Buddy's War #55- A Brief Respite and More Background

    •    Friday, March 16

Got up at 11. Did not feel so good. Wrote to Buddy.
Diary, Beula Keller Lehman

75 years ago today, the 10th Armored/80th Medical finished a four-day break in the city of Trier. In the two weeks prior to the break they had, as pointed out in earlier posts, cleared the Saar-Moselle Triangle, captured Trier, crossed the Moselle and did some clearing up toward Wittlich and Bullay. According to Nichols in Impact, they took the opportunity to do some sightseeing in Trier, the oldest city in Germany of the old Roman Coliseum and other ancient remains.

The Tenth was about to go on a long trip. In the next six days, they will travel 83 miles and then over 100 more by the end of the month. In these movements, the 80th Armored Medical Battalion will change its organizational movement to match the original plans set out in the manual for Armored Medical Battalions. No doubt this aided in the work of the clearing station of the company. With the more rapid movement of armored units as compared to infantry units, they needed to make sure the patients in the clearing station were moved appropriately. To do that Company C would often move in two sections as we will see from here through the end of the war.

As shown in this screenshot of the 1944 Armored Medical Units Field Manual flexibility and mobility were essential. As will happen for the rest of March and all of April this will be the story of the 80th as the 10th Armored’s organic medical battalion. The battalion medical companies were referred to as “second echelon” treatment, i.e. not front line treatment. The Field Manual describes them this way.

    ✓    24. MEDICAL COMPANY. For details of organization, see T/O 8-77. The armored medical battalion includes three medical companies organized and equipped to be self- contained. The primary function of the medical company is to assure prompt and continuous evacuation of forward medical units, and to render medical care to casualties evacuated. Each medical company consists of a headquarters, a collecting platoon, and a clearing platoon.

In reading through the daily Morning Reports for Company C, my Dad’s company, there has not been any indication of three sections as listed above. I am sure there must have been some breakdown, especially considering there was a surgical team since my Dad’s duty was surgical tech. Whenever they would move, the Morning Report would almost always indicate that the “clearing station” was set up and then the troops billeted.

    ✓    Collecting platoon

(1) This platoon consists of a platoon headquarters and two identical collecting sections. The platoon headquarters is equipped with a radio-liaison vehicle included in the group medical net (FM). It is capable of contacting all division medical units within range,
(2) This vehicle formally operates forward from the clearing platoon, contacting the aid stations and controlling and directing the ambulances of the medical company to battalion aid stations and casualty collecting points in the forward areas.
(3) Ambulances of the collecting sections operate forward from the clearing station to evacuate battalion aid stations and casualty collecting points established by the medical detachments.

Sidenote: there is a good memoir of a radio technician, Wire As a Weapon: Observations of a lineman with the 150th Armored Signal company laying wire from 10th Armored Division Headquarters to the forward units in 1944-45. (If you Google it, you will get lots of articles about the weapon a garrote wire for killing.) 

    ✓    Clearing Platoon

Functions and operation. ( a ) This platoon is the nucleus of second echelon medical service in combat. The clearing station does not attempt surgical procedures better performed by specialized units of supporting medical elements. Its primary purpose is to perform emergency surgery, including amputation, to combat shock, to administer blood and plasma transfusions, tetanus toxoid, apply splints, and check dressings.

The clearing stations employed mobile surgical trucks. According to the Army Medical Department History:

“Mobile Surgical Trucks” were truck-mounted ‘mobile’ operating rooms designed for temporary expansion of busy and overcrowded Hospitals! These units provided additional and self-sustained two-table operating rooms which could be utilized for all types of surgery. No additional burden was put on the Hospital, since the truck possessed its own autoclaves, surgical instruments, lighting, gloves, dressings, and linen. It must be noted that the Truck itself was only a means of transportation, while the ‘special’ Tent (carried in the trailer, together with the necessary power supply) provided with the Truck acted as the actual operating room.

The Truck, 2 ½-Ton, 6 x 6, GMC, CCKW-352 (short wheelbase); 353 type (long wheelbase), aka “deuce-and-a-half” the US Army’s workhorse, was one of the best vehicles suited for this purpose. manufactured by the General Motors Truck and Coach Division of the Yellow Truck and Coach Manufacturing Company

Illustration of a Surgical Truck and Tent, as introduced by the 47th Armored Medical Battalion.

One of the two Mobile Surgical Trucks of C Company, 78th Armd Med Bn, 8th Armd Div, ready to accept casualties. Wounded German PWs on litters are waiting for treatment.

Partial display of basic equipment of two Mobile Surgical Trucks, set up in the appropriate Tent

Again, from the Field Manual:

Each surgical unit contains an operating table with operating lights, cabinets for supplies, instruments and sterile dressings, hot water heater with boiler, a supply of cold water, a sterilizing unit and facilities for ventilation and heating. Electric power is furnished by a gasoline-operated generator. Each surgical unit includes a specially constructed blackout tent to provide additional space for the treatment of casualties. One surgical unit has in addition the necessary items of equipment to treat gas casualties. In the event of an enemy gas attack, this unit operates for the emergency treatment of systemic symptoms incident to toxic gases and the emergency treatment of chemical burns. It is equipped to perform essential decontamination of personnel and equipment. (Field Manual)

As I mentioned above, part of the reason we will see in the coming weeks for the splitting of the clearing station into platoons or sections (both words are used to describe them in the morning reports) is for the efficiency of collecting and clearing the wounded. The Field Manual makes sure this is covered.

    ✓    EVACUATION OF CLEARING STATION BY SUPPORTING MEDICAL ECHELON.

An essential for the proper functioning of the clearing station is the ability to move on short notice. This capability is dependent upon whether the accumulated casualties are being promptly and continuously cleared from the clearing station by corps or army medical units. Constant liaison by the supporting medical unit is necessary to insure prompt evacuation of the clearing station. Liaison is established and maintained by the supporting medical unit charged with the evacuation of the medical company. (Field Manual)

One other note during this brief break from the war from reading the Morning Reports:

When someone either joins the company or is transferred to another company, in most instances they indicate their race.  Race is almost always listed as “W”. This one was different:

    ✓    Company C Morning Report
    ✓    13 March 1945

Manygoats, Raymond Pvt. Reasgd and jd 13 Mar 45 from… HQ 53rd Reinforcement BN, 17th Reinforcement depot. MOS 303. Semi-skilled. Race Amer Indian. (MR)

MOS 303 was the duty code for "hospital orderly."

And on the homefront:

75 years Ago Today
March 16, 1945:

President Roosevelt said at a news conference that as a matter of decency, Americans would have to tighten their belts so food could be shipped to war-ravaged countries to keep people from starving. (Link)

Buddy's War #54- Beyond Trier

    •    Thursday March 8

Got up at 10. Felt bad so I am not doing anything. Received a letter from Ruth. Wrote to  her. It is a spring day.
Diary, Beula Keller Lehman

The 10th Armored and Company C of the 80th Medical Battalion remained at Trier from 2 March through 15 March. It was a clean-up time around and northeast of Trier. Originally, Nichols tells us, the plan was that the 10th just clear the Saar-Moselle Triangle. Their efficiency and speed achieving that goal led to the capture of Trier as well. That then was to be the end of the mission until the actions of Col. Richardson’s Task Force captured the Romer Bridge. Again the combat operation was extended to crossing the Moselle and heading north to Wittlich.

8 March 1945- After capturing Trier two Tiger forces crossed the Moselle and were within six miles of Wittlich, 20 miles north of Trier.

10 March 1945- Task Force Cherry entered the city and kept moving another 12 miles toward Bullay to seize the bridge there. They were not to be successful as the Germans had already destroyed it.

12 March 1945- The mission ended and TF Cherry rejoined the rest of the 10th in Trier.

At the same time, CC B and CC R drove the Germans back just a few miles north of Trier at Ehrang. Unfortunately, work on repairing the bridgehead at Ehrang was slowed allowing the Germans to mount a specific attack on the infantry battalion and the battalion’s captain was killed among heavy casualties. A Task Force of CC R managed to cross the river and pushed the Germans from the hills on the high ground overlooking the town of Schweich.

Schweich was declared an “open city”. The Germans, according to Nichols, told the Division in a message that the town was

“undefended and sheltered 3,000 wounded Germans.” But when Task Force Chamberlain entered Schweich, they fond a devastating array of 88s, [88mm German anti-tank and anti-aircraft gun, perhaps the best overall and most feared of the German arsenal] mined streets, and instead of 3,000 wounded- they found but two German casualties. Nettled by the big lie, the tankers quickly seized Schweich. Shortly afterward, the acerbic Germans rained a steady stream of shells into that “open city”… resulting in heavy Tiger casualties there as the bombardment took its toll.

11 March- after two days of fighting the TF had neutralized the German threat and they returned to Trier.

By March 12 the Division was back together in Trier. They were resting in preparation for the move toward the Rhine.

Co C was assigned in support of CC B during this time. Looking at the battalion’s end of March After Action Report, the capture of Trier and the move toward Ehrang and Wittlich are reflected in the admissions to the three clearing stations. Between 1 March and 9 March over 1,300 admissions are listed, an average of 145/day. The numbers drop beginning on 10 march with less than half that- 615 admissions, 56/day- through 20 March.

    •    Sunday March 12

Got up at 10. Changed the beds. Washed some. It is a rainy day.
Diary, Beula Keller Lehman

Reflections
In following my dad, Buddy, through the war I have also read a number of books by others who were in similar situations in World War II. One was the book Battalion Surgeon by the late Dr. William McConahey from Mayo Clinic. Captain McConahey was part of an infantry battalion surgeon medical corps from D-Day through the end of the war. I will be quoting him again later, but this particular quote from the preface of his book struck me at this point.

My horizon was quite limited. The war fought in division, corps, and army headquarters, where personal danger and discomfort were slight, was one of maps and lines and pins and shifting troops here and there- more like a fascinating game of chess. But the war I saw was one of mud and discomfort and suffering and death and terror and destruction.

I have the advantage of books and the Internet to put these stories in some semblance of order. As I read I can find out what happened when and in what order. Even in Nichols’ somewhat over-hyped prose, it all sounds clear and directed. I also know the end of the story. Through it all, though, I keep looking for ways to describe what my dad was going through. This quote does it as well as any. I am sure that the “mud and discomfort and suffering and death and terror and destruction” McConahey describes were real for Dad. Perhaps the transformation in him that war must exact on one’s soul, was why he may have been “Buddy” to his mother, but he was no longer simply a mother’s son.

We are now just shy of 8 weeks until the end of the war in Europe. There is still more of the chaos and destruction to come.

Buddy's War #49- Surprises in the Earlier Story

We are about to enter a very busy period in the activities of the 10th Armored Division and the 80th Medical Battalion. This post, though, is a momentary jump back to before they were in Europe and the uncovering of more mysteries from my dad's army years. I should have known there would be more. There are many skirmishes and battles in the whole of Buddy’s war.

Since I have been digging into things that happened before I was born to people who have been gone for over 55 years, there are more than enough unknowns to fill several volumes. I have no letters, one person’s diaries, hardly any pictures from the time before the war. There are a couple from my dad’s high school, a profile in a college yearbook, bits and pieces of the family story. But nothing else of any substance.

Even from the years I am covering through my grandmother’s diary there are so many blank spots, most big enough to drive a Sherman tank through. But as has been said, one does not know what one doesn’t know. Which is why I still dig, still keep looking for new information.

I did some of that through a researcher in St. Louis who was recommended to me from a mentor. I wondered what might be in the National Archive in St. Louis from back there in 1942-43 that I had not yet discovered. The unit Morning Reports for the companies of the 80th Armored Medical Battalion were out there. Was my dad in there somewhere?

I was shocked when some things were found. In these I found information that I hadn’t seen any hints of in Beula’s diary entries. Maybe I should have.

This series of events started at Christmas, 1942. Buddy was in Georgia with the 80th Medical. It was only a few months since he had been activated in August and assigned to the 10th Armored at Fort Benning, GA. Then that December Beula says in her diary that she was “looking for” him on Christmas Eve. Did he say he was coming home? Just that one little statement.

    •    Looking for Harold

The next day, Christmas Day, she reports that she

    •    Looked for Harold. I am disappointed.”

He didn’t show up. When I first read that a couple years ago I just assumed it was a mother wanting to see her son who was now in the Army- wishful thinking that he would come all the way from Georgia for Christmas. But with no advanced warning? It didn’t make sense because it didn’t say she missed him being home or that she wished he was there. There was action in it- she was looking. I passed it by.

In the information from St. Louis, however, I found something intriguing that may be connected. The morning report for 24 Dec 1942 from HQ Company, where he was assigned at that time, for T/5th Lehman:

    •    DY to Hosp. (Duty to hospital.)

What? It looks like he was one of five from the company who went from duty to hospital in a five day period that month.

Move forward to January 14 and Beula comments in her diary that she has received a letter from Harold and that he

    •    might be home soon.

Two weeks later, 28 January, the Morning Report records that

    •    T/5 Lehman hospital to DY.

Apparently he was in the hospital these entire five weeks.

Okay, he’s back to duty? But there's more.

Also on January 28, when he went from hospital to duty, Beula says in her diary that Harold is in Atlanta, which is two hours north of Fort Benning. She says that he is traveling home and

    •    Gee, I’m nervous.

On the 29th she says that he is
    •    delayed in Washington

and then on the 30th that he arrived home. I do not have the Morning Report pages for January 29-31 so I do not have confirmation of “duty to furlough” at this time. But on 12 February I find in the Morning Report that

    •    Tech 5th grade Lehman fur to DY.

That correlates with Beula’s diary from the day before,  February 11, that he left to return to Georgia.

Once again, he’s back on duty? Once again, it appears not to have been the whole story.

    •    MR for 13 Feb 43
Tech 5th grade Lehman duty to abs in hands of civil authorities.

Six weeks later:
    •    Beula’s diary entry for March 23 1943
Harold called. Gee, I was glad to hear from him and to hear everything was O.K.

Then, after about 40 days:
    •    MR for 25 Mar 43
T/5 Lehman fr conft in hands of C Auth to dy.

So here I am today, mere months from the end of the war in Europe and I am quickly transported back to Dad’s first six months in the battalion. In that period he has been promoted twice, from Private to Private First Class to Tech 5th Grade, a specialist rank equal to corporal. But he has also been in the hospital for over a month followed immediately by furlough for two weeks and then immediately absent into the hands of civil authorities, obviously for confinement for over six weeks.

Are there no end to the surprises?

To be clear, I do not have all the diary entries in front of me. All I have are the ones I entered into the timeline that at the time seemed different or out of the ordinary. I will have to wait to get home to look these dates up and see what else was around them. But let me do some reflecting and ask a whole set of questions, in addition to “What the hell is this all about?”

Here goes.

• Why was Beula “looking for Buddy” to come home on that Christmas Eve when I am aware of no indication that he had said he was? That needs to be verified, of course. That this is the day he goes to the hospital is interesting.

• Why was he in the hospital? That there were four other members of the company in the hospital at the same time may be an indication of some flu or other bug going around. Since I do not have all the morning report pages, just the ones that mention Buddy, I don’t know when the others went back to duty.

• He wrote to Beula, obviously, it seems, from the hospital, and she mentions it at almost exactly the half-way point in his hospital stay. No apparent mention in his letter about even being in the hospital.

• His return to duty from the hospital seems to be on the same day Beula gets a call from him in Atlanta. Was that where he was in the hospital?

• Was he delayed in Washington the very next day? He is most likely on furlough since he returns from furlough, according to the Morning Report, on February 12. It is unlikely that he was AWOL. I may just be missing the pages that might give some hint.

• One tiny bit of intrigue from his furlough at home was that there was one night when he didn’t come home. That was, of course, an old pattern of his as I have mentioned in earlier posts from that time period. Was this perhaps Buddy’s last “fling” before the next issue arises a few days later?

• But then the big surprise, his being in the hands of “civilian authorities” for what would later be called “conft”, confinement. It does not say where this confinement was. One assumes in nearby Columbus or further? No hints, no family lore, nothing to go by in anything I have or have ever heard. Beula seems relieved when she hears from him again in March a few days before he is returned to duty from civil authorities. She was “glad… that everything was ok.” What role might have this played in who Buddy became? It didn’t seem to have an impact on his status in the Army.

Maybe we can call them skeletons in the old closet, or maybe I have overlooked something, or maybe it is hidden in some now unavailable letter or report. Time will tell.

When one digs into the unknown, there are always things of interest that pop up.

Buddy's War #28- Arrival at Camp Shanks

    ◆    75 Years Ago
    ◆    1 September 1944

Arrived Camp Shanks, NY, 1430 via rail from Camp Gordon, GA for permanent change… Distance traveled 384 miles. Discipline excellent. (MR)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Through the next year there will be many references and quotes from the daily Morning Report of Company C, 80th Armored Medical Battalion, Buddy’s unit. The screenshot here is from two days ahead in October. The top locates the company and then lists any changes in personnel followed occasionally by a record of some events. The bottom section is an accounting of numbers of personnel in each of the categories, officers first, then enlisted men. Different units had slightly different styles of morning report forms, though they were all for the same general purpose.

Jennifer Holik at the WWII Research & Writing Center has a couple of good articles explaining both their use in the military during World War II and their value for researchers.

Company Morning Reports
A Morning Report was created each day outlining events of the prior day for the events of a Company. …Morning
Reports listed many details about the company which include:
    ◆    The location of the company for the date of the report.
    ◆    Strength of the unit in numbers of men
    ◆    Details of those entering and leaving the company
    ◆    Names of those declared AWOL, Missing In Action, Killed In Action, or wounded.
    ◆    The reports also provided information on the day’s events. Some clerks reported weather conditions, in addition to the usual information on where the unit was fighting, and other enemy encounters.

The companies were required to report numbers of men at each meal, which provided information to the Army, who then was able to provide food and appropriate supplies for the soldiers. These numbers also alerted headquarters when the ranks were depleted and replacements were needed. (-Link)

I have been able to obtain the Morning Reports for Co. C for the entire time in Europe beginning with today, 1 September 1944. They have given me invaluable information on where my Dad’s company was every day and, when appropriate, a record of events. Whenever I use one of the reports I will note it with (MR).