June 11, 1945
Epinal, France
June 11, 1945
Dear Dad:
Received several letters from you, but this is the first chance I’ve had to answer. I am with a group of twenty trucks. We are attached to an engineer forestry company for thirty days and will haul poles and sawed timbers. We are at the southern end of the Argonne Forest in the Vosges Mountains. The Moselle River runs right through town. It’s very nice country here, a lot like Missouri. So you were surprised to hear where I was when the war ended. The jobs a trucking outfit gets would surprise a lot of people. Just because we have been lucky is no sign we just came over here for a boat excursion or sight seeing tour. When Patton raced across France he had no railroads so they moved the stuff by trucks. After the Rhine crossing the rails stopped. Again they hauled the stuff in trucks. After V-E Day all the truck companies got a letter from Ike. It was a letter of thanks, and he stated that without the truck companies we could have never accomplished what we did. There is no praise for a truck driver, few if any ever get any medals. You seldom, if ever, hit the headlines, but the truck drivers who were killed over here are just as dead as a guy killed in the front lines. When you cross a pontoon bridge there was always that sign, “In case of air attack Keep Moving.” Along the road the sign “Keep Moving or get off the road” and if you broke down, the other signs said “mines cleared to the ditches.” The ditches are about a foot off the road, now how in the hell were you going to get off the road if something happened that you couldn’t keep moving.
Once you are loaded and the convoy pulled out, you kept going till you got rid of the load. I never knew a guy could get so tired. I can’t count the times I snapped out of a sleep to find myself still driving along the center of the road. You’d just fall asleep so quick you didn’t realize it. Several of our guys are back in the states now and in hospitals from results of crack ups and falling asleep on convoy.
We had some good roads, even super highways, and a lot more bad roads than good. Those roads through the mountains were terrific. Some hills were so steep you had to shift to second gear at the top and go down, even then the air brakes of a semi trailer barely held you back, and when you got to the bottom the linings were smoking so bad you thought they were on fire. We didn’t have it any tougher than the next outfit, the only thing I’m glad of is that our luck held out as well as it did. When ever the going got rough, we kidded each other so much that we hardly had time to think about it. In April we were hauling replacement troops from Aachen to Bonn, Germany. We were working 24 hours till we got enough of them there. We would haul a load down and unload in Bonn. The city was under artillery fire from across the river in the Ruhr pocket. As soon as the troops unloaded off our Semis, we got the hell out of there but quick. We didn’t have no foxhole to get in, we had a ten ton trailer and our orders was to get the hell out of there, and a canvas cab top and a windshield ain’t a hell of a lot of protection from the shrapnel and bricks and debris an artillery shell can send flying through the air. Well it’s all over now and I’m sure glad of it. Since they divided up the Germany campaign into three battles we have four battle participation stars and a chance for the fifth. We probably won’t know about the fifth for a while yet. The four we have are Battle of Normandy, The Battle of Northern France, The Battle of the Rhineland, and The Battle of Central Europe. The one we are sweating out is The Battle of the Ardennes. If we get the fifth star I’ll have 78 points as it stands I have 73. They are going to lower the score next month and in about six months they will add up the points again. That is six months from May 12. If we get 5 stars, in six months I’ll have 90 points. If we just get four I’ll have 85. They are going to lower the score so I figure in about five months I’ll be over, either way, because one month has already passed since the points were frozen. Anyway the sooner I can get home the better it will suit me.
I am in the best of health and hope this letter finds you all the same. I got a copy of our paper, “The Red Ball News,” that I’ve been saving. Keep it for me as it’s the only copy I have left. It can tell you some of the things a truck outfit does better than I can. So long and keep the air-mail coming. The hell with those dehydrated v-mails. So long. Give all my regards.
Your old Buddy,
The Jug
P.S. We got a baseball game Friday. I’ll let you know how it turns out. We still use the same address. They bring our mail to us twice a week.
June 11, 1945
Once you are loaded and the convoy pulled out, you kept going till you got rid of the load. I never knew a guy could get so tired. I can’t count the times I snapped out of a sleep to find myself still driving along the center of the road. You’d just fall asleep so quick you didn’t realize it. Several of our guys are back in the states now and in hospitals from results of crack ups and falling asleep on convoy.
We had some good roads, even super highways, and a lot more bad roads than good. Those roads through the mountains were terrific. Some hills were so steep you had to shift to second gear at the top and go down, even then the air brakes of a semi trailer barely held you back, and when you got to the bottom the linings were smoking so bad you thought they were on fire. We didn’t have it any tougher than the next outfit, the only thing I’m glad of is that our luck held out as well as it did. When ever the going got rough, we kidded each other so much that we hardly had time to think about it. In April we were hauling replacement troops from Aachen to Bonn, Germany. We were working 24 hours till we got enough of them there. We would haul a load down and unload in Bonn. The city was under artillery fire from across the river in the Ruhr pocket. As soon as the troops unloaded off our Semis, we got the hell out of there but quick. We didn’t have no foxhole to get in, we had a ten ton trailer and our orders was to get the hell out of there, and a canvas cab top and a windshield ain’t a hell of a lot of protection from the shrapnel and bricks and debris an artillery shell can send flying through the air. Well it’s all over now and I’m sure glad of it. Since they divided up the Germany campaign into three battles we have four battle participation stars and a chance for the fifth. We probably won’t know about the fifth for a while yet. The four we have are Battle of Normandy, The Battle of Northern France, The Battle of the Rhineland, and The Battle of Central Europe. The one we are sweating out is The Battle of the Ardennes. If we get the fifth star I’ll have 78 points as it stands I have 73. They are going to lower the score next month and in about six months they will add up the points again. That is six months from May 12. If we get 5 stars, in six months I’ll have 90 points. If we just get four I’ll have 85. They are going to lower the score so I figure in about five months I’ll be over, either way, because one month has already passed since the points were frozen. Anyway the sooner I can get home the better it will suit me.
I am in the best of health and hope this letter finds you all the same. I got a copy of our paper, “The Red Ball News,” that I’ve been saving. Keep it for me as it’s the only copy I have left. It can tell you some of the things a truck outfit does better than I can. So long and keep the air-mail coming. The hell with those dehydrated v-mails. So long. Give all my regards.
The Jug
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