John Foy was born in October 1925 in Rochester, New York, one of the ten children of a plumbing contractor. He came up during the Great Depression era, and he said, "Things were pretty rough." Foy recalled that he was with a friend when they heard on the car radio that the Japanese forces had attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. They wanted to enlist straightaway and "get those damn Japs" [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese], but they were too young to act on the threat. He said there were all kinds of preparatory programs going on in his high school, including first aid courses and tougher physical training, and all the guys knew that they would be going into the military. When he was 17, he was accepted into the Army Specialized Training Program, or ASTP, whereby young men of draft age could become part of the enlisted reserves and take coursework in engineering and applied sciences. Foy had never been far from Rochester, and he chose to attend Cornell University because it was close to home. He noted that the cadets dressed in West Point uniforms, and attended classes for five months, after which they were given a short leave. Foy said the news from Africa was that the American troops were experiencing heavy losses and more men were needed for the front line. While on break he received word that the ASTP program had ended and the cadets would become part of the regular Army. Foy found it ironic that these recruits, with the highest IQs [Annotator's Note: intelligence quotient; a number reflecting an individual's reasoning ability] in the Army, were taken from a program that was supposed to keep them out of the fighting, and put into the infantry that suffered such tremendous losses. Foy wondered what our country would be today if all those guys had lived.

On his first trip outside of New York, John Foy traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia for basic training. He had a parochial school background, so was used to taking orders and he adapted well. For many, Foy said, it was a better life than they had at home during the Depression. After a few weeks leave, he reported to Fort Jackson, South Carolina and became a part of Company A, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division. Foy had learned to drive military vehicles at Cornell [Annotator's Note: Cornell University in Ithaca, New York], and although he was trained to be a machine gunner, he became a jeep driver for the weapons platoon. His division went to Fort Shanks, New York for a few days then shipped out on the HMS Queen Elizabeth, sailing solo and crossing the Atlantic in four days to Glasgow, Scotland. They then moved by train to Manchester, England and after a month they continued south. Foy and his jeep crossed the English Channel to Le Havre [Annotator's Note: Le Havre, France] on an LCT [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Tank].

John Foy's division [Annotator's Note: Foy was a member of Company A, 1st Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division] moved through France to the area near Metz where he first saw combat. He said the division had a "hell of a time" taking the old forts around there. After reorganizing, they moved on to the Alsace region of France to fight right on the German border. It was the end of November [Annotator's Note: November 1944], raining and miserable. He remarked that actual combat was greatly different from his training experiences, and that the Germans were tough soldiers. His job was driving a jeep back and forth, but one day he was on the ground and came upon an enemy soldier coming from behind a shed. The German raised his rifle, but Foy was quicker and made his first kill. He said it was hard to know that he had taken a life, and never forgot the experience. The division moved on Christmas Eve, and Foy said a soldier only knows about the hundred yards around him, so he was unaware that they were headed for the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. He passed the Reims Cathedral while midnight mass was letting out, and thought it strange that on the birthday of the Prince of Peace they were on their way to fight. Outside of Bastogne, Belgium the American 4th Armored Division was just breaking through the German ring of steel around the city. Foy's division jumped off their trucks into the driving snow and got right into the fight. The soldiers did not have winter gear, and men were lost from frozen feet in the below zero temperatures for the first couple of weeks they were there. Foy noted that the local population was very helpful; regardless, the casualties were heavy. In the rest of this clip, Foy compares the German and American personnel and equipment.

In early January 1945, John Foy was in the snow, preparing to attack in support of another battalion that was "gettin' the shit beat out of 'em," when the snow suddenly stopped. Sitting on their right flank were two German tanks and a couple of hundred soldiers. Foy's company [Annotator's Note: Company A, 1st Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division] had nothing to stop the tanks, and hurried to get behind a hill for cover. Once the tanks found their range, the German's put a high explosive shell about a hundred yards from Foy, and shrapnel smashed his machine gun. Foy's assistant gunner had a hole in his chest, so Foy put the cellophane from a cigarette pack over the wound, put a belt around him, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him to cover. By that time, artillery came in and took care of the tanks. Foy helped load the seriously wounded man on a jeep, never expecting to see him alive again. Some 20 years later, the guy showed up at Foy's front door wanting to know the circumstances of his rescue. Foy discussed the small but important comfort of having an occasional hot meal during a mission, and what great and brave guys the Army cooks were. Another luxury was a good night's sleep, and Foy told the tale that happened on the road to Saint Hubert Saint-Hubert, Belgium. Their captain persuaded the abbot to allow the GIs [Annotator’s Note: slang term for an American soldier] to rest inside a monastery. Feeling his way in the pitch dark, Foy found a straw-filled box and laid down to rest. Daylight revealed that he had been sleeping in a coffin.

Toward the end of the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], John Foy became battle weary, but self-preservation kept him going. Seeing his friends die would tear him up, and replacements always seemed inadequate. Foy said being a replacement soldier, trying to move into a closely knit group of battle honed soldiers, is one of the worst jobs in the Army. Some never got the chance to learn the "tricks of the trade" before they perished, and Foy said he sometimes didn't want to know their names. For a long time, he didn't speak much about his battle experiences, but when books and movies started coming out around the 50th anniversary of the war, Foy began answering the questions posed by his family members, and put his story on paper. Brought back to the subject of his interview, Foy said he was not in Europe for long after the war ended there. After the Battle of the Bulge, his division [Annotator's Note: Foy served as a machine gunner in Company A, 1st Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division] marched to meet the Russian Army in Czechoslovakia, which came under the Russian zone of occupation. Because the division was still in pretty good condition, they learned it would be going to fight in Japan. The whole division was brought back together to a "cigarette camp" called 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]. On the Fourth of July 1945, Foy sailed on the USS West Point (AP-23) from Le Havre, France to into New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] harbor. Everybody got a 30 day leave. While he was home on leave, the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and the war officially came to an end. Foy said it was the happiest news he ever had.

John Foy wanted to mention something about the quartermasters. They were mostly black units, relegated to unloading ships and driving trucks of the Red Ball Express, "which they did and did well," according to Foy. For a long time there were almost no black fighting units, but when casualties were heaviest, the Army put out the call for members of the rear echelon to join the infantry, and a lot of the quartermasters volunteered. Foy had a couple of black men join his unit; they had to be shown what to do, but they made "damn good soldiers." 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], he also got two master sergeants that had been caught stealing, and when court-martialed they chose going into the infantry instead of prison. Foy was 18 and they were mid-30s, and he had to threaten them with his pistol to get them to cooperate. They had their rifles, and he gave them two or three hand grenades and ordered them to help take out a German machine gun nest. One was killed, but the other became a good soldier. Foy also divulged a story he had never told anyone before. His unit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 1st Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division] encountered a group of 40 to 50 SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS] that had just machine-gunned all the men of a Belgian village because they had welcomed the Americans as liberators. Foy and his men killed every one of the SS, regardless of the possible charge of a war atrocity.

When John Foy's unit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 1st Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division] came upon their first concentration camps, a relatively small one, they didn't know what to make of the situation. They encountered emaciated prisoners dressed in striped pajamas, living in filth. Foy said their first instinct was to give them food, but they were immediately warned against doing so, because it would make them sicker. Not long afterward, his company smashed through the gates of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, a stinking complex with bodies all over the place. Foy said the Germans were usually very efficient about disposing of the bodies, the cremation ovens were still burning when they got there, but apparently the number of dead had gotten ahead of them and there were bodies stacked like cordwood. He estimated that 90 percent of the prisoners were Jewish, with a few Catholic priests, French and Russians making up the difference. On the road approaching the camp, the GIs [Annotator's Note: slang term for an American soldier] had captured about 40 SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS] guards fleeing the camp, and they decided to let the prisoners deal with them. They brought them to the middle of the camp and walked away. The prisoners tore them apart, except for one guard that several prisoners vouched for as being the most humane of the lot. That guard was pulled out and turned over to the MPs [Annotator's Note: military police]. The facility remained operational as a displaced persons camp for some time after its liberation.

As a result of a court-martial, John Foy's rank was reduced to corporal just before his discharge. He was a staff sergeant, in charge of several theaters at Fort Dix where returning soldiers where brought up to date on what was happening in the United States. Foy got into a big "argument" over current events with a major, got escorted out of the auditorium by two MPs [Annotator's Note: military police], and was brought to trial for insubordination. Although he had a "generally good experience" in the Army, Foy did not want to stay in the military after the war. While he was deciding what to do next, he worked for his father's plumbing business, and recognized that he enjoyed working with his hands. He gave up the idea of going back to engineering school and used the G.I. Bill to get his master plumbers' license. He retired in 1987.

When he looks back on his time in the Army, John Foy feels proud that he served his country during the war. He said he learned a lot about different kinds of people, and contends that the war helped to integrate America. Asked to relate his most memorable experience, he recalled crossing the Rhine River near the scenic town of Rhens [Annotator's Note: Rhens, Germany]. On the German side of the river, there was a steep hill with a castle on top that the enemy was defending with big guns. Foy had taken over the motor of a vessel ferrying engineers across the fast flowing water, and after about ten trips, a German 20mm shell hit the barge's bow, and the boat sank "like a rock." He rejoined his unit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 1st Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division] and went on to a "hell of a battle on the hill." He laughed when he said they looked like the "knights of old" as they charged across the drawbridge of the castle to join the fray inside. He is sure his experiences in the war changed him. It made him more tolerant and taught him different ways of understanding people. Foy called World War 2 "the last good war," and explains that the great majority of the country was involved and fully supported the effort.