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During the time that I was away
during World War II my Mother and Dad kept letters, newspaper articles,
and other mementos in a scrapbook which they gave to me upon my return.
The pages of the old scrap book deteriorated, but now on the 50th
anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge I am putting them back together and
writing this synopsis thinking that it might be interesting to future
generations of our family. When I'm gone, I want the scrapbook to be kept
by my grandson, Donelson E. Houseman, who was named for me and for my Dad
- and I hope he will pass it along to one of his heirs.
As I have been putting the book back together and rereading the letters
and clippings, I realize more than ever the anguish of my Dad and Mother
during the time that I was in the service and particularly when I was
"missing in action". Only after having children of your own is it possible
for a person to understand the love of a parent for his child. I get cold
chills when I think of my Mother and Dad picking up the newspaper one
morning and unexpectedly seeing the article about my division, the 106th,
being wiped out. Then later the telegram from the War Department saying I
was "missing in action" and the long months of waiting - because they
never knew until I was liberated whether I was dead or alive.
To give a little summary of my participation in WWII - - - The Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and within a few days the Germans
also declared war on the United States. I was 18 years old and in my
sophomore year at the University of Texas and, along with almost all other
male students, started looking into joining one of the branches of the
Armed Services. Some enlisted in the Air Corps, some Navy, and some Army.
I applied to be a pilot in the Air Corps, in which my Dad had served
during World War I, but lacked the required 20/20 vision, so I chose the
Army. Those who enlisted in the Army were placed in what was called the
Enlisted Reserve Corps, and we were to remain in school until they were
ready for us. We expected to be called to active duty within a few weeks,
but so many all over the nation had enlisted that it was over a year later
- on April 27, 1943 - that we were finally called. The tower building at
Texas had chimes which chimed every quarter hour and also played tunes on
special occasions. I was sitting in class that April morning when all of a
sudden the chimes started playing "You're in the Army Now". We knew what
that meant, and we just closed our books and walked out of class. There
were about 900 of us in the ERC, and we each received a telegram telling
us to report to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.
Out of the 900 who were inducted at Fort Sam Houston eleven of us were
assigned to Antiaircraft basic training at Camp Callan near La Jolla,
California. The rest were sent to camps all over the country with the
great majority going to Camp Maxey at Paris, Texas, for basic training in
the Infantry. Going to California was not quite as good as it sounds,
because we trained 6 days per week and were restricted to the base even on
Sundays for the first 13 weeks. However, upon completion of Basic, I
remained at Camp Callan for a couple of months and did get into La Jolla,
San Diego, and once up to Los Angeles. I was supposed to go to LA on
another weekend to meet my good friend and Phi Delt fraternity brother at
Texas, Chuck Storey, who was in pilot training near LA. Chuck was a real
ladies’ man and had arranged for dates with a couple of Hollywood
starlets. Would you believe I got assigned KP duty, and in no way could
get anyone to switch.
All of us in the ERC were supposed to go to Officer Candidate School after
completion of basic training, but as it turned only about 20 % were
selected. I was lucky enough to be one of them and was sent to
Antiaircraft OCS at Camp Davis near Wilmington, NC. The officer’s training
course lasted 90 days, and they busted out about 25% of our class - but I
made it so on January 20, 1944 at the age of 20, I became a Second
Lieutenant.
On a 10 day leave I returned to Texas and in January 1944 became engaged
to Kathryn Buckley. We had gotten "pinned", which in those days meant you
dated no one else, on March 2, 1943, (Texas Independence Day, but not for
me) just before I was called to active duty and while I was Junior at
Texas University and she was a Freshman. We married in June 1945 after I
returned from overseas. One funny thing about our getting engaged and my
giving Katy an engagement ring - - My Army pay as a new 2nd Lieutenant was
$150/month, and I spent $125 on the ring, which I felt was a lot. I
brought it home and proudly showed it to my mother asking what she thought
about my selection. It had a white gold band with one diamond in the
center about the size of the white part on a kitchen match head. Her
comment was “well it looks like it’s paid for.” But Katy loved it and wore
it many years until I finally used the one diamond along with several
others that size plus a big one and made her a new ring.
After graduating from OCS and becoming a Second Lieutenant, I was assigned
to an Antiaircraft Artillery battalion stationed at Fort Fisher on the
coast of North Carolina to be on guard against a possible German invasion.
(There had been reports that a German sub had been sighted off the
Carolina coast.) .Like so many of us in those days, I was anxious to get
into combat, and after a few months of this, I requested a transfer to the
Infantry. I was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, and when I got there found
they were asking for Paratroops volunteers, so I applied. However, I did
not qualify for the "parachute infantry" because I lacked 20/40 vision,
and I remained in the regular infantry. We took a 6 weeks Infantry
Officers' Refresher Course and upon completion I was assigned to
Company
D, 423rd Regiment of the 106th Infantry Division, which was in training
near Indianapolis. By way of explanation, during WWII a division was
composed of three regiments, each regiment had three battalions, and each
battalion had three rifle companies and one heavy weapons company, which
supported the rifle companies. D Company was the heavy weapons company of
the 1st Battalion and supported rifle Companies A, B, and C. D Company had
two platoons equipped with heavy water-cooled 30 caliber machine guns with
about 40 men each and one platoon equipped with three 81mm mortars with
about 40 men. I was with the mortar platoon. In combat the mortars were a
few hundred yards behind the front line, but the lieutenant had to be out
in front of the rifle companies to direct the mortar fire. Not a good
deal.
The 106th Division went overseas in October 1944 aboard the
Queen
Elizabeth. It was the world’s premier luxury liner and was converted to a
troop carrier. It carried most of my division of 15,000 men plus half of
another one. We did not have escort ships because the Elizabeth could
outrun all subs as it zigzagged across the Atlantic. It carried many men
back and forth during the entire war and to my recollection was never
torpedoed.
I was in a luxury stateroom for two, but we had 22 sleeping in it. In
fact, there were really 44, because the entire ship was divided into two
groups - one shift stayed in their rooms and slept or read while the other
shift wandered around on deck, and vice versa. One day while on deck I ran
into Buddy Ashby who was a Pfc. in the other division. He was a year
younger than I, but we had been friends since childhood. When I returned,
I learned Buddy was killed his second day in combat. You can see his name
on the bronze plaque at Highland Park High School along with the names of
many, many other of my close friends. I still get all choked up whenever I
go out the front door of the school and read that plaque.
We landed at Glascow, Scotland and went by train to Cheltenham, England,
where we went through rigorous physical training for about a month. One
weekend I got a pass and went to London. The Germans were sending nightly
buzz bombs plus air raids, so the city was in total darkness. Weird to
walk around with no lights. Sunday morning I went to church at St. Paul’s
Cathedral in the center of London, which was virtually untouched despite
everything around it being in ruins. (Later I saw the Cathedral at
Cologne, Germany, which likewise suffered minor damage despite the
devastation around it.) The service was in the basement, and right in the
middle of a prayer a bomb hit. It sounded like it hit the Cathedral above,
but the priest never missed a beat. I must have come up 2 feet off my
knees. After the service I found a buzz bomb had hit a block away.
The 106th crossed the English Channel in November on ships, and I was on
an LST (Landing Ship Tanks). It has a flat bottom so it can go right to
the shore and unload troops, trucks, and tanks, etc. The sea was so rough
that we were all deathly sea sick, and a lashed down jeep tore loose and
fell overboard killing two men. When we finally reached shore, the front
unloading door of the LST wouldn’t open to let us out. Lucky we didn’t
come in on D-Day.
We were bivouacked in pup tents in France for a couple of weeks during
which time it rained constantly. We then moved by truck convoy to the
front lines to relieve the 2nd Infantry Division, which was holding dugout
positions in the Siegfried Line in the Ardennes Forest along the
Belgium/German border. We had only been there a few days when the
so-called Battle of the Bulge started just before daybreak on the morning
of December 16, 1944. The Germans shelled us for about three hours in one
of the heaviest artillery barrage of the war and then sent two whole
Panzer Armies (the 5th and 6th) through the area occupied by our division.
Despite some limited casualties we were able to hold our positions, but by
the third day the 422nd and 423rd Regiments of the 106th were totally cut
off from the rest of the American Army. The temperature was well below
freezing, and the skies were so overcast from snow and fog that our planes
could not fly to drop provisions and ammunition. We ran out of food, were
running out of ammunition, and were ordered on December 18 to leave our
dugout positions and to try to fight our way back to American lines.
During the afternoon of the 18th we started moving back towards the
Belgium town of St. Vith and were able to advance only a short distance.
We lost a bunch of men taking a hill right at dark, but we pushed the
Germans off it and dug in for the night. We planned to start again the
next morning. Just after daybreak on December 19th my battalion was hit
suddenly by a concentration of heavy artillery, mortar, and rifle fire. In
less than 20 minutes my battalion commander, Colonel William Craig, and my
company commander, Capt. James Clarkson, were both killed, and about half
the officers and men of D Company were killed or seriously wounded. I
received a shrapnel wound in my right wrist. I think I was hit by
fragments from a German mortar. A burst hit just down the hill from me,
then another just above me, so I dropped to the ground and instinctively
held my head. The third burst hit right near me, but missed me. I didn't
feel any pain nor realize I had been hit - probably because it was so cold
- until I noticed my glove had filled with blood . Had I not grabbed my
head I guess the piece of shrapnel from the mortar would have gone in my
temple.
The shelling finally ceased, and the German Infantry and tanks started
coming. We moved from our open position across a small creek (which I fell
in) and into the dense woods. There my platoon sergeant, Sergeant Robert
Stringer from Massachusetts, took my first aid bandage and put it on my
wrist. My company, D Company of the First Battalion was decimated, and
those of us who were left joined a rifle company. That afternoon I was
nicked in the leg with a rifle or machine gun bullet as we were attempting
to cross an open area which in peace time served as a fire break between
the woods. I made it to a temporary aid station, where there were several
hundred wounded, in order to get my leg bandaged. There I apparently
passed out or went to sleep from exhaustion and loss of blood. The first
thing I heard upon waking was the guttural voices of Germans. I was told
that just before dark a ranking officer, who felt we were completely
surrounded and defenseless for lack of ammunition, surrendered us to the
Germans.
From the start of the Battle of the Bulge on December 16th until December
20th nearly a fourth of the men in our two regiments were killed or
wounded. By December 21st almost all those not killed had been captured -
less than 150 out of all the men in those two regiments made it back to
American lines.
It was still nighttime, but they started us marching with hands over head
back along a road on which their advancing troops and tanks were coming.
Some Germans were riding in captured American vehicles. What humiliation.
We had to carry those who could not walk, or else they would have been
left to freeze to death in the snow. About mid-morning we came to the
little German town of Auw, where we were herded into an open field
enclosed with barbed wire and guarded by Germans armed with machine guns.
Many American prisoners were already there.
The next day - after a bitter night in the freezing cold which we made by
taking turns lying on top of each other - those who were wounded but could
walk, including myself, were segregated and marched to the town of Prum.
There we were put in an old two story bomb-damaged hotel building which
already held German wounded. We all lay on the floor together, with the
Germans in one section and Americans in another. On December 24th some
German fraus brought small Christmas trees from the forest and started
decorating them for the German wounded. Right in the middle of it,
American planes started dropping bombs, and those who could (including
Americans) moved to the basement. I'll never forget lying on that cold,
cold basement floor on the night of Christmas Eve when a wounded German
started singing Silent Night in German. Other Germans joined in and later
we Americans joined singing in English. How about that - a few days before
we were trying to kill each other - and now we were united through Christ.
On about December 30th a bunch of us wounded prisoners were loaded into an
open truck. There were so many of us that it was impossible to lie down,
and we traveled for two days before arriving at Stalag VI G near Cologne,
Germany. It snowed on us the entire time and two horribly burned Air Corps
pilots went crazy from their pain and both died. At least three others in
the truck also died during the trip. We had to just throw their bodies out
in the snow.
Stalag VI G was an established German prison camp with prisoners from all
nationalities, some of whom had been there since the early days of World
War II (which had started on September 1, 1941 when the Germans invaded
Poland). I think Stalag VI G had about 50,000 prisoners, who were
separated according to nationality. Also, officers were separated from
enlisted men, and the wounded were kept in a different area - so I was
sent to a building which housed wounded American officers. The building
had about 40 double bunks, plus an adjacent room with 2 toilets and 2 wash
basins and 1 shower (however, since the building was unheated and with the
outside temperature below zero, no one showered. In fact, it was so cold I
never showered or even removed my clothes until sometime in mid-March.)
There was another small room with 2 beds which was the so-called operating
room. We had a couple of captured American medics, and they did the best
they could.
Since my leg wound was so slight, I used an upper bunk, because many had
injuries which prevented them from being able to climb to the top bunk.
There weren't any tables or chairs and very little vacant space, and it
was so cold that for the most part we just stayed in our beds under the
blanket with our clothes on.. The doors to the building were locked, and
we couldn't go outside except on very rare occasions.
Once a day a couple of German guards would bring buckets of water from
melted snow plus loaves of dark bread sufficient to have 1 loaf for each 6
prisoners. So our ration of food was 1/6th loaf of bread per day. The
bread was made with husks and sawdust mixed in with the flour, and it gave
everyone dysentery, but we ate it because it was filling and helped
satisfy our gnawing hunger. We would carefully carve the loaf in exactly 6
equal parts and then divide the crumbs 6 ways. Everyone that could walk
stood around while this occurred to make sure he didn't get cheated.
Some of those in our compound had been in prison long enough to be
receiving Red Cross packages. The "rules of war" provided that the Red
Cross in Switzerland be notified when someone was taken prisoner.
Switzerland would in turn notify the American Red Cross, which would
notify the next-of-kin and the War Department. Then the American Red Cross
would start once a month sending mail and a package containing food,
cigarettes, candy etc. to the prisoner. The family could also send one
package a month. A few of these packages made it, but most didn't for one
reason or another. I guarantee you when a package did arrive, that
prisoner was the envy of everyone, and he could trade one of his food
items for a watch, sweater, or other things of value. Unfortunately I
never received a Red Cross package the entire time I was in prison.
One time I traded something (can't remember what) for a small piece of
cheese less than an inch square. I would take a very small bite each day,
and then hide it under my pillow. (You wouldn’t think it necessary to hide
something from fellow Americans, but stealing happened since everyone was
so desperately hungry.) One night while I was sleeping I felt something
move under my pillow, and a big rat ran out with my cheese. I was crushed.
About once a week the guards would let a few of us go out into a courtyard
adjacent to our building. Other prisoners would also be out there, and we
were surrounded with armed guards. We were about 15 miles from the center
of Cologne, whose factories and railroad yards were the targets of Allied
air raids. It was mid-January, and on a clear day we would watch the
bombers coming over by the 100's with anti-aircraft shells bursting all
around them. They converged on Cologne from every direction and the sky
was full of "con" trails and bursting shells. An unbelievable sight. Every
now and them one of our planes would be hit by anti-aircraft and would
start down in flames. Sometimes parachutes would open up, but most often
not. We grieved for the guys in the plane.
My hand, wrist, and arm all became terribly infected and swollen, and I
was in such pain I sometimes didn't think I could stand it. Maybe the only
consolation was that there were others in the room in even worse pain. We
had absolutely no medicine or pain killers available, and we didn't even
have bandages. The Germans gave us rolls of 3 inch wide crepe paper
(similar to what is used to decorate for a party) for the medics to use as
bandages - but we only had enough paper to change each man's bandage once
a week. During the week the wounds would secrete pus, which would dry out
and stick to the skin and the paper. You can imagine what it was like when
it came time to remove the paper bandage and wash the wound. Excruciating,
almost unbearable, pain. My arm got to be about 5-6 inches in diameter
from all the infection, and during one of the changes, the medic told me
he counted 19 holes in my arm and hand where pus had forced a hole in the
skin and was coming out. One day a medic cut an X in the top of my hand to
drain pus and relieve pain. The scar still shows. This condition lasted
from early January until March when I was sent to have my arm amputated
(later in the story).
In early February we were told that all wounded who could walk were being
moved - I have no idea why. We were marched with arms overhead along a
highway and then through the center of Cologne and then to a railroad yard
at Siegberg. This was only about 30 kilometers but took 2 days because we
were so out of shape. There we were loaded into railroad box cars and the
doors shut tight. There were no windows or openings of any kind, and there
were so many in each box car that we couldn't sit down at the same time.
Everyone had dysentery - so you can imagine the situation. Once a day
while we were in the box cars, they would stop the train, open the doors,
let out a few at a time in a field to relieve ourselves, give us a hunk of
bread and drink of water. We were in the box cars for 3 days, until we
finally unloaded at Stalag XIIA at Limburg, Germany. The last 2 days were
on a railroad siding at Limburg, and each night the British Mosquito
bombers would bomb the railroad yards. Some bombs sounded like they hit
right on top of us. When we finally got out of the box cars, I learned
that one box car had taken a direct hit and either killed or horribly
wounded the prisoners inside.
Stalag XIIA was a huge prison with many prisoners of all nationalities. I
was not put with the wounded here but was put in a compound with other
American officers, most of whom were not wounded. The food ration was the
same 1/6th loaf of bread, but about every third day they would give us a
potato to split among 6. Also, the medical room was in another building,
and they had some real doctors, who had been captured - not just medics.
But the bandage situation was the same and still no medicine or pain
killers.
At this Stalag I learned the difference between men who had the will to
live and those who gave up. Some had been prisoners a long time, and the
ones who just lay in bed withered away. No matter how bad you hurt or how
bad you felt, you had to get up and keep going.
One thing about prison that was maybe even worse than pain were the lice.
By the time I had been in for about two weeks I started getting lice,
which are very similar to fleas that get on a dog. There was no way to get
rid of them, and they drove you absolutely crazy. They were constantly
crawling around your body making it impossible to sleep soundly, and they
kept you constantly scratching when awake. It was too cold to take off
your clothes, so you just picked away underneath your shirt and coat to
try and pull one off. When you did get one and smash it, it would leave a
blood spot the size of a dime. I can distinctly remember the day at Stalag
XIIa at Limburg when we finally got a bright sunshiny reasonably warm day.
We went outside, took off all our clothes, and started picking and killing
lice. We helped each other pick them off our bodies, and then we each
started pulling them out of our own uniforms. I had picked off over 100
when I stopped counting, and it looked like there was a 1/2 pint of blood
where I smashed them on the ground.
My arm became so badly infected that one of the doctor’s told me he was
sending me and about 6 others by truck to a nearby German medical
facility. In early March I was moved to a German Army hospital at
Montabaur. The place they sent me consisted of a large multistoried stone
building plus some other stone buildings, all surrounded by a stone wall.
It had formerly been an insane asylum operated by an order of Catholic
monks. The German army had taken it over to be used as a General Hospital
for German wounded. Also inside the walls were several frame buildings
within a barbed wire enclosure, and that is where I was placed. Once again
the Germans separated officers and enlisted men, so I was placed in a
building with about 20 American officers and one Russian first lieutenant
- Schinkarenko Woldimar Iwanowisch (with English pronunciation the W’s
become V so we called him Valdimar.)
At the Montabaur Hospital there was an American doctor, Capt. David V.
Habif, from New Jersey, who had been captured at the 101st Airborne
Infantry field hospital at Bastogne. The Germans made him assist their
doctors with the German wounded, but they allowed him to also treat the
American wounded. He examined me right after I arrived and said I had been
sent there because my arm probably needed to be amputated to keep the
infection from spreading further. He said he had access to some sulfa
drugs being used on German wounded, and he was going to use some on me. He
applied the powder about every third day and changed the bandage at the
same time. The bandages were still paper - not cloth - but changing them
regularly rather than every week or 10 days made a huge difference. The
swelling in my arm started going down and this relieved a lot of the pain.
By the time I was liberated I was in much better shape, and I will be
forever indebted to Capt. Habif. He didn’t have a lot of time to visit,
but we nevertheless became good friends and remained in touch for several
years after the war.
Another great friendship I made was with Valdimar, the Russian lieutenant.
He and I and George Reed (a young captain from Indiana with the Fourth
Infantry Division, wounded and captured in the Hurtgen Forest during the
Bulge) were the only ones in our building who could walk so we had to help
feed the others, take them to the bathroom, etc. At first Valdimar and I
communicated only by sign language, but later we got to where we could
talk to each other pretty well in German. He spoke it well (I assume he
did since he talked regularly to the guards), and he taught me enough to
get by. He was a great guy! He had been wounded a couple of years before
with shrapnel at Stalingrad and captured , but his wounds had healed
except for deafness and drainage in one ear. He was very interested in
hearing all about America, and particularly wanted to know all about Katy.
He couldn’t believe I was going to get married (if we ever got out) and
hadn’t even “tried her out”. He said “How do you know you are going to
like her?” I told him we just didn’t operate that way in our country.
All in all, Montabaur was a great place compared to where I had been.
Instead of 1/6th loaf of bread per day, we received 1/3rd loaf plus 1/3rd
of a potato. My weight had dropped from about 150 to around 115 when I got
to Montabaur, but it went back up to about 125 by the time I was
liberated. Also, the weather was getting better, and we weren’t so cold.
There was always a certain amount of information to be received in prison
- mostly rumors but some fairly accurate. We heard the Americans had
crossed the Rhine on a bridge at Remagen, which was not too far from
Montabaur, and we were plenty excited. One night we were informed that all
who could walk were being moved out. I was sick! However, Capt. Habif
prevailed upon the Germans that both Reed and I were too weak to march.
They did march out Valdimar. (Sometime later at the hospital in England I
ran into James Cooley, an enlisted man from my battalion in the 106th, who
was also at Montabaur and marched out that night. He said there were about
40 prisoners with 2 German guards. Valdimar had a knife and killed both
guards. The group hid in a field for 2 days until the American tanks came
down the road. All of them except Valdimar remained, waiting to be sent
back to American hospitals, but Valdimar climbed on one of the tanks with
American Infantry to go kill Germans. I had his address in Russia and
wrote him several times but never received a reply. I have no idea what
might have happened to him, but he was all soldier - that’s for sure!)
A couple of days later tanks from the American 9th Armored Division rolled
up to the gates of the hospital. They had only a few infantryman with them
riding on the tanks and said the main force of the 2nd Infantry Division
should arrive within 48 hours. In the meantime they were moving on and
would leave us weapons to defend ourselves if any Germans came back. They
told us the German hospital staff and guards had already surrendered, and
they were leaving a few men to guard them and assist us if needed. An SS
patrol did return to retake the hospital, but we killed several and the
rest left. I got a ceremonial sword off one of the dead SS officers and
brought it back to my Dad. It later disappeared from his house.
When the 2nd Division arrived there was an Associated Press photographer
with them, and he took a picture of several of us who had been liberated.
It did not run in either of the Dallas papers, but Katy’s Aunt Mabel saw
it in the San Francisco paper and thought she recognized me. She sent a
copy of it to Dallas, and my Dad had his friend, Jim Moroney, a top
executive of the Dallas Morning News, dig it out of their files and make a
huge blowup. They still couldn’t be sure it was me, but when my “well and
safe” telegram arrived several days later, they felt confident it was and
were elated that I appeared healthy. Up until this time they did not know
whether I was dead or alive, and if alive, what shape I was in.
A very tragic aspect of the Associated Press picture relates to the number
of people who contacted me and were convinced that the person in the
picture was not me but their son or relative who had been reported killed.
These letters continued for months after the war and are in the scrapbook.
It’s so sad, because they just wouldn’t believe their son or loved one was
dead. I finally took a picture of myself in uniform and in the exact same
kneeling position to send to them.
After a couple of days I was sent with others by truck to an airfield near
the Rhine. We then were flown in a C-47 (the military version of a DC3) to
Paris. My seat on the plane had a bullet hole in it where they said a
paratrooper had been killed with ground fire. The first thing they did at
the Paris hospital was take all our clothes and burn them and put us in a
hot steam room to kill the lice. At the hospital we were allowed to pick
two canned sentences for a telegram to no more than two addressees. I sent
“Am well and safe. Love you more than ever” to Miss Kathryn Buckley in
Austin and another to Mr. and Mrs. D. H. Houseman in Dallas.
After about a week I was flown again in a C-47 to an Army hospital in
England. There was a terrible fog where we were to land, and the pilot
made several passes at the field, one time nearly hitting a hangar. I
thought “My gosh am I going to killed now after all I’ve been through”,
but the he got us down. From the hospital there I wrote long letters home
telling about my experiences, and these are in the scrapbook. One morning
a few days later they came by my bed to tell me my telegram to Mr. and
Mrs. D. H. Houseman needed to be resent because Army Regulation number so
and so provided that all cablegrams had to have the full first name, and I
had used only initials I told them to just forget it since my letters had
probably arrived by now. To her dying day my Mother believed I could only
send one cablegram and sent it to Katy rather than to her.
A funny aside to Katy’s cablegram - - At the time they still did not know
whether I was alive or dead, only that I was “missing in action”. She was
living at the Pi Phi house and was called to the telephone. The operator
said “this is Western Union and we have a cablegram from Lieutenant
Donelson M. Houseman “. The operator never got to finish because Katy
threw the phone in the air (breaking it for which she was later charged)
and ran two blocks in her slip screaming to where my sister, Leila, was
living. There they phoned my mother and dad, and when he asked what the
cablegram said, they didn’t even know. They had to drive down to the
Western Union office to find out and call back.
From England I was sent on a hospital ship back to the States. The war was
still going on (this was in late April 1945 and the war ended in Europe on
May 8th, 1945), and the German submarines were still active, so we had a
convoy of Naval ships to protect the troop ships. In fact, one destroyer
escort was hit by a submarine missile, but it didn’t sink, and the crew
was saved. We arrived in New York harbor on April 28th, my 22nd birthday.
What a birthday present - the sight of the Statue of Liberty. I remained
in an Army hospital in New York for about a week and then was put on a
train for Temple, Texas, and McCloskey General Hospital. When that train
crossed the Red River there is no way to describe how happy I was to be
back in Texas.
McCloskey had about 4000 patients, 98% of whom were amputees. I later
learned from Dr. Dale Austin, who was the commanding officer of a wing of
the hospital and later my good friend at Dallas Country Club, the reason I
was sent to McCloskey was that my medical papers indicated my arm would
probably need to be amputated at the elbow. I was blissfully unaware of
this - and of course, it didn’t happen. I still had a lot of infection
including osteomyelitis, which is infection in the bone and bone marrow,
my wrist was fused solid and all five fingers were completely stiff.
Right after arriving I applied for and was granted a two week leave to
visit my parents and Katy. During this leave Katy and I decided to get
married, and I asked for my parent’s blessing. They agreed, but my Dad
said he was somewhat disappointed because he wanted me to finish college,
and then he wanted to help me go through Harvard Graduate School of
Business. I assured him I agreed with the plan and would follow it even
though married, but he said we would probably have children and never be
able to do it. He was sure right because we had three within 3 years and
didn’t get to Harvard, although I did finish at Texas. We married June 9,
1945 - Katy was 20 (4 days later she became 21) and I had just turned 22.
She dropped out of school and lost all credits for that semester, which
would have ended in another 2 weeks. We have a copy of her letter asking
her mother “Do you think Daddy will mind?”
We stayed at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas our wedding night and then took
a train to New Orleans to stay at the Roosevelt Hotel for a 3 day
honeymoon. Katy had never had a mixed drink, and she wanted to try the
specialty of the house everywhere we went that first evening in New
Orleans. First the Roosevelt’s famous Gin Fizz, then to the Court of Two
Sisters for a Pink Lady, then Pat O’Brien’s for a Hurricane. I tried to
warn her, but she was having fun. Before our second course was served at
Antoine’s, she was “history”. And so went the second night of our
marriage.
Another funny part of that trip was that I couldn’t get to sleep in the
soft bed - I guess because I was so used to sleeping on the hard floor. -
so I slept on the floor and she in the bed. The last night she moved down
to the floor with me, thinking it improper to spend our honeymoon sleeping
separately. After a train ride back to Dallas, we drove to Temple in a
1937 Terraplane to start married life together. We couldn’t find any place
to live, because the war with Japan was still going and Camp Hood at
Belton (only 30 miles away) had about 40,000 military plus families and
McCloskey Hospital had perhaps 6,000 counting nurses, doctors, etc. A wife
could stay at the Officers’ Club for no more than 7 days, and I was afraid
Katy was going to have to go back home to Dallas - but on the last day we
rented a room in someone’s basement. The only light was from an exposed
light bulb in the ceiling plus a small shaft of light from a coal chute to
the outside. The only furniture was a bed, a chair and a card table. We
were allowed to use the owner’s powder room upstairs, but it had no tub or
shower. The basement had a shower head coming out the ceiling (but no
shower curtain) plus a floor drain in the middle of the room. We also
could keep a limited amount of food in their ice box and could use their
stove when they weren’t. Not exactly what a girl who had grown up in the
Park Cities was accustomed to.
We lived in that basement for about two months until we luckily found a
garage apartment in Rogers, Texas, about a 20 miles south of Temple. There
were two other wounded officers and their wives who lived in rooms in the
main house on the property. One of them had a car so we took turns driving
back and forth to the hospital, thereby leaving a car with the wives. They
were very pleasant people, which made it nice for Katy. One of them was an
infantry lieutenant who had lost his arm and was pretty bitter about it.
He told being in the front lines and receiving letters from his mother
saying she was so glad he was in a “quiet sector”, and she was so worried
about his brother who was stationed in Brussels where the German’s were
sending buzz bombs. (For a month or so just before the Bulge the American
advance slowed down, and the press reported that there was only isolated
patrol activities. He was leading one of these nightly patrols behind
enemy lines when he lost his arm.)
The war against Japan ended in August 1945 after we dropped the two atomic
bombs. This undoubtedly saved thousands of American lives, because the
Japanese culture was to fight until killed, and we would have had to take
island by island and finally invaded Japan itself. It must have taken a
lot of soul searching by President Truman to give the order to drop the
bombs, but he did the right thing despite killing a lot of civilians.
After all, the Japs gave absolutely no warning when they suddenly attacked
Pearl Harbor killing over 2300 Americans, sinking 21 American naval
vessels, and destroying 165 planes. I will always dislike and be
suspicious of them - strange, because I was a prisoner of the Germans, for
whom I have the greatest respect. Let me also point out that about 95% of
the Americans captured by the Germans were returned after the war whereas
less than 50% of those captured by the Japs survived.
One funny thing happened in Rogers. I had an operation on my arm and had
to remain in bed in the hospital for about a week instead of commuting to
Rogers. During that time my former University of Texas roommate and best
friend, S. M. Leftwich, returned to Dallas from the Pacific, where he had
been an Infantry Lieutenant. He was still in the Army but on leave
recovering from wounds caused by hand grenade shrapnel. (He threw a
grenade at a Jap machine gun emplacement, but in the excitement failed to
count to three after pulling the pin. The Jap caught it and threw it back
at him. S.M. had shrapnel working out of his body for at least 15 years.)
He heard I was at McCloskey and immediately drove to the hospital to see
me. Katy was at the hospital visiting when S.M. arrived, and when we
learned he was driving back to Dallas late that night because there were
no hotel rooms, we both insisted he sleep in the kitchen of our apartment
on an extra cot we had. The next morning they were eating breakfast with
S. M. in uniform and Katy in her robe when the landlady came in to ask
Katy how I was doing. I don’t think she ever believed Katy’s explanation
that “this is Don’s best friend.”
The doctors couldn’t do anything about my fused wrist, but the finger
movement started coming back by use of daily whirlpool treatment plus
massage and other physical therapy. In early October 1945 they performed
an operation on my wrist to fuse it at a different angle, and it was going
to take 90 days to heal. I applied for and received a 30 day leave
(maximum allowed) and since I had nothing else to do, I decided to go back
to Austin and try to get my degree. I lacked 18 hours, and although the
semester had started 2 weeks earlier, I signed up for all 18 hours.
Once again we couldn’t find a place to live because so many men were
returning to school after being dismissed from the service. In desperation
we finally rented by the day a one room cabin at Dan’s Dollar Courts, a
“hot pillow” operation right next to the Avalon Night Club. We kept
looking for something better but never found anything. Every morning I
went to the motel office and paid my $1 while the manager begged me to
leave so he could rent it 3 or 4 times per night - but we stayed there the
whole time. Once again, it was a very bad deal for Katy. First, she had
all four imbedded wisdom teeth pulled at once and had a terrible time.
Then she became pregnant, was deathly ill the whole time, and couldn’t eat
a thing. In addition to that was the Dan’s Dollar Court factor. There were
8 of these little cabins with about 6 feet between each one, and with no
air-conditioning and windows open, you can imagine some of the things that
were heard by her pristine ears. Also the music at the Avalon 20 feet away
blared away until the wee hours. Every 30 days I had to drive back to
McCloskey for 2 or 3 days to get another 30 day leave - leaving her
stranded in that awful place with no car.
In late February 1946 I had taken two of my six final exams when I
received a telegram telling me my leave had been cancelled and to return
immediately to the hospital. After much mental debate I decided to ignore
the orders, take my chances on being court-martialed, and to finish the
other four finals.. Immediately upon finishing the last one some 6 days
later, we got in the car which was already loaded with everything we owned
and drove to Temple arriving about 10 PM. The place was pitch black dark
and deserted except for a few sentries. McCloskey had been closed by the
Army and all the patients, nurses and doctors assigned elsewhere. There
was no way to find where I was being sent except at the Eighth Service
Command Headquarters in Dallas. We kept on driving, arriving there about
when it opened at 7AM, and found I was assigned to William Beaumont
General Hospital in El Paso. Fortunately, they allowed everyone 10 days
travel time to make the move and I didn’t get in trouble. But I had to
drop Katy at her parents house and keep on driving in order to make it. A
long two days.
Our stay in Austin while I finished the University of Texas hadn’t been
all that much fun. But we made it, and I graduated with 6 A’s for that
final semester despite having to learn to write left handed. It’s amazing
what can be done in school if you follow the Army routine of up at dawn
and work non-stop until 11 at night.
The reason I had to remain in the hospital so long after the war was over
was that I still had bone infection and could only slightly move my
fingers. After I got to El Paso it was about a week before they got around
to X raying and otherwise examining me. During that time I searched for a
place for Katy and me to live but never found anything. When I finally got
examined, the doctors said I needed some more time for the fusion to set
and gave me another 30 day leave. I came back to Dallas, and when I
returned to El Paso after the 30 days we decided it was best for Katy not
to make that long trip, so she never joined me in El Paso. I lived on the
base and continued therapy until being transferred in August 1946 to
Brooke General Hospital, a permanent Army hospital in San Antonio. By that
time Katy was 8 months pregnant so I didn’t even try to find a place for
us to live in San Antonio. Fortunately I was able to get home several
weekends and also when our first child, Nancy, was born in September 1946.
I finally got out of the hospital and the Army effective December 8, 1946.
In conclusion, it was an experience I wouldn’t want to relive but one that
I wouldn’t take a million dollars for having been through. Each day that I
see the sun rise I thank God that I am here to see it and that I am an
American. . Each day I thank God that I am not hungry or cold or in pain,
because I experienced that and know the difference. And most of all I
thank God for letting me survive to have the most wonderful family anyone
could possibly have. The kids laugh about the time I was saying the
blessing at one of our traditional Thanksgiving dinners. I got all choked
up and nearly cried. But let me tell you - to look out over that room and
see a lovely devoted wife and five children with their five wonderful
spouses and 13 grandchildren, all happy, healthy, and sharing love for
each other - - - that’s enough to make a grown man cry. |
