The True Story of the 92nd Signal Battalion and the Liberation of Dachau – A First-Hand Military Biography from Normandy to Dachau's Liberation 20/2/26
60 years after the war they were recognized as the Greatest Generation. War is the worst of man's creations. Senator Bob Dole wrote the Forward.
They fought their was across Europe and reach Dachau where the made the Nazi's stop killing people in April 29th 1945. Good must always find a way to overcome evil. The liberators were boys barely out of their teens in the 92nd Signal battalion. Joe Sacco was the only child of immigrant parents. When Jack was a kid his father Joe had shown him the album of pictures and ones he had taken in Dachau.
Life is not a given, it is a gift. On a farms near Birmingham . Alabama there was a large Sicilian community in this area and in a smooth part of the valley was an airport. He was always surrounded by uncles singing Italian songs. His father was a decorated soldier in WW2 from the Italian army. Italians were not very welcome there even though there was no mafia by the KKK and Rednecks. There were only certain places where Blacks , Jews , Italians Catholics could live and hard work saw them through the Great Depression which brought them closer together. He received a letter as did hundred of others and started the journey that would lead him to the greatest conflict in recorded history.
First taken to Fort McClellan Alabama. where his health was rated AI and sworn into the US Army. Then Fort McPherson , Georgia. where he took an aptitude exam. Sent to Camp Crowder Missouri to be in the 92nd Signal Corps. and received basic training. They were fed extremely well with plenty of meat vegetables, fruit and milk. Napoleon is quoted as saying an army marches on its stomach. Patton " If you are properly trained you will survive to tell your grandchildren about the war." Proper meals and mail call were the best activities of the day and they had 3 proper meals a day, unless activities caused them to eat horrible C-rations. The army had censors and they had to watch what they wrote. Saturday was a half day and Sunday was free time and he went to Mass. March 19th is St Josephs day the Patron saint of Sicily.
Fort Polk, Louisiana was where they were in authentic battles. Ten men in a tent was their squad.3 or 4 squads make a platoon. In training lights are out at 9pm and Reveille is at 4am. They learned the technical aspect of the signal corp. military logistics and maneuvers, setting up communication for the infantry, stringing up cables in the trees. The heat of this area was bad with flies, gnats and mosquitoes. Some were taught driving and truck the were to use.
They enjoyed making fun of Silverman because he was a Jew but the tough guy Chandler an ex con from Joliet Prison, Illinois was illiterate and it was Silverman he went to for help in reading and writing his letter and who taught him some reading. So Chandler became his protector.
He had a 2 week furlong and back home the whole extended family came to see him. He had missed his grandfathers funeral and now understood the saying that "funerals are for the living"
Camp Maxey, Texas. They were now issued with steel helmets but nobody knew if they were going to Europe or the Pacific. They preferred Europe as it was considered safer and more familiar. They were taken by train to Camp Shanks, NY. across the Hudson north of NY City, the staging point for embarkation. They were given a chance to spend Christmas and explore the city. This was the first time many of them saw the sea or a ship. They did not need to know where they were going as "loose lips sink ships" His father had described the Statue of Liberty when he arrived in 1921.
George S Patton "You can't run an army without profanity"
They joined a convey of 35 ships. Each was given 2 cartons of Raleigh cigarettes but if they wanted a better brand could buy. A full moon meant great submarine weather and so is dangerous. After 10 days they arrived at Liverpool where the goods and troops were unloaded but they were taken to Belfast Northern Ireland. They were taken to a camp at Lurgan He knew that most of their priests were from Ireland. At 15.30 it was pitch dark, they did not realize that at the high latitude the day is so short with sunrise only at 10am. Plus blackout made it darker. It is always cold and damp. They were served powdered eggs which tasted awful these became prominent in the 1930. They always seemed to get beef and potatoes. There always seemed to be more girls, here than GIs. Patton came to inspect the troops in Lurgan.
From Lurgan they were taken to the port of Lame and a ferry to Stanrear in Scotland and from here to a camp in Carlisle where they saw hundreds of rabbits in the fields eating grass. By train to Oxford, this was considered an Open City so was Cambridge . There were a lot of hospital here and around Oxford. This concept was unofficial. Bamberg, Heidelberg, Marburg, and Konstanz, in Germany survived largely intact due to limited strategic military value,
Here they set up a campsite and General Patton with , General Simpson, Haislip and Cook visited. Patton gave a pep talk. -That they have been well trained to fight, all real men love a fight, Americans despise cowards and play to win. The real hero fights even though he is scared and the enemy is just as frightened.
They were aware that D day and Operation Overlord was on as ambulances starting arriving at the hospital in Oxford. They were moved by train to Southampton. Very little news came from the front but they heard that they would be sent to set up communication a week later. V 1 rockets were being launched by Germans in France. but most were falling in fields north of the town. From the ships they had to climb down netting with their heavy loads into Higgins boats.
Omaha beaches was next to Calvados. The first landing the were stopped at a sand bar and the sailor told them to get back in and moved to a place they could land. On land they moved towards Cherbourg via Isigny-sur-Mer and Ste-Mer-Eglisa a destroyed village, then in forest they got to Montabaur. Then the battle of Cherbourg which the Germans had sabotaged before they left.
They now moved south to Barnesville, where they saw V1s flying that were a plane without a propeller, later understood they were missiles. They came across a US army unit baking fresh for the troops and got hot loaves a luxury. Some of the 92nd hit landmines with that killed and injured them. In the sky they saw 3,000 bomber moving to attack Germany. Then Saint Lo , Periers.are still in Normandy and the bocage with hedgerows 6ft. high and 4ft. thick, that even armillary could not open.
Fogeres Brittany from here the infantry opened a corridor to Laval where the Germans were retreating but regrouping for counter attacks. Once it rained the muddy roads were impassable as they sunk in. They moved to Argentan and the Falaise Gap which was blocked by German Panther units, this was a headache for the Generals. A German soldier said he wanted to give up and also 5 Russian soldiers wondered into their camp wanting to defect.
They did not know about the wider story of the war situation. Longny, Normandy, the infantry was moving fast and they could barely keep up string up the telephone and moving in the direction of Paris. Headquarters were now set up at Dreux on the Blaise River, They supplies arrived with the Red Ball Express , this was a division of black soldiers who drove trucks non stop from the ports to the front lines and back.
At Mantes la Jolie they came to the Sein River. There were a few US planes captured by the German using them to surprise their enemy. The Americans wanted de Gaul's French troops to have a major role in the liberation of Paris. In Paris at the same time as the people were celebrating the arrival of the allies they were shaving the heads and painted swastikas on women who collaborated.
Fontainebleau 55km south of Paris, then north to Roznay en Brie then to Sens and Troyes and Neutchateau in Champagne. Then Alsase- Lorraine where many could speak German as it was on the German border. At Charms they were entertained by Bob Hope ,Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore. One of their squad knew Dinah from school in Nashville and they all got to meet her personally.
Lanesville Lorraine on the Moselle River. Here snipers shot at them from the church tower and they got the artillery's to bomb it. This had been hastily evacuated by the Nazis who left behind field glasses and a few dozen bottles of cognac. Eisenhower , Patton and Bradley and Hislop had a 4 hour meeting here, they knew about this before as one of them was operating the phone switchboard. From grilling German a POW they found out location of enemy guns adn destroyed them.
Sarrebourg and Severna in Alsace- Lorraine here they found hidden in the woods 2 crying German 16 year old soldiers there were another 3 kids who were wounded and they got them to the medics.
1944 December the coldest winter Europe had in decades. They were issued with Parkers, underwear and woolen socks, Insulated boots wool helmet linings and gloves and they always searched out abandoned farms or stables to shelter in. If it wasn't snowing it was raining.
The Battle of the Bulge they were informed that they were American Germans who had come to fight for Hitler had infiltrated them and they must be wary and use code words. They Germans were not as well outfitted as many had lost equipment. The German blitzkrieg had cut and surrounded the American in Bastogne. Then the sun came out and Allied planes took over and the destroyed the Germans.
1944 Christmas day, they spent the day connecting and repairing switchboards, circuit boards amplifiers, cables and phones. They were offered a cow barn that they could set up residence in by a family. In Alsace Larraine the people could speak German and one of their group had learn German from his grandmother. Joe fell in love with the daughter Monique and could speak to her in Italian as her mother was Italian.
Fenetrange, Alsace. He was wounded and in hospital and Monique visited him. After he recovered he and 2 others had been assigned to go to an officers school in England but they did not want to, however Jack was promoted to corporal. On March 17 they were getting ready to push into Germany and entered at Zwelbrucken in Rhineland-Palatinate, then on to Kaiserslautern and Ludwigshafen. Near Worms they found a cellar of bottles of Campaign and sent 16 trucks to load it up. By the time the had past threw Worms it was ashes.
The Germans had bombed the bridges but the Engineering corp was construction new ones.
The Air Corps had bombed Mannheim and Blenheim in anticipation of their arrival and at Darmstadt the saw hundreds of Germans marching towards them with white flags trying to surrender.
1945 March 27th Aschaffenburg Germany General Haislip sent US armored vehicles through the town tell the public to evacuate if they wanted to live, and then heavy artillery bombardment began, later planes flew over also dropping bombs. German adults were not keen on seeing US troops but children liked the Hershey bars that soldiers carried in their packs to give them quick energy. Many of the children were orphans.
Lohr and deeper in Bavaria to Bad Bruckenau where the found a dead soldier only 12 years old All dying young soldiers call for their mamas. However a retreating army could be a dangerous one.
Bamburg, Bavaria They could not get a smile out of the local population. A snipers bullet came from the church steeple and mortars' shot the top of the steeple off and a woman fell out. Erlangen, Bavaria. Nazi SS troops decided to fight to the death and airplanes bombed the SS troops and hospitals to rubble. Nuremburg Bavaria, the Donauworth, Swabia on the Danube River in southern Germany.
Dachau was in their zone and they were told that when they capture the notorious concentration camp nothing is to be disturbed. An international commission will come and investigate. The first thing when they got there was to ask" What is the smell?" an infantryman there said Welcome to Hell. They walked into the camp and saw dead women children , old men and babies beaten starved stabbed shot butchered and left to rot. There were open railway cattle trucks with dozens of lifeless bodies that looked like they had been starved to death emaciated mouths agape and eyes staring vacantly. One of the squad started snapping photos and said these will be historical one day get it on film and had spare film to give Joe. The inmates realized that the American's had taken over the camp and started coming out. "These are the ones well save. "the looked like walking dead.
Most of the regular German soldiers had fled before they came but they captured Nazi SS troops who remained vowing to fight to the death. They were lined up against the wall sneering and we executed them. One ran away and they chased him and caught him and pushed him in to the gate with the inmates and they all crowded around and beat him to death.
A special group of soldiers doctors, nurses were assigned to give the prisoners food drink and emergency medical treatment. Some died trying to eat other so weak the died within hours of liberation. The ones who had arrived recently were healthier . There were some prisoners speaking to a few US soldiers in Italian and he went to investigate. They told him about them about an infirmary where they found prisoners tied to steel tables, where medical experiments had been done on them.
Some German doctors refused to assist the dying Jewish prisoners and they were arrested and led away by the US military. There were cages with 80 vicious dogs mostly Dobermans and German Shepherds paced around they had been trained to kill inmates. Infantrymen came and shot them through the fence. They saw huge mounds of shoes as well as striped clothes. The next morning the whole town of Dachau was marched through the concentration camp, by the US military the people were emotionally shocked at the carnage. After a years combat we finally understood why destiny had called us to travel so far to a place abandoned by God.
Satzburg, Austria on the way there thousand of surrendering German troops carrying white flags, the entire army except for a few rogue SS. The Americans now had permission to turn on headlights. In Salzburg they were welcomed by the population. They took over a house that belonged to a Nazi officer and found the officer , wife son and daughter dead in the parlor. So they then moved to another Nazi officer house. Here they had to man the telephone companies in the different town suitable for the armies needs.
1945 May 5th President Harry Truman announced in an important speech that President FD Roosevelt had died. In Salzburg the SS capitulated on its own. In the Austrian Alps the decided to visit the Eagles nest Hitler hideaway nearby to Berchtesgaden, even though it had been repeated bombed was still intact. There in Hitler's study a red flag with a black Swastika and a boatsful painting of the Fuhrer. The Russians entering Austria did not get as good a reception as the Americans.
Joe now returned to Fenetrange with his new sergeant stripes on his arm hoping to marry Monique and take her to Alabama. Her parents showed him her grave. 3 German soldiers had come out of the forest raped and murdered her. American caught the Germans and killed them.
Fresh replacements were being sent out from the States to replace them, married soldiers were being sent home first. When he landed in Boston the people there were cheering and waving flags to welcome them home. On arriving at Fort McPherson , Georgia, the major said to him you were all over Europe did you ever run into Patton. Yea I used to see him every day. He then found out that "the army gave exceptions for only children and farmhands. You didn't know that ?" Children asked him if he killed any Germans. With his parents they pointed out that he was only 21.
50 years after the war these American were called the Greatest Generation that gave so much and asked so little from Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation in 1998.
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