December 7, 2011

Update: Grandpa passed July 13. 2012.

 

Grandpa is a Railsplitter, a division in the Army originating with Abraham Lincoln that also boasts Malcom Forbes and Henry Kissinger. He is 85 and still lives in Nixa. Recently we’ve seen the importance of recording his stories that he loves to tell even though we’ve heard the same ones repeatedly. He grew up in the hills of Hurley, Missouri and his thick Ozarks accent is just too musical to not try to translate. It’s a rough read but once you get the sound it’s the only way to hear these stories. Age and dementia make him jump from thought to thought with missing segues so as you read, you’re not missing anything –the conversation really is this fragmented. I wanted to transcribe as authentically as possible and maybe one day I’ll polish it up but for Pearl Harbor Day here are some small bits of his experiences in his own words.

Oh, them storms and snow and weather and so on was somethin’ else to bug with. Uh, we had more rain in England than it did in Germany. I don’t recall too much rainin’ in Germany, not like we had in England. Oh, we had snow in Germany and France. That winter snow, we had more of that stuff to put up with than rain. Had clothes to put on, course them, you’d hole up in that snow quicker than anything. Course then you’d cover up in that white stuff, that snow, an’ o’course that covered up any o’ that color. I’s more int’rsted in food than anything. We’d get us in a house if they was any houses available. An’ if we was still out in the fields out there, they’d be, well, they’d occupied that country, the Germans had, and they’d made dug outs, big as that room there, and I carried in pine needles in the floor. Course, you din’t dare start a fire with them pine needles in the floor. Hoooo!

No, them, them dug outs, they uh, they was one of them places to git into. Course somebody had to stand guard at the entrance. That time I was checking that prisoner in, I knew where the dug out was, and got there about from here to that tree, and I stopped him and I hollered out, “Guard at the dug out! Mitchell with a pris’ner approaching! Allowed to come in!  And it’s, Proceed! Come on!”  So, we went on. The Platoon Sgt there delegated somebody to take him on back to Battalion headquarters. Supposed to give him some information on locations. I don’t know. I wadn’t in on that part. They had interrogators to uh, to uh, get it from em, but they might talk back down the line when somebody give ‘em some food or somethin’.

This was a…this guy wandered into our lines. I couldn’t figger out why. Well, yeah I could too. He wound up bein’ some kind of a officer. I don’t know whether he was platoon leader or that size but anyway he was an officer in a German army and he was seekin’ information and locations, and walked into our line. Hooo! Shouldn’t a’oughrta done dat! But anyway, he did. I don’ know if he give ‘em any valuable information or not. S’posed to have been. S’posed to have later on, I understood, he s’posed to.

We had dug outs, we had houses we stayed in. Lot of ‘em was 2 and 3 story houses. If you wanted to, say you stayed below the top floor, you stayed in the 2nd, artillery comin’ in. They, they throwed shells in on us.

Yeah, I killed that rooster that time. We had chicken n’ dumplins.”

I needed clarification to set this scene.

         “Grandpa,where’d you find that rooster?”

“In that chicken coop behind the house we was in. Him and about a half dozen old hens was in that chicken coop. I went out and he squawked like…tore his head off and throwed him out that snow bank and let him flop and bleed and die. I went up there and told that other feller that I…was ready for you to work on ‘im. He said okay. He fixed him, they put him in a big pot, cooked him up, got some o’ them GI biscuits, made dumplins. Hoooo. (smacked lips)

No, a, a warm place to stay was uh, and food, was the two things we looked for. We had a…most of us had a K ration or at least one. They was 3 of ‘em. Breakfast, dinner and supper. K rations. They come in a box about that long, about that deep, about that wide. Scrambled eggs and…I forget what else…. With some o’ them…they was dried biscuits. It was a bread thing, kind a like crackers. Part o’ the time they’d be a powdered envelope ‘bout so big of some kinda drink. Sometimes it was Nescafe coffee.

I carried a little field pack on my back. It wadn’, it wadn’t, nothin’, it just stuck up a little bit if I decided I wanted to stay undercover… it was a field pack. Stuck up ‘bout a little bit higher than my normal body. Anyway, I usually tried to have some kind of one o’ them boxes of food in there. Yeah.

BAR—Browning Automatic Rifle, it’s called. It’s shaped like a rifle but it had bipods out on the end of the barrel, heavier than a rifle and it had a magazine of 18 or 20 shells in each magazine. And I think they was 8 o’ them I could carry in that, in that uh thing at my waist.

At this point in the recording, Grandpa was distracted by some video on TV of extreme weather and a bridge being washed out by floodwaters. It reminded him of the portable floating footbridges that were often built ahead of his platoon to enable them to cross rivers with little interruption to their progress.

 

“There, looky there, there’s one of them bridges. We had some of them. Some that tried to keep them intact …so we’d cross ‘em.”

And back to his train of thought…

No, I tried to carry at least one of them meals in my field pack for when I might want something to eat.

Floods in the basements… I slept in a potato bin in my sleepin’ bag one night. Yeah. Me an’…me an’ taters slept there together. Hooooo. Anyway, it was, it was a warm and safe place and that was the 2 things, 2 things.

Them trucks and tanks would slide off on them sides of the places, get stucks, the, the, uh, wrecker sized stuff would have to come pull ‘em out, get ‘em goin’. The noise made it, they made a noise and gave the Germans an idea of where they’s located and they’d throw artillery shells in around ‘em.

No, they had what they called a tank retriever. It was a, it was a trailer and it had a wench set up so they could pull one outta the ditch with a wench. And they had hooks on ‘em—cleavis’s, I guess they’d call ‘em—of some kind that they could tie onto ‘em with a cable. Yeah. Anyhow, back on the road and get ‘em goin’.

No, them tanks. They throw that 75mm shell and machine guns was hooked up inside ‘em and they was 2 and 3 inches of armor, of metal. Yeah.

Another pause…Grandpa lost in thought (or tired). It gave me the chance to prod him back to another story that he tells a lot but I didn’t have the bits and pieces that led into it and set it up.

 

“How did you find that house you stayed in?” I knew he had stayed with families in Belgium but never was clear on how they came to be houseguests in the war torn countryside.

“We uh, well they had advanced party in lot of them things. And the advanced party would go in and, I don’t know, they had some kind of way to negotiate with or talk to the people that give our troops certain rooms.  I don’t know. I wasn’t in on anything like that. I don’t know what exactly the operation but anyway that… them towns just like down here. We’ll just say downtown Nixa. That old uh, hardware building you know, it’s got a lot o’upstairs to it. It’d, it’d, course, that was the first floor. That was the dangerous floor to be in. Now, that’s an example of findin’ them places. Lot of them homes, like this one, be 2 stories, that way we could get upstairs in this thing but it’s still dangerous for the artillery shells to hit the roof and the pieces come through. But it they’s a basement in this thing that’s the place to git. Whooo, yeah.

Oh, I walked out one morning, Daphne, they was snow on the ground, it was one o’ them blue cold days. Walked out the basement of that house, they was a ‘lectric line pole like this one out here on the corner right there. Walked out up them steps, sun was shinin’, we was blinkin’ and a’blarin’ with all the snow on the ground. Saw a shadda, we could see shaddahs, looked up, and the civilians had caught a infil—a German soldier had infiltrated in sometime durin’ the night and they’d caught him and hung him to that pole! There he’s hangin’ there! Blue cold. Somebody said, “Well, should we cut him down?”

“No, let the sonofabitch hang there, Goddammit, he didn’t have any business over here.”

“Well, that was the kind the attitude we had you know.

Anyway, one day we was sittin’ out there out in front of this cow shed….

To be continued…

Daryl Mitchell       September 25, 1925- July 13, 2012

December 7, 2011

Update: Grandpa passed July 13. 2012.

 

Grandpa is a Railsplitter, a division in the Army originating with Abraham Lincoln that also boasts Malcom Forbes and Henry Kissinger. He is 85 and still lives in Nixa. Recently we’ve seen the importance of recording his stories that he loves to tell even though we’ve heard the same ones repeatedly. He grew up in the hills of Hurley, Missouri and his thick Ozarks accent is just too musical to not try to translate. It’s a rough read but once you get the sound it’s the only way to hear these stories. Age and dementia make him jump from thought to thought with missing segues so as you read, you’re not missing anything –the conversation really is this fragmented. I wanted to transcribe as authentically as possible and maybe one day I’ll polish it up but for Pearl Harbor Day here are some small bits of his experiences in his own words.

Oh, them storms and snow and weather and so on was somethin’ else to bug with. Uh, we had more rain in England than it did in Germany. I don’t recall too much rainin’ in Germany, not like we had in England. Oh, we had snow in Germany and France. That winter snow, we had more of that stuff to put up with than rain. Had clothes to put on, course them, you’d hole up in that snow quicker than anything. Course then you’d cover up in that white stuff, that snow, an’ o’course that covered up any o’ that color. I’s more int’rsted in food than anything. We’d get us in a house if they was any houses available. An’ if we was still out in the fields out there, they’d be, well, they’d occupied that country, the Germans had, and they’d made dug outs, big as that room there, and I carried in pine needles in the floor. Course, you din’t dare start a fire with them pine needles in the floor. Hoooo!

No, them, them dug outs, they uh, they was one of them places to git into. Course somebody had to stand guard at the entrance. That time I was checking that prisoner in, I knew where the dug out was, and got there about from here to that tree, and I stopped him and I hollered out, “Guard at the dug out! Mitchell with a pris’ner approaching! Allowed to come in!  And it’s, Proceed! Come on!”  So, we went on. The Platoon Sgt there delegated somebody to take him on back to Battalion headquarters. Supposed to give him some information on locations. I don’t know. I wadn’t in on that part. They had interrogators to uh, to uh, get it from em, but they might talk back down the line when somebody give ‘em some food or somethin’.

This was a…this guy wandered into our lines. I couldn’t figger out why. Well, yeah I could too. He wound up bein’ some kind of a officer. I don’t know whether he was platoon leader or that size but anyway he was an officer in a German army and he was seekin’ information and locations, and walked into our line. Hooo! Shouldn’t a’oughrta done dat! But anyway, he did. I don’ know if he give ‘em any valuable information or not. S’posed to have been. S’posed to have later on, I understood, he s’posed to.

We had dug outs, we had houses we stayed in. Lot of ‘em was 2 and 3 story houses. If you wanted to, say you stayed below the top floor, you stayed in the 2nd, artillery comin’ in. They, they throwed shells in on us.

Yeah, I killed that rooster that time. We had chicken n’ dumplins.”

I needed clarification to set this scene.

         “Grandpa,where’d you find that rooster?”

“In that chicken coop behind the house we was in. Him and about a half dozen old hens was in that chicken coop. I went out and he squawked like…tore his head off and throwed him out that snow bank and let him flop and bleed and die. I went up there and told that other feller that I…was ready for you to work on ‘im. He said okay. He fixed him, they put him in a big pot, cooked him up, got some o’ them GI biscuits, made dumplins. Hoooo. (smacked lips)

No, a, a warm place to stay was uh, and food, was the two things we looked for. We had a…most of us had a K ration or at least one. They was 3 of ‘em. Breakfast, dinner and supper. K rations. They come in a box about that long, about that deep, about that wide. Scrambled eggs and…I forget what else…. With some o’ them…they was dried biscuits. It was a bread thing, kind a like crackers. Part o’ the time they’d be a powdered envelope ‘bout so big of some kinda drink. Sometimes it was Nescafe coffee.

I carried a little field pack on my back. It wadn’, it wadn’t, nothin’, it just stuck up a little bit if I decided I wanted to stay undercover… it was a field pack. Stuck up ‘bout a little bit higher than my normal body. Anyway, I usually tried to have some kind of one o’ them boxes of food in there. Yeah.

BAR—Browning Automatic Rifle, it’s called. It’s shaped like a rifle but it had bipods out on the end of the barrel, heavier than a rifle and it had a magazine of 18 or 20 shells in each magazine. And I think they was 8 o’ them I could carry in that, in that uh thing at my waist.

At this point in the recording, Grandpa was distracted by some video on TV of extreme weather and a bridge being washed out by floodwaters. It reminded him of the portable floating footbridges that were often built ahead of his platoon to enable them to cross rivers with little interruption to their progress.

 

“There, looky there, there’s one of them bridges. We had some of them. Some that tried to keep them intact …so we’d cross ‘em.”

And back to his train of thought…

No, I tried to carry at least one of them meals in my field pack for when I might want something to eat.

Floods in the basements… I slept in a potato bin in my sleepin’ bag one night. Yeah. Me an’…me an’ taters slept there together. Hooooo. Anyway, it was, it was a warm and safe place and that was the 2 things, 2 things.

Them trucks and tanks would slide off on them sides of the places, get stucks, the, the, uh, wrecker sized stuff would have to come pull ‘em out, get ‘em goin’. The noise made it, they made a noise and gave the Germans an idea of where they’s located and they’d throw artillery shells in around ‘em.

No, they had what they called a tank retriever. It was a, it was a trailer and it had a wench set up so they could pull one outta the ditch with a wench. And they had hooks on ‘em—cleavis’s, I guess they’d call ‘em—of some kind that they could tie onto ‘em with a cable. Yeah. Anyhow, back on the road and get ‘em goin’.

No, them tanks. They throw that 75mm shell and machine guns was hooked up inside ‘em and they was 2 and 3 inches of armor, of metal. Yeah.

Another pause…Grandpa lost in thought (or tired). It gave me the chance to prod him back to another story that he tells a lot but I didn’t have the bits and pieces that led into it and set it up.

 

“How did you find that house you stayed in?” I knew he had stayed with families in Belgium but never was clear on how they came to be houseguests in the war torn countryside.

“We uh, well they had advanced party in lot of them things. And the advanced party would go in and, I don’t know, they had some kind of way to negotiate with or talk to the people that give our troops certain rooms.  I don’t know. I wasn’t in on anything like that. I don’t know what exactly the operation but anyway that… them towns just like down here. We’ll just say downtown Nixa. That old uh, hardware building you know, it’s got a lot o’upstairs to it. It’d, it’d, course, that was the first floor. That was the dangerous floor to be in. Now, that’s an example of findin’ them places. Lot of them homes, like this one, be 2 stories, that way we could get upstairs in this thing but it’s still dangerous for the artillery shells to hit the roof and the pieces come through. But it they’s a basement in this thing that’s the place to git. Whooo, yeah.

Oh, I walked out one morning, Daphne, they was snow on the ground, it was one o’ them blue cold days. Walked out the basement of that house, they was a ‘lectric line pole like this one out here on the corner right there. Walked out up them steps, sun was shinin’, we was blinkin’ and a’blarin’ with all the snow on the ground. Saw a shadda, we could see shaddahs, looked up, and the civilians had caught a infil—a German soldier had infiltrated in sometime durin’ the night and they’d caught him and hung him to that pole! There he’s hangin’ there! Blue cold. Somebody said, “Well, should we cut him down?”

“No, let the sonofabitch hang there, Goddammit, he didn’t have any business over here.”

“Well, that was the kind the attitude we had you know.

Anyway, one day we was sittin’ out there out in front of this cow shed….

To be continued…

Daryl Mitchell       September 25, 1925- July 13, 2012