Lowell Hughes was born in Poteau, Oklahoma in October 1919. He stayed there until he was 18 years old. He went to the Citizens Training Camp [Annotator's Note: Citizens Military Training Camp or CMTC; military training camps held annually each summer from 1921 to 1940 in order to give basic military training with no active duty obligation] at Fort Sill [Annotator's Note: near Lawton, Oklahoma] in July 1938. He spent 30 days there then went to Roswell, New Mexico for 60 something years. At CMTC, he mostly did close order drill and marching and he lived in a tent. In 1940, the draft began, and he had to register. Hughes was 21 years old. A week or two later, he was notified he was A-1 [Annotator's Note: 1-A is a Selective Service classification indicating that the individual is available for military service]. He learned that if he signed up and went in for one year, he could do that and then get out. He volunteered but was not called until January 1941. He was inducted 9 January 1941 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was then sent to Fort Sill where the 45th Infantry Division was encamped. In April 1941, they went to Camp Barkeley in Abilene, Texas. They were the first there. Hughes says, "They took Abilene without a shot." It was a good town, but they tore it up. Hughes enjoyed being there. Fort Devens, Massachusetts was their next stop. They were the first people to load an entire division on one troop train. Hughes had a motorcycle. A General arrived to see a demonstration on loading vehicles on a train. Hughes was selected but had not practiced. There was frost on the ramp up to the flatcar, but he made it up there with his motorcycle and the General liked it. Hughes was in Company A [Annotator's Note: at that time, it was Company D, 120th Engineer Combat Regiment, 45th Infantry Division] and they were unloading the troop trains as they came in. It took a month or two to unload the whole Division. This was the first time he lived in barracks. He spent a year there and then went to Pine Camp, New York, now Camp Drum, near Watertown. Hughes calls it the coldest place in the United States. It was 45 degrees below zero when he was there.

Lowell Hughes was stationed at Camp Barkeley near Abilene, Texas when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. A supply sergeant had a radio on. Hughes made reveille [Annotator's Note: bugle or trumpet call used to wake military personnel at sunrise and often requires falling in to report for duty] and then went back to sleep. He heard others talking about the attack and he asked where Pearl Harbor was. They all thought they would go to war the next day. Half of the engineering regiment [Annotator's Note: 120th Engineer Combat Regiment, 45th Infantry Division] was sent to guard the Panama Canal. Hughes stayed in Abilene. His company was changed from Company D to Company A and the regiment was made a battalion. [Annotator's Note: On 22 February 1942, the 120th Engineer Combat Regiment became the 120th Engineer Combat Battalion]. They made A, B, and C Companies. Company A was attached to the 157th Infantry Regiment, Company B to the 179th Infantry Regiment, and Company C to the 180th Infantry Regiment. The ones who went to the Canal Zone stayed for the whole war. He said he would have had good duty there. Hughes almost had his first year of duty up and his discharge paperwork was being prepped. He went over the day after the Pearl Harbor bombing and asked what they were going to do with his discharge papers. They tore them in half and threw them in the waste basket, telling him he was now in for duration plus six months. He wanted out the entire time he served, about four and a half years. They moved around a bit and then shipped out of Hampton Roads, Virginia in May 1943 in a convoy of over 100 ships. He was in the flagship with the admiral. The ships would change course every five minutes to avoid submarines. It took them 28 days to reach Oran, Africa [Annotator's Note: arriving on 22 June 1943].

Lowell Hughes crossed the Atlantic from Norfolk, Virginia to Oran, Africa. The weather was great for the trip. They would sit on the fantail at night. They spent two weeks in Oran on maneuvers and readying to invade Sicily. The reason the Army likes young people is that they just get on with things. He did not think about being scared. When they landed in North Africa, Rommel had been moving around there but the war was just over there by then. They went into Sicily in July 1943 [Annotator's Note: the 45th Infantry Division landed near Scoglitti, Sicily on 10 July 1943]. That morning, a storm came in and the water was rough, eight foot swells. Hughes waited to go in with the trucks around nine o'clock that morning. He climbed into an LCI [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Infantry]. He had never been seasick but he started to, so he climbed back up until it was ready to go. He had made friends with a sailor, and about the time he climbed back up, an American plane flew over and an errant shell hit the bridge. This was the USS Charles Carroll (APA-28) which was later sunk at Normandy. The shell tore a sailor's head off and his friend asked him to help him pick up the bones. Hughes threw them overboard. He then boarded an LCT [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Tank] and had a rough ride in. He got a jeep and looked for his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 120th Engineer Combat Battalion, 45th Infantry Division]. He had no idea where they were and went up a dusty road toward Gila, Sicily. A plane approached and Hughes saw the Nazi crosses for the first time. It scared him. He found his outfit that afternoon.

Lowell Hughes was part of the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. His primary duty as part of the 120th Engineer Combat Battalion was to get the rest of the 45 Infantry Division to where they were needed to go. If the infantry came upon a bombed out bridge, Hughes had to help build a way for them to get across. In Sicily, they mostly were able to bypass everything. Most of the time they were ahead of the infantry. If the Germans had blown a bridge, they were zeroed in on it. Once the engineers started working on it, the Germans would begin shelling them. Very nerve-wracking work. The first 88mms [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] he saw in Sicily drove him up a wall. The US Army did not have a gun close to that then. His outfit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 120th Engineer Combat Battalion, 45th Infantry Division] went into Messina to cut the Germans off from going under the boot. The 120th Engineer Combat Battalion went with one infantry platoon and boarded a ship. They landed close to Messina where the Germans were retreating. They captured quite a few Germans there before the fighting ended. They cleaned up and then invaded Salerno, Italy. Salerno was a rough deal for Hughes. He went from Sicily to Italy on an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. He was onboard with the Black Quartermasters. He had fun on the way over and landed about midnight. Hughes had a Dodge command car [Annotator's Note: Dodge WC series vehicles] that he had really cleaned up. When he drove off the lander, the car went completely underwater. They pulled him out on the beach which was being shelled. Chrysler [Annotator's Note: Chrysler Corporation, American automobile maker] products did not deal with water well. He got it working and made in into an olive orchard to figure out where he was going. He decided to wait for daylight and went to sleep. He was awakened by some trucks going by. He saw they were full of dead Americans, members of the 36th Infantry Division who had been cut to pieces there. He saw six truckloads of dead soldiers and that really opened his eyes. He had never seen anything like before in his life. Hughes spent four sleepless days and nights on the line at Salerno at the Volturno River. He got pulled off the line to get some rest and he fell asleep on the hood of his jeep. Before long they went back on the line. Finally, some P-38s [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighetr aircraft] came in and bombed the area and that saved the day. The Germans had a tobacco factory there that could not be taken by the Allies until then. There were P-47s [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] in on it too. Hughes was on the beach where they had fallen back to. The aircraft were strafing the factory and the bullets were hitting the beach. Once secured, the outfit moved out to Naples, Italy.

Lowell Hughes went from Salerno to Naples, Italy. He did not get any leave for a long time. The landing at Salerno was the roughest part. They had skirmishes all the way up to Venafro. Hughes' work here resulted in a Bronze Star [Annotator's Note: Bronze Star Medal]. He and his engineer battalion [Annotator's Note: Hughes was a member of Company A, 120th Engineer Combat Battalion, 45th Infantry Division] had four bridge by passes to build one afternoon and night. The Germans had zeroed on the area and started shelling it so badly that most of the platoon ran into a cave to hide. Hughes and a captain jumped in a jeep. A Lieutenant Safer [Annotator's Note: no given name provided] jumped in the back. Hughes dropped them both down the road and decided to go back and get the men. Safer went with Hughes and got about 15 soldiers out of the cave. Hughes was decorated for that action. After it got dark, the shelling stopped, and they got the bypasses built. They made it into Venafro about one o'clock in the morning. Everybody was so tired. It was a small town. Hughes found a house that had no roof but had a bed. The next morning, they realized the Germans had stayed the night in town too. The town was right at the edge of the mountains and they ended up fighting there a long time. It once rained for 17 days and nights without stop. The Volturno River flooded and washed out the pontoon bridges they built. There was a half-track tied to it and he thought he would lose it too. The bivouac area was knee deep in sloppy mud. The trucks had to go to Naples every two weeks to have their brakes redone. Hughes liked Naples. Going down there was a good deal. There was a lot to do there like drink wine and hangout. The men would be given three or four days of leave in Naples. Naples was the repair center for military trucks. When a truck had to come down for repairs, men going on leave would be on board. The repaired trucks would then take the men coming off leave back to their outfits. Italians were helping with the brakes. On one trip, Hughes got to spend two weeks there awaiting parts from the United States. One night, they took over a restaurant and locked the doors. They told the restaurant owner they wanted fried chicken and champagne. They ate four chickens and had 16 bottles of champagne. They had a blast and some of the men had to be carried out. That's what happens when soldiers are at war.

There was not much going on when Lowell Hughes landed at Anzio, Italy [Annotator's Note: 22 January 1944]. The landing was a surprise and if they could have gone on, it would have worked but they did not land with enough troops and General Truscott [Annotator's Note: US Army General Lucian King Truscott Jr.] did not do what he was supposed. It was a few days before it got bad. About the first week they were there, Hughes went up around five miles and there was nothing. The Germans were moving divisions in though, and they started shooting Anzio Annie [Annotator's Note: "Anzio Annie" and "Anzio Express" were Allied nicknames for two 280mm Krupp K5 heavy railway guns which the Germans referred to as "Robert" and "Leopold"] down at the ships. It would scare him to death when that gun's rounds came over. Only after the war, did they discover it was a railroad gun. A few days later, the Germans began shelling. Hughes was in a bivouac area about two miles in. They remained there for months. They were lucky they had an R4 [Annotator's Note: Caterpillar R4 bulldozer] and a D8 Caterpillar [Annotator's Note: Caterpillar D8 bulldozer] that they used to dig in. Hughes slept in an area he and the Caterpillar driver dug out and sandbagged. It never was really dry, and everything got moldy. If it rained badly, it would get wet. Everybody smelled the same then, so it did not matter. Hughes only went on patrol on the line one night. He was very afraid. He really felt for the infantry that had to patrol every night. The Germans would drop flares and he would just freeze in place. Other times he was close the front lines, laying wire. Earlier at some caves, Company E [Annotator's Note: [Annotator's Note: Company E, 2nd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division] was there and the British 56th [Annotator's Note: 56th (London) Infantry Division] was taking over. Hughes was supposed to build a bridge, but the Germans had pushed them back. Hughes and his engineers were tasked with taking the wounded British out. It was hard to stand up let alone carry men on a litter. The mortars were firing and bullets going through the air sounded like bees. Hughes had never heard anything like it.

Lowell Hughes was part of the invasion of Anzio, Italy. German mortars and artillery were almost nonstop. The four months he was there, it would lull but at any given moment they could drop a shell in. Hughes remembers trying to play baseball and a shell landed where they were. He does not remember anyone getting killed by a shell. Artillery was the worst part for Hughes. He was shell shocked. For many years afterwards, he worked near a railroad yard and every time he heard rail cars bump each other he would hit the floor. How the Germans ever stood our artillery he does not know. Hughes could not see much of no man's land on a night patrol he had made. He could see a bit of a glow from around a house that had burned. The Germans were setting up a machine gun nest. The lieutenant he was with wanted to go down and knock it out. Hughes said he did not want to do that. He had no authority over Hughes and could not make him go. The lieutenant did go down and take out the gun. Hughes ran into some infantry later and asked about the lieutenant and was told that he had been killed playing around with some German artillery that went off.

Anzio, Italy was the worst place Lowell Hughes ever was. The morning they left, they had dug in about 500 yards from the front line. Hughes, his captain, and First Sergeant were in the dugout and behind them were some tank destroyers with 90mm guns [Annotator's Note: M36 tank destroyer or 90mm Gun Motor Carriage]. The tank destroyers were shooting right over their heads. It was hub to hub artillery, solid artillery for eight to ten miles that fired constantly all night long until daylight. Hughes believes it was 66,000 rounds. The hospital area was about a mile from the beach between the 45th Infantry Division and 3rd Infantry Division. Hughes returned in 1984 to where the 3rd Infantry Division had been. The Germans shelled that hospital every night and killed many nurses and wounded soldiers. At one point, the Caterpillar bulldozer driver from the 120th Engineer Combat Battalion, 45th Infantry Division went down and built embankments around the hospital for them. The Germans did not pay attention to the crosses on the hospital tents. Hughes thought he had a cold or the flu and was told to either work or go to the hospital. Hughes returned to work because he was afraid of the hospital.

Lowell Hughes first encountered Germans in Sicily, Italy. He never had any face to face contact with them but he dealt with their mortars and artillery because of where he would be with regards to the front line. You could not dig foxholes in Sicily because the ground was too hard. Hughes was on the north beach and they were getting shelled by the Germans up in the mountains. Hughes and Sam Milsap had worked all day to dig a foxhole and only made it down four inches. Milsap said he was going to stick his knee up so he could get hit and go home, but whenever a shell was coming in, he would drop his knee down and not do it. Being under artillery fire is nerve wracking. One day, Hughes' belt buckle was dented by a rock thrown by artillery. He came close to being hit by shrapnel and sniper fire at different times. A sniper missed him once when Hughes was relieving himself next to a wall. He was looking for a bivouac once and took a small road that had not been cleared of mines. He noticed some dirt had been dug up and he stopped. He saw that he had just barely missed five mines by just inches. He was shook up the rest of the day. He was working the beach area one day when a jeep with some men came up. They said they were going onto the beach. Hughes warned them not to as it had not been swept for mines. They ignored him, hit a mine, and were killed. Hughes had been trained to take German mines out of the ground. Hughes and another soldier were taking out a Bouncing Betty [Annotator's Note: German S mine] mine in Sicily. It was a tricky mine. They were trying to get it out of the road using a bayonet and accidentally set it off. Luckily, it was a dud. Hughes never forgot that one.

[Annotator's Note: Lowell Hughes served in the Army as an engineer in Company A, 120th Engineer Combat Battalion, 45th Infantry Division.] The 45th Infantry Division broke out of Anzio, Italy and progressed up to Rome [Annotator's Note: beginning on 23 May 1944 and ended in Rome on 4 June 1944]. After the breakout, it was not too bad but a few days before it had been really rough. Some of the platoons were with the infantry and it was a bad sight. He will never forget that sight. The temperatures were hot, and the bodies were swollen. The 45th Infantry Division shoulder insignia was visible all over the hillsides. There were tanks knocked out everywhere. Hughes had a real good buddy of his, Monty Strong, he was a good soldier and a nice man. He had gone into the 179th Infantry Regiment and the morning of the push off he was blown apart in a tank. He is buried at Anzio. The beachhead cemetery at Anzio is a disheartening thing to see. Hughes was present at the dedication of that cemetery in 1985.

Lowell Hughes was out in front of the line at Anzio, Italy in no man's land putting up barbed wire. He had three trucks and his jeep. The ground at Anzio was soft and it was easy to get a truck stuck. Hughes would winch it out but the then get that truck stuck. Around daylight, all of his vehicles were stuck, and they had to walk out. They were very tired. He hit the forest there where the 1st Armored Division was bivouacked. Hughes sat down next to a tree with his Tommy gun [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun]. Somebody picked him up and took him back. The next night he returned to retrieve the trucks. The Germans had shelled them during the day time but they were able to salvage the trucks. They could not move around in the day time. He does not know exactly where they were. They moved from Italy to Southern France [Annotator's Note: landing on 15 August 1944] and it was pretty smooth there. They did not lose any engineers [Annotator's Note: Hughes was a member of Company A, 120th Engineer Combat Battalion, 45th Infantry Division]. France was not well guarded at the time. It is a beautiful part of France. They hit the beach near Nice, France. He thinks they drove 20 miles the next day and did not see anything. The land is pretty flat and hard to defend so the Germans would just move back. After a week or two, they drove so far they ran out of gas.

Lowell Hughes had not come into contact with many German prisoners of war until he got into France. He captured two or three himself. One was a lieutenant on a German motorcycle. Hughes was approaching a crossroads and it was raining and the area was pretty flooded. Hughes saw a motorcycle coming and knew it was German. Hughes just stopped and had his Tommy gun [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun] on him. The German was lost. It was a small motorcycle and Hughes threw it into a foxhole full of water which made the German mad. Hughes made him sit on the front of the jeep. The German had a leather map case which held everything but a map and he would hold the map case in front of his face to keep the rain off. Whenever they reached a small town, he would lower the case and sit up proudly. Hughes captured another lieutenant who did not want to surrender to someone of a lesser rank than him. Hughes wanted his map case to make a camera case out of, so he took it. Hughes was mad at him. He still does not like Germans, he was brainwashed to hate them. Maybe he does not hate them now, but he does not like them or the Japanese.

Lowell Hughes was about an hour late for the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp by the 45th Infantry Division on 28 April 1945. He got there after the 157th Infantry Regiment under Sparks [Annotator's Note: later US Army Brigadier General Felix L. Sparks, commanded 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division] had taken it. That company went nuts when they saw the camp and shot nearly all of the German guards. The first thing Hughes saw was the gondolas [Annotator's Note: coal cars] of the trains that brought the prisoners into the camp. The Germans had not had time to deal with them all and they were still in the gondolas. There were eight to ten of them there by the gate on the railroad tracks and everybody inside of them was dead. Some were lying on the ground. It was a pitiful sight that really got to him. The gate was open to the camp and Hughes drove in. Ten to 15 of the guards were laying there after being shot and not all of them were dead. Some of them wanted Hughes to kill them but he ignored them. Hughes went inside to see the worst thing he had ever seen in his life. There were a few people still alive and ambulatory. Later, Hughes had a flat tire. As he was changing the tire, a prisoner was coming up the road. Hughes was not afraid of him. The man ran to Hughes and tried to hug him. Hughes felt bad that he had to push him off because he was covered with lice. They bivouacked nearby and had three German prisoners with them. Three former camp prisoners came along in their striped uniforms. Hughes made them swap shoes, which really angered the Germans. Hughes thought it was funny and loved it. They moved out of the area the next day.

There was a lot to be done right after the 45th Infantry Division arrived in Munich, Germany on 29 April 1945. Lowell Hughes and a friend from Texas were the only ones with any knowledge of electricity. The war was just about over. It ended while they were there on 8 May 1945. Dachau had just been taken previously. Fürstenfeldbruck [Annotator's Note: 4th Air War School of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), established in 1935] was the airport for Munich. Hughes and his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 120th Engineer Combat Regiment, 45th Infantry Division] made a barbed wire compound for German prisoners. The first night it was built, there were two separate fences, one for the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel, the German paramilitary organization] and one for regular Army. At each corner of the fence, Hughes and his friend set up four searchlights. There was an antiaircraft unit that had not seen combat there. They had half-tracks with four .50s [Annotator's Note: M16 Multiple Gun Motor Carriage, or M16 half-track; self-propelled antiaircraft weapon; equipped with four Browning .50 caliber M2 machine guns] that they used to guard the prisoners. The SS troops decided to escape the night before and broke the fence down. The ones who survived it, did not try it again. The sewer system in Munich was not working. Hughes was tasked with fixing that but did not know what he was doing. The electrical systems were different from what Hughes knew about. Hughes found a German electrician who helped them out with some generators and got it working. Right next door was the BMW [Annotator's Note: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, or Bavarian Motor Works; German vehicle manufacturer] plant that was only making portable generators.

Lowell Hughes thought he would be home by 4 July 1945. When his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company A, 120th Engineer Combat Regiment, 45th Infantry Division] got to Munich, Germany he was told he would be flown home. He got on a train to Metz, Germany where he stayed for a week. Then he was taken by another train to Marseilles, France over four days during which he only had K rations to eat. In Marseilles, there was a camp that he spent another week at. One night he was told to get to the airport. There was a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] there with plywood over the bomb bay doors. They got in and the pilot told him they were headed to Casablanca, Morocco. He thinks there were about ten of them. If anyone wanted to smoke they had to crawl into the nose turret. The lieutenant came back and was talking to them. Hughes wanted to take a picture of the Rock of Gibraltar on the Iberian Peninsula and the pilot flew them over it for him. Hughes was in the nose turret when they landed and was getting nervous about landing, he was scared to death. He spent three days in Casablanca and there were thousands more veterans coming in. They were really shooting dice there and running dice tables. The Andrews Sisters [Annotator's Note: an American singing group made up of Laverne Sophia Andrews, Maxene Anglyn Andrews and Patricia Marie "Patty" Andrews] were singing there. Hughes did not care to hear them and was anxious to go home. He boarded a brand new C-54 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-54 Skymaster cargo/transport aircraft] with blue suede seats. A Staff Sergeant was their steward. They landed in the Azores and spent three days there. He then got on a flight to Newfoundland which was not as nice as the previous plane. They saw oil leaking from an engine and got frightened. They landed and had breakfast. They then went to Maine and took at train to Camp Myles Standish [Annotator's Note: in Taunton, Massachusetts]. Hughes was sent to Fort Devens [Annotator's Note: Ayer and Shirley, Massachusetts].

Lowell Hughes got new uniforms when he returned to Fort Devens [Annotator's Note: Ayer and Shirley, Massachusetts]. He went to get some ice cream and a soldier who thought he was a new recruit told him he probably was not going to like the Army. It took him about a week to get out because the war was not over with Japan. Hughes was not certain he would be discharged either. He went up to an office and found a captain he told he thought he had been forgotten about. One of the men with him wanted to stay in the service, but Hughes wanted to out. He was in the first bunch to be processed out. Only one person decided to stay in. Hughes went down to find that German prisoners were running the tailor shop. The Germans started asking them questions and the soldiers had no a patience for the questions. Hughes went to Lowell, Massachusetts as a civilian to his girlfriend. When on the train to his parent's home, he would tease the military police checking papers. They could see his ruptured duck insignia [Annotator's Note: Honorable Service or Honorable Discharge Emblem; poorly designed eagle led to the nickname], so they knew he was messing with them.

Lowell Hughes feels his war service made him grow up. That is the main thing. He was a man when he got out which might have taken longer otherwise. He tried to find a job. His brother-in-law was working at Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico, at the bomb site. Hughes got a job driving a bus. Jobs were not plentiful. His first wife wanted to move back to Boston so they did. He had been out of work for a couple of months but his wife was making good money in a textile factory. They lived with her family. Hughes got a job with a generator company. They wanted him to teach new employees. He worked with all kinds of people from all walks of life. He worked for a year until the union took over. They were supplying generators for the whole coast. He knew they were closing so he quit instead of joining the union. He went back to New Mexico and opened his own business.