Ray Sobieszczyk: Company C

When the 35th Engineer Combat Regiment was nearing the end of its tour of duty in Canada, the whole regiment was to rendezvous at the Ross River Post.  The troops were to be rewarded with a gigantic beer bust.  Needless to say, the guys were looking forward to hoisting a few as beverages of any kind were scarce or nonexistent on the Canol project.  The day finally arrived, and all the troops pitched camp at a huge, bulldozed clearing near the Ross River.  The party was to begin in the early afternoon.  Our tent was positioned right near the refreshment area, so we were definitely going to be at the front of the beer line.  At about noon, I laid down on my cot to get a little rest.  When I awoke a couple of hours later, the party was over.  Not a single bottle of beer was left.  One consolation--no hangover!

This reminds me of a similar incident that happened in Southampton, England.  On the day we were to exchange our English pounds for French francs, I was again asleep in my tent.  Consequently, I didn't get any currency exchanged, so I held onto the English currency until we got to Mersch, Luxembourg.  This time, the ending was a little happier.  I exchanged my English pounds into Luxembourg marks at twice the going rate.

KP at Camp White

Once when I was on KP ("kitchen police") at Camp White, Oregon, I was instructed to get some asparagus ready for our evening meal.  Being a young kid from Nebraska, I didn't know too much about asparagus.  I proceeded to cut up and clean about five gallons of asparagus; I cut off and discarded the seedy-looking top and ends and kept the well-formed, solid butts.  When our head cook saw what I had done, he said, "No harm done.  We'll just cook and serve the butt ends and the guys won't even know the difference."  And they didn't.  Now, if he had asked me to clean some corn, I think I could have handled that.

The Handsome Strawberry Pickers

When we were in Normandy, I was one of those "handsome" soldiers who ran the mine-sweepers along the road shoulders looking for mines planted by the Germans.  Since our officers didn't want us to get too bored and possibly a little careless, on occasion they gave us more interesting tasks.  On this particular day, the challenge was to remove the plastic anti-personnel mines from a field about half the size of a football field, planted in strawberries.  Our squad, under the skillful leadership of Sergeant Larson and Sergeant Reyes, carefully started looking for and removing the mines.  Since the mines were all plastic, our detectors were of no value.  But after tediously finding a dozen or so of the mines, we discovered the pattern to the mines' locations.  From then on it was piece of cake -- remove a few mines, eat a few strawberries, and so on.  We picked up about two hundred and fifty mines in two hours; not a bad day's work.  And it was a lot tastier than picking onions near Tule Lake, California.

Brittany

When we were on the Brittany Peninsula, our job was to contain the remnants of the German army and keep them locked on the peninsula, a job not usually done by engineers.  Once we went on a patrol in platoon strength.  We were to advance until we contacted the enemy, so we advanced under cover to a wooded area.  Two cavalrymen with us were familiar with the area.  It was decided that the cavalrymen plus two engineers would go on a reconnaissance patrol to see if the Germans could be located.  Joe Cunningham and I were the two lucky engineers accompanying the cavalrymen.  Before we took off, Joe and I noticed that the cavalry guys had removed their packs, bayonets, canteens, and any other equipment that might make a noise .  We looked at each other and then followed suit.  This was still hedgerow country, but more hilly than Normandy.  We advanced using the hedgerows whenever possible.  After about half a mile we stopped for a little conference.  As we were planning our next move, Joe said, "I think we're getting close because I smell them."  Well, he didn't smell them exactly, he smelled their latrine which was just across the hedgerow.  We crawled ahead slowly.  One of the cavalrymen surprised a German sergeant and made him throw down his gun.  This German sergeant then helped us round up five more Germans and told us that there were twenty more Germans and an officer just over a little hill, not over fifty yards away.  We talked it over and decided that the odds weren't in our favor if the Germans wanted to fight it out.  We headed back to our platoon, prisoners in tow.  We had a few anxious moments because we had six extra people who didn't help in staying under cover.  Maybe they were too happy to be careful -- their war was over.

Nowadays if people ask, "Did you shoot or capture any Germans during the war," I answer, "Yes, I captured one and a half."

Banquet in Lorient

After the Germans were pretty much locked up in the Brest area, things were rather quiet for a while.  So one day, the powers that be decided that our squad could go to Lorient.  Lorient was a beautiful town on the Atlantic coast, unscarred by the war.  Everyone seemed so friendly and willing to give us directions and advice, even if we didn't communicate very well.  One well-dressed Frenchman directed us to a restaurant, the best in the city, or so he said.  It was on the second floor with a span of windows overlooking the ocean and a part of the town below.  With the help of a waitress, the six of us in our group managed to order our dinner.  This dinner turned out be an eight-course banquet.  It began with a large bowl of boiled shrimp.  We stared at the shrimp and wondered what they were.  Luckily, the waitress sensed our dilemma and showed us how to peel and eat the shrimp.  After her impromptu lesson, we had a great time eating the shrimp and drinking wine.  Each course was followed by an even more delicious course, and we all agreed that this was a superb dinner, the best we had ever eaten in the army.

Finally, it came time to pay the bill.  Each of us gave the manager a five thousand franc note, which was equivalent to one hundred dollars at the time.  He gave us a strange look, but proceeded to give each of us the correct change.  Why did each of us pay with a five thousand franc note?  Well, one of our friends back in camp gave us each one note.  He had helped to capture some German prisoners who were loaded with French money.  At the time we could get money orders with French currency, but he was a bit hesitant to try it with such large bills.  He had given us the large denomination to avoid having it confiscated at battalion headquarter.  We got to keep fifteen percent, and returned the other eight-five percent to our buddy.

Thanksgiving Dinner in Mersch

Company C was billeted in Mersch, Luxembourg during the months of October, November, and part of December.  Our Thanksgiving dinner is one that most of us will not forget.  The cooks did a wonderful job of preparing the turkey, dressing, pumpkin pie, and all the fixings.  All went well except for on thing -- the frozen turkey must have been somewhat tainted!  Around nine or ten o'clock that night there was an unusual rush for the restrooms.  I lived on the third floor of the castle, and there was a lot of traffic up and down that spiral staircase that night.  As I recall, there were only four or five toilets in the restroom, so some of the guys had to choose alternative facilities.

[Years later] when my wife and I toured Europe, we visited Mersch and saw the castle.  They were remodeling the interior and converting it to a museum.  The spiral staircase was still there, eighty-six steps from the third floor to the ground.

The Day Before the Battle of the Bulge

A day or two before the official beginning of the Battle of the Bulge, Company C was building a practice Bailey bridge.  The bridge site was about ten miles down river from Mersch on the abutments of an older bridge that was blown earlier.  As we were dismantling the sections of our "double-double" bridge, we noticed an unusually large number of civilians traveling westward in cars, wagons, on bicycles, and on foot.  We didn't think too much of it at the time.  A short time later we heard quite a lot of gunfire fairly nearby and then we noticed a lot activity on a hillside about a quarter of a mile away.  GI's were running around, taking cover, so we assumed it was a small German patrol skirmishing with our friendly forces.  When things quieted down a bit, we loaded our gear in the trucks and returned to Mersch.  At about midnight, we left our warm castle in Mersch and the rest of the winter was not as calm or as comfortable for the Battle of the Bulge had begun.

The Heated Barn

One of our main concerns during the winter of 1944 and '45 was staying warm, especially at night.  Our officers usually did a fine job in finding us a place to sleep.  I especially recall a day when it was bitterly cold.  The best they could do was put us up in an old cow barn.  The barn wasn't exactly clean; as a matter of fact, the manure on the floor was at least a foot deep.  Luckily, there was a hay mow with plenty of straw and hay, so some of the boys took their bed rolls up in the loft and staked out their sleeping areas.  Only about half of the guys could fit into the hay loft, so the rest of us were forced to sleep on the main floor.  However, before we laid out our bedrolls, we pitched a two foot layer of straw on top of the manure.  And did we ever stay warm!  The chemical action of the decaying manure boosted the temperature just enough to make sleeping comfortable.  The ammonia given off made our eyes smart and the smell wasn't Chanel #5, but we survived nicely.

The Mosel River Crossing

Late in the winter of 1945 our outfit was designated to make an assault crossing of the Mosel River in Germany.  Compared to the Rhine crossing that we made a few weeks later, the Mosel  crossing was rather mild.  It was unique for our crew because we had never made an assault crossing before, and we were assigned to string the communication wire to the opposite shore.

We shoved off around midnight and were making fairly good progress with a minimum of shell and machine gun fire directed at us.  Of course our boat wasn't making quite as good time as our neighboring boats because we had the drag of the wire to contend I\with, but all things considered, we were doing okay.  Suddenly, our boat quit making any headway, and began moving straight downstream, drifting further and further away from the opposite shore.  We had run out of wire!  The signal corpsmen who were reeling out the wire tossed the reel overboard and we then completed our crossing.  The person who had calculated how much wire was needed had made an error.  Maybe he had figured that we could cross at ninety degree angle in spite of the speed of the current and the drag of the wire.  We returned to our shore and picked up and delivered another load of infantrymen.  Then we headed back once again to our shore.

Paralleling the Mosel River was a highway and just across the highway was a winery.  We three engineers took shelter in the winery to escape the sporadic sniping outside.  After sampling several varieties of wine, each of us filled a burlap sack with a dozen or so bottles of wine and carried the three sacks back to our truck a mile away.  We just knew that the guys in our squad would appreciate a bottle or two of good wine.  When we got back to the truck we found ten partially inebriated guys.  Each had had the same idea as we had and had brought along a bunch of wine.  We couldn't drink all the wine at the time so we removed the tools from a tool chest and replaced them with wine bottles.

The Rhine Crossing

About ten days prior to the Rhine crossing, the 35th was involved in an assault crossing on the Mosel River.  It was our first crossing.  In my opinion, it was a rather easy crossing.  There was some resistance, but mostly small arms fire.  So this was more or less a practice getting us ready for the Rhine River.  About two days before the Rhine assault was to take place, we had an actual practice session on the Mosel River.  Our boat crews were formed, we got acquainted with the infantry guys that were specifically assigned to each boat.  We even had a few lectures from our officers.  One point that they specifically stressed was that under no conditions were we to do any shooting from our boats.  We were even issued our inflatable life belts at this time.  I had a couple of Texans on my crew; Howard Pemberton (age 42), and Robert Johnson (age 35).  From my squad, Cunningham, Heinbaugh, Robinson and myself were each in charge of a boat.  Each engineer platoon had 16 boats.  So with three platoons per company, each company was responsible for 48 boats.  Each crew was to make three crossings.  We were to transport ten of eleven men each trip.  So our company was responsible for approximately 500 infantrymen.

I recall that we were transported by trucks at night to a point that was about two miles from the Rhine River (I never did know the exact town, but it was somewhere between Bingen and Koblenz).  I remember walking single file down a rather steep cobblestone street.  It was so dark you could hardly see the man in front of you.  We walked through the town and assembled behind a railroad embankment that paralleled the Rhine River.  We were informed by our squad leaders that the boats had already been positioned right near the edge of the water.  The boats were spaced about ten or fifteen yards apart.  We were even provided with a guide to escort us to our specific boat.  Since this was supposed to be a surprise crossing, everyone cooperated in keeping the noise level down.

At about midnight, we left our safe haven behind the railroad embankment and were guided under a railroad bridge down to the river's edge where our boats had been placed.  We very quietly slipped our boats into the water, climbed aboard and headed across.  I would estimate that the Rhine in this area was approximately four to five hundred yards across.  The current was moderately strong and flowing from our right to our left.  I was in the back of the boat steering and everything was going smoothly.  When we reached the approximate halfway point, all hell broke loose.  In an instant, the dark night became as light as a well lit football field.  As the flares died down, new and brighter ones took their place.  We were receiving all kinds of enemy fire from small arms to 20 millimeter cannon.  Tracer bullets were carving their way across the sky.  Machine guns, machine pistols, everything.  Bullets were cracking like .22 caliber rifle shots as they zipped past our heads.  And there was no place to hide; we couldn't hit the deck and dig in.  We had to just head straight ahead and pray.  Instead of counting cadence or hollering, "Row, Row, Row," I was saying, "Jesus, Mary, Joseph, help us," over and over again.  To this day I don't know whether I was saying this litany to myself or out loud.  When we had about forty yards to go, the infantryman to my immediate left and the man in front of him were hit.  The man right next to me kept yelling, "I'm hit!"  The man in front of him just dropped his paddle and slumped over.  Now we were in real trouble.  The two men who were hit were on the downstream side of the boat, so consequently we began going almost straight downstream.  No matter how hard I paddled to straighten the boat, I couldn't keep on course.  Finally, I yelled to the guys closest to me on the upstream side to quit paddling.  We finally got headed in the right direction, but another boat upstream from us drifted into us and threw us off course again.  Now, while all this was taking place, we were getting direct fire from the Germans who were standing on the bank.  Luckily, no one else was hit before we reached shore.  As soon as the infantry men hit the shore, they were firing and they cleaned out the Germans in the immediate area in no time.  We three engineers jumped out of the boat and snuggled our boat parallel to the concrete retaining wall.  The two wounded infantrymen stayed in the boat, and got as close to the wall as they could.  In a short time a couple of infantry medics came along and tended to the wounded.  Then they transferred our two wounded guys to another boat that had a badly wounded man in it.  The medics had a little discussion with the other boat crew, and decided to head back to our shore.  The gun fire was still pretty heavy and I didn't think it was too wise-a-move on their part, but I guess they got back okay.

After a half hour had passed and the enemy fire had subsided, my crew and I headed for our friendly shore.  We had to quit rowing several times and hit the deck when those tracer bullets began reaching out toward us.  Robert Johnson rowed so hard that he dislocated his shoulder.  We finally made it back to our side and scrambled over the railroad embankment to relative safety.

Well, we survived the first crossing, but our job wasn't finished.  We had to get the rest of the infantry across.  Many of the crews became separated, so it was catch as catch can in getting crews formed.  Joe Cunningham, John Heinbaugh and myself got together and took another group of infantry across.  During the rest of the night, troops were shuttled across.  In the morning, when enemy fire had died down, power boats were used to ferry the remaining troops across. 

As we looked across the Rhine the next morning we noticed a huge sign painted on a concrete retaining wall.  It said, "YOU GET US, BUT THE RUSSIANS GET YOU."

The End of the War

When the war ended we were in a small village near Zeulenroda, Germany.  A small creek separated our quarters from the signal corps group on the other side of town.  At the end of the block near the top of the hill was a huge keg of wine.  I imagine it held around two hundred gallons.  We filled canteens with wine and a few filled their helmets as well.  That night when it got dark, we celebrated by shooting our rifles into the sky.  Tracer bullets and flares lit up the sky too.  The signal corpsmen were doing the same thing.  After a few stray bullets started pinging the houses, I adjourned to the basement.

Company C was located on a long U-shaped cu-de-sac and occupied all the houses on the street.  One afternoon when we were idling away the time, two young, good-looking German girls came into our house.  They didn't speak much English; they were just looking at the guys and chatting between themselves.  One of our men who spoke some German asked what they were looking for.  They said that they were looking for their men.  They had started at the house on the end of the block and were looking the guys over with the idea that each would pick the man of her choice.  When we heard this we sort of perked up and without being to obvious, put on our best fronts.  After they looked us over, they thanked us and excused themselves, saying that they still had several houses to inspect. 

Sure enough, they visited each of our houses.  Each of us younger guys thought our chances of being chosen were better than the chances of the older guys.  Well, the girls made their decision and they chose a couple of the older guys.  Fraternization was legal by then, so everything worked out fine.  The girls' parents even invited the guys over for dinner.

A few weeks later, our outfit moved into Zeulenroda, about eight miles away.  The two guys would walk eight miles each way to visit their girls.  They had to be back in town by seven the next morning.  We used to kid these fellows about losing weight from all that walking, but they took the kidding pretty well.  They never did take up our offers to substitute for them anytime they got blisters on their feet; or where ever!

The Rendezvous at Ross River Post

35th Engineer (Combat) Battalion

Northern  France - Rhineland - Ardennes/Alsace - Central Europe

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