WWII Veteran Describes Seeing Friends Blown Up During His First Time in Combat...

yeah roper never knew what hit him uh i'm sure he probably almost took a pretty much a direct hit because he pretty well he was i want to say decapitated but i i hate to use that because people get kind of shook up you know that's kind of a tough language to use well you know combat i saw it though you know so i'm sorry that you had to see that uh you know i've seen germans with their whole belly cut open by one of our our tanks their whole guts guy actually holding his own guts in and they're they're kind of carrying him along you know i've seen uh guys on a motorcycle machine gun right off the street you know and uh and i've been i didn't mention it yet but when we took the big city on the rhine river the city of mainz boy i don't know i i somebody was watching over me that day because i i i came pretty close to not making it there but i i got hit in the shoe and that was it but i saw lots of stuff there that day [Music] that [Music] pretty soon we begin seeing artillery pieces here and there and start seeing some trucks and so forth and i thought man where's where's our seven week training coming in we pulled into a little village didn't you know where we were pulled in little village we were actually in germany didn't know it at all but we pulled in went saw the dragon's teeth i thought what is this and the truck pulled up muddy streets of it was muddy the streets were all full of mud the truck stopped i said you three guys get off so three of us got off the truck he said see that church over there go get go sit in the church he said when it gets dark some guy will come and get you that's kind of odd three of us we walk over there crawled in that church we sat in the front pew and it was so damaged you could see out the side you could see out through the roof it had been either artillery shell or something had torn the thing apart but we sat there on the front pew there and um well we better get acquainted so i asked the guy next to me what's your name my name's robert roper i said where are you from so i'm from california i said so am i he said i'm from l.a and i said well i'm from fresno nobody knew where ridley was i said i'm from fresno oh and the other guy said what's your name and i noticed he was older he wore glasses real thick glasses he said my name's irving wigton i said where are you well he said i'm from colorado and he says i got transferred into this i'm from i'm serving in the air corps now i'm now i'm with you guys and i said reading and he said i don't see too well and i could see the thick glasses i thought why is he up here we had to use our our eyeballs to fire that rifle but then looking back they needed help so bad they needed but warm bodies so bad they took anything that could walk at that time and i thought still didn't know nothing we sat in that church and kind of got acquainted three of us sitting there started to get dark we could hear artillery shells coming over another you know we got to be we got to be up pretty close we started talking about we must we must be up here where where we must be near germany we still didn't know where we were you know nobody told us nothing finally a guy walked in there he says hi guys and he says i want you to follow me he said i don't want nobody talking it was already dark so he said just stick right with me i walked out of that church and i began to feel the ground was kind of rough we were walking by a cemetery right by the church walked out and i began to feel the rough ground i thought man this must be a pasture or some where we're out on the side of a hill we're walking and this guy named wigton he said smith i can't see i can't see i said grab my belt this poor guy could not see at in the dark he hung onto my belt and i'll actually pulled him along out and we got out we're walking down in the dark out there and the guy said no word shut up and pretty soon i hear him stop two guys exchanged a password a password then was like two names like uh the popular uh uh newest new um what he called one of the movie stars okay like like um marilyn monroe that could be a password one guy would say maryland the other guy would if he knew he would say monroe the guy knew hey you guys are part of me so you had to use two words i heard them exchange under so the guy took us down kind of down the hill there and all of a sudden i heard a kind of a squeaking sound like an iron door opening up either side of a hill mountain like door open up follow me we walk inside we're inside of a big room about the size of this building right here cement sides cement top no lights no ventilation i see water running down the sides of the of the wall there i thought what in the world is this turned out to be a german bunker we called them pill boxes okay i learned right away we got to be very close we call it in there and there's no light except there's a wine bottle on in the middle of the room with a sock inside and a little light there was gasoline in this little wine bottle and that was our light you can see it flickering there and the guy in charge there was a staff sergeant he said hey guys just make yourself at home put your stuff in there and kind of make yourself at ease he says my name is sergeant mueller i'm the squad leader here you're in e company 358 infantry regiment of the 90th infantry division i welcome you he says we're in the third army or serving under general patton wow a whole mouthful and all of a sudden we're a part of an outfit we're finally with an infantry outfit and he says make yourself feel comfortable here he says there was about six other guys in there and they introduced us to them and and we're sitting in there and he says um well we jump off at six in the morning i thought to myself i'm not going to ask him what that means but what the world what does jump off at six well we have slept i'd say but at six o'clock everybody outside everybody outside line up we're outside man i said we're on the side of a hill where are we he let us know we were in the siegfried line and he says we're gonna we're gonna head off we've got to clear out these pill boxes i thought boy we we we're in combat we get hard to hear you can hear the artillery shells coming over and i thought wow muddy everything mud around every place and off we go i said wait a minute i said i got my girlfriend's picture in there my razor's in there my toothbrush is in there we're probably coming back here aren't we he looked at me boy here's a green guy he said the only way we're coming back is if you come back in a wounded or we get pushed back boy he said if you want anything you better get it in there quick and get it because we're moving out boy i i had an overcoat on i had rubber galoshes over my my boots i walked down there and crawled in that thing again found my my barracks bag i pulled out my uh girlfriend's picture which is on the over there and there and i uh i gotta because i better take a razor i got a shave i better get a toothbrush and and i said all my fountain pens in here too so i i grabbed that was about it stuffed it in my pocket and come back up there he said let's go we start walking pretty soon i hear something like i said man this must be a tank or something coming up sure enough two tank came up there and actually the guy said well we'll follow those tanks and they're supporting us today and it was cold i was cold i had this overcoat on shivering there and i walked behind this tank i could see the exhaust i stood behind there man i've been hocked it was a diesel engine some of the early tank destroyers called the m10 had a a diesel engine in it i stood behind there a while i said man that feels good nice and hot i had driven enough trucks to where i knew if if you stood behind the exhaust pipe then it was nice and warm the guy said get away from there he says that's those germans know exactly where those tanks are that's what they're going to zero in on he says get away from that tank no anyway we're following this tank and we're starting to clear out this pillbox every time we came to a pillbox we had to go inside and and check it out make sure the germans were gone and uh i thought man this is this is i can't hardly walk with you big old rubber glosses on a great big old overcoat hanging clear down carrying a rifle i thought this is boy this is real and pretty soon guys hit the ground somebody had seen us the germans they knew exactly where we were they were there probably the day before so we were slowly i realized we're slowly pushing the germans eastward day by day pretty tough going i wonder where we're going to sleep tonight well we got into the woods and again they began the germans opened up a machine gun on us and we had to hit the dirt again finally we had to move back into the woods again there we begin to find german foxholes already dug my whole time in combat i dug one foxhole being as we pushed the germans exactly where they were they actually brought slave laborers along to dig their own foxholes nice ones big three men foxhole nice dug nice and deep you could crawl in had logs on top of them dirt and leaves you felt pretty comfortable in there so uh here we were in right into german foxholes and they would lob in mortars or whatever i had one land as close as you and i are together right here landed right there exploded but it was a dud so all it did was throw dirt all over me never exploded or i wouldn't be sitting here talking today and i thought you know somebody must have done something to make that thing a dud and pretty soon we artillary shell would land nearby didn't explode that's odd but boy they're machine guns and their automatic weapons were right on right on and on on my ninth day of combat the three of us pretty well the three of us were the only ones we knew each other because we'd spent almost a whole day getting acquainted so we dug we tried to dig in together because we felt we could comfort one another roper and i start digging together or getting in foxholes together because i knew him and he's from l.a okay so i feel i know him better than i know wigton but we then would dig in with someone else on my ninth day uh my squad leader came to me and he said schmidt i didn't even know his name he said schmidt he said i want you to take my radio he said i'm sending markham back to the rear to have a few days rest he said he's gonna you're gonna carry his walkie-talkie wherever i go you follow me and i thought wow that's what am i gonna do about what roper here he's my buddy he said roper and winston can be together you follow me so i take this walkie-talkie it looked like about the size of a loaf of bread and battery operated about 75 percent efficient when sometimes when you needed it the battery was dead but anyway i carried that walkie-talkie radio and we started to one direction he said roper and wigton dig in you follow me schmidt he found one big german foxhole he crawled in that and he said you crawled in here with me it was just i could hear the other guys digging our squad was digging in on the side of this hill and in about 10 minutes the germans had figured out right where we were they might have heard us digging or somebody might have seen us or whatever but two artillery shells came in they were called tree bursts they could time them to explode up in the up in the air and they would explode up there and just send down their hutch just red hot shrouds of metal and one shell came down and i should say maybe both of them came down the same time or one right behind the other killed both of these guys roper was killed instantly never knew what hit him roper i uh winked in i heard him holler medic medic and then he dropped it died within i say 10 seconds two of them both then then they brought a guy in to the foxhole medic brought him in he said help me get this guy patched up so we can send him to the rear my tenth day of combat i'm shaking like a leaf he said help me get this guy and he had blood all over one leg so we he said help me cut his pants off so he cut his pants off in his leg he had he had a wound about five or six inches long like there was no meat there just blood just spurting out and so we had to help help him stop the blood he's starting to pass out and he gave him some medication there to kind of make him kind of drift off into a half sleep motion like that poor guy he was bleeding like everything then i looked down on his boot the heel of his boot was totally gone it was bleeding down there the the heel of his foot was taken completely off he was bleeding there so we had to stop the bleeding i helped this this poor medic was just frantic trying to make sure this guy was sedated enough to to ease the pain and also put him in kind of a relaxed mood and i thought wow this is right here we're we're right there where it's all happening and uh we got him fixed up ready to evacuate and the sergeant called me says hey smith he said take the radio and your rifle and go down the hill and get get bring the captain up here and i i thought you know shouldn't the officer be leading us he said go down and get the captain he's down in that barn down there where we formed up so i'm heading down this hill and now lo and behold if i didn't uh i heard something uh we had already been accustomed to one of the rockets that the germans had was called a screaming mimi it fired six rockets and they sounded like a siren and uh we learned already that uh after all six of them firing the first one if it went past you all other five would land beyond that first one well i heard the first one come over and i thought to myself you know i'm not sure where that one landed whether it's on my right or my left so i i hit the dirt and the next one came over right behind it and it went a little bit farther and so i thought well i guess i can get up so i got up and and cleared down to six every time one whizzed over i was so scared you know that's on my tenth day of combat i hit the dirt each time and time i got down to the barn there was a captain standing there waiting for me he says let me see your rifle it was the whole front end of the rifle the first six or eight inches solid mud boy he balled me out he says hey private with a weapon like that you can't fire at the enemy he's got muddy so you don't you don't put you don't take your rifle and dunk and dump it in the mud well he didn't know that i he didn't see me when i was falling down up there but anyway he said what do you want i said well we've we've had some casualties up there i said the sergeant wants to see you he says where is he at i said he's up there in a foxhole and he said i i pointed out to where it was and he said he saw how we had originally we went up around a draw where the enemy couldn't see us i came right down where the enemy could see me because that was the shortest way so he said i showed him where they were up on top the hill so he walks over to the side and i said i'm going back up the way i came i said that's a short distance i get up there and start where's the captain i said he's coming and said he's coming around the back way so he gets up there and i thought this is this is i thought to myself if this guy's a leader why isn't he there but i found out after about a few weeks of combat that we didn't have a real leader one day he's not with us anymore and i thought wonder what happened they sent us another captain they found out that this guy was not a leader he was a follower so we didn't see him anymore later on he became an executive officer but we got a new guy and he was right up there with us so boy you get a baptism of fire in a hurry like that and then you learn that i learned quickly that it must be us guys the privates the corporals and the sergeants that actually get the job done so um that was my tenth day of combat i really appreciate you sharing that story i just have a few follow-up questions can you tell us more about the 88s coming in oh okay how far you know were you from roper and winton you know what did you see okay um when i realized that these two guys had been killed actually and another one we had a machine gunner attached to us that same day from h company because easy company didn't carry the 30 caliber machine gun h company was a heavy weapon so we we had h companies supporting us and a fellow by the name of eaststep took me 70 years to find his son but i found his son in the east coast and we have talked together and written together and so forth told him about his father being killed he he said you're the only guy in 70 years to ever call me and talk to me about my father so but that his name was e-step artist e-step from h company and those three guys were killed and if there was any other ones wounded i wasn't aware of it other than the one they brought in to the to this pillbox but roper and wigton were probably maybe uh between 15 and maybe 15 20 feet away from me when when they were killed a terrible day my 10th day boy i knew i was in combat then because i walked off that hill without either one of these fellas um as i said roper i finally found part of his family in l.a years later uh had to be a dysfunctional family they could care less that i was talking to them about their person that was killed so i figured they were kind of dysfunctional and then i um i i found a wigs and actually family actually found me about about fifth about close to about 10 or 15 years ago and his younger brother who is a dentist lives in colorado found me uh through the through the book and then through a telephone call and like i say i walked off that hill by myself so to speak so you

Channel: Legends of WWII (apart of Remember WWII)

Views: 431,593

Rating: 4.9550529 out of 5

Keywords: world war II, veterans, world war II veterans, world war 2, combat veterans, heroes of world war, heroes of war, soldiers, marines, navy, airforce, combat, army, interviews, WWII, fighting the germans, fighting the japanese, Allied forces, Allies, battle of the bulge, legends

Id: nm-7FhLG1rk

Length: 24min 28sec (1468 seconds)

Published: Sat May 01 2021