Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
6:35 | It was the coldest winter in twenty five years. Harold Ford was a mortar squad leader along the Rhine just before the Battle of the Bulge broke out. When it started, his division was left to hold a line that had been manned by seven divisions. The others headed north to join the fray and, meanwhile, three SS divisions headed his way.
Keywords : Harold Ford Rhine Battle of the Bulge Gambsheim France cold winter George Patton Schutzstaffel (SS) German tracers machine gun mortar squad frozen feet
Like many other young men, Harold Ford joined the ASTP program that sent draftees to college to study engineering. That lasted exactly one semester before the Army decided that it needed infantry more than engineers. It wasn't long before he was at the front line on the Rhine, where it was eerily quiet, except for that time he tried to see across the river.
In the fight to retake Gambsheim, Harold Ford first had to dodge some friendly fire, then had to hide from some German tanks. With two others from his mortar squad, he hunkered down with some wounded GI's and a dozen French civilians in the cellar of a train station. They hid for hours, but, eventually, there came a sound from the top of the stairs.
He had frozen feet and pneumonia and now he was a POW. Harold Ford recovered in two German hospitals and was sent to a camp, where he was well treated by the guards, but at the mercy of a brutal system.
The building was big and old and cold. The coal ration for the week lasted about thirty minutes and POW Harold Ford spent a lot of time in his bunk under a blanket. When the front approached the camp, he joined a long column of prisoners marching southward.
It was April of 1945 and thousands of American POW's were on the march as their German captors made them move in advance of the approaching front. The guards began deserting and Harold Ford was free on the road, but he went into the camp in Munich because there was food in there. Then, one day, came the sound of American machine guns.
When Patton's army liberated the prison camp in Munich, the feeling for Harold Ford was indescribable. He had only been a prisoner for a few months, but he had dwindled to about a hundred pounds. He began to make up for this on the trip home.
He had been a POW in Germany, but after returning home, Harold Ford was still on active duty. After an interesting interlude as an MP, he got orders to prepare to go to the Pacific. Apparently, the Japanese heard that he was coming and promptly surrendered.
