Don McCormick

Don McCormick, Army Ranger

Don McCormick was an Army Ranger in Italy and Germany

You can start at the beginning if you want.

I was drafted in 1943. I went down to Camp Walters in Texas for training. I stayed down there for I think eight weeks of basic training. Then they gave me a furlough so I came up home to stay at the house at 6208 N. Talman Avenue in Chicago. Then I went to Newport News, Virginia. I had two teeth pulled and then got onto a ship to cross the Atlantic in a convoy. It took us 28 days to get to Africa. We stayed at Tripoli for two weeks before going to Naples. We listened to someone trying to get us to join the Rangers. I remember them saying, “If you want to come back alive, join the Rangers because we’re ahead of everybody else.” I joined the Rangers in December, 1943 and trained for about two weeks. Then I got on a ship and we floated around for a couple of days until January 20, 1944. I was in the second wave of Anzio. All I can say is you don’t want to go in on the second or later wave because the first wave woke up all of the Germans. On the second wave, they’re waiting for you.

How old were you then?

I was nineteen. I was eighteen when I got drafted and nineteen when I went through basic training. At that time, President Roosevelt said that nobody under nineteen will go overseas. So they had to wait until September 30th until I turned nineteen to send me overseas. I guess that is why I went to Virginia to wait. I was captured on January 30, 1944. It was the first battle I was in as a First Scout. I had two years of ROTC and knew how to read a map and I knew directions.

Where were you captured?

I was captured at Cisterna, Italy. The Rangers were wiped out there. It was one of the most horrible battles. They had orders to take as many Rangers as they could. They took about 200 Rangers. There were 700 of us in the trap and 200 to 400 were either killed or captured. Very few of the Third and First Ranger Battalion came back from World War II. I can’t watch a World War II movie. I would like to know what I did. I was a First Scout, because of my ROTC training, and I had a Thompson machine gun that had 18 bullets in every clip. I had 5 clips on each side and I put the hand grenades between the clips. Most of them were fragment grenades and a few were phosphorus and a couple were compression. If you were close by, the power of the explosion would kill you.

We were captured by the Hermann Goering Armored Infantry Division. They were told to take as many as they could, but if we put up any resistance, to shoot us. I went through the whole battle and met up with these two guys. I had no more ammunition. I went through 400 rounds. They put us in a valley in a group of 25 and told us that if anyone was missing the next morning, they would shoot those who were left. So we made an agreement before we went to sleep that if anyone got the idea to escape they should wake up everyone else and we would all take off because we didn’t want to be shot “cold-blooded”. We didn’t know if the Germans would do it.

The daughter of one of the Rangers wrote a book about the Rangers. The 1st, 3rd, and 4th Battalions trained originally in Scotland with the British Commandos and we learned all of their tricks. The 1st Battalion were the first Americans to go into ground battle in WWII. They went into Dieppe, France and a few of them came back.

What Battalion were you in?

I was in the 3rd Battalion, Company D. We were the only outfit that could wear a patch on both sleeves. We could only wear the scroll and when you had the scroll, you went into combat with the Rangers. If you only had the diamond that meant you didn’t go into combat with the Rangers. I met a couple of generals and I asked “Where did you get those sir?” and he said they were given to me – I was in the area. That’s why they have so many medals.

In fact, these two battle stars I have here, one for Naples and one for another area. I got two of them because I was in the area. That was after Salerno. This Silver Star I got in the mail and I still don’t know if I am entitled to wear it. I don’t know what it is for. This next one is the POW medal – I know what that is for. And this one is the Good Conduct medal. I know I got that because I was tied up in a prison camp for over a year and they give a Good Conduct medal for every year. I was the State Commander for the State of Illinois POWs and I sent for them.

My mother used to take me to the church, Saint Paul’s, and told me to tell my stories to the women at the church.

Is that where you met your wife?

I met my wife in Chicago. I was originally going with one of her girlfriends. But she was the one I fell in love with. We have been married 62 years. We lived in this house in Park Ridge since 1968. I have lived on Harlem Avenue a few years and in Edison Park. I also lived in Kankakee with my father running a laundry service.

When were you released from the camp?

I was liberated because I walked across Germany. Every third day we walked a bit. We went from Poland to Germany. I was on a farm, thank God, because I could steal food. I was a conniver anyway. We had roasted chicken for Christmas one year. We got two chickens, I don’t remember who made the dressing but we ate the chicken right down to the bone.

So the farm was in Poland?

No, the farm was in Germany on the border line with Poland ninety miles southeast of Danzig where the camp was. We heard through rumors that the Germans would not leave us alone for the Russians to liberate us because we could get arms from the Russians to fight the Germans. It was a different war. If we were liberated by the Americans, we could not pick up arms against the Germans. That’s why they walked us across Germany to get to the American side to be captured. I forget the name of the town, but we were at some airport and we were digging ditches around the airport for the Germans. We were digging the ditches so they would cave in easy and they were going to shoot us but they were afraid to. They were ready to shoot us because we didn’t follow the rules. We did a lot of damage even though we were prisoners.

We looked at it this way – we kept one wounded German soldier off of the front line because he had to guard us. The Wehrmacht had to have officers around to give us orders because we wouldn’t listen to anybody else. We went on strike on July 4, 1944, and all of the other prisoners of war at that farm wouldn’t go back to work until we went back to work. Finally they backed up the machine guns at both sides of our house and we said “We give up – we go to work.” We had our own protest but it only lasted about 2 to 3 hours

The most I remember was walking across Germany as the Russians got close to the farms we were working on near Poland. We started walking on Feb. 3rd or 6th, 1945.

They took us from Italy to Lichtenstein by train and whenever there was an air raid, they stopped the train and the guards left us in the boxcars because if the planes strafed the boxcars they would kill all of us. We were lucky they didn’t strafe us. I think they looked at the boxcars and if the doors were shut they thought there were prisoners in the cars and they didn’t strafe them.

I was a prisoner of war for 440 days. How I remember that is that I got a bonus check for one dollar a day from the US government for being a prisoner of war and I got a check for $440.

I was liberated on April 13th, the day after Roosevelt died. The first news was that we got a new president and his name was Truman.

We did a lot of things the Germans didn’t want us to do. I had a .45 pistol put to my head three times by German officers. They would come to inspect where we were living. Every two weeks we would change the guy who stayed in the camp and he would be the cook for two weeks and he would be relieved from doing farm work. We cut down and planted trees. The way we did it was plant one standing up and two underground. We would put a layer of potatoes in a pouch, then a layer of dirt and a layer of straw and repeat this. They would take the pouches and sell them. They paid us the equivalent of seven cents a day for working on the farm. We would be paid once a month and we would pool our money and we would bribe the guards because that was the only way we could spend the money. If we didn’t bribe the guard, he wouldn’t take us to town so that we could buy ice cream or what. We even had a barrel of beer sent out to the house. We would spike it with prunes and raisins and on Christmas Eve we drank it. Boy it was good. It had to be at least six months old, fermenting.

I remember more things from the prison camp than I do from the Army. Actually I call myself a 60 day wonder for the Rangers. There were two other Rangers on the farm. When we tried to escape we never asked another Ranger to go along and we should have. When we got caught, we were sent back to the camp and on bread and water for seven days.

Did anybody successfully escape?

Not from our camp. We had a choice of going up to Danzig or to the Baltic Sea which was cold and if we couldn’t get a boat we would have to swim across the Baltic to Norway or Finland. A lot of felt we couldn’t swim that far and it was too cold so we went down south to try to get into Italy where it was warmer.

I was on the train four days to go from Italy to Lichtenstein Germany.

If the prisoners weren’t Rangers, what were they?

We had Polish girls in forced labor with us. We had French, British, and American prisoners of war. We were scattered all over so we never got to meet each other. They kept us separate. Once in a while, a guard would take us over to the Polish girls and we would dance with them. It was nice the guard would do that.

I got liberated on Friday the 13th, April 13th, the day after Roosevelt died. I always wanted to get on a radio or TV show and be asked that question. I knew the answer to what day he died, April 12th, 1945.

And then you took a train to where after you were liberated?

They put us on an airplane and flew us to Camp Lucky Strike in France and we stayed there. They said we could have a pass to go to Paris, but if our name came up to go home and we weren’t there, we would be put at the bottom of the list. A lot of us decided to stay there until our names were called.

I landed in the States on Mother’s Day, 1945. I had to wait one day, until Monday, to get off the boat. They took us to a camp. They gave me a free telephone call home and I wished my mother a Happy Mother’s Day a day late.

Did you have any brothers in the service?

There were 8 children in the family – four boys and four girls. One brother had a football injury and had surgery on his knees which gave him 4F status and he was drafted right after the war ended.

I had told my father that I would be at Fort Sheridan on Thursday. He knew a Captain at Fort Sheridan and was able to get a pass to get on base. When I arrived I was told to get into a car and my father was sitting there. What a wonderful welcome home that was. I will remember that the rest of my life. I slept in the Captain’s house that night and his wife made some ham and eggs for me for breakfast the next day. The chauffeur came to take me back to the barracks and when I walked in the guys wanted to know where I was all night. My dad stayed at the Fort until I got my furlough pass.

I met my wife who lived in Edison Park and worked at Tam 0’Shanter. She used to meet with friends for coffee at the restaurant where I worked. I started to talk to the girls and sitting with them. I dated one of the girls for two weeks and then started going with my wife.

You were lucky that you were one of the ones captured.

Yes, I was lucky. If I could see the American doctor that sent me to the farm, I would hug him to death because if he didn’t send me there I would have died any place else. Only a few were elected to go to the farms and, if you were one of the few, you were lucky. If you stayed in the camps, you got one food parcel a month. If you went to the farms, you got one food parcel per week. You got four times more food and that kept you alive. In the parcels there was Spam, corned beef, cheese, and two little packs of cigarettes. They were worth about $25 - $30 apiece. There were also grapes and lemons and stuff that didn’t spoil. Every three months you had to go to the town with a guard to pick up and they would only give us a one month supply at a time.

When it was time to start marching us, they said to take all the food you could carry because this is all you’re going to get. I stayed in the back because I was one of the youngest and healthiest and picked up any soldiers that fell down. Me and another guy would carry them up to the front of the line because, if we left them, the guard would shoot them.

We walked from February the 6th to April 12th. Every two days we walked and the third day we rested. The last day British Spitfires came over. There were about 200 of us in the group and we started waving handkerchiefs or anything we had. If we started running, they would have strafed us. They flew around again to make sure and dipped their wings. Then they flew off, I guess, to radio that 200 Americans were walking on the highway.

That night the German guards took off because we were actually in “No Man’s Land” between the German and the American and British lines. We were still wearing the uniforms that we wore when we were captured. We could get one food parcel every four months from home and one clothing parcel every month. My mother sent me tee shirts and underwear and socks, which I am glad she did because I could make a lot of money on those.

It was an adventure.

It was an adventure, right, and I was very, very lucky that I was one of the fellows that were captured right away. The only battle I was in was with the Rangers in Cisterna and they were wiped out. I have a picture of the Rangers that made it out of the original 1200.