Faith a factor in saving Private Clayton

David Clayton

Saturday, Nov. 11, 2000 | 4:09 a.m.

It was May 11, 1945, five years to the day before I was born. Censorship of letters home had just been lifted, and I imagine my dad was just one of thousands of GI's fighting the war in Europe who felt liberated. They could finally write home and tell their families the real story of what they had experienced.

Eugene Clayton was a 24-year-old music teacher when the war broke out but soon found himself in the uniform of an Army infantryman. On this day, when the worst was over, after 18 months of combat, my dad sat down at a typewriter and sent off a letter to his sister Ernestine, my aunt.

A farmer's wife and a registered nurse in upstate New York, my Aunt Ernestine gave me many of my life's greatest gifts. My love of the land I learned on her farm. My love of tractors and animals and baseball and storytelling all came as gifts from Aunt Ernestine. She blessed my whole family with gifts all of her life and when she died, there was one more.

Among her things was discovered this letter from dad. I couldn't let Veterans Day go by without sharing some of this letter. My dad was like a lot of World War II veterans. After the war, he went home, resumed his career, started a family and went on with his life until he died in 1992. In the 42 years I knew my dad he spoke maybe 42 words about what he had done in the war.

This letter speaks volumes, not just about my dad but about all of our combat veterans. This day, if you know a veteran, you might just want to say thanks. I know I'm sending thanks to Dad Clayton, now that he's in a better place after having made a better place for us.

Here is some of what he wrote that day:

"At last I can tell you whatever I please in this letter -- no more censorship! Hurray! ... I don't have to tell you that the war is over because you probably knew that before I did. We are all very happy about it, but we don't do much celebrating because we know that it is only half over and that many of us will have to go and help finish it. I know that if I have to go, the prayers that will continue to be said will keep me safe from all harm. ...

"The inevitable day arrived when we packed our things and went to the P.O.E. to board our ship. Our ship was the SS Atuos II, a French ship with a French crew. I tried out some of my French on them. They could understand me, but I'll be darned if I could understand them. ...

"Well, after 14 days our ship pulled into Naples harbor. The first thing we saw was Mt. Vesuvius. I was in hopes it would erupt while I was there, but it didn't. It probably won't erupt again for a hundred years or so. It is beginning to look as though I will probably be there to see it! ...

"We had a long, miserable train ride to our destination, which was a replacement depot near the front lines. I passed through Rome late at night and never even got a glimpse of it. I was only at this replacement depot three days when I was told to pack, that we were moving up. I knew that this was the last move, the one I had been dreading. ...

"We went to the 349 Inf. Replacement pool and were assigned combat companies. I was assigned Company D, but when I reached the front, was attached to Company C. Here I turned in all my excess equipment and drew a bedroll, entrenching tool and rifle. That night I slept in a fox hole with shells bursting all around me.

"Maybe you think I wasn't scared. I prayed fervently, and I learned for the first time the great value of prayer. It comforted me and gave me a strange sense of security. The next day I joined the company on the line. I got into a ready made foxhole, but I dug it a little deeper. The line was stable when I joined it, but "Jerry" was throwing everything he had at us ...

The command post

Dad now writes of a few days later, when he had made it to "the Command Post, which was in a house with big, thick walls."

"It was a little safer, but those walls were far from shell proof. Here, a fellow who was in command sent me on a very foolish mission. About 2,000 yards from our C.P. was another house occupied by some members of our Company. The mission was to take a 5-gallon can of hot coffee across a dam, which was being constantly shelled. If it was now, I would refuse, but I was new and afraid to disobey orders so I gritted my teeth and started. It was at times like these that I felt the influence of the prayers that were being said for me. I flung myself to the ground many times and prayed, but I finally made it in safety. I surely hope they enjoyed their coffee! ...

"We were at the base of the great Mt. Grande, one of the highest, most difficult mountains of the whole Appenines."

He writes about orders that came down to "take Mt. Grande."

"I knew that everything I had been through up to now was merely a preface and that this was to be the real thing. Late that night we started up the mountain. If I thought that we had been shelled before, I was sadly mistaken because now shells really began to fall, and our men starting dropping -- some killed, some wounded.

"We got about half way up and decided to dig in. We dug furiously. I was sitting outside my half completed hole panting for breath when a shell landed about two yards away from me, killed a man in a hole just above me and wounded six men in holes below me.

"It filled up my hole with dirt but left me untouched. From here on I knew that God was protecting me, and I wasn't scared anymore.

"Later that same night we moved on up the hill and set up our C.P. in a house, which had been hit about 10 times and was still smoking. The next day, I was standing by a window looking out where we could see the Po Valley and Germans all around us. Suddenly something told me to move away from that wall and find cover somewhere.

"I quickly walked to the other side of the house and crouched down behind a wall. Just as I did a tremendous explosion came, which wounded six men including our Company commander and completely knocked out the wall where I had been standing. If I had remained there, they never would have found the pieces.

"Once more I fervently thanked God.

"A second lieutenant took over the company, and I felt very shaky because I felt that he could never keep control of them. I was right. It was early the next morning when we left this house to make the final drive for Mt. Grande. The lieutenant lost control of the whole Company, and we were all on our own. He left us openly exposed to enemy fire, and we had to seek out our own salvation.

"I wandered into a house in which I saw several of our men go and heard a man calling for help. I was going to his rescue, but a medic beat me to it. I stayed in this house all day. I later learned that this house was completely surrounded, and everyone who saw us go in there gave us up for lost. The boy that was calling for help had been wounded and was steadily growing worse. It was late in the afternoon when the medic asked for three volunteers to remove him from the house.

"We fixed up a stretcher with a piece of canvas and two pitch forks. We abandoned our weapons and started out across the field to where we thought our lines were. I am sure that the Germans could have easily killed all of us, but they respected the fact that we were unarmed and carrying a stretcher and let us go. We went up behind a hill where a portion of our Company was dug in.

"By this time I was getting pretty weak because I hadn't eaten in five days, and I was suffering with ante diarrhea (I don't know how to spell it). They said that the stretcher bearers would be up after the wounded boy. I then had a terrific vomiting spell after which I nearly fainted. They sent me to the aid station. I learned later that they never came after the wounded boy and that he died. If I had known that, I would have carried him myself to the aid station, as weak as I was.

"By the way, it was shortly after we got up behind the hill that we saw the "Jerries" close in on the house where I had been and all who remained there were prisoners of war. I thought I was being very brave when I volunteered to help carry out the wounded boy, but it turned out to be all that prevented me from being captured."

Other battles

In this single-spaced letter covering five pages, dad wrote of other battles and of a stint as a bugler and as an assistant to the military police, charged with supervising POWs.

"After the (German) lines were cracked and Bologna taken there was no stopping our Armies. They rolled full speed ahead onto the Po Valley plains. They moved so fast that they beat the retreating Germans to the Po River. They expected a tough fight there, but they crossed it and never even slowed down.

"We walked and walked and walked for five hours in the morning and five hours in the afternoon, day after day we walked. My feet were a mass of blisters and every muscle in my body ached. By this time the prisoners of war were rolling by us by the hundreds of truckloads. There were such great numbers of them that the necessity arose for more guards to work with the MP's. I was one of the ones chosen. ... We set up cages in practically every town in the Po Valley. I walked across the Po River on a wrecked bridge with all my equipment and a box of C rations on my back.

"The news finally came of the surrender of the German forces in Italy, and there was no need for further P.W. cages so we went back to our Companies. We are now in a small town in the Alps Mountains, 15 miles from the Brenner Pass, living in a hotel with running water and nice beds. We are really living the life of O'Rielly."

Dad spoke of his many brushes with death and told Ernestine why he made it through.

"There was a Guiding Hand behind all of it, and I am sure that all our prayers were answered."

Dad knew, however, that the war for him was not over. His closing line:

"I am glad you got the money order, and am resting easy knowing that you will follow my instructions just in case. So long for now. Lovingly, Eugene."

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