Obie Wickersham was born in March 1925 in Oklahoma. One of the legacies of his father's World War 1 service was confusion about Wickersham's name, so that his service documentation lists him as Ollie B. Wickersham, serial number 39415704; whereas his social security number and all other civilian documentation identify him as Obie Wickersham. His father was a cattle farmer in Oklahoma until Wickersham was 12 years old, when the family moved to California to manage a peach farm. Wickersham liked sports, and he and his four siblings all worked odd jobs from an early age. Wickersham does not remember how he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but he does recall that reconnaissance airplanes began flying over his region, and remembers a Japanese neighbor being sent from his farm to an internment camp for the duration of the war. When he graduated from high school, Wickersham and most of his friends were drafted and "yanked right in" to the armed forces. Most of them felt it was the thing to do. He wanted to be an "aero gunner on B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]," but when he signed up in Monterey, California, he was slated to become a paratrooper. Wickersham said his 16 weeks of combat engineer basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington was "rough," and he was anxious to get out and go to Fort Benning, Georgia for jump school. The training to become a paratrooper was even more rigorous. He had to make five practice jumps to qualify; jumping with heavy equipment was scary, but exhilarating as well. Wickersham said he grew up real fast. Being pinned out of Class 83 with his parachutist's wings was really "something." Ignoring his father's advice to "never volunteer for anything," he got in line at Camp McCall, North Carolina, for the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division.

After qualifying as a paratrooper, Obie Wickersham was at Camp McCall in North Carolina for two months of advanced training when he volunteered for the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion. He knew nothing about the 307, but he did know the unit would be going overseas for combat. He spent 22 days crossing the Atlantic on a liberty ship, with enemy submarine threats a constant, landed in Africa and flew from there to Naples. Wickersham joined Company C, 1st Platoon, 2nd Squad - the best, according to Wickersham. The 307 had jumped in Sicily and Salerno, and their next assignment, at Anzio, Italy became Wickersham's first combat experience. He would rather have jumped, but his unit went in on one of "those stinkin' Higgins boats" [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP] with full equipment. When he got in the water, he sank. At first, he didn't know what to do, but the squad saw to it that the new guys were broken in immediately. They were sent with TNT to blow up a bridge in No Man's Land. It was raining, and after a treacherous hike, they found the bridge had already been blown. Coming back, Germans positioned in a farmhouse opened fire on them with 20mm guns. He remembers being tired, hungry, "scared and mean" and lying in a foxhole on his 19th birthday when he looked up to see B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] coming off a bombing mission, and thought how easy those plane crews had it. Then one blew up, and Wickersham realized that a soldier can get killed anywhere. After several weeks, the squad went back to Naples and on to England to prepare for the invasion of Normandy. Wickersham was still a private and relatively uninformed, but was on guard duty during the night before D-Day when he saw the many planes of all types fly over, and he knew something really big was happening. On several occasions, Wickersham's group went to the airport for a planned jump, but Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant general George S. Patton] beat the airborne to the targets, and it wasn't until Holland that he actually dropped.

Obie Wickersham said the paratroopers liked to go out to the airport, because the Air Force always had good food for the men, and he remembers going out one night and sleeping under a C-47 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft]. The next day, when the order to "load up" came around noon, Wickersham got hooked up. He remembers looking out over the Channel, which was great until German machine gun fire hit the tail of the plane and he got away from the door. When they reached their target, Wickersham said the plane was taking so much ack-ack [Annotator's Note: slang term for antiaircraft artillery fire], the paratroopers were happy to jump out. On his first and only combat jump, Wickersham was headed for a barbed wire fence but missed it. He hit the ground hard and was unable to get out of his leg straps so he cut his way out with his trench knife. The squad assembled in a wooded area, and Wickersham cut his parachute up and used it for a sheet after that. They were marching toward Nijmegen and stopped at Groesbeek the first night. Wickersham was told to man a bazooka and blow away any vehicles that come down the road. He was 18 years old, scared, and hadn't handled that kind of weapon except in basic training. The next day, he put the bazooka down on the asphalt road, and its rocket dropped out. Thankfully it didn't explode, but it gave everybody a scare. After they reached Nijmegen it was decided that they would have to make a river crossing. Using British boats and their M-1s [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 rifle, also referred to as the M1 Garand] as oars, they embarked and came under ferocious German fire. The noise was almost intolerable, and they struggled to get aboard. Several men were wounded, and although the memory of the crossing is mostly a blur now, Wickersham remembers getting a wounded man to safety and being gifted with that guy's brass-knuckled trench knife for his reward. By dusk they had taken the bridges, but the British tanks just stopped, bringing a sad end to the mission. Even sadder was seeing dead buddies laid out on the ground and having to identify them. [Annotator's Note: At this point, Wickersham takes a long emotional pause.]

His recollections were called back to the river crossing where Obie Wickersham lost his friend. To get to the river, the troops had to pull the 26 boats they had assembled over a levee and through a thick mud shoreline. The Germans were on the other side of the river and hit them with everything in their arsenal. The platoon lost men all along the way. Wickersham was preoccupied directing his own rowers, and did not see his friend fatally hit in the chest. Wickersham's boat was shot full of bullet holes. The Americans lost about half of their force, but the others made it across the 450 feet of river. Wickersham was among them, helped to save a stranded soldier, and went back across to participate in the second and third wave of the assault, but did not continue with the infantry. The next night, Wickersham was sent out by himself with a submachine gun to walk around Nijmegen. There were still German troops in the area, and his imagination got to him. He does not deny being scared during patrols, which he did a lot before returning to the base camp in France for a few weeks. The unit was looking forward to a happy Christmas when they got news that they were off to the front again, to fight in the Battle of the Bulge.

To illustrate how adrenaline takes over in battle, Obie Wickersham said that during the Battle of the Bulge members of his detail each had a tank mine in a gunny sack to place along a route the Germans were pushing for control. They were trying to be quiet, but were somehow detected, and a 120mm mortar shell came in and exploded among them. The force of the blast picked Wickersham up and threw him across the road. The legs were blown off one soldier that Wickersham brought back to base in a jeep. The soldier never lost consciousness throughout the ordeal, but died, and once again Wickersham had to identify the dead from the detail. Wickersham's was the first division [Annotator's Note: Wickersham was a member of Company C, 307th Airborne Engineer Battallion, 82nd Airborne Division] to be called into the battle; the 101st was behind them. His convoy went through Bastogne, and took the forward position the first night. It was raining and cold, and on 20 December [Annotator's Note: 20 December 1944] the platoon participated in the battle at Cheneaux. Wickersham was the squad leader, and fought the battle next to a tank destroyer. On the next day, the squad dug in along a row of fences. Wickersham said the Germans were pretty smart, and would shoot at the fence posts causing the fence posts to splinter into shards that came down into the Americans' dugouts. At that point, Wickersham said the platoon was working strictly as infantry. The defense needed men, and they did their job right alongside the 504 [Annotator's Note: 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Divsiion], a good outfit, in Wickersham's opinion. The conditions were tough at the Battle of the Bulge. They were fighting in the woods, with snow up to their fannies, and the Germans had the best tanks ever made, and other good armament. But Wickersham feels the Americans had them beat on the airplanes. After Cheneaux the platoon moved from place to place, patrolling. At the Siegfried Line, the Germans once again used the splintering technique, this time shooting into the trees, to damage their opponents, and Wickersham said many were injured from the exploding plant life.

After the Battle of the Bulge, Obie Wickersham went back to France, only to be sent back to the front between Dusseldorf and Cologne, where the Americans were dug in along the Rhine. Some G.I.s had gotten stranded across the river, and Wickersham went with a patrol to bring them back, but it turned out to be an ambush. He bailed out of the boat he was in and hid, and the ranking officer gave the order to "get the Hell out." When Wickersham came out of hiding and looked around, the others had all left, and he was reported as killed in action. So it was just him and the Germans, and Wickersham said that was a really weird feeling. After he was stranded for about an hour, he decided to swim the 450 feet of swift river, so he took off all his outer clothes, and even left his dog tags behind because they were rattling. When he got several yards out, he got cramps and swam back to shore. At daylight, he observed the Germans leaving their dugout to pull up to the village, and he crawled into their dugout, wrapped himself in the shelter half and straw, and slept. After noon he woke and decided to try again. On the opposite bank members of the 504 [Annotator's Note: 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] identified him as friendly by his olive drab shorts and t-shirt. Wickersham said that although he is not a great swimmer, he employed every water technique he could remember, and got across to where the waiting G.I.s had been making bets as to whether he would make it. Wickersham was blue, and his teeth were chattering so badly he couldn't talk. He was taken to headquarters, warmed up, and questioned about what was going on across the Rhine. He refused hospitalization and asked to be returned to his unit [Annotator's Note: Company C, 307th Airborne Engineer Battallion, 82nd Airborne Division]. This event earned him a Silver Star. Back at his outfit, he spoke with his commanding officer, shared a few drinks with him, was put into a sleeping bag and slept for 48 hours. The war was coming to a close, and Wickersham was offered a promotion if he would stay in the service until the platoon reached Berlin, but he had enough points to go home, which he did.

Obie Wickersham was back in the United States for a while, having fun and working for a garage, when a captain in the reserves persuaded him to join. He got married, and after about three months, he heard on the radio that North Korea had invaded South Korea, and Wickersham was called up. He went to Japan, and took over a platoon in the 30th Infantry Regiment. In May 1951 his unit was completely overrun, and Wickersham was captured. Five hundred soldiers of different nationalities were marched off, and most died from brutality or dysentery. On two occasions, Wickersham thought he would die, but he survived through 28 months of internment and attempts to convert him to Communism.

Offered to go back to Korea, Obie Wickersham refused. He has returned to Holland three times, where the food is good, the people are friendly, and they can all speak English. He thinks the American cemeteries in Europe are really beautiful. Wickersham said that the war made him grow up, and did wonders for him. He met good friends, and doesn't regret the Hell he went through.