Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. was born in 1923 and raised in West Point, Mississippi. His father's family moved to Mississippi in 1919 from Iowa where they were farmers. Hazard's great grandfather on his father's side was with Sherman [Annotator's note: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman] and Hazard's mother's family fought to keep Sherman from making it across Georgia, so his family never discussed the Civil War. When the Great Depression hit, his family had trouble making payments so they lost their farm. They did not lose the livestock and equipment, however, so they rented another farm and continued their trade. Hazard went to college in 1941. His parents scraped together 100 dollars for his first semester's tuition and room, but told him that they did not think that they could get that much money together for every semester. Hazard found a job working in the Animal Husbandry Department at State [Annotator's note: Mississippi State College, now known as Mississippi State University] so he could save up enough money to pay for tuition the next semester. He also got a job with the Dairy and Agronomy Departments. On the afternoon of Sunday, 7 December 1941, Hazard was sitting on the bull ring with a bunch of people talking when someone came up and told them that Japan had just bombed Pearl Harbor. They all got up and tried to find a radio to see what was going on. The next day, the United States declared war on Germany and Japan. Germany had been sinking American ships in the North Atlantic but there had not been much said about it. Now that people had attacked America, there was no panic in the United States. Instead, a sense of deep, inner rage that someone would attack the United States unprovoked. They started it, so they would have to pay. Everyone that was able bodied, immediately started to make his plans. The draft was in effect, and volunteers were pouring in so fast that the military was overwhelmed. America was not really ready for war. Hazard and a bunch of his friends decided that since Mississippi State had ROTC [Annotator's note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] that they would sign up for that and maybe go in with a commission. One day, 65 of them went down and signed up for ROTC, which was a good idea, but it did not work. They started advanced ROTC, but were now privates in the Army and were sent to Camp Shelby. From there they went on to Fort McClellan, Alabama for infantry basic training. With a large part of their college behind them, Hazard and his buddies all signed up to go to Officer Candidate School [Annotator's note: also referred to as OCS] at Fort Benning, Georgia. He thought that all of them were accepted and they were sent to OCS, but they did not have room for them or guns to issue them. They had to put off OCS and were sent back as a unit to Mississippi State for nearly a semester and got credit for school. They were in uniform living in the old dormitory as barracks, drilling and going to class. Finally, there was enough room at Fort Benning for OCS training so they all left and went back Georgia. Typically, an OCS class would flunk out about 50 percent of the cadets. In Hazard's class, about 65 percent graduated and received their commissions. From that point, they were scattered everywhere. Hazard and two other men were assigned to the 42nd Infantry Division at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma. Mickey Walker [Annotator's note: Emmett H. Walker, Jr.] was one of them. Walker stayed in the Army after the war and finished his career as a four star general. Lucious Walter Jerdan [Annotator's note: unsure of spelling], also known as Skinhead, was from Kosciusko, Mississippi and he and Hazard both went into the Army Reserves after the war.

Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. was always a thinker and he designed a way to make things easier for his men when marching. Hazard explained to the men in his platoon, 1st Platoon, Company B, 1st Battalion, 232nd Infantry Regiment, [Annotator's Note: 42nd Infantry Division] that if they would learn to stretch out and get 36 inches on the marches, that every time they took five steps then other people would have to take six steps. Every Friday night, there was an all night march and different companies would lead the regiment in the march. Finally, it came time for Company B to lead the regimental march. Since Hazard had the 1st Platoon, his guys were leading the 3,000 men of the regiment. They started off at their correct cadence, but taking six extra inches every step. Before they had gone an hour, people were falling out behind them and were trotting. The colonel came up and glared at Hazard. At a break, Hazard reported to him and was told that he was going too fast. Hazard argued with the colonel that they were at the correct cadence. They continued the march at the correct cadence but by this point in the march, ambulances were picking up the ones behind that were falling out. This happened in the summer of 1944 in the red hills of Oklahoma. The colonel went up ahead and one of Hazard's men notified him that the colonel was up ahead hiding in the bushes watching them. Hazard dropped alongside his men and softly started counting the cadence. The colonel challenged him and told him that they were going too fast. Again, Hazard assured him that they were at the correct cadence and the colonel notified him that the men were falling out, to which Hazard suggested that maybe those men were not in as good of shape as Hazard's men. The colonel did not want to hear that and told him to wait and join in on the tail end of the march. Men were encouraged to sing during the march to improve morale, but men carrying a pack on a march in the middle of the Oklahoma summer and walking 20 miles, did not want to sing. As they approached camp that morning at daylight, Hazard noticed that the colonel was sitting on the front porch of his house. Hazard dropped back and told his men that the colonel wanted them to sing and that he was up ahead. Hazard asked them to sing when they got close to the colonel's home. The next morning, Hazard got orders to report to Fort Meade, Maryland to the staging area for going overseas. Hazard was supposed to have 90 days of troop duty and he had not yet been with the 42nd Division for 90 days, so they had to hold him there until the 90 days were met. Once his 90 days were up, Hazard and his two friends, Walker and Jerdan [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], went to Camp Shanks, then to New York City where they boarded the Ile de France [Annotator's note: SS Ile de France]. Hazard had 40 men assigned to him aboard the ship and his men slept down in the hold on canvas beds that went all the way up to the ceiling. The officers were taken to staterooms, which were small rooms with steel bunk beds and just enough room to get between them to crawl up one side or the other to the top. The morning after going aboard, Hazard went to see his men and saw men still loading the ship. When he got to his men, they were all mad at one man who had gotten seasick and had thrown up on everyone below him from the top bunk. The soldier told Hazard that when they hit the storm the previous night he got seasick. Hazard took him to the top deck to show him that soldiers were still coming aboard and that they were still tied to the pier. The soldier quickly recovered from his seasickness and never got seasick across the Atlantic Ocean.

Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. had two master sergeants assigned to him on the journey over. They would play cards and shoot dice during the trip. One of the sergeants told Hazard that he had a good night the previous night and asked him to keep a little change for him. He then handed Hazard 4,000 dollars. Hazard handed it back to him. He had never seen that much money before in his life and he was not going to keep it. Mickey [Annotator's Note: later US Army General Emmett Hudson Walker], Skinhead, and Hazard each put ten dollars up as a bet that the last one to get seasick would win the 30 dollars. Each time one of them went up on the deck, the others went behind him to see if he was getting queasy. By the time they reached their destination, they each got their own ten dollars back. On the seventh day, they were off of the coast of Ireland. They landed at Gourock, Scotland. They got off of the boat and went straight onto a troop train. Hazard did get to see Glasgow while riding on the train before it got dark and they had to pull the shades. At noon the next day, they arrived at an underground station in London and got off of the train. When they did, a gift of bread, cheese and an apple was given to each man. They ate, stretched a little bit and then got back on the train which took them to the dock in Southampton [Annotator's Note: Southampton, England]. Hazard had been told that if wanted to be a hit with the English girls, he should give them soap. While he was at Fort Meade, before leaving the United States, Hazard boxed up his dress uniform and shipped it home. He then went to the PX [Annotator's note: Post Exchange] and bought a case of Palmolive soap. He packed it in the bottom of his duffle bag with his clothes on top. He carried it on the ship, the train ride and then onto the ship across the channel. Hazard landed in Normandy across Omaha Beach. There was wreckage on the beach still and the fighting had moved inland. Hazard was with a number of other replacements. They came over the side of their ship into LCIs [Annotator's note: Landing Craft, Infantry] and climbed down cargo nets to the landing craft while the ships were bobbing up and down. The LCIs dropped them at Omaha Beach and they waded ashore. Hazard held his rifle out of the water and had the soap in his bag as he waded ashore. Hazard and his group climbed up a path to the top of the cliff. When they got to the top, they got a wakeup call. From their location on the cliff, they could see fresh graves with wooden crosses on top. They knew then that it was not fun and games. They walked inland about three miles through the hedgerows where they spent the night. Hazard looked at some of the Frenchmen there and realized that there was no need to keep this soap, so that night he left the case of Palmolive soap on the side of the road which made his duffle bag easier to carry. The next morning, they were taken to a replacement depot and there the three, Mickey, Skinhead and Hazard were split up. Skinhead and Hazard went to the 79th Infantry Division and Hazard thinks Mickey went to the 94th Infantry Division.

The 79th Infantry Division had just come off of the front line to rest and resupply. Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. was assigned to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment. His friend, Skinhead, was assigned to Company L, 3rd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment. They stayed in that area for three or four days training all the replacements and connecting with the combat vets in the unit. George Dale was the company commander and Ralph Keith was the second in command. They put Hazard in charge of the 1st Platoon. Batchy Galupe [Annotator's note: unsure of spelling] was in charge of the 2nd Platoon and Airhorn [Annotator's note: uncertain who the nickname refers to] was in charge of the 3rd Platoon. Hazard is unsure who was in charge of the weapons platoon because the man was hit as soon as they got to the front line. When they assigned Hazard to the unit, the men had just come off of the front line and were the worst looking bunch of men. [Annotator's note: Hazard gets emotional thinking about how the men appeared to him when they came off the front line and he joined the unit. His wife can be heard briefly and then he asks to take a break for a minute before returning to the interview.] The men of Company E, 313th Infantry Regiment had been at the front for a long time. To Hazard, they were the meanest looking, hardest bunch of men he had seen in his life. They all had beards, hair that had grown, eyes were dead and they were just tough. All of a sudden it hit Hazard that these people had been up on the front line fighting and now he has to lead them. It was an awakening for him and he could not think of one way to do them any good. He called them in and told them that he knew they had been on the front line fighting and that they knew what they were doing and now he has been assigned to be in charge of them. He admitted that he did not know a thing and that they knew that too. Hazard said that he knew that his job was to get out in the front, but that he needed his men to work with him and help him so that he would not make a mistake and get them killed. He asked them to tell him if they saw him making a mistake. The men agreed and a few days later they went on the line. He knew what he was supposed to do, but had never done it. Within seven days, he was one of the men. Hazard stayed in the unit for four campaigns.

When Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. joined the outfit [Annotator's Note: Company E, 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division] it was past Paris and they were getting close to Nancy, France. [Annotator's note: There is a brief pause to close the door in the room to block out sound from another room.] They were headed in the direction of the Vosges Mountains. Hazard thinks he made one mistake. One night they called him and told him to take a patrol and try to get through the German lines to see what the Germans had in the way of armor. Hazard took two men with him and the three of them moved along a paved road going through a forest. They dropped off the road at about ten that night. They eased along and took their time to ensure that they would not encounter any Krauts [Annotator's Note: derogatory term for a German soldier]. They made it to the town they were going to attack the next day and did not see any armor or activity back there. Hazard circled around then left the way he originally came. He reported back that he could not see any activity whatsoever. The next morning, at about daylight, Hazard was looking down the road and saw a white flag on a stick moving back and forth coming down the road. Hazard spoke to his platoon sergeant to put a gun on that flag and wait to see what was coming toward them. The flag came closer and it was a German in uniform that was wounded and had a pistol on his side. When the German got close, Hazard rose up out of his foxhole and told him in German to come to him. When the German approached, Hazard ask him in German what he was doing and the German responded in English, speaking it better than Hazard. The German informed Hazard that he was wounded and that he had a friend down the road who was wounded and could not walk. The German requested a stretcher to go back and pick him up to which Hazard obliged, but made known that the German would go with them back to get the wounded man. Hazard informed him that if this was a trap, that he would be the first dead man. So, they went down the road. They were 400 or 500 yards from their lines when Hazard spotted a machine gun emplacement to the right of the road and moved behind the German. Hazard asked the German what the machine gun nest was and the German responded it was his machine gun nest and that his wounded friend was in it. Hazard reminded him that if this is a trap that he would be killed. There was a back entrance to the nest through the ground and the stretcher team went in and brought the wounded German out. He had been wounded long enough that he smelled. Hazard took the pistol off of the wounded man and had already taken the pistol off of the first wounded German. As they went back down the road, Hazard asked the walking German soldier if he saw any Americans in the area. The German responded that they saw three the night before, which had been Hazard and the other two GIs. Hazard then ask why the Germans did not shoot at them and the German threw up his hands and said the war is over. The Germans had left the area and left the wounded behind. That is why Hazard did not spot any German activity and explained why there were wounded Germans in the area. Hazard realized that he made a mistake going on that night patrol, because he kept getting assigned night patrols for the rest of the war which he felt was not a healthy way to live.

Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company E, 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division] continued fighting through several towns. Bischwiller was a tough fight. Blamont was also a tough fight. Blamont was in a valley and there was a high hill outside of the town. The 314th Infantry Regiment was supposed to take the hill, but was pinned down by fire from the hill. Hazard and the 313th Infantry Regiment were in reserve so they were sent down the line to come up the hill on the flank. The Germans had their foxholes dug facing the front of the hill and the 313th Regiment was coming from the side which the Germans could not put as much fire on and were not prepared for an attack from that direction. The Germans began to give up pretty quickly as the 313th Infantry climbed the hill and surrounded the area. The 313th Infantry took many prisoners there, as the Germans just gave up, and the 314th Infantry moved into the area. That was one time that Hazard did not follow the Geneva Convention. They absolutely hated the SS troops. The Wehrmacht did not want to be there. They had put in the Poles [Annotator's note: Polish soldiers] and the Hungarians, and the Slovaks [Annotator's note: people from Czechoslovakia]. They did not want to be there, but they had to be. Hazard and his men learned that with SS troops they had to be careful. The others were not nearly as tough as they did not have the war at heart and would give up quicker. Insignia and rank were not worn in Hazard's unit. Hazard put his lieutenant's bar under his collar so that if he was taken prisoner, he could prove he was an officer. He mainly did not want to be drawing any extra fire. The sergeants did not wear any stripes but everyone knew who was in charge. The Germans, however, would wear all of their insignia. At this hill, the Germans surrendered and were lined up. There was a German officer sitting against a tree and Hazard looked at his insignia and recognized him as an SS officer. Hazard walked over to him and told him to get up. The German responded in perfect English that he was an officer and under the Geneva Convention he is entitled to be taken to the rear by a stretcher and treated because he was shot in the leg. Hazard informed the German that he had men who had been shot that were going to take the German to the rear and told him to get up again. The German refused and quoted the Geneva Convention again to Hazard who ask the German where he was wounded. The German pointed out a flesh wound on his leg and Hazard then took the heel of his boot, stepped on his leg and spun around on the wound. The German jumped up immediately to which Hazard noted that he could walk. Hazard turned to one of his riflemen, Porky Flynn, and told him to take the German officer to the rear and if he stumbled, he would probably die anyway. When Porky got back to the unit later, Hazard asked how the German did and Porky informed him that the prisoner picked up speed as they were going to the rear. That night, they knew they were going into Blamont with a night attack. Hazard sat under a tree outside of his foxhole and watched the prettiest display of artillery and mortar fire. They were working the town over with 81mm mortars and white phosphorus rounds up and down the streets. Houses were burning and every time a white phosphorus shell hit, it was like a chrysanthemum. There was a house they had worked over and Hazard and his men made their way toward that house around one in the morning. They got into the town and there was not a soldier there who wanted to fight. By daylight they were on the other side of the town and had not engaged any Germans. As they would go down the street headed to the other side of the town, Hazard would notice a stick or something pop out of a window with a white handkerchief on it and they would tell the Germans to come out. They had more than 20 prisoners who had hidden in the town so that they could surrender.

As the division [Annotator's Note: the 79th Infantry Division] was preparing to enter Haguenau, Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. had been running the patrols for the battalion [Annotator's Note: 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment]. Before going on one such patrol, he was called back to the battalion and told that they wanted him to get a live prisoner in an effort to learn what kind of German units were defending Hagenau. Hazard was blessed with a photographic memory. He was given a map and went off to study it for a few minutes. He then led his men behind enemy lines on the patrol. [Annotator's note: There was a tape break error in the story, but it picks back up with them going behind enemy lines.] Once they got into the German area, they walked like they were going somewhere instead of sneaking around. They tried to act like someone sent them somewhere to get something. They also did not talk. The Germans were not looking for them behind their lines. As they moved through the area, they heard someone coming and crunching the snow. Hazard gave a signal for the men to drop off of the trail. Rowold was on the other side of the road from Hazard, who was now behind a tree. A German soldier approached in a nonchalant way, with a rifle slung on his shoulder as he headed to the front lines. Hazard grabbed his knife, which he would sharpen whenever he was in a foxhole or had nothing else to do. As the German came between Hazard and Rowold, Hazard stepped out and put the knife between the German's ribs. Rowold, who spoke perfect German, stepped out and explained to the German that they were taking him prisoner. They told the German that they would not harm him if he did as they did. They had not been behind enemy lines for more than 15 minutes and they already had a prisoner. They were in good spirits as they headed back to the front lines. When walking with a prisoner, Hazard would always walk on the prisoner's right side with his left arm hooked around the prisoner's neck, so he could feel if the prisoner was going to move, and with his knife against the prisoner's belly and they would walk like Siamese twins. As they got close to the front line, the prisoner yelled out to let other Germans in the area know where they were. As soon as Hazard felt him yell, he pulled the prisoner to him and in one motion drove the knife into the prisoner's side, killing him. Jim Webb, from Texas, was behind Hazard. Webb had his rifle in his hand and as Hazard stabbed the German, Jim hit the German in the head with his rifle, neither man was certain who actually killed the German, but he was dead nonetheless. Now, after having a prisoner and then having to kill him, the men would have to go back behind German lines again. Before they left the area, Hazard cut the uniform off of the German and they put his body off behind a bush and then they put the roll of clothes on his chest so that they could pick it up on their way back, after they attempted to get another prisoner.

They headed back down the path to an opening where there was a house. Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. dropped the men off away from the house and then he and Rowold walked up to the house. When they got to the house, they could hear people inside. Rowold put his head against the wall and told Hazard there were soldiers inside. Rowold got on one side of the door and Hazard on the other. Then, one pulled a white phosphorus grenade and the other a fragmentation grenade. They put their fingers in the pins of the grenade. Hazard opened the door and when he did, Rowold announced that they were Americans that had them surrounded. He told the Germans to come out with their hands up, but the Germans did not believe him and shots came through the door. Hazard and Rowold were on the ground on either side of the door, both pulled their pins and let the handles fall, held them a few seconds just before they would explode and then rolled them into the building. The fragmentation grenade stopped the shooting and then the white phosphorous grenade made flames come out of the windows. Everyone in the house was dead. They still did not have a prisoner. Hazard yelled for the rest of his men to quickly move out of the area. Instead of moving out of the area, they moved further behind enemy lines. Before they left on the patrol that night, Hazard was told by the battalion commanders that if they did not get a prisoner, they were to hold up behind enemy lines and get one the next night. In other words, do not come back and tell us you did not get a prisoner. Hazard and his men ran away, something they did not usually do on patrol. They quickly found a ditch and dove into it to figure out what to do next. All of the sudden, they heard a bunch of Germans coming into the area and they could hear them talking and running amongst themselves. It was approximately a squad of Germans that had seen the fire and were trying to figure out what was going on. Hazard and his men were between the fire and the Germans. The Germans started headed toward Hazard and his men, so the men opened fire on the Germans directly in front of them. Hazard's men were trained well enough to wait for him to fire the first shot and that way nobody got trigger happy. The Germans came right up to the ditch and stopped to discuss how to cross the ditch without knowing Hazard and his men were in snow camouflage down in the ditch. It was dark and with the Germans right above them, Hazard opened fire and was almost immediately followed by the rest of his men. Yet again, they still had no prisoner to take back. Hazard and his men kept going and moved even further behind German lines. They knew that there was a railroad going into Haguenau. They got to where they could see the railroad and started walking toward Haguenau. When they could see the train station they stopped to regroup. All of the sudden, they spotted a light behind the train station. It was a German standing behind the train station lighting a cigarette. Hazard could see the cut of his helmet and his weapon against the house. Rowold and Hazard swung around the building as the German just stood there and smoked his cigarette. As Hazard came around the corner, he pulled his knife, knocked down the gun and put the knife in the belly of the German. Rowold came around behind Hazard at the same time and told the German that they were going to take him prisoner, not hurt him, but if he yelled then they would kill him. Hazard decided to test him and stuck the knife blade in the fat part of the German's buttocks to see if the German would yell. The German flinched, but did not yell. Hazard and his men started back home. They found their trail and got to where they killed the first German [Annotator's Note: See clip titled First Prisoner from Haguenau Patrol]. Hazard knew that they still had to cross the front line into friendly territory and had been holding his hand on the neck of the prisoner the entire way. Hazard took him out to see the dead German and ask if he understood, which the German said he did. Hazard picked up the dead German's clothing and gave it to the prisoner and Rowold told him to carry them. They eased back across the front line and returned to friendly territory, just before daylight.

[Annotator's Note: Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. served in the Army as the commanding officer of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division.] They made the breakthrough around the Vosges Mountains and headed through the Belfort Gap. They took Brumath. They did not have much fighting there but Hazard had a bad thing happen. He reported that they had taken the town and was told to dig in and defend it. They had a clear field of vision, flat land with snow all around. The first building behind them was a tavern. They could see so far into the distance that they knew that they could see the Germans if they were moving in. This provided a chance to get behind a wall and out of the snow. Hazard told half of his men to go into the building and build a fire to warm up and then come back in a few hours and switch out with the men still outside. Hazard had a man in his outfit named Peter Rossigno, who had been a chef in the Parker House in Boston in civilian life. Rossigno's sergeant was Cowboy Evans from Tremont, Mississippi, who was a mean guy. They went to the tavern after the first group returned. They had not eaten anything except for K rations for months. There was a courtyard behind the tavern with chickens, geese and ducks and Peter told Hazard that if he could kill a bunch of those animals that he could make a stew for the group. Hazard grabbed Cowboy and they went out to get chickens, but they were too slow with all of their combat gear on to catch the chickens. They found a long stick that was about 8 feet long and they could walk up to the chicken with the stick, come around and then break its neck with the stick and did not have to catch it. They were preparing to give the birds to Rossigno when they heard the scream of an artillery round. Hazard was not far from the concrete steps that headed into the basement where Rossigno was and he took a dive down those steps. Cowboy was not one to be afraid so he walked down and got waist down below ground when the shell hit, with his upper half exposed. He came down the steps and landed on Hazard who could not even recognize him. The night before, they were out and saw a German patrol working their way in and they passed the word that a patrol was coming and to let them come on in where they could not miss them. Cowboy told Hazard that he wanted to crawl on out and get all three by himself, so Hazard let him. Cowboy crawled out and then lay there about 100 yards away in the snow with his snow cape on. They came up to him and Cowboy killed all three of them. The next day, they got Cowboy [Annotator's note: with the artillery strike]. Another time, they were going into some mountains north of this area and there was a night attack. There was a German panzer division that was blocked in. The unit was told to go in and find the German infantry around the tanks, which would let them know where they were. Hazard and his men moved out about midnight and took their time creeping through the mountains. All night long it sleeted and was below freezing. Hazard's men would turn their rifle pointed down so that water would not get in the barrel and freeze. As dawn broke, they were right at the location of the Germans on that mountain. Their machine guns and rifles were frozen over. The night before they started the attack, Rossigno asked Hazard if there was any way that he could get out of going on the attack. Hazard said he could not let him off because if he did, he would have to let others off the next day. Rossigno told him that he was about to be killed and Hazard told him that he felt that way every day and that all of them would be killed, they just do not know when. Hazard said he could not let him off and Rossigno accepted it. On that attack, it was like shooting fish in a barrel and the Germans were trying to knock the ice off of the guns while the Americans were shooting at them. Only a few rounds went off during that attack and one of them hit Rossigno in the center of his head. He was the only man that Hazard lost in that attack.

[Annotator's Note: Mark Gordon Hazard, jr. served in the Army as the commanding officer of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division.] They had already caught the Germans going across the Alsatian plain. The Germans had given up on holding the 79th Infantry Division back and were doing their best to get across the Rhine at Colmar and Strasburg. As the 79th Division left Brumath, they brought the French 2nd Armored Division up on the line. The French division was going to work with the 79th Division to chase the Germans out of the area. General Leclerc [Annotator's note: Jacques-Philippe Leclerc] was the commander of the French 2nd Armored Division. Hazard would put eight to ten men on top of a tank and they would go down the roads behind the Germans. There were horses, kitchens, German soldiers on the move as fast as they could, as far as they could see. As they went over a little ridge in the road, the Germans would take a Tiger tank [Annotator's Note: German Mark VI heavy tank, known as the Tiger] and go over it and turn around with the snout of the tank sticking over with the hull in defilade. There was no way to easily hurt it with just the gun and a little armor sticking up from the ground. The French soldiers would start speaking quickly and then send one tank out in one direction and another tank in the other direction. They would approach the Tiger from the rear and one French tank would be knocked out while the other knocked out the Tiger tank. The Americans learned when they heard the French speak quickly and start swinging out, to jump off of the tank or they would be blown up too. One night, Hazard and his men had to jump off of the tank then had to wait for another tank to come along to pick them up. They spent all afternoon one day until the next morning waiting on a ride to catch up with the fight. The 314th Infantry Regiment went on to Strasburg and the 313th Infantry regiment went up the Rhine River, on the French side, to Neulauterburg where Hazard they reached the Siegfried Line. Hazard was told one night that a patrol within the 79th Division sector found a hole in the German lines. Around midnight Hazard's battalion, the 2nd Battalion, was lined up single file and told to move quietly to Neulauterburg. At daylight they were to launch an attack. They had scouts out front and there were 700 to 1,000 men in the battalion that were moving. The scouts would move ahead and check things out and then come back and get the rest of the men to move a little further. Each time the line stopped, the platoon sergeant would step to the side to watch the column. One time Hazard was out on the left side and saw something white coming through the woods. He thought it may be a German in a snow cape and got his rifle ready, but remembered he could not shoot. He put his gun up and got his knife out and saw this white thing continuing toward him. It came right up to Hazard and it was a large, white Saint Bernard dog. The dog started licking Hazard and was so happy to see him. Hazard thought there may be someone with the dog and he did not want the dog to run around and make people nervous. Hazard got his knife out and was considering cutting the dog's throat, but was afraid it would holler out so he left it alone. All night long the dog bounced up and down the line wanting someone to play with him. Just as dawn broke, they came out of the woods and there, on a high hill, was Neulauterburg. Between their position and the town was a creek.

When they got to the creek, Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. was about five steps ahead. There was ice on the top of the creek and Hazard spotted a rock and a log lying over the creek. Hazard reasoned that he could get on that rock and jump across the creek and not get wet. About the time he started moving in that direction, the Germans opened fire on the battalion. Hazard looked back and realized that all of his men were lined up behind him preparing to cross the creek right after he jumped. He realized that he could not make that jump and let them file behind him or they would all be dead. Hazard was already on the log and jumped into the water and told his men to jump in and move across. They jumped in and their boots and clothes filled with cold water. Ahead of them a German machine gun fired and tracer rounds were going around. Hazard lost six or eight men in this spot. They started to take the hill but the Germans machine guns were doing a bit of damage. As they were going up the hill, Hazard spotted a door on the hill and realized it was a machine gun nest and that the gunner was just waiting. He grabbed a grenade and pulled the pin and told one of his men to step to the side and open the door. Hazard was ready and left the handle on the grenade. The soldier opened the door and instead of a machine gunner on the other side, there was a cave filled with elderly and children. Hazard had that grenade in his hand and could not throw it behind him because it could hurt his men, so he armed it then threw it up the hill and it went off. They closed the door and moved on. In the sector ahead of Hazard, he came upon one of the most beautiful stone fences he had ever seen. It was about six feet tall with shards of glass on top. Hazard had to go down to the end of the fence to lead his men around and was now in Batchy Galupe's sector. There was a stone post there and as Hazard started around it, a bullet hit right beside his head. He hit the ground to see who was shooting at him. At the same time as he rounded the corner, he saw Batchy Galupe on his left. He saw Galupe go down. He had been hit in the brain. Hazard hit the ground and froze for the first time in his life. He was lying there looking for the soldier that was doing the shooting. While Hazard was looking for him, the German shot four more times. Caudill came around the post and as he came around, Hazard saw him start firing. He hit the German in the center of the head. Hazard did not know if he froze up because of the cold or seeing Batchy killed. They continued into the town, took it and moved on through it. They stayed in the area for a day or two and then moved into the Siegfried Line.

[Annotator's Note: Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. served in the Army as the commanding officer of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division.] They left the area of Neulauterburg and headed into the Siegfried Line. The Germans thought this area was invincible. The 79th Infantry Division started into the Siegfried Line on the same day that the Battle of the Bulge began in the Ardennes [Annotator's Note: 16 December 1944]. They did not have much reconnaissance of the Siegfried Line. The first thing they spotted was an anti-tank ditch that was about ten feet deep and 15 to 20 feet wide. Behind the ditch was 30 yards of concertina wire that they could not get through, nor could they get through the ditch. To get across, a tank dozer was brought up and it pushed dirt into the ditch and they built a ramp across. The soldiers were given Bangalore torpedoes to blow up the wire. For some reason there is a big part of this day, from the middle of the morning until dark, which Hazard has no recollection of other than what he is telling. About every 300 yards, there was a reinforced concrete bunker that was six to eight feet thick with apertures for a machine gun to fire out of. The guns opened up on them and Hazard and his men were firing into the hole where the enemy fire was coming from. They had flamethrowers assigned to them and Sergeant Robertson had one of them. Sergeant Robertson ran up to the hole and tried to get the fuel running and the flamethrower lit, but it would not work. There was gun fire everywhere and people getting killed, but they could not help but to laugh at him trying to get the thing to work. He finally got the flamethrower working and fried the gunners in that position. That is the last thing that Hazard remembers of that day. The US Army history says that 700 or 800 in his battalion went in that day and by that evening there were only 127 left. [Annotator's note: There is a brief pause then Hazard picks back up with the taking of the pillboxes on the Siegfried Line.] History says that they took two pillboxes that day. Hazard only remembers the first. His mind is blank from the point of joking with Robbie [Annotator's note: Sergeant Robertson] about that flamethrower. During the day, their 700 men went down to 127, with two line officers left. Hazard was senior. History says that they got to the third pillbox and the Germans came in with ground troops and the combat was hand to hand. Finally, things came to a stalemate and both sides went back to their holes. Hazard can remember getting into his hole with Arthur Swanson, from Boston, Massachusetts, who was Hazard's runner. He has no recollection of that day at all. That night was the most eerie night he spent in combat. There was complete silence, not a gun was fired, and no artillery. All they could hear out in no man's land [Annotator's note: No Man's Land refers to the unoccupied area between opposing forces] were folks crying. Hazard remembers the medics going out that night and German medics coming in from their side and there was not a bit of fighting, just cries and medics trying to find the wounded. The quartermaster would get the dead. The American medics said that they would find a wounded man and feel his uniform in the dark. The Americans had a field jacket and the Germans were wearing wool. The American and German medics would bump into each other and they would point out their own soldiers to each other to take back to the appropriate sides of the line. The medics went out all night long.

By daylight, combat started again. Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. and Swaney [Annotator's Note: Arthur Swanson from Boston, Massachusetts] were in a foxhole together and took stock of how many men they had. A rifle company is usually around 200 men, but they were never really up to full strength. That morning Company G had 14 men left, Company F had 26 men, and Hazard [Annotator's note: who was in command of Company E] had 40 men left. He had about 170 the day before. There were two officers left in the entire battalion [Annotator's Note: 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division]. Hazard, being a first lieutenant, was the senior. There was also a second lieutenant from Company G who survived the combat of the previous day. That morning, Swaney and Hazard were watching the pillbox ahead of them and across a ditch. There was not much going on that morning. No one was attacking on the German or American side. Hazard, on his knees in the foxhole, ate a K ration. He told Swaney he was going to pee in the K ration box but Swaney told him not to as he could use it to heat coffee in. Swaney suggested that Hazard crawl out to the tree to urinate. Hazard explained that this was not a good place to crawl out of the foxhole, but gave it a try while Swaney was going to make them coffee. Hazard crawled a little ways and got behind a bush and then heard artillery coming in. He flattened out on the ground and a shell came screaming in and hit the top of the tree, not far from their hole. Hazard waited a moment as the artillery usually came in groups of three or four rounds, but no other shell came in. Hazard crawled back to the hole and saw that Swaney had been wounded. He had lost one of his legs except for a piece of flesh about the size of a hand holding it together. His other leg looked as if it had been through a meat grinder. He was lying in the hole just looking at Hazard. Hazard noticed that Swaney had the radio outside of the hole and that the shrapnel had not touched it. Hazard called battalion headquarters on the radio and asked for a stretcher team. Battalion sent a Sherman tank up which provided cover while the stretcher bearers picked up Swaney and headed to the rear. Hazard did not think anymore about Swaney because he knew he was dead. About 25 years later, Hazard's phone rang and it was Swaney. Hazard recognized his voice but could not place it initially, but then Arthur Swanson identified himself and Hazard explained that he thought he died during the war. Swanson said he stayed in the hospital for 49 months, had 48 operations and that he can walk. Swanson came to visit Hazard. [Annotator's note: Hazard asks his wife if she saw Swanson's legs and explains that his leg was crooked and it looked like they took meat and sewed it back on.] Swanson went home and worked in a factory, retired and died two or three years before this interview with Hazard was conducted.

[Annotator's Note: Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. served in the Army as the commanding officer of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division.] The same day that the 79th Infantry Division attacked the Siegfried Line, the Germans launched the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: 16 December 1944]. The 79th Division was ahead of the divisions along their flank and was told to stop advancing and pull back to a position that they could hold and form a defensive line because they figured that the Germans would make a push on them as well. They used a stick of dynamite to make a foxhole in the ground since it was frozen. Reconnaissance told that the Germans had a tank division in the mountains that was ready to move out into the plains. The company headquarters was in Reipertswiller. George Dale was running the headquarters and Hazard the combat leadership. Hazard was told that the hill ahead had no Germans on it and that he and his men had to take it and dig in so they would have a defensive position set up if the Germans came out of the mountains and down the road to Reipertswiller. Hazard moved his men up the hill. They found a plateau that was 200 to 300 yards wide with no vegetation on it. Hazard and his men climbed up there and could see the road winding and turning. That was where they were supposed to stop the Germans from. By then they only had 40 men to do it after the fighting on the Siegfried Line. They moved to another part of the plateau and noticed that there was no place for a machine gun to have a great firing position so they moved to the other end. They were able to dig in and set up the machine guns. Hazard called headquarters and explained that they could see the road and everything was white and hard to see, except for one dark spot where snow had collapsed. They put a tank focusing on that area for firing if there was to be an attack. They sat in that position all day and nothing happened. The same was true for that night. The next day about noon, they heard the Germans coming and making a lot of noise. Americans would use hand signals and stay quiet, but the Germans made a lot of noise. They seemed to get their courage up that way. There were two big round boulders that the Germans started to come through and started shooting and yelling. There were so many that Hazard's machine gunner's were wiping the area with fire and riflemen would pick off the Germans. A bunch of Germans would get behind both boulders and then they would break and move out and get hit. It was not long before the Germans could not move beyond the boulders because of all of the bodies. The Germans made three or four runs that afternoon at Hazard and his men. Each attack was made with about a company of men. It was like a shooting gallery, so much so that Foster, the company medic took his armband off and started shooting saying that he did not want them to have all of the fun. In about 30 minutes, another wave would come and there were three or four waves that hit before it became dusk and the Germans quit attacking. When it got quiet, a few of the guys asked Hazard if they could go out and pick up some watches and things from some of the Germans. They went out and came back with all kinds of watches and pistols from the dead. When they returned, they reported that they counted 396 bodies. Those figures were just for the dead as the Germans were taking their wounded back behind their lines. Shortly after that, they were pulled back to go into the Bulge to a town along the river. As they got to the rear, as far as they could see there was nothing but trucks. The artillery, tankers and engineers were falling in behind them and there were cat eyes [Annotator's Note: an apparatus to allow very dim light from the headlights to shine ahead in the dark] on the trucks. That night they went across Eastern France through Lichtenstein to Wimmertingen, Belgium and arrived about daylight. The trucks did not stop all night long and they were cold.

The Red Ball Express hauled the troops around and it was almost completely made of black drivers. When they got ready to go, Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. crawled up into the cab of the truck. Hazard told a driver that he should get in the back. The driver told him that he thought there was room enough for three in the cab. There was a radio in the cab of the truck that Hazard thinks was not GI issue. Axis Sally was on the radio and while they were driving to the front she asked where the boys of the 79th Infantry Division were going and what they were doing. They had only been on the trucks a few hours and she was telling them where they were. They arrived at Wimmertingen and the next day they received mail. Hazard got a letter saying that his father had died. The next day, the 79th Division was sent into Aachen. The town was bombed out and they had to crawl over bricks. The Germans had opened the Ruhr River dams and flooded the area so the 314th Infantry Regiment was to cross that area initially. The Army brought up the 102nd Infantry Division to go through the 79th Division as they were headed toward the Rhine. The 313th Infantry Regiment was taken back to Maastricht, Holland to practice assault crossing a river. On the first crossing, Hazard was on the left of the entire training operation. As they were going across the Maas River, Hazard saw the ammunition bearers from Company H with slings carrying ammunition boxes around them that were heavy. Hazard saw the boat start to swing and then flip and all the men fell out and not many came up. After they reached the shore, the officers were called to form up and were chewed out. They continued to practice for days and they did not lose another man. By this point, the Army was crossing the Rhine. On 21 March [Annotator's Note: 21 March 1945], they were taken to a little town 12 miles from the Rhine River. The next night they were taken in trucks to within three miles of the Rhine. Behind the dykes to the Rhine, there were three little houses that were boarded up and they got in them sometime around midnight. There was not enough room for everyone to stretch out and sleep, so they had to sit up. They were crowded but not allowed outside until it was time to cross the river. They were to cross at three in the morning on 23 March. At two the next morning the artillery was going to start the second largest artillery barrage of the war except for D-Day. As they were waiting to move, George, the company commander was there with Hazard at a table and had the sound powered phone sitting on it. George picked up the phone. He responded to whoever was on the other end asking to put something off until tomorrow and said that he needed him since he had the number one boat. Hazard realized that George was talking about him and started to listen at the phone and a colonel was telling George to get Hazard out of there. About a month before this, the Army had come out with a 45 day rest and recuperation period as a feel good deal to raise morale. They would pick two or three men from an infantry division to go home for 45 days. They played it up in the Stars and Stripes, but no one paid attention to the article. He had been selected and George sent him back to the rear to make his way back to the United States. Hazard did not know what to do and did not feel it was right, but he thought at the same time that God had taken him through four campaigns, maybe he was sending him home. Hazard thought to himself that he gave everything he had and if God was sending him home, he would go. He got up and undid his belt and gave the men whatever they wanted that was on his belt. George picked the phone up again and talked with the colonel who told him that Hazard had to take his sergeant with him. They put the candle out and opened the door and when the artillery barrage started at two in the morning, Caudill [Annotator's note: unsure of spelling, but this was Hazard's Sergeant] and Hazard were sitting on chairs in the back with the artillery people.

Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. and Caudill [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling, but this was Hazard's Sergeant] went to Le Havre and got on a boat with wounded soldiers and went across the Channel to England. There, they loaded on more wounded who were heading to the United States as well as Air Force personnel who had completed their missions. They pulled out in a convoy. Hazard was aboard the SS General S. Weigel [Annotator's Note: USS General William Weigel (AP-119)]. It took 17 days to get home. They got off of the ship in New York then went to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. Caudill and Hazard were still in their combat clothes. Hazard got some new clothes then went home. While they were in the middle of the ocean, Franklin D. Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin D. Roosevelt] died. Hazard was in West Point [Annotator's Note: West Point, Mississippi] when the war ended [Annotator's Note: when the war in Europe ended]. He reported back to Camp Butner, North Carolina to go back to his unit. When he got there, he and others that came from Europe learned that they are not going back to Europe. They learned that they were going to a replacement pool for the Pacific. Hazard's records were still with his old unit so he had to fill out a new one with what info he could remember. He had been in four campaigns and wanted a new job. He thought supply would be the easiest so he said that he could not remember his MOS number [Annotator's Note: Military Occupation Specialty number] when he knew it was 1542, infantry unit commander. The officer asked what he did during the war and Hazard told him that he was in supply. The officer told him that the MOS number was 7000, so Hazard wrote that down. He was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and when he arrived he was told that they did not have a unit like that there. Hazard asked them to give him a room and he would wait until they started to get people with his MOS in there. Others began to arrive and every one of them were people like Hazard. Big John McCurdy [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] from the Americal Division was put in charge of Company A, Lieutenant Tarn [Annotator's note: unsure of spelling] from the Red Bull Division [Annotator's note: the 34th Infantry Division] got Company B, and Hazard was supply officer in the outfit. Hazard did not have any supplies and upon checking the supply room and finding it empty, he had to send requisitions to get things. He did not know what to do. [Annotator's Note: There is a break in the interview due to a tape change.] The supply sergeant arrived. Hazard told him that he was the supply officer, but he could not find his rump with both hands because he lied about being a supply officer and was actually a rifle company officer. The only time Hazard had been in a supply room was to draw supplies. Hazard found that all this master sergeant had ever done was work in supply so he agreed to sign every requisition that the sergeant would send up to him. Hazard also informed him that while he did not know very much about supply, he was one of the world's top people on getting even. As long as the sergeant did his work, Hazard told him that he would have an easy life. A few days later, Hazard was at the officer's club on base and talking with Tarn. Tarn was complaining to Hazard about being in charge of Company B when he was actually a supply officer. Hazard told him the story and suggested they go to the colonel to get them swapped around. The colonel had also returned on the 45 day deal. They told him what had happened. They got in 1,000 men and processed them and sent them to the Pacific. They were nothing but cadre and did not even get another man in the unit. Hazard and McCurdy got together when the war ended on 14 August [Annotator's Note: 14 August 1945] and decided to go out and celebrate. Hazard gathered his cadre together and gave everyone a three day pass. He asked everyone to not stay on base, but go out and have fun. Big John and Hazard went to Saint Louis. Hazard was called to the colonel’s office. The colonel asked where he had been and Hazard told him Saint Louis. The colonel asked Hazard if he realized that he could be court martialed for doing that. Hazard told him that he did and asked the colonel if had heard the news that the war was over and we had won it. The colonel told Hazard to get out of his office. Within three weeks, Hazard was back in West Point, Mississippi walking the streets.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. to tell the story regarding his canteen on the wall in the room with holes in it.] They took a town on the way to Haguenau and Hazard set his men out. He told Carter, the mortar sergeant, to go back with him to find a spot for the mortars. Hazard could see one low area where he knew he would want the mortars. He also knew where Carter was dug in and was setting an azimuth there so Carter could set one to throw out a shell to the low area. While Hazard was looking at his compass, he passed out. He came to and was further down the hill than where he started. Carter and Caudill [Annotator's note: unsure of spelling, but Caudill was Hazard's Sergeant] were both with him and had pulled him down the hill. When Hazard came to, he asked if he had been hit and Caudill said he had. Hazard then asked them if it was bad and they sat him up and helped him undress to look. His arm looked like it had been in a fight with a Boy Scout since he had a shredded sleeve. He sat there while they helped him with his clothing and he got to where his hands started to work again. Caudill told Hazard that he was no worse off than if someone had hit him with the side of a broad axe. The skin was barely broken. The shell missed Hazard by two or three feet and hit behind him. Some of the shell fragments had hit his shoulder blade, forming a blood blister about the size of a hand, and some hit his canteen. Hazard asked them if he needed to go to the aid station since he could not see his wounds and they told him it was two miles back and that he looked like he would heal up. Nobody in an attack would stop if they got a flesh wound, they just kept going. Medics would come in behind and take care of the wounded, all they had to do was keep moving. Part of the shrapnel that hit Hazard hit his canteen. He threw it in his ammunition jeep and sent it home. Caudill was absolutely fearless and once Hazard took over the platoon, he made him a squad leader and then a platoon leader. He never got perturbed in an attack. The platoon leader is five steps ahead and the platoon sergeant is five steps behind so that if the platoon leader gets hit the platoon sergeant can move up and take over. They never called anybody by rank, just last name in combat. Hazard always called him Caudill and learned that he made whiskey before the war. They would make attacks together and then get through and Caudill would come up and suggest that Hazard switch with him the next day because he would get lonesome in the rear of the group but Hazard would not let him do that. On one occasion when they were in Bischwiller or somewhere like that, they were street fighting and knew that there was a German tank ahead. Caudill eased up to the corner of a side street and put his eye around the edge. Evidently, the German tankers spotted him and knocked the corner off of the building just above his head. It knocked him out and dented his helmet. They ran up and pulled him out. For the next few weeks whenever there was artillery hitting nearby, he would jump. They began to joke with him about it and when they were in the woods they would tell him to creep up ahead and look around a tree, which was soon followed by a response of cursing.

[Annotator's Note: Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. served in the Army as the commanding officer of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division.] They never had a man with trench foot. It was Caudill's [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling, but this was one of Hazard's sergeants] job to make everybody changed their socks. In the house, Hazard would hear Caudill in the room waking people up to put on fresh, clean socks. He was a five stripe sergeant [Annotator's Note: then a Technical Sergeant, now a Sergeant First Class], which was as high as he could go. He has a bronze star certificate that he was sent and he did not know what it was for. He came home before the war was over and he has the medal, but he never received a certificate saying what it was for. In the outfit, they did not go much for medals. Hazard did not want one and does not think that Caudill got one. Hazard started out with the 42nd Infantry Division before transferring to the 79th Infantry Division. He ran into his old outfit again in the Haguenau area. He had his machine gun set up like he wanted it. There was another unit moving up to his left to tie in with them. Hazard had plenty of room to cover with the trajectory of the machine gun where they could cover each other with four machine guns instead of two. A captain came up to Hazard and introduced himself and his unit, the 42nd Division, which was moving onto the line. Hazard explained that he had a machine gun on the right that could fire and cover his position and that if they could do the same for him, it would give everyone more firepower. The captain told Hazard to take care of his front and that they would take care of theirs. Hazard did not say anything more and late that afternoon, a German showed himself on their front line a half mile away and they could see him. Someone from the 42nd Division shot at him and before long their machine gun was trying to shoot at him. Hazard knew that on the front line shooting at a single Kraut [Annotator's Note: derogatory term for a German soldier] would give away their position. That night, the Germans avoided coming into Hazard's area and they hit the 42nd Infantry Division. At dark, they had sent up Company F to take over the holes of Hazard and his men. Hazard's crew moved back half a mile behind the front to let the men get a break. The Germans pushed the 42nd Infantry Division back and Hazard got a call around midnight to get back up to the front because the 42nd Division had been pushed back and Company F was still up on the line. They went through the woods and made it to Company F and took over the area previously held by the 42nd Infantry Division. The next morning, the 42nd Infantry Division launched an attack but did not move the Germans. The day after that they attacked again and the Germans still did not move. The third day, there was firing and commotion to Hazard's left. After a while the roughest looking man Hazard had ever seen came up to see him. The man introduced himself and said the 101st Airborne Division was up on the line and asked if anything was needed. Hazard talked with him and they agreed how the 101st should set up nearby. That afternoon, Hazard heard a big commotion with a German talking. Hazard asked Rowald what was being said and Rowald said the 101st men put a jeep with a loudspeaker on it and were talking to the Germans. The person on the loud speaker was speaking very peacefully and would occasionally speak louder and faster. Hazard asked what they were saying to the Germans and Rowald told him that the man was saying that the 101st Airborne is now on the line and they will be there if the Germans would like to attack anytime day or night because the 101st had not killed enough of you son of a bitches yet. Hazard wrote about that in his book and a man named Gordon King from Wisconsin called him after reading it. [Annotator's Note: Hazard implies that King was in Company E, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Infantry Division but most records show he served in Headquarters Company.] King came down to see Hazard twice. [Annotator's Note: Hazzard's wife can be heard in the background at times and there is a brief break in the interview.]

[Annotator's Note: This segment begins with Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr.'s wife asking if he had any idea how long he had been interviewing. The interviewer responds that they have been at it for five hours, including the time spent talking before the interview.] Between fighting in towns and forests, it was harder to fight in a forest. They could not see where they were going and their automatic weapons did not work as well with no clear field of fire. In a town, if they got fire from a house they just sent a 105 [Annotator's Note: 105mm artillery round] through it. In the United States the unit would have sick call and out of a company they would have a few men out on sick call every day with something wrong with them. Hazard sent one man back that was not hit during combat. He had one man who was absolutely one of the spunkiest men he had ever known in his life. Pop Bowers was his name. He had been a forest ranger in Yosemite National Forest and joined the Army. Bowers was wiry and hard. He was 41 years old so they called him Pop. In the morning after a freezing night, they would have to pick Pop up and straighten him out so that he could get going. What was wanted in an infantry company was officers who were 20 to 24 and soldiers who were 18 to 20. When they started getting older, they could not take it. Pop could not take it and got a tooth abscess and his jaw was sticking out. They tried to send him back, but he would not go. Hazard convinced him that he needed to go back and have someone to look at his tooth. Hazard called George Dale, the company commander, and asked him to find something for him to do in the rear after he got his tooth fixed. Hazard never saw him again. He was tough and would never give up, but his body could not stand it. After a big fight, they would get replacements. Some would be men that were in the unit previously that had healed from previous wounds and some would be straight off the boat. They came in one night and there was a big, good looking, blondish redheaded boy that looked stout as a mule. Brandon and Garret [Annotator's Note: uncertain on name or names] were short of machine gun ammunition bearers. It is hard stuff carrying everything and fighting too. The new guy looked big and stout so Hazard put him in the machine gun section that night. The next day they did not attack and they had the boy fixing the machine gun emplacement so they could stretch out in it. As Hazard walked by the machine gun emplacement the boy was bent over with the shovel and groaning. Hazard walked over and the man told him that he had been shot. Hazard asked how he could be shot if there was not a German within a mile. Hazard told him to get up and saw a hole in his coat. He was bent over digging a hole and a stray bullet flew through the air and hit him. It went through the muscle in his back and the tip of the bullet was sticking out of the skin. Hazard just pressed it out and handed it to him. He sent the boy back to the aid station. From there he was then sent back to a hospital. Hazard did not think about it again. Later on, there was a call for replacements and Hazard sent someone to guide the replacements up to the front. While the man was gone an artillery barrage hit them. When the man returned with the replacements, Hazard asked if any of the replacements had been hit. He told Hazard that the only one hit was the boy that had been hit by the bullet previously. This kid had never fired his rifle in combat. He had never even seen a German but now had two purple hearts. [Annotator's Note: Hazard's wife can be heard laughing in the background] Hazard did not even know his name. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer joked that his name must have been Lucky.]

After returning home, it was easy for Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. to adjust back to civilian life. [Annotator's Note: Hazard asks his wife, Sarah, her opinion on it and she agreed saying she met him right after he returned.] Hazard starts to say something, but decided not to put it on camera. [Annotator's Note: His wife can be heard saying she knows what he is going to say and urges him not to.] The World War 2 generation grew up tough, without anything and without any money. He drank his first beer at Fort McClellan, Alabama. Large number of the soldiers came from the CCC Camps [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps]. They had been in barracks and had been working during the depression. Japan and Germany jumped on the United States. Hazard says that they never were really afraid of them, but that they were mad. There was a deep inward rage that they would not do this to America. During their tour of duty, they knew exactly when they would go home, that would be when they killed Hitler in Europe and Tojo in the Pacific. It never occurred to them to think about going home. They worked hard and understood work and just came home and went back to work. Hazard does not know of a single man of his company that ever had any mental problems. An infantry division is made up of 15,000 men and 6,000 of them do the fighting. Of the 6,000 men in the 79th Infantry Division, they lost 24,000. They turned over four times on the front lines. Everyone would help everyone else and call each other by their first names. In the United States, it was saluting and all of that but in combat you killed somebody. Hazard went through infantry basic training and OCS [Annotator's Note: officer candidate school] and he is a graduate of the munitions and explosives school at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, where he learned how to blow bridges. Everything that the infantry taught was how to kill somebody. Some other branch would teach something else, but his job was to fight. In regards to pinning their rank, they pinned their rank on the outside of their collar with the insignia facing the inside so that it would not shine and also would not rub their neck. In regards to civilians that he ran across during the war, Hazard felt that the French people were very glad to see them. In Alsace they were a little nervous. If they made a move there, the Germans knew it. Hazard feels that the Free French 2nd Armored Division was tough and did not mind fighting. The British were good people and had their ways. A British convoy would stop every day at four in the afternoon for tea. For the Rhine River crossing, Hazard and his unit were attached to the 9th Army. The British 1st Army was just to their left and they were supposed to cross the Rhine first. A large smoke screen went up in the British sector and the Americans thought the British were crossing the river. Then they find out that the British did not cross the river. Hazard did not get to cross the Rhine or meet many of the German people because he was pulled out before then. In a little pocket book, he has a copy of the orders that he was given. He copied them down in his book. Hazard also feels that the French did not like infantry fighting. One group that Hazard and his men were in awe of was the Goums. The Goums were from French Equatorial Africa and stood about six foot six inches tall, big and lean, and dark as soot. There were stories that the Goums were used to fight at night, but Hazard does not know for sure. He would not want to fight them at night. They did not see anybody else. The only time he ever fought close to foreign troops was the French 2nd Armored Division in Alsace. [Annotator's Note: The tape cuts off.]

The night that they arrived in Reipertswiller, Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. was told to take some men and go back into the mountains and keep going until he found Germans. This was about five in the afternoon. The Vosges Mountains during the winter were dark. He took ten or 15 men and they headed out. They could see the road and were creeping further into the area to try and make contact with the Germans. Finally, it got so dark that they had to feel where they were going because if they stepped off of a cliff, they did not know how long it would be before they hit bottom. Just after dark, they heard a bunch of Germans on the road below that were yelling to each other. He asked Rowold what the Germans were saying and he told Hazard that they were shouting that there were Americans in the area. The Germans were hunting all night for them below the mountain area along the road while Hazard and his men were up above them. Hazard knew that they could not run so they found a good place and sat down in a circle facing out through the night with everyone watching. It was black with no moon. They started talking about how to get out of the area. They had not kept up with how they got there because they were paying attention to what was below. They had to figure out a way to get out of there. There was a man in the patrol named Robert Lillow [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] who was from Pennsylvania. Lillow said that there was no need for all of them to go. He said that he would find a way out and come back and get them. Hazard told him to go ahead and the rest of the men remained there. Around four in the morning he returned and told them that he had a way out. Hazard told the men to let Lillow lead and each man touch the man in front of him and not say a word. Lillow led the men out of the area and they got to an area where they had to cross the road. They crossed the road and they heard one shot ring out and one of his men grunted. Eventually they stopped and Hazard checked on the man who was hit. The man was hit in the shoulder and was able to keep going. They made it out of the area and Lillow should have gotten a medal. All the Army did was pat him on the back.

[Annotator's Note: This segment begins with the interviewer asking Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. about the type of weapon he carried when out on night patrols.] At night Hazard would use a knife even though an officer was supposed to carry a carbine [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 Carbine]. Hazard had a carbine but it is no good at 500 yards and is not accurate. He used it at night because it carried 15 rounds where the M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 rifle, also known as the M1 Garand] had eight rounds. He would also tape two magazines for the carbine together so he could change magazines out quickly. But, he would get dissatisfied when he would miss somebody and would then carry an M1 until he went on a night patrol. He went back and forth between the M1 and the carbine. There was one man that used a Thompson [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun] and it was the captain of Company G [Annotator's Note: Company G, 2nd Battalion, 313th Infantry regiment, 79th Infantry Division] who spoke fluent German. He and his company took four German prisoners one time. He went up to them and asked them a question in English and they said they could not understand him. He asked another question and they said they could not understand him and then said something about him in German to each other and cursed this captain. He acted like he did not know what they said and he kept talking to them. The Germans got pretty brave and kept talking bad about him and he kept taking it all in and kept asking them questions in English. Then the captain looked at them and started talking to them in German. He let them know that he knew exactly what they said to him. He told them they should have to pay the price for their actions and then pulled up his Thompson and shot each of them. Hazard witnessed this himself and thought the Germans should not have cussed the captain. Hazard said that they played by the rules pretty well, but after hearing about Malmedy things were different. After Malmedy, the word came down to take no prisoners until further notice. Hazard called his men in and talked to them, telling them that they were not to take a prisoner until further notice. He told them he knew that they did not mind killing Germans, but he also was sure that some could not shoot a Kraut [Annotator's Note: derogatory term for a German soldier] when he surrenders, but they had to. He said that those who did not want to shoot prisoners would not be thought less of. They had been fighting together for many months and they had killed their share of Germans. Hazard instructed them that if on their religious beliefs they could not kill a man, they should raise their hand and know that nobody would look down on them. He had about five men raise their hands and then asked who of the remaining men wanted the prisoners of those who did not want to kill any. He then began to pair them off so that when one gets a prisoner, he could call for another man.

For the Rhine crossing, the 17th Airborne Division was supposed to jump before they [Annotator's Note: the 313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division] were to row across the river. Mark Gordon Hazard, Jr. had all of the orders because he was in the first wave. They were supposed to bypass Walsum and take a little town less than a kilometer away and leave Walsum to the second wave. Hazard and his unit were to make their way to the 17th Airborne Division and squeeze the Krauts [Annotator's Note: derogatory term for a German soldier] in between the two units. The orders that Hazard was given said that there were to be no medics in the operation and no prisoners taken until further notice. Hazard says it was war. It was a job to do and the infantry, or the Marines and infantry in the Pacific, did the same thing. Hazard says they understood that until they whipped the Germans to a bent knee surrender, then they would be there. He does not think that any front line infantrymen expected to go home. The average time of a front line platoon leader in combat was 17 days according to Army statistics. Hazard went over and stayed for months and months and just got one little nick. In that time, the company commander was hit four times, every platoon leader they had never came back because of being either hurt too badly or killed. It was just George [Annotator's Note: Hazard is referring to George Dale who is mentioned in previous clips] and Hazard that whole time. The sergeants just stepped up and acted like officers. They expected every day would be their last and Hazard prayed every day as they started an assault. He did not let a day go by that, as he came out of that hole, he would not ask God to take him home. Then he would not think about it anymore. If they worried about getting killed in a fight, they were not worth a damn. Hazard was back home before he was 22 years old. The war ended on 14 August 1945. On 18 August Hazard turned 22.