Halfway through his undergraduate education at Colby College, Ron enrolled in the U.S. Army Reserve and served during the Second World War as a combat medic with K Company in the 414th Regiment of the 104th Timberwolf Division. As a soldier he was awarded a Purple Heart for a shrapnel injury to the left leg and back and a Silver Star for gallantry in action. His desire in writing Looking Back was not to tell the gory details of war but to tell the emotional and human side of war. These pages could easily be filled with bloody stories of mangled bodies and vivid depictions of the war that are a part of every medic's daily life. While these vivid details remain etched in his memory, to what avail would these horrid memories be today for the reader or for the legacy of those whose lives were taken by war? These stories evoke emotions that cannot help but touch the reader with the humanistic side of this war. These soldiers, whose lives were taken at such young ages and by such cruel and unfair circumstances, were, despite their nationalities, all human beings. They were young men whose lives and potential before the war were not much different than his.
Looking Back
Memoirs of a World War II Combat MedicBy Ronald E. CoeiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Ronald E. Coe, MD
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-2019-4Contents
Acknowledgments...........................................xiIntroduction..............................................xiiiA Slow Adjustment to War..................................1World War II-On Our Way...................................5Hard Cider................................................11The Dead Germans..........................................14First Combat..............................................16Outfitting a Medic........................................20SIW.......................................................23Common Emotions...........................................24The Dutch-Forever Friends.................................25The Apparent Coward.......................................28Chaplain Clair F. Yohe-Always on Call.....................30Explosive Power...........................................31Too Much Alcohol..........................................34The Brave and the Dead....................................36An Old College Foe........................................37The Capture...............................................38The Legging...............................................40The Sergeant..............................................42The Moving Dead...........................................43Vigilante Justice.........................................44Political Power...........................................46The BAR Rifleman..........................................47The Wrong Gold Star Mother................................48The Apparent Brave........................................49Half-Truths Plus an Amazing Response......................50The Minefield.............................................52Words Better Left Unspoken................................53Hand-to-Hand Combat-No Thanks.............................55A "Boarding House" in Brussels............................56The Beer Keg..............................................58Unexpected Room Service...................................60Sammy.....................................................61T4 Jess T. Renteria.......................................65Jim.......................................................67Fred......................................................68The Fully Intoxicated Soldier.............................71Diarrhea..................................................73Chancellor Bismarck.......................................74The Disturbed Dead........................................76A Pleasant Breakfast......................................78The Railroad Shell........................................80Life with the Third Armored...............................81A German Burial...........................................85We're Human Beings........................................86A Quick Response..........................................88No Time to Heal...........................................89A Confession..............................................90Bill......................................................91Medics Also Cry...........................................95Encouraging Signs.........................................96The Wounded Enemy.........................................98Halle.....................................................99It's Often Just Plain Luck................................101The Old Sergeant Syndrome.................................104The Highest VD Rate.......................................105Nature's Way..............................................106Strange Priorities........................................107Souvenirs Alive with Memories.............................108Night Attack..............................................109An Emotional Experience...................................110A Tragic Ending...........................................113Going Home................................................117Returning to the Battlefields.............................119Afterword.................................................121Resources.................................................122
Chapter One
A Slow Adjustment to War
My initial contact with the realities of combat unfolded in the safe confines of the basement of the Durham Public Library in Durham, Connecticut. I was in high school in 1938 when on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I opened a soft, brown, leather-bound book titled The Horror of It ... Camera Records of War's Gruesome Glories by Frederick A. Barber. The book was filled with exceedingly graphic pictures of wounded and dead gassed victims from World War I. These pictures left me with a strange and sickening feeling, but even stranger was my feeling of remoteness from World War II.
As time passed, the increasing number of military convoys passing through the little town of Durham offered mounting evidence of the impending war, but still I had not embraced the realities of war. After high school, I went on to Colby College in Waterville, Maine, as a premed student. Watching the U.S. Army Air Force students march in formation to their classes as a college student, I cannot recall ever thinking of myself as a combatant. Even after joining the Army Reserve in Portland, Maine, during the middle of my sophomore year, I did not face the obvious reality of the near future. I joined the Army Reserve so that I would be permitted to finish the current semester of college. It seemed a better alternative to the draft, but the consequences of this action had not yet hit home.
In June 1943, after completing my sophomore year of college, I reported to Fort Devens in Massachusetts and began my journey through several camps, including Fort Benning in Georgia, for basic infantry training. Although this training included experience with many different weapons, I could not imagine using one to kill another human. I feared taking a life, and by volunteering to be a medic, I was confident that I could avoid killing.
After training in the ASTP at Fort Benning, our group was sent to Princeton, New Jersey, where we were allowed to take academic courses at Princeton University. Finally, we were sent to Camp Carson in Colorado Springs, where we joined the 104th Timberwolf Division. Following five more months of training at the end of August 1944, we were sent to New York City for deployment overseas.
After arriving overseas in 1944, my friend and fellow medic Nils Isachen and I experienced our first combat exposure, and the reality of war finally hit home. It was on the flat, wet soil of Holland that fear and the realities of war took hold with a vengeance. Our senses were immediately awakened to the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the feel, and the smells of war. What took an instant to become real would take a lifetime to process. Decades later, I now know that these realities will stay with me until the day I die. While the reality of war is inescapable, one never fully adjusts. The memories are difficult, if not impossible, to erase.
Fear is a great catalyst in learning survival skills. The first priority was to learn the difference between incoming and outgoing mail-the military terminology for shells and bombs. I have heard it said that you don't hear the one that hits you. I doubt if this is always true. I recall being hit by a shell fragment; I heard the whistle of the fragment, but I didn't hear the shell explosion. One problem is that during heavy shelling, it is impossible...
