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Young bride's answer didn't stop Joe Travers' quest to join Army's elite in World War II

Seventeen-year-old Shirley Travers got the Army correspondence and had a blunt answer to the question inside. "NO!"

She would not sign away her approval for her husband Joe to become a paratrooper.  It was bad enough he was in the Army at all, but as long as she had a say, he would stay in tank destroyers, the tank-like vehicles with thin armor.

"When they sent the letter and asked me, I said 'No,'" she recalled.

But Joe had the last laugh.  The Army changed its rules. Next of kin would not have to give their permission for a soldier to join the paratroops.  Soldiers could decide for themselves.

"I called her from Ft. Benning and I told her, 'Do you hear that plane engine? It's revving up now. Guess what?'" Joe Travers said.

"And I knew what he did and I was so angry," Shirley said. "I was so mad that I could have just shot him. I said, 'How could you do such a stupid thing.'  Later, I just cried and cried." 
                                                                                               
               
Joe and Shirley married in November 1942. He was 20; she was 16 and an only child. The  young lovers ran off to Ripley, N.Y., to exchange vows. Then they lived on Erie's lower west side, near 25th and State streets, with Joe's cousin.

Two months after their marriage, Joe was drafted into the Army.

They knew the day would come when Joe would ship out, but knowing it didn't make it any easier.

"The day they took him, at the railroad station, I called him out of line three times. The MPs had to line him up three times.  They took me right out of my coat. I was yelling at the MPs, 'Don't take him! Don't take him!'

"That was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life. He took my insides right with him," Shirley said.


Following basic training, Joe Travers went to the 610th Tank Destroyer Battalion where he trained as a driver and then as a tank destroyer commander.  "I loved it."  But in 1945, when he saw wrecked tank destroyers shot up and burning along the Elbe River, he was glad he left.

He left because he had an itch to become one of the Army's elite – a paratrooper.  Regulations initially called for a soldier's next of kin to sign their approval before he could take part in the hazardous paratrooper duty. The rules changed and that's when Shirley was circumvented. Travers became a paratrooper.

"Then they told me my teeth weren't good enough to eat the rations," Joe said.  "I threatened to go over the hill, so they said, 'Go ahead.'"

Training at Ft. Benning, Ga., was tough, but he endured. After he got his paratrooper's wings, the Army again sought volunteers. This time the Army needed glider infantry.  As dangerous as jumping from an airplane seemed, to some this seemed even more so. The U.S. Army had followed Germany's and Britain's lead in developing gliders to take soldiers into combat.  Soldiers laden with close to 100 pounds of gear would crowd into a powerless, canvas-skinned. A twin-engine C-47 aircraft towed two or three to the battle area and cast them loose to land on the nearest open field. Once there, they would jump out and go into combat, almost immediately.

Did he prefer gliders to parachuting?

"Not really.  When they take that chute away from you and you're in a glider, you're going to have to get out by yourself, brother.  You're not going to jump out the windows," he chuckled.

In late 1943, Travers was shipped overseas to England. There, he joined up with the Second Platoon, Company A, 325th Glider Infantry Regiment. The 325th had been part of the 82nd Airborne Division, the Army's first paratrooper division, since the invasion of Italy in September. The 325th had gone ashore back then in landing craft, like all the other American units.  But now the regiment would train in England with the rest of the 82nd, and it would train to land behind enemy lines.

Travers, like others, was nervous approaching his first combat. "Yeah, you get nervous, but you have to go with the roll. What the hell."

 By June, the Allied Army was ready to strike at German-occupied France.  In the early morning hours of June 6 – a dark, moonless night – the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions jumped into Normandy, France. In the dark, the paratroopers were scattered all over, many landing as much as 20 miles from their drop zone.  Men from both divisions intermingled. It was confusing for the Americans; it was even more confusing for the Germans who lost time trying to determine where the American paratroopers were trying to concentrate. That day the combat was furious. It would that way for the next three weeks for the 82nd.

The next day, June 7, the men of the 325th boarded their Waco gliders. They would reinforce the three parachute regiments that had dropped the day before.

"We went over singing 'God Bless America,'" Joe said.  The majority sang, he added.

They knew the risks. A glider could get shot down by enemy antiaircraft fire. The morning of June 6, several loaded with artillery were. Or a glider could hit a tree. It could hit the ground wrong and get up-ended. The Germans could be ready to mow them down as they exited the glider one or two at a time.

"We were lucky.  You have to know the ground where you're going to land. We landed in an open field right where we were supposed to, near Ste. Mere Eglise.  We got out quick. You have to get out of there because they'll zero right in you."

The first day was a "mixed up affair, but it didn't take too long for the commanders to go ahead and start getting them going and moving the men to where they were supposed to go."

What the young men of the 325th saw as they formed up was enough to sicken them.  Dead paratroopers from the 82nd were hanging from trees, gunned down where their chutes had snagged them.  

For the next few days the 325th fought with the rest of the 82nd to secure Ste. Mere Eglise, the French village a few miles inland from Utah Beach.  The Germans fought hard to recapture the village and the bridges and roadways around it.

"We lost a lot from our platoon," Joe said, among them a good friend from upper New York State, Joe Ambrose.  Travers doesn't elaborate about the losses. He clams up, his eyes tear and his hands fidget.  Even 58 years later, the memories are too hard to bear.

The 82nd Airborne Division was supposed to remain in action for a week, then turn the fighting over to regular infantry and armored divisions.  But the German resistance was so fierce that the 82nd and the 101st were kept in combat for almost three weeks, fighting through hedgerows and villages.

"At one town the cemetery was blown up by the bombing and shelling. The caskets were open, bodies were all exposed.  And we moved right on through. You were moving so fast, you had to keep going."

By the end of June, they were back in England, getting replacements and preparing for operations that were planned and canceled.  Travers was promoted and would spend the rest of the war as platoon sergeant.

Back in Erie, Shirley, the mother of the couple's infant daughter, Joyce, lived in dread fear that something would happen to Joe. She was living with Joe's mother now.

"I went to the Warner Theatre with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law," she recalled. "This was soon after he left and it showed a newsreel of the war.  They had to take me home. I just went to pieces.  It was showing the fighting. And ohhhh my God, I just lost it."

During the war, the young mother did what so many American women did – she worked.  First, she worked at the Boston Store – main floor – where she would write letters to Joe on the package wrapping paper.  Then she got a job at the Odin stove works on West 12th Street, helping to make aircraft parts.  Her family and Joe's family helped take care of the baby.

As a platoon sergeant, Travers was in charge of 36 men – when the platoon was at full strength.  But in extended periods of combat, like that faced during the Battle of the Bulge and the weeks afterwards, the platoon could drop to half that number, Travers said. When replacements came, they had to be worked into the unit. "They worked in fast," he said, noting that they were glider infantry also, and had gotten the same tough training he had received in 1943.

Being sergeant was a "good job."

"It keeps you on your toes," he said. "The more they like you the better it is. They look up to you (as a veteran)." After combat,  "they say that went OK, we're glad we listened."

When men stepped out of line, "they would come around later. They would say, "Sarge I'm sorry."


On Dec. 16, the German army launched a major offensive against the American army in the Ardennes Forest in Luxembourg and Belgium.  The Americans were knocked back and the Germans threatened to break through to Leige and on to Antwerp, cutting the Allied armies in two.  Gen. Dwight Eisenhower rushed the veteran 82nd and 101st paratroop divisions into combat to plug the hole.  The 101st went to Bastogne where it made its epic stand with a few other U.S. units, and the 82nd headed for the north side of what would be known as the Bulge. For the next two months in one of Europe's coldest winters on record, the 82nd faced the Germans on the front line, first holding them back, then joining in the Allied counteroffensive that would shove the Germans back to their original lines and beyond.

During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans infiltrated by the lines units in American uniform, with American equipment and able to speak English as well as any American. They created havoc behind the lines in a number of ways. One was the effect that knowing they might be around somewhere had on American GIs, who now weren't sure they could trust anyone they didn't know.

"They were smart.  They were no dummies. Some of these guys knew more about America than we did," he said.


Joe Travers received the Bronze Star for valor.  The man, whose name he can't recall anymore, put him for the citation during the latter part of the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945.  Possibly, he said, it was for the day he was wounded in action. 

"We were in trenches, and when we got up and started running, I felt something funny. I kept going and going and going." The "funny" feeling was in the back of his right thigh and buttocks. He was riddled by shrapnel from a mortar round that exploded behind him. "When they got me to the hospital, they said you have frostbite, too."

It knocked him to the snow-covered ground.  He couldn't get back up.  By the time medics could get to him and carry him back to a field station two hours later, frostbite set in on his legs.

Leaving his platoon hurt more than the shrapnel and the frostbite.  And to this day, as he recalls it, the pain he suffered then from being separated from his wartime buddies cuts deep.

Days later, while in the hospital recovering, he met up with Ed Joint, another Erie man and a paratrooper, though with the 101st Airborne Division.  Both men wanted only to get back to their units and in a few weeks they were taken by truck back to their divisions.


When Joe was wounded, the War Department sent a Western Union telegram to 17-year-old Shirley saying her husband had been wounded in action.  And that's all it said.  She had no idea how badly he was hurt or what his chances of recovery were.

"That drove me crazy," Shirley said. "I sobbed my heart out."  It wasn't until she got a letter from Joe weeks later that she knew anything.  "He said he was OK."

In February, the 82nd moved through the Roer River region, an area that included the Huertgen Forest where several American divisions had suffered heavy casualties trying to break through strong German positions.  "We were walking through a wooded area. It was snowing like hell.  There was a tree. One of the guys said, 'Hey Sarge, I want to show you something.'  There was a body drooped over the stump. He was dead. He had been there a long time. He was frozen right there.  As we went there must have been a hundred of them.  We kept moving right on through. The lieutenant said that was the Pennsylvania National Guard.  The 28th Division. (The 28th Division had fought in that area in early and mid November 1944.)  They were all the way through there … just frozen. To know they were from your home state … oh boy."

Though the sight of those frozen bodies from his home state was painful, as a platoon sergeant, Travers had to think of his men.

"It's up to the sergeants to try to calm them down. You're hurting yourself and you have to calm them down," he said. "You have to keep going, keep moving. You can't do nothing for them. Guys would come in later and throw them on half-tracks like they were beef."

Once during that cold winter, Travers' platoon spent the night in a church. "I said I'll take the altar.  That's where I slept.  It was a cold night. We were safe there.  They didn't seem to hit that church."

In Cologne, Travers saw a clock on the mantle of a home where he and his men were staying. He knew the rules: No sending home loot unless it was something broken. "I broke a little thing on it.  It took us 13 years and Frank Zebrowski fixed it for us."

An infantryman hates night patrol.  In the dark, with the enemy likely to be close, even as close as arm's length, the feeling of being alone and exposed is intense. Anything can happen, and in an instant.

"One time I was in a trench, during the Bulge, and the runner comes by and says Joe you're wanted.  In the meeting, they wanted me to take six men up there by this hill and let them know if we hear any tanks or any movement of vehicles.  We went up. We were maybe half a block from the top. We heard nothing. No vehicles moving. I said, 'OK, let's move out.'"

The memory of that night still haunts Joe, not for what happened, but for the terror of what could have happened.  This was his third campaign, all of them hard fought.  He knew all the things that could go wrong and he knew what happens, especially to infantrymen, when things go wrong.  

"We were alone," he explained.  "You don't have a big bunch of machine guns alongside you to shoot if you see anything coming. You gotta watch it."

The password that night was Mae West.  When his patrol got back to the lines, a GI called for the password.  Travers gave it and the sentinel led them through the mines and booby traps.  They were back and they were safe. The relief was overwhelming and complete. 

On May 2, 1945, the German 21st Army surrendered to the 82nd Airborne at Ludwiglust, Germany. 

"There were so many of them coming through the line, we had to pull up our jeeps and say, put your helmet here, put your rifle there.  … These guys were glad to get away. They were glad to get away from the Russians."

But Travers strongest memory from Ludwiglust was the concentration camp. Like everyone else, he was appalled at the condition of the camp inmates.

"We saw everything," he said, drawing in his breath. "One guy would be alive. One could just barley move. Another guy's dead.  This eye's here like it's almost popping out of his head."

Gen. John Gavin, commander of the 82nd Airborne, ordered the entire population of the town assembled.  He chewed out the Germans, then ordered the townspeople to bury the victims.

Those sights "made us worse."

We had lots of times (in the war), we thought what the hell are we doing this for. Then we saw this, and we wondered how they could stand it, to see all those people dying and starving to death."
  
The war in Europe ended May 8, 1945, but Travers had more to do.  Twelve men from his unit won a drill competition. They did so well, they were selected to be the American honor guard in Berlin where the triumphant Allied powers sent military delegations.  The honor guard remained through November when, on Nov. 12, 1945, Joe's 23rd birthday, they headed home.

Back in Erie, Joe saw his daughter Joyce, two years old. He hadn't seen her since just after she was born. Over the next 10 years, he and Shirley would have three more children: Dick, Sherry and Gary. They now have eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Travers left the war, but it didn't leave him so easily. For a few years after, he had nightmares, Shirley said.

"I'd put my arm around him and talk to him when they happened," she recalled. "He went through absolute hell.  He did." It was a time when veterans didn't share their memories or pain. They kept the tough parts locked inside, most often dealing with the memories themselves, or, like Joe, with help from a sympathetic spouse.

Travers became a letter carrier for the U.S. Post Office. And for 12 and a half years, served in the Marine Corps Reserve in Erie. He left the Marines after he had a "blowout"  with a second lieutenant. "I said, 'You can have it.'"

"If I would have stayed two more years, I would have gotten another pension" to add to his Post Office pension, he said.

If he had to go to war for his country again would he go?  Joe thinks a minute.  "I think so."

Joe and Shirley Travers were interviewed Sept. 28, 2002, by Bill Welch