Captain Robert P. Lewis, 99th Infantry Division, U.S. Army

"We did not want to be the ones to capture Berlin. We just wanted the war to end. We were just doing a job. Just stay alive."

At home during the war, in Auburn, N.Y.:Carl Dickman did have prisoners of war work on his farm. He had to board them I think. I don't remember here, but I remember all through the United States they took a lot of the prisoners of war, they were the African Corps really, that they had captured and some that they could trust they allowed to be used in certain places, farming and so forth. They were very happy, they did not want to leave. They would march and sing their own German songs.

Joining the Army: "Mr. Gleason who was a good friend of the Graney's and so many others was on the draft board. They gave me deferments so I could finish college. So I graduated from Niagara May15th, 1942, went to Syracuse and looked at the Navy. I wanted to get into destroyers, but they would not guarantee me anything. So I just went next door and enlisted in the regular Army.

Training: I went to Fort Niagara, took the test, the I.Q. test, all of a sudden I got my orders and was shipped to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I was put in Instrument and Survey Battery, which was a specialist. In August I was called in to the Battery Commander. He wanted to know if I wanted to be an officer. I said yes and I already had two years of ROTC. They sent me to what they called the Camp Commanders Place. The whole bunch of us, there must have been a hundred of us there and they gave us a math test. Ten questions. And the whole ten questions were based on C-Square=A-Square+B-Square. And if you knew that you're in (training for Officer Training School). So they accepted me and I went to Center School for a month. And in September I was shipped to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Got my commission on Christmas day and came home.

To War: So I was assigned the 99th Infantry Division and went all through maneuvers with them in Louisiana. We were then shipped overseas. We landed in England. We got all our stuff. We went to one of the ports, boarded L.S.T.'s and we landed in LaHare, France. This was in November, 1944. We drove all the way across France and Belgium and we went up to Verbierz and the snow was flying, we pitched our tents and slept in the snow.

On November 11th we moved in on the lines to relieve the 1st Infantry division that fought all the way across after D-Day. We were the 99th and we had a 25 mile front with the 106th Division, which was a brand new division, Charlie Avery was in it, he is a lawyer here in Auburn. And the Bouley boy, he was in that 106th, they were to the right of us. And there was a cavalry outfit that drove in between us and we were in the woods. And what happened is the Germans on December 17th started their artillery attack and the Bouley boy was killed, Charlie Avery was taken prisoner. Only one battalion of the 106th got out. And then they drove after us. We had moved our guns (artillery pieces) to what was called the Triple Cities. The Germans came in 100-200 yards in front of us and they were fighting and we had to try to get out. And we had to leave all our guns and they got behind us. Normally we would get commands (orders) but there wasn't any forward observers to direct our fire because they were all captured or killed. So the only road out was all blocked with (military) traffic and there was no way out, it was all mud but we found a ravine which we worked our way out of and we got to Camp Elsenborn. That's where I ran into my brother-in-law Ed Hart, he was with the 2nd Infantry Division.

The 99th and 2nd Infantry Divisions were in attack positions on the left flank. We had to attack when the Germans came back. The Germans drove straight through the 106 Division, so they pushed us back on what they called the Elsenborn Ridge. And then the 9th Infantry Division came up to help us and the 1st Infantry Division came back onto the line again 'cause we had to stop them from going to Lieage. Once they got to Lieage they'd be at a port and that's where all the oil, gasoline and supplies were. So we had to hold that northern flank. So what happened is, we got back up and I had to go up to the front lines as a forward observer because I did not have any guns and they needed officers. So they they called me out of the front line and I was with a company that only had 75 men. When the Germans attacked we had to counter-attack and I was giving the artillery fire.

So we got back on the line again, the line got settled, we got the whole line stable. At that time the Battle of Bastogne was going on and the Americans had stopped them and then the Bulge was happening. General Patton and the 3rd Army turned around completely and drove up to cut off the Bulge. So we had all the regular Army divisions, we had the 9th Infantry Division which was a regular Army division, we had the 2nd Infantry division which was a regular Army division, we had the 1st Infantry division which was a regular Army division and the 99th which, we had just gone on-line November 11th and here we were in a fight for our lives.

So then in February, when they finally got the line straightened out we attacked. The whole line, that's when we attacked. We started driving the Germans back and then we finally were taken out of the lines when it was getting into Spring. We were then sent across the Cologne Plain. And we drove across the Cologne Plain behind an armored division. Our job was to give them artillery fire. So then we reached the Rhine River, went into position on the Rhine River. When we got up there that night we were ordered to fire one thousand rounds at different targets across the Rhine River. So we fired all night long. We'd get coordinates and we'd get what we called the S.I.. and the elevation. We never knew what we were firing at, we just fired. We did not realize at the time that the 3rd Army had captured the Ramagen Bridge. The whole 99th Infantry artillery which consisted of 3 105 battalions plus a 1-5-5 battalion. We were firing thousands of rounds so they could think that we were going to attack, go across the Rhine River the next morning. But we didn't. At 6:00 the next morning we got close station march orders. We were heading for the Ramagen Bridge. So the Battery commander and some of the others went ahead of us. So I led the whole battery. Going down towards the Ramagen Bridge it was like being on Broadway in New York City at high traffic. There was so much traffic (all units going to hold the Ramagen Bridge). And we were fighting.

We finally got into position on the west side of the Ramagen Bridge, ready to fire. And our dough-boys were going across the Ramagen Bridge and at the same time they were building a pontoon bridge. And the Germans were trying to bomb them. We went to bed that night and I woke up the next morning and we were surrounded by 90 millimeter anti-aircraft guns, they moved them in the night before. So when the German planes came in they were shooting them all out of the sky. I was the first battery across the pontoon bridge. I was the first artillery unit to ever land on the other side of the Rhine River. Once we were on the other side of the Rhine River we knew the war would not last long.

Artillery Problems: When we first went on the line to relieve the first infantry division, we got a firing mission. So I gave the commands to the battery in the firing mission. The next day they had a big investigation. We had to check our guns. One of our guns dropped three rounds on our own regimental C.P.. (Command Post). And they wanted to find out what happened. So finally one of the chief of sections came in and said to the Captain, Captain Romano, he said Captain, (and he was a Phys-Ed instructor before the war) "I'll tell you what happened and if you want to bust me you can but I set the S.I.. short so the guns went short." The Captain says "well then don't let it happen again, I'm not gonna bust you, we're here in combat, we're not going to break a competent sergeant." I'll always remember that. And that happened once before when we got across the Rhine River we were in position, the Germans were attacking us, trying to drive us back across the river, the Rhine River. We were firing and they came down and they said "Lewis, one of your damn guns is shooting long" and I could not find out, I could not correct it, we tried to find out which gun was shooting long. Because all of a sudden you hear firing out there and you have 5 guns and you see 4 rounds land and then one land another thousand yards way out. But we made out all right.

American and German Dead: We were right in the thick of it in the Bulge. We had shells landing 75 yards in front of us. The Germans didn't quite get our batteries zeroed in. We had guys wounded. After we got the Battle of the Bulge stopped and we started to go forward we started to go through Krinkell where I lost all my guns and they were loading the bodies of the guys up in 2 1/2 ton trucks like cordwood...like cordwood. And we saw so many American soldiers along the side of the road dead. And we saw Germans all over the place dead.

Americans Caught Looting: In fact in one position we had a sergeant from the supply battery, and we always had two trucks from service battery loaded with ammunition and once we unloaded that truck and use all the ammunition that truck would go back to service battery and we had one guy going around with a knife cutting off all the wedding bands off the dead Germans. He had a Bull Durham sack full of wedding bands. The Captain reported him to the battery commander.

When we went to Geisen in Germany, that's when the Russians were coming and we had to stop there. This was going to be the joining point between the Americans and the Russians. One of our sergeants went into a house and came out with all the silverware and everything and the captain just blew his stack. He told him point blank "you get that stuff back in there!", which he then did.

So then, I was out in front of the guns, laying the battery. All of a sudden I saw the men hide behind the guns (artillery) and I looked over my shoulder and here must have been 500 German troops coming out of these Pine trees and they had a white flag, to surrender. So I moved them down, put them on the trucks take them up to a secure area. All of a sudden the captain got a phone call "get those watches, get those rings..." the Americans had stripped those soldiers of all their watches and all their wedding bands. And they complained. Battalion Headquarters ordered us to give it all back. That was the last time anything like that happened, except when we found a warehouse full of Hennessy 5-Star Cognac, heh, heh, heh...

Army Information/Food: We never knew what was going on. The only thing we knew about how the war was going was what we read in Stars and Stripes (military newspaper). You only knew what was going on in your little area. We didn't know the war was almost over. I was green. But once we got across the Rhine River we knew the end was coming, because we were in Germany and they were bringing in new divisions. When we cleared up the Rural Pocket we came back to Geisen we were in the 1st Army and we had two hot meals a day. Once we got to the 3rd Army we never had a hot meal. Patton didn't believe in it. So you had C-Rations or K-Rations. But we always had, in the 1st Army two good meals. We had pancakes with sausage, bacon and eggs in the morning. At night, we always ate at 4:00 in the afternoon, we had turkey, we had meat and potatos...In the C-Rations would be a fig bar to keep your bowels open, you would have lemonade, a can of cheese, a can of Spam. You'd have your morning ration, your noon ration and your evening ration. In the morning ration you'd have your powdered eggs in a can with bacon mixed in. And you'd have your thing for your coffee.

The Malmedy Massacre: We didn't know anything about the SS until after the Malmedy massacre, when the SS troopers lined up all the Americans and shot them all down. Then it got bad because the infantry men, if they captured any Germans, they were only supposed to bring two back. If they captured 10 they'd shoot eight. It was retaliation to the Malmedy massacre. So it backfired on the Germans in the long-run.

Slave Labor Prisoners: One other time, in the Rural Pocket, we were in position, ready to fire, but we didn't fire. I don't think we fired one round during the whole Rural Pocket. All of a sudden, swarms of people come over the hill. They're all Polish. The infantry ran across this labor camp with all Polish people in it. And they opened the gates and let them out. They ran down and they all wanted to eat. They were all around the kitchen. The captain was going out of his mind. Those days you had somebody that could speak Polish, somebody that could speak German, we had a boy that could speak Italian. We told them they had to wait until all our troops were fed. Then the order came down that if you come upon a labor camp or any type of stockade where there are civilians being held, you are not to let them out, until they can get transportation up there to put them in trucks to take them to the proper places. They stopped that because they raided the German houses, hell they were terrible, they were mad! They were free! We never came across any of those camps after that. I never saw Auschwitz.

The Death of FDR: After we got to Geisen and stopped we had surrounded a whole bunch of Germans around the Rural Pocket so we had to drive north to meet the British to close off the Rural Pocket. And that's when I heard Franklin Roosevelt had died. It was a scary feeling when he died, because we had lived through FDR and FDR had built everything up. We knew he was the war President. We knew he was giving us everything. It was a very sad day. I remember everybody was kind of glum about the whole thing. It was the whole topic of conversation.

The War Ends: The day the war ended we were driving with Patton, Patton was nasty. He did not like us using tents or stoves. We were to sleep in sleeping bags on the ground. So the day the war ended we were in this little village, we were in this huge, big house and we had 10 in 1 rations. These were boxes with food in them that you could cook, different than K-Rations. All our men were housed in the one house. It came around with someone saying the war is over. I went out that night the anti-aircraft guns were going off, the guys were shooting tracers in celebration. Then we got into the cognac. And really got bombed. The next day I had to go to battalion headquarters and pick up the pay to pay the men. Well I was so hung over I was practically hanging out of the side of the jeep. So I got up to headquarters and they were all laughing. They said "boy you guys really put on a splurge last night." So they said they has aspirin, they were trying to doctor me up, get me back on my feet. I had the payroll, it was all cash. It's all broken down, so that if a guy gets $12.50, you have to give him a ten, two ones and fifty cents. Any time you split the money up it had to come out just right. You had to give it to him just the right way. Boy, what a time I had sitting there.

Then the rumor started that a lot of us were going to the Pacific theater to fight Japan. Everybody was moaning and groaning. We were saying "we've already fought one war, now we have to go fight another war?" But we didn't.

The P.OW. Camp In Germany: After the war we had a prisoner of war camp that was filled with SS troops. The SS had their own officers and they had their own guards, to keep their men in. And they ran the camp. And I was on duty one day and I would go with them and they'd line them all up and this SS officer would walk down and they'd all report to him. And he'd report to me in English, how many men were there, how many men were in the hospital and who were on work detail. And they had their own guards, nobody could get out, they wouldn't let their own men out. They ran like hell away from the Russians, they did not want to be captured by the Russians. When they got captured by the Americans they had food, they could play soccer, they played all sorts of games, they had it made! They were just waiting to finally go home. They did not want to have any trouble.

Army of Occupation: After the war, in the army of occupation, I became a defense counsel for some of the American soldiers that went AWOL (Absent Without Leave). And that's why I got rid of all the regular Army officers on the military board. And they did not like me. And I fought them because the Colonel always wanted to convict them and give them the maximum sentence. So I screamed and yelled and they got rid of me. He sent me back to the states.

Editors Note: I interviewed my Uncle Bob (and Aunt Peg) in April, 1989. Most of the information above is verbatim, but I did change the progression of the interview for sequential reasons as I went from tape to this format. And I made some other minor changes to keep the flow of his story as clear as possible.

I do have the original cassette tapes if anyone would like to listen to them. There is a lot of information about his and Aunt Peg's lives that are not mentioned above.

Doug Graney
drgraney@fcps.edu