Professor's Father Reveals War Experiences

Editor-in-Chief

   For the first time, retired Army Colonel Ed Strong talked about his World War II experiences to people other than family and close friends. Carol Strong, assistant professor of political science, convinced her father to speak to her political science classes and faculty from the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences Nov. 20.

   Carol Strong wanted her classes to understand how her father’s stories inspired her to pursue a career in political science.

   Carol Strong said she knew she wanted to live up to her father’s example he set in fighting for his principles and country. She grew up hearing stories where Germans were the enemy, but her family lived in Germany and had German friends. This inspired her to want to understand how a country found itself in the situation Germany did in World War II.

   “It set me on the path I am on today,” Carol Strong said.

Courtesy of Carol Strong

American Heroes - Ed Strong (front row, left) fought in the 328th Army Regiment in World War II. He spoke about his war experiences to Carol Strong's European Politics class, along with other political science students and faculty.

   Ed Strong attended the University of Michigan, then the University of Pittsburg to be a dentist. After teaching at Louisiana State University, he and his family settled in Clarksville, Tenn. where he still resides today.

   When he got to Clarksville, Tenn. he went to volunteer at a soup kitchen being started by two women. After the women mistook him from someone wanting to eat at the soup kitchen, he told them he just wanted to volunteer and wash dishes.

   “If you want to get along with a woman, you say you want to wash dishes,” Ed Strong jokingly told the audience.

   Carol Strong said he volunteers because he felt if he was allowed to live through the war, he should give back rather than take

   Now he volunteers at the soup kitchen occasionally and teaches Sunday school at a Methodist church.

   Ed Strong was drafted into the infantry during World War II. He said there was no getting out of it. Entire towns disappeared because all the young males were gone.

   Ed Strong started with basic training in Greensboro, N.C. He went into the Army Air Corps. After being I.Q. tested, the Army sent him to Providence College in Rhode Island through the college program. After eight months, Gen. Marshall canceled the program.

   “Things got bad in Europe, so he canceled the program and sent us off,” Ed Strong said.

   He was sent to South Carolina where he joined the 328th. From there, he shipped to France and joined Gen. Patton’s army. Omaha Beach happened after he had been there for two months.

   “I never got a scratch (during the war). Don’t know how that was possible,” Ed Strong said.

   From France, the squad went to Hill 360 at the German border. They were the first squad to cross into Germany. The 88 German Artillery piece claimed the lives of many men, including Ed Strong’s friend, Fink. Fink “disappeared” when an 88 blew him apart. Only one of his shoes were left. Ed Strong said they knew it was Fink because he was the only man with them that wore a 7.5 shoe.  

   After tough fighting in Germany, the Army sent the 328th to train troops in Metz, France. The company only had 50 men left, so they needed replacements.

   “In Metz, we got to eat chow out of mess halls. We hadn’t had showers in months,” Ed Strong said.

   Then the Battle of the Bulge came. The Germans massed up by Luxembourg and broke through the border. President Eisenhower had a meeting with the head of the armies about the Germans breaking through and said Bastogne was under attack. Montgomery, a British general, said he could get his troops there. Patton said his troops could be there in 48 hours.

   “People said he (Gen. Patton) was crazy,” Ed Strong said. “That was us (troops).”

   The squad marched for two days through the snow with no winter clothes to the Belgium Border.  

   “We marched until we beat the enemy,” Ed Strong said.

   The Germans wanted to break through to Antwerp to cut the Americans off. Ed Strong said this would have been bad because it would have been hard to win the war after that. The company saved Bastogne from being taken by the Germans. The Seige of Bastogne took place during the larger Battle of the Bulge.

   The squad started with 150 men and left with 49 men. Ed Strong said others were killed, captured, wounded or had frozen feet and had to leave. After that, a platoon came in and took over.

   The weather dropped to 20 below zero. Ed Strong said it was difficult walking and hiking.

   “On Christmas Eve, I crawled under a tank to get warm,” Ed Strong said.

   His Christmas Day was not much better. He spent the day in an icy river in Luxembourg. The squad lost a lot of men, including “the best sergeant the squad ever had.”

   Ed Strong and his friend, Cippoletti, spent many days in a foxhole together. Ed Strong received a care package from his sister, which included a small can of pineapple. Cip told Ed Strong they should save it.

   Then the squad went to Mort Schuman Crossroads in Luxembourg. Ed Strong said that was a bad place because the squad was stuck. Ed Strong and Cip decided to eat the pineapple. Then Ed Strong told the major he needed gas from his jeep to heat up the stove to make coffee.

   “He (the major) said we were out of our minds, but we wanted coffee,” Ed Strong said.

   Cip had contact patrol that day. The Germans captured him 10 minutes after eating the pineapple. Ed Strong said that was a bad time to get captured. The Germans put Cip in a prison camp. Cip said the Germans did not starve the men; there just was no food. Once a day, the Germans gave one loaf of bread to feed seven men. The men each took turns slicing the bread. The day a man had a turn to slice, he could make his slightly larger.

   “They were cold; they had no covers,” Ed Strong said. “All you could think about was slicing bread.”

   When Cip was captured, they took him to a German hotel for interrogation.CSip told Ed Strong it was just like a movie—he was in a room with a single light bulb. The Germans searched Cip and found a 24 square of Ex Lax his mom sent him in a care package. The German lieutenant said ‘Ooh, American chocolate!’ and ate all 24 squares of the Ex Lax. Cip later told Ed Strong he was so scared they would figure out it was the “chocolate” that made the lieutenant sick. Ed Strong said he is still good friends with Cip.

   At Mort Schuman Crossroads, an air force pilot was shot down. Ed Strong said they told him there was no way out and they had to sit and wait.

   “He was a great guy,” Ed Strong said. “We gave him some ammunition and said ‘now you’re infantry.’

   Ed Strong laughed when he talked about how the pilot said what rotten luck to get shot down, and then wind up in the infantry.  

   The squad encountered new German airplanes at Mort Schuman Crossroads. The soldiers could not hear the new jet engines, so they could not hear the Germans coming. Ed Strong said they had machine gun bullets on top of them with no time to jump in a ditch out of the way.  

   “World War changed everything,” Ed Strong said.

   Ed Strong talked about his experiences freeing people from the German concentration camps. He said his division saw people that came out of the camps and people who did not make it out alive. The ones that did were just skin and bones. The ones that did not come out had been shot and thrown in a ditch with lye on top.

   Ed Strong said they went into one accessory camp to a larger camp. He shot the padlock off the gate. He opened the gate and said to the Jewish people ‘its OK, you’re out. You can do what you want.’

   He said they did not know what to do. They wanted to give Ed Strong something for freeing them, and he told them he did not need anything.

   “This was terrible. I can’t imagine how people starve other people like that,” Strong said.

   Ed Strong put an Episcopal prayer book in his pocket and had a letter from his mother in it. He lost the book when he had contact patrol in Luxembourg and had to take everything off. Two months later, the prayer book came back to his company. Someone found it and thought the owner of it was surely dead, and though the mother might want it. The book went with him to the Dominican Republic and Vietnam. He still has it today.

   Ed Strong said before his squad entered Grossauheim, people said no one would cross the line into Germany. The squad did that and took out two forts. They moved into a town and the only way to walk was to get inside a line of houses. The only way to move forward was to blow holes in the building with bazookas.

   “If you went in the street, you were a dead man from the machine guns,” Ed Strong said. “They cut you down like weeds.”

   After being called away, the Germans blew up the building, killing nine other men.

   Ed Strong said the Germans were going to fight until their last man. The squad walked for two days. He said they learned to sleep while they were walking. They came into Grossauheim and were told to take the little town.  Tanks came across a bridge, the only way to enter or exit the town. Ed Strong said they should have known if the tanks were leaving, there was something wrong.

   When the squad saw the tanks, a photographer took their picture and published it in the Saturday Evening Post. Ed Strong said someone sent it to him later.  

   When the squad made it to a house, Ed Strong took off his boots and went to sleep.

   “All of a sudden, all hell broke loose outside,” Ed Strong said. The company had five new men that had never even heard a rifle fired before.

   Ed Strong said his friends shook him and him they were under attack. He told them it was only combat patrol.

   “I don’t know how I got my boots on,” Ed Strong said. “It was sheer terror after that.”

   The two men were still holding Ed Strong from getting him out of bed when the Germans shot a panzer into the room. One man holding Ed Strong got hit, and the other had about 70 pieces of shrapnel in him. Ed Strong did not have even a scratch.  

   Ed Strong went outside and shot some of the Germans with a little gun he had. His friends told him to leave, but he refused to leave them behind. He put them in the basement and stayed down there. One of the replacements said to Ed Strong,  “There is a German outside, what do I do?” Ed Strong told the soldier to shoot him and he did. The German blew his leg off when he fell on the grenade he was about to throw at Ed Strong and the wounded soldiers.

   After that, Ed Strong went upstairs and came face to face with a German soldier.

   “I knew he was German from the phrase he said that in German meaning ‘what is going on here?,” Ed Strong said.  “I started firing my M1 and he fell like a ton of bricks.”

   Ed Strong had three wounded men and five scared, totally useless men. He said it was the only time he had to stop and decide whether to surrender or be killed.

   “I had to make up my mind to die for the United States of American,” Ed Strong said. “It was chintzy, but I did it.”

   Ed Strong came out alive. He went to get some medics for the wounded men still in the basement. When he got back, the German soldier he killed was standing up talking.

   “He (German soldier) laid at my feet for two hours and I thought he was dead,” Ed Strong said. “He had weapons and could have killed me.”  

   A year later at home, Ed Strong’s mother asked him where he was the day he thought he killed the German. He told her that was his toughest fight. His mother said she had a dream that night he was on a porch roof and if she did grab me him, he would fall. Finally, she grabbed his hand and pulled him back in.

   Ed Strong said his company stayed with Patton’s army until we they arrived in Czechoslovakia and the war was over.  They were about to jump into attack and were told the war was over.

   He said the best people he ever met were the Czechs.

   “They (the Czechs) were sweet and I felt terrible when the Russians came in and pulled Czechoslovakia into the iron curtain,” Ed Strong said.

   He talked about Carol Strong’s experience backpacking in Czechoslovakia. While she was there, a fellow said they had put up a monument to the Americans after the war. The Russians made them take it down, but the people still came together. The people were so appreciative; they got together once a year and dressed up like an American platoon.

   The first time Ed Strong went to the American Cemetery in Luxembourg, it was difficult. One of his closest friends in the Army during the war told Ed Strong one day ‘I’m not gonna make it’ when they were in a foxhole. Ed Strong laughed at him and assured him he would make it through the war. Ed Strong was taken out of the company for a few days. As soon as he left, mortars rained down on his friend.

   “It was almost like he had a premonition about his death,” Ed Strong said.

   He said the U.S. Government maintains the cemetery well and people would be proud to see it. He said 1, 198 soldiers died at the Battle of the Bulge and were buried there. General Patton was the only man buried there who did not die in combat.

   Ed Strong knew five people buried at the cemetery. He went back three times. He said he had a hard time the second time.

   “I went through the entire war and hadn’t shed a tear, but I couldn’t go back in that cemetery,” Ed Strong said.

   Ed Strong said he and his friends from the Army still keep in contact. The 328th regiment just had a reunion in Harrisburg, Penn. He said it would be the last one since there are no people left. All of us are dying. He said he invited his daughter so she could retell the stories.

   He said the men in the Army were like brothers.

   “If they called and needed $5,000, if I had it, I’d send it to them,” Ed Strong said.

   Ed Strong talked about some of his experiences after the war. He went fishing in Italy one time after the war. He went back to Luxembourg and found his old foxhole.

   “I knew it was mine. The next time I went someone had built a house on my foxhole,” Ed Strong told the audience indignantly.

   So many people died in the war, after only seven months Ed Strong became a platoon sergeant. He said his proudest time in the Army was being in the infantry and receiving the combat infantry badge. He also received five bronze star medals. According to the U.S. Army Institute of Heraldry Web site, the bronze star is given for heroic or meritorious achievement or service.  Ed Strong received his colonel wings from Patton’s son. He held every office in the Army except lieutenant and general.

   Tiffany Reed, first-year education major, said she thought it was really cool to see this perspective (of World War II) first-hand.

   “It was interesting hearing all the stories, and the significant things you wouldn’t think of,” Reed said.

   Trey Berry, dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, considered it a privlidge to be one of the few people on earth to hear Ed Strong’s story.

   “Dr. (Ed) Strong is a true American Hero and I don’t say that lightly,” Berry said.

Danielle Kloap is a student in Carol Strong's European Politics class.

Have a comment? Please e-mail us.

©The Voice 2008