Combat Medic: Nonfiction, None Needed

Copyright © 2007, 2013 Betty Jane Kirby, Tom L. Parker, and A. Dale Parker.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Edited by Betty Jane Kirby and A. Dale Parker

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Except as noted, all photos are in the public domain. Photograph of Vernon Parker in the Introduction by A. Dale Parker, © 2007, 2013. Photograph of Vernon Parker in the Epilogue © 2007, 2013 Betty Jane Kirby, Tom L. Parker, and A. Dale Parker. Map data ©2013 Google, GeoBasis-DE/BKG (©2009).

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-0843-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0842-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0841-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013917330

iUniverse rev. date: 12/09/2013

CONTENTS

Editor’s Preface

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

YOU’RE IN THE ARMY NOW

OVER THERE

NORMANDY TO LUXEMBOURG

BATTLE OF THE BULGE

ACROSS THE RHINE

GOING HOME

Epilogue

Appendix A—Medals, Citations and Awards

Appendix B—Route Through France, Luxembourg and Germany

Appendix C—World War II Websites

EDITOR’S PREFACE

T h is book was transcribed from tapes made by our father, Vernon Parker. Dad’s memory and recollection of details are of no surprise to those who knew him, but without which this book would never have been possible. As with any oral recording, the dozen or so tapes contained a few mis-starts and do-overs. These were surprisingly few given his age, the span of time over which the tapes were recorded, and the length of time that had transpired since the events themselves. Our edits were intentionally minor and we retained Dad’s language and phrasing to allow the reader to better hear the story as it was told. Dad was a great storyteller, as you will no doubt discover for yourself.

Andrew Jackson once stated, I have never in my life seen a Kentuckian without a gun, a pack of cards, and a jug of whiskey. Not much had changed by the time Dad was born in 1920 outside the small town of Dawson Springs in western Kentucky. He and his five siblings attended grammar school in a one-room schoolhouse. Sustenance farming provided most necessities and few luxuries. Worn shoes were patched with cardboard insoles, and his school drinking cup was a used cold-cream jar. High school required leaving home and living with relatives, which he did briefly, but he left after only a short time to help out at home.

Farmers were mostly self-sufficient, raising the food they needed and supplementing the table with game and fish. Corn and tobacco crops were sold to buy coffee, flour, and gasoline. Paying jobs were intermittent at the coalmines and sawmills. Doctors were for life and death, and not always then. Kerosene lamps provided evening light. The Rural Electrification Act brought electricity to the region long after Vernon was grown.

It is against this backdrop that Dad’s story begins . . .

DEDICATION

T h is book is dedicated to my family, a constant source of joy in my life: my late wife, Fredia Constance (Martin) Parker; my daughter Betty Jane Kirby and granddaughter Jane Nicole Kirby; my son Tom L. Parker, granddaughters Amanda Lynn Montgomery and Katherine Elizabeth Parker, and great-granddaughter Ava Lynn Montgomery; my son Alan Dale Parker, grandson Dale Carlos Parker, and granddaughters Chelsea Marie Parker and Katelyn Cecilia Parker. ( Editor’s note: Parker Lance Montgomery—another great-grandchild—was born after Vernon’s death, and is now included as Vernon would have wished).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T his story is a long time coming and never would have been recorded and written down if it were not for the encouragement and support of many people. I’ve carried these memories around in my head for the past half-century. Several I shared with close family and friends when I got home from the war. Others I kept to myself, until now.

The last few years I’ve thought more about the war and that time in my life than any other time. Whenever I would get to telling a story of when I was overseas, the kids would tell me I ought to write it down. They gave me a tape recorder, to make it easier. It was a good idea, but I never got around to it.

On New Year’s Day 2007 I decided it was time due to my health. I had wanted to wait until I thought it was a proper time. I found it difficult to go back and relive some of the things I had tried to forget. It refreshed them in my mind, but I’m glad I did it so my family and others down the line will have a record of what happened.

I want to thank my family members and friends who have listened to my stories through the years and encouraged me to record my experiences.

I especially thank my children. Without their support this story would never have made it to print:

Betty Jane, for spending many long hours transcribing the tapes and editing the drafts. My grammar is not so good and the tapes weren’t always clear, but she stuck to it, calling me with questions when she didn’t understand something;

Tom, for buying me the tape recorder and helping proof the document; and

Dale, for doing extensive research, scanning pictures and documents, and pulling everything together.

Finally, and most importantly, I thank the good Lord, who brought me safely home from the war, who brought me home to saving faith in Jesus Christ, and who will bring me to my heavenly home when this journey ends. He has blessed me very much.

INTRODUCTION

T oday is January 1, 2007. This tape I’m making is about my experiences. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and I kept putting it off. It’s about what I seen and what I went through and what I seen a lot of other people going through too. This is not about Sergeant Carter or about my ambulance orderly. They’ve got their own stories. It is strictly Vernon Parker’s experiences in WWII.

All of this tape is done by memory. It’s been sixty-two years, and I don’t have any books or notes to refresh my memory. I want to make it as clear and simple as possible. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m beating my chest. There’s no way that you can understand the feelings that we had after what we’d seen because you have to experience it to understand it, but I hope the ones reading or listening to it will know and understand a little bit about what we went through while we were over there.

Now a little about my background before I start about the army. I was born and raised here on the farm and went to a one-room school. When you finished the eighth grade, that was it unless you moved to town. It was mud roads and no buses so that was as far as you went after you finished the eighth grade out here on the farm.

I had nothing of my own but the clothes on my back and my dad had bought them for me, but I was always looking ahead trying to make plans, and in 1939 we had the best crop that I’d ever seen growing on this farm. My brothers Woodard and Ken helped me when they could. Carlton wasn’t big enough. What I had my goal set on was to raise some good tobacco, put it on the market, and then buy me a A Model Ford, but during July it started raining and it rained for a solid week. Back then they didn’t have any dams to control the water, and the river would overflow easy. Pretty soon I looked down and water was rising until finally the water got all over everything that we had in the bottoms. There was a couple of high spots the water didn’t get to, and I went ahead after the water went down and salvaged what little I could, and it was just a little tobacco along the river banks and some in the fields up here behind my house now, so that shows you what Mother Nature can do to your plans.

Coal Tipple

After I took care of what I could, it was October and I told my dad, This has been a failure; I’m 19, and I’m fixing to get me a job or volunteer for the army. They was hiring in Crabtree at Ilsley at the Norton Coal Corporation at the time, and I went down and talked to Mr. Connery, who was the superintendent. They were building a spur track from IC Railroad up to the mines in Ilsley. Mr. Connery told me to wait, and after they all interviewed and hired, he said, Vernon, you’re too light for this kind of work; you can’t handle them ties and that steel and them railroad irons so I’m going to put you on the tipple. Well, I went to work on the tipple picking sulfur on a 3x2 conveyor.

Then I decided to look around for me a car, and I passed the garage and seen a ’32 V-8 Ford settin’ out there in front of the garage. It was one my cousin had owned, and had let go because the mines where he worked was shut down. It was the first V-8 they put out. I went into the Ford garage and talked to Clint Meadows, who owned it. I asked him what he wanted for it. He said, It don’t belong to us; it belongs to Hal Harned Finance Company, so I went on down to Mr. Harned’s office and went in. He come in and sat down and I asked him about that ’32 V-8 Ford that Floyd had owned that was settin’ out there. He said, Well Vernon, I’ll tell you. There’s three payments behind on it. You make the three payments and then start making the monthly payments at eighteen dollars and five cents a month.

I’d saved up enough money, and right then I took my billfold out and paid him the three months, and he handed me the keys. I was hoping for an A model, but I went to a V-8. It was blue with black fenders. I never owned a car in my life that was more pleasing, and it was really a good buy for the money. Later I traded for a ’35 Chevrolet Baxter Coupe and let Floyd Cansler, the one who originally bought it, have it back.

1932 Ford V8

Vernon in 1942

YOU’RE IN THE ARMY NOW

O N E

W ar clouds was looming in Europe, and things was picking up. They were hiring in different plants. The United States was building submarines, boats, tanks, anything that could be used in the army for England; it was called lend lease at that time. Hitler was expanding all of his operations. He was getting greedy. He took Finland; then he went into the Netherlands. He took Czechoslovakia, and England was really taking a beating. Germany had all kinds of airplanes, tanks, infantry, and everything. They were occupying France at the time, and they pushed the British back into the English Channel at Dunkirk. A lot of them was captured. Some of them got back across the English Channel on any type of transportation that would float. The United States was furnishing them as much as they could, but Roosevelt decided he wouldn’t put any American troops on foreign soil.

On December 7th, 1941, I was driving down the road on 112 on Sunday morning, and I heard a broadcast that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I was on second shift and heard that night that Roosevelt was going to make a speech, so I pulled my car down to the tipple where I was working, and we all turned the radio on in my car and listened, and he declared war on Japan. Back then they had the draft where you would go in and stay eighteen months and then you would come out. Well, a lot of them had spent their eighteen months, but when he declared war, they froze that and wouldn’t let them out and they started drafting anybody from 18 to 44. And they were throwing up training camps all over the United States. They was temporary camps. They set up a Camp Campbell at Hopkinsville. We also had some forts: Ft. Sill, Oklahoma; Ft. Hood, Texas. Well, Ft. Knox, Kentucky had always been a fort where most of the tankers got their experience—their training.

Mr. Connery talked to me. I had gotten promoted up to a washer operator. He said, Vernon, when you get your papers, you call me or come in the office and I’ll get you a deferment because that job you have is essential to the defense. When I got my papers, I didn’t say anything to him. I just went ahead and went for an examination. Pretty soon I got called. I was supposed to report the first of October, 1942, to the induction center in Evansville. I went into the office and talked to Mr. Connery and told him I didn’t want a deferment; I was going to go, and that was the same thing as volunteering.

He said, Sit down. Let me talk to you a little bit. I’m a World War I veteran, Vernon, and I got gassed while I was over there. I knew that he was always short of breath and wheezed and coughed a lot. He said, Good luck to you, and when you get discharged, if you make it, you come back to Norton Coal Corporation and you’ve got you a job; it’ll be waiting for you.

*     *     *

I went to Hopkinsville, caught the bus over there to Evansville, and we were all examined there at the Armory. That was a bunch of wild people I’ll tell you—all kinds: farmers, people that had worked at the bank, people who drove trucks. You name it and they were on that bus. So we went to Evansville. I’ll never forget the World Series ball game was on. I don’t remember who was playing even, but we all sat outside and waited for them to call us in. (Editor’s note: St. Louis Cardinals were playing the New York Yankees. This was game 2 of the series. St. Louis won this game—and the next 3—to take the series 4-1).

When they called my name, I went in,