My Experience with the 99th Division

My Experience with the 99th Division

I joined the 99th Infantry Division in December 1942 at Camp Van Dorn, Centreville, Mississippi at age 20 and was assigned to the “HQ” Battery, 924th Field Artillery Battalion, a 105mm Howitzer Battalion. I was placed in Battalion HQ as a Personnel Clerk and I was elated to be assigned to this job because I felt I would be safe when the time came for us to enter a combat zone. Even though I was a clerk, we were all trained to kill. In fact hardly a day went by that were not reminded that our primary reason for being in the Army was to kill. We were also shown a series of film, “Kill or be killed”.

We trained for close to a year at Van Dorn, and then moved to the Louisiana swamps for three months of battle maneuvers. After these miserable three months we moved to Camp Maxey, Paris, Texas. Getting back in a Barracks again with showers and all the comforts of home seemed like Heaven. We received more advanced training at Camp Maxey for approximately six months then moved to Camp Miles Standish, Massachusetts (near Boston) where we prepared for movement overseas. We boarded Liberty Ships and took off across the North Atlantic. I’ll never forget that rough crossing. Many days we could not go topside because of the huge waves washing over the Deck. I was deathly seasick. Then one day there was a German U-Boat trying to get at us; The Conoy took off in every direction and the destroyer Escorts were bombarding the area with depth charges. We were all at abandon Ship stations. I was too sick to even care. We heard rumors, never confirmed, that the Destroyer Escorts got the Sub.

Our ship, the USS Exchequer, landed in Scotland. We were put on trains and went to Weymouth, England. We spent a couple of weeks there and several of the top brass from Division HQ came around and tried to prepare us for seeing our buddies killed and telling us that we were not all coming back. I didn’t worry; I was a clerk 3 miles behind the main battle lines.

We boarded LST’s at Southampton, England, crossed the English Channel, and disembarked at Le Havre, France, then by truck to Eupen, Belgium. It was in the woods at Eupen that we got our familiarization with the German Buzz Bomb (V-1).

During the next few weeks we made several moves in the Ardennes, I cannot remember all of the places but I can remember Camp Elsenborn and Butgenbach. And on or about the 14th of December 1944 we moved to Bullingen. The weather was very cold and foggy but no snow as yet. We were set up in a house (no heat) on the road that leads from Bullingen to Honsfeld. On the morning of 16 December 1944 at about 0500 hours we were all snuggled down in our sleeping bags when we were rudely awakened by a German Artillery Barrage. (I wasn’t feeling so safe anymore) It didn’t last too long but was heavy while it did last. Only one man was killed by this artillery and he wasn’t one of ours. We didn’t know it but the Germans had launched an all-out attack that would turn into the greatest battle fought in Europe in World War II.

At this time our HQ had put the personnel section back with Service Battery, 924th Field Artillery Battalion. They thought the records of the Battalion would be safer there. Our section consisted of the following personnel:

CWO Harry A Thompson

T/Sgt Carl Leibrock

Sgt Burrell Hartley

Cpl Charles Dissinger

Cpl Dean Howell

Cpl Martin Mazur

Cpl Howard Meinhart

Cpl Jiles B Lunsford

Cpl Ernest Clore

Cpl Bertram

Personnel Officer

Personnel NCO

Personnel Clerck

HQ Btry Clerck

“A” Btry Clerck

“B” Btry Clerck

“C” Btry Clerck

Service Btry

Extra

Thompson and Leibrock were armed with 45 cal pistols, the rest of us were armed with M-1 carbines. I would have preferred an automatic weapon such as a Thompson, or a grease gun. German weaponry far outnumbered us in automatic weapons.

On the night of December 16, Corporal Meinhart and I were on guard duty. The guard had been doubled because of rumors that the Germans were trying to get patrols through. We still didn’t know the magnitude of what of what was coming. All night long American armored columns were moving back through Bullingen. I challenged an Officer on foot, made sure he wasn’t a German in American clothing and he told me to tell my commander that we had better “Get the Hell out of there”. I relayed this info to the Commander thru the Sergeant of the guard; however, nothing came of it.

Then on the morning of December 17 we received word that a “patrol” of German Infantry was coming our way, get ready to fight them. We then went to breakfast, the last food I would have for 10 days. After breakfast I went back to the house we were set up in and put on my warmest clothing, long handle underwear, field Jacket, Overcoat, Gloves and Overshoes. Checked my weapon and went out to meet this “Patrol”. We could hear the rattle & clatter of tanks heading our way (since when does a patrol use tanks?).

Then all Hell broke loose. Three of us should have been killed from the initial burst of fire from the lead tank. Bullets snapped all around us – I dove to the ground and crawled to my foxhole, (a blue racer could not have caught me that morning) I didn’t have many targets to fire at for my carbine wouldn’t stop a tank, but when the infantry started slipping in they did provide us with something to shoot at. I can remember downing only two Germans at the corner of the house that was above us. (guess we were considered expendable by then).

Then things seemed to quiet down some, I heard CWO Thompson shouting to “Stop Shooting”. I turned around to look behind me and there was a German SS Trooper with the Warrant Officer in tow and an American 45 Pistol in his hand pointed right at my head, so I threw my Carbine down and raised my hands. I was a prisoner of war at age 22. Why they didn’t line us up and shoot us like they did in Malmedy and Honsfeld, I’ll never know. By this time they had tanks on every corner and the town was swarming with German Infantry.

I saw a halftrack go by with an American soldier spread eagled on the front end (so as not to draw fire). This American soldier was Sergeant Grant Yager of Sandusky, Michigan. He had knocked out the second tank in the column with a bazooka, and then he was captured. He would have got the first tank but the bazooka didn’t have a sight on it and he wasn’t too sure of its workability. German atrocities were few in Bullingen. They did shoot a wounded GI in the head, killing him for no reason. His name was Pappel. There were around 60 men in Service Battery, all were killed or captured except 6. 6 got away. Note: Pvt Bernard A Pappel Jr

We were lined up and marched from Bullingen to Honsfeld where we spent the first night in a big building which had a sign on it which read “Little Camp Maxie”. We were under American artillery fire all night long from both 105 and 155 mm guns. We could hear the weapons fire way in the distance then we would hear the shell whirring in, then the explosion. We were lucky that night too for we never got a direct hit on the building we were in even though some hit very close.

Photo: American prisoners from 99th Division captured during the first two days of the battle, 16-17 December 1944.

The dead, both German and American GI were lying all over Honsfeld. I remember one American lying there and tanks had run over his head. His skull reminded me of a coconut that had been shattered. The vehicles in the German column were running over the dead bodies. In one instance a German truck ran up against a body and stalled. Cursing, the driver backed up and gave the truck more throttles to get over the body. We had to step over and around the dead in Honsfeld. Dead animals were in the fields nearby too, both horses and cows, all on their backs, bloated with their feet sticking up.

My POW (Prisoner of War) experience is another horror story. It was hard for me to understand how a people that were supposed to be civilized could treat their fellow man so terrible. We were on the road 10 days walking, riding freezing cold box cars so crowded that we couldn’t even sit down and if we had to go to the bathroom we used our steel helmet and passed to the end of the box car where there was a small window in the corner, there the helmet was emptied and passed back to the owner. Most of the men including myself experienced frozen feet from these boxcar rides. I forgot to mention that the Germans at time of capture took our gloves, overcoats, overshoes so all we were left with was a field jacket and they aren’t very warm. We finally arrived at Stalag XIII-C in Hammelsburg, Germany 10 days later and got our first soup or rather our first meal of any kind since capture which consisted of a cup of Barley boiled in water. It as full of little white worms with black heads. Hungry as I was I couldn’t eat that first cup of soup. But next day I shut my eyes and ate worms & all. I knew I had to eat or die. We had no water during the 10 day trek except once from a Railroad engine. By that time there was plenty of snow so we ate snow to quench our thirst.

I remember Christmas Day 1944 we were standing in a large Railroad Yard somewhere in Germany, had not eaten anything in 8 days, shivering from the extreme cold – there was hot water dripping from the locomotive so we took turns drinking it trying to keep warm.

I lost weight rapidly, went from a normal 170 Ibs down to less than a 100. When sitting down we had to get up very slowly or we would black out. The Germans would take us out to the woods and make us cut wood for their firewood, we got the branches. This was extremely difficult for we were all so weak from malnutrition. We NCO’s got together and decided that the Geneva Convention prohibited working NCO’s so one day out in the woods we sat down and refused to work. The German guards were furious and we thought they were going to shoot us. They would jam a shell in the chamber of their rifle and point it at us, but we sat tight. Finally they took us back to the POW Camp and we never had to go in the woods to cut wood again.

One day prior to this they had me on a detail digging a hole in the frozen ground so I deliberately broke two pick handles, I thought I was going to be shot again for they were mad and yelling “Sabotage”, but they took us back to camp.

I was at Stalag XIII-C, Hammelburg, when General George Patton sent a task force (Task Force Baum) in to liberate his son in law, Lt Colonel John K Waters. We were free for one night only – the entire task force was either killed or captured. The Colonel Waters was shot in the rear and was taken to a hospital.

Photo: Liberation of prisoners at Hammelburg.

We were moved out the next day and walked to Nuremberg. We were there only a few days and the day we left American Bombers flattened Nuremberg and the PW camp too. Many prisoners were killed there. Again I was lucky, being near the head of the column the bombing was behind me. After 18 days of walking we arrived at Stalag VII-A Moosburg, Germany. We ate pretty good on the road for every couple of days Red Cross Trucks met us and gave us food parcels and we stole potatoes and other goodies from the farmers along the way.

I was liberated on 29 April 1945 by the 14th Armored Division and none other than the 99th Infantry Division. After I was dusted with DDT to get rid of my lice and fleas I located “HQ” Battery, 924th Field Artillery Battalion and got to see my old buddies gain. Two of the men that had been T/Sgt’s were both 2nd Lt’s, they both had received Battlefield commissions, and their names were Pilliard and Moses. The cooks prepared me a big meal and I couldn’t eat it all. Thought I would die that night, was very sick from eating too much.

They flew us out of Moosburg (C-47s) to Camp Lucky Strike, Le Havre, France where we received a physical, drank egg nog and ate boiled chicken. Returned to the USA June 9, 1945 and received my discharge November 1945.

I think as time goes by, Historians will realize that what the 99th Division did holding the Northern Shoulder of the Bulge was equally or more important than what the 101st Airborne did at Bastogne.

Source: From Jerry Streitz, Ettelbruck, Luxembourg. November 2, 2019

By Sgt Burrell F HARTLEY