St. Joseph News-Press from St. Joseph, Missouri • 6

TlTTVffTMl.TTrJTT-JTTVT- TT TT A TvnT TT7 ViV IT i. llitflt "Thankfully, that was the last big battle," he said. "From there, we went on and met the Russians all of a sudden, there were no more Germans." On the second day of the Battle of the Bulge, Dec. 17, CpL Lee Webber was captured by the 1 1:1 'A -J'V -A Germans. A member of Company H.

423rd Infantry Regiment in the 106th Infantry Division, Webber was loaded for travel, Wj 7 it i i i us wk. flMd -vi. 'im, jt ill until III' ffr- i Webber and given yiai-i rt iwiT 'i iihinl Tanks of the 82nd Airborne Division move in the snow from the battle finally came to an end on Jan. 25, 19,000 American soldiers lay town of Tri-le-Cheslaing, Belgium, on Jan. 7, 1945.

By the time the dead in the frigid Ardennes Forest. shots. He was a prisoner of war for4'i months. Now 71 and living in St Joseph, Webber said he lost 45 pounds during his imprisonment. Doyle Slayden, a 22-year-old PFC in the 60th Armored Infantry Battalion of the Ninth Armored Division, also was taken as a prisoner of war just after the battle began.

Slayden, now 72 and living in Dearborn, had been in the same unit as his twin brother, Don. The two were separated when the battle began; Don Slayden now lives in Mound City, Mo. As a prisoner, Doyle Slayden was always on the move. "They tried to keep us ahead of our lines as much as they could," he said. "There were so many places On Christmas Eve, the British Air Force bombed an area where the prisoners were staying, wounding a number of them.

Slayden suffered a scalp wound and shrapnel injuries to his knee and right leg. Then it was on the move again, toward the Baltic Sea and a labor camp. "They were terrible, and it was rough," Slayden said of the Germans and his time as a prisoner. "They starved us. Something would go wrong and they would make us stand in the snow.

They took our clothing, they took our overshoes." About 170 pounds at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge, Slayden dropped to about 125 pounds with little food and the constant walking all over Germany. Slayden was in the labor camp when the war ended and began walking back to Hamburg. But because bombers were still striking the area, much of the walking was done at night Bernard Estes remembers the snow. And in that, he is not alone. Fifty years ago, Gaylerd Kelley was a first sergeant in the 329th Infantry Regiment of the 83rd Infantry Division.

Today, the St. Joseph man is 87 years old. Among his memories of the Battle of the Bulge la a bleak one on Jan. 9, 1944, he lost 270 men and two officers. Dorman Reid Miller knew how to pick them.

A corporal with the 331st Infantry Regiment of the 83rd Infantry Division, Miller arrived at the battle after it began and was told that if he could make it for three days, he'd probably make it the entire time. "I said, 'Who's the oldest man said Miller, now 74 and of Savannah, Mo. The answer was a private, and Miller asked him if thought it was another day." But once there, each day was not just like another. One day, as Hughs and a some others were sitting, a group wearing American uniforms came over the hill in the vicinity of Bastogne. "They had all of our tanks they had all of our uniforms," Hughs said.

"We thought they were with us until they opened fire on us they just started firing. "That's why wc lost so many men," he said. "We didn't know anything for about 10 or 12 minutes, until it sunk in what was going on." Hughs now says he wouldn't relive the war for $20 million. But, he wouldn't take $1 million for his experience. Hughs also remembers the terrible winter conditions during the battle.

"Hundreds of people lost their feet because they were frozen," Hughs said. After the Battle of the Bulge, he was hospitalized for a war injury. Doctors in Paris told him that his feet would have to be amputated. "My legs were painted up to my knees to be amputated," Hughs said. "And then the doctor checked and said they wouldn't have to be." Chaotic.

That's how Ernie Glauser Jr. described Bastogne while his unit, the 90th Infantry Division of the Third Army, fought there. he would oversee him, just for three days? Continued from page 1 A 23,500. It is called the greatest land battle ever fought by the United States Army. And more than one million men 500,000 Germans, 600,000 Americans and 55,000 British were there to live it.

For veterans alive today, the Battle of the Bulge seems so long ago. Memories, like faded photographs, have dimmed during the 50 years since the epic battle. For others, the remembrances are strikingly bright. They can-detail the bitter cold of the snow, the quiet of the forest, the chaos after the last-gasp attack by Hitler's Germany. And before the colors fade, the News-Press presents this account of the battle by soldiers from the St.

Joseph area-those whose memories are quick and those whose memories are slow. Charles McClanahan was eating a "late breakfast" about 8 a.m. on Dec. 16 when his unit was ordered to be ready to move out in 15 minutes. "We didn't know why," said McClanahan, now 79 and a St.

Joseph resident. "I was forward observer, so I traveled with the front vehicle. "We'd move, and then we'd wait," he said. "And then we began to hear all the firing up ahead." The farther they went, the louder the sounds of gunfire became. The group moved into the town of Weiswampach, Luxembourg, and began to settle in.

McClanahan was then dispatched by jeep to go even farther forward. He received these words of advice: Drive as fast as you can because you might be under fire. The jeeps topped a hill, and on a flat just ahead lay an area "just full of German vehicles," McClanahan remembered. The enemy set up in a church steeple, where McClanahan was instructed to pick any German targets he could and to start shooting. Perhaps the most chilling of his stories about the Battle of the Bulge has to do with what happened after McClanahan's group was pounded hard by the Germans on Dec.

19. Members of the group surrendered and were taken as pris-oners of war. They walked for days, until on Christmas Eve, they came to Prumm, Germany. "We had a chaplain or two with us, so we had a service there and we started singin' carols, Christmas carols," McClanahan said. "The German guard pounded on the door and wanted in and wanted us to stop, and we chased him off and kept singing Christmas carols that night." McClanahan was a prisoner until March 27, 1945, when American troops broke through.

He first thought the liberating group was part of the front line, but it wasn't. So, instead of waiting at the camp or staying with the group that freed them, McClanahan and some others took off for the front line. On foot, it took them nine days. McClanahan lost about 50 pounds, but he was safe. In his own words, Lawrence Larrew was "right in the middle of it." A member of the 120th Infantry Regiment of the 30th Infantry Division, Larrew was only 19 years old that December.

"We were in Germany, and we had dug in for the winter when they threw this at us," said Larrew, a St. Joseph resident who is now 69. "In 24 hours, we were in Malmedy." For veterans of the Battle of the Bulge, the name of the Belgian city Malmedy is almost always followed by another word: massacre. The day after the battle began, on Dec. 17, a group of captured Americans was herded into a field.

The shots began, and, according to one account, continued for about 15 minutes. Historians estimate the group at about 150 men. Of those, about 90 were killed, and they were left in the field in which they died. "We were supposed to move into there," Larrew said of Malmedy. "The Germans had it, but we pushed them back out and took over the town." There, they made a somber discovery.

"Our regiment found those people," Larrew said. "There was a whole field of them and there was an awful lot of snow." But running the Germans out of Malmedy was almost the easy part of the job, Larrew said. "We took over that town, and nobody told the Eighth Air Force we had it," he said. "They came over and hit us six days out of seven they just couldn't see us." 1 Larrew was buried under a building for about three hours after a bombing. "It sure seemed like they were our worst enemy sometimes," Larrew said of the Eighth Air Force.

"They'd come over and get all mixed up." Larrew was in the area until February. V' III IILL.lllllll "He took me under his wing and saved my life two times in those three days," Miller said. It was so cold during the Battle of the Bulge that soldiers learned to improvise. "We were trying to kill animals to put in the bottom of foxholes to keep us warm," said Bud McDonnell, 69, of St. Joseph.

"People were standing on German bodies to stay off the A corporal in the 94th Infantry of Patton's army, McDonnell's unit was sent to the battle as reinforcements. "Then we got this one town and the Germans made a big push," McDonnell said. "They got my whole company, and that was the we'd squeeze once," Benson said. "And if they'd squeeze back twice, we knew everything was OK." After hearing himself described as one of "those wonderful Americans" who fought at the Bailie of the Bulge, Gordon Manring changed the description to "one of those ordinary Americans." An operations sergeanttech sergeant, the 23-year-old was with the Sixth Armored Division of Patton's Third Army, sent to Bastogne. One of the things the group, and Manring, learned, was that it was no use planning for tomorrow, he said.

"It was extremely cold, the snow was deep, it was miserable living," he said. "If we could find any kind of shelter, we made use oflt People who weren't there just can't imagine." On Dec. 26, Virgil Begesse, a machine gunner in the 134th Infantry Regiment of the 35th Division of Patton's army, went to the Bastogne sector to relieve pressure on the 101st Airborne Division. And, then, on Jan. 2, the 20-year-old was wounded, an injury that would cost him a leg.

Now 70 and living in Troy, Begesse looks back at the Battle of the Bulge and says the surprise was in the initial attack. "There was no surprise at the time we were in it," he said. "We were trying to push them back." Last June, Neal Dawson went back to the site of the Battle of the Bulge. Now 74 and living in Maysville, he was a 23-year-old T-5 at the time of the battle, and was a member of the 1308 Engineers. They had hauled the 101st Airborne in by truck, and with that mission complete, helped block the German drive.

"We wired all the bridges for about 50 miles," Dawson said. "They said that if we saw them coming, to blow the bridges and get out if we could." At the time, like many of the others there, they didn't know exactly what was going on. "We got a letter, then, from General Patton when it was all over," Dawson said. It was very close to Christmas when the 128th Armored Field Artillery Battalion with the Sixth Armored Division of the Third Army was sent to relieve the 101st Airborne. With them was Staff Sgt.

Bob Snow is one of the first things many veterans mention when they recall the Battle of the Bulge. At the beginning of the battle, Americans fought under Estes "We were having a little Christmas party on Christmas Eve and we had orders to go to Bastogne," said Glauser, 74, of St. Joseph. "It was auite a ways mas night," the paper continues. "Oh yes, the general got his good weather for battle, but we couldn't appreciate it nearly as much as we loved those Christmas baths!" Russell L.

Smith fought his way to the Battle of the Bulge. Pfc. Smith was a member of the 330th Infantry Regiment of the 83rd Infantry Division. By the time the war was over, Smith had fought in seven different countries and had earned the Purple Heart and three Bronze Stars. "We fought our way up there," said Smith, now 75 and a St.

Joseph resident. "And I was injured in the battle, though not very badly." In the midst of a major battle, soldiers were finding what they could to eat. For surgical tech James Jordan, that included frozen potatoes. "We just dug them out and put them next to our bodies to warm them up," said Jordan, who is now 74 and lives in St. Joseph.

Jordan's unit, an engineering combat battalion, worked to reach the Eight Corps Headquarters in Bastogne after the battle began. Then, the unit was sent as combat engineers to help the 28th Infantry Division in another city. "That turned out lb be a disaster, just a disaster," Jordan said. "The Germans were on the offensive and overran the town in about three days." Jordan's group was broken into two smaller sections and was wished good luck. And, they were told, they'd need that luck because the town was almost surrounded by Germans.

One of the small groups was later captured; Jordan's was not. "We considered ourselves lucky because we had a good captain of engineering and he did an excellent job in guiding us," Jordan said. In a war, going backwards isn't encouraging. So in December, when Vince Moore and his fellow soldiers found themselves right where they had been in September, they weren't very pleased, "That was kind of depressing, because we felt we had really been pushed back," he said. Staff Sgt.

Moore, now 75 and a Chillicothe, resident, watched a German plane fly over so low that he could see the pilot "We fired from down below, but he kept right on going," Moore said of the plane he saw Dec. 16, 1944. "He was probably doing reconnaissance in the area." When the battle began, Griff Benson got out with five of 27 men. And then those men found themselves 5 miles behind the German line. "We'd walk at night picking up stragglers from Company from the same battalion," said Benson, 79, of Chillicothe, Mo.

Benson, who had reported sounds coming from behind the German line before the battle began, was a first lieutenant with the 394th Battalion of the 35th Division. "In the daytime, we'd sneak off into the woods," Benson said. "And we walked at night with the Germans so we wouldn't be detected." Because they couldn't speak as they walked, they devised strategy. "If we bumped into someone. last oi me.

McDonnell was taken to a hospital on the Swiss border after his injury. Bill White, with the 128th Armored Field Artillery Batallion of the 6th Armored Division, would ik hww 1 dtauser If-) fight in seven major campagins by the time the war was over. "The 101st Airborne got surrounded," said White, of St Joseph. "So we got gloomy skies and on muddy ground. As December went by, the snow piled up.

Estes, a fire control operator in the 537th AAA Battalion of the 90th Infantry Division, Third Army, never doubted Americans would win the battle. He was 22. "When we got up there, while we were driving in it, we thought the bumps we felt were logs at first, under the snow," said Estes, now 72 and a St. Joseph resident. "But it was dead Germans and dead Americans." As Estes remembered his part in the Battle of the Bulge, his voice sometimes choked with emotion.

"When we got there, it didn't take us long to clear them out" Estes said of the Third Army, led by Lt Gen. George S. Patton Jr. "A hundred thousand men couldn't hold them. They called for Patton and three divisions and we cleared them out in one day." On Christmas Day, Maurice Glenn Hughs saw Bastogne, Belgium.

"Slim," as he was known then, White --v tew and it was snowing as we drove up the snow plows kept plowing up GIs." An operations sergeant, Glauser was one of about 25,000 troops in the division sent to Bastogne. "General Patton and some of the other generals came into a command post and told us what we were going to do," Glauser said. "It was cloudy, rainy and miserable." Part of the confusion stemmed from the fact that the Germans were deceiving the Americans. "Germans were trying to break through, and they even had some of our jeeps," Glauser said. "They would steal our password, and it was kind of hairy, more so for the troops than for us." The division stayed in Bastogne until the battle was over and witnessed history.

Nothing could have been better than a bath. So writes Walt Drannan, a St Joseph resident, in a paper about the Battle of the Bulge. A member of the Third Army, Drannan and others got an early Christmas present during the battle. It was Christmas Eve. A tank company was moving out and they told us about it and we took over the treasure," Drannan wrote.

"The secret was that there was a bathtub on the second floor of the house belonging to the mayor of the town "We each had a long soak in the tub before we moved out Christ- moved over there and fought our way around." Virgil Poe was a private with the 89th Cavalry Squadron of the 9th Armored Division. After spending some time in the Ardennes region, the group left "We were back on a rest period when they notified us to come back into the Bulge," said Poe, 79, of St. Joseph. With about 150 miles between -them and the battle, they headed back, and, with other Americana took a stand against the Ger- mans. Glendrue Gaddy and the rest of his gun battalion stuck it out to Ward, 20, and they stayed until the end.

"As we were going up there, we went past the infantry a lot of the time," said Ward, now 70 and a was a teen sergeant with the 134th Regiment of the 35th Infantry Division. After fighting into Bastogne to relieve the 101st Airborne Divi- Ward St Joseph Ho AM4 T- Hughs resident "Field artillery is supposed to be behind the infantry, and that was the frightening part about it" When Ward and the others arrived in Bastogne, the 101st Airborne had been cooped up for a long time, and it had been heavily shelled. "They were running around without hats or helmets," he said. "They were just so happy to see somebody." Part of the First Army, Gaddy, who held the rank of T-5, was 19 years old during the Battle of the i Bulge. 1 He, too, remembers the oonfa-: sion and the chaos.

He remem- I bers the forest The snow. "We didn't know anything until sion, Americans held the city for seven or eight days. And though the day he became involved in the Battle of the Bulge seems monumental now, at the time it wasn't. "We were young, we didn't think too much of it" said Hughs, who will be 72 in May. "We just resident "We didnt know any UUUg UUU1 U1C cuu..