Robert Stephen Bebko was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in October 1925. There were three girls and five boys in his family. He is the oldest. His father was a steel miller at National Erie [Annotator's Note: National Erie Corporation]. It was hard to keep his job during the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States]. It was hard but they got by. Bebko attended school. He only attended high school for two years and then quit to help out his family by working. He gave his money to his dad, who then gave him an allowance. In the military, he had nothing going to them. He made 60 dollars a month. When he went overseas, he was made a PFC [Annotator's Note: Private 1st Class] and that gave him four more dollars per month. He had to pay for his own insurance out of that. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bebko where he was when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] Bebko was at home. He cannot remember it exactly. He volunteered. He actually pleaded to get in the Navy at the recruiting office. They told him the Army was good for him. That was on 20 July 1944. He had wanted the Navy because he had friends in it, and they looked sharp in their uniforms. Bebko went to Fort McClellan [Annotator's Note: in Anniston, Alabama] for three months of basic training. He went home on a seven-day leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. Then he was shuffled around and around Christmas [Annotator's Note: December 1944], he boarded the Queen Mary [Annotator's Note: RMS Queen Mary]. He waved to the Statue of Liberty going out. He was put on guard duty on top deck. He did not want to see any submarines. They did have a warning, but it turned out to be a whale.

Robert Stephen Bebko had not heard about the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] when preparing to go overseas [Annotator's Note: in December 1944]. They sailed for three days. When that ship listed, it listed. He would wonder if it would turnover. They landed in Glasgow, Scotland. They boarded some LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] and sat in them for a long time. They then boarded trains across to England to the English Channel to Southampton [Annotator's Note: Southampton, England] he believes. They got on more LSTs to cross the channel to Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France]. It was the middle of winter. They had no tents. They dug into the snow and slept in it. They stayed until 6 January [Annotator's Note: 6 January 1945]. He was put into the 28th Division [Annotator's Note: 28th Infantry Division]. They called it "The Little Bloody Bucket". He had gone through a replacement depot, but he does not remember it in detail. He was in a barn somewhere when he joined them. There were only ten men left in his company when he joined it. That was with the 110th, 28th, in F Company [Annotator's Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division]. The standard for a company was around 220 or 230 men. He remembers going through a town in a covered truck. He only heard slates falling off the roofs onto the streets. They were up in the mountains once. He had overcoats and the bottom of them were on top of the snow. Combat boots were not waterproof. He froze his toes and to this day they are the same. He cannot even have a blanket on his toes now. He could handle the cold. The overcoat was a big drag. Being in the snow with a brown overcoat, he shone out like a star.

Robert Stephen Bebko got to the Hurtgen Forest [Annotator's Note: Battle of Hürtgen Forest, 19 September 1944 to 10 February 1945, Hürtgen, Staatsforst or state forest, Germany] for his first encounter with the enemy. He was sitting on his helmet. A Colonel came by and told him to put it back on. Shrapnel was all around. They were in the forest for quite a while and then moved up the line from the French Army to the 1st Army, and so on, all the way to Belgium. He was in F Company [Annotator's Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division] for a while, his captain was Reinhardt [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify], another German. Bebko was made a runner. Runners are in trouble all the time. He takes the orders from the captain to wherever something is going on. There was house barn on the side of a hill. Before they got there, the captain sent a squad to go in there. They encountered mines. The captain ordered Bebko to tell the sergeant, who later made second lieutenant by a field commission [Annotator's Note: a field commission, also referred to as a battlefield promotion, battlefield commission, or field promotion, is an advancement in military rank from enlisted to officer that occurs while deployed in combat], to get into the barn and stay there. Before Bebko got to the end of the column, the Germans started lobbing in mortars. He hit the snow. The captain popped up and asked if he was hurt. When he got to the end of the column, he was told he was in a mine field. He then carefully stepped in previous footprints and did not fall over anymore. He told the sergeant what to do and he went with him into the barn. While there overnight they had to pull a raid because they needed that crossroad. Seeing nothing but gunfire and bomb blasts was quite a bit. Going through the mine field, a sergeant and a lieutenant each had one of their feet blown off. They put them in the basement. To get to them, they had to slide through snow through a window. A couple of guys slid in on top of them. The next morning they wanted to send people for help. Bebko was picked to provide cover fire. They had to stop him because he was going wild with it. After that it was a long deal.

Robert Stephen Bebko and his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division] were put up on a mountainside [Annotator's Note: during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, 19 September 1944 to 10 February 1945, Hürtgen, Staatsforst or state forest, Germany]. There was big fire going on the opposite mountain. They had to go over the next day and some boys laying there were stiff as a board from the cold. The French Army relieved them after a day. German troops got through their line somehow and captured a few of the boys, including their first aid man called Smoky. They met the French Army as they were going down. They had all kinds of schnapps [Annotator's Note: type of alcoholic beverage]. He had an M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. He was a replacement rifleman and the company runner. His job was to try get the word the captain gave him to ones it was meant for. He was upfront and in brown [Annotator's Note: Bebko is referring ot the color of the uniform he was wearing at the time]. The Germans had snow capes. Bebko got to Colmar [Annotator's Note: Colmar Pocket, Alsace, France] after the action had taken place. They took over the town [Annotator's Note: of Colmar, France] and there were dead Jerries [Annotator's Note: slang for Germans] laying all over the place. Their barracks was there as well as their guns. They were told not to go souvenir hunting. He did come back with a Mauser [Annotator's Note: Mauser designed Karabiner 98 kurz; often Karabiner 98k, Kar98, or K98k, German 7.92mm bolt-action rifle] that he picked up at a later date. [Annotator's Note: Bebko stops to look at a book and a map of his to refresh his memory.] The boys he joined had taken a shellacking at Omaha Beach [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. [Annotator's Note: Bebko recounts all the stops on the map that is off camera.] He thinks he was near the Remagen Bridge [Annotator's Note: Ludendorff Bridge in Remagen, Germany] but is not sure. He was in Weisenthurm [Annotator's Note: Weißenthurm, Germany] where he did a little sniping. He did not know what he was shooting at, so he got tracers from a machine gun belt. That was the biggest mistake he made. The Germans then knew where it was coming from, and they lobbed six mortars at him. They were there a day and overnight they could hear the Germans moving out. The wagon wheels on the brick streets brought that in loud and clear. They moved up to Cologne [Annotator's Note: Köln, Germany] and then Wassenberg, Holland. They then went down to Saarbrucken [Annotator's Note: Saarbrücken, Germany] with a few ordeals along the way. After he sniped on the Rhine River [Annotator's Note: Rhine River, Germany], he was issued a sniper rifle with a scope, an O-3 Springfield [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber Model 1903, or M1903, Springfield bolt action rifle]. That did not make him happy. He did not want to do that kind of sniping.

Robert Stephen Bebko went to one town they [Annotator's Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division] had to take. It had a chocolate factory. Bebko broke into a house to see if there were soldiers there. There was a woman and two guys at a table. He came across a German wearing G.I. [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier] pants. He took him to the major who questioned him. The German was an old guy and the major slapped him. Bebko does not know what happened after that. Bebko hardly remembers Aachen [Annotator's Note: Aachen, Germany]. They went through a big building where there were a lot of people sleeping on the floors. Bebko was made a sniper towards the end, and there was not much need for it. He turned in his sniper rifle for an M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. When he was sniping previously on the Rhine River [Annotator's Note: Rhine River, Germany] with an M1, it was to check out the accuracy of his rifle. The German soldiers were good. The Germans used bolt-action Mausers [Annotator's Note: Mauser designed Karabiner 98 kurz; often Karabiner 98k, Kar98, or K98k, German 7.92mm bolt-action rifle]. Bebko brought one back and used it for deer hunting. He did not have a lot of contact with German armor. Some guys did. The German cannons [Annotator's Note: tank guns] shot just like a bullet. Whatever they shot at, they hit. Bebko was strafed, shot at, and had to play dead once. They were in the hills. The whole group was marching, and he was carrying a bazooka [Annotator's Note: man-portable recoilless anti-tank weapon] and his M1. They would pass the bazooka around to be carried. By the time they got to where they needed it, a sniper pinned them down. When the bazooka came up, it was packed full of snow. They cleaned it out and got the sniper. That is where Bebko froze his toes. His friend named Frank Bernowski [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] had his feet so frozen they had to cut his boots off. Bebko did not change clothes for three months and had wet feet all that time. You cannot imagine what they smelled like. It was January and cold but they did not encounter heavy snow. It was tougher to fight in a forest than a town. He wanted out of there and they did before the heavy stuff came in. When they go off in the tops there, shrapnel goes everywhere [Annotator's Note: German artillery using air bursts to explode the treetops]. That caused a lot of casualties, and he lost a lot of friends there [Annotator's Note: during the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest].

A friend of Robert Stephen Bebko's [Annotator's Note: in Company F, 2nd Battalion, 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division] had to pull guard duty. His name was Eddie Brezinksi [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify]. He never came back. He got a mortar right through his head. They were close. The snow was the problem. Trudging through snow and fighting. He wonders how he did all of that. He never got hit and he was lucky. He had this nice big overcoat on, and they would just hit that. The most difficult fighting was around where he went through a minefield. He was on a road in a truck once, and a German plane strafed them. He got into a dugout. Nobody got hit. It was getting towards the end, and they were chasing the Germans. His outfit got five battle stars [Annotator's Note: device worn to denote subsequent awards on medals and ribbons; also called campaign stars or service stars] and he got three for the Ardennes, Rhineland, and Central Europe. He had contact with the civilians at the end. When they got to Saarbrucken [Annotator's Note: Saarbrücken, Germany], he was on guard duty at a communications station. That was right at the end of the war in May [Annotator's Note: 8 May 1945]. Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] said to give the boys all they wanted to drink. That was the saddest day of his life. He was not a drinker, and he drank Cognac [Annotator's Note: type of alchoholic beverage]. They got them up at five o'clock in the morning to march and he was drunker than a skunk.

Some of the Germans were good. Robert Stephen Bebko felt sorry for the kids. At Saarbrucken [Annotator's Note: Saarbrücken, Germany], they [Annotator's Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division] would have their chow and the little kids would wait and get the scraps out of the garbage. The civilian population was pretty good. Before the end of the war, Japan was still fighting, and he was learning how to take a pillbox [Annotator's Note: type of blockhouse, or concrete, reinforced, dug-in guard post, normally equipped with slits for firing guns]. When he landed back in the United States, some boys had been sent straight over. He came back through England. When he got to the United States on 2 August 1945, the war was still on. He got one week leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. While he was home, he was told to take another week and the war ended. He married on 16 August 1946. He has been married 67 years [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview]. They had been courting before he left to go overseas. They had started dating in 1944. After he went back to camp and the war ended, he was sent to Louisiana where the 28th Division disbanded. Part of them went to 10th Mountain Division and some to the 2nd Division [Annotator's Note: 2nd Infantry Division]. He went to the 2nd. They got on trains to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] where they had an Army Day [Annotator's Note: now Armed Forces Day] parade. He stayed there. He then went to Fort Lewis, Washington [Annotator's Note: near Lakewood, Washington]. He was ready to go to Japan. They were getting out by 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]. He got discharged on 20 June 1946. He hitchhiked his way home which was not bad for soldiers. He got to Yuma, Arizona and stayed overnight. Then he could not get rides and got on a train. He was a PFC [Annotator's Note: Private 1st Class] when he got out. When training to go to Japan, Bebko was not too happy, but it was the job. They had a real tough time there.

Robert Stephen Bebko used the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] to go to school in the mechanics' trades. He had no money for at least three months, and he was married. He did not consider going back in the service. He had his fill and earned his infantry combat 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] and got five medals. Norman D. Cota [Annotator's Note: US Army Brigadier General Norman Daniel "Dutch" Cota, Sr.] was the general of the 28th Division [Annotator's Note: 28th Infantry Division]. In "The Longest Day" [Annotator's Note: 1959 book by Cornelius Ryan and American war film of the same name released in 1962], Robert Mitchum [Annotator's Note: Robert Charles Durman Mitchum; American actor, director, author, poet, composer, and singer] played him. When Bebko as going up to Fort Lewis [Annotator's Note: Fort Lewis near Lakewood, Washington], he got to meet Mitchum. He did not know who he was, but his buddy pointed him out. Bebko took a picture of him. Mitchum asked what they were doing. He told them they would not let him in because they did not know any movie stars. He took their names and got them in. He said to meet him at noon for lunch. Going through the studio, he met Bob Hope [Annotator's Note: Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope KBE; British-American entertainer who was famous for entertaining American troops serving overseas during World War 2, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War]. He met a few after that, including Howard Hughes [Annotator's Note: Howard Robard Hughes, Junior; American businessman, pilot, engineer, film director, and philanthropist]. He did not have lunch with Robert Mitchum. Bebko met Hope and went on the set of "Sinbad the Sailor" [Annotator's Note: American film released in 1947]. He got to talking with Douglas Fairbanks [Annotator's Note: Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Junior; American actor, producer, and naval officer] and forgot about Mitchum. He stayed with him, and Maureen O'Hara [Annotator's Note: born Maureen FitzSimons; Irish actor and singer] walked by them. This was in Hollywood [Annotator's Note: Hollywood, California]. He was at the bar with his buddy and a waiter asked if he wanted to meet Howard Hughes. Hughes was with Linda Darnell [Annotator's Note: born Monetta Eloyse Darnell; American model and actor]. The person who had been next to him at the bar was Burl Ives [Annotator's Note: Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives; American singer, musician, actor, and author]. Bebko had trouble finding housing when he got out. He had 15 dollars when he got married in Westfield, New York. He came back and was disowned by his family for eloping. He got married again when she was pregnant to set things right. [Annotator's Note: Bebko has a photograph of them he shows to the interviewer.]