Arnold Horn was born in July 1919 in Luling, Louisiana. He is one of seven boys. Five of them served in World War Two together and they all came back. His father was a barber. They had a garden. His mother raised sheep and chickens. The hogs would get so fat that they could hardly stand up. His mother ran the house. Horn worked at the grocery store when he was 15 years old making five dollars a week. His grandmother gave him 200 dollars to go to Tulane Business College [Annotator’s Note: Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana] from where he graduated. He was drafted into the Army in June 1941. They had to have at least one year of military service. After Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], six months were added. He was sent to Camp Shelby, Mississippi for induction into the Army. Next, he was sent to Camp Walter, Texas for 90 days of basic training.

Arnold Horn remembers that they had to help build barracks while they slept in tents. They trained with wooden guns. They did five-mile hikes. He was in the 45th Infantry Division. [Annotator’s Note: Horn describes his commanding officers.] He was sent to Europe. He asked the general when he could go home. The general gave orders for him to go home. He was discharged after he made it back to the States. In basic training, they were training for combat. After Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], they had six months added to the duration of their obligation, but it ended up being a lot longer. He figured the war would be long and he would do his share to protect his country.

Arnold Horn and his unit [Annotator’s Note: 45th Infantry Division] departed from of Chesapeake Bay [Annotator’s Note: Chesapeake Bay, Virginia] with thousands of ships. The Navy surrounded them and they proceeded in a zig-zagging formation [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver]. They landed in North Africa in May 1943. They got ready for the invasion of Sicily [Annotator’s Note: the Allied invasion of Sicily, code named Operation Husky, 9 July to 17 August 1943; Sicily, Italy] in July. They had wool uniforms. They made it through Sicily within 30 days. He was assigned to the motor pool. They delivered officers to the front-line companies. They had to do clerical work. He learned how to type in the Army. Horn was the only man who knew how to cut hair and that is how he ended up in Headquarters Company. The Germans were in the mountains on the Anzio beachhead [Annotator’s Note: The Battle of Anzio, 22 January to 5 June 1944; Anzio and Nettuno, Italy]. They had the long guns in the mountains on the railroad tracks. They would drop flares and there were ammunition dumps. Everyone stayed in a foxhole at night. They would take baths using their helmets. The Germans almost cut them in half during the night.

Arnold Horn remembers the Italians did not want to fight. He saw the Italians hang Mussolini [Annotator's Note: Italian fascist dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini; also known as il Duce] along with three other people. When they got off the troop transport, they had to climb down the rope nets to get into the landing crafts. The Higgins boats [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP; also known as the Higgins boat] saved World War Two. They sent out patrols every night. They watched the B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] bomb the Germans. When they broke out of Anzio [Annotator’s Note: Anzio, Italy] they had a replacement division join them. Then they moved into southern France. The French underground showed them where the Germans were. They hated the Germans. The French tried to feed the Americans. They had a guide book for the French language. The French did not have anything. The Germans took everything they could take. The Germans were very well trained, especially the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS]. The Germans would put people in gas chambers, load them up on trains, and then dump the bodies and bury the bodies with a bulldozer.

Arnold Horn and his unit [Annotator’s Note: 45th Infantry Division] moved about 20 miles a day once they were in France. Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr.] said “do not stop the tanks” and, “if anything moves, shoot it”. He would keep the gasoline coming. K rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals] were like a crackerjack box. They would use dynamite to fish. They would trade the French for fresh rabbits. They reached the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s] in the winter. It was cold. The Army wanted to make sure they had enough tanks and gasoline to make it through the line. The infantry troops were given concussion grenades. They threw them into pillboxes [Annotator’s Note: a type of blockhouse or concrete guard-post, normally equipped with slots through which defenders can fire weapons]. The war was almost over when they reached Germany. The Americans bombed them all day and the English bombed them all night. The Germans killed the Jews by putting them into the gas chambers at the concentration camps [Annotator's Note: the Holocaust, also called the Shoah; the genocide of European Jews during World War 2]. When Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States], Patton, Montgomery [Annotator's Note: British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery], and Churchill [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill; Prime Minister, United Kingdom, 1940 to 1945] saw that, they were outraged. The Germans did not even bury the bodies. They let them rot in the sun and the flies were terrible. When the Americans freed the concentration camp prisoners, they also fed them. Horn felt bitter toward the Germans after he saw this. He wished he would have been able to shoot Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] himself. To this day he will not buy any products made in Germany or Japan. After the surrender [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945], they could not shoot German civilians because they would be court-martialed. When they got to the first concentration camp, they fed the people. The people wanted the Americans to give them weapons to fight the Germans. The people were nothing but skin and bones. Horn returned home on 30 September 1945.

Arnold Horn remembers that they [Annotator’s Note: the 45th Infantry Division] went through Munich [Annotator’s Note: Munich, Germany]. They took over a house to serve as headquarters. They started eating better food, then they started being sent home. They did not eat any more K rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals] and C rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food]. They were in Munich for two or three weeks. Horn did not fraternize with the German girls. Horn’s paychecks went into an Army savings account. In September 1945, he put thousands of dollars into the bank. Munich was the end of the war. He left Munich in a Flying Fortress [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. They were flying men home as fast as they could because they wanted to get the war over in Japan. Horn had 120 points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home]. Horn wanted to get home and go to school. He wanted to get a job before everyone came home. His wife went to high school with him. They got married in New Orleans in November 1945. He was married for 63 years. He had a good life. His wife made all of their children’s clothes.