Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Verne Staley. He's a US Army veteran of World War Two, serving as a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division. That division spent nearly ninety days in combat during the final months of the war in the European theater. And mister Staley, thank you so much for being with us. Well, thank you. Well, let's start at the very beginning, sir, where were
you born and raised? Well, I was born in Brainville, Oregon, and my birthday is three twenty six, nineteen twenty four, ninety nine. Now, well, that's fantastic. You sound terrific. Happy birthday. Not that long ago. Was there a history of military service in your family. Well, my father served in World War One, has did two of his brothers, and then my brothers that was younger and I than me served in
World War Two at the tail end. Other than that, I had uncles and what have you that had served in out in the Philippines when there was an insurrection out there and step way back. And so we have been a proud supporter of the military. Let's put it that way. It sounds like a great legacy of service to our military and to our nation. Sir, if you were born in nineteen twenty four, that puts you about seventeen years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. How did you hear the news?
What do you remember about that day? It was a Sunday afternoon and that was had gone outside and was walking down the street, and then neighbor boy came out and told me, he said, the Japanese of atap Pearl Harbor. So I went back home and we turned onto radio and listened to the news because it was everywhere on the radio, so you can listen to and it was really chaos because nobody knew what that was going on. Were you thinking that you'd have to go to Warszoon personally? Oh? Yes, Oh
yeah, I knew that. Everybody I went to high school with, if they if they could pass the physical, ended up in the Service. Then the strange thing about it is, or I don't know why it's strange, but the ones that went to the Pacific, I think we lost six people from Primeville or Crook County in the Pacific and lost none in the European theater in a small town. That's a big hit. Yeah, well up there. Our hero is Dexter Fincher and he was on the Arizona in Pearl Harbor
and he's still there, sir. Were you drafted or did you enlist? No? I was drafted. My dad wouldn't let me. He wanted me to finish high school and be the first one to graduate from high school. And he told me, and he was right. He said, there'll be plenty of war left as soon as you get out of school, and there was. So you're drafted into the army. Did you have a preference on
which branch? Were you happy with that? Oh? Yes, I could have went into any branch, but the family been going into the army mainly, and my IQ was good enough. I could have went to officers or been a airplane pilot. Got kicked out eventually and ended up with a rifle in my hand. Anyways, So where did they send you for training? Campadare, Oregon. I went to the seventieth Infantry Division, which is sowhere
near Correllis, Oregon. It's north of Corvellis and the seventieth was formed in Campadare, Oregon in June of nineteen forty three, and so we took first eleven months of training. Was there, although I went to Denver Seems General Hospital for to be a medical technician. I was back there for three months and then came back. And then the next thing we knew this on the Sevillian workers was telling us that the camp was going to close and we were
going to leave. And that's how you'd find out you're doing things because they'd been notified their job was ending. Were you assigned to medic training or did you volunteer for that? Oh? No, no, I didn't volunteer. People said how did you end up? And see, I've been working part time in a machine shop, So they said how did you end up being
a medic? And I said, well, I have no idea except that they had a board there's like about on a piece of plywood f and they had all kinds of numbers across it and lines across and he took some number from my tests that take in and went across to it and came down with the other and then said right there it said two seventy fourth Medical Detachment. And I said, I don't want to be in a medics And he said next. Not a lot of dialogue, right, It's just this is what
you're going to do. So what did that training consist of? What were you taught that a medic can and can't do on a battlefield. Well, sometimes you can't save a life no matter what you want to do. But it was basically bandage wounded, you know, take care of them, and then you had problems with them coming down with diarrhea. Ime, everyone spring hit and we was pulled off the line for two or three days of rest. And we went back and the guys drank the water and the house we
stand in and I had diarrhea. An army they called her business subcarbonent was supposed to take care of it. Didn't do it. So I thought, well, I wonder what selfa diazne will do. I had a lot of Zolfa diazine tablets, so I started giving all of nap and had cured the diarrhea. So you're an innovator too, So that's good to know. And then hopefully that word got around to other units. What tools and medicine did you have with you? You mentioned the tablets, but what else did you
have in your kid? Well, you had a pair of bandage scissors, you had rolls of bandages, you had compressed bandages, you had band aids. And then I was able to because of my training, that our sergeant in the age station let me have taketure belladonna, which our doctor didn't like a lot it was to have, but he knew I'd been trained how to use it. Then we also had iodine swabs and you had those for to
stop infections. And you just had a lot of compress bandages in your kit to take care of because you needed that kind of stuff to bandage up wounds and stuff. And I never had to put an attorney quet on. I did discover something though, that they gave you a graham up morphine. They had these in these little uh well, it was like a toothpaste tube and Neil days. Anyway, there was a needle on a cap over they pulled it off, and if you gave him the whole chatta morphine, you turned
them in from walking wounded to a litter case. So I discovered it if they wasn't wounded real bad, give them about a fourth of it, just a numb it so they could walk to the pickup point and get picked up and hauled back to the aide station and had a doctor tell me and learned later years. He said, you was practicing pain management way before we doctors were. You should have written a paper and I said, yeah, sure. I said it's a PFC Verne Daley. Would you have read it?
And he said no, Still still at the cutting edge, we're seeing this all over the place. So you left for Europe in late nineteen forty four. What was your voyage across the Atlantic like at that time of year? Very smooth, just glass smooth it was, And the Mariposa was a converted lectury lner and you need to due thirty three knots, so we sailed across there by ourselves. So it was really a very smooth, even though with some guys got sick in Boston and never got out of their bunks all the
way across, and it was smooth as could be. It was an enjoyable trip across. And one thing you laugh about is we had this here fellow Breezy Breeze a check breeze us a nick name. Anyway, he was about six foot four and he wore a fourteen boot, and so they gave him four pairs and his double bag was full of boots and no room for anything else, hardly so out in the middle of Atlantic somewhere, he went out at night and dropped two pairs of boots overboard, so he had more room
and he's double bag. Well, you guys are resourceful. When we come back from the break in a moment, we'll talk about where you were sent as soon as you landed. But from what I read, it sounds like your plans changed once you got there due to the start of the Battle of the Bulge. What was your original expectation once you arrived in France. We knew we would end up on the front line. We didn't know it. It would be that sudden, let's put it that way. But you didn't
You didn't know where yet at that point. No, no, we didn't know until we got there. Well, we got to Marseilles on the tenth
of December. Of course, the Battle of the Boat started on the sixteenth, So about on the seventeenth I think we were ordered to back our devil bags and wait for the trucks, and then went down to the railroad and get on forty and eight box cars and spent five days going north and ended up getting off the train of a town called Barmouth, and then we walked about six miles to Bischweiler, where we spent the night and a couple of
days until they got organized what they were going to do with us. Well, that's a perfect spot to take a break, because when we come back, we're going to talk about how mister Staley and seventieth Division first saw combat and how they would see a lot of combat over the ensuing few months. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is Veterans Chronicles. Our guest today is Vern Staley, US Army veteran and combat medic in World War Two with the seventieth Infantry
Division. Please stay with us. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Vern Staley. He's a US Army veteran of World War Two serving as a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division.
That division spent nearly ninety days in combat during the final months of the war in the European theater, and just before our break, mister Staley told us about his story all the way up to the point of his unit landing in Marseille in December of nineteen forty four, and then finding out just a few days later that they were needed near the location of where the Battle of the Bulge had broken out in more northern France and into Belgium. And so we're
now going to talk about what exactly he ended up doing there. And from what I understand, Verne, you and some others were attached to the seventh Division as part of something called Task Force Heron, Is that correct? It was called Test Force and it was just a three infantry regiments we had. We had no artillery, we had nothing. We was attached to the forty fifth Division a lot. And worst of it is, they got credit for all the good work we did. Well, tell me about that good work.
Well, we after we got the Bishweiler, it was it was close to the Rhine River, and they scattered us up and down the Rhine River. Standard guard and our mortars for each company was nine miles apart. Give the idea how thin it was, and the Germans could walk through. They went through there anytime they wanted to. We had the Rhine River separating us from them. And well, the colonel got a bright idea there was a bunker on the other side. So he decided that we had to take a
fifty seven nine to tain't gunned down there and shoot it. So we get down there and we're laying on and then there's a nice dike there to lay on at the Rhine River, and so we was laying on that waiting for him, and they hit the dirt on a bunk or over across the river, and then they started firing out of it, and there was limbs falling all around us, and that was their exposure to a German machine gun.
And we found out how fast they were, and so we got down immediately got below where we could get hurt, and so then the colonel ordered us to go and get out of there. So we went ahead and made a mad scramble and got out of there and went back to our billets where we were at because we were lucky. We were staying in a house, so we were at that time no foxholes. Some people was at foxholes, but
I didn't happen to be one. Anyway. After we was there about a week on the Rhine River, we got orders going to pack up, and so we went out. It took us to this little town called Pooberg and we got off the trucks there. They said we didn't have to walk the rest of the way. So we went down a treacherous because it was slow at the ground it was icy, and we went down a couple of three miles, walked down to the edge of this town called Wingins or Motor,
and the Germans captured it. It was the sixth Mountain Division of the Airs, and they were an SS division, which was like an Army ranger division, really top notch, and they had been training for two years in Finland,
and so they were dead shots. And like the first day we got there, they had captured the town and captured a lot of the regiment of the two seventy sixth Regiment, and their colonel has seen us, and so he ordered our lieutenant for the rifle, but tune to win and rescue these men, and like a darned food officer ordered across an open field and we at one man killed because they opened up with machine guns. And so eventually
we were able to pull back into the woods. And then then next day we attacked again, and that I was assigned to F Company, and F Company suffered nineteen men killed the day. At sixth day of January that year's a lot of people in one day, nineteen plus a lot of wounded, and it was one of the worst days they were put in. I got pinned down on an open field and spent the day laying in snow, and if you moved somehow I didn't get hit. I had dead people on both
sides of me and others that were wounded. And finally it was dusk and one of her modis come down and yelled at me and he said, hey, it's safe, you come off. And I said, well, I need help, come on out, and he said no, and he showed me it's safe, but he wouldn't come out to where I was. So
it was out an open field, so I couldn't walk. So I got my hands in the east and I crawled in about one hundred and fifty feet to the bank where it was safer, and then he helped me up and we went up and got the litter bearers to get down and evacuate all the people that was still live down there, and got them headed back to that. I never didn't know how they come out. I never could track them
down. Today with a computer, I could have done it, but back years ago it was next to impossible, So I have no idea how they made out. I wish I knew. After spending the ordeal, they decided I needed to stay in the age station and recouper it in the next day. Then the next day Captain Clifford said, Sergeant Clausner and you and me are going to Wing Andsromoter and tag the dead. And I said, why
do we have to do it? And he said orders. So we went to wing Insermot and went through every house and it's really hard to take somebody anew you know after that where it was just kind of routine battle, but that was one of our worst ones. And now that the second Battalion to seven four got a unit citation for that, we were the only organization or unit in the seventieth to get a unit citation, so we're very proud of that. So and that operation was called it was the southern part of the
Battle of the Bulls. It wasn't recognized for years till an English author really got to diggon into the records and discovered that it was Operation Nordband and Hitler's plan was was to go through there because there was a rail through there, and then there was the Alsatian planes where he'd run tanks on and so his plan was was to go through there on the southern part, skirt around and the northern part and bottle up on af A lot of the US army there.
We stopped the Operation Nordband. We captured over nine hundred Germans in there. We were successful and that's part of why we got this citations with an outstanding job. And most of those enemy fighters were SS guys, right,
yeah, they were deadly shots. Their sharpshooters were just deadly. And when we was tagging, I found out that they would lay up and in the houses there, you know, they all have tiles, so they could move a tile to one side and put the rifle up through that little triangular hole and shoot and you couldn't tell where it was coming from. That was the
worst part. The only thing that demoralized the Germans to a degree was we had no artillery, no support of anything outside of the fifty seven millimeter tank guns. Ed a tank and so they rigged up away and they they pulled it by hand, a lot of it. They let it down icy slopes with a rope and they finally got it down and they were able to shoot it to Germans with it then, and we found after the war talking the which we shot that with it, that are scared of them to death.
They said that thing really was We could and now fifty seven was it very hard? What was a nanitate gun? What you expect? You know? So it helped us win the battle. So anyway, after that then we packed up and oh gosh, it was soon one skirmish after another, you know, and it would just foxhold after foxhole, and people were getting hurt and wounded and killed, and but we kept plugging away in eventually we won.
Verne, let's pause there one more time. When we come back, we'll discuss the rest of your story of service during World War two and beyond. Our guest is Vern Staley. He's a US Army veteran of World War Two. Served as a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division, which spent nearly ninety days in combat during the final months of the war in the European Theater. I'm Greg Corumbus Veterans Chronicles. We'll be right back. This is
Vetter Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is Vern Staley. He is a US Army veteran of World War Two, serving as a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division, and that division spent nearly ninety days in combat during the final months of the war in the European theater. And mister Staley, you set us up well for the next part of your service.
But I do want to go back to a couple of things from earlier, towards the end of nineteen forty four, very early part of nineteen forty five, and in that part of Operation Nordfind or North Wind in the English translation, I read in the history of the division that there was considerable hand to hand fighting at times during that combat. What do you remember about that,
Well, I was pinned down on Nopod field. I could only tell you what the fellows told me. Yes it was, And one of our medics was there somewhere, and the Germans to a white phosphorus grenade down said he was wearing an overcoat, and he shed his overcoat to gave it. Of course it was will it wouldn't burn, but I'd sure melt, you know, and stuff so, and there was it was just hand to hand.
They would throw hand garnades in the house into the basement and they'd go charging in shooting and and that's how part of them got killed around there was they didn't u and grenade didn't get all the Germans at times and stuff. It was. It was the toughest fight we had the Old War. Was William's Sermot was absolutely the worst. We were green troops. We'd never been
in combat before. There was some officers of the other ones that seemed what we did and they said to him and said, where did you find those guys? You know what we said after the war we was too dumb to know that we could. You couldn't do what we did. If we'd been experienced, we wouldn't have done it as much as he did. They told us take the town. So we're green, we go take the down, simple, right, exactly exactly what's going through your mind as you're pinned down
there? You can't get up and help people that you know have probably been hit, but you know if you get up, you're going to be hit and then you can't help them anyway. So what's that moment like in your mind knowing what your role is during a battle. Well, you know a lot of praying and crawl up in your helmet and hide. At times people say call your helmet. You said, oh, yeah, you can do that when you're scared. You know you've been shelled shot at. Normally we
tried to get to them. Some Germans observed the red cross, other shot at. It was always a risky took I guess, and but that's what we were trained to do. I know that the Germans did not have a men that went out in the fighting and helped their people. They waited until after the battle was over. So we went about it a totally different way. And what we did, no doubt help save lives. You valued your own people a lot more than they did too. So did you have a
red cross on your helmet to designate your role as a medic? Yes, we discovered we needed to do that, so they got white and red paint and we painted took a coffee can and drew a circle around a coffee can and then painted it white and then put a red cross in the middle of that. That'll work. Now. Were you also armed? Oh no, there was a part of the Geneva Convention stated that medics would not be armed.
So no, you you did not carry anything, but you were surrounded with guys that had m ones and forty fives and and grenades and all that good stuff to fight wars with, you know, so you ne were worried about it. Like when they were just laying down real heavy fire with a bar. I helped load clips to make sure we had enough full to keep the guy that was firing him bar to do what we wanted him to do. When that was silence of Germans, which worked. A bar was a
wicked rifle that we had. The Yeah, I didn't know this until the last couple of years that all the baars we had were made during World War One or right after, and then they were you furbished for World War Two. This Browning that designed that designed all kinds of different guns. He worked for Winchester and Springfield. And if if you go to og Utah, there's a museum there of Browning museum. So you said, where was the factory,
There was no factory. He was smart. He designed them, patted them, and then got a royalty from every gun that the different manufacturers made that he designed. One more thing I want to touch on before we get back to your progression during the war where we left off a moment ago, and that's the cold. You mentioned that when you got there you did not have to stay in foxholes. Was that the case throughout most of the winter, And how did you deal with the cold during the day as well?
You shivered a lot. The army did not supply us with good foot gear. They gave us what they called shoe packs, and that's it has a right or bottom and a leather sold on sewed onto it. Then you had half felt insoles and you had four of them. You kept two under your shirt next to your body to dry them out, and you wore them there one day, and then you every morning you took in chains to put a dry pair of felt liners in your boots. And that's that was how you
did it. But I have frostbite, as most everybody that I was with as frostbite. That my feet do not have the sensation in them they could have because they were frozen. It was hard because of the fact living in a foxhold. And then we had dugouts. Mber one place we were and woke up in the morning and we had a dug out there, and then you had a blanket over the emptry hole and one of the guys Eddie go
out. And every time we're living a dump, it snowed about a foot of snow overnight, and so that was what you was living then, was snow and cold and miserable. And then the Germans wasn't helping you. And because they'd shoot at year show, you know, so of course we did
the same thing in return for them. And you know, and then Eisenhower had all these pamphlets, leaflets dropped on them telling them they'd surrender, they would have a dry bed to sleep in every day and three meals a day and if they'd surrender, they could live a good life and so they would never be cold. You'd hear Germans soli or yelling, have his hands over his head and yelling comrade, comrade, and holding it orange slip of paper. And we always said, yeah, you're lucky. So and so you
get to go back and get three three meals and caught. But it worked. So it was it was that now sometimes we were in bunkers. There was bunkers along there that the between the French and German line, and our engineers wanted to blow one up, and so they put eight hundred pounds of T and T in this one we was living in, but it was in sight, so it could never get hit the walls. Was thinking those bunkers, and so I talked to one of the engineers afterwards, and I said,
what happened when you blew up that bunker with all that intent? He said, we put too much in it and turned it upside down. Bunkers was a safe place to eat, but also they were dangerous if you were very careful when you come in and out of one. You had to always listen or make sure there was no income in our tillery or anything, so you were always on there alert. Well, Vern in our discussion earlier, you kind of led us up to the point past some of that vicious fighting
that happened early on during your deployment into eastern France. And I believe you set us up as you moved on from there and got near the town of Sarbrooken, Is that right? Yes? So what happened then they shelled Sarbrooken. There was the heaviest artillery put down the heaviest shilling they ever did during the war, shilling Sarbrooken. So we were scheduled to Gwin like eight o'clock
in the morning and they had built Pontou Bridge across. They had generally had taken the forty mineralmeter and aircraft guns that normally protected the division headquarters and put them up on the front line and had them so they chew flat trajectory if they needed And what was those guys complaining because they'd never been on the front line before. We went across and was nothing. The Germans had left during the night, and we went about twenty miles that day and they could never
catch up with the Germans. And then for us the war was over. They decided that somebody had to be in the Army of Occupations. So we was living it up and I have fun stories of that. We was in this town of bat Sawback and there was a big green for door Mercedes in the garage, so gays don't take long to hot wire one, and so
we we would take it out and drive it. And one day we was out two lun around and we come to a checkpoint and here's these guys, these mp standing there not a spot on our uniforms, neckties, tommy guns, and they said out we got out of that and they take our Mercedes and do it across the street to a lot or road, and so now we're going to get back, and he said, that's your problem. We hammed to end up in the patents third Army and you weren't allowed to be
driving any German vehicles GIS. So they took our big Mercedes away from us, left us a foot and showed us no mercy. Fortunately, a jeep from each company came along and we flagged them down and got back to her where we were blowned about twenty miles away. We got lucky that day. I also read from the history of the seventieth Division Verne that you liberated a town called four Bak, and yes, shortly after that you also helped deliberate
more than a thousand Allied prisoners. So tell me a little bit about those things. Third Battallion actually did four back. We was about a few miles from there. We was up at Staring Window, which is Towne. They're just a few miles apart. We went up on Kreisenburg Ridge for a period of time and then they they drew the detail of doing four blocks. So all I know is what they told us, But I know that we had some really tough fighting there on Kreisenburg Colonel Connelly got the bright idea that the
having machine guns out of straits the Mets highways. So so lo and behold just where we were supposed to start firing on there. He showed up with his group of tenants and they started straighten the Mets Highway, and then the Germans started shelling us up there. And it was so I went to jump on my foxhole and I look, and there's a guy with eagles on his shoulder in my foxhole. And it was only big for one big enough for
one person, so I didn't try to kick Colonel Connolly out. So another GI yelled at me and said, I got room over here, and I jumped in his. Yeah, Colonel Connley could always break. He was under direct fire up there. The General didn't know. He went up and did Daddy. He was always doing something like that. He had. He had six shooters and he carried like Patton, and he had a nickname Senior Raf Churcher looking for ways to do it, and so he had the name of
Shooting Sam. And he had two ships, six shooters on each hip, one on each side. He was a neat guy, though he was all right. Verne. Let's pause right there. When we come back, we'll conclude your story here on Veterans Chronicles. Our guest is Vern Staley. He is a US Army veteran of World War Two, served as a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division. I'm Greg Corumbus. Please stay with us, says Veterans Chronicles. I'm right, Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
Vern Staley. He is a US Army veteran of World War Two, serving as a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division and Verne. We've talked about your role as a combat medic in a couple of different ways. Are there any particular moments as a combat medic that stand out? A particular wound that you treated, or a person that you treated, or a story that comes to mind almost right away when when you think about your service as a medic.
The worst ones they got was a shell and hit a full in the back and he was breathing through this hole in his back rather you know. And I put a compress bandage on it, but you didn't have a way to really hold it in place like you'd like to add. But he managed
to get to the age station. I know because I asked him about him and they said, well, the bandage come off the terror where you put it, And I said, well, there was no way you could really hold it because we didn't have any good tape or anything that you could use on something like that. So that was one of the worst ones. And then the others that were just it's so mortally wounded that there wasn't anything you could do for him. When that was ones that always hated, you know.
And I've had people come up to me and said, you remember when you bandaged me up, and I kind of said, well, yeah, and I didn't really because you was doing a lot of it at times, and you just it was hard to remember everything there was. Ones were just look at the torn flesh and the rest that would just shudder, and I
still do. I don't like to think of it too much now. At Staring Windel, there there was a camp there were there was political prisoners in there, and so when we got closer, they broke out and the Germans shot them in the back as they was leaving. And I never seen anybody skin and bone, and they had wounds. I'm sure they would gang green in him. It was just the most pitiful sight that I had I had ever seen, and nothing like it since then. And it was cotton picking.
Germans was shooting at those poor people and it had hit him in the back and go through and there was a little hole in the back and a little hole in the front where it came out. And I ran out of band aids, so I had to give up on that, and they were sent back and eventually was taking care of the army, got a deal set up and Doc Ellis was in charge of getting things straighten out there. He
was first battalion surgeon. It's one of those things that there was a lot of wounded, a lot of bandages just done, and I'd just like to think about the fun we had. Understandable, understandable sir. How did you learn that the Germans had surrendered? Where were you and how did you hear the news? Oh? We were in Darmstadt, Germany, and we were in the Saga Battalion Age station was in this big manchion there. The guy
was the director of all the utilities in Darmstadt. So you had electric refrigerator, electric cookstove, washing machine. Oh, there was all kinds of stuff in there. It was a fancy place, and so we partied it up for three days, and there were several false surrenders, and then we got to word this was the real one, and everybody was shooting her rifles and just and then we drank a lot of champagne celebrating it, because she was always a dark cloud. The war wasn't over and with a Japanese yet,
but we lived it up for three days. I got a picture of us when we're all looking pretty good. Now, your division had seen nearly ninety days of combat in a little more than four months. That's a lot of combat. So what kind of a toll had that taken on you and your division? And I'm sure that played into the relief that went into that celebration
too. It was always very hard. It's like, you know, I heard it was two sergeants I knew, and they were both in the same foxhole in a shell, landed the inn and killed both of them at the same time, you know. And yeah, those kind of things now in Darmstead, I'll tell you one funny thing that happened though our medical would we call him anyway? He was a first lieutenant, he was an assistant.
He was supposed to do the bookwork. Anyway, he went had to go over to secondment day and headquarters, and he was over there and this German lead comes in waving a piece of paper and saying, docs goot, dosss goot. So somebody read the paper on it that she had there, and on it it read this lady has a damn good bitch coming. I took her bed and it was signed Jack the Ripper. Now you explained to some poor as a German lady, who Jack the Ripper is? You're doing well
if you can. Yeah, that's gonna that's gonna be a challenge to be sure. To be sure. Now, after the surrender, you stayed in Europe for a few months as part of occupation duty. Correct. I stayed there until March of forty six. Had enough points and six of us that from the seventieth. We were in the third Infantry Division then and we got enough points to go home. So we came home and thought of all of us that came home in that group, I'm the only one still alive.
All the rest are gone. Now what were you assigned to do during the occupation duty. Well, you was with the companies and your big duty was is to run operate a pro station. That's a prophylactic. Ah, it's quite an assignment. Hey, you know you're sound to sleep at two o'clock in the morning and they shake it. Hey, doc, Doc, I need a pro Wow. So after you came home, Sarah, what did
you do? I did a whole lot of things. I'd worked in a machine shop, but I wasn't really settled down to because I've never went back to work. I had work steady there. So my brother in law and I worked at a lot of different jobs, just short times a week or two, and then we get tired, quit and go party for a while. And then finally, by the end of nineteen forty six, I went back to the machine shop i'd worked in and got serious about learning the trade
of being a machinist. Well, of course, the guys I went to school high school with someone in a marine course, somewhere in the Navy and somewhere in the army, and so we had a standard of guys representing everything you know, so and we would turned out to be my brother in law, he was a marine, so we was always picking on him. Now he did five invasions in the Pacific and never got a scratch out that real quick, Verne, just a couple more questions before we let you go.
I know that you are very active and have been for some time sharing your story with students and other members of younger generations, so they're aware of what your service looked like. In the importance of winning World War Two. Talk about why that is so important to you well to people know that there was a price to pay for the freedom that we have today, you know, and it cost a lot of lives. And now I'll tell you one thing.
I have spoken over in France to schools over there, and also met German high school students that were very curious about a lot of stuff because they don't do it. So I've had a lot of chances to explain to foreign students and then American students. It's amazing. When we were over there, we'd meet a group of high school students on tour over there, and they
had all kinds of questions. And then one question I always told him was never ask an XDI if he shot somebody, because nobody wants to talk about it. But other than that, I was they asked so many gig question sees. I've met, you know, play I met more of the big tour groups in Europe than I have here in a way, you know,
So it's amazing. I've been back to France about eight times since the war, so we know people, or we got acquainted with people and stuff, and that's always a joy to go over there and see all of them. At my age now and my problems, I'm not going to go anymore. I can't do it. What does it mean to you to have organizations like the American Veterans Center and other groups like ours gather the stories from veterans like
yourselves. They all do a great job of helping, you know, I get I see all this stuff, and the VFW has helped me a lot on violently claims to get on injuries I had in the world during the war and stuff. So there's all these units all serve a purpose and do a good job. As far as I'm concerned. They're very necessary to help people, and I guess keep people exposed. It. It wasn't just something that just accidentally happened. It was a tough fight to get to where we're at
today. Finally, sir, what are you most proud of from your service? That I served and all the people I met and the things we've done together, there's nothing like us guys getting together. And like for my birthday party, none of the originals get maked, but twenty two of the second third generation was present for my party. That one came far as a way as Massachusetts and all over the US scattered around my birthday party for my ninety
ninth, and so now we're planning for one hundred. So got that going. I was going to say, if the ninety ninth got that kind of a turnout, the hundredth should be a real bash. Well, I got to find a bigger place to have. We had roughly about one hundred and twenty five people there and twenty or so got sick. It couldn't make it for right, you know, Gosh come down with it, and I appreciated
him staying home and not bringing their bugs to me. But my friends and my family and my big family, the seventieth Division Association, we had a great time. Well that's outstanding, sir. The celebration, the respect that you were given at that event is thoroughly understandable given your service and I know your very active dedication and participation to the seventieth Division Association, and so we thank you very much for your service, and we obviously thank you very much
for your time with us today. Sir. We're very grateful. I am so thankful. Let I got a chance to talk to you, because that everybody has heard my stories, I guess, and so they some will now anyway. So I really am most appreciative you contacted me and allowing me to unwind rat along, you know. Thank you, sir very much. Burne. Staley is a US Army veteran of World War Two. He served as a combat medic with the seventieth Infantry Division, which saw nearly ninety days of
combat over the final months of the war in Europe. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is 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 Veterans Center 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