And you could hear those bombs coming in. It sounded like a bunch of children screaming.
We were encircled by the Germans, fighting for our lives.
My name is William Pilati. I was born in the little town of Waynesburg. But at the age of six
we moved to a little town of Negley in Ohio, about four or five hundred people. My father got a job
over there when the brickyard in Waynesburg quit during the Depression years. He got a job for a
dollar a day digging coal. Can you imagine that? A dollar a day. Then he got a job on a railroad for
30 cents an hour, which is $2.40 a day. He thought he was a rich man. So that lasted for a while,
but you know I always had everything I needed and wanted - food and clothing, no problem.
Ruth was my girlfriend at the time. Actually we met in the fifth and sixth grade. She came
to town as a fifth grader and I was in the sixth grade. But then we started dating in high school.
i graduated in May of 1943 and got drafted in November of '43, so I didn't have a chance to
do much after high school days. And when I got drafted I went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for basic
training. It's a field artillery replacement training center, so they were training us for,
of course, combat and training with tanks and half tracks, and preparing you for anything that could
take place during the war. At that time I got shipped to Camp Campbell, Kentucky and that's
where I was assigned to the 275th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, B Battery. I was in the
ammunition section and rode in the half tracks. We kept the tanks supplied with ammunition.
In August of 1944, the 275th deployed to the shores of France only weeks after D-Day,
the unprecedented Allied invasion of Normandy. Though the fighting on the beaches had long since
ceased, Bill was overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the operation
and the apparent undaunted will to achieve the victory.
When we crossed the English Channel, we landed at Utah Beach. I just couldn't
believe how we ever won that war, having to ship everything over to the battle sites over there.
When you stop to think of all the airplanes, the tanks, the trucks, the jeeps - you name it - how
could we ever have done that successfully? But we did. And those poor boys didn't have a chance,
but they pulled it off. They pulled it off. It's just unbelievable we were able to be victorious.
And we worked our way up through Southern France. There was still a little bit of fighting
going on in some of the small towns and hedgerows. And after going up through France, we went up into
Luxembourg and Holland and we ended up in Belgium up at the German-Belgium border
up in the Ardennes. Our guns were firing away at the Siegfried Line.
We were actually in... they called it combat, but at that point I had never even seen an enemy.
Just firing at the pill boxes and what have you, because we were told we were
going to stay there for all winter long and prepare for a spring offensive. But that never
came about since the Germans started their winter offensive. Started on December 16th.
Although the Allied Forces had spent the past five months steadily pursuing the German Army across
Western Europe, their offensive was abruptly halted when Adolf Hitler unleashed a surprising
attack of his own in a desperate onslaught of every German soldier and machine available.
The Allied lines were broken, resulting in the brutal, relentless Battle of the Bulge.
At that time we were attached to the 106th Infantry Division,
and they were only young boys 18 or 19 years old, like a lot of us were at the time. And
they had only been out of the States for about two weeks and put right up into the front lines,
no battle experience at all. A lot of them didn't even have enough ammunition for their guns.
And that's where the Germans broke through. And for a couple days
it was very, very hectic. Everyone was confused, they lost their outfits, they were just
staggering here and there. And it was so cold. It was anywhere between zero and five below. Probably
close to a foot of snow on the ground. A lot of the troops didn't even have sufficient clothing.
Some of those poor troops - I can't imagine what they went through, especially the infantry.
Those poor boys. It just boggles my mind what they had to do, because they really got into a lot of
hand-to-hand fighting. I know in many cases, the infantry would jump on our tanks and we would take
them up to the front lines and then we would shoot over their heads. And, my gosh, those poor boys.
They went through hell. Went through hell.
At the outbreak of the Bulge, Bill and the 275th would find themselves in the middle of
a crucial battle that would have a major impact on the outcome of the surprise German offensive.
Well, the significance of the Battle of Saint Vith was that the Germans wanted to get to Liege
and Antwerp to stop all of our supplies. That's where all of our supplies were coming in from.
However, Saint Vith was a bitter battle. The Germans took it,
we took it back, then the Germans got it again.
The German commander's view of the importance of Saint Vith was
three things had to happen for the Germans. The German attack had to be a surprise - which it was,
definitely. The weather to be such as to prevent strikes by Allied aircraft
so the German columns could come through the Ardennes. That certainly was in their favor.
The third one was the progress of the German main effort through and beyond Saint Vith
without any delays. Well, that one they did not meet, because as I said earlier, the Battle
at St. Vith went back and forth several times. So those things did not happen in their favor.
Though the battle of Saint Vith proved an American defeat,
their brave resilience resulted in a major disruption of the German objective.
The time wasted at Saint Vith prevented a larger encirclement of Allied forces and ensured the
continual flow of American supply lines and the eventual reinforcement of American troops.
But there was a lot of fighting going on in Bastogne, Malmedy, Saint Vith,
Hinderhausen. Many, many bitter battles were fought there, and sometimes direct tank fire.
And you could hear those bombs coming in. It sounded like a bunch of children
screaming when their 88 shells were coming in, especially up in the Ardennes forest.
You could hear them coming in and all the trees were just flattened.
We were so young that sometimes we hardly even realized what was going on. But actually we were
fighting for our lives. And many, many times the Germans were so close to us. And during the Bulge
at one time, right around Christmas time, we were kind of
the hole in the doughnut. We were encircled by the Germans.
And it was so foggy that our planes couldn't fly. We were running out of supplies. And I think about
the 27th to 28th of December, the fog did lift, and all the airplanes, the bombers, and all the
airplanes that were dropping supplies. And that was a turning point for us. Fortunately, we found
a way out and, my gosh it was just... I can't tell you how happy we were to get out of that mess.
By the 25th of January, 1945, the resilient Allied
Forces finally emerged from the Battle of the Bulge victorious. The subsequent
push toward Germany saw the Allies advancing faster than ever before.
After the Bulge, we continued on towards Germany across the Ruhr
River. We crossed the Rhine River in March of '45. And once we crossed the Rhine River,
we would pull into positions and our guns would be ready to fire, and shortly thereafter the
Germans were surrendering in mass droves and also retreating. So our guns had to be moved again,
moved forward, and set up again. But at that time we were taking many, many prisoners.
There was still a lot of fighting going on, but not to the extent that it was during the Battle of
the Bulge. They were retreating and surrendering so rapidly that we could hardly keep up with them.
The people... it was so sad when we would pull into these little towns.
The people were just leaving their homes with their children. A lot of times kids were crying,
people were pulling a little cart with wooden wheels on it, and a sack over their back
with their belongings, going in the opposite direction of where the fighting was going on.
It was just so sad to see that. If you can imagine something like that going on in our own country.
Throughout the world, throngs of people hail the end of the war in Europe.
It is five years and more since Hitler marched into Poland.
Years full of suffering and death and sacrifice. Now the War against Germany is won.
We were up on the front lines yet when we got the word. Oh my gosh, everybody was so happy at the
time. I think we just dropped our guns and started hugging each other and it was a special moment.
And to know that finally we were able to just realize what we'd gone through,
and fortunately for a lot of us. It's unfortunate how many people were lost,
and how many soldiers were lost in the Battle of the Bulge. It was thousands.
How many German casualties... enormous figures.
So sad. Because, really those people didn't want to fight any more than we did.
It was their leader, Hitler.
We got shipped down to France to a camp called Lucky Strike. We got on a ship called the Santa
Maria and came back to the States and we landed at Camp Myles Standish in Boston. It was so... I just
don't know how to describe the the joy that it was to come back and know that the War was over.
Ruth was going to the Youngstown Hospital school of nursing under the cadet program. And when it
come time for us to get discharged, Rene Campbell, who was an instructor at the Youngstown School of
Nursing, she made arrangements for Ruth, who was just a student, to get some time off and meet us
at the railroad station in Youngstown. I kind of tear up sometimes at some of these memories,
so forgive me. She waited for me. We got married in December of 1947 and had five sons - five
wonderful sons and five daughters-in-law. I have nine grandchildren, four great-grandchildren,
and two great-great-grandchildren in Alabama. So yeah, life is good. Life is good. And I'm still
here at 96 years old. I thank God every morning and every night for another day.
hi everyone i'm josh from memoirs of world war ii and i just want to say thank you for watching
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