John Moran was born in Superior, Wisconsin. He had a great youth and enlisted in the Army at 17. He was then sent to the University of Wisconsin for engineering courses, followed by basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, then he was assigned to the 87th Infantry Division in South Carolina. [Annotator's Note: Moran was assigned to Company K, 3rd Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division.] Moran trained all summer of 1944 and then took the RMS Queen Elizabeth to Scotland. The unit trained more in Knutsford, England and then crossed a stormy English Channel to Le Havre, France before moving in inland. Moran's first action was in Nancy, France. He spent a week in the Saar Valley, Germany. It was very tough fighting against the German 11th Panzer Division's 88s [Annotator's Note: 88mm multi-purpose artillery], mortars, and machine guns. Moran's unit suffered 96 killed and 113 wounded in first six days. The first morning, they crawled into foxholes of the people who had left. Dawn broke over farmland and they did not see anything dangerous. Once they started advancing, they lost seven men in the first 15 seconds. Moran spent the next few days moving cautiously, digging in every time they stopped to be below ground level. The first three days they did not see any Germans but were getting cut down regardless because the Germans could see them. He says that in warfare you have to move to make the enemy move. The 88s were hard to move so that is where they applied the most pressure. Obergailbach, France had a valley before Hill 360 which was their objective. They dug in on the forward slope facing the hill. German Tiger tanks [Annotator's Note: Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf. E, Tiger I German heavy tank] with 88s came onto the top of the hill. He was barely missed by an 88mm shell that hit right behind him and killed three men. Surviving war means having a lot of luck. Forward observers called in 105s [Annotator's Note: 105mm artillery] on the Tigers and he watched a 105mm round explode right on top of a tank doing no damage. The American Sherman tanks [Annotator's Note: M4 Sherman Medium Tank] were no match for a Tiger tank because they had to get very close before it could even start to fire. Michael Wittman [Annotator's Note: SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittman was a German tank ace and commander of 2 Kompanie, Schwere SS-Panzerabteilung 101 or 2nd Company, 101st Heavy SS Panzer Battalion], German tank commander took out 53 British tanks in one afternoon with one Tiger.

John Moran's first day of action in Obergailbach, France was the day after a large battle had been fought. Bill Hundley went and grabbed some machine guns from empty foxholes. When they got up to their positions, they found 51 dead American soldiers that were so torn apart it was hard to imagine the battle. This shocked them greatly. They were ordered to attack Hill 360 in the afternoon. A lot of mines were being hit. His squad leader was one of the first casualties and he also lost a number of his friends. Mortars were coming in and the Germans were dug in on the hill. By the time they reached the top of the hill, he was closer to the Germans than anyone else. The 105mm [Annotator’s Note: 105mm artillery] shells were landing in front of them in order to keep the Germans from attacking, and the concussions were affecting him and his fellow soldier who started bleeding from the nose and ears. He was later able to come down and get food and rest. The next day they decided to go around the hill to Walsheim, Germany. His squad took over a house on the town square. The first night he became violently ill and could not take his squad out on night patrol. Johnny DiFlavio [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] filled in for him as squad leader. The objective of a night patrol is to locate Germans and maybe capture one, a very dangerous business. They came back early, and Johnny was torn up from being shot. The next day some soldiers caught a chicken they killed and started cooking it. German Tiger tanks [Annotator's Note: German Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf. E, Tiger I, heavy tank] on Hill 360 saw the smoke and blew the house apart. Fortunately, the soldiers were protected by a stone wall by the stairwell. They were pulled out the next night to go to Belgium to get into the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945, Ardennes, Belgium].

John Moran and the 87th Infantry Division were headed to join the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: he describes a scene from the movie, Patton]. Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] was going to beat Montgomery [Annotator's Note: British Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery] to the battle, so they took a miserable trip by truck in bitter cold. They were strafed by German fighters before arriving at the Bulge 40 hours later. On Christmas Day 1944, his dinner was at 4:30 in the morning and his turkey leg was frozen. Their assigned objective was to seize a road junction in the woods. About 80 or 90 of them, company at half-strength, advanced and got cut off by the Germans. They had to dig in and formed a circle facing out. The next morning, the Germans attacked from their rear with burp guns [Annotator's Note: 9mm MP40, or Maschinenpistole 40, German submachine gun] and grenades but they fought them off. The soldier next to him had been shot between the eyes. They could do nothing but let him just lay there for a week. Moran hated seeing that. Mortars came in the next day. They counted 29 seconds from ping to hit and just hoped for no direct hits. The second night they knew they had to get the wounded out, so that they did not freeze to death or die from shock. They were not successful. The Air Forces were unable to operate due to weather and the men could not even see their hands in front of their faces. Moran heard Germans patrolling in the snow. Firing at them would give away their positions so he took a hand grenade and laid it down outside the fox hole. It went off, killing the Germans but also knocking him unconscious for a few hours. It took him about a day to get back to normal after that. Three of four days later the weather lifted, and the air raids began. The Germans did not want to be there either and let up on them. They left after about six days. Moran's unit [Annotator's Note: Company K, 3rd Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division] had been written off due to how much fighting was going on where they had been. The brass had been packing up his unit's belongings when they came back with their prisoners and their dead and wounded.

After leaving the Battle of the Bulge, John Moran and the 87th Infantry Division chased the Germans out of Belgium. In February 1945, they headed for the Siegfried Line. They were afraid of that coming battle. That first day, they stopped short where they could see the fortifications. They saw that the pillboxes could provide covering fire for each other's positions. He got into a foxhole for the night with a soldier who told him how much he missed his family. The next morning, they both left the foxhole and the other soldier's squad started moving up just ahead of him, when they walked into a large minefield. His new friend came staggering by and then fell down and died. Tank destroyers with a 90mm cannon [Annotator's Note: M36 tank destroyer or 90mm Gun Motor Carriage] came in and were firing at the pillboxes. It would not do much physical damage, but the concussions would disorient the soldiers inside and a lot of them surrendered. One pillbox was filled with medics who were shooting at them in violation of the Geneva Conventions [Annotator's Note: standards for humanitarian treatment in war]. The line there was only about a half mile deep, so they broke through above Ormont, Germany. The Germans had retreated down to the town. The captain did not want to just go down right into the town and called for Corp Artillery. Each Corp had nine artillery regiments attached. Each one called for all firing to commence at staggered intervals, so the shells all arrived on target at the same time. He heard the rounds fire in sequence: 240 long rifle [Annotator's Note: 240mm howitzer M1, Black Dragon, towed howitzer], 205mm howitzers[Annotator's Note: M115 203mm howitzer or M115 8 inch howitzer, towed howitzer], 155 long rifle [Annotator's Note: M114 155mm howitzer or 155mm Howitzer M1, towed howitzer], 105mm [Annotator's Note: 105mm Howitzer]. He could see the shells flying and it sounded like aircraft coming over. The town just lit up. He imagined it must have driven the Germans crazy. Then 70 of Moran's group assaulted the town with M1s [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 rifle, also known as the M1 Garand, is a .30-06 caliber semi-automatic rifle] firing 3,000 to 3,500 rounds per minute with their rifles. The surviving Germans had fled, leaving their dead behind. Moran's squad found an elderly couple in a basement. The woman told them that the noise and impact was so intense she thought the world had ended.

John Moran and the 87th Infantry Division chased the Germans after leaving Ormont, Germany and arrived in a nearby railroad yard. The captain went into the depot below while Moran and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company K, 3rd Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division] started digging in on the hill. It was snowing and the Germans hit them hard with 88s [Annotator's Note: 88mm multi-purpose artillery] in a way he had not been subjected to previously. He thought it would never stop and was shaken for hours afterward. Between 10 and 15 March 1945, they came upon the Rhine River. It was a great sight for a 19-year-old. Two P-47s [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] came right down the river, machine guns blazing. One side of the river was Niederspay, Germany [Annotator's Note: actually Oberspay, or Spay, Germany], and on the other was Braubach with Marksburg Castle above. Germans were trying to cross the river and the aircraft made several passes before leaving. Moran and his platoon went down before dark to get into the buildings. The next day they were fighting from building to building and the Germans were using anything that would float to cross the river. He put a squad into every fourth or fifth house along the river for nearly a mile down. A soldier found a motorcycle and was riding the backstreets of the town and a German sniper shot him from about 600 yards away from the other side of the river. So many men were hit by then that Moran felt the sniper was always just waiting for the perfect moment. Their accuracy was amazing, especially against moving targets. Word came down for them to cross the river at night. When they arrived at the water's edge, they had small boats to cross with, eight riflemen in each boat with an engineer to take the boats back and forth. They were to push off at midnight. They could not help making a lot of noise and once they were in the middle of the river the Germans put up flares and opened up with heavy machine guns. The boats were colliding in the chaos. Of the 140 men who had pushed off in the boats, half were lost. Moran kept being missed by the shooting, but his men were getting hit and killed. After getting across, they were physically and emotionally exhausted but the they carried on the attack. A captured German said that the amount of firepower they were laying down made him think there were at least 700 of them and not just 70.

John Moran and the 87th Infantry Division crossed the Rhine River and attacked Braubach, Germany at night. As dawn broke, they had made it to the first buildings in the city. They were resting when the Germans started firing 20mm antiaircraft guns at them. They were told to move out and to try to take the town and push the Germans into the woods. The German tanks were unable to fire due to the geography, so the Germans were using mortars. Moran learned quickly to move just after the explosions. Once inside a structure, they would get in the stairwells to avoid the mortar blasts. Screams of some wounded men are almost inhuman. By the afternoon, they had pushed the Germans out, so they circled around to the other side of a hill when a mortar hit his platoon. They drove the Germans out of Braubach and they decided to go up and see the Marksburg Castle above the town. It was empty of Germans. A couple of months later a headline from a newspaper in the United States read "Tupper captures castle". Colonel Tupper [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Sevier R. Tupper] was their regimental commander [Annotator's Note: Tupper commanded the 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division]. There was not one single shot fired at that castle, but the paper carried it as a big battle. Moran was sensitive about medals and citations going to people who did not deserve them, while plenty who did got no recognition. He never once saw an officer above the rank of captain in action. Rank has its privileges. He took a good look at a regimental book after the war and saw that officers got five percent of Purple Hearts but 45 percent of Bronze Stars, Silver Stars, and Distinguished Service Crosses.

When John Moran was in Belgium during the Battle of Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945, Ardennes, Belgium], it was the worst winter in 50 years. It was 22 degrees below zero and there were no buildings. They were freezing so he and another soldier climbed into a haystack and held each other all night to stay alive. He would lay in his foxhole in the mornings and watch B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] going over in groups of three in the mornings. In the afternoons they would be returning, some only limping back. Moran has many memories of friends being killed and wounded. He once prevented one of his soldiers from raping a girl. Moran was checking out an industrial building and a sergeant had a girl trapped in there. The sergeant was angry that Moran was following them through the building. The sergeant finally gave up. The girl smiled and thanked him before escaping. After invading Braubach, Germany a German infantryman shot and hit a grenade on the chest of an American soldier, killing him. Friends of that American soldier caught the German along with one other and beat them to death. There was reciprocity from both sides.

During the Battle of Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945, Ardennes, Belgium], one of John Moran's soldiers shot his some of his own wounded men thinking they were German soldiers. Around 6 May [Annotator's Note: 6 May 1945], this same soldier was on guard duty when the platoon leader and two others went out to check the security of the area. As they came around to his section, he shot and killed them too. Later when they were being discharged, Moran was in the train station and this soldier brought his wife over to meet him. He asked Moran to tell her what a great soldier he was. Moran and his men had gone 28 days from the time they entered combat to the end of the Bulge, with no change of clothing, no toothbrush and hungry all the time. They slept in shifts and never more than a couple of hours at a time. There were no sleeping bags or bedrolls. There was the constant din of battle, even during any sleep time that they managed to get. They were functioning, body and mind, on very little sleep and under extreme pressure. They were always tired and scared during this time. Moran was a staff sergeant and his men would ask to be let go, but he would not let them just walk away. He had so much luck in staying alive. Of the 42 men in his platoon that entered combat, only two came back. War is a lousy, dirty business.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks John Moran several follow-up questions]. Moran was born in September 1925 and lived in Superior, Wisconsin for 18 years. There was no television then so he was always outdoors playing. Moran volunteered for the Army at 17. There were different programs available to enlistees and he knew he could get an education that way. The program was cancelled though due to the amount of losses that were happening in Europe. Even the Air Corps was sending people into the Infantry. He does not know why he chose the Army over the other branches. He did not want to be on a ship, so he knew that much. He started out as a rifleman. He has been to Europe for Memorial Day in the years after the war. The Europeans really honor the Americans. He visits his squad leader, Tommy Langston's, grave when there. He became a squad leader early in 1944 when his friend Langston was killed. His officers recognized his abilities and told him to take the squad then.

John Moran says that there was not much humor while in the war. He saw things that were funny, like a tank driving over a car. On the day the surrender of Germany went into effect, Moran and his men built a huge bonfire. The news of the war's end was anticlimactic to them. They started asking each other what they would do after the war. He says the guys who were killers, without exception, said they were going to be policemen. He recalls being in a German town where there was a small, Catholic church and a German priest and some parishioners were standing outside. The church had been padlocked by the Germans. Moran shot the lock off for them. He is more of a religious man now after the war than he was during it. As the war wound down, the displaced persons from the labor camps were everywhere. He would toss his hand grenades in the river to kill fish to help feed these people. At this point, the law only existed in the consciences of the people. He and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company K, 3rd Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division] opened up the concentration camp at Buchenwald in Weimar, Germany. He came two or three days later and went through the camp. Moran found it hard to believe how staggeringly inhumane man could be to his fellow man. He had known the camps existed, but being there was very sad.

John Moran was home on leave when Japan surrendered [Annotator's Note: on 15 August 1945]. He had left Europe around 1 June 1945. He was sent back for the planned invasion of Japan. His unit [Annotator's Note: Company K, 3rd Battalion, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division] was to be south of Tokyo on 13 December 1945. He did not think it possible to survive two wars and was worried about it. He was discharged on 6 January 1946 in Wisconsin. The last desk soldiers passed when they left was the Reserve desk. They had a good pitch but Moran was through. Some of his friends who did sign up lost their lives in the Korean War, which made him sad. He went right back to class after he got back. He then helped his parents move to Arizona, got married and had a long happy life. He graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1951 with a degree in Business Administration using the G.I. Bill. He had tremendous headaches after he got out and he still does. They sometimes last five days. He is working with the VA [Annotator's Note: Veteran's Administration] on it. He dealt with it for 50 years before seeking help. He had no transition trouble going back to civilian life. The government did not owe them anything. Watching the artillery bombardment of Ormont, Germany still sticks with him. He fought because everyone had to. The war gave him a great appreciation for the small things in life, to have respect for your fellow humans, be a good citizen, and influence the younger people. He gives talks to a high school and he really enjoys the kids. He feels they will be the future leaders of America. He is very proud of his service and very happy that he survived. When he first saw death, he was very bothered but became desensitized to it out of necessity. You can only move forward. He feels that the graves registration job must have been the most horrible job in the military. The hardest part for him was becoming a killer of humans. The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana is an absolute must. The war was so important in that it had to be fought.