By Allyn Vannoy
Men of the Medical Detachment of the 2nd Battalion, 274th Infantry Regiment, 70th Infantry Division, arrived in France in December 1944, and within days found themselves in action in Alsace-Lorraine as the unit was sent to help blunt the German offensive—Operation Nordwind.
The 70th Infantry Division was formed and trained at Camp Adair near Corvallis, Oregon, with Mount Hood visible in the distance in the Cascades. The mountain would become a symbol in the infantryman’s shoulder patch, the only such instance of a geographic feature to be so immortalized. The unit would prove to be as rugged as the mountain.
Born March 26, 1924, to Ed and Josephine, Vernon Staley was the oldest of five children. After graduating from high school in Prineville, Oregon, in May 1943, he was called up and inducted into the Army. After a short stay at Fort Lewis, Washington, he was sent to Camp Adair where he took basic training and was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 274th Infantry Regiment. Even as the division was forming and getting organized, it was heavily drawn on for replacements for other units that were already seeing action. A new infusion of personnel resulted in Staley having to undergo basic training a second time.
Then, in February 1944, Staley and a number of others were sent to Denver, Colorado, for three months of medical technician training. In July, the division was shipped to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for combat field training. That’s where Staley received his first experience as a medic. A soldier had a rifle grenade on the end of his M1, but used a live round rather than the special cartridge for the grenade launcher, causing the grenade to explode and strike several men. Staley and several other medics were nearby when there was a call of “Medic!” So, Staley and the others got to work on actual wounds.
From Fort Leonard Wood the division traveled to Camp Myles Standish, Massachusetts, in preparation for overseas deployment. Due to a shipping shortage, only the division’s infantry regiments made the initial Atlantic crossing aboard a converted ocean liner, the SS Mariposa; support units such as artillery, engineers were to follow weeks later.
The troops disembarked at Marseille, France, on December 10, and were trucked to a nearby cantonment.
In charge of Staley’s medical detachment was First Lieutenant Joseph Clifford, MC (Medical Corps), 2nd Battalion Surgeon, 1st Lt. Forrest J. Beard, assistant battalion surgeon, and Staff Sergeant Richard E. Strassburger, section leader.
On December 21, the GI’s of the 70th Division left their cantonment on a troop train for a three-day journey to Haguenau, not far from the French-German border, arriving on Christmas Eve.
As they disembarked from the train, the sound of distant artillery fire provided a realization that they were now close to the front. An eight-mile march with full field packs took them through the villages of Kaltenhouse and Oberhoffen-sur-Moder. By the light of a quarter moon they passed signs reading, “Mines cleared in ditches,” and saw their first corpse, a dead German lying in a ditch along the road.
The infantry regiments of the division were formed into Task Force Herren under assistant division commander, Gen. Thomas Herren.
By the time they reached the outskirts of the village of Bischwiller it was 2 a.m. on Christmas morning. They were bivouacked in an old factory building. Not yet accustomed to the sounds of war, their first night was interrupted by the occasional burst of ack-ack from a nearby antiaircraft battery.
On December 27, another night march brought them to the village of Drusenheim, where they set up positions overlooking the Rhine River. Staley and the other medics established an aid station in an old tavern. Its first casualty, Private Victor N. Estrella, How Company, the battalion’s weapons company, came in the early hours of December 28.
Under artillery fire, Estrella had jumped into his foxhole and landed on his bayonet. He had received first echelon medical treatment for the deep penetrating wound in his buttock from Tech/3 Leonard Kloaner.
In the field, the wounded were first given aid by his comrades or medics. The injured would then be taken to an aid station for immediate treatment and stabilization, carried by litter bearers to a collecting station, then taken by ambulance to a clearing station. At the clearing station casualties were sorted according to the severity of their injuries; treatment administered to reduce suffering and prevent permanent disability; temporary care provided for more severe cases until they could be moved to an evacuation hospital.
An infantry regiment’s medical battalion comprised a headquarters detachment, three collection companies and a clearing company. Each collection company included a platoon of medics—with an authorized strength of two officers and nine enlisted men, sufficient to provide three medics per rifle company or one to each platoon. The collection company also had a litter platoon staffed by one officer and 43 enlisted men divided into nine four-man litter teams.
Because they’d been on the move, Christmas dinner was delayed until the 29th. The turkey and cranberry sauce, along with the usual trimmings was a welcome change from the K-rations and C-rations they’d been surviving on.
After a few uneventful days, they were told on January 3 to prepare to move and boarded trucks at 2 a.m. in blackout conditions. There was so much traffic on the narrow, snow-covered roads that it took them 10 hours—exposed to winter winds in open trucks—to go 40 miles. They reached the village of Puberg, deep in forested hills close to the German border, about 11 a.m. on January 4. The battalion was ordered to prepare to move on to the village of Wingen-sur-Moder, which was held by elite troops of the German 12th SS Mountain Regiment, 6th SS Mountain Division.
On January 5, the 2nd Battalion was directed to prepare positions overlooking Wingen. That evening the battalion received further orders directing them to capture the village. German forces not only held the village, but also dominated terrain above it.
Staley’s medical detachment set up their aid station in Puberg—illuminated at night by only a single lantern and a few candles.
The battalion’s assault on the village began at dawn on January 6, requiring the GIs to cross open ground. The attack continued throughout the day against intense enemy fire, causing heavy casualties. But by late afternoon half the village was in American hands.
During the dawn attack, Fox Company, after sustaining heavy casualties, was under intense enemy fire and unable to withdraw. When four litter bearers were hit attempting to evacuate the wounded across 300 yards of open ground the medical detachment’s litter squad became disorganized. When Clifford was apprised of the situation, he left the rear aid station and set up an advance aid station and collecting point. Then the detachment commander led a litter squad of Privates First Class Branscum, Porter, Carter, Earhart, and Rybarczyk, into the town while under heavy machine gun fire.
The detachment’s first casualty was Private Donald Brown. Attached to the 2nd Platoon, George Company, he was moving to render aid to a wounded sergeant when he was hit in the arm by machine-gun fire. Brown was able to reach the sergeant and was about to give him morphine when he discovered the man was dead. Brown then crawled to a covered position until litter bearers could reach him and evacuate him to the aid station in Puberg.
About 11 a.m., Tech/5 Theodore Fleck, aid man attached to the 3rd Platoon of Fox Company, was hit in the left shoulder by a sniper while treating a PFC Scott who had been hit in the jugular. Unable to stop the bleeding, Fleck realized the wound was fatal. Wounded and numb from the cold, Fleck managed to render aid to a number of other casualties before making his way to a collecting point to be evacuated to the rear by litter bearers.
While evacuating casualties under heavy mortar and machine-gun fire, PFCs Eddie E. Porter and Wayne Shook were hit by sniper fire—Porter in the leg and Shook in the hand. They continued to work until they were forced to evacuate to the collecting company. Porter would recover from his wounds and return to the unit on March 8.
Following the medical detachment’s losses, replacements were transferred from the Regimental Aid Station. Three were assigned as litter bearers—PFCs Paul L. Stallsmith and Milford Johnson and Private Flores; along with Tech/5 Max Freeman, a medical technician. Shortly after their arrival, Pvt. Flores was on his first assignment, with Pvt. Peter Kotsovolos, when their jeep hit a mine on the outskirts of Wingen—injuring the legs of both men.
During the assault on the village, Tech/5 Donald Conway was attached to Fox Company, which spent the night in a house it had occupied after a fierce fire-fight. Tanks with a U.S. assault force approaching Wingen—unaware that the house was occupied by fellow GIs—appeared to be preparing to open fire on the building when Conway ran out into the open. Amid enemy machine-gun fire, he was able to signal the tankers, who held their fire.
PFC George Brush, who was attached to the 2nd Platoon of George Company, was rendering aid to a fallen comrade when he was hit three times by sniper fire, and wounded again when a phosphorus grenade exploded nearby. Taking cover behind a wall with the soldier he was treating, he removed his burning coat, and returned to providing aid. But when another bullet mortally wounded his patient, Brush then moved on to provide aid to other wounded men.
At dusk, the German defenders counter-attacked ferociously and succeeded in isolating units of the 2nd Battalion. The battalion fought tenaciously, forcing the Germans to begin withdrawing during the night. The next day, the 2nd Battalion drove the remaining Germans from the village, but the battle had cost them some 130 casualties.
PFC Ray Waterhouse, a member of the medical detachment, a CPA in civilian life and a Seventh-Day Adventist, recalled that “bitter experience took precedent over the events of the past for the actual terrifying sight of battle casualties with torn broken limbs, deep penetrating chest wounds and head wounds came pouring into our aid station, on blood soaked litters. The ‘battle green’ aid station group, now active in the administering of blood plasma soon became veterans in the first echelon of medical care a few yards behind the front.” Waterhouse also pointed out, “our Red Crosses painted across our helmets proved to be only an excellent target for the SS troopers.”
For its actions at Wingen, the 2nd Battalion, 274th Infantry, received a Presidential Unit Citation. Also, for their personal actions at Wingen, Bronze Stars were awarded to Captain Clifford and PFC Thomas J. Maher, who had rendered aid to a wounded soldier under heavy fire, and saved the lives of many others.
Like the others in the detachment, Staley saw his first action at Wingen while he was attached to Fox Company. Later, there was an opening for an aid man in H Company and Staley campaigned hard to get the assignment because “H Company had 21 jeeps—they rode, not walked.” With H Company, he was assigned to the 2nd Platoon machine gunners.
The morning after Wingen was secured, the aid detachment moved to set up an advance aid station in the nearby town of Zittersheim. There, they treated a number of captured German prisoners, finding them half starved and some with gangrenous wounds. They were soon ordered to move again, this time back to Puberg. This was also a short stay, moving once again on January 8, this time to the town of Oberbronn, arriving after a long truck ride in freezing temperatures.
During January 8-10, the 274th Regiment was shifted into defensive positions in the area of the towns of Philippsbourg-Dambach, with the 2nd Battalion on the right flank of the regiment, taking up positions in former Maginot Line bunkers.
After arriving in Oberbronn, well back off the line, they were told that they would be in reserve for a few days, the medics began setting up in an old Catholic hospital and convent. But by January 10, they were ordered to Niederbronn(-les-Bains), a short distance away, and set up their aid station in a bomb-damaged house. Combat units had established positions to the northeast of the town in a rough, forested area. Realizing the possible difficulties in evacuating wounded over such terrain it was necessary to organize a forward aid station on a knoll in the mountain-like hills. The aid station was set up in a dugout, just behind the forward positions of the rifle companies. There, life-saving plasma was kept heated at body temperature over a small burner as other medical supplies were made ready for use.
The losses at Wingen left the medical section under strength, so four medical technicians volunteered to man the aid station dugouts. The rifle companies were in foxholes and pillboxes overlooking the Siegfried Line. The terrain was not suitable for ambulances, so any casualties would have to be transported by jeep over winding trails.
There was a steady 24-hour pounding of artillery. Shells frequently landed close to the aid station dugout, sometimes the shell fragments could be heard tearing through the nearby trees.
Late in the afternoon, PFC Johnson, a replacement from the Regimental Aid Station, was struck in the leg by shell fragments from a tree burst, but he carried on helping with the evacuation of several casualties.
Given the treacherous terrain and recent heavy snowfall, an attack on the battalion was not expected, but the heavy artillery fire falling on the company front meant a continued stream of casualties to be treated.
On the night of January 16, aid station personnel attached to Fox Company, went to evacuate a casualty from one of the Maginot Line pillboxes. “We were close to the town of Dambach,” Staley recalled. “We got a call one night that there was a wounded GI in one of the bunkers. So, we took a litter and went out—there was snow and ice. We finally got to the bunker. The guy had shot himself through the foot. We thought, ‘We’re not carrying him back over that ice and snow—he can walk.’ We put a compress on him, got him patched up, and made him walk back. We put him in a jeep and took him to the aid station. Doc Clifford worked that guy over, saying that that was the worst place (the middle of his foot) he could have shot himself, that it would bother him the rest of his life. The soldier said it was an accident. But Clifford (was angry and) said it wasn’t. Normally he (Clifford) wasn’t that tough.”
During the effort to recover the wounded soldier, no one had bothered to give the medics the password. Staley said, “We got down there (near the forward positions) and they (the sentries) said ‘Halt! What’s the password?’ We replied, ‘We’re medics, they never tell us.’ Again, ‘What’s the password?’ And you could hear the M1’s safety clicking off.” After convincing the sentries that they had come down to collect a wounded man they were allowed to pass.
As they approached the seventh day in their position, the cold and lack of sleep due to the continued artillery and mortar shelling was wearing on the medics. The vicious fighting in frigid weather near Niederbronn had reduced rifle companies to an average of 50-percent of authorized strength.
The aid station at Niederbronn was in an old hotel. There they were provided a shower under an open-air tent—the first since leaving Marseille. By 6 p.m. they were once again on the move in open trucks.
“The snow that started to fall earlier in the evening turned to slush (sleet) and after traveling a good part of the night, the slush began to turn to ice, and our overcoats froze so stiff we could hardly move our arms to keep warm,” Waterhouse recalled. “We traveled all night, though it involved only a few miles, it was over winding trails, and our guides were cautiously watching the roads for any of the enemy that might ambush our troops.”
They arrived at Obersoultzbach, just 13 miles southwest of Niederbronn, early on January 21. A day later they moved near Wingen, where they had seen action earlier in the month. January 23 brought yet another move—a truck convoy carried them to Wimmenau, about 13 miles to the north.
While at Wimmenau two aid stations were set up in the forest. The forward aid station was set up in a large dugout near the front and the rear was in a tent. The forward aid station was manned by Lt. Beard, Sergeant Strassburger, Corporal (Breezy) Brezacek, Tech/5 Wiggins, and Tech/5 Freeman. The rear station was manned by Lt. Clifford, Tech/3 Leonard Klosner, Tech/3 Robert Cady, Corporal Jonte, and PFC Waterhouse.
After five days in the Wimmenau positions, they were alerted of another move on January 29. This took them to the town of Adamsweiler, where they paused just long enough to have a meal of cold K-rations, and then continued on to the town of Enchenberg—a distance of some 19 miles over mountain roads. There, they had a chance to talk with other aid men who shared their experiences. What they learned was not encouraging—they had completely turned over their medical units, replacing all their personnel, in the few months that their unit had been in combat.
Over the next two days the unit re-organized their aid station and litter bearers. They were able to rest and write letters home. Replacements arrived from the “repple-depple” (replacement depot) in England. This included PFC John Jest. He was in his second year of overseas duty, but had not been assigned to a combat unit before. Tech/5 Fleck, wounded at Wingen, rejoined the unit here.
On February 9, the unit moved again as the battalion’s infantry companies were placed in reserve, taking them to the town of Dehlingen, about 18 miles to the southwest.
On February 14, three more replacements arrived—Privates Daniel W. Hoover, James McBride, and George A. Pochepka. Replacements were being drawn from wherever they could be found, these latest from army hospitals in Paris. They were assigned to the litter bearer group. They were considered to have sufficient medical experience and well qualified to carry out their duties. As replacements, they were sent with a squad experienced in dodging artillery and mortar shells.
It was at this time that the support units of the 70th Division finally arrived and the 274th Infantry rejoined its division, having been attached to the 45th Infantry Division.
Rumors were circulating that the 2nd Battalion was to prepare for the forthcoming drive to the city of Saarbrücken—a strongpoint of the Siegfried Line on the Saar River, along the French-German border. But before reaching Saarbrücken, several towns and German defensive positions would have to be dealt with. The next day the unit left for the town of Bousbach, less than 10 miles south of Saarbrücken.
The battalion surgeon, Clifford, received a promotion to captain on February 15, though he thought of himself as a doctor first and then an officer. “Captain Clifford was an easy going guy, a great guy,” Staley said. “Half the time we called him Joe—that was his first name.”
The 274th was informed on the same day that it was to make the main effort to capture the high ground—Kreutzberg and Forbacherberg Ridges—overlooking Saarbrücken, spearheading the Seventh Army’s effort to break through the Siegfried Line.
Preparations were made for an attack on the nearby town of Kerbach and high ground in the vicinity. The medics were to follow the assault parties as they moved up, setting up forward aid stations as close as possible to the front lines.
Leading the assault on Kerbach on the night of February 16, the 2nd Battalion’s Fox Company encountered strong opposition.
Based on their experience, the aid unit devised a plan to determine a casualty’s position ahead of time by telephone, speeding up evacuation from the field to the aid station.
“We found it impossible to follow up troops under automatic weapons and artillery fire without losing the advantage that speedy evacuation might give, due to the danger of having the entire aid station and its personnel a complete battle loss,” Waterhouse said. “This was experienced at Wingen when we lost many of our litter bearers in an effort to speedily evacuate casualties that were not too seriously wounded.”
After the first call of casualties came in, a half hour after tanks had passed the aid station on their way to Kerbach, litter squads were sent forward. Then, as those at the aid station waited for the litter squads to return, a steady stream of calls were received for more litter squads.
Those at the aid station sweated out reports after the litter squads had left that morning. The first squad had not yet returned when the second squad returned to the aid station. It was learned that they had encountered enemy automatic weapons fire, forcing them to seek cover in a creek. When they got back to the aid station they were covered with mud and soaking wet. This group included PFC’s Brush, Gladany, Stallsmith, and McBride.
The first squad, which included Captain Clifford, Lieutenant Beard, Sergeant Spence, Cpl. Brezacek, Tech/5 Freeman, PFC Rybarczyk, PFC Branscum, along with Privates Hoover, Pochepka, and Hilton, had yet to return. When they finally did return, it was learned that they had been pinned down by sniper fire while attempting to go forward to set up a forward aid station at the outskirts of Kerbach. They were forced to seek cover in a road culvert which was partly filled with water.
The battalion sent out a force to drive back the Germans and secure the road for supplies to come forward and the wounded to be evacuated. Once this was completed casualties began to flood the aid station.
Following days of fighting, the aid station was moved forward on February 19 to Kerbach—a short distance behind the front.
They set up in an old parish church where, from the upper floors they could see explosions of artillery and mortar shells on a hill in the distance. Near the rear of the aid station passed a steady stream of German prisoners. Many had serious wounds that were treated in the aid station before they were evacuated to POW hospitals.
“It was during this attack that litter bearers and aid men were struggling under the precarious circumstances set up by the open terrain, and impeded in contacting these casualties, because of a sudden burst of enemy machine gun and mortar fire,” Waterhouse said. “First Lt. Forrest J. Beard observing their plight, together with the assistance of Staff Sgt. Richard Strassburger and Corporal Brezacek, quickly left their covered position, located a suitable approach… for contacting the wounded, and assisted the aid men and litter bearers in rendering emergency medical attention, and evacuating them to the rear… Their quick action and dauntless courage in a time of emergency eliminated the possibility of further casualties, and contributed directly to the saving of many lives.”
The aid men moved a mile north to the village of Etzling on February 21. A suitable building was found—one room was used for the care of casualties, and the remaining rooms of the building for quartering the aid station personnel and litter bearers.
As they settled in, word came that recently promoted Tech/5 James O. Fouts had been killed the day before by artillery fire near the Stiring-Wendel. He was credited with the saving of many lives during the action at Wingen in early January. He was awarded the Silver Star, posthumously.
“The continued pounding of artillery on our positions was like living under a death sentence,” Waterhouse said. “A medical composite section consisting of 12 men in support of the various companies of the battalion was indeed a strenuous task for these men who give their every last ounce of strength to save the life of a fallen infantryman.”
February 23rd saw bitter fighting as the 274th dealt with attacks and counter-attacks. By March 2, the battalion was looking down from the ridges above the towns of Forbach, Stiring-Wendel, and Neue-Glashutte.
As the combat units readied to take Stiring-Wendel, the medical unit looked for a safe evacuation point for the handling of casualties, finding one in an abandoned pillbox.
The battle began the next day with house-to-house combat. The Germans used Nebelwerfers—rocket launchers capable of firing multiple heavy rockets.
“It had an unexplainable scream as it went through the air and lit in our lines,” Waterhouse recalled of the weapon known to GIs as“Screaming Meemies.” The Nebelwerfer volleys seemed to come four or five times a day with impacts so close that all the windows at the aid station were blown out.
A heavy concentration of artillery fire on forward positions during the night of March 4 brought the call for two litter squads to evacuate a number of casualties. The two litter squads included PFC’s Branscum, Rybarczyk, Calderon, Hilton, Carter, and a litter squad from the collecting company. To speed up the process, PFC Branscum delivered the litter squads in a jeep, then headed for a pre-arranged forward collection point. He hadn’t gone far when his jeep struck a mine. The explosion destroyed the jeep and threw Branscum a short distance leaving him with a sprained arm and shrapnel in one leg. He crawled about 200 yards while under artillery fire, allowing him to reach the litter bearers. Despite his wounds he was able to assist in the evacuation of more serious casualties.
PFC Dan Hoover, who had arrived as a replacement, was also wounded. He had been assisting at the aid station as a litter bearer and was then sent out as an aid man. He was hit by shell fragments when he left a foxhole to reach a wounded man.
Once the battle started, casualties arrived at the aid station with a wide variety of injuries—each more gruesome than the last. One evening a GI whose abdomen had been ripped open by a shell fragment was brought in. Asked if the man would survive, Captain “Doc” Clifford replied, “There is a slim chance that he will come through.” After being evacuated from the aid station, the unit seldom had word of a patient’s fate unless they later returned to duty.
On one occasion two casualties arrived within minutes of each other, both having had their right foot blown off. A GI had stepped on a mine and when his buddy rushed to his aid, he also stepped on a mine. Applying a large Carlisle bandage to the stub of the right leg of one of the soldiers, the wounded man was asked if he had feeling in his right foot. He said he could feel it, but those treating him knew it was a phantom feeling, since his foot was gone. A little encouragement went a long way to lifting morale and aiding in recovery, but the aid men also used discretion when discussing wounds with their patients.
As house-to-house fighting continued in Stiring-Wendel, heavy casualties made it necessary to set up an advance aid station for the handling of the seriously wounded.
While the Americans would attempt to treat their wounded as quickly as possible in the field, the Germans usually waited until after fighting had stopped before sending their medical personnel into the field under a Red Cross banner or flag of trace.
Under the cover of darkness and heavy fog, Captain Clifford and some volunteers organized a forward post in the early hours of March 5. The group included medical technicians, Tech/5 Wiggins and PFC Waterhouse, together with a litter squad consisting of Tech/5 Freeman, PFC’s Rybarczyk, Stallsmith, and Calderon.
As they set up the new post, they began to receive shell fire. Added to this was a barrage of screaming-meemies that caused those in the aid station to hit the floor. Though the rounds landed a few blocks away, the concussion blew out the windows of their building.
As the 274th Infantry advanced during the afternoon, a column of men came streaming towards them along the Metz-Saarbrücken Highway. “The day after Stiring-Wendel, we could see this building with a red cross on top of it,” Staley said. “We didn’t know what it was. But there were these Eastern Europeans in there. When we got close they started breaking and running out of there and the Germans shot ‘em in the back… I had never seen anybody that starved in my life. Some of them had been wounded, had gangrene,… I started treating their gunshot wounds, but I ran out of stuff to do it. I doubt if a lot of them ever survived.” It was only later that the GIs realized they had come upon a slave labor camp.
Early that evening a German artillery barrage landed three direct hits on the building housing the aid station, shearing off part of the roof. The medical staff, who had been working on two seriously wounded casualties at the time, were spared from injury. Though they feared the building would be struck again, they continued to treat the wounded.
During the evening of the 5th, PFC Edward Keller, an aid man attached to Fox Company, was hit in the leg by shell fragments from a tree burst as he provided aid to a wounded soldier. During action at Wingen he had a bullet crease his helmet. Though injured, he helped dress wounds and directed the walking wounded to the aid station before litter bearers arrived to evacuate him.
Every day just before dawn the Germans shelled the same part of Stiring-Wendel, an area referred to as “88 Corner.” The nearby aid station had to be evacuated at that hour.
On March 6, four U.S. tanks arrived in the town, one stopping alongside the building that housed the aid station. The commander had just dismounted from his tank when a shell burst next to the house, and a fragment hit the left side of his chest. Assistant battalion surgeon Lieutenant Beard, Cady, Klosner, and three litter bearers rushed the tank commander into the aid station, but found that his wounds were fatal. As shells continued to fall, the aid men worked on walking wounded and litter cases, expecting any moment that their building would become the target of artillery fire.
“All through our fighting in this sector and throughout our fighting in various towns we received the able support of Chaplain William Henderson and his assistant Tech/5 Jim Cochran,” Waterhouse said. During the action at Stiring-Wendel, Henderson assisted in evacuating the wounded while under fire and Cochran was wounded while assisting litter bearers and rendering first aid.
On March 8, replacements were received, bringing the unit back to full strength. The replacements included Sgt. John F. Kane, PFC’s John R. Conlan, Dennis B. Hall, and Maurice H. Stahl. Two days later the unit went into battalion reserve.
In the next few days the 70th Division would assault Siegfried Line defenses and secure the city of Saarbrücken as German troops were forced to withdraw from the area. They spent the next few weeks mopping-up the area west of the Rhine until the German surrender, then became part of the Army of Occupation.
Army medics in Europe in 1944/45 were continually on the move and exposed to the elements, with the constant threat of injury or death. But they saved the lives of thousands of GI’s, as well as civilians and German POWs.
PFC Vernon Staley was transferred to the 3rd Infantry Division, returning to the States in 1946. Back in Oregon he raised a family and had a career as a machinist. In March 2024, he celebrated his 100th birthday.
Author Allyn Vannoy, who has written extensively on a variety of topics related to World War II, lives in Hillsboro, Oregon.
US medics in the Pacific were often armed.