(gentle music) (exciting music) - [Interviewer] You went in the military and you hadn't even graduated from high school, is that right?

- No, sir.

I asked for a deferment to finish my junior year in high school.

I was granted that, and then on the 13th of June I went to Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and I was inducted into the service there.

It was the first time I had ever been in a city larger than Mankato.

I was a country hick.

From there, then I was sent to Camp Callan, California between the communities of Del Mar and La Jolla.

There was an artillery camp there and a 90 millimeter, an aircraft artillery camp, and there was a gate or a fence between our camp and another camp, which was called Camp Matthews, which was a marine training base.

We shared the infiltration courts, the rifle range, and some of the other facilities, although we never intermixed with the marine training unit.

I was appointed to an M7 director, which controlled, by tracking the target, I controlled the fuse settings of four 90 millimeter guns, and this way, the information I got by tracking it was transferred into this fuse cutter, and then upon the time when they were going to fire, the shell was taken out of the fuse cutter, put in a breach, shot up and fired, which was allowed three seconds dead time until it was fired.

It had the ability to fire at 30 degrees, approximately 10 miles.

We fired HE, high explosive.

Then also we had armor piercing and point detonating.

The armor piercing was a separate shell.

Should we fire onto a tank on the ground, we used that.

I trained there in Camp Callan, and then I got some boils called carbuncles.

I lost part of my training so that when the training was finished, there were a few things I had not completed, so my unit at that time was sent to the CBI, and then in turn I was sent to Fort Bliss, Texas, and I went through another training, desert training, although the African campaign had at that time come to an end and it was quite going on in Italy and Sicily.

We did a training there which was basically desert training, and then from there I was sent out east to Fort George G. Meade, and then eventually shipped out of Boston up the east coast and across the North Atlantic to Liverpool.

There I got my first taste of the war.

As we landed and were unloading there at the dock, we heard these funny buzzings, and the dock people told us those are Hitler's buzz bombs.

Then we went in and we did some physical training there.

I got see the 101st Airborne, the 82nd Airborne.

They were always on double time, always.

I was so happy that we did plain marching.

Those boys, uphill or downhill, were double time.

Then...

I was a replacement in batteries.

456 Automatic Weapons Battalion Battery C had gone to make the initial invasion, hit a mine, lost two thirds of all personnel and two thirds of all equipment.

They were pulled back.

We regrouped and I became a part of that.

We went over to the beach... at the Utah beach.

The beach had been established, but the infantry was working at hedge roads, so that we were just a short way into the beach.

We did not get to set our guns up because much of the fields were mined and we didn't dare go in there, so we remained in column for maybe a week, and then came the bombing of Saint-Lo, which was something like 3,000 B-24s and B-17s came over there and bombed the city of Saint-Lo.

That was the German, very strong supply depot, and they used that to strengthen the resistance at the beach.

Once bombing of Saint-Lo was over, now General Patton was in England with a makeshift army.

Cardboard airbags that looked like tanks and guns.

- [Interviewer] Make-believe stuff.

- It was a big play.

Hitler swallowed it.

He believed it, that the invasion, this was merely a sham, and the big invasion was going to happen there.

Then at the bombing of Saint-Lo, General Patton was given Third Army.

We were transferred from First Army to Third Army, and I was with them to the end of the war.

I was with the Third Army.

I have five major battle campaign that I was involved in.

That was Normandy, Southern France, Northern France, Belgium, the Ardennes.

- [Interviewer] All the way up to the Battle of the Bulge, from what I understand.

- Yeah.

- [Interviewer] That also.

- As an anti-aircraft unit, we were not assigned to any one.

We were sometime with one corps then transferred to another corps, wherever we were needed.

- [Interviewer] Could you say how many aircraft do you think that you participated in shooting down?

- [Dennis] We were credited with something like 36.

We had quite a number of possibles, because some of them limped off awful bad.

- [Interviewer] And most of them were ME-109?

- [Dennis] 109s and 190s, a few 190s.

They're harder to take down.

- [Interviewer] The 190s are?

- [Dennis] Yeah.

- [Interviewer] Because they're faster?

- [Dennis] Faster, and they did eventually arm the cockpits.

- [Interviewer] How about bombers?

Did you get a chance to shoot at very many of the bombers?

- [Dennis] No, we left that to the 90s.

- [Interviewer] Okay, the big guys.

- I think it was in Belgium.

We were moving forward and we came to a halt because there was a swift river, and the Germans were on the other side, well dug in, and as our engineers attempted to put a pontoon bridge across, they were defeated immediately.

Artillery was called in and just really hammered that other side.

It looked like they were going to back off.

We had our gun positioned on the higher ground overlooking that pontoon attempt.

One of the guys on our, we had quad 50s, four 50s on one mount, and he was our spotter at that time.

He saw that P-50 or that P-47, and he says, "Friendly aircraft in the right field of fire," so nobody really paid attention.

And then all of a sudden it made a nice left wing and came down.

I saw on the rudder was a swastika, and I said, "That's Heidi, that's German."

Nobody paid any attention to what I said.

They said, "P-47."

No one was on the gun.

There was no way I could get over to the gun in that time.

I took an M-1, I fired full eight rounds at the canopy of that P-47.

It went down and behind the trees.

I have no idea if I did any damage or not.

- [Interviewer] At least you scared them off.

That's the good news.

He didn't come back.

That's the good news.

- The P-47 had heavy armament, very heavy.

I've often thought, my little old 180, 30-06s aren't going to do all that much damage, but I attempted.

I got Herman early in France.

It was raining, bad weather.

We were going to set our 40 outside.

It's a very small darf, a small community.

The civilians had all been evacuated.

There was nobody there, but the Germans had used it as a defensive because they could hide.

Well, but now they had been chased out and we were going to set up our 40.

I and two other guys went in there to make sure that there was no German infantry in there.

And as we walked, as the Germans retreated, they pulled their artillery out and they made tracks in the mud.

And my goodness, this little puppy was a survivor out of that community, and he followed us and he was walking in that track.

I saw him and I kept going, and I looked back and he was still there.

Then the third time I looked back, he was closer to me and he couldn't get out of there.

He had just little short legs.

I picked him up, I put him in my raincoat pocket.

And then we checked it out and said well, it's a good place to set up, and so we did.

We adopted him after a week or so, and everybody was feeding Herman from his own rations.

He was just the happiest little pup.

Finally Johnny McCarthy, I asked him one time.

I said, "Well, what are we gonna call him?"

"Oh," he says, he was from the Bronx.

He says, "Oh, we'll call him Hoiman the Goiman."

And that became his name, Herman.

I says, "Herman is not a German, he's a Frenchman."

We called it bed-check Charlie.

At night, that JU-88 or some old Heinkel would come flying over and harassing certain anti-personnel stuff, and it was popping all over.

But Herman knew that before it got.

We had a call.

- [Interviewer] His name was Herman?

- Yeah, we had a call from C Battery headquarters.

There is a possibility of enemy aircraft in your area coming from the south.

And we said, "We know about it already."

Well, how do you know?

Herman is down under the gun.

He went to hide.

When the war was over, it ended on the 9th of May.

Our outfit was totally disassembled.

Our guns were mast balled.

They took the breechblocks out on the 8th of May already, so we couldn't fire at all.

I was assigned to Bad Tolz, Germany, General Patton's forward echelon.

Munich was his rear echelon and Bad Tolz was a forward echelon.

I was appointed as a Jeep driver to take officers to wherever they were assigned, Innsbrook, Munich, to go to Frankfurt or to wherever.

I had the chance to drive the Audubon many, many miles.

I was waiting for an officer who was assigned to some place to go, and I was waiting in there and I had my dog Herman in the Jeep.

An officer brought General Patton's dog, Willie, out for whatever reasons there are.

He was out there, and my Herman saw him, jumped out of the Jeep and ran right over there, and they were just going around and around.

I ran over there and I grabbed Herman.

No blood was shed, none.

He was showing them who was the alpha.

The officer said to me, "Soldier, is that your dog?"

And I said, "Yes, sir."

And he said, well, pardon me, but he said, "That is a damn good dog, but you better take care of him."

I did, I took Herman back into the Jeep and I took my tent rope and I tied it around his neck and I tied it to the Jeep, and Herman did not leave that anymore, and that was the last I ever saw of Willie.

Differdange, Luxembourg, there was a young lad by the name of Paul Moyer.

He would come up to our gun position.

He was very, very well educated.

He spoke English, French and German, or the Luxembourg German.

He could speak them all.

His English was very good, because they were taught that in school.

He came up there.

- [Interviewer] How old was he then, when you first met him?

- I'll tell you, he was between maybe 12 and 13.

He came to visit us.

I have pictures that he took of our gun crew.

You'd never take a picture of our guns or anything like that.

You can't do that, but he did take pictures of what's personal.

Then we got moved out of Luxembourg there in the late fall and moved up back into Belgium, and when the Germans had that breakthrough, the bulge, then our outfit was pretty well split and we got a lot of supplies wherever we were able to get them.

But in the meantime, we had given Paul treats, powdered milk, powdered potatoes.

You remember the D bar, the D ration?

I gave him that, things like that.

One day he came to me, he says, "Would you honor my mother and me to supper?"

You know, ahbendbrot, a German supper.

Well, Johnny McCarthy, my friend, he said, "No, I'm not going to go."

I said, "Paul, I will come."

And I went down there.

Well, at that time you had to have your rifle, your ammo belt with a bayonet and the first aid kit and your helmet and the whole schmear.

I went there armed like that.

I went in, and on the mantle of the fireplace was a man in the Wehrmacht uniform.

I said, "What am I getting into?"

And I asked him, "Paul," I says, "Who is that?"

He says, "My father.

He's in the Wehrmacht."

He said he worked for the railroad, and when the Germans came in, they took him, put him in the Wehrmacht, gave him a uniform, sent him to Berlin, and he was working on the railroad in Berlin.

And I said, "Do you hear from him?"

"No," he says, "We don't."

But she served, the mother came out, served some of the food, and I ate, and there was meat.

I said, "Where did your mother get meat?"

He says, "I made a 22 rifle."

He said, "I have ammunition much," but he says, "I shoot a rabbit."

And so we had rabbit there, we had powdered potatoes, and we ate there and it was good.

Then his mother came out once more with a loaf, and it looked like dark bread.

She had to cut it, and there were two pieces.

Paul gave me one and he took one.

Now, she remained in the kitchen all the time.

She would never say a word.

And I ate it.

I said, "Paul, where did your mother get chocolate?"

He says, "That's from the candy bar you gave me."

She mixed it in the bread dough.

Then I ate that and I said, "Now Paul, I will go now."

Then I left.

Then shortly after that, we got pulled out, and so when we got to go back after our stay had just about ended, then the nephew, my wife's nephew that we were with, he says, "I want to see the Alps."

I says, "What do you think we're in?

The French Alps."

I said, "These are the Alps."

No, I want to.

I says, "All right, maybe we should go to.

(speaking foreign language) That would be the Alps."

So we drove, took off, and that's when we drove near Differdange, and I says, "Greg, let's turn in here.

I really would like to stop at Differdange," and we did.

We had a little lunch there.

At noon, everything closes down.

School's closed, the bank closes, except the cafes.

They will feed the people.

We were eating there, and right to the tables aside of us were two young ladies.

We conversed in English, and finally one of the ladies said, "Are you American?"

And yes.

She goes, "What are you doing here?"

I said, "I would like to make an inquiry about an individual I knew back in 1944 and '45.

She said, "Well, why don't you come to my office?"

She was a lady in the office at a college.

It was called the Luxembourg College of Miami.

That was the name of it.

Anyway, I went to her office and she asked, "Well now, who are you looking for?"

She got on the phone.

I said, "Paul Moyer."

She called the operator and asked if there was a Paul Moyer.

And finally she got, yeah.

She says, "Maybe this is not the Paul that you are looking for."

And so she handed me the phone and I picked it up and I said, "Hello, Paul?"

"Yeah," he says.

Do you remember Dennis Boldt?

Dennis Boldt?

Yeah.

I said, "Well Paul, can I come see you?"

Yeah, come.

I said, "Well, where are you?"

He said, "The same house, where I have always been."

Generation after generation, the family stayed at that place there.

I said, "I can't remember where that place was."

And the lady says, "I know where it is.

You go down that cobblestone street to a certain house number and go up those steps, and that's the place."

And we did that.

I walked up the steps and I took that knocker, door opened, there stood an older man.

I said, "Paul?"

Yeah, come in Dennis, come in.

So we went in.

On the table, I knew where we ate was a big round hardwood table, was a portfolio open with our pictures.

I told my wife, "Come look, I'm not fooling you."

- [Interviewer] Wow, what a day.

- I met Paul once more.

- [Interviewer] Wow, and how long ago was that?

What year was that?

- '99.

- [Interviewer] 1999.

- I was 18 when I went in, and on the way home by the Bermuda, my birthday's on Christmas Day, and I was out on the deck in my shorts.

I had never been in such a place before on Christmas.

That day I was 21.

I was legal to vote and I could buy a beer.

- [Interviewer] And you were on your way out?

- On my way home.

On New Year's Day, I saw the Statue of Liberty, 1946.

I went to a reunion, C-Bat reunion in Grand Junction, Colorado.

I am the only survivor of our gun crew.

Our sergeant squad and Johnny McCarthy and Angelos and Toro, some of them, my old friends, they are no more.

I'm the only one.

- [Interviewer] Well, obviously you did your job well because we won the war because of guys like you, and we say thank you, and a lot of people don't say that enough.

- Well, I'll tell you, the real heroes are back there.

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