Buddy's War #46- More Prep, More Waiting

    •    January 17, 1945, Wednesday

Got up at 10. Went to the store. Did some cleaning. It is a beautiful day.
Diary, Beula Keller Lehman

Not a great deal happened in January for the 10th as a whole. CC-A and CC-R spent the first 16 days at Metz. During that time, Nichols tells us in Impact!, that

The Division’s battalions, which had been shot up during the Bulge, were considerably strengthened with tough and experienced replacements. Almost all of these fighters came from an airborne division which has participated in a disastrous jump in Holland months before. After recovering from their wounds in hospitals, they were sent to the Tenth and proved to be superb in combat. [While plans for return to action were made,] the rest of the Division was engaged in training the new replacements.

By mid-month, after its historic and heroic defense at Bastogne, CC B had rejoined the Division. The whole 10th Armored then moved to be in a position for the renewed offensive in the Saar-Moselle Triangle. Division HQ moved first from Metz to Dieuze, FR (17 Jan 45) then to Falquemont, FR (22 Jan 45) where they would remain until mid-February. This will be the last time the HQ and troops stay in one spot for more than a week until the end of the war.

Nichols reports:

This time, the elements, not the enemy, made the movement south one of the most difficult ever attempted by the Division. Rain and snow teamed up to send one Tiger vehicle after another off icy roads and into the ditches.

He tells the story of one sergeant who discovered that some simple hand pressure on the side of the tank was helpful It was a “treacherous" 180-degree turn near Falquemont. That pressure was enough to provide the needed traction.

According to the Morning Reports, Buddy’s Company C of the 80th Medical Battalion had been doing “usual organizational duties” both before and after they moved from Metz on 17 January. They ended at Eschwiller on 20 January where they would remain until mid-February.

    ✓    Company C Morning Report
    ✓    17 January 1945

Left Metz 1350. Traveled 38.5 miles via motor convoy to Bezange-la-Grande. Arrived 2230. Roads icy. Weather cloudy, occasional snow flurries. Set up Clearing Station. (MR)

    •    January 20, 1945, Saturday

Got up at 10. Went downtown. Cleaned some and rested for I am tired. Mrs. M____ was in this evening.
Diary, Beula Keller Lehman

    ✓    Company C Morning Report
    ✓    20 January 1945

Left Bezange-la-Grande 1515 and traveled 36 miles via motor convoy to Eschwiller, France. Arrived 2400. Set up clearing station and billeted troops. Roads icy. Weather snow. (MR)

Both of these movements started in the afternoon and lasted well into the night. The pace of around 4 mph was necessitated by weather and road conditions. But I also would guess that part of it was a nighttime movement in order to avoid detection by enemy intelligence. Through this whole time, Co C was assigned to CC-A.

    •    January 23, 1945, Tuesday

Got up at 10. Went to the store. Packed Buddy a box and sent it. Wrote to Buddy, Ruth, and Dora. Father and I went to banquet down at the I.O.O.F. Hall. Had a nice time. Of course I got a pain. Had to take a pill.

Beula, who was 69 at this time, has had some type of health problems for years. In 1940, after Buddy had left home, she spent a month in the hospital in apparently critical condition. Throughout these years in her diaries, she often mentions not feeling well, suffering from some type of pain, feeling tired. She would live another 3 years, dying in January 1948 of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by high blood pressure. I never met her as she died eight months before I was born.

    •    January 31, 1945, Wednesday

Got up at 9:30. Washed and ironed the kitchen curtains. Wrote to Buddy. Had a letter from Buddy. Gee but it is cold today.
Diary, Beula Keller Lehman

Buddy's War #38- Thanksgiving 1944 and Beyond

Diary Entries, Beula Keller Lehman

    •    November 21, 1944
Dora called and said she was coming up for Thanksgiving

    •    November 23, 1944- Thanksgiving Day
Dora came at 9.20. Had dinner. It was a lovely day

    •    November 26, 1944
Dora and I went to Bethlehem.

For Thanksgiving, Dora made her second trip to Pennsylvania since her new husband had deployed. Beula, as usual, shows no emotions in her diary about what is happening. Dora has become another person in her life who can help fill her loneliness. She and Dora go to the movies, visit Ruth in Bethlehem, sharing what must have been a very subdued Thanksgiving. Beula regularly comments that she receives letters from Buddy and that she writes back. There is never anything indicating she knows where he is or what is happening. Most likely, he downplayed the events knowing that in any case, the letters were censored.


In Europe, on November 21 Co. C was moved to support CC B. It was their first time on the “front line” and not with the reserve unit closer to Division headquarters. It would only last a week, but they were finally, truly, in the midst of combat casualties.

    ✓    21 November 1944
    ✓    Company C Morning Report
Departed Kaltweiler 1300 via motor convoy. Traveled 9.4 miles to Ritzing. Arrived 1600. Billeted troops and set up Clearing Station. (MR)

During this week that Buddy’s Company C was assigned to CC B:

    ⁃    21 Nov- the north column of CCB received a heavy counterattack just west of BUDINGEN but it was repulsed with heavy loss to the enemy.

    ⁃    22 and 23 Nov- CCB was patrolling to the front to determine exact location of enemy positions.

    ⁃    26 Nov- CCB cleared the woods east of WALDWISSE and then entered the town of BETHINGEN. Although the town was taken by surprise, heavy enemy artillery concentrations soon necessitated a withdrawal. General PIBURN now had three columns within four miles of his objective, the bridge of MERZIG. The head of the northern column was just east of BUDINGEN with a good road leading into the city of LERZIG.

    ⁃    27 – 28 Nov- The Germans had realized the importance of the city of MERZIG, the key to the SAAR Valley, and had taken extreme care to block all avenues of approach. The terrain along with the soft subsoil afforded the defender an excellent position. The roads, the only avenues of approach for armor, were covered with numerous roadblocks, which made going extremely slow.

    ✓    29 November 1944
    ✓    Company C Morning Report
Left Ritzing 1100. Traveled 5.2 miles via motor convoy to Sierck-les-Bains. Arrived 1200. Billeted troops and set up clearing station. (MR)

[Co C reassigned back to reserve combat command (CC R) and they moved back to the vicinity of Division HQ.]

    ⁃    29 Nov- Both the northern and the center columns of CCB pushed to the built-up area of HILBRINGEN, only one mile west of the bridge in the afternoon

    ⁃    30 Nov- As the elements of CCB were preparing to complete their mission of seizing the bridge intact over the SAAR River at MERZIG, a terrific explosion shook the area. The Germans had blown the bridge just as the engineers reached it.



All this action with CC B is taking place in an area smaller than the New York City borough of Brooklyn! It was 11 miles wide and 7 miles long.

It is interesting to note that there are no morning reports for Company C from 23 Nov - 29 Nov, the period they are assigned to CC B. While I have the end of the month After Action Report for the whole 80th Battalion which shows the activity at the clearing stations, it is not broken down by company. (I will post that at the beginning of December.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Following the 80th Armored Medical Battalion and10th Armored Division in World War II has given me a new perspective on the planning and execution of war. I have never been in the military; I have read many books (novels as well as non-fiction); I have watched many movies; I have never studied the tactics of warfare. It is intriguing and educational to look at war from a tactical perspective, even if it is with the “perfect” vision of seventy-five years.

The staggering number of troops involved is far more than my mind can handle. As I stare at the maps I realize that each map is but a small slice of a huge story, even within the area covered by the maps. I remember that the whole 10th Armored Division would have been between 10 and 15,000 troops.

An armored division’s organization included

    ▪    a Division Headquarters and Headquarters Company,
    ▪    two Combat Command Headquarters (CC A and CC B),
    ▪    a Reserve Combat Command Headquarters (CC R),
    ▪    three tank battalions (of three medium and one light tank companies),
    ▪    three armored infantry battalions,
    ▪    three eighteen-gun artillery battalions,
    ▪    a cavalry reconnaissance squadron (battalion),
    ▪    an armored medical battalion.
    ▪    an engineer battalion, and
    ▪    division services,

The division was commanded by a major general, the combat commands by a brigadier general (who was also assistant division commander) and two colonels. The division included

    ▪        77 light tanks,
    ▪        168 medium tanks,
    ▪        18 M4 105mm assault guns,
    ▪        54 M7 105mm SP artillery pieces,
    ▪        54 M8 armored cars,
    ▪        450 halftracks,
    ▪        1,031 motor vehicles, and
    ▪        8 light observation aircraft.

(Military History Online)

Eastern France was a city in the mud and rain that November seventy-five years ago. To organize, direct and carry out the maneuvers must have been incredibly complex and, of course, based on the fact that the German troops weren’t just going to fall over and quit.

So I look at the maps and read the descriptions and am finally, after seven years of this, beginning to figure it out.

    ▪    First there’s the work of Combat Command A or B (CC A, CC B). CC A went one way with one job, CC B went another.
    ▪    Then there are the different Task Forces sent out from the Combat Commands. One might come in from the rear and another from a flanking maneuver.
    ▪    On top of all that this had to be coordinated with other divisions, Combat Commands, Task Forces, air support, medical support.

The movies make it look like all the tanks did was just barrel on forward crushing everything in their path. That is obviously not what happened. There were the days or weeks when a particular group might be less involved than at other times. There were the times after a battle when they could (sort of) relax.

How much could the medics relax? What could the soldiers do in the “downtime?” It must have been nothing short of maddening on some level of awareness that they must have had to sublimate, push away, forget.

Buddy's War #32- Battalion Preparations

    •    October 2, 1944

1st Letter from Buddy. He arrived in France all OK. Said he had a nice trip going over. Dora called and said she received a letter also
— Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

In general, as applied to infantry units,

The Medical Battalion was a Divisional medical unit developed to furnish medical support for the Infantry Division. Its primary mission was to organize and conduct the necessary evacuation and medical care for casualties of the Division. Because of the high mobility of the Division, the installations of the Medical Battalion had to be of a more temporary nature and possess increased readiness and ability to maintain contact with the different units of the Division. The Medical Battalion was thus charged with the evacuation of ALL casualties from the Infantry Battalion and Regimental Aid Stations. If for any reason, casualties could not be gathered at the Aid Stations, the Collecting Companies would remove casualties directly from the field.

 The Medical Battalion was organized as a kind of ‘miniature’ medical organization in order to maintain the best operative coordination of all the existing facilities and to give flexibility to a possible expansion of the medical service when necessary. It always accompanied the Division in the field! (Link)

 Armored medical battalions were training slightly differently in light of armored movements being different from infantry. They also looked at other special issues, such as extricating the wounded from tanks! There was a unique field manual for the armored medical battalions. The schematic shows the idealized view of how they were to be set up.

(P. 2; Armored Med Units Field Manual 1944)

Like the infantry battalions, the armored battalions needed to be ready to move at quick notice. The Armored Medical Units Field Manual, 1944 has specifics about how and what to do in advancing or “retrograde” movements.  It also gives these details about the general organization of the companies of the medical battalions:

  The armored medical battalion is a flexible, highly mobile unit capable of accompanying combat elements of the armored division. It is composed of a headquarters and headquarters company and three identical medical companies.

21. FUNDAMENTALS OF EMPLOYMENT, a. The medical battalion provides second echelon medical service by the collection, treatment, clearing, and evacuation of the sick and wounded of the division. It is self-contained administratively and technically, having its own maintenance, administrative, and supply organization.

b. Flexibility of the medical battalion is always maintained. The battalion is organized to be responsive to any demand made upon it for reinforcement or support. It can function as a unit, or its several major components may be broken down into lesser elements to support tactical groupings. In combat, usually one medical company supports each combat command. (p. 25)

 Undoubtedly they had received a great deal of training on this in the States prior to leaving. Here they bivouacked and most likely learned the ins and outs. It had to become second nature, I am sure, to be able to do what was needed in difficult and dangerous circumstances. This was all preparation time. After they had set up the bivouac in the rain on 23 September, the morning reports through 25 October simply say:

✓    24 September 1944- 25 October
  ✓    Company C Morning Report
Field duties at bivouac site. (MR)

Meanwhile, since the 10th/80th had arrived in the European theater:

    ◆    75 Years Ago
    ◆    25 September 1944
Operation Market Garden ended. It had begun on 17 September when Allied paratroopers landed in the Netherlands and Germany. They did not cross the Rhine and ended with an Allied defeat.

    ◆    27 September 1944
The Battle of Metz began. It would stall and then not be finished until Patton, the Third Army, and the 10th Armored joined later in the fall.

A piece of family “lore” comes to mind as I work on these early days in Europe. My aunt, Buddy’s sister, Ruth, told me a number of times that the family believed that when he went overseas he was actually too old for the deployment into battle. In October 1944 he was actually about a month shy of 39 years old. It is important to also remember that Buddy had lied about his age when he first enlisted in 1940, saying he was a year younger than he was. As far as the army was concerned, as he bivouacked in France he was not even 38 yet. I was told that Dora and the family tried in vain through letter writing to get him discharged prior to his deployment. They were told by one of his superiors, however, that he wasn’t going to let a medic as good as Buddy be discharged.

Whether he was too old, should have been there or not, Europe was where he was- a medical corpsman with Patton’s Third Army and the 10th Armored Division about to be part of the last seven months of the war in Europe. In pictures that I have of that era, he almost stands out like someone who shouldn’t be there. He is clearly older than most of the guys around him. He is an elder among his band of brothers.

Buddy's War #31

    ◆    75 Years Ago
    ◆    14 - 23 September 1944

10th Armored en route to and arriving in Europe.

    •    September 16, 1944

Dora came to visit.  (Diary)

Dora arrived only 3 days after the 10th was on its way. Did Buddy say to her, “Go spend some time with my mother. She will be at her wit’s end?" Had some kind of connection been made between Beula and Dora in that brief visit at the end of June? Did Dora know that for the marriage to work in the long run she needed to find out more about Buddy’s family and what the future might hold? Just by the fact that she had been living in Georgia, was doing things that introduced her to a wider-than-just-Jewish group of people, and then found one she married, would reinforce the idea that she had moved beyond her closed-off Brooklyn upbringing. Whatever the case, it is interesting  that she was open to this visit.

On that same day, Nichols in Impact! Reports that the 2nd ship (the USAT Brazil) caught up to the whole convoy and experienced some type of storm, possibly a hurricane. (Nichols)

    •    September 18, 1944

Went to visit Mabel together and then a show (Diary)

Attacked by U-boats, destroyers ran them off. One of convoy’s tankers torpedoed. (Nichols)

“Appetites dwindled” as ship constantly shifted positions zig-zagging maneuver (Nichols)

    ✓    20 September 1944
    ✓    Company C Morning Report

At sea aboard Brazil enroute to European theater. Weather favorable. (MR)

    ✓    22 September 1944
    ✓    Company C Morning Report

Dropped anchor at Weymouth Bay England (MR)

    ✓    23 September 1944
    ✓    Company C Morning Report

0730- Sailed for France
1945- Debarked Brazil via LST
2005- Arrived. Truck convoy to 2.1 miles NW, Quettehou, FR
2350- Set up bivouac. Weather rainy. (MR)

        •    September 24, 1944

Dora left on 2.15 train (Diary)

    ✓    24 September 1944
    ✓    Company C Morning Report

Began field duties at bivouac site. (MR)

Quettehou is on the eastern coast of the Cotentin or Cherbourg Peninsula. The headquarters of the 10th Armored Division was about 4 1/2 miles west of there in Teurtheville. It would make sense that the whole area was an extended bivouac for the newly arriving troops. Company C would remain at Quettehou until the end of October.

[Diary= diary entry from Beula Keller Lehman

MR= 80th Medical Battalion, Co. C Morning Reports

Nichols= Impact! The Battle Story of the 10th Armored Division]

Who Do We Care About?

I know I'm not the first to say this, but I want to add my voice to the discussion, if only in a brief way.

The Headline:

Nigeria's forgotten massacre: 2,000 slaughtered by Boko Haram, but the West is failing to help

Then the story:

Ignatius Kaigama, the Catholic Archbishop of Jos and president of the Nigerian Bishops Conference, spoke as bodies lay strewn on the ground in Baga, in north-east Nigeria, after a surge by Boko Haram fighters who took over the border town earlier this month.

He highlighted the stark difference between the West's willingness to act when 17 people were killed by militants in France and the approach to the slaughter in Africa.

Estimates of the death toll in Baga and surrounding villages, which were razed by fire, have been put at up to 2,000. Most of the dead were women, children and the elderly who could not flee in time, said Amnesty International, which labelled it the group's deadliest massacre yet...

The gulf in the attention between the murders in France and the Nigerian massacre was highlighted Twitter messages yesterday.

Imad Mesdoua, a political analyst at consultants Africa Matters, tweeted: "No breaking news cycle, no live reports, no international outrage, no hashtags." The actress Mia Farrow and Stephanie Hancock, of Human Rights Watch, were among those to observe that there had been "no outrage or headlines" about the Nigerian slaughter.

Harry Leslie Smith, the 91-year-old who electrified the Labour Party conference last year with a speech on the NHS, said on Twitter: "Note to the media and Western politicians that Paris isn't burning but Nigeria is."

--The Independent

Do we even care?

Why not?

Parisian lives matter; African lives do not?

Lord forgive our selfish self-centeredness and lead us to compassion and care.