Issue 29.13
I have lived in Hurricane for many years but at the urging or more than urging, of our daughters, we now live at a retirement place in Sandy, Utah. None of our daughters would move to Hurricane so we are now closer to our four daughters. It was very hard to give up our peach, apricot, pomegranate trees and grape vines. We are trying to get some financial help from the VA to enable us to stay hear. One advantage of residing here is that we have a number of WW2 veterans who also reside here so I hope to get some good stories of their war experiences. The following is taken from papers that were written up with the help of their daughter or grand daughter, Ray Dean Hill. On the day that America was bombed into WW2 December 1941, Wallace was a sophomore in high school. All of the boys across America wondered what was going to happen to them. Wallace graduated from high school May, 1943 and soon turned eighteen and was taken into the army. He took his basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and was sent to an engineering school for further training.
However the Army needed infantry soldiers more than they needed engineers so they sent him to be part of the 42nd division in Oklahoma. After more intensive training he was sent to New Jersey where after a wait boarded a troop ship that was part of a large convoy that sailed for
France. The ocean was very rough on this North Atlantic crossing and most everyone on the ship got seasick. Sometimes he had to look up from the fan-tail of the ship to seethe top of the waves. As they debarked from the ship at Marseilles, people at the commissary told Wally they could buy cartons of cigarettes for 50 cents each. He bought two cartons but found out that he should have bought more. The going price for one carton on the street was $15.
Apparently it was quite interesting for some of the guys in that city because the rest rooms were for both sexes. One guy said he went to use a restroom and there was already a lady in it and she just smiled and said “Just a minute please”. While camped there, the Germans started the Battle of the Bulge. The rest of the division hadn’t arrived yet so they were organized as a Regimental Combat Team and were hurried to the front. They took the place of a battle hardened division which was part of Patton’s Third Army, which was then rushed to the Beleaguered Bastogne sector. On the night of January24th was the most exciting day of Wally’s life. Wally said it was our job to go out at night and plant anti tank mines. “Our leaders must have expected a German Counter attack, therefore we planted the mines”. “The ground was frozen so we just put the mines where we pushed the snow away, covered them with straw and then put snow back on top”. “It was then that I was hit in the arm by a German artillery round bursting in the trees overhead”. If there is anyone job that is more dangerous than the infantry, it is minefield engineers who work beyond the front lines. Some American soldiers came through months of intense fighting without becoming a casualty and Wally was seriously wounded on his second day of combat.