John Shirley was born in December 1924 in Santa Ana, California. He had two sisters. He was in school during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. They had a small orange orchard of five acres. They had about three thousand hens. They had a big garden. His father was a carpenter. Work was hard to find until the WPA [Annotator's Note: Works Progress Administration] started. His mother was a nurse and she could find work pretty easily. His father would carve wood miniatures. His father built a ghost town that is a theme park. When the war broke out his father helped build ships. His mother died in 1942 right before he was shipped overseas. His father fought in World War 1 [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918]. Shirley rode his bike to school. He had a paper route. It was a long paper route of about 10 to 12 miles. When he graduated high school, he was 17 years old. He went to college to study dairy science. He was drafted in 1943. He trained at Camp Cook, just north of Los Angeles [Annotator’s Note: Los Angeles, California]. By the time he graduated from basic training, he was promoted to corporal. Shirley was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for OCS [Annotator's Note: officer candidate school]. He became a sergeant while he was there.

John Shirley was an infantry replacement sergeant. He was stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland. After a three-day leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] he boarded a liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] for the 22-day trip across the Atlantic Ocean. They were in a convoy of 120 ships. They ended up in Casablanca [Annotator’s Note: Casablanca, Morocco]. There were 500 replacements on the ship. They ate steamed rice and boiled potatoes. They were sent to Palermo [Annotator’s Note: Palermo, Sicily, Italy]. The first person Shirley saw get killed was a 10-year-old boy. He was hit by one of the Army trucks. Next, they went to Naples [Annotator’s Note: Naples, Italy] to a replacement depot. The Cassino front [Annotator’s Note: the Battle of Monte Cassino, 17 January to 18 May 1944] was north of Rome [Annotator’s Note: Rome, Italy]. The first battle of Cassino failed and they were stranded at the Anzio beach [Annotator’s Note: Anzio, Italy]. The Germans had surrounded the beachhead. Two battalions of Rangers were captured. In the middle of May 1944, they broke out. Shirley was in the 3rd Division, 15th Infantry [Annotator’s Note: 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division]. They trained and planned for the breakout. There would be 12 men in a sled pulled by a tank. The Germans had the high ground at the Anzio beachhead. They gathered at nighttime to head to the front. Shirley received 40 letters at once. He thought he would not stay alive long enough to read them. Naval artillery started opening up on the German front lines. Shirley was in one of the sled squads. They moved forward toward the German line. When they got into an open field of wheat, machine gunfire was going off over their heads shredding the grains.

John Shirley [Annotator’s Note: a sergeant with the 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division serving in Italy] remembers his first few minutes in combat, artillery pounding the heck out of them. [Annotator’s Note: He is referring to the Cassino Front in Italy]. He came up to an anti-tank ditch with the sled team. He saw a man get blown up by a mine. This was the first American soldier he saw get killed. Shirley climbed into the ditch to be safe. He had to look out to see where the Germans were. He saw a German flamethrower [Annotator's Note: ranged incendiary device that projects a controllable jet of fire]. He was one of two sergeants on his sled team. Shirley and a few others were out of the ditch crawling toward the German side. The BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle] man was shot in front of Shirley and he rolled the man out of the way and kept going. He made it to the other trench and threw a hand grenade into a house. There were no Germans in the trench. Shirley killed his first enemy soldier behind a house. He went into hand-to-hand combat against another German, breaking the wooden part of his gun. Shirley was alone in the trench looking at the German bunker. The Germans waved white flags indicating they were done. Shirley had to take the Germans back to a prison collection point. After four days, they lost several men in their company.

John Shirley [Annotator’s Note: a sergeant with the 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division serving in Italy] was near Artina [Annotator’s Note: Artina, Italy], one of the objectives at the time. They lost three men while heading to Artina in trucks. They were trying to get there before the Germans. They were going through the mountains. A piece of artillery hit the truck Shirley and his men were in. The sergeant in the front seat was decapitated. The men were running for the ditches. After that, they marched on foot toward Artina. They entered Rome [Annotator’s Note: Rome, Italy] on the 4th of June, two days before the Normandy beachhead [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. They had clean uniforms and haircuts during their training in Rome for two weeks. Then they went to Naples [Annotator’s Note: Naples, Italy] to prepare for the invasion of Southern France [Annotator’s Note: the Invasion of Southern France, code named Operation Dragoon, 15 August 1944]. Shirley was a platoon sergeant. This would be a daytime landing. They were on Navy transports. They rode in landing crafts [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP; also known as the Higgins boat] until it was time to head in for the landing. They were assigned to Yellow Beach. There were no mines on the sand where Shirley was. The Germans were up on the hills. They had to march up the hill to the Germans. They made it to the top of the hill and went back down. They spent the day marching then went back and ate C-rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food]. They marched all night long and the next morning. The Germans had orders to retreat. Shirley and his men went 400 miles in one month.

John Shirley [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division] and his men got ahead of the German Army to stop them [Annotator’s Note: following the Allied Invasion of Southern France, Operation Dragoon; 15 August 1944]. The aircraft wiped out two lines of the Germans. There were big battles in some of the towns, such as Besançon [Annotator’s Note: Besançon, France]. They traveled 400 miles in one month. They made it to Strasbourg [Annotator’s Note: Strasbourg, France] in December. They had C-rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food] for Thanksgiving dinner. They did not have hot kitchens. One time, they had hot showers and clean uniforms. The rest of the time, they were in dirty clothes. They dug a foxhole every night. Strasbourg was a big city. Shirley was sent to school for guns while he was there. On 19 December [Annotator’s Note: 1944], they had to load up and leave the camp. They went south about 60 miles. The Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] had started on the 16th of December. They had to relieve the 36th Division [Annotator’s Note: 36th Infantry Division]. By 23 December, they were fighting in the Colmar Pocket [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Colmar Pocket, 20 January to 9 February 1945; Alsace, France]. Every building was destroyed. They were fighting in rubble. One hill was still armed by the Germans. Artillery was coming in. Shirley had shrapnel cut through his pants, but he was not injured. They came across German Panzer tanks [Annotator's Note: panzer is the German term for armored and typically refers to tanks] as they entered the center of the town. Shirley and his men helped the wounded and got them into the cellar of a house. As Shirley looked out, he saw several Germans. He threw a hand grenade out at them. The company commander came back and said there was a tank coming. Shirley called for artillery because they were surrounded on three sides. The tank came into the courtyard. The tank started firing. It fired three rounds. When they returned to the cellar there were two wounded Germans in there with their wounded. The Germans had attacked the cellar behind Shirley’s back. The artillery opened up on them and Shirley got hit in the mouth. It knocked out his teeth and cut the inside of his mouth. After the attack, they all came out and started walking with the Germans. Shirley hit the German corporal and then hid in the rubble. He did not want to get captured. He made his way to a house where he found two GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] and they helped him.

John Shirley [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division] was sent to England to a hospital [Annotator’s Note: having been wounded in action near Colmar, France]. After two months recuperating in England, he was sent back to the front lines. Shirley wrote a book hoping he would hear from people who served with him. Shirley was wounded in a cellar from tank fire. He could not speak due to his wounds. He went back to an aid station. They gave him morphine and bandaged him up. From there, he was sent to a hospital in Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France] and then on to England. He had to cross the English Channel. He was there for a couple of months. Then he had leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] in London [Annotator’s Note: London, England] before being sent back to the front lines. When he got to Germany, he was in a weapons company. He had to learn about heavy machine guns. The Nuremberg battle [Annotator’s Note: the Battle of Nuremberg, Germany; 16 to 20 April 1945] was a big battle. Shirley got a battlefield commission. They fought for four days at Nuremberg. This was the first time Shirley shot at a German civilian. They had a lot of anti-aircraft and 88s [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] there.

John Shirley [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division] had to occupy a forest until midnight. They came up to a village and a German was walking toward him with several canteens. In southern Germany, the Germans were surrendering like crazy. The German indicated for Shirley to follow him. He followed and came upon about 40 Germans who were sleeping and had tons of weapons. He hoped they would be surrendering. There was a German with a rifle pointed at Shirley hiding behind a tree. Pretty soon the Germans surrendered and Shirley walked them down to the MPs [Annotator's Note: military police]. Another two soldiers captured about 100 Germans who surrendered. Roughly 100,000 Germans went through the prisoner of war camps. They had to try and cross a river, but it was too swift for anyone to cross. Shirley tied a wire around his waist and walked across the river. Then he was on the German side. They crossed back and then he was called up by his commanders. The lieutenant was being court martialed for not making it across the river. Shirley was not given the battlefield commission. He was sent to Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France] to rest. While he was in Paris, they had crossed the river and made it closer to Strasbourg [Annotator’s Note: Strasbourg, France]. They built bridges to get the tanks across for combat.

John Shirley [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division] was moving toward Strasbourg [Annotator’s Note: Strasbourg, France]. He was commissioned on the battlefield. His platoon was on foot to scout it out. They were dead tired and the men were drinking a little too much. Most of the men were riding on tanks. They came across a roadblock of logs across the road. The tanks did not wait for the road to be cleared. The Germans opened fire on the tanks. The first tank was hit. Shirley’s platoon took cover in a house. They captured the town and moved toward Strasbourg. They did not fight in Strasbourg. They fought Germans in apartment houses on the other side of the town. They called it the Battle of the Apartments.

John Shirley [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division] was not in Berchtesgaden [Annotator’s Note: Berchtesgaden, Germany]. He received a battlefield commission in Nuremberg [Annotator’s Note: Nuremberg, Germany]. He was sent back to Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France] to a school for newly commissioned officers. He had to learn all the things that officers were supposed to know. Eventually, he commanded his unit as a Second Lieutenant. The company commander was able to go home and Shirley was the next officer in line. They did not have much to do with civilians. They did not see many civilians. There was not a lot of fighting in the villages. One of Shirley’s men was wounded and he hid in a barn. Shirley had to get him back to the company. Shirley was in Paris, France in school when the war ended. Then he went to Austria and did occupied duty there for a while. Then he was sent to Germany for occupation duty until he was sent home. They were stationed in a German village. He was staying in a German home. The man had flown planes in World War 1 [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918] and bombed England. There was an officers’ club there. Shirley had never been drunk in his life until then. He had five shots of cognac and got sick. He had vomited the teeth out the window [Annotator’s Note: Shirley had previously been wounded in the mouth]. He found a German dentist to get new teeth. The dentist only wanted a carton of cigarettes for the work. After that, he was shipped home. On the way home, it was Shirley’s job to convert the money to American dollars. They could not sail right away because there was too much wind. He had to wait until they were aboard the ship to pass the money back out to the men. There were about 5,000 people on the ship. There was a raffle for a convertible. The winner could have the car or a thousand dollars.

John Shirley [Annotator’s Note: who had served with the 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division from Italy to Germany] remembers it only took six days to cross the Atlantic on the way home. He had to take a train across the country to Los Angeles [Annotator’s Note: Los Angeles, California]. He got home on Christmas Eve [Annotator’s Note: 24 December 1945]. He was studying to be a dairy farmer before the war. He studied to be a veterinarian after the war. He got a horse to ride and take care of. He went to the University of California, Davis in 1948. He was in the first class of that veterinary school. He graduated in 1952. He used the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] for six years. He got 75 dollars a month for room and board. He saved about 3,500 dollars during the war. He remodeled a garage into a veterinary hospital, and then he built his own hospital.

John Shirley wrote ten war stories. His first day in combat was memorable. He climbed out of a ditch and onto the German side. They had 3,300 men killed and wounded in 12 days. He never had any nightmares. He grew up in the war. He prayed to God to spare his life. His parents did not think he should drink. World War 2 changed the world. It was the biggest conflict we have ever had. It ended the colonial system. It brought in the atomic age [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. It left the United States as one of the superpowers of the world. He thought about staying in the Army. He was well-decorated. He thinks he might have been killed in Korea [Annotator’s Note: The Korean War was a war fought between North Korea and South Korea from 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following clashes along the border and rebellions in South Korea] if he had stayed in. He was very lucky. Eventually, he thought the praying he did was not working. It is important for leadership to understand how combat affects young people before getting into a war. It is good to be happy and have others happy because of you. He was mayor of the town once. It is important to set a good example for the children. Integrity is important. If you tell someone you are going to do something, you better do it.