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Robert Braun

Robert Braun was a member of Unit 445, Division

8, Company A as a gunner. He trained in Texas,
North Carolina, Virginia, and New Jersey. He was
part of many battles including several in Liverpool
and on Normandy beach.

How did you become involved in the war? Did you enlist or were you drafted?
Both. Between my brother and I, one of us had to go from our family. Because we were farmers, one of us
got to stay and help with the farm. I volunteered to go.

How old were you and what year did you enter the military?
I was 21 and it was 1942. [I served from] December 1942 to December 1945.
Were you in the European or Pacific Theater of the war?
European.

Where were you stationed?

I wasnt really stationed; we were always on the move.

Can you share with us what an average day was like?

That is a difficult question. We had training days and other days. Its hard to say what an average day was
like because there wasnt one.

Were you in any battles during the war?

Yes, they are all on this sheet. The Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Central Europe, and [other]
Ground Combat [battles]. I was a gunner in the 8th Infantry Division and we were assigned to that.

Did you lose a lot of weight over there?

Basic training, I put on 30 pounds and I lost it all on the ten days I was on the boat coming home. Thats
what stress does to you. Thats how much it meant to the physical person.

Did you take a boat over to Europe or were you flown?

I took a boat from New York, but I had my basic training in four or five different places. We started out in
Camp Wallace, Texas. From there, we went to North Carolina. Then we went to Virginia and New Jersey.
We got to spend a week on Cape Cod. Then we went back to New Jersey and Fort Hamilton. So we had
training, all over.

Where did you land in Europe?

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Liverpool, England.
Where did you go after that?
The administrators know where youre going, but they dont tell you anything. They dont say, pack
your bags, were going here and going there. You just go. You dont know if youre in Africa or in
Australia. They never once told us how to shoot and
hen we landed in
kill somebody.

Where did you see the most battles?

Liverpool, they had to
When we landed in England at Liverpool, they had a
camp in somebodys field. It was just a plain shed- a
building with a plain slanted roof, four walls. Each of
these buildings might hold 200 people, or maybe only
75. Anyway, from Liverpool we went to this field that had these barracks in it and we spent a couple
weeks there to get the climate. We got there in March, and it felt like May there. The weather was like
a spring day. In fact, the grass was green. We might have been there a week or ten days, or something
like that, and then they moved us to separate locations along the English Channel. It was different
because we were always a gun crew. We were assigned to a gun on a hill overlooking a bay off the
English Channel where the ships could get in. We were given a gun there.

England at

You were in England at first?

I think we landed there in March. From March until June, we were there for the invasion. We stayed
behind because we were the anti-aircraft landing operation. When they all got over there, we went
over the channel into France.
Did you sleep when you could sleep? Did you have to take shifts at the gun?
We were assigned hours of duty at the gun. Three on and six off, around the clock.

Then in June, you were moved farther into France?

Its hard to describe the whole operation. It was seven or eight thousand men. We were just a stick in
the mud and you go along for the ride.

Was it always by train?

I guess we went by truck. I cant quite remember. After Liverpool, we did get on a train and we went
to this camp far away west. When you were traveling, the train might have gone five miles and then
might sit for two hours. It wasnt just straight through. Even when we got straightened out in France
and we made a move, we didnt go. We went as a gun crew. We had two trucks and two guns and that
was the gun crew. On occasion the whole works would meet together and get moving; after the
invasion in France it was captured. We landed in Normandy. On the peninsula, the land below
Normandy was called Bretagne. Bretagne was where they landed in WWI and the French and the
Germans had built shore fortresses to protect the English Channel. When the other troops went into
Germany, we stayed behind in our positions. We took Bretagne and the Germans had replacements
three stories down deep. They had their big shore guns. After it was captured they killed a lot of the
troops there. They had good protection with concrete six feet thick. After the Germans were all
eliminated, they let us go into this part of this fortress to see it. From Bretagne, we went back to
Normandy- central town called Rennes. It was kind of a dispatch center. From there we went to
Luxembourg.
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About what time was this?
September. This whole process took a long time.

hese houses were the

houses they had a
thousand years ago. Straw
roofs, sod, cows in one

Did you lose anybody in your gun crew?

There were a few that got killed, but we were
lucky. What the Germans had done, they were
arranged, these shore guns that were set up there
in that fortress to protect the English Channel.
Imagine how big they were, they were bigger than some of the battle ships. When they reversed them
and were shooting back at us, and when the shells went through the sky, they sounded like a freight
train. They were going 60 miles an hour. You couldnt see it, but you heard it. You never know when
theyd explode. We were showered with the shrapnel at the end of the explosion.

What did you do when you got to Luxembourg?

They moved us on the borderline when we were in a place like Kellner. Out in the country, youve
seen old pictures of the people who lived in the crossroads and went out in the field to their horses and
animals and so on. We were in the crossroads. We were there two or three weeks. Thats when we
were introduced to what is called the buzz-bomb. That thing went through the sky like a freight train
too, but we could see it.

You guys would be in the same field?

They gave us a house to move in, but in France they didnt let us go into a house. In Luxembourg we
did. These houses were the houses they had a thousand years ago. Straw roofs, sod, cows in one
room, and the next room was the kitchen. Thats how they kept warm, with the animal heat. In the
location in Luxembourg that Im telling you about, we were in September or October. It was at a
position where they were getting ready for the Battle of the Bulge. This was an area that they were
well aware of. They were Luxembourg and pro-German, which was all right. One of them buzz
bombs exploded quarter mile down the road and it left a hole that you could drop a house in. In the
middle of the night when it explodes, it makes a big noise and everybody wakes up. We did walk
down to see where that thing blew up. The hole. And it wasnt meant to be there, it happened with
malfunctions. From that part of Luxembourg and we were only about 35 miles from about and I
remember that number real well from a real nice modern up-to-date new hotel called the Wiltz. It
was real nice and when we got to where we were, we had to go right through the middle of this
beautiful place. Here we end up in sticks. The roads went in three different directions. At one time
there was some business; there was a building [here and] there and it could have had some business
there. One had a business when we were there and it had a bar room. We could go in there and buy
whatever. The young lady was the barmaid and she spoke enough English where we could talk to her.
And the closest of our troops were seven miles away. Seven miles from where we were. Thats how
war was.

After Luxembourg where did you go?

Then we went out to what was called the Virgin Course, heading towards the direction of the northern
front. The front was divided into three parts: the American, British, and supposedly neutral France.
The British had the northern segment there on the coast on which was the location of the German
rocket center where they developed German bombs. It was run by Warner von Brahms. In the
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meantime, there was the Battle of the Bulge at Christmas time. We were, at that time, assigned to the
British commander.

You worked with the British then, or along side them?

The only thing that was British was the communications. Telephones. We had telephones. The
telephones that they had [were] a string and a wire. All these gun crews had to speak to headquarters.
The telephones were in a box about this wide about
this high and about that deep. They were tan and
he only thing that
leather and everybody had a telephone. It couldve
was British was the
had a strap. Everything was done by telephone.

After Christmas, how long were you there working

with the British then?
We didnt see any. We never even saw them. But thats the way it was supposed to be. I was there to
the end. We got within 30 or 35 miles of each other and thats at the end. Three times in one day wed
dig a hole and theyd need approval. We did them by hand. They were big around but maybe 3 feet
deep with a shovel. Imagine how much fun that was? A good deal of the holes we had to dig with a
pick, because of the rock.
Did you guys ever run out of rations?
No; if we didnt make a move during the day, wed get raw food. A chunk of meat to cook, some kind
of vegetable. Other than that, it was fish. Wed have one guy assigned to do the cooking. That was
his whole job. That was a good job. Headquarters would bring it in. There werent semis. Keep this
in mind; the war was going three years already. There were no cows. There were no horses. There
were no dogs. They had killed everything. The most terrible thing you could ever dream of were how
Germans did all their killing. It was all wrong, all wrong. There was nothing living left. The only
thing that I had seen once in Germany, all of Germany was a deer, a wild deer. It was on the road, a
little bigger than a shepherd dog. People were starving to death. I saw German people standing there
that you wondered how they could hold their clothes on. They were that starved to death, hoping
troops or somebody would throw them scraps. And you pretended not to see them; it was a war.
Was there a lot of physical and emotional stress for you?
No.

Only when you had to dig the hole, right?

That wasnt stress. The stress was between the troops and the officers. They had to see that we did dig
the hole. That we didnt sit down and we didnt screw around. The emotional stress wasnt with the
enemy, it was within the unit. The challenge was to have to dig three holes in a day and then barely
get set in it and have to move on to another one. The officers had to make sure we did it. They could
be in a field a ways away and theyd have binoculars watching us. Two officers would be in charge of
four gun crews. The same officers.
Did you lose many people in your gun crew?
Not from enemy fire, although the unit supposedly lost them they never told us.

How many gunnery groups were in that unit?

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A battalion had 32 gun crews, about 8 gun crews, and 64 guns. Im not talking about rifles; Im
talking about the big guns. Each of us had a rifle. But I had two. The one they issued I wrapped up
real good and tight and threw it in the back of the truck. Then I picked one up from a dead soldier and
thats the one I used. You never knew when some officer would come along and inspect your gun. So
I showed them the one I had wrapped up. We had a big truck and there was plenty of room for it.

As you went along, did you come across other battles?

Right away when we landed is when I picked it
he emotional stress
off the dead soldier. From the activity of the
crossing and getting into France, thats where
wasn t with the enemy,
the worst was. Like I said, taking that fortress
it was within the unit.
in Bretagne, there was a lot of activity, a lot of
dead soldiers. To start was the airborne
company and they landed first. They landed,
hanging in trees all over. Thats just how things work out; you dont know how to explain it. To make
a story out of it, we lost one guy right away. He was given to us as a replacement for some reason, I
dont remember. On the boat going over, he was assigned to our gun crew. This guy comes along and
hes the big shot, smart alecky. He always challenged authority. We were sent up in France and made
an overnight stop for something. I could see the place yet; it was a country farm road where some kind
of battle had been. There were a lot of dead guys there. This mouthy guy, he takes a German rifle by
the barrel and smashes it down and breaks the stock so it couldnt be used. And it went off and got
him right in the guts. It didnt kill him right away. They got him back to England and he died there.
But he was plain careless; he wasnt smart. And he was
a replacement. He wasnt an original. In fact, I wasnt
an original either; I had come along two months after it
started. After basic training, you got the unit you were
assigned to. The guys that took basic training were
probably not in your unit.

You werent with anybody from basic training?

The guy across the street. I was A battery and he was
B battery, or C, that close. The draft had left here on
December 22. It was the largest draft that ever went out
of Wisconsin Rapids. It was the last draft of 21 year olds, and the first draft of 18 year olds.

Were you ever injured in the war?

No. Not as an offensive injury. I was injured as a result of the whole thing. I contracted arthritis. I
blame it on the chemicals they put in the food they cooked. The chemicals your system resisted and
couldnt function. Just like a person breaking out. Its an alien to your body and your body is going to
suffer the negative results.

What were your feelings about the war?

Terrible. Theres so much to answer that. One of mans failures is to allow war to happen. Then we
could go a little further and we have to understand its an act of God. Its punishment cursing us for
not following his word. If you want to include that. If youre not a Christian, it doesnt count, and if
youre a Christian, then you have to feel guilt for it.
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When you returned home, did it seem as if America had changed drastically?
Thats hard to describe. You have to remember that at the same time you went from 20 years old to
25. You had a different outlook on what earth should be. You were only half developed. You had to
start looking at it as a 25 year old and not a 20 year old. So were the changes a normal thing or was it
because of the war, I dont know. Thats a
hard one to decide.
ne of man s failures

Did you come home on leave at all in

between your service?
Twice. I think it was twice.

is
to allow war to happen.

For how long?

It was maybe a week, maybe two. I know I was home at least once. Once was from Washington. I
have to think it was twice that I was home.

Did you get off the train in town here still?

Yes. From Milwaukee. I was discharged out of northern Illinois. There was a camp near
Northwestern University. I was in Illinois for two or three days.

How often today do you think about your war experiences?

They come up more today than they did in the past fifty years. We lived without it for many, many
years. Now we see the same thing happening again and you have to reflect. Were all making the
same mistakes all over again.

If you were to go in the military today, with all the new technology, do you feel youd be interested?
Oh, I dont know; it would depend on things and on how much control we had.

Do you have any particularly memorable moments youd be willing to share with us?
Thats another one you could write a whole book on. Nobody else has got a story like this one, but Ill
give it to you. When the war was over and the Germans were surrendering we were given a post; a
position exactly like the one over here in Kellner. Identical, the fence posts and everything there was
the same. And at that spot, we had to cover an area a couple miles square to get the whole picture.
And theres a sandy road coming up to the main road and the Germans were surrendering coming up
this sandy road and surrendering because they were escaping the Russians that were coming in the
opposite direction. So they were doing what they could to get behind the American lines rather than
the Russian lines. And that was no doubt the feeling of the Germans. They never told us anything
about it, but I formulated it. Anyway, the Germans are surrendering as they came down the road. Me
and my two gunners, our shift had changed and we were relieved at the gun and we went to see if we
could we were just a few steps and I could show you how close it was to where these Germans start
coming up the road and we stop them and are checking them for guns or any kind of a souvenir that
they might have. And we took their handguns away. And they come up with their handguns. They had
a lot of them. And as the German troops are coming up on bicycle and oxcart and anything that an
engine would drive, they surrendered their handguns. And along the way, here comes an American Jeep
theyre driving. And so thats just what we needed to carry the handguns. So we took the Jeep away
from them and we loaded up this American Jeep with German handguns, which were quite a prized
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souvenir. And this went on for quite awhile; hundreds of German troops were going through and the
Germans start saying that the general is coming, the general is coming. Well, to hell with the general.
Who gives a damn about the general. And we kept on searching. Finally here comes a big sedan.
They were traveling bumper to bumper and sure enough, there was the general. So I go around to his
drivers side and asked him for his handgun and he wouldnt give it up. The traffic was so packed there
was nothing moving. So I opened the back door and start shoving and his back seat was full of
personal things. And I started throwing stuff apart
looking for his handgun because he wouldnt give
e says, You were
it up. And with that, he comes and starts wrestling
lucky. He says,
with me and we had a wrestling match there and
then. I stopped to think there are three of us and
Normally, you should
about a thousand German troops following him. I
have been killed.
thought I better back off, so I did. And he kept his
handgun and away they went. I didnt get his
handgun. A wrestling match with the German general and he won. And I didnt realize how serious
that was until maybe four years ago. I belong to a wandering religious group. And one of our leaders
was a brigadier general in the Pentagon. He was a wonderful man. And he got to talking about
something and so I related this story about the general who wouldnt give up his handgun. He says,
You were lucky. He says, Normally, you should have been killed. No officer would give up his
handgun to a lesser rank person. So, I had a wrestling match with a German general and I dont think
any other soldier did.

Robert owned a hardware store, a school bus

company, and a used car lot in Wisconsin Rapids
until his retirement in 1985. He currently resides in
Wisconsin Rapids and has four children, two sons
and two daughters, and a wife, Betty, who passed
away in 1994.

Braun, Robert

2008 D.C. Everest Area Schools Publications