Herndon Inge, Junior was born in Chickasaw, Alabama. His father had worked there in the shipyards in World War 1. Inge was born in 1920 and they later moved to Mobile [Annotator's Note: Mobile, Alabama]. He went to school there. The Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States] came along, and he quit high school in his senior year to work. He later returned, finished and went to the University of Alabama [Annotator's Note: in Tuscaloosa, Alabama]. All men had to take two years of ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps]. He took two more after that. He graduated in 1943 and was sent to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. After four months, he received a commission as a second lieutenant in the infantry. He went to Camp McCain, Mississippi [Annotator's Note: now Camp McCain Training Center in Grenada, Mississippi] assigned to the 94th Infantry Division. They trained for six or seven months and then went to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York, 6 August 1944] to board the Queen Elizabeth [Annotator's Note: the RMS Queen Elizabeth] to England. They landed in Scotland [Annotator's Note: 11 August 1944] and went to southern England for more training. They went to the Normandy beachhead [Annotator's Note: Utah Beach, Normandy, France] and went ashore [Annotator's Note: 14 September 1944]. They went to Lorient [Annotator's Note: Lorient, France] and Saint Nazaire [Annotator's Note: Saint Nazaire, France] to hold the Germans in the ports on the Bay of Biscay. They stayed there until 1 January [Annotator's Note: 1 January 1945]. The Leopoldville [Annotator's Note: the SS Léopoldville] was a troop ship that was sunk off of Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France, 24 December 1944]. The men who drowned were in the 66th Division [Annotator's Note: 66th Infantry Division] that was supposed to go into the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. The remainder of the 66th was diverted to replace his division so they could go to the Bulge instead.

While at the University of Alabama [Annotator's Note: in Tuscaloosa, Alabama], Herndon Inge, Junior was in the infantry ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] because he was in the commerce school. When he graduated [Annotator's Note: 1943], he went into infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Inge where he was when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He heard it over the radio at his fraternity house. The next day many students left to go home and join the Armed Services. He and his friends had had some background thoughts about impending war, but they were surprised. A lot of students who were in the Reserves left. Inge was in advanced ROTC and stayed in it until 1943 and was deferred [Annotator's Note: postponement of military service] from the draft. He had four brothers. The oldest had a bad arm and was not drafted. He was a Red Cross field director in the Pacific. Two brothers were in the Marines. His youngest brother was not old enough. They all came back. The two submarine ports that remained in German hands in Lorient [Annotator's Note: Lorient, France] and Saint Nazaire [Annotator's Note: Saint Nazaire, France] were heavily fortified. His division held them [Annotator's Note: the Germans] in. The Americans never made any attempt to capture them. They had lost so many taking Brest [Annotator's Note: Battle of Brest, 7 August to 19 September 1944, Brest, France], they decided to just keep them bottled up. The submarines operated in and out though. They were in hedgerow [Annotator's Note: man-made earthen walls that surround a field that are often overgrown with impenetrable vegetation] country. The Germans had set up a defense around the ports. The Americans fired a lot of artillery at them. When the Leopoldville [Annotator's Note: the SS Léopoldville] was sunk off Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France, 24 December 1944], the remainder of that division [Annotator's Note: the 66th Infantry Division] relieved his outfit [Annotator's Note: 94th Infantry Division] so they could join the 3rd Army at the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945].

Herndon Inge Junior's first action was when they [Annotator's Note: Company D, 1st Battalion, 301st Infantry Regiment, 94th Infantry Division] went into the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s] between the Saar and Moselle Rivers [Annotator's Note: also called Orscholz Switch, between the Saar and Moselle Rivers, part of the Siegfried Line of German defenses]. The Siegfried Line was across the base of the triangle. His division was assigned there. The Line was a belt of fortifications that Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] had inside Germany to block an invasion. The French had the Maginot Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by France in the 1930s] on their side, but it did not hold up well. Most of the work was patrol work. It was sort of a constant with small unit battles and no big attacks. When he was in a battalion going into a German town, the Germans came around behind them and cut them off. Inge was a forward observer in that. They could not make it back and they were captured. They were surrounded in a little village. About two companies of 150 men were in trenches. When they tried to get out, the Germans closed in. There was no chance of getting through. The company commander, Captain Straube [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify], talked to the colonel of the regiment who ordered him to surrender and save as many lives as he could [Annotator's Note: January 1945]. There was about two feet of snow on the ground. Inge was a second lieutenant. Once they were disarmed, the German soldiers milled around with them. In the 1930s, the Americans, English, Germans, French, and Italians signed the Geneva Convention [Annotator's Note: standards for humanitarian treatment in war] regarding prisoners of war. The Germans treated them as soldiers and prisoners. They were informed that if anyone escaped, the Germans would shoot anyone left. They marched through the countryside, there were 70 or 80 of them in columns with only four German guards. Nobody wanted to escape and endanger the other men. Inge never saw any mistreatment. They had been captured in Orscholz [Annotator's Note: Orscholz, Germany] at the Saar River. Inge was made to go back up to the front lines to evacuate the wounded men to the German aid station. They were then marched back to a stockade about 30 miles behind the lines. They moved to Limburg, Germany [Annotator's Note: Limburg an der Lahn, Germany] to a prison camp [Annotator's Note: Oflag XII-A in Hadamar, Germany] for Americans. The officers were interrogated there in a castle a week at a time. The Germans could have put a plant in the prisoners and learned everything they wanted to know. The questions Inge was asked were simple.

To Herndon Inge, Junior, the German soldiers were just like American G.I.s [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] more or less. They had a strong non-commissioned officer group. They were well-trained. Inge never saw anything untoward from any of them. He believes the non-commissioned officers were the strength of it. In the camp [Annotator's Note: Oflag XII-A, Hadamar, Germany], there was no heat, and he was cold all the time. Two prisoners shared a bunk with one blanket. Somebody had a pocketknife and made chessmen out of a bed slat. That chess game went from daylight to dark. There were no electric lights. The officers were kept separate. He was there for 88 days. He went in the Army September 1943 and got out in September 1945. From Limburg [Annotator's Note: Limburg an der Lahn, Germany], he was moved to Hammelburg [Annotator's Note: Oflag XIII-B, Hammelburg, Germany] in freight cars. They were very small and there were 30 to 40 men in one. It took two or three days to get there. The railroads only ran at night due the bombing. The German guards could not speak English. The men would be on a siding for many hours. The Germans were moving their prisoners into Germany. Colonel Paul Goode [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Paul Ryan Goode] was the senior American officer at Hammelburg. They organized in the camps by rank. Goode had rules about keeping shaved and dressed as well as they could. They had formations every day where the Germans counted them. Ernest Hemingway's [Annotator's Note: Ernest Miller Hemingway; American novelist, journalist, and sportsman] son [Annotator's Note: John Hadley Nicanor "Jack" Hemingway, Canadian American conservationist and writer] was there. General Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] son-in-law [Annotator's Note: later US Army General John Knight Waters] was there too. Patton sent tanks to liberate that camp. Inge rode out of there on a tank. They nearly got back to the American lines when the Germans cut them off [Annotator's Note: 26 March 1945].

Herndon Inge, Junior heard scuttlebutt [Annotator's Note: a period slang term for a rumor] that the Americans were headed towards Hammelburg [Annotator's Note: Oflag XIII-B, prisoner of war camp in Hammelburg, Germany]. He could see German spotter planes and smoke on the horizon. Some German vehicles sped by the camp and then he saw American trucks and tanks coming in. At night they broke in [Annotator's Note: 26 March 1945]. Inge went through the barbed wire and got to the lead tank and jeep. The commanding officer of the task force was Abe Baum [Annotator's Note: later US Army major Abraham Baum]. Inge heard him telling the prisoners they were headed back to the lines. Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] son-in-law [Annotator's Note: later US Army General John Knight Waters] had been shot by a German soldier and was being taken to a hospital. Inge climbed up on a tank with some others. They were headed back to the American lines. After two or three miles, they stopped. He went and got on a halftrack [Annotator's Note: M3 half-track; a vehicle with front wheels and rear tracks]. Pretty soon they were surrounded and recaptured. They were then shipped down to Nuremberg [Annotator's Note: Oflag XIII-A or Oflag XIII-D, Nürnberg Langwasser in Nuremberg, Germany]. This was close to the end of the war. They thought they were being liberated but they were still pretty far inside German lines. Patton later said that if he had sent a combat command in, he would have been successful. The task force was not enough troops. Patton's son-in-law had been a prisoner for nearly three years. Baum's jeep was near where Inge was. He remembers him getting on the jeep and said they were heading back. That is when a lot of the prisoners climbed on the tanks. They thought they were only a few miles from the American lines, but they were about 40 miles from them. Inge stayed on a half-track all night. At daylight, the column stopped, and Colonel Goode [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Paul Ryan Goode] got up on the tank and said they were behind German lines without weapons, and he was going to back to the camp. He jumped down and started walking with a white handkerchief. Almost all of them got behind him. After they got two or three miles, they heard a battle. The Germans destroyed the task force [Annotator's Note: 28 March 1945]. Goode said the war was so nearly over, he was going back. They were locked in box cars and taken to Nuremberg that night.

Herndon Inge, Junior was at Nuremberg [Annotator's Note: Oflag XIII-A or Oflag XIII-D, prisoner of war camp, Nürnberg Langwasser in Nuremberg, Germany] when the war ended. He had hung on the back of a half-track [Annotator's Note: M3 half-track; a vehicle with front wheels and rear tracks] and split his toe open [Annotator's Note: after Task Force Baum attempted to liberate the prison camp at Hammelburg, Germany, 26 March 1945]. When he got to Nuremberg, he had his foot bandaged. The American tanks came in and the 45th Infantry Division liberated them [Annotator's Note: 16 April 1945]. It was wonderful. The tanks came in and went around them. Some trucks came soon after with troops. They climbed in those trucks went to a big open field were there were three C-47s [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft]. They told them to load up and fasten seat belts. They flew at treetop level across the Rhine River to Nancy, France. The Americans had made the University of Nancy into a hospital. They stayed there about a week. They went to Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] and then Camp Lucky Strike [Annotator's Note: American transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands] and back to the United States. The first thing Inge did when liberated was cry. Inge was okay, he was just skin and bones. A fellow prisoner could pull his uniform around his waist. Inge was in Paris on V-E Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945]. There had been a blackout in Paris for five years. The lights were all turned on and that is how they knew the war was over. All during World War 2, the French people never had any heat above the first floor of any building. The people were in the street cheering and parading. The Champs-Élysées [Annotator's Note: Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris, France] was empty of traffic. Inge got on a ship in late May [Annotator's Note: May 1945]. About two days out of New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York], the convoy broke up and each ship could proceed on its own. When he had been in Southampton, [Annotator's Note: Southampton, England] he saw several German submarines come in and surrender. A lot of them were green and moss-covered because they had been in the Atlantic for so long.

Herndon Inge, Junior got off the ship in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and got on ferry boats to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. He was then sent home. He had to then report to a separation center to be discharged. He did a lot of correspondence. He had to censor the mail of his company. Most of the G.I.s [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier] got to where they would write without giving things away. His parents first got a telegram that he was missing in action. They got notice that he had been returned to Allied hands and had been liberated. Inge went to law school. He joined the American Legion [Annotator's Note: wartime veterans service organization] and was commander of the Post in Mobile [Annotator's Note: American Legion Post 88, Mobile, Alabama]. He thinks the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] is important and fabulous. It is important that future generations learn about the war. World War 2 was universal with the country. The United States conducted itself in an admirable way. The American service person was taken care of even after the war. He still goes to Veterans Hospitals. Inge is really proud to have served. There were very few draft dodgers. He found the country was almost 100 percent behind the war. His wife was a WAVE [Annotator's Note: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service; United States Naval Reserve women's reserve] officer in Pensacola [Annotator's Note: Pensacola, Florida]. She outranked him when they got married 1 September 1945.