Part 2 of Dad Cassano WW II I have verified that Dad and Mom were married on September 2, 1944. Dad was finally with the unit he would deploy with and that would be in late September/ early October 1944. I base this on the fact that he arrived in Normandy in late October 1944. Of note I understand that Dad invited Mom to join him that Ft. Polk, La., according to Mom this was not going to be a permanent job for dad after the war ended since she had no intention of ever living at Ft. Polk. At any rate her time there was short if at all since her mother was ill and she needed to be in Pennsylvania to be with her. As mentioned Dad’s unit arrived in France at Normandy and was deployed to a training area to try and get the troops ready for combat. I am not sure if his entire units was training as a unit or as individual replacements. At any rate Dad was said it was a cold rainy night and he and seven other NCO’s and a Lt. were called to the company commanders tent and told to pack their gear and report back they would be leaving by truck and heading deeper into France and would be met by an officer who would take them to their new unit. It was shortly after the Germans had started to attack in what would become the “battle of the bulge”. Dad said they traveled all night and sometime later, they were met by another Lt., who verified their names and took them to their ne unit. Their new assignment was re-organizing soldiers and units that had been decimated in the early days of the German attack . I am sure there were several groups that were sent forward that formed the new corpsof NCO’s and Officers to augment the surviving officers and NCO’s that had survived the attack. At sometime after the tide turned in the battle of the bulge, Dad was assigned to a Calvary unit and assigned to 3rd Army under Patton. Dad was the mess sergeant for one of the companies. He talked of entering Germany and traveling through Heidelberg, since he remembered the giant beer or wine barrel in the castle there. He also traveled through Frankfurt where he recalled that one of the only damaged building there was the old opera house. It was not until after I left in 1973, the Germans finally did rebuild the opera house. My CSM Howard told me that he was assigned to the hospital in Frankfurt and there was nothing standing between the Hospital and the Bahn Hof or train station a distance of several miles. One of Dad’s favorite stories was his designing and building his mess truck so he could cook on the move. Her had the burners and large cooking pot holders secured in such a way that they would not move nor lose too much of whatever he was cooking. He would pull into the new CP location and was able to immediately pull some 2x12x12 ft. boards from under the truck and with a saw horse under the boards, he was ready to serve hot coffee, soup and whatever else he had prepared. This was great for the troops who had been traveling in one of the coldest winters in history at that time, since the hot chow was ready and did not require a wait while he prepared it after stopping. I found if funny that it took the Army over 40 years to develop the capability for cooking on the move in a trailer. Dad was also moving at night once when the road they were traveling came under 88 fire, ( the German 88 mm anti-aircraft gun was also a great anti-tank and truck weapon that was deadly accurate) and he bivouacked for the night in a forest. A young green LT. tried to order him forward but Dad being a good NCO apparently was able to convince the young officer it would be better to take a complete mess hall forward after the guns were silenced rather than having pieces lying around the road. One of his funnier stories was that he would deliver chow to the units in their fighting positions by platoon using marmite cans to keep the food hot. This was done at least once a day normally just before or just after dark. One morning the company commander called him in a chewed his ass since one of the platoons had not received their chow. Dad, tried to explain he had dropped off the ration in the location he always did the night before. When he went to pick up the cans the next day, when he got to that platoons location the mermite cans were there which was confusing until he saw a note on one of the cans. It said Danka shone ( thank you in German). I believe Dad changed his procedure for that platoons delivery. Dad’s unit stayed with the 3rd Army all the way into Czechoslovakia when the war ened.in May 1945. To go home soldiers in WW II needed points based on the time in service, time overseas and in combat, awards received. Due to the fact that Dad had not been overseas that long, he stayed as part of the German occupation in and around Bremerhaven, Germany. He came home in January 1946 and was discharged from the Army.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 00:45:55 +0000
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