Frank J. Waldeck was born in May 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended high school there before studying accounting and business at the University of Notre Dame [Annotator's Note: in Notre Dame, Indiana]. He was a sophomore when the war broke out in 1941. There was a lot of confusion when they heard about it [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] on the radio. Notre Dame was an all-male university at the time, some of the men had already been drafted into the Army. Men in college were deferred [Annotator's Note: postponement of military service] from the draft, but they did not think that would last long. Within a few months, the Army made an offer to join the Enlisted Reserve Corps, or ERC, the expectation being that you would finish your degree, and then go into active duty in the Army. Waldeck signed up for this, removing him from the draft. By March 1943, that all ended and even the men who had not finished their degrees were called up as the Army desperately needed manpower. Waldeck was called to active duty in Cleveland and shipped to Camp Wheeler, Georgia [Annotator's Note: near Macon, Georgia] for infantry basic training which lasted three months. Waldeck was in good shape, having been a runner in high school and college. At the end of the training, everyone was dispersed to divisions in need of men. Waldeck did not think the infantry was for him, so he applied to pilot training and was accepted. He reported to Miami Beach, Florida and went through both psychological and physical testing. He began flight training, but the military decided infantrymen were needed more than pilots, and Waldeck was sent to Camp Howze[Annotator's Note: Camp Howze in Gainesville, Texas; now Gainesville municipal airport] and assigned to Company C, 411th Infantry Regiment, 103rd Infantry Division. There were many others in a similar situation to his, as well as men who had gone through ASTP [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program; generally referred to just by the initials ASTP; a program designed to educate massive numbers of soldiers in technical fields such as engineering and foreign languages and to commission those individuals at a fairly rapid pace in order to fill the need for skilled junior officers]. It was clear that they were preparing for combat. The Normandy invasion took place in June [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. Waldeck headed to Camp Shanks, New York [Annotator's Note: near Orangetown, New York] around October [Annotator's Note: October 1944] to prepare for deployment.

Frank J. Waldeck [Annotator's Note: in Company C, 1st Battalion, 411th Infantry Regiment, 103rd Infantry Division] shipped out in a convoy on a two-week voyage overseas. They were provided overhead air cover. They did not know where they were going, but crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, landing at Marseille [Annotator's Note: Marseille, France]. Southern France had already been invaded by the 6th Army [Annotator's Note: 6th United States Army Group]. Waldeck's unit was part of the 7th Army [Annotator's Note: Seventh United States Army]. They set up camp about 10 miles north of Marseille, and the 103rd Division was given its first combat assignment in Saint-Dié [Annotator's Note: Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France]. It was his first time seeing dead people, both Americans and Germans. They were there replacing the 3rd Division [Annotator's Note: 3rd Infantry Division] which had served in Italy and had already been through some heavy action in Saint-Dié. The 103rd considers Saint-Dié its first victory, although the 3rd Division had done a lot of the work before the 103rd arrived. From then on it, was constant combat and living on C rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food]. They started to get a lot of rain in the Vosges Mountains [Annotator's Note: a mountain range in eastern France near the German border]. Incoming artillery shells brought disaster; many men were lost. They finally crossed the German border when the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] began. The 103rd was diverted and assigned to the 5th Army for two to three weeks. They remained on the fringe during very aggressive German action. They returned to the Vosges Mountain group holding a defensive position. In March 1945, they crossed the Rhine [Annotator's Note: Rhine River] and the war began winding down. The Germans were retreating. Waldeck's unit went south through Austria into the Brenner Pass [Annotator's Note: a mountain pass through the Alps mountains that form the border between Italy and Austria], taking prisoners from the German Army in Italy. He began as a Private. He was later promoted to Sergeant only because he was older than another man at age 21. He finished the war as a platoon sergeant. Many of the men were reassigned to divisions headed for Japan. Waldeck was assigned to the 5th Infantry Division. He returned to the states, was given a 30-day leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], and reported to Fort Campbell [Annotator's Note: in Oak Grove, Kentucky and Clarksville, Tennessee] to prepare for the invasion of Japan. Waldeck got married two days after returning to the States, two days after that was Hiroshima [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945], and effectively, the end of the war. Waldeck had been recommended for a commission as Second Lieutenant, which he accepted. He was later recalled to Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953], where he spent four months on active duty in the Transportation Corps. Waldeck has maintained close friendships with his fellow soldiers, even having company reunions.

Frank J. Waldeck [Annotator's Note: with Company C, 1st Battalion, 411th Infantry Regiment, 103rd Infantry Division] saw combat in the Vosges Mountains [Annotator's Note: a mountain range in eastern France near the German border]. It was terrible. They were subjected to artillery fire coming from overhead. The mountains were easily defendable. During the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], Waldeck's unit was sent to the Siegfried Line area [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s] where it was very cold and had a lot of snow. He was having problems with his foot, which had frozen and had to have a medic look at it. He spent three weeks in a hospital in Nancy [Annotator's Note: Nancy, France], treated with the then-new medicine penicillin Annotator's Note: an antibiotic]. General McAuliffe [Annotator's Note: US Army General Anthony Clement "Nuts" McAuliffe] took command of the 103rd Division when its commander was having health problems. A friend of Waldeck's, Jerry Turk [phonetic spelling], a rifleman in the 409th [Annotator's Note: 409th Infantry Regiment, 103rd Infantry Division] was made the PR [Annotator's Note: public relations] director of division headquarters. Some of the 103rd was involved in liberating a concentration camp in Landsberg [Annotator's Note: subcamp of Dachau Concentration Camp in Landsberg am Lech, Germany], although the Germans had already left and only the victims remained. There were a lot of dead bodies. The living looked like zombies wearing striped suits. It was horrible and the smell was awful. But the war was still going on, so they had to advance quickly after. By this point, he had been in combat since October [Annotator's Note: October 1944]. They were not surprised at what they found at the concentration camp, as they had been given information that this had been going on. He was disgusted that those men could do this to other men. It was awful.

Frank J. Waldeck and his unit [Annotator's Note Company C, 1st Battalion, 411th Infantry Regiment, 103rd Infantry Division] traveled by anything that could move once they got into Innsbruck [Annotator's Note: Innsbruck, Austria]. They were there taking prisoners. Thousands of German troops could not wait to get back into German-speaking territory, and the only way was through the Alps. The 103rd Division took around 100,000 prisoners within just a few days. They made sure the prisoners had no weapons and took down their identification information. Waldeck had a confrontation with a German officer, the equivalent of a Colonel, who refused to surrender to him because he was of inferior rank. Waldeck took the officer's dress bayonets which are now on display at the American Legion Post in Lake Forest, Illinois. VE-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945] was a relief, but they knew that they still had more ahead of them, receiving reports from the Pacific Theater. FDR's [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] death [Annotator's Note: 12 April 1945] was a shock, no one thought it was imminent. Looking back at the war, America always took care of its friends. The America Waldeck knows is not looking for a fight but is there to help its friends. Being in the field, Waldeck was in wet clothes and eating K rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals], sometimes going without rations at all, stealing eggs from nearby farms, and drinking wine. The life of an infantry soldier was terrible. You saw friends being wounded and killed and realized how vulnerable you were too. There as a lot of fear. When they crossed the border into Germany there were quite a few casualties, including some of his close friends. His platoon lost five men during the war. He was close to some of the men when they were killed, something he cannot ever get out of his mind. During one battle just over the German border, one of the men in his platoon was struck in the head the second he poked his head up, falling back into Waldeck's arms. When he called for a medic to take him back, he said it was too late, he had died. The man was only 18 years old.

After the war, Frank J. Waldeck was married, and his wife became pregnant. Waldeck was in a hurry to get his college degree. He could not go back to Notre Dame [Annotator's Note: the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana], and ended up going to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland [Annotator's Note: Cleveland, Ohio]. He had been promised a job at a CPA [Annotator's Note: Certified Public Accountant] firm if he could get a degree. He studied and worked nights in a factory. His tuition was paid for by the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. He later went on to get his master's degree. The leadership skills he learned in the military were useful throughout his life and career. He became mayor of Lake Forest, Illinois and served three one-year terms in the late 1970s. He had been living there for 10 years before he learned that his commanding officer, General Haffner [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Charles C. Haffner, Junior] had also lived there, when he saw his death notice. Waldeck became friends with his daughter, who helped gather finances to create a monument to the 103rd Division in Texas [Annotator's Note: the 103rd Infantry Division World War II Memorial at Camp Howze in Gainesville, Texas]. Haffner was strict on discipline, which Waldeck sees as part of leadership. Waldeck did what he was asked to do and was glad to come home and go back to normal life. Waldeck has run 15 marathons in his life, having completed his last just two years before the interview. He had eight children and a lot of grandchildren. He did not discuss the war with them, although his wife knew everything from their wartime correspondence. She wrote to him every day, but he only got mail deliveries once a month. He would mostly discuss his wartime experience with fellow soldiers. At one of their reunions, a woman asked Waldeck about her father who was killed overseas during the war. It was difficult. He would do it again if he had to. Whenever he visits the monument in Texas, he makes sure the names of the five men in his platoon who died are on it.