Anzio veteran one of 13 to survive out of 200

Antipodean Andy · Aug 18, 2008

Central Ohio - www.centralohio.com - Central Ohio, OH

MANSFIELD -- At one point during the long slaughter at Anzio, Italy, Walter Henry Jr.'s company was down to just 13 survivors out of nearly 200 men.

"I was never wounded and I'll never know why," Henry said. "By the time I left, only five guys in my company hadn't been hit. You just can't figure it out."

During his long service on the Anzio beachhead in 1944, Henry, now 85, was "pinked" seven times and came out with a bad case of trench foot.

"How I ever did it I'll never know," he said.
About 20 years ago, Henry, a retired postal worker who lives with his wife, Norma Jean, on McElroy Road, put his memories down on paper.

He never found a publisher, so his 38 typed pages of "Random Recollections" were stored away.

"He never told me very much about the war," Norma Jean said. "He's my hero."

A Mansfield native and 1941 graduate of Madison High School, Henry worked at several Mansfield plants before he was drafted into the Army in 1943.

Basic training in Georgia was no new experience.

"I had a good idea what I was in for. I took basic training at Fort Ben Harrison, Ind., in 1939 through the American Legion Civilian Military Training Corps. I was a sophomore in high school and used that training to stay in shape for football," Henry said.

In addition to sweating through training in Georgia, Henry said the new troops were entertained by the Bob Hope USO troupe that included singer Frances Langford and comedian Jerry Colonna.

Before he was shipped overseas, Henry said his mother and his girlfriend, Norma Jean Kimes, visited him at Camp Shenango, Pa.

"She waited for me," he said of Norma Jean.

It would be a long wait.

Henry's first stop was North Africa and Casablanca, where he was a tourist more than a soldier.

Then, in the winter of 1944, he shipped out with A Company, 7th Regiment; 3rd Infantry Division. The landing spot was a place called Anzio-Nettuno.

The idea was to take Rome by landing behind Germany's Gustav Line. It did not work.

"We were stuck down in that swamp for four months while the Germans up in the hills fired down on us," Henry said.

On Anzio, he was a machine gunner and later joined an anti-tank squad. He was also a platoon runner and telephone wireman.

He said the German artillery, including a huge railroad gun called "Anzio Annie," turned the flat plains below into a shooting gallery.

"We could only move around at night. By day all you had to do was show your hand and it would draw fire," he said. "On Anzio, if you got wounded during the day you had to lay in your hold until dark. If you got up you were dead."

Henry remembers when a German shell hit his unit's command post.

"It badly wounded our first sergeant, who had just returned from the hospital in Naples from a previous wound. We pulled him out of the debris and set him up in a ditch. He was still alive. He knew he was hit bad. He asked us to take out his wallet and get out a picture he carried. It was a picture of his wife and two little girls. He sat their in the ditch, in the moonlight, straining to see the picture of his family, and died."

Henry can tell dozens of stories about close calls, rotten C-rations, frozen feet and of life reduced to the basics.

He remembers listening to Axis Sally on the radio.

He recalls a snake that came calling while he and his buddy were pinned down in a fox hole by enemy fire.

"We couldn't kill it or chase it away. It only stayed a few minutes but it felt like an hour," Henry said.

Eventually, the Anzio siege was broken, and Henry was part of the division that liberated Rome.

Later he was in the invasion of Southern France and fought his way north to the mountains where frozen feet acted up again.

He was transferred to an anti-aircraft unit in Belgium and was with that unit all the way into Southern Germany.

Somewhere in France, Henry said his unit was moving along a road at night when it joined another column of men on the march. Those men turned out to be Germans.

"Someone yelled 'Krauts!' We had blended in with their column in the dark. Hand to hand fighting broke out. Then it went to shooting. We finally chased them back down the road. We set up our mortars and kept them running. We were both surprised. The Germans had a lot more casualties than we did."

When it was all over, Henry had this observation to make:

"People think the German soldier was the best soldier. The only thing they were exceptional at was in following orders. If that makes a good soldier, then they were good soldiers. Just remember, it was our men that were advancing. We were the ones that had to cross open fields to dig them out of their holds and bunkers. We had to attack them. We were great targets, walking across a field to route them. We climbed up the mountains while they sat in their holes and shot at us. Don't tell me who the best combat soldiers were. We had the best in the world during World War II.

"We got to the point that we welcomed a counterattack. It was our turn to sit in a hole and pick them off in the open fields. It didn't happen very often as they were moving backwards, but when it did, we enjoyed it. If they sat in their holes and fired until they ran out of ammo and then put their hands up and yelled 'Kamerad,' they were dead. If they surrendered in groups or without firing at us, they would live. Those were our own rules, not the Army's."

By all the rules of war, Henry should have died. Instead he came home, married Norma Jean and the couple had a son, Robert. They now have a grandson, Shaun. Robert served in the Air Force and Shaun in the Army.

"Robert was the smart one, but Shaun said that if the Army was good enough for his grandpa it was good enough for him," Henry said.
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Kyt · Aug 18, 2008

An interesting article. Shame the last two articles contradict the rest - seems that the Germans were pretty good considering they kept the Allies trapped for four months.

And they seem pretty effective in making the Allies run into the killing zones. So maybe not just a case of taking orders. And what were the Allied soldiers if not taking orders to attack, when all reason dictates that one should taking cover?

Antipodean Andy · Aug 18, 2008

Yes, they're interesting comments to make. They must stem from his immense admiration for the men he served with.

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