Memories of Lawrence P. Belmont, A Battery — Part VII Lawrence crossed the Rhine at Mainz over a pontoon bridge near a German road bridge that had been destroyed. What are some of your recollections from Germany in the Spring of '45? Well, I remember that a buddy of mine named Frank Mercurio, from New York City – he lived on 1st Avenue – blew his ankle off while fooling around with a Panzerfaust at a hunter's lodge at Rhein-Main airfield outside of Frankfurt-am-Main. The Panzerfaust was like a bazooka, like a metal tube with a big charge at one end that the Germans used to knock out tanks from up close. So, we were up there there to "hold" the place in advance of the arrival of more elements of the 225th (it turns out that we never redeployed there, but we set up at nearby Waldorf instead). This was in April 1945. There was a big wooded area adjacent to the field, and this lodge was inside the woods. It was a strange time, because the war wasn't over yet, but you almost had the sense that it could happen any day now. While we there, every once in a while a German plane would come in to land and surrender. Well, Frank just picked up this thing and was fooling around with it, when it went off. It blew his foot clean off. I took off down the road to where a Medical Detachment had set up about a mile away. They sent an ambulance back, but I never saw Frank again or heard what happened to him. Plus, he's not listed in the Unit History book. I also remember having a fight with some guy from Kentucky named Maloney when we were there. I ended up throwing him through a window, though I have no idea what we were fighting about. "At the end of the war, we were at a small airfield in Unter Biberg, which is a southern suburb of Munich. It was designated R-85. There were brand-new Luftwaffe barracks there that we occupied (in picture at left, Lawrence poses in front of one wing of the barracks), and there was a big park nearby, where we would eat picnic lunches. I can still remember – this was still early May 1945, remember – finding Germans in the woods. They would put their hands up and say 'Me no Nazi,' Me no Nazi.' Of course, no one was a Nazi now." "There were several Focke-Wulf 190s and Me262s on the strip, but they were out of gas (click the preceding link to view one of the unpainted Me262 jets abandoned at Unter Biberg; the plane behind the 262 is a Ju88G-6). One day, one guy who had procured a few cans of gas from somewhere fueled up one of the 190s and took it for a short spin along the airstrip. He didn't get far, but it probably was the first time in a long while that the plane had moved. We learned later that the Germans had a lot of jets at this strip, and even had some hidden in the woods along the Munich-Salzburg autobahn, which was just south of the field. They just had no gas to fly them." Lawrence at Unter Biberg, August 1945 "One of the other jobs we had after the war was to destroy surplus B-17s. We set them on fire after stripping them of all the radio equipment." (Click on the preceding link for a photo of surplus B-17s sitting on one of the many airfields in the Munich area; the planes that Lawrence burned were not parked so neatly, but were scattered about the field.) "The field at Erding was a collection point for German aircraft. They had a supply building there and repaired them." (Click on the preceding link for a photo of damaged Luftwaffe aircraft at a collection point in the Munich area, perhaps Erding.) Munich from the air, June 19, 1945. This is the city that the Skylighters saw that Summer. "During R&R after the war, I went to Berchtesgaden to see all the big Nazi houses on the Obersalzburg. Most of the area had been heavily bombed and most of the buildings were in ruins. The SS barracks was totally bombed out. But, I did get to see the Führer's most famous retreat, the Eagle's Nest. I remember that only officers of a certain rank and above could ride up to the house in the big brass elevator that was cut right into the mountain. Enlisted men had to walk up to the top on a rocky path that zigzagged from the parking lot below. It took about 45 minutes to reach the summit."(Webmaster's Note: in the 1945 photograph at right, the railings along the path are clearly visible in the foreground.) Lawrence returned to the United States aboard the SS Marshall Victory, arriving at Hampton Roads, Virginia on December 10, 1945. [In Germany, in mid-November, the battalion had been packed aboard "Forty and Eights" (boxcars that could carry either forty men or eight horses). They had arrived in Le Havre around Thanksgiving to wait for a ship home.] Other members of the battalion had returned on at least two other vessels, the Chanute Victory and the Norway Victory. More information on the Victory Ships is available here. "We were stationed somewhere between Nuremberg and Ansbach. I forget the name of the town. It was only about 40 minutes to Nuremberg Railroad Station. (The photo below right shows Nuremberg in late 1945; it is reprinted with the permission of the Nuremberg Official Web Site.) Well, they trucked us into Nuremberg and they had 40 and 8 boxcars waiting for us. These were the old French National Railway "goods wagons" that could hold forty men or eight horses. We noticed that the Germans were riding in regular railroad cars; you know, coaches with heat and windows. A 40 and 8 was just an old boxcar with a sliding door. Along side our train was another train with a lot of flat cars that had straw piled on them. Everyone started going over and taking some straw so we could have something to lay on the wooden floors of the boxcars to make the trip more comfortable. Then this colonel appeared. I guess he was in charge of the train. He told us that the train would not move unless all of the straw was put back. Well, we put it back, and after about a two-hour delay, and after this colonel inspected all the boxcars, the train finally left. What made everyone so mad was that the Germans were riding in nice coaches and we were in 40 and 8s. You'd have thought they won the war! On the trip to France, the train moved very slowly in some places and people were selling potato schnapps, which was a German alcohol made out of potatoes that was over 100 proof. GIs would trade cigarettes for it. Some of the stuff wasn't schnapps as it turned out. It was wood alcohol, which is poison, and about five guys died from it on that trip. Every place along the route people were begging for cigarettes and food. It was late November 1945 and it was getting cold." "We arrived at Camp Twenty Grand, outside of Le Havre, France sometime around Thanksgiving. I'm not sure if it was Thanksgiving Day, but we went to the mess hall to eat and they served us raw turkey. It made some of us sick. I recall that the food was being served by these fat German POWs. Soon after, we were transported into Le Havre itself and when I saw the ship, the SS Marshall Victory, I said to myself 'you've gotta be kidding.' Compared to the Queen Mary, which was 83,000 tons, this ship was about 5,000 tons. Well, needless to say, the ship made it across in 10 or 11 days. One of my more vivid memories of the crossing was a black GI who was always strumming his banjo. The North Atlantic was especially rough, very cold and windy, but I used to walk around the ship a lot and used to stand at the bow and look at the ocean. It was worse to stay in your bunk, which were stacked 10 or 12 high. The ship was pretty crowded. I remember seeing the 79th Division patch; you know, the "Cross of Lorraine." Guys were getting sick because this little ship was being tossed around pretty good. I would stand at the bow and keep myself occupied by keeping my eyes open for mines. Even though the war had been over for six months, there was a still the danger of floating sea mines – you know, those big round ones with the spikes on them you see in Destination Tokyo – so lookouts were posted to scour the ocean ahead of the ship for these things. When one was sighted the Merchant Marines on board would try to detonate them by shooting at them with their rifles." "The Marshall Victory pulled in to Hampton Roads (Newport News, Virginia) on December 10, 1945. I went to went by train to Camp Patrick Henry right outside of Newport News; it took less than an hour and they gave us a steak dinner. All the cooks were German prisoners of war. A couple of days later we took a train to Fort Dix, New Jersey, where I was discharged on December 18. I then took a train from Trenton to Penn Station and then went over to Jersey City to catch the Erie Railroad train to Deposit, NY. During the 30s and 40s they had great railroad service in that part of the country. They had the New York Central, the Pennsylvania Railroad, The Erie, and many others coming into New York City or Jersey City. From that little station in Deposit, you could catch a train to Chicago. It'd go to Binghamton, Elmira, and into Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and right into the Loop in Chicago." "From Deposit I had to hitch-hike to my hometown, Walton. There weren't very many cars on the road. I had to walk about 10 miles and got home around two o'clock in the morning." The Erie RR station in Deposit, circa 1908. It looked pretty much the same in 1945 according to Lawrence — imagine a soldier returning from the war in Europe arriving there on a cold December evening, barracks bag in hand. Such a scene must have been played out thousands of time across America during the Winter of '45. Lawrence is now retired and lives in Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY, a small village about four miles north of West Point, where many of World War II's general officers were educated. The picture at left was taken in February 2000, showing Lawrence at 77. He spent nearly 15 years working at the United States Military Academy Cadet Mess, retiring as a supervisor in the early 1980s. Lawrence's brothers, John and Sam, both served during the war in the Pacific Theater of Operations, and survived. Both have since passed away. His sister, Virginia, resides in Albany, NY. A list of World War II veterans from his hometown of Walton can be found here. "During the war, I didn't think about much about the historical perspective of what I was involved in. I was living one day to the next, and I couldn't wait to get home. Although some guys were good at keeping a diary or taking a lot of pictures, I wasn't. I'm glad that this Web site is being put together so people will get a better idea of what it was like. Including some of us who were there! That all of these memories and pictures can be shared through a computer is amazing. Just seeing some of the photos helps me to remember. A face in the background, or a place from 50 years ago, will sometimes bring a memory back."

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