Meyer J. "Mike" Levin was born in Venango, Nebraska. It was a small village near the border with Colorado. When he was three years old, his family moved to Brooklyn, New York [Annotator's Note: Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs in New York, New York]. Brooklyn was a nice residential area. Levin's family lived in a house near the subway, which he took to school. His family listened to the news on the radio, so they knew about the situation around the world. His father had been in the medical corps in World War 1 [Annotator’s Note: World War 1, 1914 to 1918]. Levin does not remember what happened on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], but is sure he heard about it on the radio. He graduated high school in 1936 and was attending college at the University of Vermont [Annotator's Note: located in Burlington, Vermont] when the Pearl Harbor attack happened. Many classmates joined the military. Levin had been in ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps], but he did not have four years' worth of experience in the program. After graduating from college, Levin took a defense job with a company in New York. The company made speed reading devices for the United States Navy. Levin was a precision instrument inspector. He was drafted, but the company got him deferred for six months. He left home in October 1942 and did his basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina [Annotator's Note: Cumberland County, North Carolina]. He was a trained artilleryman. The hardest part for Levin was the rigidity of the uniform, and the maintenance of quarters. He was a laid back person. He went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma [Annotator's Note: located in Lawton, Oklahoma] after spending a year in the Arctic. While doing that training, he had to keep his barracks in much better shape. One time, his barrack was given a gig because there was lumber on the floor. It was actually a piece of broken broom. Levin was trained on the truck drawn 105 gun [Annotator's Note: M2A1 105mm towed howitzer]. After his commissioning, Levin was given a self-propelled 105 [Annotator's Note: M7 Priest]. He thought it was a good piece of equipment until he was shot at by a German 88 [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery]. After his basic training, Levin was in a replacement depot when the first American transport ship, the Dorchester [Annotator's Note: SS Dorchester], was sunk in the Atlantic [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean]. The ship was going to Greenland to relieve the troops there. Levin was put onto a ship to go to Greenland to complete that mission. When he landed, he was trucked north to the Arctic Circle to an airfield used to fly planes to Europe. He remained there for a year. There was a fjord near his base. Levin was selected to go to OCS [Annotator’s Note: officer candidate school] because he had graduated from college.

Meyer Levin was sent to Europe after graduating [Annotator's Note: after he completed officer candidate school] at Fort Sill [Annotator's Note: in Lawton, Oklahoma] and fought in the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. He knew the war was reaching a climax. He sailed oversees in the Queen Elizabeth [Annotator's Note: RMS Queen Elizabeth] as a loading officer. Levin loaded over 7,000 soldiers on the ship's two gangways. The ship carried 15,000 men to Europe. Because of the amount of men, they were only served two meals a day. The trip took four days, but the ship moved so quickly she did not have an escort. He landed in Scotland. From there, Levin took a train to Southampton [Annotator's Note: Southampton, England]. He then boarded a Polish steamer and was sailed to Le Havre [Annotator's Note: Le Havre, France], where he took a landing ship to the beach. Levin was excited when he got to the beach. He knew what he was getting into and was apprehensive, but it did not bother him too much. Levin had some seasoned regular soldiers in his ranks. His sergeant was a good man and Levin felt lucky to have him. After landing, Levin took a three day train ride to Belgium, where he saw battle. It was a cold winter that year and the train moved slowly. It stopped frequently. On one of the stops, the men made a fire from the boxes C rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food] came in. The men had to open the windows of the train to keep the smoke out. They accidentally burned a hole through their freight car and the fire fell through it. They had to quickly cover the hole to keep the cold air out. Levin joined his outfit [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 489th Armored Field Artillery, 7th Armored Division] in Verviers, Belgium.

After a few days, Meyer "Mike" Levin's unit [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 489th Armored Field Artillery, 7th Armored Division] entered the Ardennes Forest [Annotator's Note: located in Belgium and Luxembourg]. The Americans used a corduroy road [Annotator's Note: a road made of tree trunks laid across soft or swampy ground], but the Germans would knock down trees to keep the road closed. There were fallen wires all over the place, some explosive, and some telephone wires. It was ugly. The Germans would string wires across trees and neck height to catch Americans driving their jeeps with their windshields down. The Americans started welding vertical metal to catch the wires. The battle was already raging when Levin made it to the front. He acted as a forward observer for his unit. He would go ahead of the infantry with a radio to direct artillery fire. He had a jeep, driver, sergeant, and a relay half-track [Annotator's Note: M3 half-track; a vehicle with front wheels and rear tracks]. The Germans would look for men with binoculars and officer rank insignia. The Germans liked to fire at officers first, which Levin did not care for. Being shot at was a rough feeling. Levin called in fire missions on enemy locations several times. Depending on the size of the target, he would call for battery, battalion, or division artillery strikes. He concentrated the fire on troops and tanks. While at the Rhine [Annotator's Note: Rhine River in Germany], there was a village with crosses on the roof. Levin radioed to the artillery center about the crosses, who told him not to fire at them. After dark, Levin heard tanks in the village. The artillery center allowed him to fire on the village, which slowed down the tanks. Levin believes his strikes slowed down the enemy. The Americans used proximity fuses, which hurt German troops, but sometimes pieces of shells would land on friendly troops. The shells were self-detonating, so instead of firing volleys of the shells, the Americans started firing differently. Levin thought the Germans had better equipment than the Americans. The tanks were stronger and the 88mm [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] was better than the American 105mm howitzer [Annotator's Note: M2A1 105mm towed howitzer]. It was hard to kill a tank because of the armor. The Americans had to hit the tank in the rear or sides. The German soldier was good as long as there was an officer nearby. Levin believes the American soldier was good with or without an officer. When Levin got to the front, the Allies had concentrated their forces to stop the Germans. The more the Americans moved forwards, the more the Germans moved towards the Rhine. The Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] was the biggest land battle the United States every fought. It was brutal to humanity, the countryside, and the Ardennes Forest. At one point, Levin stopped and saw a patrol coming in carrying a young kid who had just arrived the front. He had stepped on a landmine, causing his leg to be blown apart. Levin remembered taking a break on a log. One of his men told him it was not a log, it was a GI [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] who had frozen to death and was half buried in snow. His pack, with unopened Christmas gifts, was nearby. He remembers the men who did not come home from that battle. Levin had been a replacement officer in his division. The officer he replaced was shot in the butt while crawling through small arms fire.

After the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], Meyer "Mike" Levin moved past the Ruhr Dams and the Cologne Plains. He thinks the Germans knew they would lose because they were moving to the Rhine [Annotator's Note: Rhine River]. Levin made it to the Rhine near Remagen [Annotator's Note: Remagen, Germany]. There were Germans across the river, so Levin sent artillery fire into their position. There was terrible devastation across Germany. The towns were beat up and it was difficult to drive through the rubble. Sometimes buildings would be knocked down to make room for the tanks. Cologne [Annotator's Note: Cologne or Köln, Germany] was devastated, but the cathedral was untouched. Levin believes the Germans spent their remaining strength at the Battle of the Bulge. The aim was to reach Antwerp [Annotator's Note: Antwerp, Belgium], but they never made it because the Americans stopped them. Afterwards, there was not much German resistance or artillery fire. After the Bulge, they made the decision to fight on the other side of the Rhine. Levine did not enter or see any concentration camps. He was in a house near the Rhine and found out he was in a house full of poison gas. He developed blisters on his body and eventually had to take off his contaminated boots. He was given shoes too big for his feet. He crossed the river at Remagen in those shoes. After the crossing, Levin was evacuated to a small airport near Cologne. He was flown in a C-47 [Annotator's Note: Douglass C-47 Skytrain cargo plane] to Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France], where he was hospitalized for several weeks. The doctors thought it was a vesicant gas. Levin thought it was a powder, but the doctors thought it was a gas. After he rejoined his unit [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 489th Armored Field Artillery, 7th Armored Division], the Germans surrendered [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945]. He was in the town of Halle [Annotator's Note: Halle, Germany] on the Salle River, where his war ended. He was happy the war was over because he did not like being shot at. The war’s end was a great feeling of relief and pride because he helped defeat Germany.

When the war in Europe ended, Meyer "Mike" Levin's unit [Annotator's Note: Battery A, 489th Armored Field Artillery, 7th Armored Division] started to prepare for service in the Pacific. Levin did not have to go because he had been in Greenland before going to Europe. He was sent to Rheims, France for reassignment. When he arrived, the headquarters was in a high school and he was sent to Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] for leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. After his leave, Levin was given a job at the Switzerland Leave Center in Mulhouse, France, near Basil, Switzerland. Levin loved that assignment. Levin was billeted in a French base and lived in the base's chateau. The riding academy was used as a show stage. Troops were brought in from across Europe, clean them up, then send them on a tour though Switzerland and to Rome [Annotator's Note: Rome, Italy]. There was a stage with 16mm cameras in the auditorium. Levin was able to build a projection booth and attain some projectors for movies. There were USO [Annotator's Note: United Services Organization] shows at the auditorium. In June 1946, Levin returned to the United States. He shipped out of Le Havre [Annotator's Note: Le Havre, France] on a Victory ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] and was discharged by the end of the month. He landed in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. It was a thrill to see the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. He had a similar experience when he returned from Greenland. When Levin made it ashore, he kissed the ground. He then saw shiny shoes and realized it was a colonel. The colonel did not like how Levin greeted him, so he was given KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police] duty. Levin's mother was worried about Levin during the war. When he was wounded, she did not believe Levin that it was a minor inconvenience. Levin was out of the Army by June 1946. He started looking for a job, but nobody wanted a forward observer in the artillery. Levin started working for the Army Security Agency in Arlington Hall, Virginia. He was a single man and met his future wife at a play tryout. They both performed in the play, and wound up getting married. Levin believes it is important for kids to learn about World War 2 and the importance of protecting the country. The war matured Levin. He wants future Americans to know they live in the best country in the world and it is worth protecting.