There was only about four of five of us came back home.
The rest of them was...
It's something you hate to even think about,
what happened to all of them.
Having spent his entire adolescent life on a farm,
Ancil Fisher knew of little else going on outside of West Virginia.
The United States had no plans to enter the war,
so to him, the conflict in Europe must have seemed millions of miles away.
But Ancil was ready for a change from the mundane.
I couldn't find anything else to do but work on the farm, and I didn't like that.
My friend and I joined the Army.
I was always the guy that was easy to take orders from somebody else,
cause I had to do it at home.
The next two years drew Ancil ever further from the simplicity of the life he left behind.
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor,
Germany declared war on the United States,
and soon Ancil found himself as part of the 9th Infantry Division,
on a boat heading to Africa.
Germany and Italy had invaded north Africa in an attempt to take control of the vast oil reserves
that fueled the British mechanized military.
Nearly two years after the campaign began,
the newly reformed U.S. Army was finally ready to come alongside their British allies
and experience combat for the first time.
As he made his way across the Atlantic,
Ancil made a promise to a God he wasn't even sure was there.
One thing I did before I got over there and got into battle,
I asked God
- or told God -
if you'll bring me back home from this war
I'll serve you the rest of my life.
From then on it was rough.
I was in five major battles.
I mean, bad ones.
And they sent planes over there.
And bombers dropping bombs on that place.
Machine gun fire like crazy.
The last part of our battles in Africa,
we lost our lieutenant.
He was the platoon leader.
And from there on, I took his place.
And I had a good platoon.
If our company commanders sent us out on a patrol
and chose me to go
the whole platoon would volunteer.
But I only needed about three of four guys to go with me.
Ancil's leadership was tested to the fullest
when his platoon was ordered to take out a heavily fortified German stronghold.
Under heavy machine gun fire, Ancil dropped to the ground
and crawled toward the enemy position.
Bullets sailed just overhead, but his men followed.
When the platoon was close enough,
they opened up their own barrage of gunfire and hand grenades.
When the smoke cleared
five Germans were dead and the remaining ten surrendered.
Soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force,
you are about to embark upon the Great Crusade
toward which we have striven these many months.
The eyes of the world are upon you.
The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you.
We got on the ship and headed for France.
Landed on Normandy Beach.
Boarding a small, amphibious Higgins boat,
Ancil and his platoon left their ship and headed toward Utah Beach.
The men had barely reached the shore when the ship they had just left was targeted
by a German heavy artillery cannon.
We was pretty lucky, cause we didn't
more than get on the shore until they sank our boat.
Just that much time, or we'd all been gone.
But we lost our ship, everything we had.
The only thing we had was a rifle and the clothes on our back.
The platoon survived D-Day, relatively unscathed.
But things would only grow more perilous from there.
In the following months, Ancil would be badly wounded.
Twice.
Once in the Hurtgen Forest.
An artillery shell hit the top of a pine tree
and the shrapnel got me across the...
split me open right across the head, there.
The second wound came during the Battle of the Bulge
when a German tank opened up on Ancil's position,
once again covering him in a hailstorm of shrapnel.
A piece of shrapnel hit me right there on that bone.
Doctor told me in the hospital,
he said if that had been a quarter of an inch higher I'd been a dead man.
Still, compared to the rest of his platoon, he would consider himself lucky.
There was only about four or five of us came back home.
The rest of them was...
It's something you hate to even think about,
what happened to all of them.
Yeah, I don't even like to think about that.
In the early Spring of 1945, the Allies had finally made it to the Rhine,
a river that cut through the German countryside.
Territory to the west of the river was well under Allied control.
But the eastern side was still full of German opposition.
It was here that Ancil stumbled into a situation he never could have seen coming.
Me and another guy was supposed to be guarding the bridge across the Rhine River.
These two women came up, crying like babies.
"We got children over there and we can't...
we're not allowed to go over and get 'em.
Will you take us over?"
So, dummies like we were, we took them across.
As the women lead them deeper into enemy territory,
Ancil began to fear he had fallen into a trap.
Just then, they came across an armed German soldier, escorting three prisoners.
The scene went quiet with tension,
but Ancil stood with his firearm at the ready,
prepared for anything.
We tried to halt him, and when...
when we told him to halt,
that German went for his pistol.
And that was the end of him.
So we took these other guys in and turned them in to the company.
Ancil marched the three prisoners back to headquarters, still unaware of who they were.
When they arrived, it was confirmed that he had inadvertently rescued three high-ranking British officers.
I just thought they were three guys.
I didn't know what they were.
For his actions, Ancil was awarded Britain's Distinguished Conduct Medal.
A great honor for an American soldier.
As the Allies continued their advance towards Berlin and soon brought an end to the Nazi regime,
Ancil was ready to settle into a quiet, peaceful life.
After all he had been through, he couldn't help but think that someone had been watching over him.
Although it seemed like a lifetime since he had made a vow to God,
Ancil remembered it and kept his promise.
If you'll bring me back home from this war,
I'll serve you the rest of my life.
He brought me back, and that's what I'm doing...
serving the Lord.
I think He protected me all the way through that war.
And God has been good to me.
He's kept me this long.
Yeah, I have to give the Lord praise for my long life.
Been a good life.
Been a good one.