Interviewed Jan. 17, 2000, by Bill Welch in Erie, PA.Kasserine Pass. Anzio. Omaha Beach. Huertgen Forest. Each place was a killing ground for American GIs during
World War II. Ken Fritts was at them all – sometimes the target, most often helping pick the targets.
From the November 1942 Allied landings on the North African coast near Casablanca to Germany on VE-Day,
Fritts was part of the 34th Field Artillery, 9th Infantry Division. For all but the first days in North Africa, he was part of a forward artillery observation team, whose job was to spot targets for the 155mm
rifled cannon fired by Battery C of the 34th.
The assignment often put his team and himself in harm's way. At Kasserine Pass, they stood alongside British soldiers as the Allies put a stop to Field Marshall
Irwin Rommel's advance. On D-Day, they landed on Green Beach in the pre-dawn hours – before the infantry arrived – to sneak past German positions and get inland to call in naval bombardment in support of advancing
American troops.
Fritts was drafted into the U.S. Army from his job at the A&P grocery store on West 26th Street and Brown Avenue in Erie just before the war began. He went from his introduction into the
Army at Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania to Fort Bragg where he received basic training, followed by advanced training in gun mechanics. He was assigned to Battery C, 34th Field Artillery. His job was supposed
to be to maintain the big, 155mm guns. But the realities of war changed that.
It happened when the 9th Division landed in North Africa in November 1942, as part of Operation Torch.
With the 34th Field
Artillery was Matt Geiger, a quarterback with the Blue Streaks, a minor league football team in Erie, who had entered the Army with Fritts. They were together from basic through their assignment to the 9th
Division. They steamed across the Atlantic Ocean from Virginia to French Morocco's Atlantic coast. On the long transatlantic voyage, Geiger said he couldn't wait to get there, thinking they would be landing
in Spanish Morocco. "He wanted to meet one of them Spanish girls."
The Vichy French opposed the American landings. Lives were lost.
"Matt didn't make it. He got killed the first day." Losing him
hurt, and still does.
Geiger had been part of the 34th's forward artillery observation team. With his loss, the commander decided quickly that the unit needed FAO teams more than gun mechanics. Fritts got the
assignment. "He said, 'Fritts, you're not doing anything. Come on up here.'" With the guns' long range, the 34th needed a team to spot targets and report corrections to the firing solution. "We took observations
of distance and movement. Sometimes they (the enemy) were miles away; sometimes we were on top of them."
The four 155mm cannons used by the 34th were of World War I vintage. They
weren't just old, they were intended for training, not combat. "They had a brass plate on the front saying 'For target practice only,'" Fritts recalled. Maybe so, but here they were in the Army's first
combat against the Wehrmacht. Old as they were, they could fire up to three 100-pound shells per minute, reaching up to 20 miles away.
"They could blow a tank away in a hurry," Fritts said. "Many's the
time we had to lower the barrels to point blank and fire. When they hit, the tanks were done."
By the end of the North African campaign, all but one of the guns would be out of action from hard wear. "They
just wilted, we fired them so much." They would be replaced in the next campaign in Sicily with new, more accurate, split-tailed 155mm howitzers that could fire four rounds a minute. "They could drop a shell in a
guy's pocket. Church steeples would always take a beating. They were easy to spot and we would sight in on them." After a few shots had been fired and corrections made, the battery would be told to
fire for effect.
Fritts' FAO team was always out. "Sometimes we were out in front of the infantry. You didn't want to do it, but you had to. The infantry always liked us, though. They watched over us
because they knew their lives could depend on it."
"There were four of us. One carried the radio; another carried the radio battery. The officer carried binoculars – a tripod with a telescope. We had a
vehicle. A command car was too conspicuous. We got rid of the jeep and usually used a three-quarter ton truck, a weapons carrier. We would go as far forward as we could. Sometimes we would be
miles away and sometimes we would be on top of them – wherever we could get an observation. How far would depend on where the hills were. We would crawl up the hills with our gear, leaving the vehicle where it
couldn't be seen. The radio equipment I carried was no heavier than a small television set. It wasn't too bad at all.
"While the officer was sighting, we'd look around in all directions. We were usually
armed with M-1 carbines. We were a prime target. So we looked real good.
"The nice thing was, that when it (the fighting) got hot, we could move out. The infantry had to stay and take it." There
were times during the war they called artillery onto their own positions.
"We knew it was coming, so we could get underground."
Except for the officers, the team stayed together through the war. "They were my
family. I got very close with them. We four got along real well. One buddy came from Muncie, Indiana, and would marry the heiress to the Ball Canning fortune. And there was Jack Rowe, who moved to
California after the war to become an artist."
The first officer they had was Captain "Easeport ED" Carpenter. "He was a long and tall drink of water. He could go up mountains faster than you could shake a
stick. He was a good captain and the troops respected him."
Carpenter eventually was promoted to colonel and moved on. Replacing him was a French-speaking officer named Gobele. Because he could speak
French, he often got directions from French farmers while the 9th Division was in France, or found out from them if any Germans had come through.
"We four were all over the plcae. We
only split up when our division met the Russians at the Elbe. Then they started to send guys home." Soldiers were sent home following a point system based largely on time served and action seen.
"I had enough points by then to take 10 guys with me."
North Africa
The early part of the North African campaign was not too hard. The first opposition the 9th Infantry Division ran into was the Vichy
French. "The French were a snap. They didn't want to fight. When we did run into real resistance, we knew we were up against Germans." The Germans had better tanks and had control of the skies
most of the time.
The critical moment of the campaign came in mid-February 1943. Field Marshall Irwin Rommel sent two of his best panzer divisions against strung-out American units along the southern flank of the
Allied positions. The U.S. units, mostly the 1st Armored Division, were not well led, had equipment inferior to the Germans, and were green. The Germans sent them running. The 9th Division's artillery,
including the 34th, was sent forward to help stop the German advance.
Fritts' FAO team was put in place to watch for the advancing Germans and report firing coordinates. The Germans came on, getting too close.
"To save our skins, we had to back off. I was lucky. Somebody left a half-track with an antiaircraft gun in the back. Nobody was around it. Well if the thing runs, I'm going to take off with it because
I couldn't run fast enough. It was pretty good, but I didn't go too far. They had troops there to stop us.
The FAO team soon found themselves alongside British infantry near the town of Thala not far from
Kasserine Pass. The Germans were pushing hard here, too.
The American artillery joined with British guns and the scratch British ground force to stop the advance. Rommel could have made it through, Fritts
said, but he thinks Rommel lost his stomach for the fight.
"I could never figure out why he didn't push through. He could have pushed us right through to the Mediterranean." Part of the reason, according to
military historians, is that the heavy opposition put up by the American and British convinced the Germans they were up against a stronger force. That's when Rommel lost his stomach for going farther.
About the
British, Fritts said, "The British were good fighters. I wouldn't want to fight them.
"I'll never forget, one day we were down in the lines trying to get an observation and here's this British rifleman. He was
shooting away there. It was quite a skirmish going. Then he says, 'Hey, it's 4 o'clock.' They said OK and stopped firing. They had to brew their tea. They had to have their tea, just like we had to
have our coffee."
Even after Kasserine, the North African campaign was tough, Fritts said. The Allies did not have the superiority there that they would have as the war progressed.
The hot days and cold
nights of North Africa gave way to the hot days and bugs of Sicily in July. There, the 9th Division came up against the Italian army as well as Germans. The Italians were not a problem. "I
think every Italian soldier in Sicily had a big, white handkerchief. We were driving by once and 300 of them came out with white handkerchiefs, crying out 'America! America!' They didn't want any more
fighting. Once we hit the Germans we hit more resistance, but it was more of a rearguard action."
Even so, the 9th was pretty badly cut up in Sicily, Fritts said. "We didn't have enough fighting power to
go on to Italy" in September. The division would later be sent to England to get new equipment and train. Fritts' unit would also get a new commander – William Westmoreland, the general destined to lead American
forces in Vietnam a generation later.
The 9th bivouacked for a time at the foot of Mount Etna, a volcano. "It was always warm there. It was like a Garden of Eden. The farms were just loaded with
fruit. We unloaded the farm there of all kinds of fruit, even bananas."
But before going to England, the forward artillery observers of the 34th Field Artillery would get an assignment sending them into one of
the hottest spots of the European Theater – Anzio.
The Allies had bogged down in Italy in 1943. Trying to swing around the main German defense line, American and British forces landed at Anzio. Before
they could advance very far, German forces bottled them up. Anzio became a small beachhead with a horseshoe of hills manned by Germans and their artillery. No place on the beachhead was safe from German fire.
"We were at Anzio for three days," he said. "We only made it 500 yards inland. The first night we were there, we got the call to get back. It took us two days. The reason is we had so much
equipment there and the Germans were dumping so much stuff on us. Everything was so concentrated, that no matter where they shot, they hit something. We were stumbling over our own feet. I was glad to
get out of there."
Only Anzio was worse than Kasserine, Fritts said.
The Battle of Piccadilly, then D-Day
Once off Anzio, they were on their way to England. The 9th Division was tagged for the
upcoming campaign in France. In the meantime, it would train in Andover, England, and relax.
"We trained a lot of troops. The regular gun crews like us would break the new guys in. It
was a very complicated job – to sight in artillery. You had to have pretty good boys and the time had to be right.
"We had a lot of fun there. The people treated us real good. And if you liked fish and
chips, there was plenty to eat." The only thing that made it dangerous was the V-1 buzz bombs that hit London.
In England, they fought "The Battle of Piccadilly," Fritts said, smiling. "We had a lot of fun
there."
One time they went to a bar in London, then decided to go to another. They stayed there for a short while but the action was no better, so they headed back. "When we got back, the first wasn't
there. It had been wiped out."
All through the spring of 1944 they trained and prepared for the invasion of France. Fritts had trained with Marines for amphibious landings in Virginia in 1942, had landed
in North Africa that November and now faced the prospect of making the biggest landing of all.
"We knew we were going to invade. We didn't know when. One day, we had a pass to go to Ireland. Then they said, 'No
way, this is it.' We started loading up."
While the 9th Division was not scheduled to land in France until several days after D-Day, something different was planned for the forward artillery observers of the
34th Field Artillery. They would land BEFORE the 1st Infantry Division assault forces. They would go ashore with a naval officer, head inland and call in gunfire from naval ships offshore.
On the way
across the English Channel, Fritts felt good enough. "I figured I made it this far OK. The rest of the guys felt the same. We just wanted to get this over with and get home."
They went across the
English Channel on a wooden craft. About 50 of them were aboard. Well before dawn, they stopped. "We stopped just out of sight of land and then got into rubber rafts."
His raft held eight
members of the FAO team plus two sailors. "They told us on the way in there we would have to go as far inland as we could."
The teams had split up. The men in Fritts' team paddled their way to the Green
Beach sector of Omaha Beach. Going in was frightening. "Your rear end is all puckered up."
They landed at a place anyone who watched the movie "Saving Private Ryan" would recognize, then moved a half-mile inland. "It
was the same beach you saw in the movie." Well before the action started, they stepped ashore.
In the dark, they made their way past the Germans' concrete bunkers. "We could hear them talking inside.
That was scary. We thought, 'What if they see us.'
"We had a little red flashlight to see enemy mines. We figured there weren't any mines because the Germans were walking all over the place.
They wouldn't mine their own troops."
"I think the first shot out of the cannon from the battleships pretty near got us. We didn't know the range of the ship. We called 'fire one for effect.' Yeah they
did. It went practically right on top of us. Thank God they missed us. Those shells sounded just like a freight train going over your head."
The FAO team got the half-mile and stopped. German troops were
on the move. "There were only a handful of us."
The day was one of mass confusion.
Naval gunfire fell around them in the beginning. "The naval guns weren't that accurate and most of the shots were meant
for the beach."
One of the first shells landed so close to their team its shrapnel knocked out the radio battery pack. "So we never got a signal off to the Navy. All we could from then on is wait –
just post guards and wait."
But the action around them was not so intense and, in fact, they saw few targets for naval gunfire anyway.
It was much different than what the infantry faced on the beach.
"I never knew
how bad the invasion was until I talked to some of the guys afterward. I didn't see it, period. But the movie Private Ryan hit it pretty close."
Other scenes from the movie were like some of the action
Fritts saw. "The tank battles were pretty close. We never got into hand-to-hand like they did. But we would hear about them and fire into those kinds of situations."
The night of June 6, Fritts had a close encounter with the enemy.
"They had lots of K-9 dogs and some were loose. I saw this one come wandering over our way. I grabbed this German overcoat that had been
hanging out to dry, I suppose and wrapped it around my lower legs. The dog came over, took a sniff, must have figured I was German and just walked away."
During the Normandy campaign, "St. Lo was a bad
situation. We wanted to drive through there. They sent the bombers over and the wind shifted, moving the smoke over us. The bombers started hitting us. Some were hitting about the same as two doors away.
That was close enough."
Once the breakthrough at St. Lo was made, the 9th Division was on its way, fighting across France, then Germany, finally stopping at the Elbe where it linked up with the Russians.
Across Europe
The difference between the move across Europe and the North African campaign was that units could be rotated out for a rest. There weren't enough American divisions in Africa to do that.
"Just after St. Lo, we hit a mine. It blew us out of the truck. We were standing there wondering what the heck we were going to do now. Pretty soon, we look up and see a column of tanks coming down. In
front of them is Patton. He yells down, 'Get that thing out of the way. Let my killers through.' He just took his tank and pushed it right through.
"The thing that saved us was that we had sandbags piled in the floor
of the truck. They made us do that because of the mines. Shrapnel would come right through. That's what saved us."
The 34th Field Artillery wasn't always the one dishing it out when it came to artillery
fire. The Germans would fire back, trying to knock out the guns that were giving them such trouble. On one of those occasions, Fritts was back with the rest of the battery when German shells began to hit
around them. He dove into a slit trench, then rolled onto his back to light a cigarette. Wham! Something landed on him. It was Father O'Connor the Boston priest who was the unit's chaplain.
"How ya
doin', Fritts?" the chaplain asked. Pulling a brandy flask out of his pocket, he looked down on the young enlisted man, and asked, "Need a snort?"
After Fritts took a long gulp, the priest asked if he had enough
cigarettes. Fritts said he did and then the priest got up and ran to the next slit trench.
"What a guy he was." After the war, O'Connor organized unit reunions. "I wanted to go, but I could never
make it. I was always working."
In April 1945, the 9th Division's relatively quick move across Germany came to a stop at the Elbe River. "We were stopped there for a couple of weeks. We wondered
what was going on. We had been all posed to go to Berlin."
Did they want to take the fight to Berlin?
"Not really," he answered quickly. "We had had enough. We had been all over Europe and Africa.
This was enough. I think we could have gone on and taken Berlin in a week because up to this time the Germans had just been disappearing in front of us." The Germans, he thinks, would not have put up the fight to
hold Berlin that they did against the Russians.
"So we just sat there at the Elbe. We saw all these planes going over all the time. It was frightening. We never knew when we would be the target –
even from friendlies."
Then one day a bunch of tanks rumbled up to the opposite riverbank.
"We didn't fire on them and wondered why. We called headquarters and asked them what to do and they said
not to fire, that they were Russians. Then we saw the crews get out of their tanks. Some of them pulled off their helmets and their hair fell down to the middle of their back. They were women."
The steady dose of combat and contact with the enemy wears anyone down.
"After you've been in the front lines for a while, your mind just snaps. It happened to one of our fellas. The young fella Patton
slapped was out of our outfit – just out of high school. We knew of him."
Fritts had another close call that summer in France.
"We were out trying to find a position for a sight. We were near a creek
bed. We heard these mortars coming and I jumped for the creek bed. I reached out with both arms to break my fall and the mortar landed right between my hands."
His right hand was cut up pretty bad.
"The
doctors didn't think I would be able to use it. I was only out of action for about a week."
Skin was grafted from a mortally injured soldier onto the hand. "He was about ready to die anyway. His whole back
was blown out. He had stepped on a mind. I never knew who the kid was."
Fritts was able to use the hand. After the war he became a tool and die maker, working for a few years at K.M. Fritts & Sons machine
shop. The shop lasted a while, then closed and Fritts went to work for American Sterilizer until it went on strike. From there, he went to Snap-Tite for 18 years, first in Erie and then when it moved to
Union City. Getting tired of the long drive each day to Union City, he took a job with R.M. Kerner until he retired.
Those first few years home, Fritts would sometimes have nightmares. The sound of
a car screeching around the corner once sent him diving through a lattice to burrow under a porch, his instincts taking over at what sounded like incoming enemy artillery.
He doesn't talk much about his service in World War II.
"You just get a funny feeling inside. So many of your buddies didn't come back with you. I was fortunate."
