Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is John Bill Kongable. He's a US Army veteran of World War Two. Mister cong Gable served in an anti tank company in the eighty ninth Infantry Division. He fought across the Rhine River and his unit helped to liberate the Ordriff concentration camp in early April nineteen forty five. Bill Congable was born in Oklahoma and lived there until he was drafted into the US Army during
the war. But even earlier than that, he remembers getting the news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.
I was in my home and we heard the news, and everybody gathered around radios to listen all of the events as they came on the radio.
Do you remember how you reacted to the news.
Well, everybody was mad as hell and surprised. One thing that we learned after a few days after Pearl Harbor was that there was a There were two pilots who got off the ground and shot down several Japanese airplanes, and one of them was Kenneth who came from Homiony. He was born and raised in homony. He stayed in the service and got to be a general.
How old were you when Pearl Harbor was attacked?
Fifteen?
You were drafted into the army less than a week after graduating from high school? Is that right?
Yes, that's right.
Were you expecting that?
Yes?
I was actually eighteen in February, and the head of the draft lord lived across the street from me. I don't know whether it was a particular favor, but he said, Billy, you can graduate from high school and then you're in the army. And so I graduated I think May twenty fifth, and I think I was drafted in May twenty on May twenty eighth.
Where did you go for training?
I went to Fort Sill for my induction. I took a train ride down to Fort Sill, and that was the second time I'd ever been on a train. We had a big station in town and a lot of trains going through, but only was on one other. I stayed there for I think it must have been a couple of weeks, and then they interviewed me to see what kind of skill or craft I might have, and I went to Camp fannin Texas for my infantry basic training.
Camp Fannin was up.
Near Tyler Longview in Northeast Texas.
Northeast Texas.
I went to the eighty ninth Infantry Division in Camp Butner, North Carolina. Neither Camp Buttner or Camp Fannin or in service anymore. I stayed there and got my training in the Anti Tank Company. I think I went up there in September around September. Then in January the division got carried by train up to Boston and we sailed from Boston in January of nineteen forty five.
What does anti tank training consist of?
The Anti Tank Company uses what is called a fifty seven millimeter rifle, which is like it looks like a little artillery piece and it's it's on a two wheel carriage, but it's designed with a very heavy powder charge and a very heavy projectile which has spent uradium in it.
To make it heavy.
And I was a crew member on one of the one of the tank anty tank guns. We had a gunner who used the site to the aim the gun, and we had a loader who put the shell in, took the old got the old shell disposed of, and put a new one in. And then we had a couple of more people moving ammunition around. I guess, kind of standing guard. Any tank weapon was designed so that if when the projectile hit a tank, it would actually melt the metal on the side of the tank and
spring molten metal round inside. And we practiced shooting at obsolete tanks. We never fired at a tank. And all the time we were in that.
Company, how fast could you move that around?
How fast could we reload and fire? Exactly? Probably thirty seconds.
So you arrived in Europe in early nineteen forty five, yes, and where did you go first?
We went to Camp Lucky Strike, which was one of the cigarette camps along the coast where troops coming in from the States got organized to go into combat. We landed at Laharvor in a driving snowstorm and it was cold, cold, cold, And when we got to the camp, our tent was laid out on the ground, so we had to erect our own thirty man tent.
I guess the thing that was that you.
Most suffered from, besides just being cold, was a little tren was out in a field away from the tents, and so if you had to go, you had to go out in the cold, cold, cold, and part of the time, it was in snow.
That's the same winter of the Bulge.
So I yeah, I was inducted just about the time of D Day and we landed in France when the Battle of the Bulge was going on. I think we landed in mid January and it was the first part of March before we went into combat. And it was a puzzle to me while we were sitting around so long, and somebody said, well, think about the situation there. They're surrounded and we've got other military units wheeling around and going back up to the Battle of the Bulch and
they don't want a Green division in. They're missing things up. That's the only reason. But when we did enter combat in March in Luxembourg, that was early March.
The war was over in May. We only had.
Two months of combat experience, and in that time we went from Luxembourg all the way to Germany and some of our troops ended up in Czechoslovakia.
That's a lot of progress.
Yeah, Well, it was fast the tanks. We were following the tanks. That's what the infantry was doing. The tanks would go blaaring ass up through every town and the infantry would come along and clear the town of any remaining German soldiers. Sometimes they would stop in that town and go take over a German house and spend the night, and another unit would leap frog through.
What other weapons were you carrying besides the anti tank gun?
Well, we carried an empty back. Crew members carried carbine in one carbine and the gun crew and the loader carry of forty five automatic pistol. After we crossed the Rhine, Patten said we don't need anti tank guns anymore, and we became a rifle company, so everybody carried a nam one. That was one of the main weapons we trained on. We trained on all of the weapons that an infantry
company might have to use. A thirty milimere, a machine gun, mortar, thirty thirty milimere and sixty milimere border.
There was what was called a.
Browning automatic rifle of the bar. We didn't get pistol training in basic training that we got that training. Uh, after we got to the United Division.
I know a lot of guys got attached to their rifles. Would it would would that be true for you?
Not really in the infantry. In basic training you answered your roll call all with your dog tag number, and you had to report every so often the number on your rifle. When we got into combat, there was no such keeping records of anything you grabbed, grabbed, whatever gun you were using at the time, and there wasn't any wasn't any record keeping go if in basic you if you lost your rifle, you were in deep trouble or
in in Europe, that wasn't a problem. At one stop we made, we passed by a house that was already occupied and somebody had their sniper rifle leaning up against the wall out just out in the open street. I don't know who might have stolen it, but it wasn't secure. I'd say that all right.
So let's talk about March and your first entry into combat. Where was that and what was it like?
That was in Luxembourg and in the anti tank company. We rode in trucks pulling our gun behind us. The rifle companies did the main ground fighting. When we crossed the Mozelle, some of the people who were in the first company said it was a pretty intense battle. After that, we traveled in our trucks, waiting, waiting to be called on to use our anti tank weapons until the crossing of the Rhine.
That's Bill Kong Gable. He's a US Army veteran of World War Two who fought in an anti tank unit that saw intense action while crossing the Rhine River. Miss the aftermath of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis at the or Driff concentration camp. When we come back, con Gable describes the vicious fighting to get across the Rhine. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
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This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is John Bill kong Gable. He served in an anti tank unit within the eighty ninth Infantry Division. Later in our conversation we'll discuss the unspeakable horrors that Conggable witnessed at the order of Concentration camp. But right now, con Gable takes us to the most intense combat of his time in World War II, crossing the Rhine in the spring of nineteen forty five.
Well, that was quite a battle.
Our commanders had planned to have a surprise night crossing, and the Rhine's in a deep valley there, and on the American side, we placed their anti tank companies on the top of the hill pointing down to cover any thing that we needed to shoot at. And at two o'clock. The first company crossed. They were in in one assault boats, which were just a metal square brow pile boat with eight soldiers, four on each side paddling and an engineer in the front and an engineer in the back. And
the first company crossed without any resistance. And when the second company started across, the Germans had anticipated us and mounted twenty millimeter anti aircraft guns and machine guns culverts under the road on the other side of the river, set up in a perfect crisscross fire, firing at water level so that no way you can get through that.
Our second company ran into that resistance. The first things the Germans did was are a twenty milimere any aircraft gun to gasoline barge which was parked along the river, and it set the barge on fire in the valley. Was dislike daylight. That company, as I understood it, had eighty five percent casualties dead and wounded, and there were
quite a few missing. We kept firing at the German positions, and the first company that crossed over came around and between the two of us we eliminated the German opposition. One thing I'll never forget is that during the crossing of the second company. Between berths of gunfire, we could hear the men on the river screaming and hollering. And the one thing that this brings me to tears every time I think about it. One guy said, old Mama, you just can't imagine the suffering that guy was having.
After the German positions were knocked out, it was three o'clock or four o'clock in the morning, and I sat down and went to sleep and woke up at sunrise. The ally was covered with a smoke strain. We crossed pulling our weapon on a pontoon bridge that the engineers had built at noon. It's just amazing they got in there that quick and built a bridge. After the fighting.
Take me back to the night before. Where are you set up?
We were?
We were set up on the top of the hill on the American side, with our guns pointing down, and our weapons were not as effective as they could be because it was just one solid bullet and you had to make a pretty direct hit to do any damage. There was an ammunition called high explosive anti tank ammunition which had an explosive head on it, but we didn't have that, so it took a little longer because of that.
But we must have been pretty close because one of the twenty millimeter guns turned it up the hill and was shooting at us.
They it went over us.
But every round on a twenty milimeter any aircraft bullet is a tracer, so you know where you can see where it goes. And the machine guns it's only every fifth round, but it's pretty fast and so you see a lot of of the tracer bullets.
Are you using the anti tank gun or rifles anti tank gun?
There were troops.
Down on the shoreline with M one shooting across two, so we had those troops and or anti tank guns up on the hill and then pops deadhead crossed on the initial crossing. I don't know who did the most to knockout the positions. Boo, we did our share.
That's Bill kong Gable, a US Army veteran of World War II. When we come back, more of his thoughts on the fighting at the Rhine and the horrors that he witnessed at the Order of Concentration Camp. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans' Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus, our guest in this edition is John Bill kong Gable. He is a US Army veteran of World War Two serving in an anti tank unit in the
eighty ninth Infantry Division. In just a moment, mister coong Gable will tell us what he saw at the Order of Concentration camp in early April nineteen forty five. But first more of his thoughts on the fight to cross the Rhine and what he was thinking in the midst of that brutal f I.
Was amazed that the Germans had always had a surprise for us, and that was the first intense battle I was involved in, and it just amazed me that they sat there and let the first company cross. They hoped to trap the first company after that first crossing, and the guns were set up so perfectly, firing in a crisscross pattern. They planned it, They planned for it. They were well prepared and they were well armed. And here it was almost the end of March, and the war
was over in May, so they were still fighting. We said, don't they know the war's over? But as far as they were concerned, it wasn't over, and they never stopped resisting.
Did you then cross the Rhine yourself? After the fighting.
No, I wasn't in any of the troops that crossed the Rhine in the paddle boats. We crossed with our in our truck.
The crew.
Rode in a truck which pulled our weapon. So that's how we crossed the Rhine in our truck across the pontoon bridge.
What did the river and the valley look like the next morning after all that.
Well, the.
Place we stopped is really a famous place. It was at Saint Gore, which is a narrow spot in the Rhine. Back in ancient days.
There's a story that and there was.
A castle up on the top of the hill that there was a singer named Loralai who sang and attracted some of the boat traffic on the Rhine over to the side of the river where the Germans looted the cargo boats. But that was the That was the location of our crossing. I couldn't see much on the river that the smoke screen hadn't completely gone away when we crossed.
Now, you said earlier that once you crossed the Rhine that you shifted to infantry. Yes, what did that shift look like? How did it happen?
Well, we parked the trucks and the guns, and we were issued Those that didn't have rifles already were issued in once and so we walked in patrols the rest of the way across Germany. Our platoon didn't encounter any heavy fighting. From the Rhine crossing there were a few minor battles and towns were German soldiers had hidden out when the tanks came through, so they had to be eliminated.
How did you do that?
Well, find them and shoot them.
That's the way. That's the way you do it.
So you did have an anti tank moment, just not with your anti tank unit. Yes, yes, Now you also encountered some displaced persons.
Yes, we encountered some.
Dps who apparently had been locked up in a factory or chemical plant that had been liberated by troops on some side of us. And these late slave laborers that we encountered were walking home. Several of them were Italian and they had been in one of the camps, the slave labor camps and Ponya Maya Polski. People were asking if we spoke Polish, or people asked if we spoke Italian.
We had one guy in our squad who came from Brooklyn, and spoke fluent Italians, and so he would stop and talk to him, but there wasn't any way we could help him. And he got to the point where he said, don't tell anybody I'm a Talian. I don't want I don't want to talk to any of those people. But then on April fourth, the division liberated Ordroff, the first concentration camp on the Western Front. It wasn't our platoon, it was some other platoon in the in the division.
Did you see ord I saw part of it, and it probably I don't know. I forget now exactly why how I happened to see it, But it was some days after the initial liberation, and it was the open pit.
Grave of Ordroff were about.
They said about an estimated three thousand naked, skin and bonne bodies were buried in this long pit. And at the time there was a detail of soldiers supervising some Germans and I don't remember how many. They were digging six foot graves, six foot deep graves and pulling bodies out of the pit. And you can't imagine a more terrifying an awful job. That is because when they take hold of a body, the rotting skin would slide off the bones and it was hard to get a grip
on it. And I saw one body coming out. It came apart, it was so old and rotted. I was only there about ten minutes, and I didn't know at the time that it was the Order of pet I found out later.
What's it like to see something like that.
It's just awful. It's just awful.
Oh, you're going to encounter dead bodies, and you encounter dead bodies as a result of enemy fire, but to see that many bodies completely unclothed, almost skeletal from having been starved to death. But I wasn't there very long, so I didn't have time to grieve over it or wonder over it. But it was a terrible and the smell was I'll never forget that smell.
Is there any way to describe the smell.
Well, you've run across dead, rotting animals run over in the road or something somebody shot and left in the countryside. That kind of smell plus a terrible smell of body odor mixed in with the rotting flesh of.
The bodies, and you had no idea that the Germans were doing anything like this.
Right, Well, we had seen.
Movies in the States, where there usually was a short newsreel. They showed film clips of various incidents, and we saw movies of where the Germans were gathering up the Jews and carrying them off to concentration camps. We didn't see the concentration camps, but it wasn't a complete surprise to find these camps like that.
Now, I also read that you encountered some local citizens who pretended they knew nothing about the camp.
Yeah.
Well, that's part of the account by the liberating company that right after it was discovered, the commanders ordered Germans from the town of Ordruf to march through the camp and see what their Nazi soldiers had done. And they said many of them were shaking your heads and saying I didn't know, I didn't know. It was too close to the town that they didn't know everything that was going on.
Now, after you encountered the camp, you kept moving into Germany. But you also witnessed the crash of a B twenty four.
Yes, that's my B twenty four story. We were walking along a road. It was pretty long, straight road and there were woods on both sides of the road, and it was a very clear day and we could see the flights of B twenty fourth going over, just squadron after squadron, and we were griping. One of the guys says, now, look at those fly boys. They fly over, drop a few bombs, fly back to England, have a bear to pub and sleep in a nice soft bed. And here
we are. Our feet are slower, sore, we're sleeping on the ground, we're eating cold food. We haven't had a bath in three weeks. It's it's just not fair.
And about that.
Time we heard a plane coming from a German side and we scattered into the woods. And when the plane arrived at was a BE twenty four and one engine was dead and the other one was burning, and I swear there was so many bullet holes in the fuselage you could almost see through it. And it was flying at about three hundred feet, which is very low for a big plane like that. And then three or four seconds later we heard it crash over behind us. It was such a shock. We were just looking at each
other thinking what did we see. And one of the guys said, you know, maybe it is better to fight the war with your feet on the ground, because when you stop flying you die?
How did you hear about the German surrender?
Somebody in in our organization passed a word down.
That the war was over, So we just relaxed a lot.
We were apparently in in the area that was going to be the Russians as the Allies had agreed, and so we had to pull back. I forget how far after we pulled back. We were in the town of Armstadt in eastern Germany.
Last couple of questions, sir, First of all, what are you most proud of from your service?
Well, I don't know that I'm proud of anything that wasn't my duty to do as a soldier. I guess supporting the crossing of the Rhine was a most intense battle. We eventually won that battle.
Do you still think about it? Often?
No?
Not often.
After I got out of the army, I went to the Canal Zone for two years and then went to the University of Oklahoma. I got a degree in chemical engineering, and I.
Moved to Texas.
I wasn't in contact with any of my crew members in the division, and I didn't know there was was a a nice division association until it's probably twenty years after the war.
Was over.
When I found out about it, I read about all the reunions they had had, and one of the members was maintaining a website, and I logged onto the website, and by that time it was mostly disbanded because everybody was too old to maintain it. But I would have liked to see some of my Patoon fell Up atoon members.
Lastly, sir, what does it mean to you to have us record your story so this generation and future generations can see it.
I think it's my privilege. There hasn't been anything much that it was, anything that I can have have done. Since the war, I have been interviewed about five times in videos like this, and I'm happy to tell the stories so that young people have some sense of what really went on. So many of them, my granddaughters, they don't look up anything about World War Two. They don't know a whole lot about current politics, so I have to I have to educate them on that. But I'm happy to share my experience.
It's been an honor to meet you. I thank you for your time today, and thank you most of all for your service to our country.
You're welcome.
John Bill kong Gable is a US Army veteran of World War II. He served in an anti tank company inside the eighty ninth Infantry Division. He fought across the Rhine River and his unit helped to liberate the Order of Concentration Camp in early April of nineteen forty five. I'm Greg Corumbus. Thank you for listening to Veterans Chronicles. Hi. This is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter. We're at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course, please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles