Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:14 | They were driving to Southampton in blackout conditions when Art Fox was awakened and told he had to drive the truck. He was the designated assistant truck driver but he was never told and had no idea how to work all those gears. But he made it and soon the 312th Combat Engineers were moving across France. Waiting out the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, he attended a moving Christmas Mass.
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He was working towards a civil engineering degree when Art Fox entered the Army. His enlistment allowed him to finish the school year, but after after the Allies began the push across France, all the college students were taken into the infantry.
At Fort Jackson, preparing to go overseas, Art Fox managed to get into the engineering battalion of his division, which was great because he was an engineering student. The training was hard but he enjoyed beach time in South Carolina on the weekends with his newly muscled frame courtesy of Army basic training. Finally, they sailed.
He thought he had it made. Art Fox had found a box spring and he figured he would be comfortable for the rest of the war. It didn't work out. The conditions were tough that winter in Europe, sleeping on snow and bathing in a helmet. At least the cooks tried to keep them happy.
He liked the Belgians because they would actually let you speak your bad French to them. What he did not like was all the mud on the chewed up roads. Art Fox was a Draftsman but he became a construction foreman, digging ditches to drain the water. At the Rhine, he was surprised to be included in a reconnaissance mission, but it was a rewarding experience.
They met little resistance and moved fast across Germany. It was Art Fox's job to reconnoiter every night and make updated maps detailing road conditions. On one of these missions, a wrong turn sent the team right into a town full of Germans.
They were already drinking plenty of liberated German wine and the end of the war was one more excuse. Art Fox relates the tale of a rail station full of armed German soldiers who were amused by the Americans changing a flat while they watch. He got a quick visit to Paris before he sailed home, financed by American cigarettes.
There were two memorable things aboard ship on the Atlantic crossing according to Art Fox. The crap games and the food, both on the way to Europe and on the way home.
Home from the war, Art Fox was able to return to school and finish his civil engineering degree. He also had some work to do when he found out his girlfriend was engaged to a Marine. Writing letters home had given him a taste for writing, so he set out to somehow use that skill in the engineering field.
While waiting in France for passage home, Art Fox was assigned the task of drawing up a map detailing the unit's movement from Le Havre to Czechoslovakia. This he displays, while lamenting that at no point on that map did the USO catch up to them.
Twice he was approved for Officer Candidate School and twice he never got to the top of the list. Art Fox didn't like that but he did like the unit he deployed with. Great soldiers and high esprit de corps. His letters home reflected that and one was so inspiring, it was read by Raymond Massey on CBS radio.
