WORLD WAR II:MORE STORIES FROM OUR VETERANS

PAGE #

GLENN HALDEMAN
Haldeman was an engineer in the
Army. He was in Belgium, France, and
Germany and was wounded in France.
I was going to go into business. I started building a bowling alley, and then World War II started. I was
a single man, and single men just didnt stand a chance of getting a deferment. The Japanese bombed us
on December 7th, and on the 14th of January I went into service. I became an Army officer and spent six
years in the military, and a good three and a half were spent in Europe. We landed in England, and there
was no war for us; we were just in training, and it was boring to get trained day after day after day. You
didnt know what you were training for, really. Some of our units would be shipped down into the
Mediterranean area and they would be in combat zones. Others were shipped into Scotland and the
islands, and I was one of the guys that sat on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Finally we got orders to
move over to the eastern shore, and of course we all had guesses of what was going to happen, but we
didnt know why we were being transferred.

What did you do after that?

They loaded us aboard ships and I was commanding a company then, two hundred soldiers, and there
were five officers counting myself. We were a forestry unit, the 74th Engineer Forestry Unit. We trained
to cut forestry logs into planks and use them for building bridges and so forth. They would go to Army
units and it was welcome for the boredom of just setting and training and training. I went in on D + 6 l.
The entire unit was on one boat, and we were transported to the French shore and we had to go off from
a net on to the boats, and some of us rode in a boat to get onto land and a few had to swim in. They missed
the boat, but we didnt lose any men going in to shore, and we were happy to get the 205 of us on French
soil. We didnt really accomplish very much until we got to the Luxembourg, German border.

That was where we got into the combat and the bullets making life miserable for us, but we didnt have
anything very active until December, and by that time we were living in tents and we fixed our tents so
they were comfortable and all of a sudden the Germans wanted them. Fortunately they were not
demanding in our area, and they were more interested in making us think that they wanted to get in there,
but they went five or six miles north of us and I was very glad that they did because the shooting was
very much more pronounced in that area than mine. When they came through we lost one man to a bullet
wound, and there was seven or eight that were hospitalized, but all were back on duty within a week or
so and we came out very nicely on that.

But then we were pulled from the combat area and had a couple of months before we had to prepare for
going back into Germany itself, and that was quite a training program there, but when we did go in we
were glad we had the training because our losses were minimal. We built a bridge across the Rhine River

2004 D.C. Everest Area Schools Publications

HALDEMAN,

PAGE #

WORLD WAR II:MORE STORIES FROM OUR VETERANS

and didnt lose a man during the building. The Germans were within four miles of us, but we had a hill
between us and we had infantry unit up on the hill and they prevented the Germans from zeroing in on
us. We got our bridge in with a minimum of trouble, and they pulled us out of there and we went south
where the American army was just attempting to get into the area, and we helped put a bridge across the
Rhine and Main Rivers. The Rhine River is a big main river that flowed from Switzerland to Germany
to the ocean near the northern part of Germany and it was very prosperous area for the Germans who
lived and farmed there. That was a very productive area, and we took over that. That was one way of
starving the enemy.

Did you have brothers and sisters in the war?

No, I was an only child. My father was a farmer and I grew up on the farm southeast of LaCrosse, and
our home base was Norwalk and Cashton. Both towns had 600 people. Our high schools were there and
I was in a high school class of 12. We had two teachers and that is all we had. We had another teacher
who was half high school and half grade school, and she would have a couple of classes of algebra in the
morning and the rest of the day she had eighth grade. That is how they operated in those days.

I got there just as transportation became more prominent. We all had autos at that time, but the autos
arent like they are today and the roads were not the same. The roads were gravel and dirt, and in the
spring the road would be broken up and many times you had to take a horse to school. It is laughable now
to think about it. Looking back, it was a pleasant life that we lived. The Depression hit in my family and
it began to hurt while I was a sophomore in high school, but my father didnt admit it was a depression
until I was a senior and then he knew that it was serious. When I went to college he was able to help me
with tuition and little monetary help now and then, but it wasnt much and I had to get a job.

I worked in the Pontiac garage where people were storing their automobiles during the winter. They
began having thievery because they had given keys to the people storing their cars, and the insurance
companies were adamant that there had to be a night watchman because too many things were being
stolen. They hired me for night watchman, and they gave me a little cubbyhole on the second floor of the
garage. There was a button to open and close the door, and I could peek out the window at the people. I
spent a couple of years there, and surprisingly it was very profitable for me. They paid me $8 a week and
two meals a day, which he bought at a restaurant that was in the same building as the garage. The owner
of the garage also owned the restaurant. I was grateful for the meals, and since I was there every day I
got to know the people very well, and they felt sorry for me and they were very cooperative. Usually I
left with a noon lunch and I wasnt stealing it, they were just cooperating with me.

What kinds of New Deal programs did we

have in Wisconsin?
My father had been quite active in politics in
Wisconsin when the Lafollettes were very
powerful. The founder of the family was Bob
Lafollette and he was governor in the teens,
and he was elected to the United States Senate
and he died in the Senate in the early 20s, and
his son took over and his name was Bob
Lafollette too. He had a brother named Phil,
and Phil got elected to the governorship in the
early 30s. During those years there were a
HALDEMAN,

2004 D.C. Everest Area Schools Publications

PAGE #

WORLD WAR II:MORE STORIES FROM OUR VETERANS

tremendous number of people, who were without jobs, and Phil did a lot of road building and highway
construction and putting people to work out there, and some of the work was done by hand when it could
have been done with machines, but the people needed employment.

We fought our way through, and the war came along and saved the day. When the war came, I was out
of school for a while and I was with the state highway department. I decided that I was going into
business for myself and I went into a sawmill business and logging and I had a crew of men cutting trees
and a group of men running a sawmill, and everything was going smooth and I was making money, so
along came World War II. I had just financed a bowling alley in Augusta, Wisconsin. I had just gotten the
bowling alley in payment for a bad debt. A man owed me money and he had this bowling alley, and I had
the mortgage and he had too much debt and he lost the place. I got the bowling alley and I went to
Milwaukee to get some new balls for it, and I was going to clean the place up and take over and I was
going to have a grand opening.

I was on my way to Milwaukee and I was driving a 1941 Hudson. During the war the Hudson Company
passed out of the scene. They didnt last long. I had this blue Hudson and I was going down to Milwaukee
for a load of balls for the bowling alley, and I had a radio in the car. In those days, radios in cars were
very unusual and I had to change it every twenty or thirty miles, because the radio stations didnt
broadcast far enough. I would go so far and I would have to change the station and find one that was
closer to me. So here they were talking about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and I knew what was going
to happen to me. The next Monday, the war was starting and I came back to Sparta, Wisconsin, where
my draft board was, and several guys had been in to be interviewed for extensions of their draft
privileges. The way they were being turned down I knew that it would be useless, so when it was my
turn the chairman of the draft board asked me what I had to say and I told him I wanted to get into it as
soon as I could, but I wanted to sell my business before I went. The chairman told me I was the first
sensible man they had talked to that night. He said that I could have some time, and I told them that I
would get the business sold as quickly as possible. I went into the military on the 14th of January, and I
spent six years to the day until I got out. I got to be a captain, and to get rid of me they made me a major.

After the war ended Glenn worked

for the City Services and Wausau
Concrete for 21 years.

HALDEMAN,

2004 D.C. Everest Area Schools Publications