James White was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1925. As a junior in high school at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he felt the war would end before he could get involved. Most of his classmates were concerned about the same thing. They would come to realize later that the war would have a much longer duration than they first anticipated. There were 50 male graduates in his high school class. Of those young men, 48 would go on to serve in the military. White enlisted while he was a senior in high school. He had taken exams and qualified for certain things in the Navy and Army college programs such as pilot training. He graduated high school in May 1943. The day after his 18th birthday, he was on active duty. His basic training was with 1,000 other college students at Fort McClellan in Alabama. He understood that there were only five others besides himself whom had never had college training. After basic, he was sent by train to Texas A&M. He had always wanted to attend that university. He studied basic engineering. This was referred to as the ASTP, or Army Specialized Training Program. The Army later decided to break up the college training program. About 100,000 students were distributed into multiple Army divisions. In March 1944, White, with many others, was sent to join the 103rd Infantry Division. Other former ASTP students were sent to the 12th Armored Division. His two roommates were both from military schools. One was from Clemson and the other was from the Citadel. They gave White a difficult time because he was from A&M. White received his final stateside training at Camp Howze until October 1944. White departed the United States via ship and landed at Marseilles, France. Arriving at night, the port was under an air attack. There were smoke generators operating and it frightened the newly arrived troops when one of them exploded. The troops marched all night and reached a mountainous area. Ordered to fall out and sleep, the men discovered the next morning that they were within a 100 yards of their intended destination.

James White and the 103rd Infantry Division were transported by truck convoy deeper into France after arriving in Marseilles. His unit [Annotator's Note: Company B, 1st Battalion, 409th Infantry Regiment, 103rd Infantry Division] was detailed to drop off the trucks in twos to man the individual stops. It made the new arrivals uneasy. The troops first saw combat in a field area near Taintrux where they fortified their foxholes with timbers across the top of them. They moved out shortly after their arrival. The division liberated several towns along the way to a confrontation in Steige. Prior to that point, the Germans were withdrawing and the fighting was not significant. When the Americans left one small town called Le Beulay [Annotator's Note: town name not confirmed], the citizens rang the church bells. After they left the town, White's sergeant queried him as to whether he recently had something to eat or drink. Since White had not, the sergeant told him that there was a benefit to the local wine. Being a Baptist non-drinker, White had never touched alcohol before. After that initiation, he never passed up wine. After exiting Le Beulay, the troops were shelled by artillery. It was obvious that the enemy had zeroed in the road as the shells landed in a clear hopscotch pattern up and down the column. Friends in front of and behind White were wounded in the shelling. White crawled in a ditch. The troops extracted themselves and proceeded. Orders came down for the battalion to go behind the German lines and capture a town called Steige. A Free French fighter was to guide the Americans through some mountain passes. The men were told not to return fire unless the Colonel fired first so they did not give away the size of the outfit. There was a soldier of German ancestry among the troops named Vossler [Annotator's Note: Julius J. Vossler]. Vossler could speak German, but he said his accent would be like a Texan trying to convince someone he was from Boston. The Colonel wanted him to lead the column anyway. The officer had no other options but to place Vossler at the head of the column. After proceeding on the trail for a couple of hours, German machine gun fire opened up. The troops hit the side of trail taking cover. After a half an hour or so, the man behind White touched him and pulled on him to indicate that they were pulling back. The unit left a sergeant behind who was asleep. As they were backtracking, they hit another machine gun. Backtracking again, another machine gun opened up on them. As they proceeded, they spotted what they reckoned was the German artillery that had fired upon them. They kept moving. When daybreak approached, the Colonel told the men to bunch up and nap. No guards were posted. When they moved out the next morning, there were Germans sleeping with them. They were taken with them. The battalion approached the town of Steige. Companies A and C were to advance on the flanks and White and Company B were to be the base of fire. Mortars were set up on the forward slope even though it was atypical procedure because of exposure to enemy return fire. The Germans were caught in a chow line. The town was taken along with a couple of hundred prisoners. Later that night, White was ordered to take position on a machine gun guarding a road block. A French truck had been placed across the road to block it. White was concerned about the position of the gun. Before it could be moved, all hell broke loose. There was incoming automatic fire along with grenades. White and several of the men around him were wounded. White looked around and saw he was by himself. Looking under the truck, he observed a man in a long overcoat. Since no Americans had overcoats, White fired on the shadowy figure with his pistol. The man fell. A couple of more shadows approached White. He fired on them and then withdrew despite having previously suffered several wounds. Approaching a building which contained some wounded, he knocked out a window and jumped through it. The men inside joked with him about not using the door that was just beside the broken window. Being behind enemy lines, there was no evacuation at that time. A couple of men were sent out to relocate the machine gun. The two were unfamiliar with the operation of the gun. They grabbed both ends of the gun but did not bother to disconnect the tripod nor remove the ammunition belt. One man had the barrel and the other grabbed the weapon's pistol grip. The grip had no trigger guard and when the GI with the pistol grip accidentally pulled the trigger, a burst went off and killed the other man. Later that night, White was evacuated to a field hospital. When he was asked what his name was he flipped his dog tags up at them and went back to sleep. White remembered being in an ambulance and when he awoke, he was in a hallway on a gurney. At that point, someone told him that he was going into surgery. While he was laid out for surgery, he looked up and observed the most beautiful nurse he had ever seen. He would go on later to marry a nurse. Later he found out that the 95th Hospital was a school. He was transferred on an ambulance train to Dijon, France. One of the ladies who came by with coffee and donuts was Madeline Carroll, the movie star. After more surgery at the general hospital, the doctor checked up on him. White told the physician that he felt alright, but his throat tickled. The doctor took a look at his throat. After some testing of swabs from his throat and nostrils, White was transferred to a different location. That room had only a few patients in it and they were separated by dividers. It turned out that despite previous inoculations, White had contracted diphtheria. His temperature reached 105, but he never felt bad. Being wounded turned out to be to his advantage. His unit was taken prisoner by the Germans after he left it for the field hospital. Had he been captured and placed on a prisoner train or in a prisoner of war camp, the diphtheria likely would have killed him. White could have contracted the disease in Steige, the last town where he fought, either from youngsters there or prisoners he was close to. Those prisoners did not appear to be doing too well. As a result of later events, White had no qualms about being wounded. The German resistance had not been strong initially in Steige. A couple hundred prisoners were taken, but some escaped during the night. Some of them captured Company D's weapons. One of the men in the covering company was named Spegel [Annotator's Note: Edward Spegel]. At reunions in later years, White noticed Spegel had ambulatory issues. He asked Spegel how he got that way. Spegel replied to White that it was a result of "smoking the Krauts off your ass" [Annotator's Note: the word Kraut was used as a disparaging reference for Germans].

James White was a 60mm mortar man, but artillery fire took out two machine gunners. White became a machine gunner as a result of his prior training on the machine gun including a .50 caliber gun. He had targeted towed sleeves, rockets and radio controlled planes so he was familiar with the machine gun. More cross training would have been beneficial. The Germans had earlier provided only token resistance at Le Beulay [Annotator’s Note: town name not confirmed]. The enemy was cleared out within an hour using rifles and automatic weapons. At a roadblock near Steige, White was involved in fighting off several Germans. He felt confident of getting at least one of them. The man dropped after White fired on him. When two more figures approached him in the dark from the same direction, White did not take a chance. There was too much rifle fire and grenades going off. After a couple of months spent in the hospital, White was assigned to Compiegne, France and a reinforcement depot. There, rear echelon troops were being trained in six weeks to prepare them for the front and infantry duty. He trained many of those troops to be replacements in combat units. That was where White was when the war ended in Europe. At that point, he was transferred to Biarritz, France, just north of Spain on the Bay of Biscay. He helped establish a GI university for the men remaining in Europe. Professors from the United States were brought over. Hotels and homes were taken over and the university was set up with courses like those found in colleges over the summer semesters. Two courses would be available over a six week period for those men waiting to go home or to the fighting in the Pacific. It was like a summer school. German prisoners would be utilized to do the cleaning and other tasks. The same thing was available in England. White was part of the permanent personnel of the college. He stayed there until March 1946. He was eligible to return to the states before then but held off to await the start of the next semester. He used the GI Bill to study industrial engineering. After he graduated, he went to work for Texaco. While in the college hospital, he met his future wife. She had been around GIs in the amputee center who were far worse off than him. After receiving his degree, he knew that if he went back into the service, he did not want to be in the infantry. He received a commission in the Corps of Engineers. He was assigned to combat engineers. From there, he stayed in the service and retired from the military as a Major. He had been a Company Commander in the 90th Infantry Division Combat Engineers. As a Major, he had no assignment until one opened up in a transportation unit. It made him feel like he was not even in the Army.

James White obtained a different outlook on life as a result of the war. He knew he had to pursue an education. He enjoyed his time in the Army Reserves. When the Korean War broke out, he was the only lieutenant in his unit not recalled. That was probably due to him not completing Engineers School even though he was commissioned in the Corps of Engineers. Congress put an end to extracting people out of units. The logic was that if the unit needed to be called up, it would have already been stripped. He was on accelerated training a couple of times during the Vietnam War but never had to transfer to Asia. White grew up in the Depression. He felt that many of the veterans received a college degree where they would not have done so otherwise. Technology and many innovations rapidly transpired during the war. There was the onset of atomic power and transistors, as well as, jet aircraft that came on the scene. The Japanese steel industry was rebuilt to the detriment of the American steel industry. Unlike the Germans, the Japanese never acknowledged their inhumane treatment of others. White's father was in World War 1 as a member of the T Patchers, the 36th Infantry Division. He served in the Meuse-Argonne combat. White remembers him talking about rebuilding Germany after that war. White remembers the onset of the Nazis and Neville Chamberlain's attempt to appease them. His father said that the Germans were not to be trusted. By September 1939, that was obvious. White has attended The National WWII Museum several times and thinks it is great. Returning to France, he has seen more restored major artifacts than here in the United States. He also has attended a reunion with his unit at the World War II Memorial. It is well done but White saw an omission he regrets. A last phrase in President Roosevelt's address that said "so help us God" was left out. He would like to see a movement to get this added. White is tired of seeing so many politically correct statements being made. He would prefer if we would be historically correct instead.