John J. Carrigg (IV)

Part IV (Part I) (Part II) (Part III)

The rest of the war was easy. In the next few days our mortar squad received several replacements (Beaver, Bauman, Boncik, Gentile, and McCammon). I was made mortar squad leader and Staff Sergeant.

Our division moved north from France through Belgium to Holland, and stayed for a week or so in a very Catholic part of Holland. I had Holland down as strictly Protestant—not this area of northeast Holland. The Dutch countryside is dotted with shrines and the Dutch farmers reciting Latin responses at Mass got an A from me. Another thing I enjoyed was the widespread use of huge draft horses by the Dutch farmers. There were no tractors; all the farming was done with massive draft horses, mostly Belgian types. That pleased me very much.

I got to know a Dutch blacksmith, Emil, a scrawny little fellow. He was employed in a blacksmith shop with four full time smiths. That all ended in 1954 when Marshall aid reached Holland and the first thing the Dutch farmer did was buy a tractor. So much for their love of the horses. Mrs. Carrigg and I visited Holland several years after the war and the horses were gone.

We left Holland and crossed the Rhine sometime in March. A big sign warned us, “You are now under enemy observation. Maintain a 60 yard interval.” We crossed on a temporary pontoon bridge.

It was in this area, while our Division was traveling through Germany, that we had the famous impromptu sleep. We had been going all day and night and our column stopped in a German town. I was standing in the gun mount on the half-track and fell sound asleep. The track driver and all the squad members were sound asleep. I suddenly awoke and the street in front of me was empty. I thought, “O God,” and shouted to Shoup, the driver. He came out of a deep sleep and had us moving in an instant but where was the column? We continued out of the town and I thought we are leading the whole U.S. Army in Germany. We came to a point where a long column was standing on our right at a point where it would intersect our road. I shouted to the lead vehicle, “Did a convoy go by here?” He said, “It went the way you are going,” and in a short time we caught up with our column. Later I talked to Sgt. Kapennhagen in charge of the track ahead of us. “Why didn’t you call or shout or something?” He said, “You were standing in your gun mount and I assumed you were alive and awake.” Both assumptions were wrong.

When the war ended in the middle of April 1945 we were in the central German village of Bad Lauterburg in the Harz mountains, a beautiful setting pretty much untouched by the war. Our mortar squad was billeted in the upstairs of a two-story frame house. Sharing the upstairs with us was a German grandmother, her daughter, fortyish, and the daughter's son, a twelve-year old whom we called Panzerfaust (a German anti-tank rocket). Panzerfaust was a Hitler Jugend and knew a lot about weapons of war.

A week or so after we arrived there, the army sent an order that there could be no fraternization with the Germans. So I had to tell grandmother, her daughter, and grandson that they must go, which meant they would have to move in with the people downstairs, whom they apparently could not stand. So grandmother came to me and said, “I was bombed out of my home in Berlin, now you are ordering me out of my home here, I would rather you take your gun and shoot me.” I told her I would not do it. I really felt sorry for her but it was an order. The crisis passed but a few days later Panzerfaust told me that “you go tomorrow.” We had not heard a word of it but it was true. The next day we left for Czechoslovakia. You should have seen the grandmother, daughter and Panzerfaust rush upstairs to check and make sure we had not taken anything, etc. We did no damage and our departure was a very happy day for them, although I sensed that Panzerfaust would miss us. He liked hanging around with soldiers and weapons. I was willing to bet that Panzerfaust would grow up to be a general in the East German Army. I think that part of Germany became Russian occupied after the war but am not sure.

One other interesting episode. In the last weeks of the war we captured a German officer and part of his platoon. As he approached me I asked him if he had ein pistolen and he whipped out a Luger and handed it to me. A Luger is a higly prized weapon and I wrote to my brother Richard that I had a Luger for him. Subsequently I went on a furlough to Ireland and left the Luger in my duffle bag with the company armorer. When I returned the pistol was gone. I also had a .44 caliber pistol not nearly as prized. The armorer, Tony Gaetano, knew nothing about it. When I got back to America I met brother Rich and gave him the .44. His face dropped. “I thought you had a Luger.” “I did but it is gone.”

The sequel to all this was very pleasant. Our unit spent a couple of weeks in Czechoslovakia. Then we moved to a German town, occupied by a Battalion. We had a football team. I played end. There were only two players of any account, Donnoly and Reagan. Our coach made the mistake of arranging a game for our team against a team from the 9th Infantry Division. It took place in Augsburg, Germany before a huge crowd of American soldiers They had some college guys and some pros and they slaughtered us, 68-0. I remember one play vividly. I caught a kickoff. (Every other play was a kickoff and they were kicking off.) I had no choice—it was right to me. I started downs the field and I got creamed by a big tackle who, they said, played for the Browns. I know he creamed me for the ages. You should have heard the roar of the crowd on that crushing tackle. The coach pulled me out of the game. But I did not fumble. However, he feared I would be killed and wanted to save me for better things.

The next step was a delightful two or three months at the Biarritz American University which the Army set up. One more aid to American colleges. They had some excellent profs. Biarritz is in southwestern France, not far from Lourdes, on the Bay of Biscay. The sunsets were spectacular, with the sun dropping below the Pyrenees. I took a course in Latin American history with Harold Davis who later became Dean of American University—one of the most boring courses I ever took. Davis had the habit of making a statement and then staring out the window. A course in conversational French by Professor Creech of the University of North Carolina was very good. And then conversational German from a German-Jewish sergeant was good.

I took part in a French play—a very small part—I was the chauffeur d'taxi. The opening line was “St. Moritz est loin? Oui monsieur.”

Finally we went back to the States. This involved a trip to Bremerhaven, a seaport in north Germany. We sailed in a Liberty Ship. The crossing was very rough compared to the going o'er. We were not allowed topside. The ship would rise and then come down hard with the sound of a steel door slamming on an empty room. We sailed into the port of New York. The New York skyline was so welcome, I just loved it. One memorable moment: A barge filled with German soldiers who had been captives were going out to board a ship that would take them back to Germany. I felt sorry for those guys because they were going back to bombed and devastated Germany, and I was coming home to safe and sound America. May it ever be so.

Fin de la guerre.

After the war I went to Georgetown Graduate School of history, met my wife there, and we have been happily married ever since.

END