John M. Roberts, called Jack, was born in Hamilton, Ohio in August 1924 and lived there until going into the Army. His father was a farmer from Kentucky and ended up as a truck driver for a furniture store where he met his wife. When Roberts was about three years old, his father decided to get back into farming and moved to a three story stone farm house in 1928. When the Great Depression hit, there was also a drought so they could not grow anything. Roberts got into the first grade when he was five and his mother lied about his age. When he got to the second grade, they moved back to Hamilton. His dad could not keep a job so they had to move around a lot. Roberts went to seven different schools in nine years. The last one was four years of high school in Hamilton. Roberts was playing in the yard when he saw an airplane for the first time. He had to ask his mom what it was. There were several times in his war years that he thought he would never be able to go home. When Roberts was a junior in high school, his father was shot. His father had a steady job by then delivering ice cream from Hamilton to Cincinnati, Ohio to drug stores. They had soda fountains back then and he would go in and check the ice cream. In Redding, Ohio one morning he was in Mark's Pharmacy [Annotator's note: pharmacy name could not be verified] and he heard something. He turned around to find a man with a .38 cliber pistol pointed at him. His father yelled to the guy not to shoot him but the guy shot him. He went to the General Hospital in Cincinnati. The bullet missed his heart and grazed a few organs before settling into the muscle in his back. He later had it removed. Roberts's mother kept it for a long time. Roberts had pneumonia at the time and could not see his father in the hospital. There were two guys that were caught in Dayton, Ohio and his father was able to identify the shooter. During that time his father received unemployment, but companies did not take very good care of sick or injured employees. He had an aunt who lived nearby who was able to help out with Roberts and his siblings. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Roberts was in the home of his friend Bill Webster, a few miles from his home. They were sitting in the kitchen playing cards with radio on. When the announcement came on the boys looked at each other and wondered what it would mean for the country and for them. They worried that bombers would come over and were concerned for their own future and that of the country.

John M. Roberts grew up wanting to go to school with his older brother so his mother lied to get him in. He caught up with his brother when his brother was held back in fourth grade. After that they were in class together until the war. His brother was drafted first. They went to the induction center and his brother was given the choice of Army or Navy. He did not want to sleep on the ground so he joined the Navy. When Roberts was drafted, he joined the Army because he could not swim. He was 18 in August [Annotator's note: August 1942] and he was inducted on 1 March 1943. Roberts went to the induction center in Kentucky and was then sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for basic training. The 106th Infantry Division was just forming there. Roberts's IQ was high enough that he was put in the instrument section of a 155mm howitzer battalion as a scout corporal in Battery C. He had to go up to the front and find a place for the guns then go back, get the guns and move them up to that position. Roberts was a good soldier. He liked the discipline. On his weekends off, he would go get a steak or good meal. He did not look for girls in town because he was a good Christian. He got to be an acting corporal at Fort Jackson then was able to lead marches and calisthenics. Roberts was in Battery C, 592nd Field Artillery Battalion. In January, they went on maneuvers near Nashville and Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His captain was tough. Roberts was court martialed because he moved his eyes in formation one night while standing at attention and the captain saw it. Roberts was given a night of hard labor as punishment. Overall, Roberts thinks the captain liked him. He picked Roberts at one point to be an umpire on maneuvers in Tennessee. As an umpire, he was given a jeep, a radio operator, driver and a bunch of pyrotechnics. He would go out on maneuvers during the week, but on the weekends he could go into Nashville. During the maneuvers, Roberts would listen for commands on the radio to go out and set off cherry bombs in the field to simulate incoming artillery fire and then determine how many men were theoretically wounded or killed. After the maneuvers, they went to Camp Atterbury, Indiana and at that point a lot of men in the division were gathered up and sent overseas as replacements for other units. Men from the band, Army Specialized Training Program and cooks were then put into the division to replace the losses of the men pulled from the unit. These new men were not trained like the men that had been pulled from the unit. The unit then moved to Camp Miles Standish. There, Roberts pulled KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police] for the first, and last, time in his time in the Army.

John M. Roberts and his unit [Annotator's Note: Battery C, 592nd Field Artillery Battalion, 106th Infantry Division] left the United States aboard the USS Wakefield (AP-21). He spent most of his time on the deck as the smell of vomit from seasick men made the ship stink down below. His bunk was second from the top so he had to climb up the other cots to get up there. The bow would rise and fall well above and below the horizon. They also took a zigzag course to get to Europe in order to avoid submarines, even though they had pretty well been annihilated by then. It took seven days to get to Liverpool where they docked then boarded trains for their next destination. They were given their guns, but no ammunition and then on 1 December [Annotator's Note: 1 December 1944] they went to the southern tip of England. There, they boarded LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] and crossed the English Channel. They sat on the ship until 4 or 5 December. Finally, the seas were better and they set sail for Le Havre, France. Then, they made their way to Rouen, France where they saw signs of the fighting that was there previously. They drove off of the ship in their vehicles. It was wet and muddy. They bivouacked for three days on their way to the front, exposed to cold and rainy conditions. As they rode in a truck to the front lines, the mood was somber and occasionally someone would try to crack a joke. On their journey to the front, it was so wet that rainwater would run off of their helmet into their food. They had to do their best to shave in those rigid conditions too. They arrived at their position in Belgium on 10 December 1944 and traded places with men from another unit. Roberts and his crew used the upper floor of a house for shelter for their intelligence section. He had to pull guard duty at night, which he thought was eerie but he was there to do a job and he did it.

At 0530 in the morning of 16 December 1944, they were shelled until daybreak then the German guns stopped. John M. Roberts and his people were fortunate and were not hit, but other units nearby were not so lucky. When they went on the line as a division they had about 13,000 men and were supposed to cover about five miles with two infantry regiments on the line and one in reserve. The 422nd and 423rd Infantry Regiments were on the line and the 424th Infantry Regiment was held in reserve. The artillery units were firing their guns by direction from a fire control center in Roth, Germany. When the infantry regiments went on the line, they were spread out along a 25 mile front. The Germans knew they were on the line because they shouted to them in English over a loudspeaker. They reported this to SHAEF [Annotator's Note: Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force] previously who told them that the sounds of tanks and things that they were hearing was recordings that the Germans were using to scare them. That turned out to not be true. Roberts and his unit [Annotator's Note: Battery C, 592nd Field Artillery Battalion, 106th Infantry Division] had no idea that the Germans were coming. The morning of 16 December, it was Roberts's turn to go to the forward observation post to relieve the group that was up there. He had a jeep, a first lieutenant, a radio operator and a weapons carrier with a .50 caliber machine gun on it. He also had a lineman to repair the phone lines. [Annotator's Note: talking watches can be heard in the background during this story.] There were 11 people all together going out to the front, including Roberts. They went through Auw, Germany and were headed to Roth to their forward observation post when they turned a corner in the road and were hit by gunfire from all sides. The driver in front of Roberts almost had his arm blown off. Roberts leaped out of the vehicle into a ditch on the left side of the road while everyone else jumped into the ditch on the right side. In the distance, Roberts could see people moving and he pulled up his carbine and aimed. He realized that he had been taught not to kill but his training kicked in. He remembered to kill or be killed so he fired. The lieutenant made it across the road to the side Roberts was on and said that someone had to get on the weapons carrier and get on the .50 caliber machine gun. The lieutenant made a run for it but was hit before he got to it. Other men from across the street tried to get to the side Roberts was on and were hit in the road. Two men had been killed. One of them was Roberts's friend who had been shot through the head.

The lieutenant asked John M. Roberts what he thought they should do and Roberts suggested that they surrender since they were outnumbered. The Germans quit firing and rushed down to them and started stripping them of everything that they had. Roberts lost his watch that had been a gift from his grandmother. They took his rosary too, but they did not take the crucifix that was deep in his pocket. The Germans then marched them to their headquarters where a lot of the noise was coming from. There were men who had maps hanging on a tree and were pointing to it. The men who captured Roberts and his buddies were in white with their gear and guns painted white. They turned Roberts and his fellow prisoners over to men in regular German Army uniforms. The men were then marched to an area where other captured soldiers were being taken to go to prisoner of war camps. Roberts helped to carry a good friend of his who needed help and was bleeding out. They did not know if they were going to be killed or what was going to happen to them. Roberts, while carrying his friend, stepped in some ice and fell into some water. Thankfully, several friends pulled them out. During the march, Roberts thought about his captain and wondered how he would find out about what happened to these men. Then, he thought about his family. They were instantaneous thoughts that went in and out of his mind. He knew too that with all of the water in his clothing that he was not going to get any dry clothes or socks and worried that he may lose his feet in the cold. They came to a bend in the road and as they were being marched along, a US Army tank appeared up ahead in the road and figured out what was going on. Roberts yelled for the prisoners to hit the dirt and the tanker opened up with a machine gun, having a perfect shot at the German guards that were still standing. As he fired, the tank started to pull away, not knowing what was going on behind them. Thankfully, the tank commander came after the Germans on foot with a Thompson [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun] and killed at least one guard. He earned a Silver Star for rescuing them. Roberts and his fellow former prisoners followed the tank crew to the nearby town of Weckerath, Belgium. They entered the town and found out who was in charge. They went down to the nearby captain and explained who they were and what happened. The captain informed them that they were surrounded and trying to get out of there. He gave the men what weapons he could until he ran out. He gave Roberts a handful of grenades which he put in his pockets. He got the heaviest armored vehicles that he could, put them in the center of the town and put the wounded inside of them. His plan was to move them out as fast as possible and make a run for the next town near the German and Belgian border. When they left, they were getting crossfire and Roberts could hear the wounded returning fire. The group of wounded was in the first group. A second group waiting behind was made up of men who were not wounded or were not wounded badly. They climbed in the back of a two and a half ton truck and lay down on the floor. As they pulled out of town, the wooden boards on the sides of the truck were splintering from the fire they were drawing. They made it out of there, finally, and got to Manderfeld, Belgium with a lot of holes in their vehicle.

John M. Roberts began to look for the wounded men in the group ahead of his but could not find them. They started to get surrounded again and what men were with him asked Roberts what he wanted to do. He said that he wanted to get a compass so they could make their way back to the 106th Infantry Division. He asked an officer to borrow a compass and Roberts told his buddies that they could stay with the group they were with or move by cover of night with him. They came with him and were able to get through the German lines that night. They ran on adrenaline without having any food along the way. Roberts was scared and says that anyone who says he was not had to be a liar. Units want to go forward, not retreat. The 106th Infantry Division lost two full regiments in the Battle of the Bulge. The 423rd and 424th Infantry Regiments were totally taken out. Roberts and the men following him went from tree to tree and made their way at night through the German lines. If someone saw them and fired at them, they would duck into the woods. During the daytime they would cross one at a time. If one person made it the other two would try to find another place. As they moved forward, they came to a barn and wanted to crawl in to get warm. It had a hayloft and they climbed up there for warmth and shelter. Eventually, they started to hear talking and Roberts could tell that he was hearing someone speaking German, not English. The Germans came in and looked around. Roberts hoped that none of the guys with him would try and be a hero and start firing at the Germans. They remained quiet in the hayloft until the Germans left. Then they climbed down and went in the opposite direction from the Germans. They moved on for several days. Early one morning, they saw parachute flares being fired into the sky. Roberts and his group spotted a tank in front of them. They recognized the silhouette as being an American tank and decided to move up to it. As they got near, a few men spotted them and started to question them. Roberts and his buddies talked to the lieutenant with this tank group who welcomed them in and informed them that he had no idea where they were, much less where the position of the 106th Infantry Division was located. Later on, the captain of this unit invited Roberts to go to the command post with him to see if he could get more information on his unit. They got shot at a few times along the way but made it back safely. Roberts and his men got a little sleep and stayed with these men for a while until they found someone that could direct them toward the 106th Division. They finally made it to their outfit and spotted their captain who smiled one of the few times that they ever saw during the war. [Annotator's Note: There is a break at the end to change tapes.]

Captain Smith was surprised to see John M. Roberts and his buddies show up as he had them listed as missing in action. There were two officers out of commission with all of the moving around while Roberts was away. Smith made Roberts a Staff Sergeant and put him in charge of the instrument section as an acting officer until they received replacements. Much later on, Roberts received a battlefield commission to second lieutenant. With his new duties, he continued with what he was doing previously. He would go forward with an officer and help with the firing for the battery [Annotator's Note: Battery C, 592nd Field Artillery Battalion, 106th Infantry Division]. The unit continued fighting until sometime in February [Annotator's Note: February 1945]. They did not see too much action because the division was so small. They went on the line with about 14,000 men then suffered about 8,000 casualties, most of which were prisoners of war. They had a captain named Jim Fonda who was the commander of Battery B, 590th Field Artillery Battalion that had to give up everything. He destroyed his guns and his whole battery was captured. One guy, Carl Hemberg [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], was a good friend of Roberts and would come home with him sometimes when they were still in the States. When Roberts was drafted, he worked at Kaiser Clothing Company. There was a girl there who was a cashier while he was a salesman, Mary Lou Starman. He was dating a girl and she was dating a guy so they just spoke and did not say too much. One day, Mary Lou found out Roberts was nearby so she started writing him some and he would come to visit. After about ten dates, they were engaged.

On 1 April 1945, they were sent back to Rennes, France to reorganize. On 9 June 1945, John M. Roberts was sent to the 589th Field Artillery Battalion to reorganize it. The captain told him it would be to his best advantage, which he later found out was part of how he earned his battlefield commission. Major Parker called for Roberts and he tried to figure out what he had done wrong. He hopped in a jeep and was driven to the major. He entered the tent, saluted and was told to sit down. The major then read this information to him and gave him the battlefield commission. Off to the side was Roberts's battery commander, Ted Kendell [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] with a big smile on his face. On his way back, everyone was saluting Roberts. It was fun to him. The unit was reactivated to go to Saint Nazaire and the Lorient pocket where they had a major u-boat base surrounded. They could not get to sea and the land forces were inside shooting every once and a while. They returned to combat for a short time and then on 8 May 1945, the war ended. Their division [Annotator's Note: the 106th Infantry Division] was put in charge of one million German prisoners. Roberts was not involved in that, however, as he was tapped to go to the South Pacific in preparation for invading Japan. He was sent to Brussels to get on a ship that was headed to the United States. He was to be assigned to a unit headed for the South Pacific. He was assigned to be in charge of a quartermaster group to take supplies around Europe once the war ended in the Pacific. He reported to Salzburg and was made the public safety officer of Kirchdorf, Austria, which was untouched by the war. He was only there a short time then was sent to Linz, Austria to work as real estate officer for upper Austria. He was only 21 years old at the time. He had a team assigned to him and would send guys out in jeeps to go to the court house to find all of the real estate properties, look up houses and take control of them so that they could redistribute them to the proper people that the Germans had taken them from. He also took over real estate in the home town of Adolf Hitler and took photos of Hitler's mother and father's grave. He had a man working for him who was a count and was educated in England. He was his right hand man, but Roberts admits that the count did most of the work. The count had a big estate in the mountains and would take Roberts home on weekends and he would sleep in a feather bed with a fireplace in his room. The count had one boy and two girls. Roberts would take the count something to drink and smoke, would take the wife some liquor and the children some gifts. Roberts also went to Vienna with a paratrooper to meet with some German. They had to pass through the Russian zone and it was a little scary because they went on a back road and into some wooded area. There was a car in the woods that flashed their lights, the paratrooper flashed his lights and then they met while Roberts stayed in the jeep. Roberts had the chance, but never went to Paris until after the war. He drove through going from one place to another, but never stopped and saw it. He went to dances and had fun on weekends and would go to small villages that were untouched by the war. He also met Lewis W. Lehr, the head of 3M and traveled some with him during the war. Lieutenant Ted Kendell married a French girl and stayed there after the war. Years later the unit made a trip back to the battle sites and Roberts got to meet back up with him after many years of not seeing one another.

When John M. Roberts rejoined his unit after escaping capture, he had not had a chance to tell anyone what he had been through and, with letters being censored, he had to write in the best way that he could to explain what happened to him. One of the first things he did when he got back to the unit was get new shoes and socks. Carl and Bill Seward [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] came to get Roberts and told him that one of their caterpillar tractors was lost and stuck in the mud somewhere. They told Roberts that Lieutenant Sawyer thought he knew where it was located and they were trying to get him to go with them. Roberts told them that he wanted to stay behind and finish his letter to his girlfriend. It was a good thing that he stayed behind, because they were ambushed on the way there. Lieutenant Sawyer was hit, Bill Seward got half of his hand blown off and Carl Himburg [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] was killed. When Roberts went back in 1944 [Annotator's Note: 1994], he went to the Henri Chapelle cemetery, but was not prepared and could not find Carl's burial place. With little time, Roberts had to get back on the bus and was disappointed that he did not get to find Carl's grave. At the 1944 [Annotator's Note: probably 1994] reunion, they went to Parker's Crossroads because the 598th Field Artillery Battalion was in charge of that area of fighting and they were bore sighting their 105mm howitzers in combat there. Roberts was not part of the fighting there, but the guys he went with on the reunion had been there. That area was critical for the 106th Infantry Division in defending that area. The 106th Infantry Division has a memorial in St. Vith, Belgium. In 1999, Roberts went back with John Kline and a group of other veterans with the association. They rented a car in Frankfurt and drove to the area. There was a photo in an issue of the association's publication at one point showing a jeep and a dead body. The association put the photo in the newsletter to see if anyone could identify it. Roberts saw the photo and recognized it and knew who the dead soldier was, it was Hoffmeier [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling]. Roberts wrote a letter to Hans Weir, who discovered the image. The photo was taken by a German war correspondent and Roberts wanted to try and identify where it was taken since he was ambushed right there. Hans told him that if he ever came back to the site to let him know because he knew exactly where he was ambushed. Roberts went back in 1999 and Hans took him to that site. Roberts had a video camera with him and Hans told him to walk and would instruct him where to stop when he was standing where the ambush happened. It was very emotional for Roberts. From that spot, he followed the creek and the rest of his route. He also got to go to the cemetery and visit Carl's grave.

In 1999, the Belgians who were with John M. Roberts on his tour gave him a rose to put on the grave [Annotator's Note: on the grave of Roberts's friend Carl in the Henri Chapelle Cemetery]. They took a photo of him putting the rose on the grave. They told him to stay there and they took another photo. They sent him copies of the photos and one of the photos had an orange glow right over the grave that was not present in the previous photo. Roberts thinks that Carl knew he was there and was thanking him. Roberts became a first lieutenant before he came home. When he got back to the United States, he went to Camp Kilmer then to Fort Meade where he got his final separation papers. He joined the inactive reserve and was not discharged until 1953. Roberts and a few buddies of his that came home with him called a friend that picked them up and took them around New York City. This was the first time he ever had a shrimp cocktail and he got to see some of a stage show from behind the scenes. Roberts returned to the United States around 14 July 1946. He had been overseas for nearly three years. Roberts had some souvenirs that he brought back, including a German Luger and rifle. After he was home for a while, Roberts and his fiancée got married and they had two sons, one of which they lost a few years before this interview was conducted. They also have five grandkids. Roberts recalled hearing a story that in the 422nd Infantry Regiment, the colonel had to leave when the Bulge broke out. A general called the regimental headquarters to tell the colonel to retreat but the radio operator had asked someone to watch the switchboard while he went to the bathroom and the man watching the switchboard supposedly pulled the plug and they missed the call. Winston Churchill once said there is nothing more exhilarating that being shot at and Roberts says it is true. When you hear bullets go by, you are not yourself. It is survival and you have to stay alive to be able to talk about these things. When he was captured, he was only a prisoner for one day, 16 December [Annotator's Note: 16 December 1944]. He was behind enemy lines until 21 December, but not a prisoner anymore.

In 1987, John M. Roberts learned that the 106th Infantry Division had an association so he joined it and started going to reunions in 1989. He went to every one of them, including the last one. He got active an ended up on the board of directors and was 2nd Vice President, Vice President and President. In Michigan, there was a mini reunion once a year for a local group as well. Roberts started writing a book and it was published in 2003. A tank commander of the 7th Armored Division called Roberts one day and asked him to go to lunch with him. He asked Roberts to help him with declining a book deal. The tank commander, Colonel Dailey [Annotator's Note: Colonel Thomas W. Dailey], asked Roberts to tell Dietter Stinger [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] that he did not want to write a book. Roberts decided to publish his own book and visited Stinger on 11 September 2001 in Quantico. Roberts was captured by regular German soldiers. The Germans would poke the Americans with their rifles to keep them moving along. One German was about to take a dog tag off of a dead American and Roberts stopped him, but the German put the gun in his stomach, which scared him. The Army changed his life for the good. He started as a 16 year old high school kid without future plans and by the time he came home from the war, he had grown up. He went from a private to a first lieutenant which gave him more confidence and a lot of discipline. He got a job with General Motors after the war, as a clerk to start with, but ended up as a supervisor of education and eventually became a personnel director. He dealt with the union and set up a contract in 1964 and was transferred to Indiana to work on the relationship with that plant and the union. In 13 months, he had a contract set up. He was rewarded by becoming a General Administrator of Salaried Personnel and the Director of Personnel services which he retired from. Roberts gives credit to the Army for helping him to become more confident. He did not want to fight, but he knew he had to when his time came. He felt like he had to do his part and he always felt like he had a job to do and had to do it. When he raised his kids, he told them to be themselves and do what they want to do. He also told them to do their best at whatever job they wanted. Robert feels ashamed of the way America is going today and feels it is not his America. He has problems with people coming to this country only to badmouth America. He feels that people should get a job, pay their taxes and live like they should. He feels that Americans should fly the flag as well. He is a very patriotic man that loves his country. He thinks The National WWII Museum is a fantastic place and should find a way to get even more people to visit.