Morris Eugene Day was born in October 1924 in Racine, Missouri, near Joplin [Annotator's Note: Joplin, Missouri]. His father built roads in the area. In 1929, the family moved to Joplin, Missouri, where his dad worked as road patrol. The town was wide open. The surrounding area was dry [Annotator's Note: there was no alcoholic drinks]. Day's family started working for an electrical company in 1937. Before joining the service, Day delivered soft drinks to surrounding towns. When he joined the military, Day became a truck driver because of his delivery background. He received his draft notice in March 1943. He was drafted into the military in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Day was at a barbeque restaurant eating when he was told about the Pearl Harbor attack [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. The owner of the restaurant bought all the soldiers a free meal. Day's basic training was done in North Carolina. He took a six day train ride to his training camp. Every time the train stopped, Day thought that was where he would be trained. Day was drafted while a senior in high school. He was the only person from his class to end up in North Carolina. Day was put into the motor pool and occasionally taught how to drive a truck, even though he did not know much about it. He did nine weeks of basic training with the medics. He learned how to treat the wounded and learned the various body parts. He did not volunteer to be a medic. He was told he was chosen to be a medic because of his intelligence. His camp had been a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] camp. He remained in the old camp for about a week until he was sent to his unit [Annotator's Note: 310th Infantry Regiment, 78th Infantry Division]. The soldiers played card games. German prisoners were used to build the camp. Day was told he was being trained to fight in the CBI [Annotator's Note: China, Burma, India Theater]. Men were trained for 13 weeks before being shipped out. Day was kept in the camp because he was a medic and a truck driver. He participated in the Tennessee Maneuvers [Annotator's Note: Second Army Maneuvers; series of military maneuvers in Middle Tennessee from September 1942 to March 1944] in 1944. It was miserable moving through those hills. He thought the living conditions were worse than combat conditions. He slept in pup tents and occasionally in the back of the truck. It was cold. He was assigned to the 310th Infantry, 78th Division [Annotator's Note: 310th Infantry Regiment, 78th Infantry Division]. Day was assigned at the regimental level and served all three battalions. After the maneuvers, Day went to Camp Pickett, Virginia. All the men he trained were sent to England and joined the 29th Division [Annotator's Note: 29th Infantry Division]. He did more maneuvers in Virginia in 1944. In October, the 78th Division was shipped overseas to Europe. When he shipped out overseas, he left with green [Annotator's Note: inexperienced] troops and had one month to train them in England. He essentially went into combat with green troops. Of the 60 medics, only 30 were not replacements.

During the voyage overseas, Morris Eugene Day helped treat the men who got seasick. He was able to eat the Navy food, which was better then what other men were eating. Day ate in the hospital with the medical crew. His ship went over in a ship convoy. The ship was in the middle of the convoy of 120 ships. Day landed in Plymouth, England in late October 1944. He trained his troops, then shipped to Southampton, England. From there, he was transported to Le Havre [Annotator's Note: Le Havre, France]. He ate his Thanksgiving meal on an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. The channel [Annotator's Note: English Channel] was very rough and the LST made it worse. Those ships did not handle the waves well. Le Havre was destroyed. He landed in the dark and moved into a bivouac [Annotator's Note: a bivouac is a temporary campsite] area, but had to sleep in the mud and rain in a pup tent. Day stayed there for a week, then started moving towards the front in Belgium, near the Argonne Forest. The weather was terrible. It snowed and was very cold. The men had no winter weather clothes and little combat gear. They used hay and newspapers to line their clothing to stay warm. Day believes 20 percent of the casualties were due to swollen feet and trench foot. He treated a lot of exposure wounds.

Morris Eugene Day's first day on the line was 13 December 1944. 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 three days later. Day was in Belgium and was sent to the town of Kesternicht [Annotator's Note: Kesternicht, Germany]. The Germans did not want to give up the town. One company went into combat with 165 men and three days later had 26 men. The Germans fought the same way for the rest of the war. They had 88s [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery], burp guns [Annotator's Note: German MP-40, or Maschinenpistole 40, 9mm submachine gun], and Tiger tanks [Annotator's Note: German Mark VI main battle tank; known as the Tiger]. It was difficult to keep the men properly equipped because so much was lost. Day would treat the wounded and bring them back to the aid station. He primarily worked with the 2nd Battalion [Annotator's Note: 2nd Battalion, 310th Infantry Regiment, 78th Infantry Division]. He treated everything from head and stomach wounds to amputations. He also treated German soldiers. They would take the American wounded first, then handle the Germans. There were several layers to the aid station hierarchy. It was a process to get people to the aid station. Day was amazed by how many men were lost during the battle. When the Americans got into Kesternicht, there were still Germans in town. The Germans pulled out the top troops and left the old men and the younger troops. When the Bulge started, Day saw a difference in the troops he was facing. He did not have to face the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS] troops. The German troops he did fight knew what they were doing. The younger troops were hard to shoot at during the battle, but they knew how to shoot their weapons. It was hard to treat their wounded because of the language barrier. Day's regimental surgeon was a German Jew who could speak German. He was very kind and a good doctor. The Americans used crocodile tanks [Annotator's Note: variant of the British Mk IV Churchill heavy tank; it was equipped with a flamethrower] to clear out pillboxes. They then used the pillboxes to hold the wounded. The Americans made holes in the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s] and the 78th Division was able to go through them. Day drove a Weasel [Annotator's Note: M29 Weasel tracked utility vehicle] through the holes in the line and hauled wounded around on it. The weasel was a small, unarmed light tank. The walking wounded would follow the vehicle with the wounded laid out on top. The Germans tied piano wire on trees at head level to decapitate Americans who were driving around. To combat that tactic, the Americans welded iron bars to their vehicles to cut the wires. When Day received his Weasel, he had the iron bar welded to the vehicle. Day put the Red Cross on his helmet and on his Weasel. Day knew some medics who were shot through the helmet, so he thought the Germans targeted them. The Americans treated the German medics with respect. The Americans had less respect for the SS medics because they targeted American medics. The Americans had a job to do, so they tried to it the best they could. They were numb and did anything they could do to keep warm. It snowed from December [Annotator's Note: December 1944] through January [Annotator's Note: January 1945]. Many men were lost because of the weather. In February, the men finally received winter clothing. The Siegfried Line was no worse than anything else he faced. Day's mother was raised by a German, so he understood the German aspect of things. The German people respected the Americans when they moved into Germany. The Americans respected the white flags the civilians had outside of their houses. Occasionally, the unit would run out of medical supplies, but C rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food] and K rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals] were constantly being brought to the front. Once a week a kitchen would be brought to the front. The supply runners would bring up dry socks once a week. Day always carried three pairs of socks so he could keep his feet dry. The cooks were brought up to be infantrymen and Day respected them for that. Day tried to carry extra supplies in his weasel. It was hard to treat a man in pain, so he gave them morphine first. Day thinks about 80 percent of the men treated died. Day felt like he had a job to do, but he did earn a Combat Infantry Badge [Annotator's Note: the Combat Infantryman Badge or CIB is awarded to infantrymen and Special Forces soldiers in the rank of Colonel and below, who personally fought in active ground combat while assigned as members of either an infantry, Ranger or Special Forces unit, of brigade size or smaller, any time after 6 December 1941]. One night, his unit was ambushed, so he threw down his supplies and picked up a rifle and a new helmet. Someone recognized him as a medic and asked why he was fighting. If a medic was caught with a weapon, the Germans would kill them. Day never carried a weapon, but picked some up occasionally.

On Christmas 1944 [Annotator's Note: 24 December 1944], Morris Eugene Day was in Langendorf, Germany. His unit [Annotator's Note: 310th Infantry Regiment, 78th Infantry Division] was the only unit in Germany. All the other units were pushed back into Belgium because of the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. On 26 December, Day received a turkey dinner. He was happy because he had not had a hot shower or changed his clothes in a couple weeks. Day saw the mail man twice in three months. He wrote plenty of letters to his mother using V-mail [Annotator's Note: Victory Mail; postal system put into place during the war to drastically reduce the space needed to transport mail]. All the mail was censored by the officer. He still has about 50 of those letters. Along the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s], Day tried to take some German barracks. It was difficult trying to get the wounded through the road blocks. One medic was shot through the head. Day did not treat head wounds or stomach wounds. While passing the soldier with the head wound, Day brought him back to the aid station. The medics worked with three or four other men. Day lost many friends very quickly, but he was able to depend on a number of medics. Day did not pay attention to the new men because everyone had a job to do. Many of them were not trained to be medics. When Day was wounded, he did not want to be evacuated because he knew he would be moved to a different unit, so he remained on the line. He was wounded in March or April [Annotator's Note: March or April 1945]. The first time he was wounded was by his own ack-ack [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] at the Ludendorff Bridge in Remagen [Annotator's Note: Remagen, Germany]. He was attached to the 9th Armored Division. Day had not slept in a week. As soon as he started sleeping, he was woken up and told to move forward. He did not go into Remagan, but went straight for the bridge. Light vehicles were the first to go across because the tanks were too heavy. A half-track [Annotator's Note: M3 half-track; a vehicle with front wheels and rear tracks] got stuck, causing a traffic jam. On the other side of the bridge, Day's unit decided to move south. By that time, it was night time, so Day resupplied. The infantry carried medical supplies and Day had to scavenge for supplies because the fighting was so fierce. He did not see the bridge collapse [Annotator's Note: the Ludendorff Bridge in Remagen, Germany collapsed on 17 March 1945]. After the bridge crossing, Day continued fighting south. It was impossible to move the wounded to the rear because the bridge was a one way road. They had to leave the wounded where they lay. It took a few days to reach a rear aid station. Day ended up near the Autobahn [Annotator's Note: German highway system that served as the inspiration for the United States interstate system], but did not drive it because of mines. The Germans would use the road as a runway. In Hangelar [Annotator's Note: Hangelar, Germany], he found some wounded Germans. It was difficult to get one of the wounded into the Weasel [Annotator's Note: M29 Weasel tracked utility vehicle]. By the time Day got back to the aid station, the German was so afraid that he reached the aid station before Day did. The time between treating a wounded person and getting to the aid station was about an hour. There was always a man waiting to help unload a wounded solider and treat them. Day was not sure about the effects of the sulfa drugs [Annotator's Note: sulphonamides, sulfa drugs or sulpha drugs; powdered antibacterial medication that was sprinkeled onto wounds to help prevent infection]. Penicillin was not invented until after the war.

Morris Eugene Day ended up in the Ruhr Pocket [Annotator's Note: a massive Allied encirclement of German forces in the Ruhr Valley in April 1945], where thousands of prisoners were taken. The Americans liberated two camps of displaced people. Day was told to leave the people alone and let the infantry take care of them. It was the first time Day saw slave laborers. None of the people weighed more than 60 pounds. He is thankful he could help liberate them. [Annotator's Note: Day shows emotion.] On 8 May [Annotator's Note: 8 May 1945], Day was in Korbach, Germany, guarding German prisoners. The prisoners were interrogated and sent home. After the surrender, Day only had 66 points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home], so he had to stay in Germany for occupation duty. He was in Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany] working as a truck driver. He did not return to the United States until December [Annotator's Note: December 1945] and did not make it home until January 1946. Day was in Korbach when he heard about the Japanese surrender [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945]. When the war in Europe ended, he knew he would go home. Day left Germany on Christmas Eve and was discharged in January. He sailed home on the Lejeune [Annotator's Note: USS Lejeune (AP-74)]. Bunks were stacked eight high and people slept in shifts. The food was very greasy. One of the tankers in the division [Annotator's Note: Day was a medic in the 310th Infantry Regiment, 78th Infantry Division] was wounded in combat. The tanker told him not to evacuate him, but Day gave him a second dose of morphine and evacuated him. When Day was wounded the second time, he was hit by barrel burst, which gave him a concussion. He refused to be evacuated, so they kept him in the hospital, then gave him leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] in Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France]. Day was discharged in Jefferson Barracks, Saint Louis, Missouri [Annotator's Note: Jefferson Barracks Military Post in Lemay, Missouri]. He was discharged as a T5 [Annotator's Note: Technician Fifth Grade or T5; equivalent pay grade as a Corporal; E3]. Day got married after returning home and did not go to school. He started working for the railroad. He had been home one week when he started working. He checked in the trains and helped unload the boxcars. In the winter, he built a bobsled. Someone saw the sled and asked him why he was doing that instead of working, so they gave him a different job to keep him busy. His wife did not like that he traveled for work. The railroad was using steam engines at the time. The military wanted to call him back into the service for the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 1950 to 1953], but his wife refused to let him go to the war. Day and his wife met after he returned from the war and were married six months later. Day felt fortunate to have survived the war.

Morris Eugene Day was a happy-go-lucky boy before the war. When he returned, he found that life was the same, but it was hard to understand what had happened. He found peace and love with his wife, which made life worth living. He worked for a railroad for a year and a half before going into the electrical business. He never drank alcohol, despite people in the service drinking. The motor pool made sure the people drinking made it home. Day was on the VD [Annotator's Note: venereal disease] team. Some medics were used to test German women for VD and found that about half had a disease. Seeing that, Day realized he did not want anything to do with the women. Drinking was a bigger problem in Germany than disease. Day believes the tankers crossing the Ludendorff Bridge [Annotator's Note: in Remagen, Germany] were drunk. They all had cognac and wine. Outside of Schmidt, Germany, it was difficult to get the wounded to the rear quickly because of how many were hit. Day lost many friends during that time. One of his friends was wounded and Day tried to save him, but could not reach him. [Annotator's Note: Day shows emotion.] Treating his friends was the hardest part, but he did the best he could. Day believes it is important for there to be a National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana].