Living On Borrowed Time - Part 2

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Harlady
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Living On Borrowed Time - Part 2

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An excerpt from the memoirs of Albert B. Skinner

By Jodi L. Severson



Recalling the horrors he witnessed first hand during those brutal days of combat during the Normandy Invasion, Al related the following: “If the people of the world could have seen that beach as we all saw it; the waters red from the blood of all those young men shot to death, bodies floating face down in the tide or strewn all over the beach; if people saw that, I don’t think there would ever be another war.” Of the 128 men in Al’s unit that landed on Omaha Beach on June 5, 1944, only 28 survived. Once again, Al had cheated death.



“I remember a few days after Major Richard got killed,” added Al, “his sister found me. She was a nurse. She asked if I knew where her brother was, and I had to be the one to tell her he was dead. I showed her where he was buried and she went up on the hill and found him.” A few months later, Al again met up with Major Richards sister in Paris. “She thanked me for showing her where to find her brother. We talked a bit about him and how tragic his death was for his young family. She was a heck of a nice woman.”



After the beach landing, Al’s unit made its way to a town called Dereishmier, in the Colleville area of France. “Our Navy ships started sending in rockets and blew the town practically apart. You couldn’t believe the noise they made! I remember going into a tavern, and there was a bunch of German soldiers sitting at the bar. We almost started shooting, but then we realized they were already dead. Someone went up to them and shoved the soldier at the end of the bar, and they all fell over like bowling pins! There wasn’t a mark on them. They were killed from the concussion of the shells exploding all around them.”



As Al’s unit made their way through the bombed out town, they came upon a church that was still standing. “I went in and found this little porcelain statute of the Virgin Mary. I picked it up and put it into my pocket, and as we walked out, a kid by the name of Sergeant Catlin said, Get out now cause I’m going to take her down! Catlin pulled the detonator and the church went up in the air. Puff! and it was gone. But it had to be taken down,” Al explained, “because it served as an observation point the Germans could use to zero in on us. We couldn’t take any chances. We had to do what we were trained to do,” he adds matter-o-factly. “That’s just the way it is when you’re in a war. You do what needs doing to survive.”



BATTLE OF THE BULGE. . .



From Dereishmier, Al’s company went to St. Lo and then to Brussels and other cities until they reached the Siegfried Line, which was near Bastogne. “I’ll never forget the Siegfried Line because it looked like a giant wall. There was one floor after another down in the ground. Some of them were down four or five basements deep. We had to take one at a time. We used to put TNT on the doors and blow them. Our big guns could blow them out at the top, but there would still be something below. Once in a while it seemed like a basketball game when someone would call time out. We would be standing on one side and the Germans on the other. We would yell at each other. A lot of them could speak English. Then all of a sudden, the time out would end, and they would go back to shooting at us and we would shoot at them.
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“When we took over Aachen, there was nobody there. We found silverware, watches, rings, and other things in abandoned stores. We all loaded our trucks with what we found. I had taken a beautiful set of silverware. But it wasn’t long before we got to Malmedy and had to burn our trucks so the Germans couldn’t use them. And all that stuff was burned. The only thing that survived was the little porcelain statute of Mary I kept in my pocket. I still have it to this day.



“The city of Bastogne, located in southeastern Belgium in Ardennes, was a relatively small market town near a railroad junction, but it was a strategic position desired by both the Germans and the Americans. The Allies managed to reach this pivotal destination first and soon occupied Bastogne. But the Germans were not far behind. We made our way through Bastogne to the opposite side of the city which was now surrounded by the Germans. It was like a prison,” described Al.



“Although the Allies occupied the city, it was surrounded so supply trucks could not penetrate the German lines. The only way to receive needed supplies was through air drops, but it was late December, 1944, and heavy fog and inclement weather grounded the Allied planes. The Germans Panzer Division was inflicting heavy damage on the town. On December 22, 1944, the Germans sent a message to General Anthony C. McAuliffe, the acting commander of the 101 First Airborne Division holed up in Bastogne, asking for them to surrender. That’s when McAuliffe replied, ‘Nuts!’” Al exclaimed loudly as he pounded his fist on the table. “This one word reply which was translated to the German Commander as “go to hell!,” became one of the most famous quotes of the war.



“Hell, by that time, we just about had the war won and McAuliffe said there was no way we’d surrender. The Allies survived the best that they could till the weather cleared. Well, just when we thought we were going to lose it all,” Al remembers, “the sun came out and our airplanes took care of them Germans but good!”



Al describes General Omar Bradley as a fine gentleman. “He may have been one of the smartest generals we had. But the most remembered general was George Patton. He’s the one that said, ‘We’ve got to do this through hell or high water!’” Al commented that a popular phrase was, “blood and guts. Yah! Our blood and his guts!” “That’s the way a lot of us really felt.



“I was in Bastogne about four days before the Battle of the Bulge took place. I remember the fair grounds and the town, and how the people, after they were liberated, took some of the women and cut their hair off as punishment for flirting with the German soldiers.



“During the Bulge we had to fall back. It was almost like running away. We retreated until a West Point Colonel said, ‘Well, this is it, fellows. The first guy who retreats any further, were going to shoot, so you might as well stay up there on the line.’ The Allied forces held the line and started moving forward. As they made their way from Bastogne to Malmedy where the battle was really raging, German infiltration into the Allied lines became a problem. We came upon a large infiltration of German soldiers dressed in American uniforms,” Al related. “I said to the sergeant, “Don’t let any of them through, because it’s going to hurt somebody.”
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“Don’t worry about it, the Sergeant replied.” Al stood there and watched as the German infiltrators dressed in American uniforms were questioned by the Sergeant. “Lots of the questions were goofy, like, Who won the World Series in 1940? You’d be surprised. These guys were smarter than me! All of a sudden the Sergeant and his men opened fire and shot every one of those impostors! I thought, Oh my god, what a mess were in now. But the Sergeant said, “Don’t worry, Lieutenant, they’re all Germans, and I can prove it.” He had asked them to recite the Constitution of the United States, and the guy started reciting it word for word! The Sergeant pointed out, “Nobody in this country of ours, no soldier or other person, could recite that because they don’t know it!” So he figured they were Germans, and he was right.



“The Allies had to be on guard for constant German attempts to infiltrate their lines. There were also a lot of booby traps we had to watch out for. I’ll tell you, you know it was worth fighting for, to get it over. And I don’t regret my part in it, but I sure wouldn’t want to go again. No, sir. We used to turn the prisoners over to a group that was supposed to take care of them. But we always suspected that when they got down the road a hundred yards or so, they’d be shot. It was just the same with the Germans. They’d treat our prisoners the same. During the winter months, supplies were short enough for the troops, and they just weren’t equipped to care for prisoners as well. Just another ugly fact of war.”



The Battle of the Bulge officially ended on January 28, 1945, with the both sides suffering heavy losses both through casualties and equipment. More than one million men fought in this battle including some 600,000 Germans, 500,000 Americans, and 55,000 British. 19,000 U.S. soldiers were killed and 62,000 were wounded; 1,200 British were wounded and 200 killed; and 100,000 Germans were killed, wounded, or captured.



From Belgium, Al headed back to France. “When we came back to Cologne, I saw a big church and the other buildings that were miraculously spared by the war. It was a beautiful church. The people were so grateful to be liberated that they gave us perfume and champagne. They couldn’t do enough for us.”



Smiling, Al recalls one incident in Paris that started out fun, but took a slight turn. “Paris was a beautiful city. I remember going down into a basement in this one building because it was supposed to have champagne in it. We got the champagne, but on the way out we got shot at! I remember it well because I thought this was one time when maybe we were playing around a little too much.”



As Al marched from St. Lo toward the Rhine River he saw a familiar face. “I saw a guy standing there who looked like my brother, Marshall. I went over, and sure enough it was! I didn’t even know he was in the service. Last I had heard he was going to school at Indiana University on some kind of a government course. But they closed it down and sent all those guys to Europe. Some men shipped over at that time didn’t really know what it was all about. They didn’t have the proper military training. Their guns weren’t even cleaned! They were still full of cosmolene. Somebody had made a mistake.”



Al went to his C.O. and got permission for Marshall to eat supper with him. Marshall took his rifle along with him and came down to Al’s unit and they ate together. “I looked at his rifle and said, my god, don’t you clean your gun? Marshall replied, I don’t know how to clean it.” Al knew the importance of getting his brothers gun cleaned and he asked his Sergeant if he could get someone to clean it and he’d pay him. Don’t worry, Lieutenant, we’ll get it done, the Sergeant replied. And he did.



Marshall was a radio technician whose job was to go ahead of the front line and set up communications. Al accompanied him back to his company, hugged his brother, and with a firm pat on his shoulder he headed back to his own unit. That was the last time he ever saw his brother alive. Two days later Marshall was hit by friendly fire when the U.S. Army Air Corps came over and bombed short of their mark. He was one of the thousands who were either killed or wounded during that campaign.



“I found out about the incident from his C.O. He told me by radio that my brother was hit, and they were taking him to a hospital in Cherbourg. I chased him all the way from Europe to the port of Cherbourg, where I found out he had been taken to England. Marshall died there 10 days later. I found out he had died when my folks wrote me a letter telling me Marshall had been killed. It shook me,” Al said very quietly, “it shook me, bad.”



After the war, Al was asked to testify before the United States Senate in Washington, D.C. about the way untrained soldiers, like his brother, Marshall, were sent to fight in Europe without proper training. “Sending those kids over there without the most basic of training was just plain wrong and it cost my brother his life.” They ended up blaming some major and a young staff sergeant for the incident without involving the higher-ups.



“War is hell,” Al repeats the familiar phrase we’ve all heard. But after listening to him relate with such emotion, the horrors of war that he experienced first-hand in WWII, somehow this cliche takes on a clearer image. “So many things happened to me there that are really hard to explain. I want you to know that I did serve, I would have never thought of not going, it was my duty. But I sure wouldn’t want to go again. There are a lot of things we (veterans) don’t care to talk about, but I have in this case. Its not my intent to glorify war or tout off a list of heroics. I want you understand the truth about what war is really like. Its not always like you see in the movies. Its about standing next to a friend one minute and the seeing him killed in front of you the next. Its about wanting nothing more than to go home and hug your wife or hold your child in your arms, and in an instant those simple things we all take for granted from the safety of our homes is gone. Its about hugging your brother, not knowing that it will be for the last time, and wishing you could have been there to look out for him. I guess what I want is for my grandchildren and the people who may read this to realize that war is hell. Nothing more and nothing less, and that’s the way it will always be. And its my wish for you, my children, grandchildren, and so on down the line, that you do your part to love and protect your country when necessary, but also to learn from the past and perhaps you all can work towards creating a world without wars. Where peace is the goal, not death and destruction. And in between, remember to look out for your brother or sister whenever you can. Never miss an opportunity to hug your spouse or cradle your child in your arms. And remember to thank God for each and every day he gives you, for we are all living on borrowed time.”



Albert Skinner returned home from the war, married Helen Ricci on April 2, 1947, and eventually settled back in their hometown of Cumberland, WI. There they raised three sons. Al was employed at the 3-M Plant in Cumberland as a production supervisor for over 30 years. In 1958 he threw his hat into the political arena and was elected mayor of Cumberland, WI, a position he held for 28 years winning every mayoral election in which he ran. His political service also included long running terms on the Barron County Board of Supervisors, the State Pension Board, Utilities Commission, and local hospital Board. July 14, 1996 was proclaimed Al Skinner Appreciation Day in which the City of Cumberland and the State of Wisconsin honored Al for his dedicated political service career that ultimately spanned nearly 50 years. Decorated veteran of WWII, devoted father and husband, and distinguished politician; for a man who has been living on borrowed time since the age of 21, hes certainly making the most of it.



Published U.S. Legacies March 2004
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