Raby Glynn G.
From Normandy to Pilsen
Glynn G. Raby, 2nd Infantry Division
On June 6, 1944, D-Day, when the Allied forces took the Normandy coast by storm and began their invasion of continental Europe, I was in a reserve camp in England. I joined the United States Army in March 1943 at the age of 18. For over a year after that, I trained with the 106th Infantry Division in South Carolina, Tennessee and Indiana. Thousands of us were selected to replenish the losses caused by the war. On that day we were asked to donate blood, which most did, joking that maybe we would get our blood back.
Within a short time I found myself in Normandy with Company H, 9th Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division near the town of St. Lo. In hedgerow country, the fighting was difficult and the advance slow. Each field was surrounded by mounds of earth up to two meters high, covered with trees and brush, which provided excellent defensive cover for the enemy. Around 1 August our tanks were finally able to get into motion and made a rapid attack to the south, east and west. While the main thrust was to the east and south, our armored units also headed west into Brittany, where German troops had withdrawn to the larger towns, mostly port cities. In mid-August, the “Second Infantry” began moving west, linking up with the 8th and 29th Divisions and together they captured the port of Brest.
Outside the city we found a countryside full of hedgerows, similar to Normandy. The advance was again slow. I had the rank of corporal and my job was to assist the sergeant of our company's skirmishers. We were laying telephone cables between our units and operating the radios. When we weren't moving forward, we were always “dug in” - in holes in the ground that were supposed to provide at least some protection from shrapnel. One memorable day we were shelled by guns and mortars and were holed up in our holes. Sergeant Thomas, maybe five yards from me, took a direct hit from a mortar. He died almost immediately.
A day or two later I had just finished a radio transmission to our battalion headquarters when someone called our code name. It seemed to me that the person had a German accent. My first thought was triangulation - locating the radio by using three receivers and entering the directional signals to the transmitter on a map. I was afraid a mortar mine would come at me, so I quickly turned off the radio and moved on. It wasn't until later that I learned that triangulation wasn't as effective and that mortars weren't as accurate. The caller might have been an American with German ancestry, but I wasn't taking any chances.
Another time, when I was on my knees digging in and picked up a field blade to jam it into the ground, a tiny shrapnel bloodied my left thumb. A friend suggested I go to the medics, get my hand treated, and get the Order of the Purple Heart (for wounds in combat). I refused, thinking that if I did that, I would get it right between the eyes the next day.
The historic part of Brest was surrounded by a huge old wall that was heavily fortified by the Germans. However, we finally penetrated and the enemy soon surrendered. By then it was the end of September. By this time Paris had been liberated and the war had moved to the outskirts of Germany. We had a few days rest and I was able to visit the town of Landerneau, where I found a bakery and bought a loaf of warm bread and some butter. It was so good that I ate it all. Then, around the 1st of October, we went east - some of us by train and the rest of us in a convoy of vehicles. We passed through Paris, but we didn't stop. After four days on the road, we entered Germany on October 4, about 10 miles east of St. Vith, Belgium.
Part of the famous Siegfried Line fell within our front on the Eifel Mountains. There were two bunkers in our company area. One was occupied by the command post, the other was for supplies and our kitchen where the cooks prepared food for us. It was a relatively quiet area where we did come under artillery fire and encountered enemy patrols, but not to such a great extent. We were able to replenish our weapons and equipment and get some rest. A few men were given leave each week and visited Paris or England. We stayed in the area for a little over two months when we were relieved by my previous unit, the 106th Division, which had just arrived from the US.
We moved some 25 miles north and on 13 December launched an attack on the important Wahlerscheid crossroads just over the German border. The objective was to seize the dams on the Rour River before the Germans could breach them and flood the vast areas below. The crossing was heavily protected by many bunkers. It was bitterly cold and we suffered many casualties both from enemy action and from the brutal weather. The crossroads was captured on the night of 15-16 December. On the 16th the German offensive, known as the Battle of the Ardennes, began. Because of the threat of encirclement, the division commander withdrew us to the Krinkelt - Rocherath - Elsenborn area in Belgium and here the German advance was slowed. On 20 December the commander of the First Army sent a telegram to our division commander which read as follows. ...IN THE LAST FOUR DAYS WILL LIVE FOREVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY.
Our defensive positions lay along the Elsenborn Ridge and the Germans could get no further in our area. By the end of 1945, the spur of German forces had been eliminated and we continued our attack to the east. It was then that we saw the tremendous losses our artillery and air superiority had inflicted on the enemy - many dead bodies frozen in the snow that the enemy could not remove, and countless tanks, other armored vehicles and trucks destroyed.
Every day we advanced from dawn to dusk, crossing rivers, capturing towns and villages, and destroying any resistance we encountered. On 11 February we were in Bronsfeld and our company commander, Capt. Higgins was killed by an artillery shell that hit the house where the captain was. Most of us respected him very much.
A few days later we moved to another town and expected to stay there for a day or so. Along with the second in command of the platoon, we entered a smaller house to see if it would be suitable as a shelter for a few of our men. The deputy platoon leader gave me orders to check the basement while he checked the rooms upstairs. The basement was dark, but just outside the door I saw someone's foot in a stocking. I shook my foot and asked who was there. The answer in German startled me. I ducked down and asked if anyone spoke English. One person answered in English, so I ordered everyone to come up with their hands in the air. I ran upstairs, informed the deputy platoon leader and we went out in front of the house. After a while, seven German soldiers came up. They were very happy to surrender. They were tired of the war and were waiting for us to arrive.
We reached the Rhine sometime on March 10-11. On March 21, we crossed the river in portable motor boats not far from the famous Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen. A few days later I was given a week's leave and several options of where I could go. I chose the city of Nice on the French Riviera. Our group was transported to Nice by Army Air Force C-47 aircraft, which were equipped to carry paratroopers. We were accommodated in rooms of two in a first class hotel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Clean linens, private bathrooms, meals in the hotel restaurant with white tablecloths and napkins, service by hotel staff. We hadn't indulged in such luxury for months before. The week passed all too quickly, and once again we flew back to the war.
By early April, the very mild resistance we were encountering began to make our progress easier. We therefore boarded tanks and other vehicles of the 9th Armored Division and continued our attack. We were stopping only to destroy any resistance. Our 23rd Infantry Regiment entered Leipzig and we continued east to the Mulde River. It had been previously agreed that we would stop there and that the Russians would stop on the Elbe River about 20 miles to the east. If the two large advancing armies had met head-on, there would have been chaos.
On 25 April our regiment sent out a large motorized patrol in an effort to meet the Russians. I was one of four men of our Company H, 9th Infantry, in a jeep equipped with a 30-caliber machine gun. We had a light tank, several other vehicles armed with 50- and 30-caliber machine guns, and a small observation plane flying overhead. In the middle of the afternoon, we encountered small arms fire coming from a town and returned fire. However, the bridges between us and the town were destroyed, so we could not proceed. We returned to our unit at Mulda. On the same day, a patrol of the 69th Division just north of us met the Russians and made history.
On 26 May, V Corps was transferred from the First Army to the Third Army, and we began a 200-mile motorized drive to Czechoslovakia. We moved by jeeps, trucks and tanks along the German Autobahn, the weather was unseasonably cold and snow was flying. We dismounted near the Czech border and launched our attack in the Sudetenland, where the local pro-German population did not welcome us with open arms. On May 4, the German 11th Armored Division surrendered and drove our columns into the rear area. Outside the Sudetenland, the Czechs welcomed us with smiles, shouts, flowers, food and drink.
At the end of the war in Europe, part of the 2nd Division was in Pilsen, and other units were in several nearby towns. The 9th Infantry Regiment was in Rokycany in the direction of Prague. The 2nd Division ran prison camps and provided camps for the displaced for about a month. I was promoted to sergeant at that time. We then went to the United States for a thirty-day leave, regrouping and then moving on to the war in the Pacific. During the leave, however, the war ended and demobilization was initiated. I was discharged on October 25, 1945, returned home and continued my studies at college.
According to the company sergeant's records, H Company had 166 men. As casualties occurred, the strength was continually replenished (I was one of the senior soldiers). In 11 months of fighting we had 38 killed, 123 wounded and 107 hospitalized for other reasons. Another 39 were wounded but remained in service - a total of 307 men. The phrase “freedom isn't free” certainly applies here. The Czechs can confirm this. I cannot imagine how they managed to survive six years of Nazi occupation and persecution. My memory is fading, but I still fondly remember the hospitality we encountered in Rokycany and Pilsen.
From the book 500 Hours of Victory by Karel Foud, Milan Jíša, Ivan Rollinger
