Ernest Chauvin was born in Houma, Louisiana in October 1925. He lived there until he was drafted in 1943 or 1944. His father had a job during the Great Depression. Things were tight. He can remember times having two pairs of pants and one pair of shoes. He went to school in a long, wooden building with a potbelly stove. The bathroom facility was outside the school. They never were hungry but sometimes a slice of bread and a glass of milk was his meal. Chauvin was a high school senior and had a part-time job after school. He went back to that job after the war. He heard about the Japanese attack [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] either on the radio or from somebody else. He was not 18 but anticipated that he would be involved. He was drafted.

Ernest Chauvin was drafted and went to basic training at Camp Croft, South Carolina. It was a pretty camp and was referred to as the Country Club of the Army. He was trained in heavy weapons, the water-cooled .30 caliber machine gun [Annotator’s Note: Browning M1917 .30 caliber water cooled heavy machine gun] and the 81mm mortar [Annotator's Note: M1 81mm mortar]. The mortar was quite effective. He would fear it more than artillery. Artillery would dig holes and a mortar round would cut all the grass off. It was hard to hide from a mortar. His last week of training was around D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. He was sent to the 69th Infantry Division as a replacement. It was being rebuilt. It had been used as a training unit. He trained in Mississippi [Annotator's Note: Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg, Mississippi]. He went to New York then shipped out of Camp Kilmer [Annotator's Note: in Piscataway, New Jersey] on the MS John Ericsson. It was a converted luxury liner. All of the decks were enclosed, and bunk beds were affixed four or five high. It was very crowded. They crossed in November [Annotator's Note: November 1944] and had Thanksgiving dinner on the ship. On Thanksgiving Day, some guys managed to steal a turkey by hiding it in a life jacket. They landed in Southampton, England and stayed there through December. The Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] took place and his division [Annotator's Note: the 69th Infantry Division] furnished 2,200 people for replacements. They went to replacement depots. He stayed with the unit. The rifle companies sent most of the replacements.

Ernest Chauvin and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company M, 3rd Battalion, 272nd Infantry Regiment, 69th Infantry Division] got on the line on 14 February 1945 [Annotator's Note: Eifel Forest, Belgium]. He started in Belgium, just before the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s]. They fought their way to the Elbe River. They were the first division to meet the Russians. They had a formal meeting and then the Russians began coming through into their lines. They took pictures with them. There was an agreement between them for what the Russians would get and what the Americans would get. Chauvin’s division backed up to their assigned positions. The general population of Germany were afraid of the Russians and began retreating to the rear of the American sector to avoid capture. Many of the German soldiers were surrendering en masse to avoid being prisoners of the Russians. The German Air Force was about wiped out. After the breakthrough, the Germans realized they had lost the war and were beginning to retreat back towards Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany]. He does not remember the German general population to be hostile but they were not too friendly. He feels they were glad it was over. They would move the Germans out and use their homes as billets. Chauvin and the men used whatever was in the house, including food. The Germans could come in for an hour a day to get food or clothing. Things were scarce for them as it was in the United States. He did not feel any aggressiveness; he is talking about the women, children, and old men. They did not see many young men. He stayed for the occupation and they were not hostile then towards him.

Ernest Chauvin and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company M, 3rd Battalion, 272nd Infantry Regiment, 69th Infantry Division] had to break through the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s], breaking through the tank traps and pillboxes. They went town by town and cleared them of troops. Occasionally, the roads would be blocked. This caused the tanks to stay behind and they had to walk on foot through the woods. He was in the mortar squad. His gun position was normally behind the first hill where they were protected from small arms fire. The machine gunners were on the forward slope. He never saw fighting face-to-face. His personal weapon was a .45 caliber pistol [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] and the only thing that beats was a knife. They were accurate with their mortars. They attacked an 88mm antiaircraft artillery battery [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery]. They went in just after daylight with tanks lined up with the riflemen behind them. The artillery opened up on the barracks, the mortars opened on the gun positions, and the tanks on anything they could find. It was a textbook attack and about 200 Germans surrendered. They had fired every round they had with the mortars. They dug a hole in a garden for their protection. The families in the houses behind them were watching the battle. That was an easy day. Leipzig, Germany was his most difficult day [Annotator's Note: 16 April 1945]. The division attacked with all three regiments. The 9th Infantry Division was on their left. Two regiments made a frontal attack. Chauvin's regiment formed a blocking position on the side and attacked to keep them [Annotator's Note: the Germans] from retreating. It was a two day affair. He does not remember the details other than one incident. In clearing the city, they went through every building. Normally, a heavy weapons company did not do that. Chauvin volunteered for a night patrol. A prisoner knew where a barracks with antiaircraft personnel was. They went in after dark. The only casualty was a lieutenant who lost a big toe. They woke up the Germans and they surrendered. They captured 281.

In Leipzig [Annotator's Note: Leipzig, Germany], Ernest Chauvin and another man were put on a listening post. He was kind of afraid being out there. He went behind a picket fence and stayed until daylight. Before Leipzig, they walked 25 kilometers to get to Kassel [Annotator's Note: Kassel, Germany]. The 69th Division [Annotator's Note: 69th Infantry Division] and the 9th Division [Annotator's Note: 9th Infantry Division] were to attack it, but the 9th got there first. They got there after it had been cleared already. He was in a little farming town when the war ended. He was doing outpost duty and he heard someone walking. It was an unarmed German soldier. Chauvin stopped him and the German told him he wanted to go home. Chauvin took him to the stockade. He was happy the war was over. He only remembers that the men on the tanks had ammunition to burn and celebrated with their guns. Once in a while, German aircraft would go over. He would worry about the antiaircraft artillery coming back down. Chauvin was the number three man in the mortar squad [Annotator's Note: M1 81mm mortar]. He carried the base plate that weighed 45 pounds. In a combat situation, his job was to unwrap the 81mm rounds and pass them to the gunner. One man aimed the mortar. The two-legged stand weighed 52 pounds and was carried by the gunner. The barrel weighed 45 pounds and was carried by the loader. Three other men carried the ammunition; six, nine-pound mortar rounds per man. One other man was the jeep driver. The mortar had about a two mile range, so they had to be pretty close.

The war was over in May 1945 and Ernest Chauvin left Germany in May 1946. He did occupation duty. His company [Annotator's Note: Company M, 3rd Battalion, 272nd Infantry Regiment, 69th Infantry Division] was in Zeitz [Annotator's Note: Zeitz, Germany]. They stood guard duty over camps for the German laborers, displaced personnel, DP or Displaced Persons Camps. He stood duty at a castle during the daytime. Most of the time he did guard duty at night around a school being used to keep them. When they began rotating personnel back to the United States, he had low points. When the war ended, he was sent to an Amphibious Tank Battalion in Holland to train for the invasion of Japan. When VJ-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945] happened, they stopped the training. From there, he went to Brussels, Belgium then to Camp Lucky Strike [Annotator's Note: one of the transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands; Lucky Strike was near Le Havre, France]. The personnel were then sent to Le Havre, France to operate Camp Phillip Morris [Annotator's Note: one of the transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands; Camp Phillip Morris was near Le Havre, France]. Chauvin was in France about seven months before his turn to go home. He returned to Camp Shelby, Mississippi and was discharged. When he was being discharged, since he had been promoted, he enlisted in the Army Reserves for three years. He did not trust the Russians and was afraid we [Annotator's Note: the United States] might have to go to war with them. He was a Company Supply Sergeant and that was a good job. In 1948, the Draft Act [Annotator's Note: Selective Service Act of 1948; also called Elston Act] went into effect. He had to reregister, so he reenlisted for three more years.

Ernest Chauvin got orders to go to Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] and spent a year there in three major campaigns. During World War 2, he was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge [Annotator's Note: Combat Infantryman Badge]. He got his second in Korea. He got the Bronze Star [Annotator's Note: the Bronze Star Medal is the fourth-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy] for Europe and again for Korea. He thinks not only should children be taught about World War 2, but that there should be universal training before one can go to college. He had seven sons and only one was in service. He was in Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975] in the Air Force. His son was also in Korea, but after the war. The history of the country needs to be stressed more than when he was in school. Civics needs to be more thoroughly explained so that people will understand how our government works and what their jobs are. People do not know who the Vice President or their own Senator is. It is a whole lot of "don't care". When we [Annotator's Note: the United States] got into World War 2, people his age knew they had to do it. They went and most went willingly. They were proud of their service. Coming back from Korea, they were not so proud. Coming back from Vietnam, they were shunned. That was wrong.