Life, Enlistment and Boot Camp

Unit Assignment, Overseas Deployment and Combat Duties

Staging in England

Storming Normandy, A Bronze Star, and Fighting On

Entering Germany and Hurtgen Forrest

Recollections of Equipment, Normandy and Cherbourg

Capture of St. Lo and the Liberation of Paris

Being a Radioman and Fighting in the Woods

The Hurtgen Forest and the Distinguished Service Cross

Breaching the Siegfried Line

End of the War in Germany

Concentration Camps

Occupation and Return to the United States

Military Decorations

Refletions

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James Flannigan was born in Detroit, Michigan, an only child of parents and grandparents who were big time cattle dealers. During his childhood, the country experienced the Great Depression and his father had to seek employment with the WPA [Annotator's Note: Works Progress Administration, a federal program that employed out of work Americans]. Flannigan remembers that he was playing football when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. When he got home, his father told him what happened, but it didn't mean anything to Flannigan at the time. Soon, everybody was singing up and after attempts at joining the Marines and the Coast Guard failed, Flannigan enlisted in the Army. They put him on a train and shipped him off to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for basic training. Flannigan spent his free time on base reading cowboy books and found it interesting that Cochise was imprisoned at the old town jail there. Once a week he would go out for a 75 cent steak at the bus depot. He was athletic and competitive, and felt he had to beat everybody at everything, and he said he did. Out of the group of about 60 people from all "boxes," some didn't make it. But of those that did, Flannigan made some good friends, and went all through the war, good times and bad, with one guy in particular. They trained on the operation of telephones and radios for the signal section.

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James Flannigan was sent to Camp Carrabelle, Florida [Annotator's Note: after completing basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma] where he lived in a Quonset hut with sand floors, and was assigned to the 4th Infantry Division [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division]. When he was granted a two-week furlough he went home, happy to see his girlfriend who was 14 years old at the time; he was 18. Flannigan wondered at how busy the railroad stations were, filled with soldiers and sailors and families and emotions. While he was away, the Division moved, and he received a telegram ordering him to report to Fort Jackson [Annotator's Note: in Eastover, South Carolina]. It was in the summer of 1942, and regardless of the fact that he knew nothing about guns, Flannigan was assigned to the gun section, where he stayed when the group moved to England. Then, a couple of weeks before D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], he got a demonstration on how a radio worked, and he functioned as a radio operator from then on. Flannigan said he had good FOs [Annotator's Note: Forward Observer, responsible for directing artillery fire], most of whom moved up the ranks. He noted that as people got "knocked off," others were "bumped up." At one point, he was caught in a mortar barrage and his FO got hit in the throat. Despite the fact that the man was covered in blood and didn't look like he would make it, Flannigan and a buddy took him to the aide station. Later they saw him, up and about, with stitches all across his neck. He said they got to know the men in the infantry very well.

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Remembering his stay in England, James Flannigan said he had a sergeant who had been in World War 1, an old man they called "Pop." Once, Flannigan got drunk on half and half, and on the way back from the pub his party crossed paths on the road with a two star general. Flannigan was afraid he'd land in jail, but Pop addressed the general by name, promised to get the GIs [Annotator's Note: slang term for American soldiers] back to their barracks, and nothing came of the incident. Flannigan remembers buying hard candy from the PX [Annotator's Note: post exchange] and distributing it to the children that had been evacuated from London to an old castle in Exminster. It was nice, he said, and he got used to the cobblestone streets, but not the hot beer. He wanted to fish in a river near where they were stationed, but was told it was off limits because it belonged to the duke. In getting ready for D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], they went every other week to a place called Slapton Sands where they practiced landing. It was a lot different then, when nobody was shooting at them. When the time came, they were served a steak breakfast and Flannigan knew something was going to happen. His Division [Annotator's Note: Flannigan served as a radio operator in Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division] was loaded up in a "damn little bathtub" and shipped off.

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When he landed in Normandy with Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division], James Flannigan saw dead and wounded on the beach. Their orders were to go up the berm to the beach road and take a right; but things got confused because their landing was off course. The group had to go left instead. The area was flooded so they had to adjust and take the next road inland, which was about a half mile away. They didn't learn until about four days later that Battery B’s LCT [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Tank] had hit a mine, killing 34 men and critically wounding its captain. Flannigan said, "It was a bitch!" Flannigan remembers getting to Montebourg, France on D-Day plus 2 [Annotator's Note: 8 June 1944, two days after the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], and taking a position in a hole he had knocked in the roof of a house. Soon a German 88mm gun [Annotator's Note: 88mm multi-purpose artillery] "chewed that son of a bitch [Annotator's Note: the house] to ribbons." Flannigan said, "I got a Bronze Star, didn't do nothing, but got a Bronze Star." As Flannigan recalls, fighting in the hedgerows was nasty because they couldn't see anything, and they were so close together, they couldn't use artillery. It took a long time and they lost a lot of people. The Allies captured Cherbourg on 25 June [Annotator's Note: 25 June 1944], and on 25 July they broke out. Flannigan went over a hedgerow, and said he was deafened when they bombed short. Then they "went like hell" toward Paris, sometimes riding on tanks. Liberating Paris was amazing, he said, and the American outfits were scattered along the Seine and protecting the bridges. One afternoon a gun went off, and people were all scrambling to find cover. It was one shot, and created quite a problem, but no one ever discovered where or who fired the round. It took over a week, but the unit reached Belgium and its underground "Hedgehogs." Along the way they accidentally picked up a guy who had been in a prison camp. He was a concert pianist living in Bastogne when the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel, German paramilitary orgrnization] took his parents and his wife, a concert violinist, brought their stuff out into the street and burned it, then burned his house down. They gave him a Tommy Gun [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun], and took him along with the unit into Germany.

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On arriving in Germany on 15 September 1944, James Flannigan remembers entering a farmhouse and with some not so gentle persuasion, the Belgian volunteer they had adopted procured a barrel of eggs. The unit [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division] ultimately had to get rid of him because he got out of control. Flannigan recalled a lot of well placed pillboxes on the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications built by Germany in the 1930s] where once again the artillery was ineffective. Flannigan became part of the infantry, getting in between and behind the pillboxes in order to take them. It was November when they got to the Hurtgen Forrest to relieve the 28th Infantry Division. Flannigan said it was a "mess," with rain and wet snow. Every foxhole a soldier dug was soon filled with a couple of inches of ice water. Flannigan laments that people don't realize what the infantryman goes through suffering misery and hunger, and the stress of combat. The Hurtgen is a dense pine forest, dark 24 hours a day. Companies, friends, were disappearing. Flannigan dug an ingenious slot into the side of his foxhole to get himself out of the water, and when replacements came, had to share the space with a new man on the scene. Replacements came in trickles, and were sometimes dead before the sergeant learned their names. Flannigan called it the "dirtiest, rottenest hole in the world," and guesses that in hindsight it was considered a mistake. They stayed three weeks, and of the 12,000 who went in, only 5,000 came out.

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James Flannigan was assigned a heavy 610 [Annotator's Note: SCR-610] artillery radio. His buddy carried the battery case. The pieces had to be carried by their handles, rendering one arm unusable. Flannigan and his friend adapted the metal frame of a German parachute to more easily transport the equipment. Flannigan described a bombing technique nicknamed the "battalion hotfoot," used mostly in towns, that employed a fuse delay round, a white phosphorous round, and a timed bomb. He said it "worked like a charm" to run occupants out of the basement, burn the house, and shatter the fleeing enemy in the street. That reminded him of an incident around Prum, Germany when they were under fire from a big gun, firing intermittently and at random, that "scared the dog shit" out of him. The Air Force searched, but couldn't find it. While Flannigan and his lieutenant were on a hill, the officer observed a moving tree and called in the firepower. The gun was on a narrow track, moving in and out of camouflage. The Air Force finished the job. Flannigan said most terrifying was the antipersonnel fire; more than once after enduring a barrage he stood up and the front of pants would be wet. Going back to his impression of Normandy [Annotator's Note: Normandy, France], Flannigan said it was "green" dairy country, full of apple orchards. Unfortunately, there were dead cows everywhere. Once in a while the soldiers would come across a barrel of the local apple "delicacy," Calvados, which made some of the best coffee he ever had. At Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France], he was fighting up on the chalk cliffs that overlooked the town and the harbor where three forts protected the town from the sea. He said they spent three or four days shooting at the forts, with the artillery bouncing off their ramparts, and altogether it was not difficult fighting as the enemy had nowhere to run. Rumor had it that a soldier went into a cave there and discovered a fortune in cash, gold and jewelry that the Germans intended to take offshore. The Americans hauled it away in trucks.

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For days, James Flannigan recalls, the word was that they had to get to Saint-Lo [Annotator's Note: Saint-Lo, France]. At last they were on flat ground and he thought they were going to turn the tanks loose. Instead, it became apparent that the plan was to secure the Saint-Lo to Carentan highway, and Flannigan's unit [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division] stopped very near the city. When it was learned that aircraft were coming in, they pulled back another couple of hundred yards, but even so his company had collateral damage. Flannigan said he looked up and back and could see the bombs falling, and felt hopeless. Although about 90 percent of the damage was to the Germans, the division next to Flannigan's suffered heavy casualties from friendly fire. Flannigan said that in spite of the drops administered in his ears at the aide station, he was deaf for a week. His eyes were also treated for injury from road grime; but Flannigan loved the excitement of riding on the tanks. It provided some respite from the fighting on the ground. The division was using the M7 tank [Annotator's Note: 105 mm Howitzer Motor Carriage M7; known as the Priest], but it was on the Shermans [Annotator's Note: M4 medium tank; known as the Sherman] that Flannigan was taking these crazy, wild rides when he got the chance. As they headed toward Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France]. Flannigan remarked that his division had to cool their heels for three days while waiting for the Free French to come up, thereby appeasing de Gaulle [Annotator's Note: French Army Brigadier General Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle; later President of France]. The Germans had already moved out, leaving only a few stragglers, and the Free French ran around in automobiles flying the French flag. Flannigan said the Americans joined in the fantastic celebration. The streets were jammed with people, nobody went to work, and the women were hugging and kissing the GIs [Annotator’s Note: slang term for an American soldier]. It brought Flannigan to tears to describe how nice it was to be thus appreciated, and said all 15 of the guys on the truck he was riding were crying like babies. Flannigan said, "It made the fighting worth while," for a while.

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As a radioman with the forward observer, James Flannigan usually traveled on a jeep to the battalion CP [Annotator's Note: command post], where they were assigned to an attacking company, and then they would walk. Although he moved from company to company Flannigan always belonged to the 8th Regiment 1st Battalion [Annotator's Note: Flannigan was a member of a forward observer team in Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division attached to 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division]. Sometimes he and his FO [Annotator's Note: forward observer] had to get in front the infantry in order to make their observations. Their position could be in a clutch of small houses, but much of the time it was in the woods. From his childhood, Flannigan was familiar with being in the woods, and had no fear going through the dark areas of trees and brush. Sometimes the GIs [Annotator’s Note: slang term for an American soldier] would get turned around and show up facing him. Flannigan said he made some good friends among the ranks and officers. He said the infantry respected the role he and his FO performed.

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Asked to recall his worst memories of the Hurtgen Forest, James Flannigan replied, "The day I went in, 'til the day I came out." It was the worst place he had ever been. The Germans had strategic advantage and had everything covered. American losses were devastating. Close calls came every day from mortars and tree bursts. Flannigan recalls the journalist Ernest Hemmingway working among their ranks, and said he was "loony." Hemmingway wanted very badly to go out with a Tiger Patrol, during which soldiers "went through the line and tore up anything they could" then made their way back, but he was refused permission. Flannigan described the situation that earned him the Distinguished Service Cross. His company [Annotator's Note: Flannigan served as a radio operator on an artillery forward observer team in Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division and in combat he was always assigned to one of the rifle companies of 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division] was down to 40 or 50 men, and got cut off. He said radios typically didn't work well in the Hurtgen Forest, and on this occasion his radio was "Kaput." The enemy was between Flannigan's company and two more American companies in the rear, so they had to be careful where they shot. There were not too many Germans, but they had machine guns. Flannigan, unafraid of the woods, set out, skirting two-man enemy listening posts and machine gun nests. He inadvertently came into the immediate vicinity of a machine gun nest. Obviously undetected, and advancing on his belly, he pulled out his only hand grenade. Knowing it was useless to try and lob anything in a pine forest, Flannigan pulled the pin and tossed it underhand so that it rolled within ten or 15 feet of the machine gun. There was an explosion and the weapon went quiet. The two Germans in the nearby listening post started shooting, and Flannigan shot back, hitting one. The other soldier "quit" and Flannigan took him prisoner. The soldier alerted Flannigan that they were approaching a minefield and Flannigan made him walk in front. When they got clear, an American opened fire on them, but Flannigan started cursing, and the firing stopped. Flannigan said he couldn't blame the guy; after all, he was walking behind a man in German uniform. Flannigan succeeded in reporting the coordinates of his trapped company then went back to help rescue them. Flannigan had no idea what happened to the prisoner he took nor does he know who wrote the commendation [Annotator's Note: for his Distinguished Service Cross].

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James Flannigan said the replacement lieutenants came in all sorts and he particularly remembered one who earned the nickname "Rabbit." On his arrival at headquarters, he called the commanding officers to task for playing poker with enlisted men and got a dressing down from the colonel. On his first trip to the field the company [Annotator's Note: Flannigan served as a radio operator on an artillery forward observer tean in Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division and while in combat was always assigned to one of the rifle companies of 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division] came under a mortar barrage, and he seized Flannigan's radio transmitter and sent in the message, "I deem this position untenable; we are coming back." Flannigan told him he could go back if he wanted, but the company was staying to fight. The lieutenant left and was never seen or heard from again. Recalling the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s], Flannigan said it was hilly country, covered in woods with pillboxes everywhere, all positioned to cover each other. Some pillboxes contained eight to nine of the enemy, some held 20 to 25. A company had to take out one pillbox to get to the next, and occasionally the Americans could overcome three in a day using flamethrowers. Sometimes the Americans would coordinate for timed fire, and used HE [Annotator's Note: High Explosive rounds] or smoke to force the belligerents out. When the Germans tried to get away, the timed fire, 25 or 30 feet off, would drop them. Flannigan said the tactic worked well on personnel, and he would never have wanted to be under an HE barrage. Reflecting, Flannigan said "You don't know them, and they don't know you; you're trying to kill them," and instinctively thinking of how to take out more of them. "War is not nice at all," Flannigan lamented.

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After the Hurtgen Forest, the 4th Infantry Division was tasked with protecting Luxembourg and James Flannigan was sent to an outpost on the Ohre River. The GIs [Annotator’s Note: slang term for an American soldier] in front had to get into what was called the Hat Factory, and a battle raged there for three or four days. Flannigan's unit [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division] was not called in, and while he was in the area he shot a deer, gutted it and took it by jeep to the battery. The troops had good cooks and they prepared venison for dinner that night. It broke the monotony. While the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] was going on, Flannigan and two buddies got leave to go to Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France], and he enjoys memories about that trip that he is not willing to share. The three men shared a jeep they named "Alles Kaputt," and they would drive it through German towns, pointing to the inscription painted on its side that, when translated, meant "everything's broken."

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After the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], James Flannigan moved to the environs of Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau, Germany]. He pointed out that Dachau consisted of many camps, and his unit [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division] got to a Polish camp out in the country that had barracks and high wire walls all around it. It was not an extermination camp, but there were a lot of sick, dying and dead inmates. The food the GIs [Annotator’s Note: slang term for an American soldier] offered the prisoners, fruit and chocolate bars and K and C rations, made them sick and their generosity had to be curtailed. The remaining German presence was scarce; Flannigan believed some of the prisoners killed the Germans, and marveled at how bad it all was. Further in their march, they released a camp full of Russians and Poles in Bavaria. While there, Flannigan helped facilitate the marriage of two prisoners of war.

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From Dachau [Annotator's Note: the Dachau concentration camp complex in Dachau, Germany], James Flannigan went to Gunzenhausen, Germany. It was a nice little town and the company [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 29th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division] went through checking hospitals. At the request of the nursing nuns at a Catholic hospital, they looked in on a patient they called a "troublemaker." There, they found a German general who had served his country since World War I and, as there was nothing wrong with him and he was just hiding in the hospital, they removed him. Flannigan said they sat him on the front of the jeep like an ordinary prisoner, and he knew the authorities were glad to get him, anybody with any rank. Strange things were happening. Flannigan remembered little of V-E Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945], and doesn't think there was a celebration where he was. It didn't mean much to him, except that he would be going home. He thanked goodness it was finally over. Flannigan remained in Gunzenhausen until he was sent to Le Harve [Annotator's Note: Le Havre, France] to return to the United States.

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By the time James Flannigan got home in June 1945, his gear had already been shipped to Fort Lewis, Washington. He was mad. He felt he had done his duty. Asked to tell the story of his Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy], Flannigan replied, "I got hit in the ass." It happened in Normandy [Annotator's Note: Normandy, France]; he had hit the ground alongside a hedgerow, and was injured when Germans mortar hit. It stung. Having been hit in the "fanny" became his standard joke. Flannigan said he also took shrapnel in the back of his legs, and was still picking it out as late as the 1960s, but Flannigan considers himself lucky. He went on to describe the firefight that merited him the Silver Star [Annotator's Note: the third-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy]. Flannigan drug a couple of injured soldiers out of harm's way, and got them to a hedgerow where a medic could administer aide. Flannigan said medics don't get enough credit for the dedicated work they performed. He also complimented the labors of the chaplains in the war. Flannigan said Normandy took a number of his companions, and the Hurtgen Forest finished even more. He said the interview brought back a lot of good memories, and a lot of bad ones, too.

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James Flannigan said the war made him older and settled him down. It made him appreciate his parents and his grandmother. When he got back, his girlfriend was still waiting for him and he married her when she was still 16. They stayed together until she died 60 years later, so he said it worked. The couple had three good children who check on him. Flannigan feels it important that young people, when they are old enough to understand, learn the lessons of the war. He said he wished The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] was closer to where he lives so that he could get there again, because he found it very impressive. He is sometimes bothered by his memories of the war, but he rarely talks about it. He was discharged at the rank of sergeant, with an impressive array of medals. After the war Flannigan became an ironworker, a trade he worked at for almost 50 years. He is grateful for the many good friends he has had over the years.

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