One WW II Soldier's Story

As I grew up, I never heard my father, John D. Maxson, talk about he war. The most we could ever get from him was a list of countries he'd served in: England, Ireland, Wales, Belgium, France, Germany. The silence on the subject ended when Mom was in the hospital with her stroke. I had taken him home late in the day, after he'd spent hours at her bedside. The staff were still offering hope for her improvement, but he was pessimistic and I kept him company at home for a while. What follows is the story I heard that night.

His story starts before the war, with their marriage. He’d met Mom in church, Simpson Methodist in Minneapolis, while she was still in high school, and they hit it off right away. But they didn’t marry until 1941. He couldn’t afford a wife. Earlier he’d started attending Hamline University, but when his father died suddenly in 1934 from a urinary infection, my dad had to quit. He was one of the younger of 10 children, and had to go to work to help support his mother and younger siblings.

His first job was with Piper Jaffrey in Minneapolis, where he earned $65 a month in the mailroom, not enough to get married on. After they let him know he was a fool for asking for a promotion, he let his future father-in-law use his connections to get my dad a job with Butler Manufacturing, where he started at the princely sum of $105 a week! My Grandparents threw a double wedding for both their daughters, Gladys and Nina Brogren, at Simpson Methodist on May 4, 1941. After finding a three-room house on south 4th avenue in Richfield, my parents put in a garden and settled down.

When Pearl Harbor happened, my dad tried to get his job at Butler classified as essential to the war effort. Unfortunately, nobody bought it, including Butler. After being inducted at Fort Snelling, they found out he could read and write (and tested him at an IQ of 139), so appointed him to a clerical position there, keeping track of where other soldiers were being deployed and when. This was walking distance from home, so he spend the first six months of the war coming home to Mom every night, even keeping some of his uniforms and supplies at home. One morning he was reading the list of soldiers shipping out that day and saw his own name, heading for Texas. He said he was lucky that it took so long for the army to transport him that far. The box of his military equipment Mom had to ship down to him when he’d had no opportunity to return home for it arrived just as he did.

Fort Bliss did not live up to its name. Texas didn’t last long, nor did California or Missouri, but he was finally sent to Richmond, Virginia and informed he’d be there for a while. He told Mom, “Come”, and she did, staying for six weeks while he was trained as an anti-aircraft gunner until he was shipped to Boston in preparation for heading overseas. He didn’t see her again until the war was over.

After landing in Liverpool, he was sent to Wales in an anti-aircraft unit. He was still there until 6 weeks after D-Day, when he was sent to France, awaiting assignment. That landed him in Liege, Belgium, where he was made a 1st sergeant and given command over between 120 and 180 soldiers. (It was unclear whether the numbers changed on the ground, or just in his recollection.) The unit as a whole had a bad reputation for morale, and he was one of many sent to deal with this. Two of the men under him tried to kill him on occasion, but were unsuccessful, and he never had enough proof to have them charged.

When he first arrived, his CO ordered him to find himself a spot in a 4-story apartment building that had been taken over for a barracks. He dropped part of his gear in a nice attic room and headed down for the rest. While he was back at the truck talking for a moment to his CO, a German V-1 Buzz bomb took off the top of the building he’d just been in and was just about to return to. Daddy and the CO dove under the truck and were uninjured. Most of his equipment had to be replaced, of course, and he found other lodgings in the building. Those were fine until it rained, when water leaked all the way down into the basement.

In early 1945 their unit was at the airstrip. The Germans put together every plane they could still coax to fly for an attack. Somehow, our guys got a 30-minute advance warning, enough to launch every plane on the ground and send them up to 10,000 feet, out of harm’s way and in perfect attack position when the German planes arrived, 80 strong. The A-A gunners took out 13 of the planes, and our waiting planes took out all but one. It was the last major German air-raid of the war.

From Liege he was sent to Munich to the occupied zone. The war was ending, and deep behind the front lines where they were, there wasn’t much action. They got bored enough that one day out on patrol, they started using the transformers on the poles for target practice. Upon returning to their headquarters, they found the camp in an uproar. Somehow the Germans had mounted a resistance and were sabotaging communication lines!

Oops!

Knowing very well who these “German resistance” fighters actually were, their unit volunteered to go out and hunt for them. It would certainly be safe enough, and they could eliminate any damaging evidence left behind. Apparently they never were found out.

At the end of the war, he was sent to Spain to ship back to New York. As he started down the gangplank for home, one of the men who’d been trying for him finally got another chance, and hit him hard enough on the head that he lost consciousness and fell. His next memory is waking up lying on a bunk in sick bay, with someone asking him whether he wanted to press charges. He gave it some thought for a long moment. It would mean another month in the army while the court martial was held. He opted for his own discharge instead.

It was 11:50 PM, New Years Eve, when he stood on his own front step, knocking on the door. After 4 times, Mom answered. Then, he related to me with a gleam in his eye, they started a very long celebration. It must have been a good one. Ten months later my brother was born.