Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
2:14 | Jim Sample pays his respects to two fellow soldiers from the war who were very different. One was a great leader and the other was quite the rascal.
Keywords : Jim Sample Mike Dankovich field commission Mafia Jack Brown
After basic training, Jim Sample was trained as a wire lineman, but when he got to an active unit, he became a mortar gunner. He learned how to dial in the mortar fire just right, then never fired it again, even after he got to Europe.
Jim Sample set out for Europe in a convoy, but the third day out, the ship was dead in the water. Hobbled by a bad propeller shaft, the craft limped back to New York. His unit made it to Europe in a bigger ship in another convoy and made its way inland from Le Havre.
While in a staging area in Normandy, Jim Sample made friends with a French family and brought them food, which was in scarce supply. While advancing across Alsace, he thought of a novel way to tell his family where he was without the censors catching it. As he approached Germany, the roads began to fill with freed prisoners and displaced persons.
Other units had gone around the Ruhr, but it fell to the 13th Armored Division to go in and clean up. It was there that Jim Sample came to hate church steeples. They either had a sniper in them or they made for excellent artillery targeting if you were near one. He knocked his own jeep out of commission through a freak accident with a grenade.
The heaviest action that Jim Sample saw was in the Ruhr Pocket. The German 88 fire was tremendous. The last movement for his unit was a run to Linz to meet up with Russian forces. He was diverted to protect a wayward tank and, while waiting there, he practiced his German with some local children. Hilarity ensued.
Jim Sample's unit was resting in a town park somewhere in the Ruhr Valley. Another American outfit was across the way and a shot from a sniper rang out. He couldn't believe what he saw transpire after that.
At the end of the war, Jim Sample had boxes full of pistols confiscated from Germans. He even had some that he took from Hungarian soldiers who were allied with the Nazis. He explains why none of them made it back home with him.
Once Germany was beaten, Jim Sample became a bit of a sightseer in Europe. He got to visit Berchtesgaden and Paris, among other places. The principle concern among the troops was points. If you didn't have enough, you might be invading Japan.
There was a little excitement on Jim Sample's trip home when lookouts on the ship spotted a stray mine in the water. They safely avoided that and, after a nice furlough, he had to finish out his enlistment. He became a cook for a while and then got to use the first skill he learned in the Army to finish up.
