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Account of Ben Emer’s Military Service

I was in Patton’s Third Army, 35th Infantry Division, 320th Regiment, Charlie Company,

Weapons Platoon and Mortar Squad. My basic training was in Camp Blanding, Florida. We were

trained for the South Pacific arena of war but were sent to the European theater of operations with the

intent that the Allies could end that war earlier. I shipped out of Camp Shanks, New York on or about

November 23, 1944, on a small troop ship called the Thomas H. Barry.

The trip overseas was adventurous in that German U-boats were very active in the Atlantic. While we

had some destroyers as an escort, there were some days we just sailed in circles to avoid possible

attacks by the U-boats. The soldiers slept in canvas bunk beds three deep. I was seasick for the first

three or four days as were many other soldiers. Our trip took us through the Straits of Gibraltar where

when on deck I could view the coast of Africa, coast of Spain and the famous Rock of Gibraltar. We

landed in Marseille on the southern coast of France on December 8, 1944. I was anxious because it

was a holy day of obligation and I couldn’t go to Mass. The first night we slept on the ground near the

port and the next day we boarded boxcars called “forty and eights” so called by the French because

they were constructed to carry forty men and eight horses in each boxcar. It was very uncomfortable

travel.

We went straight up the Rhone Valley and were billeted in a small French town called Toul. It was

here that I was assigned to the 35th Infantry Division which was billeted at the time in nearby Metz. A

few days after joining the 35th it was announced that the German onslaught in the Ardennes Forest had

to be stopped. We were assigned to Patton’s third army. We left Metz in open-air trucks on December

26 and we got off in Luxembourg for one night. It was near the Belgium border. We traveled on foot

into Belgium and were poorly equipped for winter weather. In addition to my carbine, I was also

carried the mortar base which was a heavy steel plate. We arrived in Bastogne on the 27th of

December and spent one night there. It was in Bastogne where I went to 101st Division Headquarters
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and asked to see my long time boyhood friend Bud Wagner and was advised that he had been

evacuated to a hospital. I was very disappointed. Bud was a paratrooper who landed in Normandy in

a glider. The next day we began our attack pushing the Germans back toward the Rhine River. This

attack took a very large toll on our squad which originally had 10 members. It went on for

approximately 3 weeks at the end of which we only had 5 men left including Sergeant Alex Karavish

who was the platoon sergeant. It was during these three weeks that my feet were gradually

deteriorating because of the frigid temperatures. We could not take off our shoes because our feet

would swell making it impossible to put the boots back on. I spent those three weeks without once

taking off my boots. We spent the nights in improvised foxholes sometimes with a companion and

sometimes alone. My main companion, Jesse Lee, frequently imitated President Roosevelt giving a

fireside chat saying, “I hate war, Eleanor hates war, Fala hates war. We will attack again and again,

never ceasing.” On January 7 in the Ardennes Forest I was thinking of my daughter, Barbara, who

was celebrating her first birthday in a warm crib. It was 10 degrees above zero and impossible to

really sleep. On one occasion I managed to dig myself a three-foot deep foxhole in a heavily wooded

area. I lined it with whatever evergreen boughs were laying nearby. We were being heavily shelled

this particular night and I was happy to settle into the foxhole for my own protection. It was then that

two medics came along carrying a wounded man on a stretcher and looked down into my foxhole and

said, “Sorry, soldier. We have to put this wounded man in your foxhole. We have to go back for more

wounded.” I spent the rest of that night wandering aimlessly around the forest hoping for “a million

dollar wound” which would take me out of the action. Finally we got the Germans pushed well back

to their starting point and it was at this point that my feet were extremely painful. Sergeant Alex asked

me not to go to first aid because our squad was so decimated. I agreed. Then during the next week I

was indeed able to go to first aid. The doctor was drunk and true to Patton’s mindset he sent me back

to my unit despite the fact that my feet were already discolored. Then we were sent into the Vosges

Mountains in a holding action. There were nights when I actually had to crawl from one foxhole to
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another because I was unable to walk. At the end of that week I again reported to first aid. When the

doctor saw me he asked why I was still with the unit. He was shocked at my condition and said,

“YOU get a Purple Heart!” I was evacuated to a hospital in Epinal, France. I was given a sleeping pill

around 9:00 PM and woke up around noon and looked up at a sea of concerned faces. The doctors and

nurses had great difficulty waking me. It was the first time I slept in a bed since leaving the States.

The next morning they started treatment on my feet. The initial effort to rehab my feet began with

dipping my feet in a pan of liquid and holding them in this liquid in spite of the severe pain. As the

days wore on the skin peeled off my feet in large hunks and I began a slow recovery. They sent me to

a tent area to await transportation back to my unit in the field of action. While in this tent area, I was

suddenly overcome with an extremely high temperature and was immediately

sent back to the regular hospital where I was diagnosed with hepatitis. I weighed 139 pounds. (When

I left the States I weighed 165 pounds.) My appetite was very poor and they continually urged me to

eat and provided 4 meals a day. I gradually regained some of the weight and was eventually shipped

back to my outfit now in Germany. We again traveled in boxcars. As we neared the French-German

border one morning, I observed a French rail attendant swinging a lantern alongside the tracks. At the

same time I heard church bells ringing and asked the attendant in French what’s going on. He told me,

“Le guerre est finis.” I relayed this to all my fellow soldiers in the boxcar who started to celebrate

what we now knew to be the end of the war. I subsequently rejoined my unit near Hanover, Germany.

On the very first day our company was able to get into the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. We

were shocked and saddened at the sight of many bodies, some of which were dismembered. We saw

the ovens and the smell was overwhelming. The next day access to the camp was restricted for

security reasons.

We were sent into Neitersen, Germany as occupation forces.

At the same time we were training to go to the South Pacific. In preparation for being shipped out we

were sent to Camp Lucky Strike (The camps were named after cigarette brands—e.g. Chesterfield
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Camp, Camel Camp, Old Gold.) While at Camp Lucky Strike one day, I heard a lot of yelling and

hoopla and a soldier came along with a French newspaper that had in bold headlines, “Atomique

Bomb Hiroshima.” A couple of days later the war in the Pacific was officially over. So instead of

shipping to the South Pacific our entire division was sent to England. We were billeted in England for

at least two weeks and were greatly surprised to learn that our entire division was being sent back to

the U.S. on the Queen Mary. The reason we were so fortunate was that then President Truman had

been a captain in the 35th Infantry Division in World War I. He still had friends who were with the

35th and wanted to honor the division in this special way.