I, Anne Maguire, interviewed my grandfather, Francis Maguire. Francis was in the first group of soldiers who trained at Camp Atterbury in Indiana, and was in the 83rd Infantry. They were very successful overseas, and aided at Omaha Beach, St. Lo, the Battle of the Bulge, Brittany, and Magdeburg. The following consists of some of his personal memories from World War II.
Of course, the first thing that I remember and I have a picture is of my mother coming with me down to railroad station so I could to leave for Boston. I was living in Providence at the time. Over the years I keep looking at that picture, and I can’t imagine how sad my mother felt. As I was the 3rd of her sons who went away to the service, and there was one more to go after me. I ended up in Fort Devons, MA, close to Boston. At the time I felt like one of a herd of cattle. There were thousands of guys in there, and they herd you into big building and issue you some clothing and run you through some tests to test your mathematics. But they didn’t even give you time to go the bathroom, so it was horrendous. They finally fed us. I think we stayed up there in Massachusetts for maybe a week or so. I was completely alone; I didn’t know anybody, so I happened to meet up with some guys. You feel very homesick, and like a lost sheep. They herded us onto a train, we had no idea where we were going, and I remember being on this train for at least two days. And all the shades on the windows pulled down because they didn’t want anyone to see who was on the train or where they were going, and they didn’t want us to know where we were going, apparently. The first inkling we ever had as to where we were was when one of the guys lifted on of the shades on the window as train slowed down, and said, “Oh, there’s Richmond! We’re in Richmond, Virginia.” Well, we found out shortly after that it was Richmond, Indiana. Finally we ended up at Camp Atterbury, near Edinburgh, Indiana. So immediately you get thrown into drilling, with tough sergeants, saying “Do this, do that,” get a hair cut, and of course you have an inspection every morning. You start getting to know each other, when you see them every day, and you become very friendly. So we trained at Camp Atterbury, we called it Camp Mudberry. It was a new camp, and the roads off the roads and where we would drill, you could step in mud up to your ankles and shins. So that was quite a training, we trained there for a long time. We went through what they call ranger training where you go under gunfire, and swing out across the river, and all that crazy stuff. So anyway, then we moved from Camp Atterbury down to Camp Breckenridge in Kentucky, down near Evansville. We still continued our training down there. After a while they said we had to go on maneuvers down in Tennessee, that’s where several divisions and parts of divisions go down there and train. They have umpires who determine who won or lost battle, how many were killed and how many were saved, and so forth. But anyway, it must have been maybe 100 or 150 miles from Camp Breckenridge to Springfield, Tennessee. But Lord behold we had to walk the whole way with a full pack on our back, for training. Then we were walking about 25-30 miles at least once a week as part of our training. Then after we finished that training, we went back to Breckenridge. Then there were rumors that they were heading to the Pacific. We ended up going New Jersey and shipping out to London, Liverpool, England. That was an experience on the ship. It was a line, a big British liner. It had like 6 decks on it, and we were way down on the bottom deck, and they were always fearful fear of submarine attacks, and you had to go through training on how to get out. And there were certain period when you could dump the garbage. All the food was the way the British eat, where you would have fish for breakfast.
We ended up in Liverpool. We went to training in Wales, and we would go back up for maneuvers there. And it was bitterly cold up there. And finally we went through a little more training in a little town called Austwestry, it was a nice little town. (Ian Welsy, the golfer was from there) From there now we went over towards Plymouth, England. It was around in the first part of June, D-day was June 6th, when we were on way to Plymouth, England, to get ready to go across the Channel, which we did. They were having trouble on the beach head, at Omaha Beach, where we went in. We embarked there, and that was quite an experience going up the hill. Private Ryan pretty well depicts what it looked like on the day when we went in there. We got on the land there, and the forces weren’t moving against the Germans very well, the Germans were putting up a strong resistance. So we set up our…what we have to do…I was in the field artilerary. In the field artillerary you have the headquarters battery, the firing batteries on where to fire, how to set the guns and so forth, and you have A Battery, B Battery, and C Battery. And ours was what they call medium guns, which were155 mm cannons. My job was in the wire section, where you have to run communication and telephone wires between headquarters and to each one of the batteries, and up to the forward observer who watches the shells land, and then they’d have to direct the batteries on to fire left or right or over or under. We were kind of static there for a while. Our job particularly at that time was once you get the lines laid, you had to maintain them. Our switchboard operator would say, “Hey, the line to battery B is out,” so no matter what time or when it is, you would have go out to find where the break was in the line. And that was very scary, especially if you would go out at night. So all you could do was start and find where the wire comes out of switchboard, take it in your hand, and feel way along until you come to a break, find out what is wrong with it, and repair it. And that gets very scary, especially when you see dead bodies lying all around; you never know what is around the corner. I remember one night, they weren’t making any progress around a town called St. Lo in Normandy. They ordered about three thousand bombers to come over and bomb that town. The vision wasn’t very good that night, and then some of the bombs fell short. I happen to be standing guard at a crossroad that same night, and the earth virtually shook. I was probably two or three miles from where the bombs were landing. And it was an absolutely frightening thing to hear. Of course, all during the time in our stay in Normandy, the Germans would fire their big cannons at us. You constantly had to be dug into a foxhole in case one hit nearby you might survive. They finally broke through, and our job was to go up towards Brittany, in France. The Germans were holding out at an island, and our job was to set up and bombard island up there. The Germans finally surrendered. We moved on down along the Loire River. We didn’t go through Paris, we went a different route, and ended up in Luxembourg. We stayed there for while and fired across the Moselle River. Then they moved us up to Duren, to relieve some division up there. That was another hard fought battle up there. That was around Christmas time of 1944. That’s about the time the Germans broke through in Belgium. So we had to pick up all our stuff and head over to Belgium. That was the coldest place I have ever been, it was absolutely frigid. Then we had a great run across the Rhine River, all the way to a place called Magdeburg, where our guys went across the river in boats and secured the river. They were able to build a bridge; we called the Truman Bridge, built by a bridge company and part of our own engineering battalion. Incidentally, there is an unusual bridge canal across same river, where boats travel across the river in an artificial canal.
But anyway, you miss the folks at home, and wondering whether you’ll ever make it back. Another interesting story was my Brother Bill, who was younger than me and he went into the service after I did. He ended up in the 30th division. He ended up going into Normandy just ahead of me. When we got there, I was riding around in a jeep with a machine gun when I happen to see a truck that was his company. I found just about where his company was in the hedgerows. So my pal and I walked along this road, and then I saw a little man made sign that said B Company, that was his company, and we went in along this hedgerow, and just started back in there then somebody says “Halt!” So we halt, and fortunately we knew the password. I asked the guy, “I’m looking for my brother Bill, Bill Maguire, is he in this company?” He said, “I don’t know, but the sergeant is back there in the woods.” So we went in woods to talk to the sergeant. He said, “Oh, he was shot last week.”  I said, “You’re kidding! Well, how bad is he?” He said they sent him back to England. I didn’t know anything for a long time until I had a letter from my mother, and she said that he was in England and ok, and he wouldn’t be in infantry anymore. They healed him up and put him back in the m.p’s, the military police and he ended up in Marsaille, France.
When you think about all of the millions of people who were killed, the devastation, there were cities in Germany, England, France, Russia, all over the world, completely devastated, peoples lives disrupted, They were under the complete insanity of wars. We should do everything we can to stay out of wars, because it all ends up on the poor working people who are hurt worst, who end up fighting the wars and being killed.

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