and real smart guys. Many of them went on to high careers in business and academia. In my opinion, they are the best infantry soldiers the world has ever seen. Infantry soldiers had to be resourceful, and had to be able to operate all types of weapons. We used German weapons and all kinds of vehicles. In the American Army, each individual soldier could do this and do it naturally. In most of the foreign armies, that's not true. Most Germans didn't grow up driving tractors and cars like we did.

JJ: You were sent home from England. What did you do, fly back home?

TR: No. I was on a boat and that was a real experience. The boat I was on, was the sister ship of the Morro- Castle, which was all ramps, which is an acronym for repatriated allied military prisoners or hospital patients. They called for volunteers and I wanted something to do, so I volunteered and a ramp air force sergeant and I showed movies to the hospital patients in the wards. When I had been in the hospital, I had been around guys with similar type injuries. I was flabbergasted when I got on board that boat and showed the movies because I was in the wards where every man was missing a limb -- at least one. We had to turn one fellow around so he could see the movie because we were shooting down a narrow aisle. His pelvic bone stuck up just like tent poles. They put a wire cage around the amputation, and then used rubber tubes tied to the cage, to keep the blood vessels pulled down in the stump. He laughed and said "Be careful you don't stump my big toe." These guys were magnificent, but I had no idea so many were torn up so badly. 

JJ: What was your date of discharge? Where were you discharged from?

TR: I had all kinds of interesting experiences in the service. I landed in New York harbor and I turned to my friend Val. I had never seen the Statue of Liberty in my life, but that was home for me.

JJ: That was after V.E. Day too, right?


TR: Yes, we went to Camp Shanks and then I got on a train and went to Borden General Hospital in Chickasha, Oklahoma. The train car I was on had beds three high, parallel to the side. There couldn't have been more than nine in a regular Pullman car with a great big picture window. I had the middle bed, so I'm laying in this very comfortable bed, nothing but glass beside me, air conditioned in the heat of summer, looking out, and watching America roll by. It was a delightful trip. There was a little lobby at the end of the car. There was a refrigerator there and it had orange juice and milk in it anytime we wanted it. That was living. I was in the hospital in Borden General in Chickasha, Oklahoma, when V.J. Day happened. Oklahoma's a dry state, and of course, that is dry in name only. Somebody got a hold of a pint of something and it was awful. We tried to celebrate, but it was so awful tasting, we couldn't even do much of that. I was discharged on September 26, 1945. I had been given a thirty day leave and I tried to re-up when I got back from the leave, but I couldn't pass the physical. I was 20 years old. The biggest thing in my life by far was my World War II Army experience. I was perfectly willing to go back in and I felt out of place at home, like I didn't belong. 

JJ: What were your expectations upon leaving the service? Did you want to further your education, get married, or anything?

TR: Sure, that was all very vague. I didn't have any real plans. Just about all of those guys from ASTP, ended up in college. In fact, some of them had had a year or two of college before they went into the army and many of them had advanced degrees. So, the G.I. Bill was there, and I went to school, more or less, in default. All of my friends were going to college when they got home, so I figured I might as well go to college. Now I want to stick one thing in -- I don't know if you remember the 52-20 Club or not.

JJ: I sure do.

TR: For those of you who are not familiar, the U.S. Government, in its kind heartedness, figured these poor veterans will have difficulty finding a job when they get home, so we'll help them and give them twenty dollars a week for 52 weeks. The guys called it the 52-20 Club. A number of my friends, these were single guys, had saved some money during service because, oftentimes, you couldn't spend it. I managed to shame several of them off the 52-20 Club, because they were using it just to get beer money. As I told them, if I'm unemployed, it's because I want to be unemployed, I sure don't expect anyone to pay me to be unemployed, and I sure don't expect the taxpayers to buy my beer. No, I didn't have any hard and fast plans, but I had assumed I would go to college, sooner or later. I did and life went on.

JJ: Well, how did military life affect your life afterwards? After your discharge and throughout your whole life?

TR: Oh, it's made a world of difference. You've got to realize that I was 19 years old and I was making history. Never anything that great, that sweeping, that important, or world-shaking could ever happen to me again. It just wouldn't unless there was another war, and then they would probably tell me I was too old, and that wass true of most of us. Your success in your job or your success in your chosen field is important, and a lot of people know about it, but when you're in a battle where there is a million men in the battle, a whole lot more people know about it. It's a whole lot bigger than getting a promotion or getting a vice-presidency or something like that. For the last 25 years, at least, I've been doing research on the outfit I was with. I've got a tremendous amount of information about it and I correspond with guys all over. I have several good Belgian friends and a German even translated part of my book into German so that people in Hoffen could read it. 

JJ: I know you belong to some unit organizations and some national organizations. What are they?


TR: Well, I belong to the America Legion and I belong to the Disabled American Veterans. I, also, belong to the Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge. There's an outfit in Asheville called Combat Infantry and I belong to that, largely just on paper. I did join the Retired Officers Association. I guess that's about it.

JJ: You've always advocated to go to reunions.

TR: Oh, yes, every veteran I talk to, I advise them to go to a reunion. Some guys may not like it, but I've seen so many get such tremendous relief when they can talk to somebody that understands what they are talking about. If you haven't been in combat in the infantry, you can't conceive of what the infantry guys went through. Other guys can, and it's a long time ago, but we still remember. We got much closer than brothers, and that closeness is still with us today. We're as close today as we were then, even though we're dying off. 

JJ: Well, thank you, Thor. Thank you very much for taking time to share your experiences with us today.

TR: Let me say just one thing. I will salute any man wearing a combat infantry badge. 

JJ: That's wonderful. It's good to have you.