JONATHAN OGLE

A politician is right down there with lawyers and used car salesmen.

Try to live your life so that when  you die even the undertaker will cry.

Every boy in America when he gets to be 18 years old should have to serve at leaset one year in the Army.

Every girl when she gets to be 18 should have to take a one year course in home economics, after that they should be forced to work one year for the public. (like a clerk in a store, or maybe a secretary. After that they will make a pretty good citizen.

”Everyone hates to see a salesman come around, but he’s the one that makes the wheels go around.”

“A farmer is the biggest gambler in the world.”

“The meek shall inherit the earth. I don’t think the meek can hold on to it after they get it.” 

(What an asset David’s golf cart has been.)

“The soldiers duty is not ask the reason why, the soldiers duty is to do or die.”

They used to call President Truman old give ‘um hell Harry- Truman said no, I tell ‘um the truth and they think it is hell. 

General Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were the only Generals that would attack when the odds were 3 to 1 against them and get away with it. Bedford Forrest did it with Cavalry audacity. Patton had it in spades. The thing was he would get carried away and sometimes he would make an ass out of himself. 

I don’t remember if Easy Company ever did turn around and run, but sometimes our forward movement got real sluggish.

For me, the longest day and night of the was was the 17th of March, 1945. The whole 3rd Army (around 200,000) started the drive for the Rhine River. My battalions objective was to clear the Germans out of the town we were in. In the early morning hours of the 17th, we attacked down this street right in the center of town. By the middle of the day we had cleared 3 blocks. The Germans counter attacked and pushed us right back to where we were. One tank was knocked out and several riflemen were wounded. Our battalion commander was wounded and carried out by the medics. That night orders came down to “Quit playing around and take that town!” (Patton) We were to jump off at dawn/twilight with E-company leading. After what we had seen and heard that day, there wasn’t a man in the company that thought he would live through it at dawn. Easy company formed up and moved out. As we began taking the city, the Germans never fired a shot. During the middle of the night they retreated. All we had to worry about were mines and booby traps. Still that was a bad night, worrying about what was going to happen that never did happen.

The known was bad enough, it was the unknown that worried us.

Trying to think back on things that happened over 50 years ago makes you realize there are a lot of gaps in there that are complete voids. How I got back to the states is one of those gaps. From reading the divisions history, I know we left Germany from Bremerhaven in the Baltic area. I sailed on the USS Hood along with 8 to 10 thousand soldiers from areas all over Europe. We were what they called “Double loaded” which means 1/2 of the troops got to use a bunk while the others went up on deck. All this is a complete blank in my mind. I don’t remember any of it.

When we crossed the border from France into Germany there was a sign painted on the side of a bombed out building in red paint that said, “Come see Germany, and die.”

We had to cross a bridge over the Saar River to relieve the 26th Division. My platoon leader was walking beside me and he said Ogle, “5 minutes after we cross that bridge we will be veterans of WWII.” The night we went on the line, the 26th boys got out of there holes and cellars and the 65th boys crawled in. I heard one of the 26th boys say “this is a bad place to put a green outfit.” I thought that was a correct statement.

After 70 plus years of living on the this planet we call Earth, the one thing that still amazes and astounds me is mans inhumanity to his fellow man.

Some of the things we liked in the Infantry:

when the cooks could get up with hot chow, being the reserve regiment in a battle, taking a town and having a roof over your head for 2 or 3 days, getting mail from home, hearing the captain brag on easy company for doing a good job.

There is nothing quite as exhilarating as being shot at and missed - Churchill

Ernie Pyle was by far the best war correspondent to come out of the war. He didn’t loaf around the rear areas to get his stories. He got right up front with the dogfaces. He was finally killed by a sniper on a little island in the Pacific called Le Shima. He was writing about the 77th Infantry division when he was killed. After the war they took him to Hawaii for burial. 

The 65th was the last Infantry division to be created - August 1943. After it was fully trained, instead of sending it over as a division, they took about 8,000 of the best and sent them over as replacements for divisions that were already fighting. When I got there in August ‘44 they were just getting back to full strength. 16,000 men. We were a long way from being ready for combat. 

The Battle of The Bulge changed everything. We were probably the most poorly trained Infantry division to see action. In spite of all this, we did ok. You learn fast on the front. Records show we had about 2,500 casualties. You can’t get any lower than the Infantry. 

We were the bottom of the heap. 

In a division of 16,000 men only 6,000 are doing the fighting and dying, the rest are support troops. Of the 16,000,000 men in the service, only a very small portion of them were Infantry, yet 75% of all the killed and wounded were dogface Infantry men.

The Infantry don’t take there helmets off for no one. My pay was $75.00 per month and $10.00 of that was for being in the Infantry (combat pay). The Artillery was the King of the Battle... The Infantry was the Queen of the Battle.

In the big scheme of things my military position was 2nd Squad, 2nd Platoon, Company E, 2nd Battalion, 260 Regt, 65th Division, 20th Corp, 3rd Army, 12th Army Group. 

You can make a dove out of a hawk real fast by putting him in the Infantry. Some of the things the Infantry hated: being 1st Scout (a form of suicide), 88 millimeter artillery, screaming meanies, bouncing bettys, pill boxes, outpost duty, brass hats, poking around schu mines.

We relieved the 26th Infantry the latter part of Feb. on the Siegfried Line at a place called Saarlautern. We took the town on the 17th of March 1945. The race was on for the Rhine and Berlin. We crossed the Rhine on the longest pontoon treadway bridge ever built to date (1865 feet long) at Mainz, Germany. We then headed for Austria, crossed the Danube River at Regensburg, Germany on the 25th of April, crossed into Austria around the 1st of May, was in Linz, Austria when the war was over May 8th. From Saarlautern to Linz was 583 miles. Most of it we walked... or crawled. Some of it on trucks, some of it on tanks, but we made it in 60 days.

The way it was before I forget it all. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor December, 7th 1942 it changed everyone and everything forever. I was 16 years old. My Daddy said, “You are too young, you won’t ever have to go.” I spent almost 3 years in WWII and 1 year in the Korean War plus 5 years in the reserves. I tried to join the army on my 18th Birthday but the physical exam got me. I had a weak left eye. A few days later my draft number came up. I went over and took the same exam and passed??!? Johnny Lee Wills Band did throw a noon show for the boys going to the Army. KVOO Tulsa

We went by bus to Fort Sill OK, where we were inducted into the Army. Here we got our dog-tags, shots and uniforms. From this day on, I would be known as:

Ogle, Chester A. Serial # 38590174 MOS#745- (Infantry Rifleman) APO #200

From Fort Sill we were put on a troop train and shipped to Fort Sam Houston, Texas for basic training. We learned close order drills, the manual of arms, etc. This took about 6 weeks. they were trying to make us look like soldiers. 

From here we were sent to camps all over the States. My group ended up at Camp Swift Texas. I spent several months guarding German & Italian prisoners of war. A couple of days after D-Day (June 6th 1944) me and another guys signed up to go to the Infantry. We went to the 65th Division at Camp Shelby Mississippi. I turned 19 years old soon after that. My buddy went to a machine gun section and was put in a rifle company.