Lester E. Johnson
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Army
Lester Erland Johnson served during World War II in the U.S. Army Air Forces. He enlisted in Duluth, Minnesota, on September 21, 1942, and started to serve on October 15, 1942.
He spent eight months at Midland Air Force Base in Midland, Texas, and worked on flight line and in-flight recording of bombardier training missions. He was then assigned to the Accelerated Engineer Training program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, for ten months. He was transferred to the 106th Infantry Division in Camp Atterbury, Indiana, and then to the 285th Combat Engineers at Camp Crowder, Missouri.
The 285th was deployed to the European Theater with General Patton’s 3rd Army. He received training in England and Epernay, France, for mines, booby traps, and explosives. During the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944-January 1945), his unit located and disabled mines, blew up bridges, and constructed bridges. His unit moved through Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia through May 1945. After VE Day, the 285th Combat Engineers built a 20,000-man POW camp in Plattling, Germany.
Mr. Johnson then contracted diphtheria and was hospitalized in a civilian hospital run by the U.S. Army in occupied Germany. His rank was Sergeant. He was discharged on January 16, 1946.
Mr. Johnson was born in 1922 in Walker, Minnesota, the son of John Elmer and Gertrude Johnson. He graduated from high school in 1941.
Source: Veterans’ Memorial Hall veteran history form; veteran’s account (below)
“I enlisted into the Army Air Corps, later changed to Air Force on October 15, 1942, at the age of twenty. I was sent to Midland Field, Midland, Texas, which was a bombardier training field. I was assigned to the 491st Training Squadron and sent out on the flight line because they were so short of help. I was fortunate to have a crew chief that could teach this kid fresh from off the farm enough in a short period to be able to do the maintenance and servicing of this twin-engine bomber by myself. I would go on some flights and record the strikes on the targets and, of course, the misses, too. It was a busy and interesting experience for eight months.
“Then one day there was a roster of over 200 men that were to report for some tests. My name was one of them. The tests were tough. There twenty-nine of us that passed and were sent to various universities. I spent the next ten months at Vanderbilt U. studying engineering under the Army Specialized Training Program. Then the Army closed the program down.
“I was then sent to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, to the 106th Infantry Division, where I trained for a couple of weeks and am glad I did not stay with them. They suffered heavy losses in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.
“My next move was to the 285th Combat Engineer Battalion at Camp Crowder, Missouri. There we trained very hard in all aspects of infantry and engineer duties. From there to Camp Campbell, Kentucky, and Camp Shelby, Mississippi. From there, we began our journey overseas.
“After a twelve-day trip on a Victory ship in a convoy that was one of the largest ever. We made it to England despite a couple of submarine attacks. Our warship escorts were able to take care of by dropping depth charges. While in England, we continued our training in bridge building in both the steel Bailey and floating bridges. Myself, I resumed my training that I had stateside on German land mines, both anti-tank and anti-personnel types. I shall describe briefly a few of the major ones that we had to deal with.
“The Tellermine-35 [a German metal-cased anti-tank mine] was the most common anti-tank mine. It had about 12 lbs. of TNT and a small doughnut-shaped charge that was near the fuse. Generally, the mine is very safe without the more sensitive doughnut. The reason that I go into detail is when we located a mine by either probing or by mine detector, we are faced with: how do we deal with it now? Only a very few in a minefield are booby-trapped. So we must treat each one as [if] it is. That slows the job down. When we are successful in removing the mine from the ground, them we spin the cover off to remove that sensitive doughnut. There again, the enemy devised a system so when the mine was planted and the cover is screwed down, the cover could not be removed without detonating it. This is all a psychological game to slow one down.
“The other anti-tank mine we found was called the Regal. It was about 5” square and 30” long and buried in the ground across the traffic.
“Anti-personnel mines that we encountered were the S-mine that would jump out of the ground a few feet and send three hundred sixty steel balls in all directions. There were others, too, but one simple one that gave us trouble was known as the Schu-mine. It was a small wooden box that had a half-pound block of TNT in it. The wooden cover fit over it, and when stepped on, the fuse would detonate it. These were placed in the snow in three rows, close together. Many lost feet, and some lost their lives from this simple little cheap device; because it was wood it could not be picked up by mine detectors. One of my buddies that was at Vanderbilt was killed by one of these.
“There were nine of us squad sergeants from our battalion that had the training, so we were sent on ahead of our outfit from England to Luxembourg after getting some more up-to-date lessons at Épernay in France. When our unit arrived, we joined them. We were all deployed along a line from Belgium and a long ways south. Our purpose was to stop the Germans from bypassing the main U.S. forces to the north. We were never in one place more than a couple of days to deceive the enemy on how thin our line really was. I was at one point sent south to remove mines from the enemy side of the river. I spent three nights doing that scary, cold job. I was sent north to blow up a small bridge to keep the enemy armor from making an attack on the southern flank of our main forces. Due to some screw-up in intelligence, there were twenty of us that were stranded out in the snow in the pine forest for two days behind enemy lines.
“Soon, the main part of the Bulge was pushed back, and our outfit was once again more together. Before this, however, it was not easy for everyone. There was the cold, snow, wet weather that we did not have the proper clothing and boots or shoes for. All of our troops were not battle ready, but soon learned there was the danger of coming into contact with the enemy dressed up in U.S. uniforms and, to further complicate matters, when both sides are dressed in white in the snow.
“One night when I and one other were out front of our lines on the lookout for any enemy infiltrators, we came back to our line, and as we approached one of our foxholes, perhaps no farther than fifteen feet away, I heard a click. That was the safety being pushed off on a rifle. There was just enough light for me to see the glint of a gun barrel aimed at me. I yelled out the name of the one that was there. He came up out of his foxhole, grabbed me and cried, and said he was so close to pulling the trigger. It is not easy out there alone, and one can imagine all kinds of things. Tensions get high, as there is artillery fire going overhead both ways. No matter where we were, there was plenty of artillery fire by the famous 88s and now and then Nebelwerfer, Screaming Mimi’s, a rocket launcher that sent five rockets out one after another with a loud, demoralizing sound. Sometimes we had to abandon our locations because the fire from the 88’s was getting too close.
“All the time we have been in General Patton’s 3rd Army and have been attached to various outfits such as the infantry, cavalry, and armored. Now that the Bulge has been broken, the campaign began to reach and cross the Rhine River. Now we are with the 4th Armored most of the time. The enemy put up strong fighting at times with their Tiger tanks. We were out front much of the time removing hastily planted mines, trees that had been felled across the road by explosives. Some places, these were piled up eight feet or more, so we used the large two-man chain saws to cut through enough o that tank ’dozers could break through. All the while there was the chance of sniper fire, so we had some help out front to make it safer. We also would be out front with patrols to clear away bazooka-type rockets that were fastened to trees on the side of the road and detonated by a wire stretched across the roadway.
“When we reached the Rhine River, the main bridges had been destroyed or badly damaged, so it was necessary to use pontoon bridges, which could be built in a short period of time. Our battalion, along with other combat engineer units, assembled short sections upstream, and these were floated down and connected until the bridge was completed. There was some artillery fire but no damage to the bridge. Our unit followed the first wave of tanks across and then began the fast-paced assault across Germany.
“There were times when we did not have as much to do, but there were those that were both hazardous and strenuous. One evening I had a job of preparing the shore of a river for a pontoon bridge. I had just gotten out of the front seat of the truck to direct the driver where to dump the load of gravel when an artillery shell burst above, sending shrapnel in all directions. For some miracle, I did not get even a scratch, but the driver had a bad shoulder wound, and the seat where I had been sitting was damaged. I tried to patch the driver with those sulfa-packed bandages to cut the bleeding down and sent him back with the next vehicle that came by.
“We were placing the pontoon sections in the river, and at about fifty feet, artillery shells would damage part of it. We called in an artillery spotter, who was able to locate where the gun was after timing a couple of rounds. It was soon known who was directing the first. It was a woman across the river in a three-story building. Our troops over there made sure that she would not be able to cause any more trouble. War—sometimes there is no mercy shown in it.
“After that delay, the bridge was completed, and the tanks were on the move. Patton was a hard pusher on both men and machines and would not tolerate any excuses for delays. As we made our way, more and more prisoners were taken. All seemed glad that the end of the war was in sight. But there still remained pockets of resistance.
“One day we stopped to stay for the night at a small village. By now we are overtaking the civilian population, who were helpful to us. They told us that there were three hundred or more soldiers that would move in to town that night. So we set up a perimeter defense because we would be outnumbered three to one.
“After it got dark, we could hear them coming, and when the order was given to halt three times and they did not stop, the order to fire was given. A short burst of one of our machine guns sent them running. The next morning there was one body laying out on the field. It was a young boy, about fifteen, who had been used as a decoy for the troops behind him.
“That day, then, we proceeded to engage those, and soon located them as we approached the wooded area where we last saw them, and we were spread out. We were perhaps forty yards from the woods when Sergeant Anderson fired, and then another explosion followed soon from the woods. What had happened was Anderson had seen this German who was sort of out of my view and was preparing to throw a stick grenade in my direction. Anderson’s quick shot killed the German and perhaps saved me from injuries or worse. The explosion following the shot was [when] the cord on the grenade got pulled. After that, the remainder of the Germans soon came out and surrendered. We found out that the one that was killed was an SS officer that kept them from giving up. There were over 300 that we turned over to another outfit. By now, there were many thousands that had been taken prisoner. One day as we got to the city of Regensburg, the main road through it had been made impassable by the American bombers, so we had to our D-8 ’dozer to fill the bomb craters and push rubble from the buildings to the side. There was a house that one whole side was missing so the interior was exposed. There two men carrying a body down the stairs. I am certain that scent was duplicated thousands of times. During that time, a sniper missed me by about a foot and struck the ’dozer blade. Thank heavens, no more shots were fired.
“By now, the speed of the spearhead was gaining momentum, and as we got deeper into Germany we came upon POW camps. One I remember very well had British troops that had been taken prisoners in the failed invasion of Dunkirk. They were very thin and some were not able to walk, but they still had not lost their spirit.
“Also, we came upon a camp that had all Americans, and these also had lost a lot of weight. Some had wounds. Most, I believe, were Air Force members that had been shot down. Words cannot describe how happy all the prisoners were, some were crying, but they suspected that something was happening because most of the guards had left the day or so before.
“There is a lot of situations in war that can touch one’s heart, but I can say that seeing the concentration camps and what went on in and around them, no words can ever paint the proper picture what the atrocities that had been committed upon the innocent people. In just one instance, there was a structure with small stalls, where prisoners had worked making cobblestones for highways and streets. Not far away were the remains of some of those dressed in prison garb that had been worked to death, and it was obvious they were malnourished. This is not the only one that we came upon. In one case, there were hundreds of bodies laying in rows out in a pine forest; the stench and the site can never be forgotten.
“On a lighter side, one day we came upon what had been some sort of German military command post. It looked like a good-sized home. There was not much furniture in it, but a safe that was about five feet high. I had orders to get it open. I used two pounds of explosives on the first try, lit the fuse, and ran outside. My helper was standing under the eaves, and when the charge went off, the clay tile from the roof was bouncing off his steel helmet. The building was constructed of lightweight concrete block. I got the safe open on the third try, but there were only two walls left standing. That ended my safe-cracking, but there was a large amount of military information that was turned over to intelligence, plus quite a bit of paper money that was kept in the company.
“The spearhead was making good headway until we got to the Isar River, where the bridge had been destroyed. The span was 160 feet, with a center support that would have been over twenty feet high. My job was to build a structure of timbers on the concrete or stone base out in the middle of the river.
“Keep in mind that there are civilians there, too, and a I was out there preparing to blast away some steel that was in the way, a horse was running along the river and, believing the bridge was still there, turned the corner.
“I can still see the horrified look on his face as he was twenty feet above the water and broken bridge parts. By some miracle and help from some of our men, he survived, swam across the river, leaving his master behind.
“We had started that steel-section Bailey bridge shortly after noon, and the first tanks were crossing by 4:00 in the morning. We were shelled three times, but there was no damage.
“From here we cut through part of Austria and into Czechoslovakia, where we met up with the Russian forces. The war ended then. They were poorly equipped, they were friendly, and from what we could tell they were glad the war was ending. There was a period of time before we got to meet up with the Russians that there were a lot of civilians coming from the east. They were German soldiers, Polish and others that would rather be in American hands than the Russian.
“From there we moved to Plattling, Germany, and without any break were given the job of building a camp to house 20,000 on a bombed-out airfield. My job was to coordinate the production of lumber at eleven sawmills with the needs of the site. We built six barracks a day. We had a thousand POWs working. There were none that ran away because they were treated well and got good food. Before the job was completed, I became seriously ill. I spent the next six weeks in isolation in the 110th Evacuation Hospital in Passau, Germany, recovering from diphtheria. When I got out of the hospital, my outfit had left, and I spent the rest of my time over there recuperating with another combat engineer battalion. I had no duties and did a lot of deer hunting. All the venison was used by the mess hall and appreciated by everyone because it was a change from the same old stuff. That venison and gravy on the famous shingle tasted great.
“After shipping out of Marseilles, France, and spending twenty-two days aboard a Liberty ship that broke down more than once, we arrived in New York City. The welcome home crowd there was a small band and a handful of others, compared to the hundreds that greeted us at the end of the Honor Flight.
“I was one happy young fellow to have done my little bit for my country, and at the same time my deepest thoughts were for all of those (and their families) that did not come back alive. Or, if they did, would never be the same.”
Another veteran account: “I began my military service on October 15, 1942, after enlisting in the Army Air Corps. After about eight months I was selected to attend Vanderbilt University for about ten months under the Army Specialized Training Program. After the program was shut down, I was sent to the 106th Infantry Division. From there to the 285th Combat Engineer Battalion.
“After training in three different camps, we were sent to England. Our first entry into combat was about the first of the year in Patton’s 3rd Army for the balance of the Battle of Bulge. We were positioned as infantry along a line from Belgium and south. I was a squad sergeant and had extensive training in mines, booby traps, and explosives. We planted and removed mines. All during this time we were under a lot of artillery fire. The weather was cold, wet, and we did not have the proper shoes, boots, or warm enough clothing.
“When the Battle of the Bulge was over, we were attached to the 4th and 11th Armored Divisions for the rest of the campaigns across Germany into Czechoslovakia. We removed mines, road blocks, built pontoon and Bailey bridges many times under fire and weather conditions that were brutal.”
