Halfway through his undergraduate education at Colby College, Ron enrolled in the U.S. Army Reserve and served during the Second World War as a combat medic with K Company in the 414th Regiment of the 104th Timberwolf Division. As a soldier he was awarded a Purple Heart for a shrapnel injury to the left leg and back and a Silver Star for gallantry in action. His desire in writing Looking Back was not to tell the gory details of war but to tell the emotional and human side of war. These pages could easily be filled with bloody stories of mangled bodies and vivid depictions of the war that are a part of every medic's daily life. While these vivid details remain etched in his memory, to what avail would these horrid memories be today for the reader or for the legacy of those whose lives were taken by war? These stories evoke emotions that cannot help but touch the reader with the humanistic side of this war. These soldiers, whose lives were taken at such young ages and by such cruel and unfair circumstances, were, despite their nationalities, all human beings. They were young men whose lives and potential before the war were not much different than his.

Looking Back

Memoirs of a World War II Combat MedicBy Ronald E. Coe

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Ronald E. Coe, MD
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-2019-4

Contents

Acknowledgments...........................................xiIntroduction..............................................xiiiA Slow Adjustment to War..................................1World War II-On Our Way...................................5Hard Cider................................................11The Dead Germans..........................................14First Combat..............................................16Outfitting a Medic........................................20SIW.......................................................23Common Emotions...........................................24The Dutch-Forever Friends.................................25The Apparent Coward.......................................28Chaplain Clair F. Yohe-Always on Call.....................30Explosive Power...........................................31Too Much Alcohol..........................................34The Brave and the Dead....................................36An Old College Foe........................................37The Capture...............................................38The Legging...............................................40The Sergeant..............................................42The Moving Dead...........................................43Vigilante Justice.........................................44Political Power...........................................46The BAR Rifleman..........................................47The Wrong Gold Star Mother................................48The Apparent Brave........................................49Half-Truths Plus an Amazing Response......................50The Minefield.............................................52Words Better Left Unspoken................................53Hand-to-Hand Combat-No Thanks.............................55A "Boarding House" in Brussels............................56The Beer Keg..............................................58Unexpected Room Service...................................60Sammy.....................................................61T4 Jess T. Renteria.......................................65Jim.......................................................67Fred......................................................68The Fully Intoxicated Soldier.............................71Diarrhea..................................................73Chancellor Bismarck.......................................74The Disturbed Dead........................................76A Pleasant Breakfast......................................78The Railroad Shell........................................80Life with the Third Armored...............................81A German Burial...........................................85We're Human Beings........................................86A Quick Response..........................................88No Time to Heal...........................................89A Confession..............................................90Bill......................................................91Medics Also Cry...........................................95Encouraging Signs.........................................96The Wounded Enemy.........................................98Halle.....................................................99It's Often Just Plain Luck................................101The Old Sergeant Syndrome.................................104The Highest VD Rate.......................................105Nature's Way..............................................106Strange Priorities........................................107Souvenirs Alive with Memories.............................108Night Attack..............................................109An Emotional Experience...................................110A Tragic Ending...........................................113Going Home................................................117Returning to the Battlefields.............................119Afterword.................................................121Resources.................................................122

Chapter One

A Slow Adjustment to War

My initial contact with the realities of combat unfolded in the safe confines of the basement of the Durham Public Library in Durham, Connecticut. I was in high school in 1938 when on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I opened a soft, brown, leather-bound book titled The Horror of It ... Camera Records of War's Gruesome Glories by Frederick A. Barber. The book was filled with exceedingly graphic pictures of wounded and dead gassed victims from World War I. These pictures left me with a strange and sickening feeling, but even stranger was my feeling of remoteness from World War II.

As time passed, the increasing number of military convoys passing through the little town of Durham offered mounting evidence of the impending war, but still I had not embraced the realities of war. After high school, I went on to Colby College in Waterville, Maine, as a premed student. Watching the U.S. Army Air Force students march in formation to their classes as a college student, I cannot recall ever thinking of myself as a combatant. Even after joining the Army Reserve in Portland, Maine, during the middle of my sophomore year, I did not face the obvious reality of the near future. I joined the Army Reserve so that I would be permitted to finish the current semester of college. It seemed a better alternative to the draft, but the consequences of this action had not yet hit home.

In June 1943, after completing my sophomore year of college, I reported to Fort Devens in Massachusetts and began my journey through several camps, including Fort Benning in Georgia, for basic infantry training. Although this training included experience with many different weapons, I could not imagine using one to kill another human. I feared taking a life, and by volunteering to be a medic, I was confident that I could avoid killing.

After training in the ASTP at Fort Benning, our group was sent to Princeton, New Jersey, where we were allowed to take academic courses at Princeton University. Finally, we were sent to Camp Carson in Colorado Springs, where we joined the 104th Timberwolf Division. Following five more months of training at the end of August 1944, we were sent to New York City for deployment overseas.

After arriving overseas in 1944, my friend and fellow medic Nils Isachen and I experienced our first combat exposure, and the reality of war finally hit home. It was on the flat, wet soil of Holland that fear and the realities of war took hold with a vengeance. Our senses were immediately awakened to the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the feel, and the smells of war. What took an instant to become real would take a lifetime to process. Decades later, I now know that these realities will stay with me until the day I die. While the reality of war is inescapable, one never fully adjusts. The memories are difficult, if not impossible, to erase.

Fear is a great catalyst in learning survival skills. The first priority was to learn the difference between incoming and outgoing mail-the military terminology for shells and bombs. I have heard it said that you don't hear the one that hits you. I doubt if this is always true. I recall being hit by a shell fragment; I heard the whistle of the fragment, but I didn't hear the shell explosion. One problem is that during heavy shelling, it is impossible to distinguish between the varied and numerous sounds. I do recall in later battles hearing the sounds of bullets whining overhead. I specifically remember climbing the face of Hill 287 in Stolberg, Germany, with my friend Sammy and hearing this sound. The Germans had added another sadistic twist to mortars, which we called "screaming meemies." The "fins" were altered to create a screeching noise, which only added to the horror of being shelled. We would come to know this distinct sound well as we tried to adjust to the daily life of war.

Chapter Two

World War II-On Our Way

After the ASTP ended, we were sent to Camp Carson in Colorado to join the 104th Timberwolf Division, which was getting ready to leave for combat. After some five weeks of training, we left Camp Carson by train between August 15 and 17, 1944, and arrived at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey on August 20. We were processed for overseas shipment, which included a final clothing and weapons check for each individual. We also got our last taste of civilized life before shipping out. Prior to shipping out, we had the pleasure of seeing a USO show in which Marlene Dietrich, the German-born actress, performed. In my opinion, the fact that she performed for U.S. troops made her a great and humble lady.

On August 24, 1944, the chaplains gave their final blessings for the men of the 104th, and on August 25 and 26, the division was taken to New York Harbor via coaches, where we boarded ferryboats that shuttled us to our ship, the USS George Washington. We walked up the gangplank and entered the ship that would take us to Europe to face the realities of war.

The USS George Washington was originally taken from the Germans during World War I. In fact, my father-in-law came back from that war on this vessel. Now, twenty-some years later, another generation was heading to Europe on the same German vessel. It seemed ironic that the same vessel that carried my father-in-law to the safety of home was now carrying my generation to imminent danger. In the darkness, as we passed the Statue of Liberty, I looked up at her, saluted, and whispered, "Good-bye, old lady, I will probably never see you again."

It was a long, slow boat trip. However, my prankster friends helped break the boredom to some degree. My friend Harry Goldberg, who was in the bunk above me, was on the heavy side. We slept on hanging bunks made of canvas material. There were eyelets around the canvas border, with a continuous running line that was tied to a pipe frame to secure the bunks. One night while I was sound asleep, Harry came crashing down on top of me. Our friends had cut him down by severing the line in several places. A rumor ensued that there would be a possible court martial because the soldiers had destroyed government property, but I never heard of that materializing.

Another prank involved waiting until a group of soldiers fell sound asleep and then rattling our mess kits and watching as the sleeping soldiers awoke, jumped from their bunks, and walked toward the mess hall after only a short sleep. Laughter helped pass the time.

A small group of us decided that it would be both practical and a good way to pass the time onboard the ship to completely shave our heads in preparation for war. This did not set well with the high-ranking officers, and we were set aside as an example of what not to do. In the military, all must look alike.

We were perhaps one or two days from our landing at Cherbourg, France, when suddenly there was a loud explosion and shaking of the vessel, which was followed by the Navy firing machine guns at the airborne balloon targets. Suddenly, isolated by ourselves, we watched the escort vessels doing what appeared to be excessive maneuvering. Years later I saw an article in the Timberwolf Howl (the division's newspaper) explaining what really happened. A German submarine message had been intercepted, and it stated that the USS George Washington had been sunk with all troops aboard. Our ship was then moved to a separate location by itself making it appear that we were missing in the formation and thus looking as if we had in fact been sunk. I often wonder if anyone would have jumped overboard had we known the contents of that German message in fear that we could be sunk if the Germans located us out of formation.

We landed at Cherbourg on September 7, 1944. We were the first American division to land directly in France. It was a gloomy, overcast, and rainy day. I recall a crane was unloading the officers' footlockers when the netting or a rope broke, and the lockers tumbled into the water. This was followed by a loud applause, laughter, and cheering from the troops taking advantage of yet another comic relief opportunity.

I was fascinated by the railroad track, which in peacetime would carry passengers right to the water's edge to board their ships. It was here that I saw the first outdoor European bathroom facility and was fascinated by a French couple standing there holding hands. He was inside the latrine, obviously urinating, and she was standing on the outside. I had always heard there were many differences in the European culture compared with ours, and I was now seeing examples of this firsthand.

When we entered the towns of Caen and Saint Lo, France, they appeared to be totally destroyed. The destruction gave us an idea of the explosive powers of war. We then moved into a small village called Valognes, near Barneville, France, where it rained for several days. We pitched our pup tents in an apple orchard. Each soldier carried half a pup tent in his backpack, and we would normally share a tent with one other soldier; however, in this case, we actually put two tents together so that there would be four men to a larger tent-two men on each end. The tents were pitched properly to promote drainage. We went one step further. We found some two-by-six lumber and made a base of this wood around the perimeter, placing three boards on top of each other and then pitching the tents on top of the boards. The orders from the officers in charge were that everything had to be uniform, allowing for the base to be two boards high. Many of us got around this by placing the first board at ground level and covering it on the outside with dirt so that from the outside only two boards were showing, but we still gained an additional six inches of height inside the tent. We also found some fresh straw in barns and electric wire and bulbs from the bombed buildings and French homes. We tapped into the aid station's electric generator and ran the wire underground to our tents, which allowed us light inside our tents. During the day, we buried the interior wires and bulbs in the straw. We never were caught.

Truckers from our division ran what was called the Red Ball Express, which served to supply the front-line troops, especially the tanks, with gasoline and all the other necessities of war. The rest of us passed time by cleaning up fallen apples from the French orchards. We were so cozy and comfortable that we hoped we could spend the duration of the war in Valognes; however, we were realistic and knew that this would not be the case. I recall gazing out at the German-occupied Jersey Islands, which were about ten miles off the shore. Knowing these islands were occupied forced us to face the fact that the war was getting closer.

The day came when we finally had to leave the comfort of our tents. On October 10, 1944, we left the vicinity of Valognes and marched some thirty miles to the English Channel. We could actually see the German soldiers and their camps on the Jersey Islands. The distance between the war and us was now growing closer by the minute.

On October 15, 1944, we moved out with most of the troops going by rail in the 40 and 8's, (which stands for rail cars used to carry forty men or eight horses), while a few rode in motor vehicles. I was allowed to ride in a Jeep because I was suffering from spontaneous acute tendinitis and tenosynovitis of the Achilles tendon, an inflammation of the tendon and the lining of the tendon sheath respectively, most likely from repetitive marching and walking. That night the rain fell hard, and I found that sleeping in a Jeep all night was not very comfortable. We reached the area of Vilvoorde, Belgium, just north of Brussels on October 20, 1944. While traveling, we passed an area where remnants of World War I were visible because of the elongated snakelike depressions in the ground left over from the old trenches. This gave one a very eerie feeling. We somehow felt luckier than those who had come before us and fought in World War I, because unlike those who fought in that war, we knew the type of warfare we were going to encounter. We knew that this would be a very different war than the one that World War I soldiers had experienced, and we hoped that it would not include poisonous gas attacks as most of us had already thrown the bulky gas masks away. Even in war, decisions and choices are relative.

Chapter Three

Hard Cider

After we landed in Normandy, France, we spent about a week waiting to be deployed. Our medical battalion was given passwords and orders for guard duty. Hedgerows rather than fences divided the areas of Normandy. We were to guard the openings in the hedgerows. We were appalled at these orders because we had nothing to defend ourselves with. I remember nervously joking that we couldn't defend ourselves with morphine syrettes.

Our natural response was subtle rebellion. We spent several days visiting French homes and trying to obtain wine. The French homeowners told us that the Germans had taken it all and that they had only hard cider and calvados, a highly alcoholic French apple brandy. We filled our canteens with the hard cider and brandy and drank freely of it. I noticed that some good old Texas boys were showing signs of the effects, but it didn't seem to bother me initially. However, I can honestly say that when it hit, I was truly intoxicated. This is the only time in my life that I experienced such intoxication. I can remember stomping freely all over the shoulders of the roads that had signs warning of mines. I negotiated my way over and around stepping-stones through a swampy section. I am sure the old Texas boys were watching me as I negotiated my path across the stones. They certainly expected that I would fall flat on my face in the water.

Although we spent the night in drunken debauchery, we still had to monitor our guard post. However, rather than taking our shifts in the proper fashion, we guarded from inside our pup tents. When our shifts were over, we would run to the next tent and wake up the next soldier to relieve us of duty. We figured that there were no Germans around and that if a German did stumble by we didn't want to be standing in the middle of the road unarmed.

I had just climbed out of my pup tent when I heard someone coming. I asked for the password and told him to throw down his dog tags. The man turned out to be a rather obnoxious MAO (medical administrative officer) who stepped forward and said, "I'll take charge." At this point, my tongue was sufficiently loosened by the alcohol, and I lost my cool. I said, "No, you won't take charge; I'm in charge."

The next morning the MAO said to me, "You know, Coe, thanks to you I've just been made a fool of at the breakfast table. I am the youngest officer in the entire division, and the incident last night just did not set well with my senior officers." I apologized. Very soon afterward, I found myself crawling on my hands and knees to a field where I vomited from the previous night's abuse of hard cider. After emptying my stomach, I looked up, and there was a jackass, whose field I had stumbled into, looking curiously at me. I remember saying to myself, I don't know what kind of animal you are, but you're awfully homely. I gave him an uppercut that landed on the soft spot under his chin. He promptly ran off, no longer curious about me.

As I mentioned, this was my one and only experience with intoxication. What I never understood about that night is the sharpness with which I recall the details of the night's events. If I were to return to Normandy today, I could retrace my same steps from that night and recall every detail.

Excerpted from Looking Backby Ronald E. Coe Copyright © 2010 by Ronald E. Coe, MD. Excerpted by permission.
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