To Whom It May Concern

Military Relations

This will be a two part post, due to it's length. Also, I am using only the first name of my wife's grandfather.

Studying World War II has been a hobby of mine that started in junior high when I read the Time Life WWII series of books. My wife’s grandfather wrote a detailed account of his time in the United States Army during WWII. I enjoyed reading his narrative, and found many similarities to my own service, as I’ve been in the Nebraska Army National Guard since 1990.

In 1943, my wife’s grandfather Foster arrived by train at Ft. Benning, GA, to begin 12 weeks of basic training at the Infantry School. As amazing as this sounds, my basic training and Infantry School at Ft. Benning more than 45 years later also lasted 12 weeks. Foster was assigned to an area at Ft. Benning called “Harmony Church”, living in a one story wooden structure. When I attended basic training, we were taught about the historic importance of Harmony Church, and we actually used a number of the old wooden barracks there for our first aid, map reading, and other classes.

We would road march to Harmony Church from Ft. Benning’s current Infantry School, located at Sand Hill. It was a 6 mile “hump” to Harmony Church, and I remember the same poison oak, snakes, black widow spiders, and other aspects of Ft. Benning that Foster wrote about. I took belly to Ft. Benning in April 2005 following her graduation from Marine boot camp at Parris Island, to see where both her grandfather and I had gone to basic training. We were told that the majority of Harmony Church has been torn down, but some buildings were saved for historical purposes. Sadly, the entire area was blocked off, we couldn’t even go up the road to see it.

Foster’s discussions of drill and ceremonies, or as he called them, “close order drills”, learning to use your rifle, M-1 for him, M-16 in my case, hand grenade throwing, digging fox holes, bayonet training, gas mask training, and road marches, all brought back memories of my time at basic training. Foster’s “hikes” were 25 miles, where our longest was just over 15 miles. His completion of basics was the mock combat training “in the swamps of Georgia”.

This is exactly how we finished our training, we called it a Field Training Exercise, where we put all of our training together in a combat environment. Upon reading his account of basic training, it was amazing to me how the basics of infantry instruction have remained the same, even as the tools and weapons have been updated, over a period of so many years.

After completing basic training, Foster was assigned to the 499th Armored Field Artillery Battalion at Ft. Campbell, Tennessee. Foster’s description of a field artillery unit was really interesting, because I knew so little of the “King of Battle”. Artillery is commonly referred to as the King of Battle, where as the infantry is known as the Queen of Battle. This is not a derogatory comment, the references to royalty are made of respect, about how both the infantry and artillery work together to rule the battlefield. I became part of A. Co., 2nd/134th INF (MECH) Battalion, 35th Infantry Division.

When Foster was in the United States Army, WWII was raging, and after a summer of physical conditioning and training exercises at Ft. Campbell, they prepared for the overseas movement. Each soldier had their wool olive drab uniforms, steel helmet, blanket roll, “musette bag”, mess kit, canteen, gun mask, carbine (rifle) and duffle bag. All personal possessions had to be sent home. At this time, October of 1944, Foster was promoted to the rank of PFC, Private First Class.

A war was also eminent when I finished basic training in August of 1990. Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and the United States had massed troops as part of a coalition in Saudi Arabia, to move against Saddam and force him out of Kuwait. I would have been unable to go, at age 17 I had another year of high school to complete, plus the first Gulf War was over so quickly that very few Army National Guard units ever got involved.

3 months after turning 19 years of age, I attended the Platoon Leadership Development Course, required to attain the rank of SGT E-5. I'm the youngest person to ever attend PLCD in the state of Nebraska. I spent my first five years in Nebraska City, earning the rank of sergeant. In the fall of 1995, the Nebraska City 2nd/134th Inf. (MECH) cased its colors and ceased to be an infantry unit, and was reconsolidated as a cavalry company. I was transferred to Wayne, NE, where I became part of the 1st/134th Inf. (MECH), 35th ID. This worked out better for me as I was attending college there at Wayne State College.

In May of 2000, I gained the rank of E-6, Staff Sergeant. 2 years later, our unit switched from 11B infantry to 88M medium transportation, and once again I was part of an infantry unit casing it’s colors and shutting down. We became the 189th Transportation Company, a combination of both the Wayne and Norfolk units, formerly troop A and B respectively, of the 1st/134th. Many of us were unhappy about this, but Nebraska closed the books on all of their combat units, instead switching to combat support units such as transportation, NBC (chemical company), military police, and water purification.

Being there were no other infantry units to transfer to in the state of Nebraska, I stayed in Wayne for the changeover to transportation, and learned another MOS (job title). The casing of the colors on the last of the 134th Infantry Battalion was hard on a lot of the soldiers and veterans who had served in the battalion over the years. The Nebraska units who made up the 134th have a long and rich history, starting in the 1800’s with the Mexican American war, and ending up as one of the most highly decorated infantry battalions during WWII, spearheading many of the attacks in eastern and northern France, including St. Lo during the push into Germany.

Switching to a medium transportation unit seemed like a real step down from the prestigious “blue cord”, but it wasn’t long and we got the call to be activated in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The call for activation came in the spring of 2005.

For belly and I this was a difficult time. She was still at Parris Island when I received the notification by phone of my unit’s impending move to active duty status. Her training was not yet completed when in August of 2005 I traveled with the rest of the 189th to Ft. Riley, Kansas, to begin mobilization training. We geared up and trained up, spending most of our 2 ½ months of training focused on convoy specifics, truck maneuvering, and basic tasks from the soldiers common tasks manual. These included rifle marksmanship, first aid, map reading, and also using the newest military electronic equipment, from global positioning systems to encrypted radio sets.

We received so much gear at Ft. Riley. The basic load that Foster received some 60 years before in 1944 seems so much simpler, easier. Each soldier of the 189th ended up with 3 duffel bags, a ruck sack, a small foot locker, and a large foot locker for all the gear we were given. Then we were allowed a regular carry on bag and a small laptop bag to actually carry onto the airplane that would transport us to the middle east. Most of our gear was sent over a month ahead of time in storage containers via a ship, where we would link up with it later on.

On October 29, 2005, we boarded a plane in Kansas and headed off towards the middle east. After stops in both New York and Germany, we touched down in Kuwait, some 22 hours of flight time later. We received the latest training and intelligence during a 10 day period at Camp Buering, Kuwait. Following this training, we boarded C130 airplanes and headed north, into Iraq. Our final destination: Tallil, Iraq, also known as Ali Air Base.

Foster’s trip overseas began on October 12, 1944, aboard a troop ship, in a convoy of 35 ships headed out across the Atlantic. His unit had guard duty on deck, which was fortunate, it gave them a chance for fresh air, considering how packed in the men were below deck. Bunks were stacked 9 high and 4 deep. There was cold salt water for showers and shaving. They were not told where they were going.

On the 28th of October, their convoy reached Marseilles, France, their point of entry into the European theater. The port showed evidence of the ravages of war. Even as the men disembarked from their ships, they walked on gangways built over sunken ships in the harbor to reach the dock, all uphill. The first night it rained, and it was a cold wet night for all. Foster learned to drink coffee black, and certainly welcomed it the following morning. They staged for 20 days to receive equipment and prep for the move north, where they were to join the Seventh Army in battle.

Upon the 189th’s arrival in Tallil, Iraq, we took over for a unit out of California and immediately set to work getting our “inherited” equipment up to our standards, which, sorry to say, were a LOT higher than that of the previous owners of the equipment. The staff sergeants in our unit were all tasked out with the job title of convoy commanders, each responsible for learning how to command a convoy traveling thru Iraq. We learned to integrate the gun trucks for protection with the M915 A4 tractor trailers for transporting cargo. I was made NCO in charge of a 15 man detail from our unit, tasked to work with the local Iraqi contractors on post, escorting them to job sites, ensuring they stayed where they needed to be, and providing them with security as we escorted them.

20th November, 1944: Foster also had a change in assignment, to the Reconnaissance Section as an instrument operator. They traveled by train into northern France. The weather in Europe is comparable to the Midwest in the United States, so it was quite cold. The land would vary, from low hills, to heavy wooded areas, to swamp lands. Finally they linked up with the Seventh Army on the fight thru the Vosges Mountains. Although the Germans were retreating, it was still some very tough fighting.

While our platoon did escort duty in Iraq for the first 2 months, the rest of the 189th was getting on the road, running convoys all over Iraq. A good number of our soldiers were tasked over to maintenance to get our equipment road worthy, and as more and more of our trucks and trailers got repaired, we were able to provide more convoy support for our combat support group, the 485th CSB out of Germany, a regular army battalion in charge of our unit.

The 189th convoys transported water, mail, MREs, retrograde, new parts and equipment, everything the forward operating bases needed to operate successfully. We loaded it all up and took it wherever it needed to go in Iraq. We’d also go on runs down to Kuwait to pick up supplies and equipment as needed. In January, one of our convoys went to Arifjan, Kuwait, to pick up around 12 older model M915 A1 semi tractors. We backed our tractor trailers in, got the old semi tractors loaded up, then lined up and were ready to roll out in under 45 minutes.

The regular army and civilian representatives on hand couldn’t believe it, stating that they’d never seen a regular army unit work so quickly with such cohesion, and certainly never a reserve component unit. This is normal for us though, we tend to exceed expectations all the time here.