Paul Marchant
U. S. Army
May, 1943 - December, 1945

He served 2 years and 2 months of his enlistment with the 1st Armored Division in the European Campaign.  He was awarded the Bronze Star and four major battle stars.
 

Miracles brought him home from battle

Editor's Note: Paul Marchant's obituary is in our newspaper today.  His story, involving his service during World War II, appeared in the Journal Gazette and "Times Courier World War II edition published in the fall of 1995.  The ranks of World WAr II veterans is thinning by the day and heroes of that war will leave with their stories.  paul Marchant was a hero.  We publish his story again today, Lest we forget!

I was living in Oakland when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  We were visiting some friends in Rardin that Sunday morning.  Soon everyone had to register for the draft and be classified for army service.  I was classified as 1-A, but wasn't drafted for awhile as I was married at the time.

Later, I went to South Milwaukee, Wis., to work in a defense factory that was making 75 mm artillery shells,  Help was short in that factory and my supervisor asked me what my draft status was.  I told him 1-A and he told me he could ge me a deferment, I said no, that I wasn't going to volunteer to go, but I would go if called.  I was called a few months later.

I was sent to Camp Walter in Texas for infantry training for 13 weeks.  I was sent overseas in the fall of 1943.  There were 85 ships in our convoy.  Ours was an old Merchant Marine ship.  It was loaded mostly with cargo and had only 425 soldiers and officers.  Half of the soldiers had just been taken out of the guard house and were being sent to war.  There were a lot of fights on board.  The water was rough and many soldiers got sick.  The ride never bothered me any, I really loved to ride on ships.

Twenty-one days later, on Thanksgiving Day, 1943, we ended up in Oran, Africa.  For Thanksgiving dinner we had a ham sandwich and an orange on the ship.  The was was over in Africa at this time, but the Army still had a lot of material and supplies there.  It was a replacement depot that sent replacement troops to Italy.

After being there a few days, I was sent to Naples, Italy, as a replacement in the 14th Army Infantry Battalion of the 1st Armored Division.  At that time they had taken quite a beating trying to take Casino.  The decided to go farther up the boot and establish a beachhead at Anzio.  I arrived there on D-Day plus one.  There at the port I got my first taste of war.  Our LTC (land craft tank) was bombed by a German plane and we had a few casualties on the top deck.

When we got off the boat we were taken directly to the front line.  We were told to dig ourselves a nice, deep foxhole, I was so tired that I didn't dig very deep, just enough so that when I laid down I was about 4 inches below the ground.  When daylight came a sniper in a straw stack started shooting at me.  I was laying on my stomach with my full field pack on my back.  Two bullets went through the pack on my back.  That taught me from then on to dig my foxhole deeper.

We went on the Anzio Beach for several months.  We took turns on the front line with other combat units.  We saw lot of dog fights between the German planes and the British spitfire planes.  It was at Anzio that the Germans had the big artillery gun which was hauled on two flat freight cars.

The had a crew of 160 men to maintain it and supply ammunition.  They had it in a railroad tunnel.  The would come out and fire several rounds then back up in the tunnel to be safe.  It had a very wicked, scary sound.  We nicknamed it "Anzio Annie."

The Germans also had a woman sing American songs on the radio to try to make us homesick.  We called her "Axis Sally."  She would tell us how good they would treat us if we would just give up and come over to their side.

When we left Anzio we took Rome and moved north quite a ways in the mountains.  German soldiers were camped in the pine forests by the thousands.  Most of the trees were 6 to 18 inches in diameter.  The bombs cut them off about 7 feet above the ground like weeds.  Some more units went before us and took prisoners-anyone alive.  Then the quartermaster corps carried out the bodies and stacked them between the tall stumps.  It was still cold in the mountains and bodies were frozen.  They were corded up on both sides of the road for several miles.  There must have been thousands of them.

It seemed from the time I entered the service that I could feel God's hand on my life.  I was in four major battles in the Italian Campaign.  We had may casualties.

When we made our final push in Italy, it was the morning that they told us President Roosevelt had died.  We knew the war was winding down and hoped we could just be fortunate enough to live until it was over.

When the war ended, one other man and myself were the only ones left that were in my company when I joined that hadn't been killed or wounded.  When we made our final drive through the Po Valley we ran the Germans 80 miles in one day.  We could have gone farther but most of our vehicles were out of gasoline.

We captured Germans by the thousands and equipment by the fields full.  A lot of their equipment was old and junky.  They also had a lot of horse drawn equipment at times during the war.  These were some of the most beautiful, big Belgian horses I have ever seen.

When the war ended in Europe, we, of course, were very happy.  For half of my time, I had been a radio operator in our company.  When we got to Germany, our 14 radio operators were taken from our Division and we were sent to an advanced radio school that was to last 13 weeks.

Then we were to be sent to the Japanese war theater.  This was very bad news for us.  We had gone to school about six weeks when the A-bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered.  The radio school was discontinued.  We stayed in Germany as an army of occupation troops.  Shortly they were sending troops home by the thousands.

I came home with the 36th infantry division from Texas.  We sailed from France and arrived on the East Coast in seven days.  I had to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming.

We unloaded late that evening and went in a very large mess hall for our coming home meal.  They had everything to eat you could think of.  All kinds of steaks, fancy desserts - it was wonderful.  Some soldiers drank a gallon of milk, I think.

We were there a couple of days, and then we boarded a train to Chicago.  I arrived in Arcola on the Illinois Central Railroad where my wife had arranged to pick me up.  It was just a few days before Christmas of 1945.  I know that it wasn't anything that I did that brought me home safe.  I give God all the glory.

I did meet some of the finest men in the Army that I had ever met.  I was proud of our division.  We had good officers.  We had good equipment.  We had good enlisted men.  We had a lot of men, women, and children back home doing everything they could to supply our needs.

The things we took for granted at home weren't in the war - like good, hot, cooked meals, and a good bed to sleep in.  Because I had lived in the dark at night, when I first came home I kept turning all of the lights on in the house.  They were so beautiful to look at.

After living in Charleston for many years, I now live in St. Louis.

Published in Charleston Times Courier and Mattoon Journal Gazzette
July, 1999