Living History in Our Community

Jim Burns' Story, page 2

Preparing for the invasion of France
The things we could buy at our Post Exchange (PX) in England were very basic, like tooth paste, shaving cream, razor blades, soap, etc., personal hygiene articles except for cigarettes and candy. Combat troops were allowed a carton of cigarettes a week, non-combat troops seven packs, and I believe five small chocolate Hershey bars, the five cent size, plus a couple packages of chewing gum a week.

Since it was in our PX rations most G.I.’s chewed gum even if they didn’t before they went into the service. Because of this a lot of the English thought of us as a bunch of gum chewers. The English kids thought it was great though and would come up to us on the streets asking, “Any gum, chum?”  Of course the G.I.’s would oblige and give them a stick of gum. If we ran out of cigarettes we had to buy English ones, which were expensive and also very strong. They used 100% Virginia tobacco while the American brands were a blend of Virginia and Turkish. The English Players brand was often referred to as coffin nails. That should give you a good idea of how strong they were.

I was in the marshaling yards near Weymouth, England before D-Day preparing for the invasion of France but my outfit didn’t sail until a couple of weeks after D-day. The trip across the English Channel was uneventful but as we got close to the French coast I could see hundreds of ships all around us as far as you could see. There were troop transports, various landing craft such as LCT’s (Landing Ship Tanks), destroyers, cruisers, etc. When we were about a mile or so from the beach we climbed down rope netting on the side of the ship into Higgins boats. These were small landing craft that could go into shallow water. They held about thirty men each and had a hinged flat bow that dropped down when they got near the beach.

We landed at Utah Beach, but not under enemy fire though we could hear the artillery further inland. We marched through a little village badly damaged by shellfire and what was left of the town of Carentan and bivouacked in the hedgerow fields nearby. Our job was to secure the area and to direct traffic of troops and munitions from the beach to the front lines.

 

Going Airborne…
It was there in Normandy that I volunteered for the paratroopers after reading an article asking for volunteers in a one-page addition of the army newspaper Stars and Stripes. I was given a physical and signed the papers at an army field hospital but my orders did not come through until after the liberation of Paris on August 25th. I was among some of the first American troops to enter Paris. There were still a few German soldier trying to flee the city while the FFI (Free French resistance was trying their best to annihilate them. The Germans or the British and Americans hadn’t bombed Paris but before it fell to the allies Hitler had ordered the German Commander in Paris, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz, to burn the city. The General couldn’t bring himself to destroy such a beautiful city and disobeyed the order and declared Paris an open city.

When my orders came through to report to the 82nd Airborne Division Headquarters in Leicester, England I was put on a train headed for Cherbourg where I was to fly on an Army Air Corp. plane to England. The train was an old beat up one with wooden seats and it was overcrowded with French troops, standing room only or sitting on the floor. About two hours into the journey we stopped and I learned that we had only traveled ten miles. I asked a conductor, in the best French I could muster up when would we get to Cherbourg. He said, “Peutet deux, trois jours,” maybe two or three days. The train had begun to move again as I jumped off after tossing my two barracks bags off. I was not about to sit on the floor of that smelly train for two or three days.

I walked to a nearby road and hitch hiked rides on army trucks and jeeps reaching Cherbourg the next morning. I got a ride to an airfield and showed them my orders and was put on a Troop Carrier Command C-47 twin-engine plane with metal bucket seats along each side of the plane facing a center isle. It was my first time up in an airplane and as I looked down at the clouds and ground far below I started thinking that I must be crazy to want to jump out of one of these things. I thought, “Oh well, I’m not going to back out now.”

We landed at an RAF field in Croydon, about twenty miles from downtown London, and an army bus took me into London where I would catch a train to Leicester and an army truck from there to the 82nd’s base camp. When I got into London I found that the German V-1 Buzz Bombs had also got there. The Buzz Bombs were unmanned winged craft loaded with one ton of explosives and powered by a ram jet engine. They were launched from sites in Belgium and Holland with just enough fuel to reach London. When the fuel ran out they would plummet to earth and explode causing massive damage and loss of life. One of them could wipe out an entire square block of houses.

I stayed in London at a Red Cross Service Club for a couple of days before catching the train to Leicester. At the 82nd’s base camp I went through the formalities of acceptance into the Division and was assigned to the 401st Regiment, which had originally been a 101st Airborne Division regiment. Through restructuring, the regiment was broken up and one part was transferred to the 82nd Airborne Division where it was to become the 3rd Battalion of the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment. I was with the 325th until my discharge from the army on December 19, 1945. 

Coming into the outfit at the same time as I were four men from the 5th Infantry Division who had also volunteered for the paratroopers. One who became my best friend was Arthur Heaton from North Jersey. Art was an orphan but he had a brother back in New Jersey and a girl friend who wrote to him often. She would send him candy which I had the pleasure of sharing. I believe they intended to get married when he got home. Art was drafted into the army in 1940, when the draft first started, and in July 1941 was shipped to Iceland before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He used to tell me how cold it was there. They would only put you on guard duty for an hour at a time because of the intense cold.

Scraptoft, our regimental camp, was located five mile from Leicester, England. It was a tent city, rows and rows of pyramidal tents each with eight canvas cots on duckboard floors with a coal burning pot bellied space heater in the center and a chimney pipe going up through the top of the tent. There were no mattresses, sheets or pillows just your two army wool blankets, one to lie on and one to cover you. When it got very cold we put our raincoats under the blanket to help stop the cold from coming up through the canvas cot and we slept with our socks on. The coal for the stove was rationed, one bucket per night, enough to last ‘til about eleven o’clock. On very cold nights the outside of the tents would be white with frost.

When we had a pass to go to town, we would polish our jump boots and step into small burlap bags, which we tied around our legs to keep from getting mud on our boots. Troopers were very proud of their shiny jump boots as the rest of the army wore straight pants for dress and canvas puttees (laced leggings) in the field. When we got to the paved road at the entrance to our camp we would take off the bags and stash them somewhere near hoping to find them when we came back that night. Usually we didn’t find them or were to tired to bother looking for them.

We were taken to town in army trucks and back to camp at eleven o’clock that night. The pubs (taverns) closed at ten except in London where they were allowed to stay open until eleven. If you missed the last truck at eleven you had a five mile walk back to camp in the dark, sober or not. There were two American Red Cross Clubs in Leicester where you could relax, listen to records or the radio, American Forces Network, or read magazines and books. The clubs had civilian volunteers who would serve coffee and doughnuts. But the pubs were the favorite with most of the guys because that’s where you could drink or meet girls. There was also a dance hall where you could meet girls and dance to your hearts content.

The people of Leicester liked the troopers and the feeling was mutual. Some of the troopers married Leicester girls. Leicester was the base for the 82nd during the D-day invasion of Normandy and the invasion of Holland (Operation Market Garden). Our next base camp would be Sissone near Reims, France.

My happiest time in the army was after I joined the 82nd Airborne. The training was much tougher than any I had experienced before and the discipline far more strict but fair and there was a mutual respect between officers and enlisted men. The officers and noncoms treated their men like the elite professionals they were trained to be. I’m sure there was many outstanding officers and men in other combat units but the airborne was truly a band of brothers. There was a mutual admiration between all parachute and glider troops regardless of whose army they were in, including the German airborne.

 

Battle experiences
In my small contribution to the war effort I experienced the savagery of battle, the horrible loss of life, the destruction of great cities centuries older than any in the U.S. and the loss of many friends. I have felt the chill of fear, the physical hardships of mortal combat and the intense anger and hatred of the enemy who I so desired to kill. Kill or be killed, that was the name of the game, and that was what we were taught in training. More than 60 million people, civilians and military were killed in this war.

Photo: Jim Burns (left) and buddy, Joe Macalusa, in France. Click here to load a full size copy of the photo.

Before long the adventure would end and the cold reality of a life and death struggle for duty and survival would set in. The thoughts of glory and medals were soon forgotten. Heroism is not usually a deliberate action but a spontaneous and instantaneous one that the average soldier would never have thought he was capable of though sometimes men in the heat of battle charge the enemy recklessly.

I was never a hero but I served with heroes. I just tried to function as I was trained to, fight off the fear that sometimes almost overwhelmed me, and concentrate on my part in the fighting. There were times when I wasn’t afraid; in fact I had a feeling of self-satisfaction when firing my weapon at the enemy. The most frightening times were when we were under intense artillery and mortar fire or advancing through mine fields. I did see men who appeared fearless and who later confessed to being just as frightened as everyone else. To see the fear of death you must look into the soldiers’ eyes.

I will always remember Christmas week, 1944. My company was dug in on a hillside overlooking a village in the Ardennes forest in Belgium. I believe the village was called Regne, which consisted of no more than a dozen buildings. We had another company of troops in the village. On the morning of December 22nd a German SS Panzer unit with infantry advanced down the opposite hillside and attacked the village. With their superior numbers and firepower they captured the village and then proceeded to kill the captured American soldiers.

From our position on the hillside overlooking the village we could see them shooting our wounded as they lay on the ground helplessly. Some of the wounded were putting their hands up in front of their face to shield against the bullets as SS troopers stood over them firing their machine pistols into their heads. We were infuriated and vowed to get revenge. It was about this time that we had received word of the Malmedy massacre, in which a German SS unit slaughtered almost one hundred American army engineer corps prisoners some with the Red Cross medic emblem on their helmets.

We watched as the Germans consolidated their positions and parked their tanks up close to the houses to try to hide them or offer more protection for them. The following morning the 325th Regiment was ordered to retake the town, as the ridge above it was vital if the Division was to accomplish its mission of extricating the American forces in the St. Vith area who were in danger of being encircled.

Our artillery moved up behind the hill where we were dug in and fired their 105 Millimeter howitzers over our heads and into the village. After about a two hour barrage the counterattack began. Supported by attached armor the 325 attacked and retook the town. They drove the Germans out, killing many of them and taking about twenty prisoners. A couple of survivors of the original company, who hid in cellars when the Germans captured the town, told of watching through the cellar window as the Krauts killed the wounded. The twenty captured prisoners were shot in retaliation for the massacre of our men.

The next day the village was abandoned as untenable and our regiment was ordered to withdraw to a more defendable position several miles back. The Germans were massing an SS Panzer Division on the other side for an all out attack. My squad of twelve men was left on the hillside to cover the withdrawal. We had a 30 caliber Browning air-cooled machine gun that fired 600 rounds per minute. It was belt fed with 250 rounds per belt and mounted on a tripod.

We took turns in the gun pit, two men at a time for two hours, while the rest of the men kept vigil in their foxholes and rested or slept. That night it turned bitterly cold and a fog had rolled in. We spent the day and that night on the hillside to cover the withdrawal. As our regiment withdrew they blew up the bridges behind them, and where the road out ran between two tree covered hillsides they cut down about twenty or more very large fir trees so that they lay across the road making it difficult for the Germans to get through.

In the morning as the fog started to lift, my squad could see the Germans starting their advance towards us. There were dozens and dozens of tanks and probably a thousand infantrymen. Our Sergeant finally appeared and told us we could now withdraw but there would be no stopping to rest. When we got to the top of the hill we saw that the road and ground muddy from the day before had frozen solid with all the foot and tire tracks making it difficult to walk on. The area with the big fir trees across the road proved to be quite an obstacle course. We had to crawl through and over all the branches because the hillsides on each side were also strewn with downed trees. We got our feet wet navigating across the blown bridges, and carrying the machine gun, tripod and boxes of ammunition plus our own rifles made it all the more tiring especially with the Krauts at our heels.

We finally reached our new positions that night, December 24th, Christmas Eve. We were so tired and our feet were sore from walking on the uneven frozen ground. I lay on the ground and opened a box of K-rations. I threw the three little dog biscuits it contained away. (They are very hard and tasteless and look exactly like dog biscuits so that’s how they acquired their name.) A group of troopers nearby were quietly singing Christmas carols and I thought of home and the turkey dinner with all the fixings they would be enjoying. It made me so hungry that I searched around on the ground for the dog biscuits I had just thrown away. I finally found them and tried to imagine that they were bits of turkey as I ate them.

The next day we learned that one of the bridges was still intact and they were looking for a couple of volunteers to sneak back behind the German lines with a couple satchels of dynamite and blow the bridge. They promised to give the volunteers, if they survived, a three-day pass to Paris as a reward. My best friend, Arthur Heaton, jumped at the chance and volunteered for both of us. We could possibly get killed but all Art could think of was a trip to Paris. Art was about eight years older than me but somehow he didn’t seem older. At the time he had already served three and a half years overseas. He was a neat guy and a lot of fun to be with, a real good buddy who you could rely on. He had become my very best friend. We had been in the same platoon in our rifle company until Lieutenant Paul Vogel, leader of the light weapons platoon, picked me for his machinegun section. I was relieved though when regimental headquarters decided to use volunteers from our Airborne Engineers instead of us.

 

An unusual Christmas dinner…
On Christmas day my squad of twelve men were pulled from the line for our Christmas dinner. We walked back into a clearing in the woods, a couple of hundred yards from the front, where they brought up our Christmas dinner, which consisted of a chicken or small turkey, we weren’t sure which, a loaf of unsliced bread, and a container of cold coffee. The coffee was probably hot when it was put in the container but by the time it got to us it was stone cold.

Drawing: Christmas dinner 1944. Click here to load a full size copy of the illustration.

The sergeant sliced the bread with his trench knife, one slice per man, and then cut and tore the bird into twelve pieces with his grimy hands. And for that we each had to forfeit a box of K-rations, which would have been more filling. The men were far from happy with that meager meal especially since we had to give up a ration to get it. Of course the folks back home would get the news that our troops enjoyed Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. I’m sure that some troops in the rear areas did get a full dinner. Later on I made a pen and ink sketch of this great occasion.

 

K-rations saved my life — literally!
I will never forget the day my life was saved by a box of K-rations, or was it by the grace of God. A K-ration is a dehydrated meal packed in a cardboard box the size of a regular carton of cigarettes. On January 4th, 1945, we had fought our way into a heavily wooded area and dug in to secure our positions.

I was dug in on one side of a narrow road that ran through the woods and my best buddy, Arthur Heaton, was dug in on the opposite side near some very large rocks. He shared a dug out with his platoon leader, Lt. Nehr from Chicago, who the night before, as we assembled to make our attack had a premonition that he was going to get killed on the attack. We tried to ease his worries by telling him we all felt that way at times and that he would probably live to be ninety. He was a replacement officer and told us about his girl friend and parents seeing him off at the train station when he was about to be shipped overseas. He and Heaton put some fallen tree limbs and logs over their dugout to protect them against artillery tree burst. Things got very quiet after we dug in, so during the lull I decided to cross the road and visit my buddy. With Heaton and the lieutenant were two noncoms that I didn’t know very well. We were standing together talking for maybe five or ten minutes when one of them suggested that this would be a good time to eat one of our K-rations.

I had taken my rations and hand grenades out of the jump pockets in my combat pants and laid them in a corner of my fox hole as it was a little uncomfortable having bulging pockets pressing against my thighs. I said it was a good idea to eat now, but I would have to go over to my foxhole to get my ration. As I put my arm down into the two-foot deep hole to pick up the box, I heard the whistling sound of incoming artillery and knew by the sound that they were coming in on us. I instinctively dropped into the hole for protection. The shells exploded very close by followed by several more. Then I heard the pitiful cry of the wounded for “medic, medic” and then silence.

My First Sergeant was dug in close to me and I heard him shout “Burns, it’s your buddy, let’s get over there!” We raced across the road and the sight was devastating. The two noncoms had been blown to bits, Lt. Nehr had one leg severed at the knee and hanging on by a piece of skin. He also had other shrapnel wounds and I remember vividly that his skin looked very pale, like marble, which made the blood on it look very dark, almost black. He was still conscious and I spoke to him as we waited for the litter bearers to come up. I tried to assure him that he would be okay. When the two litter bearers arrived I helped put him on the litter (canvas stretcher) and placed his severed leg on it with him. My buddy, Heaton, had both legs missing at the knees and he too was still conscious but in shock. The only good thing about shock is that it dulls the pain momentarily.

After the litter bearers came and took Heaton away I found myself alone. Suddenly, more artillery shells came screaming in and I hugged the ground for dear life trying to make my body fit into every little dent in the ground. I looked at the hole that Heaton and Lt. Nehr never got a chance to crawl into, the logs atop it were covered with their blood, and even to save my life I could not crawl into it.

Photo: Arthur Heaton's grave in Beverly National Cemetery. Click here to load a full size copy of the photo.

After the shells exploded I started to run back across the road to my foxhole. When I got to the middle of the road I slipped and fell flat on my face as more shells exploded all around me. My body tensed up as I waited for the shock of shrapnel tearing into me. Luckily none did and I was able to make it to the relative safety of my foxhole. As I lay on the road out there I prayed to be spared for the sake of my mother who surely would have died at the news of my death.

I learned later that my buddy Heaton and Lt. Nehr died before they could reach a hospital. Of the five I was the only survivor because of that little box of K-rations and whoever suggested that we eat. I like to believe that it was Heaton; if so, then it was he who saved my life.

 

Continuing on…
The sights of battle are far from pleasant; in fact they are very gory and leave one with a vivid lasting memory. Ground combat is an experience of sight, sound, smell, and emotion that can never be forgotten. I can remember, after a battle, seeing bodies lying about on the ground where they had been killed, some with their arms sticking up in the air like dead tree limbs. One that comes vividly to mind was a machine gunner bending down on one knee spreading the rear legs of his machine gun tripod in front of him when he was killed. The next day I passed through the same area on my way back to an aid station and saw the man’s body still in the same position like he was frozen in time. The graves people had yet to come and pick up the bodies and there were quite a few both American and German.

When I walked through the German dead I kept my rifle at the ready just in case some of them were feigning death and might try taking me out. Most men who have been in ground combat in the infantry or armor corps have difficulty talking about it except maybe with other vets who have also experienced it. It is impossible for the movie industry to depict the true feeling of combat on film, not even actual combat film can do it.

On January 7th, 1945, our battalion was advancing on enemy positions in the snow-covered Ardennes Mountains of Belgium in a dawn attack without any artillery preparations. We didn’t want the Germans to know we were moving up. My platoon of some thirty men, under strength due to casualties, was on the extreme left flank moving along a narrow road. On the right side of the road was a line of small trees and a barbed wire fence with a steep hill rising up to a wooded area on top where the rest of our battalion was advancing. On our left were snow-covered fields with a grove of trees about a hundred yards ahead. All was very quiet except for the crunching of snow under the men’s boots.

All of a sudden, from the grove of trees, our column was raked with machine gun fire and from over a rise in the road came 88-millimeter artillery and mortar fire. We were caught in the open in an ambush with no cover. We hit the ground and tried returning fire. All we had were rifles and a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle). I saw a German half-track vehicle under the trees manned by soldiers firing a machine gun plus another machine gun on the ground with more infantry. I was firing my M1 rifle at them. I don’t know how many I may have hit, if any at all, as everything was happening so fast. I remember our BAR man crawling up and firing his weapon across my back. He was using me as cover while he fired on the Germans. You can always expect concentrated enemy fire on automatic weapons such as a BAR or machine gun. I shouted at him to “get the hell out of here, I’m still alive.” 

Our platoon sergeant had his arm almost blown off at the shoulder but was still able to make his way to the rear while telling us to get off the road before we were all killed. Suddenly a shell exploded very close to me and lifted me into the air.  Everything went black. I came to a few minutes later on the opposite side of the road. I must have been blown fifteen or twenty feet.  I was numb all over and couldn’t see. I thought I had been blinded but after a minute or so I was able to move my right hand. I felt for my eyes and found that my eyelids were closed.  I had to physically open them with my fingers and I was so happy that I could see.  As I was exploring the rest of my body to see if any parts were missing I felt my right foot being shaken. I looked back to see another soldier shaking my boot.  He said, “I just wanted to see if you were alive.” I was happy to say, “Yes, I’m okay.”  One of our officers advancing in the woods at the top of the hill shouted for us to get off the road before we were all wiped out.

I heard a German tank up ahead on the road coming towards us and I knew I had to get off that road or be run over by the tank or blown away by it. Two men in front of me decided to climb the hill and join the rest of our unit on top. Part way up they were cut down by machine gunfire. One of the men struggled to his feet and again vainly tried to get up the hill but was hit again by machine gun fire and tumbled down into the barbed wire with the other man where they thrashed around in the wire ‘til they died. My attention was fixed on this scene as if I was watching a war movie but there was nothing I could physically do to help them.

I saw that trying to get up the hill would be futile and impossible so I started crawling back down the road, which by now was strewn with bodies, trying to keep as low as possible so my movement wouldn’t be seen by the Krauts. The snow-covered ground on the side of the road was about eight to ten inches high, which afforded some concealment and cover. After crawling fifty or sixty feet I came upon two other men who were crouching close together. I shouted for them to get down but they didn’t seem to hear me. From the look on their faces and the bewildered look in their eyes I was sure they didn’t understand what I had said. I shouted at them again and then got up and, crouching low, ran for maybe seventy-five feet before throwing myself to the ground. As I hit the ground I looked back just in time to see the two men’s body’s flying through the air after taking a direct hit from artillery.

I got up again and ran about two hundred feet or more and saw that on my left was an open field leading to the woods where the rest of my company would be. Looking back up the road I saw no other survivors. I was alone. Looking at the snow covered field I decided to make a run for it even though it was across the machine guns line of fire. I decided to run nonstop, the quicker I got across the better. As I was running the bullets were kicking up the deep snow all around me and one tore through the pocket of my jacket cutting an aluminum mess kit fork in half. I made it to the trees and after crossing another smaller clearing on the left I joined the rest of my company who were digging in along the tree line. Once again I was spared.

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