If you plan on taking a moment at 3 pm local time today to reflect on the veterans who have sacrificed for our nation, you probably already know of some service members who have fought to protect our country. But in case you don’t, or if you would like another one, I’ll provide you with a brief story of a hero… my father, Roger. He’s been dead for more than a quarter of a century now, but on Memorial Day it’s worth taking a moment to recall him.
In 1943, Roger was going to school and working in my granddad’s garage fixing cars. But then he answered Uncle Sam’s call, as most all of the men in my family did, and enlisted in the Army. With my grandfather as a co-conspirator, he lied about his age and went to basic training as little more than a boy. (He celebrated his 17th birthday in uniform on his way to Europe.) Following his training, Roger joined tens of thousands of other young men boarding ships and heading for the Great War already underway in France. He was assigned to the U.S. 4th Armored Division, part of George Patton’s Third Army. He actually got to meet the great man a couple of times in person, and Patton remained my father’s enduring hero and legend until he died.
Upon his arrival, he was asked if he had any “special talents.” Dad responded by saying that he supposed he was pretty handy at fixing cars. With little more than that, he was assigned to one of Patton’s “vulture crews” for vehicle maintenance. It may not sound exciting, but it was dangerous. Patton moved fast and left a trail of broken down vehicles of all types in his wake. He wasn’t one for stopping for any reason and waiting around, either. The Vulture teams set up ad hoc garages in bombed out structures in towns across France and later, Germany. They stocked them full of jeeps, trucks and tanks that couldn’t be coaxed into motion any more and stripped them down for every usable part they could rip off of them. Dad also admitted, with some remorse, that they had probably boosted a few civilian vehicles along the way if the parts could be used. They also maintained large stockpiles of gasoline.
Most of their time was spent chasing Patton and the front line forces. They would fix a vehicle, drive it like a bat out of hell back to the front lines, usually spend a day or two fighting, then round up any vehicles which had broken down and either fix them or figure a way to tow them back to the closest vulture depot and rebuild them. When he first started out, Roger’s equally green partner asked their unit leader what would happen if they ran into some big column of Huns while they were driving all over these disputed lands in the middle of a war. Their boss replied, “Well, I suppose they’ll either take ya prisoner or shoot ya on the spot.”
Dad loved to tell that story in later years, but confessed that his blood ran cold when he first heard it. He kept up that frantic schedule until December of 1944 when the 4th Armored was turned north in the middle of one of the more brutal winters on record and sent on a trip that approached the conditions of a death march. The U.S. 101st Airborne was pinned down at Bastogne, France by the Germans’ elite Panzer Lehr division along with elements of their 26th Volksgrenadier Division. Bastogne was the major road and railway hub of the area and controlled all large scale, meaningful motion through the area for mechanized units. When Patton heard that they were pinned down and in danger of being overrun, he sent the 4th Armored Division on a vast march through the storms with elements of the rest of the 3rd Army trailing behind.
Dad arrived there with the rest where they fought their way through the woods to open up a relief corridor to the beseiged 101st. On the edge of town they ran right into the teeth of the Panzer column, with their state of the art Panther and Panzer IV tanks opening up on them. A shell exploded at one point and my dad woke up in a hospital the next day. He wasn’t even aware that he had missed Christmas Day, but found out that the Panzer division had finally been completely destroyed and Bastogne stood relieved, still securely in Allied hands.
Dad was young and strong and bounced back quickly, returning to his unit and his vulture crew duties within a couple of weeks. He continued following Patton all the way into Germany, eventually gaining the battlefield rank of Sergeant in an incredibly short period of time. At last the war ended and he returned home to marry my mom and get to work on producing your humble reporter so you could read this story today.
Anyway, there you have it. If you stop to consider our fighting men and women this afternoon, take a moment to remember Sergeant Shaw of the U.S. 4th Armored Division who spent one cold, lonely Christmas Day long ago laid out in a field thousands of miles from home so that you could have the freedom to sit here today and read all about it.