Early training
Willard and Wilbur Diefenthaler trained at Camp Phillips, Kan., and both were assigned to the 106th Infantry. Willard recalls how mistaken identity almost denied him his first meal at the mess hall. He describes his chemical warfare training and recalls witnessing British ingenuity in Oxford, England.
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The Bulge
Willard Diefenthaler chronicles the early hours of the Battle of the Bulge. Surviving those first hours was the first of many "lucky" moments.
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Surviving Bad Orb
Diefenthaler describes his capture during the Battle of the Bulge. Prisoners marched and dragged each other through the rain and sleet to a railhead, where they were packed into boxcars for prison camps. While waiting outside Lindberg Prison Camp, Diefenthaler narrowly escaped strafing from an Allied plane. He recalls a moment of kindness from a German civilian and describes the grim living conditions at Stalag 9B in Bad Orb, Germany.
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Wilbur
The Germans moved Diefenthaler to Stalag 9A on Jan. 25, 1945. He describes his last memories of his brother, Wilbur, who was too ill to move. Decades later, Diefenthaler received his brother's final letter and met the American medic who took care of Wilbur during his final days.
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Liberation
The Allies liberated Stalag 9A on Good Friday, 1945. Diefenthaler describes how several prisoners exacted revenge against "The Man of Confidence," the sergeant formerly in charge of the camp. The next staging ground was Camp Lucky Strike in LaHavre, France, where some former POWs died from overeating.
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Reunions
Diefenthaler reflects on the importance of attending veterans' reunions. He notes that POWs suffered during and after the war, and he commends supportive POW wives.
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The Bulge
Willard Diefenthaler chronicles the early hours of the Battle of the Bulge. Surviving those first hours was the first of many "lucky" moments.
audio clip (8:48)

Mark Van Ells: So with the 106th, you were in England for a while and you crossed the Channel at what point? I'm interested in—

Willard Diefenthaler: I think it was Southampton, and then we went across — supposedly it was the narrowest part. And then we went up to the Seine River and to Rouen and we landed — drove off the LSTs there. It was raining and awful cold. It seemed like yesterday.

Van Ells: And you got to the front, when?

Diefenthaler: Well, we relieved this one outfit that had been — The front had been very quiet for quite awhile, so we were greenhorns and didn't really figure on anything. We slept with our rifles and everything. The outfit ahead of us had made some little log cabins and some, well, big foxholes and covered them with logs. And so we could see out — like a machine-gun emplacement. And when the Bulge started. we backed into this one — another fellow and I — into this one big hole under the logs, and I stood up to my waist in water all night because it had been filled up with water. It was something that you don't forget.

Van Ells: So it was December the 16th was when the Bulge started.

Diefenthaler: The Bulge started.

Van Ells: What was going on just prior to that? You apparently had no idea that they were going to be coming.

Diefenthaler: Yeah, we went about training, and we had to stand guard and stuff. I was pretty lucky; I had the truck and I didn't have to walk much. We went down, just a couple of days before the Bulge started, Sexton and I went down the hill. They had just carved a road out of the mounts with a Cat, and it was steep on one side and just rubble on the other. So we went down the hill there, down the mountain to get some mail and gasoline and oil. And Bob Porter was the mail clerk and he went with us. And I drove down and went past this open place where the sniper had always hit and everything; we were going and stopped almost at the bottom of the hill, and here come a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier and they stopped in the middle of the road.
So, here a sergeant, an English Sergeant, come in the — wanted me to pull in the side of the road so he could get past. And it had been snowing and everything else. So, I says, "No," that he could pull off, I would go past, and then would pull him out.

Then the lieutenant, he was a British lieutenant, come up and said: "Now that's an order. You pull over and let me through."

And I says: "I can't do that 'cause you can't pull me out. I can pull you out." So I walked up and I was kind of pouting and walked up to the truck and wound her up good, and I come about as fast as you'd go. And I smacked this three-quarter-ton in the front bumper and pushed him in the ditch, and we never stopped to pull him out. He's probably there yet. One reason we didn't like the Limeys because they were so smart and driving our vehicles, and that kind of hit a sore spot.

Van Ells: Sort of resentful about that.

Diefenthaler: Yeah. So it was one of those things. I think the Limeys did a good job, but we just didn't like them. They didn't like us either. …

I drove down, and then we loaded up with all these "jerry cans" — five-gallon cans of gasoline in the bed of the truck, the 6x6, the GMC. And on the tailgate we strapped a lot of five-gallons full of oil. So my buddy drove back and I sat aside the buckboard with feet up on the cans, and it was rattling and we're hollering back and forth. And all at once the tarp across the side tore and we didn't hear nothing and the cans were rattling, and so I kept talking to Porter and he didn't say nothing. I looked and here he's slumped down, and he took a bullet in the back of the helmet and it spun around and took the top of his head off. And so I was pretty thankful it wasn't me because just a second or something it would have been. So, we got back to where we were headed. And I talked to Lieutenant Mike Tomey — he was the S-2 there — and we wanted to go out and get this sniper — my brother and I and this guy from Iowa. He said, "No, you guys are too upset and [will] make some foolish mistakes." So he wouldn't let us go, but he did send out four or five guys, and they come back with this German kid and then they took him back for interrogation and something. …

And then the day we got captured, that was only a couple of days after that. We really hadn't been in combat. A lot of them never even got to fire their rifle because when we got up in this rest area, there was hardly any ammunition available. So I went in one of these log cabins that they had built, and I found a bunch of armor-piercing and incendiaries and tracer ammunition that they weren't supposed to use against personnel. And then Captain Wilson, our CO, had given me two A-6 machine-guns in [unintelligible] and I should clean them and give one to the radio section. I says, "I'll clean them, but I'm not going to give them away." So then I had just cleaned mine, and I loaded up all the ammunition I could and the M-1 clips and the machine-gun clips.

And then we had this Curtis Allen from Mississippi, was an All-American football player, a big guy, and he was driving with me. And then we had a .50-caliber machine-gun on the ring, so we sat in the seat and fired. So this night it was raining and snowing and cold; so Allen and I had dug a slit trench, and he was over six foot tall, so we dug a pretty good-sized one, and kind of filled with water and ice. So we laid on our raincoats and covered up with the shelter hat.

And that night I heard something up by the truck, and I hollered, "Halt!" And he hollered "Halt!" right back with a German accent. So we let loose with a couple of the rounds from the BAR and it stopped working. When I hollered "Halt!" we were laying on top, so I pushed Allen in the hole and he stood up, all six foot of him, and started to fight me. So I finally got him to sit down and my rifle wouldn't work anymore, so I used the A-6 machine-gun and kept him down, and Lieutenant Marshall was just across the way from there and all I could see was the second lieutenant bar on his helmet and a .45 sticking out.

And then my brother went up on his truck — he was the third truck — and was getting down his .50-caliber, and he had the supplies from the supplies area. And during the day, some of the cooks had stood guard on a road section and had cleaned his .50, so when he got up there and he got down and put it on the bi-pod, it wouldn't fire. And here they had put the sheer pin in backwards, which was quite common. So then I hollered back to get the one off of mine 'cause I wouldn't let anybody have that. It was my personal gun, you know. And up comes Spitzer, a little Jewish guy, and he says, "I don't know much about it, but I'll help you." So he reaches up for that .50 and I hollered at him not to touch the butterfly 'cause that was the trigger. So my brother took it by the muzzle and handed it down, and Spitzer helped him get it to the bi-pod and set his on the side and then it started to chatter. Well, everything was quiet.

In the morning, I looked to see why my rifle didn't work, and I got a bullet through the front hand guard. So that was only about six or eight inches from my hand. So I was lucky again. And I was lucky so often. I think the good Lord took care of us.