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.

My father, apparently, at boot camp

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.

Overage men in the 94th ID during basic training

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.

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.

Browsing through some of my prior postings, I decided to see if I could find some more information about the photos my grandfather had taken at Panmunjom. This was partially prompted by the thought that, other than my grandfather’s short notation on the photo, I have no real proof as to what they are.

A quick search on the Internet and I found this National Archives photo that looks like it was taken from the exact same spot as one of my grandfather’s photo. Hmm, it was either the “only” spot to take the shot or an odd coincidence.

UN delegation tent at Panmunjom

I also found this description of the National Archives photo from the 558th MP Company’s web site:

The 558th MP Co. provided security for the armistice negotiations. To accomplish this mission the company maintained detachments of military police at Munsan-ni and at Panmunjom. In this photo, MPs are guarding the tents of the United Nations delegation [commonly referred to as "tent city."] / Photo courtesy of The National Archives - Still Pictures Branch, Record Group 111-sc-383310

I regularly glance though a lot of RSS feed headlines looking for subject matter of interest but rarely do I find an article that overlaps my interest quite like Jack Ganssle’s article on his visit to Bletchley Park. . In addition to having lots of photos, the article includes a pretty fair description of the historical significance of the place and the equipment itself.

Enjoy.

So far, I’ve read two books which were truly disturbing – Sheriff David Reichert’s Chasing the Devil and James Bradley’s Flyboys. I mention this to provide context for the following quote from Bradley’s book:

Few people reflect now that samurai swords killed more people during WWII than atomic bombs. WWII veteran Paul Fussell wrote, “The degree to which Americans register shock and extraordinary shame about the Hiroshima bomb correlates closely with lack of information about the Pacific war.”

While my grandfather, Walter L. Medding, was stationed in Japan in the early 1950’s he apparently made a couple of trips over to Korea. This news came as surprise to my father because when I asked Dad about it, he said “Grandpa was never in Korea.” The reason why I asked Dad is that I found three slides which had to be taken in Korea – they are of the negotiating tents at Panmunjom. And they were, most likely, taken by Grandpa. I’ve include two of the slides here.

All three slides are undated; the two here have legends, hand lettered by my Grandfather. The first appears to be in a very primitive setting – no road to be seen, a little gravel out in front of a standard army canvas tent. This slide is titled Panmunjom; Chinese guard at Panmunjom, Korea.

The second slide shows a bit more refined tent and surroundings. This slide is titled Panmunjom; Armistice tent Panmunjom. Two additional things about this second slide I find interesting- it was taken from, apparently the Chinese side and in the background, off to the right of the tent, appears to be a US solder using either a camera, or surveying equipment. Surveying would, conceivably, be a reason for my grandfather to make a trip over to Korea since this would be a service provided by the Corp of Engineers.

In Stanley Weintraub’s 11 Days in December, Christmas at the Bulge, 1944 one story stands out, for me, more poignant than all the others. Weintraub retells the tale of Roscoe “Rockie” Blunt’s Christmas celebration from a fox hole.

“Hey, Blunt,” someone whispered from the next fox hole.

“What?” he whispered back.

“Merry Christmas.”

He hadn’t remembered what day it was. “Why bother keeping track of the date, for you had long resigned yourself to the fact you were going to die that day anyway. Of this you were always certain.” But he had stashed in his pack a four-inch artificial Christmas tree from home. He dug it out and struck it in the snow at the lip of his frozen foxhole. Then he extracted some candy bars he had saved, a can of C ration pork and beans, and a small can of fruit cocktail from home, which had come from his sister June with crackers and peanut butter. He shared it with Joe Everett in the next hole and they had a frigid yet festive party.

Rockie Blunt’s memoirs, Inside the Battle of the Bulge: A Private Comes of Age were published in 1994.

Rare book hound (and my brother-in-law), John Jenkins, tells me that the book Buena Vista’s Part in the World War, One Iowa County’s Record of Service and Sacrifice is very rare. He was able to uncover copies of the book in only seven libraries and none for sale in the rare book network he regularly uses. So here’s his list, in case you would like to peruse a copy yourself.

Sioux City Public Library, Sioux City, IA 51101
Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA 50112
Loras College, Dubuque, IA 52004
University of Iowa Library, Iowa City, IA 52242
WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Madison, WI 53706
Wisconsin Veterans Museum Res Center, Madison, WI 53703
New York Public Library - Research, New York, NY 10018

John E. Reese of Iowa was assigned to Company F, 316th Engineers Regiment, 91st Division during the Great War. On November 1st the allies began their final drive to victory; John earned the Distinguished Service Cross for “extraordinary heroism” during the Ypres-Lys offensive. The U.S. Army Center of Military History provides the following brief description of this offensive:

In mid-October Pershing dispatched two American divisions—the 37th and 91st—to the French Army of Belgium, at Foch’s request, to give impetus to the drive to cross the Scheldt (Escaut) southwest of Ghent. A general attack began in this area on 31 October and continued intermittently until hostilities ended on 11 November.

John’s description of this battle and his actions are as follows:

There are three canals and the river Scheldt running through Audenarde, and as all the bridges were blown up and the opposite banks well fortified we had to stop. Not much was known about the conditions of the bridges, etc., but we did know that the Germans were shelling the place so badly that it was impossible to get through. The Allied forces did not have any luck getting information with air service because of weather conditions and heavy bombardment. So volunteers were called for from the engineers. Our captain sent two of us in first to observe conditions. We were busy dodging shells and Germans until 5 o’clock in the morning, but by this time we had learned the location of their batteries and their machine-gun layouts, as well as the condition of the blown-up bridges. “Jerry,” as we call the Germans, is a bear on demolition work.
The next day we were in position to go in there - that is, after our artillery had moved Jerry’s batteries. We had plenty of shell fire even for a few days later while we were building bridges, but we soon crossed the river and had him on a high lope by November 11th.

In addition to the Ypres-Lys offensive, the 316th Engineers Regiment also participated in the St. Mihiel and the Meuse Argonne offensives. For more details about the 91st, and this battle, I recommend The Story of the 91st Division which includes more information about the 316th’s reconnaissance of the destroyed bridges and the town of Audenarde.