My name is Mortimer Sheffloe. I was born in Crookston, Minnesota on November 27th, 1924. I had 5 siblings, all girls. My youth in Crookston was a pleasant time. Mothers didn't worry about their kids, we could do whatever we wanted. Us kids enjoyed that freedom.
My father passed away when I was in 10th grade. My cub scout master looked out for me and helped me find jobs. My mother was working, and I needed to as well. I had worked a newspaper route as a kid, but our family needed more income. During High School, I got a job with the gas company as a meter reader. I used to miss about a week of school a month on that job.
I also worked with the telephone company on toll patrol, and during my senior year I replaced our school janitor who was drafted. I wasn't very competitive or athletic in High School. I played football but was only 138 pounds, which even then made me pretty small. Academically, I was about in the middle of my class.
In April 1943, I took a test administered to boys throughout the country to determine qualifications for the A-12 Army College Training program. I took the test, and four weeks later I learned that I passed and was able to enter the Army.
After entering service, 35 of us were put on a train at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, headed for basic training in Texas. We got to Dallas, then took a bus to Camp Fannin in Tyler, Texas. At the camp, we had four companies of trainees, with 4 platoons in each company. We spent 13 weeks of training in the heat of a Texas summer, from July to September 1943.
When training finished, the entire battalion was put on a train to Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. We all would have rather gone somewhere like Southern California. Texas A&M was an all boys school at the time. We were enrolled as army students in their basic engineering program, and took general classes with the rest of the student body.
I went to the theater one Sunday evening for a movie. They had a long newsreel on the Marine landing on Tarawa, which was a horrible battle with a lot of casualties. After seeing the destruction, I wanted to get out of the program and leave school altogether. I didn't ask for a discharge though, I just quit studying.
When my roommates were studying in the evening, I silently read magazines at the latrine. That lasted for 3 weeks, and my grades suffered. In January 1944 I was extracted from the program. They placed me in a temporary basics program. We served my former classmates and washed dishes.
We were then sent to Camp Polk, Louisiana but never got on the base. We were trucked out to the woods of Louisiana, where our platoon unloaded the truck and made a bonfire. We spent two days around the fire until we joined a company headed for basic training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
When we assembled in Missouri we realized we were extremely understaffed. Undergoing basic training all over again was a hassle. In March 1944, the battalion was granted a seven day furlough. I went home to Crookston for two days, then headed back to Missouri. When I returned, I found out our base had received members of the Air Force. They were overstaffed while our Army base had a dearth of members. Anyone in the Air Force who was deemed less useful came to our infantry. I was sleeping among some unhappy people.
The Air Force had minimal basic training, so we once again started training. The training didn't last long though. They shipped all of us who had already been trained to Fort Meade, Maryland. We were there for five days, four of which I spent in the hospital with food poisoning. From Maryland, we were shipped to Camp Shanks in New York.
On May 10th, 1944 we sailed from Camp Shanks to Glascow, Scotland. From Scotland, we took a train to Bristol, England. Our company trained every day in a huge training facility. On the morning of June 6th, while on the field after breakfast, someone asked me if I had heard the planes the night before. I hadn't heard them, but our Sergeant then told us D-Day had occurred.
We stayed at the depot for a few more days then were shipped to another camp in a place called Yeoville. At that time of Summer the sun was out until 11PM in England, and we wanted to take advantage of all the daylight. We would go out into Yeoville and talk to the young ladies there, but us corporals had to be in early. One time I got the bright idea to sneak out past my curfew and put silver foil on my helmet to pretend I was a Lieutenant. If I was a Lieutenant, they wouldn't mind me coming back later. It worked, but it was too risky to try again. In another instance, a guard caught me and another soldier sneaking back into camp and made us spend a night in Army jail. We had to do some scrubbing as punishment, but it wasn't all that bad.
On July 10th, they placed our battalion on a train headed to Southampton, where we were loaded onto a ship. We sailed to Utah Beach and headed to our camp south of Saint Mere-Eglise, France.
We drove to what was called a replacement depot and dug foxholes to protect us from potential enemy fire. In the foxhole, one person slept while the other would sit guard. We switched every hour. Our food was packed for us in small cardboard boxes. When we got toilet paper, we stuck it in the lining of our helmet to protect it. I spent two months in that foxhole.
One morning, we were all urged to assemble near a truck that had just shown up. The officer in the truck assembled 12 of us and took us right outside Saint Mere-Eglise. We ended up being distributed among several platoons. I made it to the 121st regimen of the 8th infantry division, in the 8th core. Our different companies were spread out throughout the area. None of us knew what the other companies were doing. We were all busy preparing for Operation Cobra.
We relieved the 82nd infantry on the 4th of July. On July 25th, the United States mounted about 3,000 airplanes to attack St. Lo and bomb enemy positions. That began a period of Germans retreating, and our platoons chased after them. I had the job of 2nd scout on the night patrol. We would go straight out for 500-1000 yards looking for Germans. We never met any resistance.
Our infantry was rolling through Normandy, 6-7 miles a day until we made it to Coutance, France. In August, we were taken to a battle in the Brittany Peninsula, where there was a pocket of Germans. Along with the 83rd infantry, we enclosed the German's pocket day by day. They finally surrendered, and we were trucked to Denain. We then continued West.
One time while I was on patrol, we ran into a French woman who was washing her clothes in the river. She told us she was visiting family at a nearby house, and our six man crew went to their house and partook in a festive atmosphere. They were grateful for us and certainly showed it with wine and kisses.
We continued West along the peninsula. On September 10th, 1944, my platoon arrived at Ft. Bouyon at around noon. It was an old, battle-worn fort with rifle holes and bomb craters. We were there for about ten minutes when our Lieutenant was shot. I was in the vicinity when he was shot, so he gave me his maps. We moved out 100 yards alongside the fort, and word came from our Lieutenant to maintain our positions.
Our Lieutenant asked me to bring the squad back together. In the process of making sure everyone was going back, I was shot through the back, in the lung and liver. I had a "sucking wound". With every breath, I was making a gurgling sound, which was extremely frightening. It felt like someone swung a baseball bat in my ribcage. After being shot, I fell 8 feet deep into a bomb crater.
I still remember the sound, and looking up from the bomb crater. In the next crater was the aid man. He came over with rocks and gravel. He cut off my shirt, field jacket and undershirt and put compresses on my wound. He covered me up with my raincoat, and put my helmet on. Four hours later, two aid men came in. They got me out of the hole, and got me to the Battalion Aid station, which had doctors and trained aid men. I was there for a half hour, where they gave me gauze, taped me up and took me to an ambulance.
At 10PM that night, I reached the field hospital. I had surgery that night to clean up the wound, then had to stay there for seven more days. I took my first Airplane ride in a C-47 aircraft to Yeoville. The replacement depot I was at had become a hospital. I had major surgery there. I stayed there for about 3 more weeks, then was transferred to another hospital that specialized in lung/chest cases. I stayed there until May 1945.
The war was over May 8th, 1945, and on the 10th I sailed back to New York. When I returned to New York, I went to Halloran General Hospital in Staten Island. I spent a week there, then took a train to an army hospital in Walla Walla, Washington. After 10 days there, I got a 60-day convalescence. I then took a train to Fargo and hitchhiked home to Crookston for the summer. My furlough was up August 14th.
We dropped the atomic bombs, and it became a tenuous time. I tried to get an extension on my convalescence but was denied. I set out to return to Walla Walla via train. When I got off the train in Spokane, Washington, the cars were driving down the street honking horns. It was V-J Day!
I was discharged on August 31st, 1945, categorized as 100% disabled. I went back to Crookston to work for the telephone company. I left there, enrolled in the University of Minnesota to study electrical engineering. I graduated in 1950 and found work in the telephone and toll industry for the next 30 years. I had many positions, moving all the way up to Engineering Supervisor for a telephone company in both Dakotas and Nebraska.
I retired in February 1982, then came out of retirement to work for Aramco in Saudi Arabia. Working for Aramco was a great experience. I came back stateside and found a job as a systems superintendent for a realty company. I moved to Sun City, Texas in 1999. I've traveled to Europe numerous times, including Normandy about 10 times. I was in Normandy for the 40th and 50th anniversaries of D-Day. I'm physically limited, but socially active.
