Henry Armstrong was born in November 1924 in Ludlow, Kentucky. His mother was a single parent of three children. They would get their clothing from the city but were not embarrassed because everybody else was wearing the same thing. His mother died six months short of being 100 years old. Armstrong went to various schools. He had six months left to graduate when he enlisted in the Army. He was visiting a friend and another friend yelled over asking if they had heard about Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He had no idea what or where Pearl Harbor was. He went to his house where his mother was listening to the radio. They spent the rest of the day listening to it. He was 16 at the time. The next day he went down to enlist but his mother would not sign for him to. His job was helping to pay the bills. As soon as he turned 18, he enlisted. He had been shocked at the attack and the number of dead. He chose the Army because he could not swim, and he could always dig a hole. His sergeant in basic training was one of the meanest guys alive until it was over and then he turned out to be one of the nicest. Armstrong says he is the guy who made a man of him. In basic, church attendance was mandatory. There were a handful of Jewish boys who got Saturdays off all day. They got Sunday off too because there was nothing else going on. Basic training was hard, and he is surprised he survived it.

Henry Armstrong trained in artillery. He was six feet two inches tall. When they boarded the train after basic training, there was a string stretched across the doorway and if your head touched it you were "in". He had no idea what he was in. All of the six-footers had to wait on the train after everyone else got off. They then went to Camp Gruber, Oklahoma. The truck drivers informed them that they were in the Pack Artillery with mules. They trained on wooden mules until live mules arrived. They had 75mm howitzers [Annotator's Note: M1 75mm Pack Howitzer] that broke down into seven pieces that each went on a mule. The men needed to be six-foot tall in order to do that. They left there for Fort Carson, Colorado and became part of the 71st Infantry Division. One of his sergeants taught Armstrong to groom his mule that he named "The Colonel". The colonel kicked the sergeant with both hind legs. [Annotator's Note: Armstrong laughs.] His battalion [Annotator's Note: Armstrong served in Battery B, 607th Field Artillery Battalion, 71st Infantry Division] is the only one to ever make the march from Fort Carson to Pike's Peak [Annotator's Note: highest summit in the Southern Rocky Mountains] with a mule pack. They went to California on maneuvers. They got rid of the mules. They thought they were going to the South Pacific. He was leading the 300 mules and they stampeded. Mules were killed and men were crushed but he survived it. He went to Fort Benning [Annotator's Note: Fort Benning, Georgia] and began to train with the 105mm howitzer [Annotator's Note: M2A1 105mm howitzer]. He met his best friend in the Army there, Walter Olson, who was a pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers [Annotator's Note: American baseball team]. Olson taught him to box. They went to Fort Dix, New Jersey. He and Olson went to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and went to Dodger headquarters. Branch Rickey, the owner of the Dodgers, took them to lunch. Rickey told them to get the best meal they could because he knew they were going overseas by their new combat boots.

Henry Armstrong expected to go overseas. He thought he was going to the Philippines due having trained with mules. Once he went to Dix [Annotator's Note: Fort Dix, New Jersey], he thought they would go to Europe. They boarded the SS Cristobal as part of a 100 ship convoy. He was seasick 90 percent of the two-week Atlantic crossing. They landed in Normandy [Annotator's Note: Normandy, France] on Omaha Beach. Armstrong was part of an artillery observation team [Annotator's Note: for Battery B, 607th Field Artillery Battalion, 71st Infantry Division], one officer and six enlisted guys, who were trying to sleep while scared to death. They had their first kill that night when they killed a nearby tree. They moved inland to a French town. Armstrong went into a French bakery and got some fresh bread. [Annotator's Note: Armstrong tells a story of being kissed by a General's wife after receiving his French Legion of Honor medal some years later.] They were told to take Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] but then were told to bypass it so General de Gaulle [Annotator's Note: Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle, French general and later President of France] could take it. They went to Bitche [Annotator's Note: Bitche, France] to relieve the 100th Division [Annotator's Note: 100th Infantry Division] and took the town. There he received a cable gram announcing the birth of his son.

It was not Henry Armstrong's first time in combat [Annotator's Note: when his Battery B, 607th Field Artillery Battalion, 71st Infantry Division attacked and captured the town of Bitche, Fracne]. His first time was going ashore, and it was horrifying. He did not know what was going to happen and shells were going off all around; men were falling. He was scared to death. Everyone was. Seeing dead American soldiers and not being able to do anything about it was tought but he became used to it. He had a couple of close calls. He does not talk about them a lot. He got the news his son had been born and he was thrilled to death. They left Bitche and traveled all through France. They were not supposed to keep a diary, but he did. He had written the names of different countries in his mother's Bible. When he wrote her, he would tell her to look at certain chapters so that she would know where he was. They crossed the Maginot Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by France in the 1930s] but missed the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. They made it across the Rhine River. He had seen a high school friend and they were standing on the pontoon bridge when General Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] came down and made a speech about how proud he was of the men. Patton was always dressed well and Armstrong wonders how a sniper did not get to him. When Patton finished his speech, he peed in the river. They went through Bavaria. He recalls Coburg [Annotator's Note: Coburg, Germany] not surrendering. He was scouting and a man fell into a hole. The Germans had put their valuables and food into some holes. They ate well for a couple of days. Armstrong was an artillery observer spotting targets for the artillery, sometimes with the infantry and sometimes in a light aircraft.

[Annotator's Note: Henry Armstrong served in the Army on a forward observer team in Battery B, 607th Field Artillery Battalion, 71st Infantry Division. He was flying in a light aircraft in southern Germany spotting targets for his battery's guns.] Armstrong and his pilot had spotted a column of German tanks. They were hit by a German Me-109 [Annotator's Note: Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter aircraft]. He could feel the slugs going through the plane. They dove for the trees and the fighter plane hit the hill and exploded. He would observe for a week and then go back to the battery for a week for rest. They crossed the Danube [Annotator's Note: Danube River] and he was with the battery. He was an expert with his carbine [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine]. They were pinned down by snipers. He and his commander crawled up to behind the snipers. Armstrong got one and his commander got one. Armstrong thinks that was his third kill. They crossed into Austria. They had a to get off the highway due to the Red Ball Express [Annotator's Note: one section of the Allied forces truck convoy system]. Fantastic guys. All black. They were taking supplies to the front and the wounded to the rear. They thought their job was so important, they left the highway for them. They went down a side road and saw two rail cars with rags in front of them. The rags turned out to be the bodies of women, children, and little babies that had been machine-gunned. He has pictures of the hundreds of dead scattered in the woods. Most of the men were in the striped uniforms and their pants were down around their knees. Armstrong realized that they did not have belts and had to hold their pants up. When they died, their pants just fell down. They then found Gunskirchen [Annotator's Note: Gunskirchen concentration camp, a subcamp of Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, Gunskirchen, Austria].

[Annotator's Note: Henry Armstrong served in the Army on a forward observer team in Battery B, 607th Field Artillery Battalion, 71st Infantry Division. While advancing into Austria they came across rail cars in the woods near the Gunskirchen concentration camp where they discovered the bodies of dead women, children, and babies on the tracks.] It was a total shock for Armstrong because he loves babies. They could not understand what they were looking at. Then they found the camp, eliminated the guards, and gave the prisoners all of their food, water, and medicine. Some died after eating the food. He became acquainted with three of them - Simon, Aaron, and Franz. The camp was shabby and filthy. It is hard to explain. They went down the road and stopped in the town to wait for a supply truck. Some inmates who were healthy enough to walk were coming up the road. The inmates wanted to go into the houses and get baths and clean clothes. Armstrong took the men to five different houses where the doors were slammed in their faces. They returned to the houses, ripped the doors off, and made the owners sit outside while anyone could go in and do what they wanted. They were criticized for that. Armstrong says that what he did was minor compared to what had gone on down the road. They got word that the war was over. They did not believe it, but they laid down and went to sleep. They were told they were going to make a convoy through Russia to attack Japan. Morale hit rock bottom. Then they got word that they dropped the bomb [Annotator's Note: the atomic bomb] on Japan. He cannot describe the smell of Gunskirchen. They could smell it miles away. He smelled a lot of horrible things but nothing like that. After the war, there was a reunion in Kentucky for the Division. The two young boys he had befriended in the camp attended. Both live in the United States. Armstrong later was able to lunch with the third inmate he met, Franz. One of the biggest thrills of his life is knowing that those three made it. Armstrong does not consider himself a liberator, he was a soldier and it was a job that had to be done.

Henry Armstrong was in Austria on a security detail [Annotator's Note: while on occupation duty after the war]. The Germans had a curfew. Armstrong challenged a German soldier who shot him through the wrist. They wrestled around. Armstrong used his knife to kill him. Armstrong spent two weeks in the hospital. A nurse had a little boy she brought to Armstrong who had a scar from a grenade. The nurse was adopting the boy. Armstrong rejoined his unit [Annotator's Note: Battery B, 607th Field Artillery Battalion, 71st Infantry Division] in Bergheim, Germany. He and another man were billeted together, and they did not like each other. They had a fight and then they became the best of friends. Armstrong was received terribly by the Germans. They would do home inspections and find hidden weapons. They found a tank buried in the floor of a barn. He met a woman who had a boyfriend who had been on the Russian front. She introduced Armstrong to him, and the German refused to shake hands. He also had a girlfriend who was trying to teach him German. Her mother did his laundry. His girlfriend called him Heinrich, which he hated. She was only six years old. [Annotator's Note: Armstrong laughs.] He was sent to France and got on a ship home. He was very seasick. Coming into New York Harbor [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] was one of the biggest thrills. The Red Cross was there with fresh milk and coffee. He ate a steak dinner. His commander asked him to stay an extra day to help with the paperwork. On the train back, he had a room to himself. Armstrong had no plans and reenlisted. He went home and was shocked at the change in himself.

[Annotator's Note: Henry Armstrong reenlisted in the Army after returning home from Europe.] Armstrong was assigned to a Military Police Unit, was a criminal investigator, and assigned to a Combat Engineer Battalion. Psychological Operations [Annotator's Note: also referred to as PsyOps] units were formed. Armstrong ultimately became the Command Sergeant Major at Fort Bragg [Annotator's Note: Fort Bragg, North Carolina] and taught at the school. He had reenlisted in 1946 because he did not have a profession and did not know what he wanted to be. He enjoyed the strictness of the Army. He had a job, and many would not. He had no desire to get back into combat in Korea. He liked PsyOps and worked at the Pentagon for a period. The job is try to convince your enemy to stop fighting. He does not feel the Cold War changed any part of his Army job. They just did their normal jobs. This impresses him today. The young people are very dedicated to what they are doing. His great grandson is in the Army and likes it.

Henry Armstrong never got concerned about Communism after World War 2. He had faith in his country that we would not be that way. He feels that we had no business being in Korea or Vietnam. We have no business fighting wars for other countries. There is no thanks given afterwards. We helped Germany rebuild. The horrible things that Japan did in World War 2 and now look at them. The postwar integration of the military did not bother him. The black troops he knew served as well as anybody else. Everybody is a human being. He does not recall there being any problems with integration or when women started coming in. It is equality.

Henry Armstrong had a few nightmares about his war experience, seeing a concentration camp, and more. It took him 15 years to be able to talk about it. He thought it was something no one needed to know until his sons started asking questions. It is part of his history and he decided to write it all down. He gave all of his family copies of it. He goes to homecomings and advises soldiers to do the same thing. A woman thanked him for inspiring her son to talk of his experiences. He thinks communicating with soldiers is great as is communicating with family, friends, and other people too. The camp [Annotator's Note: liberating the Gunskirchen concentration camp in Gunskirchen, Austria] is his most memorable experience. Finding the rags [Annotator's Note: he and other soldiers discovered that what they thought were piles of rags that were actually women, children, and babies who had been shot]. He is not a killer at heart, but he would have no problem putting a bullet in the head of the person who machine gunned children. He would like to forget that memory. He felt it was his duty as an American citizen to fight in the war. World War 2 made a man out of him, a better man. He is proud of his service. He helped his country and protected the people in his country. It was something he had to do. Today, he almost feels the war is a forgotten thing in a lot of cases. It is not taught in the schools and needs to be. It is part of American history and does not get the same attention as the war between the south and the north. Good or bad it is what we went through. The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] is good to have and should continue.