Jim Medding’s Blog

In my grandfather’s, Walter L. Medding, memoir of WWI is an engaging vignette which reminds me so much of the stories he would tell during our frequent visits with him during my childhood.

We had a hard boiled motorcycle driver who rejoiced in the name of “Spike” Adams. One day Spike took me, in his rattletrap motorcycle & side car, on a trip to Ft. St. Mange. In climbing the long grade to the ridge at the far end of which the fort was located, the motor labored considerably and the exhaust pipe became red hot. Finally a tire went flat and we had to walk half a mile to the Gas School. Here we begged transportation to finish our trip. A Dodge sedan was placed at our disposal and we were warned to hurry as the school was about to start a demonstration with chlorine gas. By the time we turned on to the main road the gas cloud had been turned loose and, as we had no gas masks, the driver increased his speed to about 15 miles per hour. Half way through the cloud a sentry tried to stop us, but we dodged around him and raced on. The cloud resembled a fog and visibility was very low. Suddenly, right in front of us there appeared a motorcycle. It had been stopped by the sentry and had hardly gotten under way again. It was impossible to stop the car and when we hit the motorcycle our driver temporarily lost control. We swerved to the right, bumped through the ditch at the side of the road and careened through the trees of a small woods. Although we avoided hitting anything as we entered the woods, it took 2 days to get the car out again.

Of course, we piled out of the car and rushed to see how much damaged we had done to the motorcycle driver. We found it was Roy McCutchen, who was badly scratched by gravel but otherwise unhurt, so we all hurried out of the gas cloud in the direction of Ft. St. Menge. Apparently the concentration of chlorine was not very heavy, for none of us suffered the slightest effects.

Hmm, it could only have happened in 1918.

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In a recent conversation with my son, Greg, he was telling me about a processor with 3 cores. We both agreed that there was something wrong about having 3 cores, but couldn’t quite figure it out. Then it came to us – you can’t have a processor with 3 cores because that’s a prime number. And furthermore it’s not a power of two. Geeze, why didn’t they think this through before they brought it to market?

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Before there was video tape, DVD’s, and DVR’s, you typically saw a movie once, unless the move was really, really good. Then you would see it every time it was broadcast on TV. Occasionally, a local broadcaster would need to fill air time when the networks didn’t have a feed and nobody was watching anyway. Like late on a Saturday afternoon.

I’m pretty sure that’s when I tuned in to an old BW movie which had caught my attention. I was probably about 8 years old. I think what caught my attention was the fact that plot of the move had the US military, which I had the greatest respect for since they had won the war, was doing battle with an “ice age monster.” NOTHING was working against this hideous beast; the carnage was terrible. I was on the edge of my seat; it was not at all certain that would the US military prevail. Finally, the heroes figured it out and did the beast in. I’ll never forget that final scene; a giant claw slowly sinking into the ocean. I was creeped out.

I never understood why the move wasn’t shown on TV from time to time. Then, recently, I looked the movie up. Oh yea, I was pretty young then. Never mind.

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If you want to have credibility on race, you have to speak honestly in very situation.

Juan Williams on the 7/24 /2009 edition of Special Report

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At a recent car show, I was delighted to find a 1964 Dodge Dart with push-button automatic transmission. To most onlookers, it wasn’t much of a sight, but for me it was special. This was the car that I had learned to drive in. And it has the one particular feature that I’ll always remember that car for: push-button automatic transmission. Ooh, I can still feel, and hear the operation of the parking lever and gear selector buttons.

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They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Ben Franklin

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As many baby boomer children did, I frequently asked my father, Richard (Dick) S. Medding, about his experiences during WWII. In my naive way I would ask something like “Did you shoot anybody?” The answers were always terse but once in a while some small detail would emerge. I knew my father had served as a combat engineer but had not seen much combat. He told me once about carrying a flamethrower to a pillbox and when they found it was abandoned, he asked for and got permission to leave the flamethrower behind because “it was heavy.” In my mind, I figured this was like a hiking trip on a warm day with plenty of up and down hills. Otherwise, why leave something awesome like a flamethrower behind?

Over the years a few more details have emerged as my father has been willing to share them. That hiking trip with the flame thrower; well, it was in the dead of winter and the reason for leaving it behind was that the Germans were counter attacking. To repulse the counter attack, an artillery barrage was called in on top of their own position.

When my father sent me the book Visions from a Foxhole, he included a page’s worth of notes on his personal experiences as they related to the book. Many of them were names of towns he remembered, but here are the more important excerpts:

Here is a book about the 94th Infantry Division’s tour in the ETO during WWII… that’s what I was in and where I was… Since I was in the 319th Engineer combat Battalion, rather than the 302nd Infantry, our paths diverged considerably. However, many of the places Foley mentions are familiar to me…

Pg. xvi – St. Nazaire and Lorient – The French cities where we held the Germans while being brought up to strength after losing about one-third strength for over-age. We shouldn’t have brought all these men overseas.

Maps – Several of the towns in Germany where I was working at one time or another. Campholz Woods – I really remember that. That’s where we carried TNT boxes into pillboxes for demolition, and from where we launched an attack on a bunker (I carried a flamethrower). Map of the Saar Bridgehead – My squad was the first to cross the Saar from Taben. My assault boat was the second boat to make the other side safely.

Pg 68 – Tettingen, Butzdorf… description of an attack with engineers carrying flamethrowers (not me!)

Pg 75 – I was also in B Company of the 319th.

Note: this reference is to a description of of an event where engineers who had been “mutilated” by Schü mines while carrying demolition charges up to destroy bill boxes; see comments above about Campholz Woods.

Pg 98, 99 – Description of the Saar River crossing. Foley apparently crossed some time after the first crossing.

P 102 – There were always three engineer troops for each assault boat. Two in front to place the infantry with the paddles and one in back steering. I was the one in back on my crossing.

Shortly after crossing the Saar, I was transferred from B Company to H&S Company, into the Engineering Reconnaissance Section as a radio operator. Because of the transfer, I didn’t get much of the action Foley did. While in France, near Chateaubriant, the battalion held a “radio school” to teach several of us Morse Code and radio procedures. That’s why they put me in H&S Co.

Pg. 265 – Ludwigshafen – The end of our attack down the Autobahn.

Pg. 281 – Krefeld – We were near Krefeld when the war ended.

Pg. 296, 297 – The USO show with Bob Hope that I also saw.

Since I didn’t have any decorations, my point total was relatively small, so I had to wait for the entire Battalion to be shipped home. We went from Czechoslovakia to a little town near Munich to wait for our call to come home. We sailed from Le Havre, France on the Victory Ship Chapel Hill, sailing south to miss a storm, and sailed right into the middle of another.

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A friend of mine sent me this video clip. The quality is a bit low so it’s hard to figure out a couple of scenes. But still, it’s an amazing video.

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My father recently sent me a copy of Visions from a Foxhole, A Rifleman in Patton’s Ghost Corps by William A. Foley Jr. Foley had served as a replacement in the 94th ID during the second world war; my father had served as a combat engineer. Many of the places, and some of the events, matched with my father’s experiences so he thought I might enjoy the book.

He was right. Foley has done an excellent job of providing a first person narration of what it was like for an infantryman to fight the war in Europe during some of its worst combat conditions seen by the US troops. He begins by describing a bleak, ominous arrival as a replacement in January, 1945 at the Siegfried Switch Position on the Moselle River. Within hours he’s in a foxhole, in freezing cold conditions with the wrong kind of boots and being shot at.

Foley goes from there to provide a gritty, nothing held back, description of combat. He unapologetically describes dispatching enemy troops simply because it was expedient. And only occasionally does he describe any emotion at the loss of a fellow troop. But as the war begins to wind down, his humanity begins to reemerge. I was particularly taken by his narration of capturing two German soldiers near Krefeld; one in his 50s and the second no more than 16.

All of the narrations provided by Foley are not only engaging but they are also clear, detailed and easy to follow. I’ve read several personal recollections of solders; this has to be one of the best.

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