Joseph Alter was born in New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] in May 1923. His father kept his job as a funeral hearse driver through the Great Depression. Things were rough. His stepmother's family moved in with his family for about four years. He had two sisters. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Alter where he was when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] Alter was at a party. He left home at 5:30 the next morning to enlist. He knew there would be excitement and he loves his country. He went to enlist in the Marines, but he was colorblind. He went to the Navy and was rejected for the same reason. The Army took him on 16 December [Annotator's Note: 16 December 1941]. He thought the Marines would be more exciting. He went to Fort Bragg [Annotator's Note: Fort Bragg, North Carolina] to the artillery replacement training center where he was attached to a 155 howitzer unit [Annotator's Note: M1 155mm howitzer; nicknamed Long Tom]. He drove a truck, was on a gun crew, and got forward observer training. He was told to report to battalion headquarters and was sent to Combat Engineer OCS [Annotator's Note: officer candidate school]. It was a perfect fit.

Joseph Alter says it is hard to describe the humiliation and tension he went through [Annotator's Note: in officer candidate school]. It makes sense though. If someone fails, they are not viewed negatively. It was the most intense three months. They never walked unless they were in formation. They were not allowed to let their backs touch the back of the chair in mess. They never got a pass [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. He learned how to assemble different types of bridges, how to use explosives, and infantry tactics. He also learned the customs of the Army and they did a lot of physical training. It was not easy, but it was the right thing to do. Alter says his instructors were excellent and did the best they could. He did not understand one thing and that was that the Army was always short of engineer officers. Only the top ten percent of West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy, West Point, New York] are qualified as engineers. He trained at Fort Belvoir, Virginia and was commissioned. A WAC [Annotator's Note: Women's Army Corps; women's branch of the United States Army, 1942 to 1978] was the first person who saluted him.

After being commissioned, Joseph Alter was sent to Camp Beale, California [Annotator's Note: now Beale Air Force Base in Marysville, California] to form a new battalion. It was a beautiful assignment. He applied for a transfer because he had enlisted to kill Germans. After a month he went to Camp Shenango [Annotator's Note: later named Camp Reynolds in Transfer, Pennsylvania]. He then went on the RMS Queen Elizabeth and landed in Scotland. He was assigned to an engineer unit in Rochester, England. He was in Company B, 1340th Engineer Combat Battalion as platoon commander and motor officer. He felt he was responsible for keeping the vehicles in good order so he would take motorcycles on test rides in the English countryside every weekend. He was supposed to have 46 men but rarely had 30. He learned a lot from them. His men had already landed in Africa and Sicily [Annotator's Note: Sicily, Italy] when he joined them in England. They were a good, disciplined unit. There were some negative feelings since he was younger, but that changed after Normandy [Annotator's Note: Normandy, France]. His unit had been together since 1940 and were close-knit. He joined them in November 1943. He has gaps in his memories about his experiences.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Joseph Alter what the trip overseas aboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth was like.] Alter says it was the biggest craps [Annotator's Note: gambling game played with dice] game he ever saw. They cleared mines [Annotator's Note: stationary explosive device triggered by physical contact] off the beach after arriving in England. In 1940, in Operation Lion [Annotator's Note: Operation Sea Lion, German plan for the invasion of Great Britain], the Brits [Annotator's Note: slang for British] expected to be invaded. They planted mines on the beach. They lost a few people blowing up the mines. They moved to Devon [Annotator's Note: Devon County, England] and did training in the moors [Annotator's Note: also called moorland, type of habitat in England]. Alter had an accident and was hospitalized. The training was realistic. It occurred to him that he might have been fragged [Annotator's Note: when an unpopular senior officer is deliberately killed with a hand grenade] because he was inexperienced. They received amphibious training too. He ended up in what was called a "sausage" [Annotator's Note: the American military camps around England were referred to as "sausage camps" since they resembled sausages when viewed from the air] near Southampton [Annotator's Note: Southampton, England]. The roads were bent and had wire strung around them. Once the enlisted personnel went in, they could not leave. Alter went over on an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. The most dangerous part of the invasion was getting down the cargo net and into the Higgins boat [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP]. It was slippery because there was a lot of vomit at the bottom of the boat due to the rough weather. Alter really admires the British people. He never heard a complaint and things were rough for the civilians. He was committed to his girlfriend back home. They used V-mail [Annotator's Note: Victory Mail; postal system put into place during the war to drastically reduce the space needed to transport mail] and he looked forward to receiving it. [Annotator's Note: Alter discusses how the soldiers of the American Civil War, 1861 to 1865, wrote letters.] Alter had to censor the enlisted men's mail and he found that disturbing and uncomfortable. He does not recall stress leading up to the invasion. He lost his best friend on D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. Alter was 20 years old. He has never had nightmares [Annotator's Note: about the war].

The weather was rough when Joseph Alter crossed the Channel [Annotator's Note: the English Channel on 6 June 1944]. It was crowded but clean and they had coffee and hot food on the LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. He landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. He was on a British landing craft. There was nowhere to go. The cliff was in front of them. He says they were very ineffective. Everybody is scared. You just run like hell. Alter has heard there are no atheists in foxholes, but the closest he heard to a prayer was "Holy Shit.” They landed later than they were supposed to, at about ten [Annotator's Note: in the morning]. They did not get out from behind the sea wall until the afternoon. They went about a half-mile in and stayed there. There was a lot of air activity at night. A few days later, Alter got in trouble with his battalion commander [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Truman H. Setliffe] for not shaving. About two weeks later, they went to Cherisy Forest [Annotator's Note: Cherisy, France]. There were seven roads that met at the same spot about three miles off the beach. It was a bottleneck, and the Germans were shelling the spot. Alter and his outfit [Annotator's Note: 1340th Engineer Combat Battalion] got the job of building a traffic circle.

The hedgerows were maybe 1,000 years old and enclosed every acre or two. Joseph Alter says some of them were eight feet high and five feet thick and most only had one entrance. It was difficult to climb over. Each field was wide open and each one was like a fortress. It was hard to do offensive combat. Alter tried to blow a hole through a hedgerow, and nothing happened. A lot of people were lost. An American sergeant figured out how to weld teeth on the front of tanks to help the tanks go through them. As an engineer, he was a Corps troop. They worked with a lot of different Divisions. They landed in Normandy [Annotator's Note: Normandy, France] with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division [Annotator's Note: on 6 June 1944]. Whoever needed them would get them. Engineers often worked in small units. He once worked 48 hours without stopping. They gave the troops narcotics to be able to do build a bridge. He liked his battalion commander [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Truman H. Setliffe] who was only 26 years old. Alter was sent to repair a damaged bridge with a squad. Mortar fire came in, but they repaired the bridge quickly. The commander did not believe they had done the job and sent someone to check. Years later, Alter ran into him at a reunion and let him have it for not apologizing to him. Alter says the fastest digging machine in the world is a scared infantryman with an entrenching tool.

Joseph Alter lost men in his platoon. He lost two men in the Hurtgen Forest [Annotator's Note: Battle of Hürtgen Forest, 19 September 1944 to 10 February 1945] to artillery. They lost a lot there to trench foot [Annotator's Note: immersion foot syndrome]. The commander of the 28th Division [Annotator's Note: 28th Infantry Division] was Norman Cota [Annotator's Note: then US Army Brigadier General, later Major General, Norman Daniel "Dutch" Cota, Sr.]. He was a good commander, and he took risks. You do not always win doing that. The fighting in the Hurtgen Forest was fierce. In Schmidt [Annotator's Note: Schmidt, Germany] there was a dam on the Rur River [Annotator's Note: also called the Roer River]. If he could have taken the dam, he could have shortened the war. Cota saw an opportunity to proceed but the Germans hit him on both sides. They were decimated. Alter was working on roads. It was the rainy season, and it was muddy. They got pulled out and were thrown into the line as infantry with another battalion. They established a line and took a lot of losses. Alter was decorated due to his actions there. They had no blankets, were short of ammunition, had no food, no coats, or adequate foot gear. It began to snow. They held off the Germans who continued to shell them. Alter volunteered to get a party to bring in supplies. On their way back, they got to Vossenack [Annotator's Note: Vossenack, Germany] and he saw a medical unit with Weasels [Annotator's Note: M29 Weasel tracked vehicle]. He asked them to evacuate some of the wounded and they refused. They took cover from an incoming barrage and Alter appropriated their vehicle [Annotator's Note: 8 November 1944]. He used it to take in supplies and take the wounded out. He got a medal [Annotator's Note: Bronze Star Medal, the fourth-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy]. The Germans could see him but were missing him with their fire. He was afraid but enjoyed it. Nothing is as exciting as being scared and beating it. Some people get addicted to it. Alter thinks his commander, Setliffe [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Truman H. Setliffe], was. Alter had learned to operate different types of machinery in training so he could drive the Weasel. It was cold as hell in the forest with a foot or two of snow. Half of the men were lost to trench foot. They went from five officers to two.

Joseph Alter first used his personal weapon on a patrol. He was a reconnaissance officer for his battalion [Annotator's Note: 1340th Engineer Combat Battalion] for a while. He went into a town with an infantry patrol and all hell broke loose. He used just about every bullet every had. He carried a Thompson [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun] that he removed the stock from. He did not need accuracy as he used it as a defensive weapon. He found an Army long bullet .45 [Annotator's Note: Colt Single Action Army M1873 revolver] in Europe. It was psychologically a beautiful weapon. He was pulled off the line. Alter was made executive officer [Annotator's Note: of Company B, 1340th Engineer Combat Battalion] after the Hurtgen Forest. [Annotator's Note: The Interviewer asks him about the Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945.] Alter and his unit spent the time around Malmedy [Annotator's Note: Malmedy, Belgium] where the Army Air Forces bombed them about five or six days in a row. Alter says that he has read about the Tillman [Annotator's Note: US Army Corporal Patrick Daniel Tillman, Jr.] stink. [Annotator's Note: Tillman was reported killed in an enemy ambush in Afghanistan on 22 April 2004, however, an investigation proved it was a friendly fire incident.] There are always friendly fire casualties. It is chaotic. At OCS [Annotator's Note: officer candidate school] at Fort Belvoir [Annotator's Note: Fort Belvoir, Virginia] was a big sign that read, "when you are up to your ass in alligators, it is difficult to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamps." When things are happening, you do not do things according to the book. During the Battle of the Bulge, his battalion's job was to keep the supply roads open. The Germans had dropped English-speaking paratroopers in American uniforms to create havoc in the rear. He patrolled to make sure they could not disrupt the traffic. They never encountered any of these soldiers. They did this for about a week and it never got above freezing. They got equipped better later and did go through a laundry once. [Annotator's Note: Alter describes the process in great detail.]

Joseph Alter does not remember how he heard that the war was over. He was uncomfortable because that evening they left their windows open with the lights on. This had not happened in years. The war was still expected in Japan. Alter was surprised that the Russians he met at the Elbe River [Annotator's Note: Elbe River, Germany] were very small. Their casualty rate [Annotator's Note: the Soviet Army] was enormous. Alter got home in October [Annotator's Note: October 1945]. His outfit [Annotator's Note: Company B, 1340th Engineer Combat Battalion] was dissolved, and he was made company commander of an armored unit. They traveled by train across Europe, and it took weeks. There were no bathrooms. He did some occupation duty while in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. They had a party, and he woke up the next day miles away. He got into trouble in the Sudetenland [Annotator's Note: historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of the former Czechoslovakia]. They were bivouacked [Annotator's Note: a bivouac is a temporary campsite] in a dance hall. They were posted as guards around the hospital with German soldiers. There was a rumor of a Werwolf [Annotator's Note: Werwolf; 1944 Nazi plan to create a resistance force operating behind Allied lines in Germany] unit being formed. A Romanian soldier approached the guards and told the Americans there were weapons in the basement. They found weapons but there was no Werwolf unit. Alter went after a doctor there and started banging him around. He almost killed the doctor.

After Saint-Lo [Annotator's Note: Saint-Lô, France], Joseph Alter and his outfit [Annotator's Note: 1340th Engineer Combat Battalion] were attached to an armored unit that raced across France. After the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], he was attached to the 9th Armored [Annotator's Note: 9th Armored Division] and raced across Germany, going 30 to 50 miles a day. They would isolate towns and take off again the next morning. They arrived at the Elbe River near Dresden [Annotator's Note: Dresden, Germany]. Nobody was there. You have to keep troops busy, so they did close order drill along the road for two or three weeks. Finally the Russians arrived. They went into Czechoslovakia in Domezlice, outside of Prague. He would go into town nearly every day. He recently went on a tour and went to a cemetery in Luxembourg. A map there that showed the locations of American troops was incorrect and Alter pointed it out. Earlier in the war, Alter and his unit were attached to the 2nd French Armored Division [Annotator's Note: French 2nd Armored Division] of the Free French. The 4th Infantry Division were the first to get to the border. They held back and gave the French the honor of taking Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France, 25 August 1944]. It is a scene he will never forget. They went crazy. He did not stay that night and went back in the next day. There were still snipers. Alter was in the plaza at Notre Dame [Annotator's Note: Notre-Dame de Paris, medieval Catholic church, Paris, France] when Charles De Gaulle [Annotator's Note: French Army Brigadier General Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle; later President of France] arrived. There was a sniper inside the church who opened up.

After the war ended in Europe, being transferred to the Pacific was kind of voluntary. Joseph Alter had made a commitment to marry at home. He thought he would become a cop. His fiancée told him about the G.I. Bill. He did not sign up for the Reserves. He got home in October 1945 because he had points to burn [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home]. He started at NYU [Annotator's Note: New York University in New York, New York] in February [Annotator's Note: February 1946]. He had a job and went to school at night. Hearing the Japanese surrendered gave him glee. He gets annoyed with second guesses, like hearing there is unhappiness that we used the atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. Things were desperate and it was an estimated half a million casualties. Alter was not unhappy in the Army. If not for his obsession with the gal who became his wife, he would have stayed in. He was separated at Fort Monmouth [Annotator's Note: Fort Monmouth, New Jersey] on 29 December [Annotator's Note: 29 December 1945]. He got a lot of money he was owed. He went back to the Bronx [Annotator's Note: Bronx borough, New York, New York] with a fortune in his pocket. It would not have been a good idea for somebody to mug him though. Alter left the service at 22 and was all grown up. It was a fabulous experience, and he has no regrets. He did not get nightmares. The war taught him that you have to do what you have to do. World War 2 was the last just war. Alter does not know that it is taught much today, and he is unhappy about developments since. [Annotator's Note: Alter lists every war from the Korea War, 1950 to 1953 to present.] We have become the world's bully. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if Alter thinks The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana should continue to teach about the war.] Alter thinks it is a fabulous museum and it takes about three days to see it. He is glad somebody is keeping a record.