Like many veterans of World War II, Al Mills didn't talk much about the war when he was home. He kept his green wool uniform, his rifle, his bayonet, his steel army helmet, his service medals, his arm patch of the 16th Armored Division, a German Luger pistol he had "confiscated" and several metal ammunition boxes which his kids used for storing toy soldiers. At home after the war he lived with traumatic nightmares, he started at loud sounds, he fell to the ground in defensive positions when he was startled, and more than once he almost hurt someone, including Sybel, when he was startled from behind and made a defensive hand-to-hand combat maneuver. A few stories did get passed down over time, and the history of the 16th Armored Division is well documented by historians.
Al said goodbye to Sybel in an emotional farewell, amid promises to return, prayers for safe keeping, and best wishes from the Butler family and Pop Gant when the 16th Armored Division got their staging orders in January of 1945. Al wrote to his Dad telling him of the plans, and acknowledging that letters home would take longer once they got overseas. Thousands of men said goodbye to their girlfriends, wives, and wrote letters home before they boarded the trains for Camp Shanks at Orangeburg, New York on January 28, 1945. There they waited a few days until they got their port call and sailed from the New York Port of Embarkation on February 5, 1945.
The Division loaded onto troop ships for the Atlantic crossing in a heavily guarded convoy. German submarines, known as u-boats, patrolled the Atlantic shipping lanes, sinking supply ships left and right. These supply ships, known as Liberty Ships, were being sunk at such an alarming rate that the only way to keep ahead of the destruction was to launch more Liberty Ships than could be sunk. In all 2,751 Liberty ships were built to the same design, using mass production, assembly lines, with welds instead of rivets, and assembled mostly by women, since the men were in the military, and at the peak of production in 1943 three Liberty Ships per day were being launched.
German submarines would have loved to sink a troop ship, destroying an entire division with one torpedo. Al and his fellow soldiers worried, night after night in the sail across the Atlantic that they might die without so much as getting to the deck above, by explosion, flooding, drowning, and being trapped deep below the waterline. But the U.S. Navy was too wily and deeply committed to preserving the lives of our soldiers, surrounding the troop ships with destroyers and sub hunters, and by maintaining radio silence and random routes across the Atlantic. As a result, no troop ships were sunk on the voyage to Europe. Al Mills bunked in the depths of his troop ship in quarters so tight that it was nearly impossible to roll over in bed because the bunk above was so close. Al was seasick most of the voyage, as were many of the men, and whenever possible, he spent time on deck, looking out at the vast expanse of boiling waves and convoy ships. The actual troop ship's name is unknown at this time. In 1951 the U. S. Army destroyed all records of troop ships and their passenger lists, for unknown reasons. Records have been reconstructed by soldiers, but are incomplete.
They arrived in France in mid February where they awaited orders to join the fighting. In his later years Al remembered that he did not like the French people he met. His concept of morality was at odds with what he saw in the women and men of France. Al was quick to form opinions about morality, so it may have been just one or two women, or just a few brazen men, but it was enough to make him form a distaste for their looser moral standards. He also did not feel they were appropriately appreciative of the role America was playing in their liberation, the sacrifice American's were making for their liberty. In contrast, Al thought the Czechoslovakians were a wonderful people. He understood that the Czechs had been oppressed by Germany for six years. Their churches had been closed, and their Jewish neighbors had been deported and slaughtered, and they had been forced to build weapons and munitions for the German war machine. The Czechs and Slovaks had a much deeper appreciation for the American Army of liberation.
Always the adventuresome one, Al tells the story that he and a fellow soldier wanted to visit the front, the line of battle, somewhere in France, so they set out at night in his jeep, tearing along country roads with the headlights turned off. You had to drive with the headlights off or you were a target for snipers and aircraft. Periodically they would flash their headlights on to view and memorize the road ahead, then continue along in the dark. At one point they flashed their headlights on, and just in time to see that the bridge ahead had been blown away, and they came dangerously close to driving headlong off a cliff into the river. They skidded to a stop, thrust the Jeep into reverse, and backed to safety. Then they sat, calming the adrenaline rush, and whispering about how close they had come to death in the dark. They turned around, and decided they had come close enough to the front for now, and headed back to their barracks, subdued by the experience, and a bit more mature than the boyish joyriders they had been when they set out earlier that night.
The 16th Armored Division was assigned to General Patton's 3rd Army, and on April 19, 1945 they entered Germany and relieved the 71st Division at Nurnburg. While some squadrons of the 16th Armored saw battle, taking over small villages in a series of marches through Germany, the major activity was a security and training mission at Nurnburg until May 5th when they began an attack along the Bor - Pilsen road, and launched an attack on Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, designed to capture the Skoda Munitions Plant. During that attack Al was part of a contingent of soldiers who were assigned the responsibility of securing a bridge into Pilsen. He and his buddies commandeered a building overlooking the bridge and set up operations there, a position he would maintain for several weeks, through the end of the war, and beyond.
Pilsen was the site of armament factories, including the construction of German tanks. It was also a famous beer brewing city, from which Pilsner beer takes its name. The conquest of Pilsen was one of the last major triumphs of the war in Europe, and 3 days later, on May 8th the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of the German forces. Adolph Hitler had committed suicide at the Battle of Berlin on April 30th, and the surrender was authorized by the President of Germany. V-E day (Victory in Europe) was declared and celebrations erupted across the world, including all over America. Sybel was elated. Fort Smith Arkansas was jubilant, and cities across America were filled with joyous people spilling into the streets in celebration.
The victory in Europe was a time of celebration. When I asked Al what he did when the victory was declared, he said, "We kissed the girls! What else would you do when a war is over! We kissed the girls!" Then, he added, a bit more pensively, "Actually, they kissed us. After all they had been through, for years, it was such a relief to them." Then, he quietly paused, and you could see that he was a man of compassion, a man who was both proud of the efforts of American, and sad for the unspoken oppression these people had suffered at the hands of the Nazi Party. Victory is personal. It is a moment in time, celebrated with the people who surround you. It carries a different meaning for each celebrant. Some soldiers knew that the war in Japan still carried on, and they might well be shipped to another front. Some soldiers, including Al Mills, hoped that victory would mean a speedy return to the loved ones at home, loved ones like Sybel Butler, like his father, Albert Mills, Sr., and like his brothers, Joe and Doug, who were somewhere in Europe at this very moment, celebrating in their own way, with the people surrounding them. For all these young men, away from home, in a land of different languages and different cultures, VE day was a cause for exhilaration contrasted with a surge of nostalgia, and homesickness. Victory meant that going home was not too far away. Al wrote letters to his Dad and to Sybel that he was thrilled with the announcement that hostilities were ended, and he looked forward to being home in America, with the people he loved, as soon as possible. The 16th Armored Division was still in Czechoslovakia when Victory in Japan (V-J) was declared on August 15, 1945.
Al arrived back in New York on October 13th and almost immediately he was on a train to Fort Smith to reunite with Sybel.
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