Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Jack Moran, a US Army veteran of World War II, serving with the eighty seventh Infantry Division in the European Theater. He was cut off and surrounded at the Battle of the Bulge for six days. He also fought at the Sar Valley the Siegfried Line. An
saw intense action while crossing the Rhine. We've spoken with mister Moran before, but we sat down with him again just a few weeks ago to discuss how he and his fellow infantrymen dealt with the immense firepower of German armor, especially the deadly Tiger tanks, and we discussed how he endured the brutally cold conditions at the Battle of the Bulge and elsewhere. Jack Moran was born in Superior, Wisconsin, which, as you could probably guess, is on the shore of
Lake Superior. Moran's father served in uniform during World War One but was never sent overseas. Moran enlisted in the US Army, thinking mostly about the educational opportunities it would allow him to pursue, but that plan was quickly ruined by the military. Almost as soon as Jack Moran joined the service.
The educational program they were projecting to go to the engineering school down at the University of Wisconsin. This sounded good, but that got canceled after about sixty days. There were universities all over the country that had the ESTP program, and every single one got canceled, and all the people in those programs all got put in the infantry.
Where did you do your training.
Fourth Pende, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina, Fort Jackson?
And what did they focus on there?
Just routine, routine infantry, nothing sensational, nothing new.
When did you get sent overseas well?
When we were to England and probably November October November of nineteen forty three.
Now, from what I've read, pretty early on after you entered combat, you were taking on German eighty eighths and tiger tanks. Talk about how you attacked an enemy with that kind of equipment.
Well, the tiger tank was the greatest take in the world at that time. It was probably impossible for any infantry. You definite a zoo can get a side shot or back or we were end shot even slow one down. Fantastic piece of equipment. The eighty eighths were deadly. They we were going through open farm country, a dairy country, and so we could be seen from some distance, and they, the Germans, every day they picked us off with the
eighty eighth. I wasn't in combat for fifteen seconds when the first eighty eight e floated about one hundred feet of my right and three of our men were down, mounded or dead. It was quite an introduction to warfare. Scared the hell out of me.
So how did you combat that? Could you get side shots against the tanks? Could you figure out a way to get around those ados?
Almost impossible? Almost impossible? Say, did infantry protecting the tanks if they were stationary or fourth or fifty in commed I saw one of our one o fives, which is a pretty good sized shell, explode on the hood of a tiger tank, and I thought to myself, see that's great, they knocked that guy out. Well, when the smoke and the dust had cleared up, this tiger tank just backed into the woods and took off. Because the hood of a tiger tank is four inches six solid steel. That's
what makes them weigh a ton. It's a very heavy tank, very difficult to stop. Our Sherman tanks for no contests could not fight a Sherman tank and a tiger coming in at each shutter. When the tiger got about fifteen hundred feet from the Sherman, they could start firing. Against eighty eight, the Sherman could not fire at the tiger until they got within five hundred feet of the tiger.
By that time the Sherman is in deep trouble. There was a saying in the in the tank order, there's a saying, if you want us, if you're going after a tiger, send four Shermans and hope to get one back. A deadly, deadly combination.
So how did you make progress against them?
At first? We didn't make any progress against them. We fire a big as heavy air chillern as we could at them. Like I said, I saw one and get hit. The first month of combat, I never saw a disabled tiger. I never saw a tiger knocked out. And of course that's a little bit discouraging that if the enemy's got to got weapons, that you don't have better weapons. And they had better tanks and we did. The eighty eight
was what's far superior to any field or Childing. We had you if you put an eighty eight in position on a battlefield, they could dominate that battlefield. It was accurate, it was fast, and we had nothing to combat it except for the throwing one of fires at them. If you if we could locate their battery, you know, or they where they were located. Their machine guns was much better than ours. It fired twelve hundred rounds a minute. Every second, twenty bullets are coming out the end of
that barrel. That's that's that fantastic rate of fire. Ours would fire about four hundred rounds a minute. I don't remember the Air Corps being called to fight hit any of the tigers. Later, when we got into areas like the Rhyine River the Battle of the Balls, there were no tanks involved because of the woods. The tiger tanks can't operate in the woods, so we didn't see any tigers in in in the Battle of the Balls, and at the Rhine River was too hilly and the tiger
tanks couldn't operate in the hilly country. But in the Star Valley the tigers were deadly and and hurt us badly. And in the thick free line we had the tank chassis was the ninety was the ninety millimeter gun on it. We took took through the seventy five middle so we had a chance to fight a tiger with with a ninety that that was more effective that that idiot was. Was was was the course. It was a great weapon on the battlefield. The tiger tank was a good only
in the Shar Valley. As far as we were concerned, we were surrounded in the in the Battle of the Balls six days. That's that hurt us. We were out. We were just pinned down tight. We couldn't move. We were in the Shar Valley when the when the balls broke through. The balls broke through on the sixteenth and December about four thirty in the morning, and if youcame very serious. I Bradley got in touch with with Patten and Montgomery said, tell us, I need some help up
and Belgium. I need some help here. What can you do for me? Patton said, I can be up there in two days, and the English general said I can. I can be up there in three days. So Bradley gave pattern the Java coming up and going up to Belgium to help out. And I was involved in that we were fighting in the Star Valley and that's where we saw tanks involved. When we left the Shire Valley, we were trucked up to Belgium and I never saw another Tiger tank the rest of the war.
So you mentioned that the tiger tanks were primarily at the Sar Valley. What were they presenting you with at the bulge? What weapons were you facing at the bulge from the Germans?
A lot of mortars. Well, we were surrounded, of course, and we were we were not being aggressive and we didn't have any room for any tanks or any mount of guns. So we were pinned down and the Germans just for days, they just lobbed mortars in us. You
could hear. We were about a mile west of bass Stone and our circle in which we were in was probably, you know, two hundred feet long and one hundred and fifty feet wide, and we had foxholes all around and the Germans would fire mortars at us, and you could hear the motar going off. You could hear the ping as it left the barrel of the mortar, but maybe half a mile away, a mile away. It took twenty nine seconds for that shell to land on us. And when it got up to twenty seven or twenty eight.
We pulled your help, went down and get tapped down deep in the fox and hopeful they didn't didn't guess you if they hit the fossil, of course you're gonna be you're gonna be dead. But partially they didn't hit my fox. They hit hit some others. They they killed some other people with the mortar. Siga Free Lion was tank destroyers, a ninety elevator weapon on on a tank chassis. That was good, that was efficient, but we know there
were no tiger tanks. That was very hilly country. But they were grateful for hitting these cement bunkers, the big cement bunkers in the in the Seek Free Lin we get to the at the end, we get to the top of the hill through all these bunkers. One day we get to the top of the hill and looking down into a valley, here's a little town called Armon down at the bottom of this hill. And it happened.
Did that want us going down this hill which is wide open, there's no trees, nothing hide behind it, and have the Germans have tanks or artillery in that town and they could slaughter us. So he called for cores artillery corner artillery. Each corps has several divisions under each division has several artillery regiments underneath it. When you call for corn artillery, you're gonna call for every gun of these all these artillery regimens to fire, so that the
shells all arrive at the same time. So about a minute after the captain gave the order for the core ar chillerry over the horizon, you can hear the rumbling of the big guns back ten or twelve miles, big big two forties. They throw a big battleship sized shell. Two forty rifles fire, then the two forty Hollisers fire a little bit later than the one fifty five long rifles, then the one fifty five Hollishers, then the one oh five long rifles, the one oh five Hollishers. All these
shells are up in the air at one time. Right In fact, looking up, I can see the flickers they as they went over, and they all landed on a target at the same exact moment, almost to the same exact second. Five hundred and forty shells exploded on that town in one burst, and that town just erupted, and every starting it was the greatest sight of my life. As soon as they smoke desks to start to settle,
we all were all racing down the hill. All about seven or eighty of us was firing from the hips was our amb once and we had the tank destroyers running along right beside us, firing their nineties into the tire. We ruined, We destroyed that talent. We knew that there'll be no resistance from the Germans. It was just absolutely they'd be absolutely shocked. So we got down there. They left, taking their wounded with them, left their dead behind, and
just an amazing, amazing sight. I'll tell you one thing about the tiger tank. I had documented report as we indeed a plus nts plus three or four. We were off the beach and inland, moving inland. Now the British anchored one end of our advance line. It is a British ar Chillery division, a whole division which consisted of a lot of Cromwell tanks, shoop carriers and our support vehicles.
So there's a tiger tank driver named Michael Whitman. Michael spotted this British ar Chiller version division coming through the woods and he tanked. He attacked them that afternoon, one Tiger tank knocked out fifty four British tanks and tank carriers and vehicles, all kinds of He knocked out fifty four. He paralyzed that English our chillry division. They had to stay there for weeks while England resupplied them with new tanks and new new trucks, et cetera. Plus maybe one
hundred and two hundred men to use that equipment. And they're all killed. So it was a real disaster for England. But it demonstrated how accurate and how good this Tiger tank was, how dynamite it was. It's just very impressed. And I think I told you that the tank in the tank field, the tanker said, if I think going out after a tiger, send four servants and hopefully get one back. It was. It was dynamite.
So you talked about this a little bit when you talked about the simultaneous explosions throughout the town that was destroyed. But talk about the Allied weapons, the American tanks, artillery that was most of.
Well, well, well that was the first Well that was a good example of our our chillry power to throw five hundred shells in on one, not one. I mean, that's using a lot of tax fairs money, and and and but it did the job. Now we used we were using the one of fires back in the Saar Valley and uh, I can remember we attacked a hill three sixty one day and it was a bad, tough battle. In fact, we lost. I lost my four best friends in that battle. That afternoon and we got to the
top of the hill. There was there was a rock pile up there, and the rock pile had been hollowed out, so so I jumped into this rock pile. Was one of our guys. The Germans were only about fifty yards away from us in the woods. There were woods at the top of hill three sixty. So we called in our artillery and and our one oh fives started coming in very close to us. They were landings right just in front of us to keep the Germans away from us.
But but but in the process they the kid who was in the foxhol in the rock pile with me, he was he was bleeding bleeding blood. This this the concussion and shock was so great. So that was that was good protection. I appreciated that. And they did some counter counter battery stuff. The Germans from several positions were firing at so are our chillery people somehow could determine where that where that battery is located and they could fire into it and hopefully destroy it. We used no
artillery in the bulls at all. We didn't of course, we were pinned down for a couple of weeks. On the Rhine River. We used We also did not use any artillery on the Rhyan River. Some are chillery. Some artillery have been thrown from our side of the Rhyane River over into into the east banks. Uh, but that was just random shooting. They were not supporting us in the field at all. But our chillar it was good. It was good and help when and when we needed it. We used more.
As of course, what did you have on you? I?
I used an M one, As I told you, it's a wonderful rifle. Wonderful rifle. I didn't like the BA r is too heavy, It wasn't any more effective than an M one.
Why did you love the M one?
It was the best rifle in the world at that time. Of course it because it because you can fire so fast and just reloaded in two or three seconds. Bang bang bang fire you can fire. We crossed the Rhine River one one night, very very bad battle. We lost a lot of the men out in the in the water. About seventy of us survived. A one hundred and forty left in little tiny wooden boats. About seventy of us
made at theater side. And we're we're advancing inland and we're we're walking in the dark, middle of the night, twelve o twelve thirty at night, and we're firing from the hip with our M the fire right rounds stick a new one in fire right rounds. Seventy of us. US were throwing a tremendous amount of lead into the dark. Wish I and we captured some Germans. And one of them, nicknames, said, you guys made so much noise last night. I thought there were at least seven hundred of you, and there
were just seventy of us. But that was the greater belieability of the M one beautiful weapon. I wish I'd taken one hole as when I left.
That's Jack Moran, a US Army veteran of World War II serving in the eighty seventh Infantry Division. In just a moment, Moran tells us about the intensity of German snipers and how he and his fellow soldiers tried to cross the Rhine. And then he takes us into the inhuman conditions that he and his platoon faced for six days surrounded by the Germans and cut off from resupply at the Battle of the Bulge, in brutally cold conditions.
That's all. Next, I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles sixty Seconds of Service.
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This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Jack Moran, a US Army veteran of World War II. He served in the European Theater and saw action at the Battle of the Bulge, the Tsar Valley, the Sigfried Line, and crossing the Rhine, among other locations in Europe. We'll take a closer look at Moran's service at the Battle of the Bulge in just a moment, but he also gave us some insight into the difficulty in crossing the Rhine in the spring of nineteen forty five.
He says, deadly German snipers made any movement in the towns near the Rhine almost impossible.
You couldn't run across the street from one building to another. You were engagered one of our own tennis running, you know, listen, even shorter distancing from here that wall running. He started to run. Sniper from six hundred yards away hit him behind the air the bullet. The bullet came out here. That sniper had to be laying on a firing platform with his eye to the telescope and his finger on the trigger and just moving his scope looking for somebody
to do something over there. He couldn't do it any other way. Another kid found a motorcycle. We had plenty of gasolines, so we got the motorcycle going. And he's in the back of a town called Meersbay. The town's at about two hundred and fifty yards wide, the river's two hundred and fifty yards. Then you got another X number of yards to the right from the shooter. This kid was riding along on the bicycle doing about twenty miles an hour, and this sniper knocked him off the bicycle.
I did a lot of honey. I could ever shoot that well. A couple other guys got killed by on the river, and of course on the river itself, we lost tons of guys. I had bullets go through my pants and another bullets skin me here and killed the kid behind it. I was number one man in the voat My assistant was number two, number three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Just before we left the West Bank, the captain came up and he said, Jack, I want I want to radio in your boat, so give me one of your men.
So I took this number three men, gave him to the captain. He gave me a guy from another voat ten fifteen seconds later. That kid is dead behind me. The bullet just skinned me and you nailed him in the heart. That's there's so much luck. There's luck and war, good luck and bad luck. It was that kid's bad luck, and it was good luck for that kid that the captain took. Wasn't because he survived that night.
Well, let me take you back to the bulge for a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm amazed at how small the area was when you were surrounding.
Yeah, there always had thirty five foxhols. You could wasn't a much choice. The Germans attacked us one we were in the woods. They attacked our little of our group. We were going through the woods, so we knew we were pinned down. So that's a pretty good, pretty good piece of real estate. One fifty by two or two fifty's that's a pretty good fiece of real estate. And to have thirty five foxhold, one foxhold every seven or eight yards or six or seven yards. We couldn't have
two spread up. We had to have some of them, you know, kind of bunch up a little bit in case that there's a sack from that area. We had to have enough firepower to throw at them. So they worked, it worked out. We finally finally got out of there.
How did you push him back? How did you stop them from overrunning you?
Just by killing them? They would they would send patrols in. We would kill them. We could see them in the woods. We were down on the ground so were they couldn't shoot, They couldn't hardly hit us. And we're banging away with them and knocking them down.
Were you getting resupplied?
We got nothing for the first three days we had. You have to have water and rest. You don't need you don't need food. Food is not as essential as water and rest, and so we had. The snow was our water and the rest. You try to get some rest, but at night time it's dark from seven three m till seven am the next day. So you got you got twelve hours of darkness, and so you and your partner to each stake. You take two hours on your
two hours off, two hours on, two hours off. You lay in the bottom of the foxhole and try to get some rest. But you're exhausted, you're hungry, you're tired. So you lay down to the bottom of the fossil and try to go to sleep and FI. You're laying down there and your cold, nice cold. There's no no blankets, no bedrolls. While you're down there, you hear a machine gun going off down you know, one hundred yards down the street. You're some orders exploding back here. It's not
good sleep. Will you drag yourself out the next morning? You're you're you're wearing, you didn't get a good night's sleep at all, and you're cold, and you're tired, you're hungry. It's it's it's have to be a good souldier in under those conditions.
Did you have any weapons besides your rifles?
No? I had all had pistols. Had I had carried a looter and I had a P thirty eight.
Uh.
Some of the boys carried forting fires, which were so ineffective. It was just a stupid gun to carry in war, and we had light machine guns. We had some machine gunners with us. We had some light machine guns, and we had some sixty million milliar motors which go short distance. That that was helpful. The overcast was so heavy and so thick that the air force couldn't The air force was grounded, couldn't help us if they were paid to.
I remember one night a couple of things happened. One night, it was so dark you couldn't you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. I already mean that the guy that was in the fossil was we had gone. The captain took half a dozen guys to try to get We had wounded in the middle of our circle, and he wanted to get the wound. He thought, after a couple of days this in that cold water, a slight wound can kill you from shock. You've got to
get some help. So he picked the half a dozen guys to take some of the wounded out try to break out to a point in the in our perimeter. But they couldn't get out. The Germans repulsed them and they had to come back. But while he was gone, I was I was all alone about eleven o'clock at night and I heard noise out there in the snow, wag in the snow. I knew it wasn't our guys.
It had to be Germans. So I got closer and closer and closer, and at first I said, well, I'm gonna put my and then on the end of my rifle, I'll put the butt of the rifle down on the gravel and if if the guy folds on it, if a resulted folds on it, you'll get them. But then I thought, well, but also he'll fall in on me and I'll be laying He'll be laying on top of me, and I'll be helpless, and his buddies may may be there,
so I gave that up. Then I said, well, I'll just start firing my rifle because the light for just a second, the light will be showing what will be shown, use will be visible through all the flashing of the weapon. But then I said, well that then they'll know where I am, so they can come and they can shoot
at me. So they didn't like that idea. So finally I thought, well, I'm going to use a hand gardad, but at night, you don't throw hand gard aids in the woods, because you might hit a tree and it'll come bouncing back at you. So that that didn't work. I just took a hander aad, I pulled the pin and I just photo out there like that. Took my
hand off. It's going to explode in four and a half seconds, and I pulled my head back down as low as I could, and then the explosion current but my helmet was sick enough, just a little tiny bit, and banged the top of my helmet. Knocked me silly for twenty four hours, but it did the job. It stopped the people that were there. So we defended ourselves pretty good for the six days, and then finally at the end of six days, the sky cleared and the
airport was able to attack the balls. The bows was of course, the bows was out like this, and the Germans were all in the balls and we were out here about Bastone was about here, and then we were further the western Bastone. But the air when the air Force was able to operate again, started machine getting all these physicians dropping bombs. It took the pressure off and the Germans, though they were beat at that point in time, so they started to retreat, head back to Germany then
asked about six days. We finally were able to get out of there. We had prisoners, German prisoners we had taken while we were in there, and we used them to carry or theadn't wound it out and get to a place where we could have a hot shower and you know, a warm, real but heavenly.
In our last couple of minutes, I want to reflect on how the cold impacted you at the Buls and beyond, because much of that winter was absolutely frigid. How did it affect you and how did it affect your weapon?
The Buls especially was tough because because we were so cold and our weapons were ice cold. Something I wonder if it was damply with a firefight, I'm sure it would. But the Saar Valley wasn't It wasn't quite as cold as the Bulls, but it was, but it was. It was sloppy, it was muddy and cold at nights when you dug it into a foxel at night. And of course there's some buildings available to us down in the Sarre Valley, but the Bulls was a tough one. That
was it. You just when it's below zero, I'm not below zero, but down around pushing zero, you know, for six days, six days, six nights, and all you can do it, All you can do is sugar. There's nothing you can do about it. You can't do a damning except bit, bite the bullet and and and accept it. The sea free line we had, we were we were able to have better protection from the elements, and in the Ryan River we were very well protected from the elements.
It wasn't I it wasn't super cold at the Rhyane rivers. It's just cool. But uh, winter was a factor. But it had to be just as hard on the Germans as on us, and maybe even harder because we're we're probably better equipped to handle it. But the young Germans in in the foxholes one hundred yards away we were were just feeling just as bad as we were.
Did it affect how you were thinking after six days? Did it affect your mind?
The co good question. I wouldn't be a bit surprised, but I can't say specifically I remember any instances where my body didn't function, didn't hallucinate, but probly despaired at times and prayed as that we had to do well.
We just have a couple of minutes left, Sir, as you think about what we've discussed today, any final thoughts on your tactics.
Okay, okay, okay, okay okay. A couple happens. One a number of soldiers shot themselves to get out of there, put the bullet to the top of their foot. One day, my platoon did. That's how desperate people were to get out of there. I saw twenty five year old men who they were men. We were nineteen year old kids. We thought there were men sitting in the corner of a barn after a battle, sitting there, twenty five year old men crying like a baby, sobbing. I can't stand that.
I can't take this anymore. You've got to get me out here. It was tough. It was tough. One guy wrote to our division magazine. He said, I went to Hell. I came back from Hell. I hope God remembers that, and when I die, I hope he takes me to heaven. It was desperate, desperate times. Its just no man should have to go through that, what we went through. It's so hard on our nerves, on our bodies, on our minds,
watching own, our own friends die. Some of the wounded badly wounded, whose lives were badly affected by the wounds. I was lucky, no question about it.
Do you still feel the frostbite effects?
No.
I've born and raised up on Lake Superior, and that twenty thirty forty one zero stuff up there. I got immune. I think there was an immune treatment for me, because I I came down off the top of a hill lash for one battle into a barn. And here's two or three of our guys from my platon are sitting there with their shoes off and with a yellow tag on their toes, and they got a big shitting grin interface they're going to be evacuated to get the frostbite. And they're halfy as kids with a new toy. And
I said, I couldn't get I couldn't get frostbite. To save my life, I would, honestly, I think I would have welcomed it.
Jack Moran is a US Army veteran of World War Two, serving in the eighty seventh Infantry Division in the European Theater of World War Two. He fought in the Sar Valley and the Battle of the Bulge, and was also involved in breaching the Sigfried Line. And crossing the Rhine. 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 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