Page 41 - Anthology

MY ELUCIDATION OF WORLD WAR II
15
BY
ROBERT L. HOOVER
IN HIS OWN WORDS – SPRING 2007
Source: Excerpt from a Video Interview by Ms. Griffin Wendt; a student from Lexington Christian Academy

I was in the service a short time, but I guess you could say:

“I got the whole ball of wax .
9
The battle in Gersheim, Germany is where my journey started.”

The draft was instituted, and I was drafted into the army. The draft board issued numbers and we were
called based on our number. When my number was up, that was it; I answered. I was exempt, so I could
finish high school. I went on active duty six days after graduation. I had just turned twenty. All my senior
class boys went in right after graduation.

The weeks and months just before entering service I kept up pretty well with all that was going on. It was
a surprise when Japan started it all by bombing Pearl Harbor. I’m not sure I had ever heard of Pearl
Harbor until the bombing, but I knew immediately that the United States would get involved.

Bertha and I went to the same high school. We didn’t get married before I went in the service. I guess
you could say I took my cue from Uncle Robert; my dad’s brother who served and died in World War I.
He had a sweetheart and she wanted to marry before he left for the war. He told her: “I’d rather leave you
as a sweetheart than to leave you a widow.” He left her as a sweetheart. He didn’t make it home.

I was ready to serve as were most of the graduating seniors. In fact, we already had our G.I. haircuts.
When I was called to duty, I was placed in the Infantry – foot soldiers - is what we were called at the time.
I was sent to Camp Blanding, Florida, for eighteen weeks. I thought it was a short training period. That
was the training grounds for the infantry. I received training in light and heavy weapons; rifle, machine
guns, mortar, and other weapons such as that. We were told that, as soon as our infantry training was
over, we would be shipped overseas and sent to the front. I believed what they said, and that is what
happened.

The timing was June 24, 1944, and it was, if you recall your history, just after Normandy and the D-Day
invasions. So, they were in dire need of replacements. They knew we were going to lose a lot of men. I
was in the infantry and that was my duty. We were in the mop-up following D-Day. If we were going to
take an object or a city; it was usually bombed with heavy bombers and then light bombers, followed by
artillery. After all that the infantry would follow the tankers into battle to mop-up.

I was in a squad of I think eight people. We had gone into a town. (Drusenheim, France) The Germans
allowed us in without firing, but once we were in, they started firing. My squad was in one of the buildings
that was part of the advance team. We were taking on artillery from our own people and the Germans
were in the house right next door.

There was a lot of small arms fire. A shell exploded and all but one person in my squad was injured. I
was wounded, and we were taken prisoners. I was wounded in the chest and lung. The shrapnel
remained trapped in my shirt pocket – the same pocket that had Bertha’s picture.

Our capture date was February 10, 1945. The dates are sketchy, but I know I was still a POW on the day
President Roosevelt passed away – April 12, 1945. A German came to me and told me that our
president had died. We had no calendars or anything, so dates are not clear. When the German told me
about the death, he also said that President Roosevelt was a good man. That meant a lot. As I recall,
and Bertha and I have talked about this, shortly after President Roosevelt died, Hitler committed suicide
on April 30, 1945.