US AIRBORNE

Many thank you to Donna Juno (Larry's daughter) for allowing me to write an article about her dad. Having taken the time to read my article and correct it. Many thank you to Larry for having responded to my questions and time to me spent!

Lawrence “Larry” A Michaelis was born May 29, 1924 at Hometown Madison, Wisconsin. He was the youngest child of the family. Lawrence had two brothers and three sisters. The names of his brothers and sisters are: Randolph, Marie, Alice, Alfred “Happy” and Emily. The name of his father was Henry Michaelis and his mother’s was Emma Pierstoff Michaelis.

“My parents had many different jobs. My father delivered mail for the postal service at a given time and he worked for many years as an automobile mechanic. I know that my mother's parents were farmers, so we helped on the farm.”

He graduated from West High School in Madison, Wisconsin in 1942 and was drafted on March 11, 1943. He reported to Fort Sheridan, Illinois on March 18, 1943.  He was assigned to and completed basic training with the 106th Infantry Division.

“One day they brought us all together. At which time the Officers called some soldiers names. My name was among them. We were told to gather our belongings and get on the waiting bus. When I asked why, they told me I had “volunteered” for airborne glider troops.”

Larry was assigned to the 101^st Airborne, 327^th Glider infantry regiment Company C. He shipped out for England on May 13, 1944 and arrived on May 25^th, 1944 just prior to D-Day. Lack of transport vehicles and the short time frame between Larry’s arrival in England and D-Day kept Larry in England until Operation Market Garden. He received his baptism of fire in Holland during Operation Market Garden on the third day of the invasion. Larry’s platoon of the 327th GIR landed 19 September 1944 (D+2) near Son. However, the glider in which Larry flew crash landed short of their destination. Nearly 70 years have passed, but Larry remembers well his flight and landing in the glider.

“If you've ever read how 27 gliders didn’t make it all the way, well I was in one of them. The fog was so bad and we flew low over the Channel, lots of times we couldn’t even see the tow-planes in front of us. When we left the fog once, the glider was up here and the tow plane it was back there! We flew over the German lines at least once, because we got a few bullet holes in the wings, and the guy sitting across from me... there was a bench seat on either side and that was all there was.... He was sitting with his legs sprawled apart and a bullet passed right between them about 30cm and tumbled down... it was spent...”

Larry was shaken, but that was nothing compared to the landing.

“We came down and it was just like an airport landing just as nice as can be and all of a sudden we hit a drainage ditch, tore the wheels off the glider, tore the bottom latch off the cockpit, (the cockpit swung upwards for loading jeeps and other large equipment) and there the pilot and co-pilot sat upside down. Of course we didn’t really have a co-pilot; he was just the ranking man in the unit that sat in the co-pilot’s seat.  As we flew over the channel and the glider pilot says, you better try it a little; if something happens to me you’ll have to land this thing. So he’s trying to fly it and the thing is going like this (way up and way down). I remember he said I think you (the pilot) better take over again.”

Larry will remember until the end of his life the fighting in Holland.  The morning light after an exchange of fire at night during a German attack revealed the bodies of German soldiers in gray, sprawled a few meters from his foxhole.

The 327th GIR fought for 73 days, including 48 days on the front line until the division was relieved and sent to rest in Mourmelon, France. Here, Larry and many other 101^st soldiers were given permission for leave to visit Paris. But this quiet rest period would suddenly end on 16 December 1944 when the Germans launched an offensive against the Allies in the Ardennes.

“They told us there had been a breakthrough and we were to plug up the hole. And your orders are to stand to the last man if necessary.”

As a single unit, the 101st Airborne was sent by truck to Bastogne, an important road junction which was to be held at all costs. Those still on leave in Paris were rounded up by the MPS as fast as possible and sent to join their already departed units.

“On the night of the 17th, we embarked on semi-trailers, 50 men on a truck with your equipment- open-top semis and you were packed in there so tight you couldn’t move. We drove all night. Ordinarily, they wouldn’t drive with their lights on, but the German Air Force was down so far they weren’t worried about getting strafed at night. They drove all night to get us in Belgium where we landed.”

Along the way, Larry crossed the remnants of the 106th Infantry Division, his former unit. It was hit hard during the German offensive.

“I had a friend in this unit, Frank Schiro. (Frank also grew up in Madison Wisconsin) I learned later that he had been captured by the Germans. He spent the rest of the war in a German POW Camp. I stayed in touch with him for many years after the war. He was never the same after that. All he had to eat was the potato peelings and that ruined his stomach. He passed away a few years ago.”

In Bastogne, the situation was critical. The Germans eventually surrounded the city. And nothing settled, in addition to enemy fire, the weather was terrible. The weather had not been so cold in Belgium in the last 10 years.

“None of us had a thermometer, but it was cold ... very cold. Way below zero many nights. I remember at one place where we dug slit-trenches and found a bunch of posts that were cut. They were about 3 meters long, about the size of a good set-post. We stacked them up over our trenches, laid our half-shelters over them and slept there. We’d have to get out for a couple hours during the night for guard duty but in the morning the opening would be frosted over and we’d have to knock it out again. I suppose in two or three days it would have been completely frosted over it we hadn’t busted it out.”

The cold and frost were very hard for everyone, but especially for the wounded not yet evacuated. Many soldiers lost toes and even feet because of deep frostbite and gangrene.

“I didn’t suffer from frostbite, they told us to keep our feet moving. At one point we joined up with the 2nd Platoon. There were about 35 of them to start with but by then there were only four of them left,” Larry relates. “We got several miles back with them and the CP told us they’d take care of security, you guys find a hole to crawl in and sleep. Some of them from the 2nd Platoon crawled in a barn there.  There were plenty of holes around so I thought I’d stay in a hole. The next morning just as it got light there was this Tiger tank that came up just over the rise and strafed the barn. There was one guy killed coming out of the barn- that was one night it was better to be cold than warm.”

Larry remembers the intensity of the fighting, by guns or grenades.

“At night, if you heard something out in front of you, you’d lob a grenade. But these weapons were of little use if your position was attacked by the tanks. This Native American (Cherokee tribe) that was in my platoon (Perry Hayworth who later was decorated for this incident) took out a light tank with a bazooka. He (Perry) was about 20 feet away from me; he put it in the treads on one side and blew the treads off so all it could do is spin around in circles. I suppose the tank was about 80 feet out in front of me. They came out running. Not too many of them (the Germans) escaped.”

A few days before Christmas, the soldiers learned that they were surrounded.

“They told us we were surrounded but we didn’t believe it. After a while we read it in The Stars and Stripes. Then we started to think maybe it was true.”

Surrounded, the ammunition was rationed, especially for artillery support. So, the artillery opened fire only in extreme emergencies. The men at the front were often the only ones to face the German attacks. When the weather permitted, the Air Force played a supporting role but Larry does not remember seeing this assistance. It was not until the weather cleared on 23 December 1944 for the first aircraft to appear in the sky including C-47s, which parachuted food and ammunition. Both, by this time, were greatly lacking. In their foxholes, men shivering with cold and hunger. But that was nothing compared to the risk of being injured or even shooting a man face to face.

“Most guys said if you were going to get it, you’re going to get it-no use worrying about it. Like someone said, if there’s a bullet out there with your name on it you’re going to get it. Just don’t stick your head up out of a hole when you don’t have to.”

Larry recalls the following incident:

“There were a few that wanted a Silver Star. The Squad leader of the 2nd Platoon...I heard him say it several times that the Silver Star is one of the most beautiful medals there is. I’m going to do my darndest to get one.” Larry explains. “Then one night half of our squad was supposed to go out on patrol and this guy wanted to go instead of me. Well, let him go if he wants to I said. I don’t know how many men went on patrol but they went down this path and the first three didn’t hit anything but the fourth man stepped on a shoe mine and it took his foot off. Wasn’t long and they were back carrying that guy with no foot. If he hadn’t wanted to go so dang bad I’d have been in that patrol.”

Larry received a medal which his family is most proud of: the Purple Heart. We was wounded on 13 January 1945. 12 days after that the siege of Bastogne is broken and the Germans were being pushed back from the Bulge.

“We were going through the 506th Infantry and attacking so we had a full load of ammo. On the path going up there they had a couple guys from the Division Quartermasters with case after case of ammo. You want any extra ammo, they asked. I had a belt full and two bandoliers but I put on two more bandoliers and we went through a company of the 506th.  In something like that (attacking) everyone would fire all the same time. Even the guys carrying machine guns would cradle it in their arms and keep firing continuously. We hit a German out post; they had dugouts there with shelter-halves over the door and dirt all over them. It wasn’t very smart to look in one. You’d go by one and you’d just throw a grenade in the hole and keep going. Then a bunch of surrendering Germans came out of there and we weren’t too far in front of the 506th so we just motioned them back to them and kept moving. It was a bunch that I think thought it was about time to get out of the war. We didn’t go too much farther and a mortar shell exploded in the trees above us and that’s when I got hit. Standing up one second and the next second my face was in the snow. I got hit in the chest-wall. Just a hole like that (indicating a hole with his fingers about an-inch-and-a-half in diameter) and over about that far I guess and it came out. It didn’t really hurt, just stung like heck. I didn’t know if I had a big hole or a little hole or what. I knew there was something there. Medic came running up and said he can’t rip that jacket, take it off if you can. He ripped my shirt away and said, awe it isn’t too bad. I said I suppose I could stick around. He said, you damn fool get the hell out of here, there’s an aide station right back there a ways.”

For Larry Michaelis, the Battle of the Bulge was over. He underwent surgery and spent three weeks recovering in the hospital before rejoining the 1st Battalion 327th GIR six weeks later in France because the war was not yet over. The 101st was tracking the Nazi beast into their Country. In the spring of 1945 in southern Germany, Larry witnessed the first signs of the German defeat. Thousands of soldiers, marching on foot, unarmed, waving white flags pointing towards the American lines to avoid being taken prisoner by the Russians. During the fighting, Larry had no awareness of the crimes of the Nazi regime. But one day, the trucks transporting us passed near a concentration camp.

“They were trucking us in to southern Germany...we didn’t go in to a concentration camp…but we went right by one in our truck convoy as the prisoners were being released. They were nothing but skeletons with skin stretched across them. How in the heck they could walk I couldn’t figure out. They were wearing these striped prisoner clothes. They were nothing but skeletons.”

5 May 1945, the war was over in Europe. On 8 May, the Germans signed the surrender. Yet for Larry and his friends, it was not finished. In the Pacific, the Japanese fought on. The 101st Airborne Division was designated to be deployed there and invade Japan.

“Rumor had it that we would get 30 days furlough in the states and then get shipped over to Japan for the invasion. They told us that if we go into Japan we’ll have to jump.”

However, the men of the 101^st were at Hitler’s Eagles Nest when they learned, with relief that the Japanese surrendered after the two atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Larry was demobilized on 15 December 1945 with the rank of Staff Sergeant.

L-R:Steve Lisewicz-Thomas Smith-Roy Reed-Lawrence Michaelis

Schaffhausen, Switzerland 30 August 1945

“I have not resumed my studies after the war. I became a farmer with my elder brother Randolph in Black Earth, Wisconsin. Randolph passed away in June 1995. Today, I am still the owner of the farm, but I rent my land to another farmer.”

During the Vietnam War in the 70s, Larry worked in a munitions factory in Baraboo, WI. He also worked for a construction company building prefab house: Windsor House in Madison, WI. October 28, 1950, he married Jane Meekma. They have five daughters: Joan (October 5, 1952 - April 30, 1995), Lois (1955), Karen (1959), Donna (1961) and Irene (1966). The family also has 7 grandchildren : 2 girls and 5 boys and 6 great-grandchildren : 5 boys and 1 girl .

Today, Larry Michaelis lives peacefully on the family farm just outside of Black Earth, Wisconsin. He spends his time reading and woodworking. He has previously made furniture such as a bookcase, cedar chest, and end table. He and his wife have also refinished many pieces of furniture. He also enjoys attending WW2 events with his daughter, Donna. They flew to Washington DC with the Badger Honor Flight in September 2012 and attended the 2012 and 2013 Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge reunions. From the war he still has his Ike Jacket with medals, a few letters that his mother saved, and a few assorted photos. Larry was in Washington DC on May 29, 2004 for the dedication of the National WW2 Memorial. The memorial was dedicated on Larry’s 80^th birthday.

Larry returned to Europe for the first time in September 2004 for the 60th Anniversary of Operation Market Garden. He also returned in 2005 and 2010. He and Donna also plan to visit Bastogne in April 2014 and the family is planning a 90^th birthday celebration in July 2014.

Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge reunion. Larry is in middle behind man in dark blue shirt with dog.

Septembre 2013 - Kansas City, Kansas, USA

2 June 2012 - Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA