Published May 15, 2000
Hendersonville Times-News

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20000515/EXTRAS02/5150321/0/search

Swept from the farm to the field of battle

By Ken Worthen
The life of a farmer is not an easy one: Get up before the sun, work long hard hours, go to bed tired, begin the cycle over again.
For 22 years, Homer Whitted had every intention of making farming his life’s work.
Except for an occasional vacation, Whitted had never strayed far from Canton.
On March 9, 1942, he hugged his Mom and Dad good-bye, boarded a Trailways bus and headed for Fort Bragg.
“I never looked back,” he said.
“After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States began drafting boys to beef up the Army, including me. I arrived at Fort Bragg on the 9th, took the oath and got my clothing issue on the 10th and on the 11th was put on a train, along with a whole bunch of other guys, pointed in the direction of Fort Polk, La. This is where I got my first taste of hell.”
Boot camp is known for testing a man and helping him find out just what he is made of.
“Besides marching, we practiced firing field artillery, fighting the enemy and bugs. The mosquitoes were so thick they had to stand in line to bite me, after the red bugs got their piece, of course. The only way we could get any relief was to take cold showers.”
For 11 months, Whitted and the rest of his platoon fought the heat, the bugs and the homesickness.
“I didn’t think it could get much hotter. Then we were sent to the Mojave Desert in California for training to fight in North Africa. The worst part of the whole desert experience was having to kill rattlesnakes in the area where we had to sleep at night.”
Gun crewman Whitted was assigned to the 434th Field Artillery Battalion.
“I was a gun crewman in an open-topped tank operating the 105 mm light artillery weapon.”
He also trained to shoot the .30-caliber carbine and was rated expert with the .50-caliber machine gun.
The boys of the 434th emerged finally emerged from the endless sea of sand, gung-ho and ready for anything. After six long months, they were being shipped out – back east to Fort Benning, Ga.
After more training, the GIs boarded the Queen Mary in New York’s harbor June 6, 1944, D-Day for the boys already across the Atlantic.
“It took about six days to get from America to Glasgow, Scotland, where we went to a camp there and began getting all our equipment together and loaded up on an LST (a large, flat-bottom boat used for hauling large equipment and troops to shore).
“We crossed the English Channel and were put to shore at Normandy Beach. There were about six tanks, several half tracks, some jeeps and other trucks in our battalion.
“We headed out after the Germans, passing the pillboxes they used to hide in and pepper our landing craft and soldiers just a few days before. We could look all around us and see the remains of the artillery used against our men. There were charred bunkers and even German prisoners held in makeshift holding compounds. You could tell by the look on some of the American soldiers’ faces the German prisoners were lucky to be alive.”
Within a day, the Americans had caught up with the enemy.
“We had some pretty fierce battles till we finally got ’em beat down a little and they started retreating,” Whitted said. “They moved pretty fast across France but didn’t seem to want to give up Verdun. For about three weeks they put up a pretty good fight, but we took the town – again.”
Whitted earned four battle stars, one for fighting in Chartres during August 1944 and another for the Battle of Verdun in September.
Fierce fighting, bitter cold “Ardennes, during the Battle of the Bulge, was some of the worst fighting I think we had to deal with,” Whitted recalled. “Not just because of the fierce fight the Germans put up, but the winter weather conditions were almost unbearable.
“We had to dig out a place in the snow to sleep and use pine brush to keep from having to lie in the mud. It helped with insulation, too. I know of several times we went at least 48 hours without getting a wink of sleep.”
The waist-deep snow made traveling slow. In the fog and dense forest, soldiers weren’t sure what they were shooting at. They used tracer bullets to see the line of fire.
“The Army couldn’t send any planes in because the weather was so bad,” he said, “but when the snow finally started to let up, the planes were able to come in and bomb the heck out of the place, which started the Germans’ retreat. By the time the planes got to us, we were so close to running out of ammunition I really don’t think we could have lasted more than another day.”
Once resupplied, the GIs marched on toward the Rhine River.
“From there on, we kept driving them on back into Germany and then went on across the Rhine River. We stayed on the river there and guarded it while the engineers built a pontoon bridge so the troops could get a foothold on the other side. We drove the enemy back across the Elba River right out of Berlin and that’s where, in May 1945, they surrendered, right on the banks of the Elba River.
“I think during the whole thing we only lost about seven men from my company,” he said, although he saw evidence of the loss of life near Metz, France, in September 1944.
“There were so many bodies there they had them stacked like cordwood,” he said.

‘Roll Out the Barrel’

The fighting in Metz was fierce. Germans shelled the GIs’ position.
“We set up camp a little closer to Metz. About two hours after dark, the Germans shelled our gun position. One round dropped about 10 feet to the side of my tank and exploded. We had this semi-fixed ammunition set in the side of the tank, and when this round exploded it sent shrapnel through the tank’s half-inch armor and set off charges in two of those cases, causing projectiles to pop up and drop right in the tank.
“I came so close to cashing it in there, it really shook me up.
“Of all the battles I fought in, I’d say the one that sticks out in my mind the most was when we fought in Metz. Some of the roads were so tight in this town that when we tried to turn the tanks we knocked off corners of buildings. It’s a wonder we didn’t demolish the town just from driving through it.”
As many GIs learned, it was either kill or be killed.
“The hardest part, emotionally, was knowing I had taken another man’s life,” he said. “I never actually saw one of my rounds hit and kill one of the enemy’s men, but I did see the bodies as we advanced. Granted, we became hardened to the fact that it’s either them or us, but it still takes something out of you when you know what you’ve done.”
The 434th Battalion was assigned to the 7th Armored Division, whose motto was “Roll out the Barrel.”
The 7th Armored Division spearheaded Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army.
“‘Blood and Guts’ they called him,” Whitted says of Patton. “I had the privilege to meet him just one time. He knew how to get his men’s attention. He was almost mean, yet I really believe he loved every one of his men. It’s too bad he had to die the way he did, being killed in a jeep accident nowhere near the fight.”
In 1944, according to a “memories” book printed by the 7th Armored Division, during the month of August alone, Whitted’s division liberated no fewer than 150 towns with a combined population of approximately 350,000 people, traveling 609 miles at an average of 29 miles per day.
During the three-week drive, they consumed 575,000 gallons of gasoline, 14,000 gallons of oil, 575 tons of rations and 660,000 gallons of water. They captured 13 tanks, a large assortment of guns and vehicles and 3,968 prisoners.
In 1945, the 7th Armored Division was awarded the “Medal of Verdun.”
Whitted was discharged from the Army in November 1945. He met Harriet Hill Dalton late in 1946 and made her his bride in September 1948. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1999 and have lived in the same house in East Flat Rock for more than 50 years.
They have two sons, Morris Dalton and Kenneth Whitted, and five grandchildren.
Whitted was a local farmer until 1951, when he went to work for the Olin Corp. in Pisgah Forest, retiring in 1985.