Harold Patton

Published on July 31, 2015

Harold-Patton "Suddenly, five machine guns with tracer bullets set grass afire around all the boats and everybody ran behind a big castle..."

Transcript

Harold Patton: General Patton had his army on our side of the Rhine River.
The other two armies were back in Belgium and France. He heard the Russians were
going tog to be in Berlin in five days. He said, "Ill beat them." Woke us up at
midnight one night and build him a pontoon bridge across the Rhine River. A
quarter-mile across. Humongous. We had our forty boats lined up on our side of
the Rhine River. Suddenly, five machine guns with tracer bullets set grass afire
around all the boats and everybody ran behind a big castle but me and my buddy,
we stayed with our boat. Suddenly, my sergeant said, "You're job now is to go
over and wipe out five machine guns." He said, "Take a squad of infantrymen." I
was, I was the first boat across. Although one other boat got across that night,
my buddy. But anyway, but 18 in my pontoon boat. The second I did that, back
home in Ider prayer meeting, my dad was in WWI, stood up and said, "Bless
Congress, bless the president and bless them soldiers." Halfway across the Rhine
River, those five machine guns zeroed in on my boat. Killed most of them. The
rest of them were crying. At that second, back home at Ider, five hours
difference in time, my dad's on the floor screaming. My sister said, "Mom, is he
going to die?" He was in WWI. I stood up in the back of my boat with my oar, hit
them in the head as far as I could reach. They stopped crying and started
paddling. But by the time we got across, all of them were killed but 3 of us. My
buddy landed the boat and said, "Patton help me!" and they killed him. I found
myself in the water and lost all my equipment. Finally, crawled out on the
little sandy beach head and immediately a hand grenade came down the embankment.
They looked like a soup bowl with a wooden handle. Landed a foot from my left
shoulder. I had time to pull my helmet over my head, it went off, two more came
in. I was laying there with fifty-two pieces of shrapnel in me. The second that
happened, back home at the prayer meeting, my dad passed out. They had to revive
him. So that's how I got captured.

Audio Information
Attribute	Value
Date	2014-08-14
Interviewer	Evan Musgraves
Interviewee	Harold Dean Patton
Repository	Samford University Oral History Collection
Accession	SUHist/NationalService/002