Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:49 | Everyone at Texas A&M took military courses and Ed Parker was no different. Electing to stay in ROTC, he received his degree and reported to Camp Wolters for infantry training. Then he was sent to Motor Maintenance school despite the fact that he barely knew which end of a vehicle the engine was in.
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Ed Parker left his division to go to Advanced Officers Training school at Fort Benning. After he returned to his unit and before he could go overseas, he went on desert maneuvers training to fight Rommel. After that situation changed, he was sent on mountain maneuvers in preparation to move on Germany through the Alps. Guess what happened?
He arrived in England just before D-Day, but it was three months later until Ed Parker waded off a landing craft onto French soil. He was detached and put in charge of a convoy and, for a while, was part of the Red Ball Express, the famous ad hoc Army supply system for the European theater. He heard his first artillery and he saw the annihilated city of Saint-Lo.
Ed Parker is still shaking his head over what he heard General George Patton say in a speech, and over how accurate the famous movie was. Shortly after that, he faced his first combat, his nervous stomach not helped by the green eggs he had for breakfast. Unfazed, he was ready to take Metz, a city which had never been taken in battle.
They lost a lot of men in the battle to take Metz, recalls Ed Parker. Shortly after that, he was nearly killed himself when a Screaming Mimi rocket knocked him down, but did not injure him. The constant diet of C-rations got the men to thinking. Why don't we eat that old milk cow that's hanging around?
It was during the Battle of Remagen that Ed Parker distinguished himself in action, enough so that he was awarded a Bronze Star. He shrugs it off, saying many more did just as much as he did. He couldn't believe the British troops he encountered stopped to make tea, but there they were. A German flag made it back home with him, but not the Luger he found. The Germans probably reclaimed that.
His unit was pretty beat up in the battle to take Metz, so they were back in a holding position during the Battle of the Bulge. Ed Parker noticed that most of the German captives were either very old or very young. They were just about defeated. On leave in Paris, he did not get a warm feeling from the French people he encountered.
They were promised a steak dinner on the ship home and Ed Parker was really looking forward to that. Not getting that steak is the primary thing he remembers from that trip. Looking back on the end of the war, he has some tough words for those who believe we never should have used the atomic bomb.
It's terrible at first, but the longer you are in combat, the more callous you get. Like being keyed up at the beginning of a football game, but settled in by the half. That's how Ed Parker describes his experience. He also reveals how his wife could keep up with who had died, even though the mail was censored.
