Recipes for Living John Saathoff

My name will show I am of German descent. I was born on October 6, 1922 at Palmer, Iowa in Pocahontas County. I lived there most of my life, working as a farm hand. When I was 19, I received the same letter all young men received in the early 1940s. It was an official letter from the government that began, "Greetings and Salutations." I was drafted for military service and became Uncle Sam's boy. Along with 60 others in Pocahontas County, I took my physical in January 1942, and we were given seven days to get our affairs in order.

On January 21, 1942, we were sent to Florida for four weeks of basic training, after which we were sent to Lincoln, Nebraska, where I served as an MP (Military Police) for ten months. I was sent on to Kerns, Utah for a month, and from there to Kelly Field, Texas to get ready for overseas service. It was there I got into the Transportation Division of the Quartermaster Corps. I was there for a month before I was shipped to Camp Shanks, New York for debarkation.

Nine thousand of us were put on the second largest ship to go overseas. The sight of the Statue of Liberty gave me some lonesome feelings. The whole experience was new and strange to this Pocahontas farm boy. Our destination was England. It took us seven days, during which we zigzagged, seven minutes on course and seven minutes off, because of submarines. I didn't know where we were when we debarked, but I knew I wouldn't want to live there. We were there about a month getting ready for the invasion of the European continent, and finally shipped out across the English Channel.

The number of American ships in the channel was unbelievable! We could look to the right and left, in front and behind, and there was nothing but ships. Bombers and fighter planes going over were almost continuous and became so common we didn't pay any attention. The channel gets pretty rough, and it was heavily mined. One ship with thousands of men went down and is probably still there. One morning our ship struck a mine. Mines were as big as a wash tub and magnetic so they were drawn to the ships and exploded on impact. Ours took on a little water, but it was riveted and welded, so we didn't sink. However, it bent the propeller shaft so we were dead in the water. On that particular morning I made one of the best decisions of my life. I was going to sleep in and decided against it. When I saw my bunk again, it was all twisted. We lost some guys who were sitting on the hatch cover. They were blown up and went to the bottom. I didn't sleep in my bunk for the rest of the time, and was glad to get off the ship.

There were cranes to unload the equipment onto the landing craft. Every ship had its own crane and they picked up the heavy equipment like picking up a sack of flour. We unloaded trucks onto the landing craft continuously around the clock. They didn't stop for meals or anything. We had water-proofed the trucks by covering the spark plugs with asbestos clay and loosened the fan belt. This had to be changed when we got on land, uncovering the spark plugs and tightening the fan belt. Everything we did, we had to do while standing guard. Ammunition and gasoline to be taken to the beach were loaded on what were called "ducks," which could go on water or land, and were pulled up alongside the ship. The next time we put our feet on land was at Omaha Beach. From there I could see the White Cliffs of Dover. They looked like snow.

In order to get some perspective of what was happening, this is taken from Britannica Online:

"Omaha" was the code name for the second beach from the right of the five landing areas of the Normandy Invasion. It was the largest of the assault areas, stretching over six miles ...The western third of the beach was backed by a ten-foot high sea wall, and the whole beach was overlooked by cliffs 100 feet high...The Germans under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had built formidable defenses to protect this enclosed battlefield. The waters and beach were heavily mined ...The defending forces consisted of three battalions of the veteran 352nd Infantry Division. Their weapons were fixed to cover the beach with grazing enfilade (sweeping) gunfire as well as plunging gunfire from the cliffs. Omaha was a killing zone. Omaha Beach was part of the invasion area assigned to the U.S. 1st Army under Lieutenant General Omar Bradley...Throughout the landing, German gunners poured deadly fire into the ranks of the invading Americans. Bodies lay on the beach or floated in the water. Men sought refuge behind beach obstacles, pondering the deadly sprint across the beach to the seawall, which offered some safety at the base of the cliff.

Other information from various sources: Around 6:00 a.m. thousands of troops began landing. Boys 18-20 years old were so frightened they had to be pushed from the landing craft. Some had incorrectly affixed their life-saving gear so that they were trapped upside down with their heads in the water, their legs in the air. From the beginning everything went wrong. Special "DD" tanks (amphibious Sherman tanks fitted with flotation screens) that were supposed to support the 116th Regiment, sank in the choppy waters of the Channel. Naval gunfire support lifted too early so that troops ran into intense fire. Soldiers were mowed down by German guns or lost to the turbulent sea. Of the five landing areas, there was no "easy beach." There were just some worse than others. Omaha has been regarded as the worst. By midafternoon, the beach was secured at the cost of 2,400 lives of the young Americans.

John continues: D-day was June 6, 1944, and we hit Omaha beach on D-day plus one. We were glad to get our feet on solid ground. I wouldn't have made a good Navy man. What we saw then and in the days to come confirmed the statement that Omaha was a killing zone. Night paratroopers couldn't see ground in the dark. They were shot and hung in trees. I saw about 3,000 bombers go over, some returning to their base in England "on a wing and a prayer."

The infantry went ashore first and lost a lot of men! The Germans with their fortified gun emplacements could fire on our soldiers, and it was like shooting fish in a barrel. There was no let-up. The fighting went on 24 hours a day. Our men kept coming, the Germans kept shooting. I don't really remember how long it went on. I would say 10 days or maybe longer. Later, we made our bivouac at St. Lo, where there was a military cemetery that was busy all the time. They put prisoners of war, captured by the infantry, to digging graves. The bodies were put in something like mattress covers, not caskets. There were rows and rows of crosses, and I think of the thousands of soldiers buried beneath them, and remember I was there! We unloaded landing mats for the first airfield so that planes could land and take the injured back to England.

A lot of our guys in the quartermaster corp were put in the infantry because they were short of men. The infantry guys didn't want to drive our trucks because they were death traps. Our vehicles were so noisy, it was impossible to hear a plane, which was a main source of attack, and the supply line was what the enemy hit first. We drove "6x6"s, which could transport 300 containers of fuel, 100 in a row, stacked three high. I hauled bombs - 500 and 1,000 pound bombs, ammunition, and gasoline. There was a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on my truck.

We had a lot of blackouts, and drove during them a lot at night. There were little lights - we called them cat eyes - on each side of our trucks. If we were too far behind another vehicle, they would come apart and if we were too close, they would come together. There were a lot of cobblestone roads and if a little mud gets on them, it was about like driving on ice. There were no guard rails. Not knowing the road, we could as easily have driven off the canyon.

Our orders were that if we had an accident, we were supposed to blow up the trucks because the Germans would try to steal stuff, particularly gasoline. There were a lot of pockets of Germans.

There were mine fields everywhere. They were marked by skulls and crossbones. We never knew when we might run over a mine. One of my friends was "Shorty," a devil-may-care guy. One day he made it through a mine field, yelled, "I made it!", and jumped out of his truck onto a mine. One fellow in our unit was tired of driving a truck, so he changed his position to gun turret, and a sniper got him. Our truck usually came back with bullet holes.

After the infantry got past, we went farther and farther from the beach, toward St. Lo. In addition to our loads of supplies, all along the French coast we came across people wanting a ride, giving the sign of "V" for victory. There were lots of women who were married to German soldiers. They would kill us. The Germans booby trapped their own dead because of scavengers - GIs looking for souvenirs. I wasn't that interested. I didn't go through any pockets. The only things I brought back were one of the "Yank" magazines and some foreign coins.

St. Lo was shelled day and night until there was nothing left but rubble. We were attached to the 1st and 3rd Army (General Patton) and the 8th and 9th Air Force. Again, we hauled gasoline, ammunition, and anything that was loose. According to "Yank" magazine, our battalion trucked enough gasoline to float three battleships. We hauled for General Patton who said, "I've got the guts, you've got the blood." And that is just what he meant. Never mind the blood was from 17 and 18 year old kids. "Bed check Charlie" came over at 11:00 or 12 at night. He dropped flares to take photographs. Somebody shot at him, made him mad, and he dropped a bomb. Thankfully, it was a dud. We became accustomed to anti-aircraft guns sounding like it was the 4th of July, only worse. What goes up must come down, and the flak had the potential of going right through a helmet.

We went through France. I was there at the time of the liberation of Paris. There were so many people and vehicles, it was impossible to get through. We went on to Belgium and into Germany. The last place I was in Germany was Kassel. I was in The Battle of the Bulge during that time. Turning again to internet information:

What I remember about being in that area was the intense cold! We didn't have warm clothes such as GIs have now. Lots of guys had frozen feet, which had to be amputated. Some died from hypothermia. Some of the enemy wore our uniforms and could speak fluent English. You couldn't tell "friend from foe." There was a blizzard during which planes couldn’t fly nothing could move.

They sent us to evacuate an airfield but the orders were changed before that happened. At any time we might see a train carrying German prisoners of war. The Germans were getting desperate. They broke through our line in Bastogne, Belgium. It was foggy, the planes couldn't drop their bombs, they were getting low on ammunition, and the Infantry told the General they had better surrender. His answer was ''Nuts!" We couldn't fly but when the fog lifted all hell broke loose. It was the final push!

We crossed the Rhine River on a pontoon bridge not far from the Remagen Bridge. This is defined in Hutchinson's Dictionary of World War II-Remagen, small town on the Rhine. On 7 March 1945, a patrol of the US 9th Armored Division discovered that the Ludendorff Bridge across the river had somehow escaped destruction. Calling up troops of the 87th Division they seized the bridge, giving them a valuable crossing point. The bridge had been bombed earlier in the war by the Allies; it was also bombed now by the Germans and this, coupled with the heavy traffic of tanks across it, caused it to collapse some days later, but by that time other crossings had been secured.

When we were there it was considered unsafe for heavy truck travel. There might be 40 to 45 trucks in a convoy loaded with gasoline or bombs. We were the Red Ball Express. We went into Germany between Koblenz and Cologne. There was sign that said, "You are entering Germany. Do not fraternize." Americans held the Remagen Bridge from early March 1945 but the Germans were still trying to destroy it. It did not halt our advance because the pontoon bridge had been completed. They would send one truck across and wait awhile before sending another. There were tracks to keep our wheels in, but I could look down between the floorboards and see the river. That's when I was too scared to be scared. I'm as big a coward as the next guy.

The Germans surrendered in May. Our unit started hauling bombs back to a designated area - 1000 pound bombs. I could unload those by myself by unhooking the tail gate, pulling up ahead and backing up fast, putting on the brakes, and the bombs would roll onto the pile. They were harmless without the detonator in, but the fellows watching ran and hid.

I think it was about June when they told us we were going home. We were anxious to get on board ship, and then we had to get off. Something was wrong with the motor and we had to set up camp and spend ten days with nothing to do. Finally we could get back on the ship and return home. There was the Statue of Liberty waiting for us! We were served a big meal in port, and some of us were sent to a camp in Illinois. I was given a 30-day furlough home.

I reported back to the camp in Illinois, was shipped to Mobile, Alabama, and we were supposed to go to the South Pacific. What they were going to do with us there, I don't know. We were in Alabama when they dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. Half of us were sent to California. I was told I'd go to the motor pool, and I said, "Don't give me another truck to drive." Instead, had a little tractor-trailer and transported guys who were getting ready to go overseas. I was discharged in Truax Field, near Madison, Wisconsin, and from there I hitchhiked home. I was so used to walking, it was not a problem.

I returned to Pocohantas County, and my readjustment to normal life began. I had been accustomed to having someone tell me what I was to do, and as much as I sometimes resented that, I was lost without it. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Memories kept coming back. Every time I heard a door slam, or heard firecrackers on July 4th, I reacted. But I also noticed that I wasn't the only one who had changed. Lifestyles back here had changed, too. It was a slower pace before I left. In my opinion, people now are living way too fast.

I made some foolish decisions before I could get readjusted. I got a job driving trucks, hauling lime. I was married but divorced after 11 years. In 1967, I married again, this time to Bernice Moll, whom I met at our church - Martinsdale Lutheran. Her first husband was an alcoholic and took his own life.

In 1960 I started working in Warren County for the DOT (Department of Transportation), removing snow and mowing. I retired in 1984. It is a bit ironic that I had no injuries during my years in the service, but in those 25 years of working for the state, I rolled a tractor over me when mowing, my shoulder gave way, I had fractured ribs, four stitches in my knee, and a tractor fender laid across my right wrist, pulling a nerve apart.

Bernice and I chose Osceola when I retired. This is where we grocery shopped, and we discovered we can get everything we need here in town. We are often in need of the hospital. Berdice has had mini strokes, during which she is unable to talk. I've rushed her to the emergency room where they give her oxygen. They put her on monitors for awhile and she comes out of it. They must have reports on her a foot high, but they have given her good care.