Robert Huber read Mein Kampf in high school. It was his first introduction to Hitler [Annotator's Note: German Dictator Adolf Hitler]. At the time they knew nothing about him. It was part of his history course. His next experience with World War 2 in Europe was in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Huber was 16 years old at the time and had no idea that five years later he would be on a ship going to Europe with his infantry outfit. He went overseas in September 1944. Huber did not realize what lay ahead. Mein Kampf was more biographical information but Huber cannot really remember what it was about. Huber was drafted in February 1943. He was sent to a place near Harrisburg and was inducted into the Army. He had tried to get into the Navy but was rejected. Looking back, he is glad he went into the Army. Huber was sent to Camp Howze, Texas where he took his basic training with the 86th Infantry Division. He spent about six months there training with the infantry. When Huber entered the service, he took a test for the Army Specialized Training Program, or ASTP. He was accepted and sent to the University of Illinois where he took basic engineering courses, along with math and chemistry. He and the other soldiers lived in fraternity houses at school. They would march to and from classes and never had any time off. They went to class all day long. The sailors in the Navy's V5 program were a different story. They looked just like regular college kids. The soldiers and sailors never got along. Huber enjoyed going to school at Illinois. He began his courses there in September and in January or February the program was shut down and he was sent back to the infantry. Huber was assigned to the 104th Infantry Division, the unit he eventually went overseas with. He joined the 104th Division in the Mojave Desert. The division was down to about two thirds of its normal strength and was being bolstered with the guys from the ASTP. At first the GIs from the ASTP were looked down upon but they were soon accepted by the guys who were there before them. Many of the ASTP guys proved themselves and were promoted for it. Huber became a staff sergeant. Some of the ASTP guys even received battlefield commissions. From the desert they went to Camp Carson [Annotator's Note: Camp Carson, Colorado] for about six months of intensive combat training. General Terry Allen was the commander of their division. Allen had led the 1st Infantry Division in Africa and Sicily. They remained at Camp Carson until September [Annotator's Note: September 1944] when shipped out from New York and went directly to France as part of the largest convoy of the war. The troopship Huber went overseas aboard was crowded but it was not a bad trip. They arrived in France and Huber went ashore over Utah Beach.

After going ashore three months after D-Day, Robert Huber's unit [Annotator's Note: Company G, 3rd Battalion, 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division] set up tents in a nearby apple orchard. They took some training and were issued new weapons. Some of the men went on supply trains from the coast into Paris. The trains were carrying all types of supplies, fuel, ammunition and food among other things. It turns out that members of the French underground were robbing the supply trains so the Army started putting armed guards on them. The guards would ride the train into Paris, spend the night in the city then return to the coast the next day. During one trip into Paris, Huber arranged to meet up with a fried from high school and they palled around the city for a couple of days. When they were no longer needed for train duty, Huber's unit was sent to Holland. The Allies captured the port of Antwerp but did not have control of the estuary above it. British and Canadians troops were trying to secure the estuary, which ran all the way up to Holland. Huber's unit moved in and replaced the British 49th Division in Belgium near the border with Holland.

Robert Huber's first combat action in Holland was at night. It was a 40 man patrol sent out to capture some enemy prisoners. Huber's machine gun section went along as support. During the patrol, one of the sergeants stuck his head up over a dyke and was shot and killed. The sergeant was new to Huber's unit. He had come from an artillery unit at Fort Sill. After the sergeant's death, Huber was promoted to staff sergeant and took his place. Huber liked his men and he led by example. During their first three weeks in combat in Holland his division lost 280 men killed in action and about twice that many wounded. When they tried to dig foxholes in Holland they could only dig shallow holes. One interesting thing that happened to Huber was when he left his foxhole to go to the latrine and when he returned there was a dud 88mm shell lying in it. Huber believes that it was sabotage by slave laborers that caused the shell not to detonate. Huber's unit was as well trained as they could be. For him, maneuvers were worse than actual combat. In combat they traveled mostly by truck. They left Holland after three weeks and were taken by truck to Aachen, Germany.

Robert Huber's unit [Annotator's Note: Company G, 3rd Battalion, 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division] relieved the 1st Infantry Division in Aachen, Germany on Huber's 21st birthday, 8 November [Annotator's Note: 8 November 1944]. Their commanding general [Annotator's Note: Major General Terry de la Mesa Allen, Sr.] had commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Africa and Sicily. Huber has been back to Germany on historical tours. On one, he was approached by a German civilian who thanked him for helping the German people to get rid of Hitler [Annotator's Note: German Dictator Adolf Hitler]. From Aachen they fought their way into the Ruhr Valley. For about three weeks in November they fought there. During the first week of December they arrived at the Ruhr River. At about the same time, men were selected to go to a rest area and Huber was the man chosen from his unit. He was sent by truck to Liege, Belgium. They were supposed to be there for the weekend but as soon as they started walking around they were rounded up by MPs [Annotator's Note: military police] who told them to get back to the front. When Huber got back to his unit he could hear artillery going off in the distance. It was 16 December, the day the Battle of the Bulge began. They immediately went into an active defense. The ground was frozen so they had to blow holes in the ground to use as foxholes and to set their machine guns up in. The battle lasted from mid December until around the middle of January. During that time the Germans blew the dams above the Ruhr River near the Hurtgen Forest. The river got so wide and was flowing so fast that they had to wait until about four weeks after the Battle of the Bulge ended before they could cross the river in assault boats.

Only one boat from Robert Huber's company [Annotator's Note: Company G, 3rd Battalion, 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division] did not make it [Annotator's Note: during an assault boat crossing of the Ruhr River]. They had trained for this and nearly every boat made it. After crossing the river they attacked a town nearby. They were able to clear it out in about 15 minutes. The rest of the German garrison was in the next town. Huber's unit surprised them by taking the town at night. They captured a German prisoner who told them about the German defensive dispositions and about the minefield protecting the town. They attacked up the road that the Germans used for truck traffic. The Germans did not like their night tactics. Later on, one of the rifle companies captured an underground bunker with about 50 German troops in it. The German officer refused to surrender to enlisted men so the riflemen got Huber. Huber got them out. They finally got to Cologne. There was a huge cathedral in Cologne that the Americans used as a land mark. By the time Huber's unit got to Cologne, the regular German forces had already pulled back to the opposite side of the Rhine River and had blown all of the bridges. The only enemy forces left were rear guard units made up of retired police and firemen, young kids and others. Cologne ended up being a fairly easy city to take. They were held up at the Rhine River for about a week trying to figure out how they were going to cross it. Then the Remagen Bridge was captured, giving them a way across. The 9th Armored Division had captured the bridge intact. By the time Huber's unit got to Remagen the engineers had constructed a pontoon bridge across the river next to the railroad bridge.

The next action Robert Huber and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company G, 3rd Battalion, 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division] took part in was the surrounding of the Ruhr Valley. The 9th Army was to their north and the 1st Army was to the south. They surrounded and captured about a quarter of a million German soldiers. During this operation, the Nordhausen concentration camp was liberated. From what Huber heard, there were about 6,000 slave laborers in the camp when it was liberated but half of them were dead. Then they went to Halle, Germany on the Elbe River. The German troops in Halle tried to put up resistance but finally von Luckner [Annotator's Note: Felix Graf von Luckner] and Huber's general [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Terry de la Mesa Allen, also known as Terrible Terry Allen] negotiated the surrender of the town. Huber's captain told them that the Germans would try to get across the Elbe River so they could get away from the Russians and surrender to the Americans. When they asked one German soldier what all the firing and explosions coming from the other side of the river was, he replied that the Russians were over there shooting the Germans and each other. The Russians were very undisciplined troops. When the American troops left Halle the residents of the city were sad because they knew the Russians were going to take over. After the German surrender, they thought that they would be used as occupation forces. Instead, they were sent back to the United States to be trained in amphibious operations to prepare for the invasion of Japan.

Robert Huber and the rest of his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company G, 3rd Battalion, 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division] were sent to the coast of France where they boarded transports back to the United States. When they first arrived back the United States they were all sent home on a 30 day furlough after which they were to report to San Luis Obispo, California. While they were home on furlough, in August [Annotator's Note: August 1945], the atomic bombs were dropped. Once back in the United States, Huber was able to get reacquainted with his girlfriend. When his 30 day furlough was up he reported to San Luis Obispo and waited there to be discharged. Huber was discharged on 6 December 1945. Huber matured during his time in the Army. This started when he was first sent down to Texas and was surrounded by people from all around the country. It was an enjoyable experience for him. Growing up during the depression and having to do without helped Huber after going into the service. So did being a Boy Scout and a paper boy for several years.

Only one of Robert Huber's friends was wounded during the war. He did not know the sergeant who was killed. The one who was wounded was hit after they crossed the Ruhr. They had set their machine guns up in a position to defend against an enemy counter attack. The Germans started shelling their position and the man was hit in the neck by a piece of shrapnel. Huber stayed in touch with a couple other friends after the war. One, Carmouche [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], was from New Orleans and the other, Edgar Davis, was from Texas. The 104th Infantry Division holds reunions every year but there are fewer and fewer veterans attending. Now, the children are taking over. Huber is also looking forward to an upcoming overseas trip. The time Huber was most afraid was when he experienced artillery barrages. The Germans could put shells from their 88mm guns into a foxhole. There was nothing they could do to stop it. They did not like artillery at all. Sometimes they did not like their own when short rounds were dropped on them. A guy Huber knows from reunions lost half of his squad, six men, to a short round. During the Battle of the Bulge, Huber experienced air burst artillery which was devastating. The only thing they could do to protect themselves from it was to cover their foxholes with heavy timber or hug trees. Being under an artillery barrage is the worst thing a person can experience because there is nothing they could do about it. Once they had a little experience, they could tell the difference between incoming and outgoing shells. During their first action a man from Huber's outfit cracked from the pressure. He had to take a wounded man back to the aid station and he never went back. He became a truck driver.

Robert Huber believes that camaraderie is what kept the men in his outfit [Annotator's Note: Company G, 3rd Battalion, 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division] together. Everybody depended on everybody else. Team work was essential for survival. Huber's unit was north of the bulge, on the edge of it. The 104th Infantry Division was on the left flank of the 1st Army and the left flank of the VII Corps. There was another unit between them and the bulge. For shelter, Huber and the guys in his outfit would sleep in farmhouses and basements. When they were in a basement one time, one of the guys in his outfit went outside to use the latrine and was killed. Huber does not know if he was killed by a short shell from an American gun, a shell from a German gun or a German jet aircraft that came in suddenly, bombed the area then left. They would shell the Germans with shells carrying messages offering them safe passage if they surrendered. The Germans would send shells over offering to play music for the Americans if they stopped shelling them. During the bulge they captured some German paratroopers who had been dropped behind the line to disrupt operations. While they were waiting for the bulge to go down their cooks brought them a hot meal. Once the bulge began it was a nightmare to supply all of the troops on the lines. Once the weather lifted during the bulge, the air force, the artillery and the tanks were able to operate freely and provided a one, two, three punch toward the Germans. Huber's most frightening experience took place in Holland when a man was killed right next to him. Combat was ten percent horror and 90 percent boredom. Units would rotate on and off the lines. The worst thing Huber heard of was about a GI having to shoot a German teenager who was wearing a uniform. Nordhausen was also horrific. After learning about that he knew why he was there fighting. During the war, the first death Huber experienced was the one that affected him the most. There is no glory in war. Huber and many other soldiers do not like medal hunters because they took too many chances. Huber's most vivid memory is crossing the Rhine River in assault boats at three in the morning with a strong current rushing by. When they reached to opposite shore they were able to move inland through a gap that the artillery had opened for them in the German lines. Huber never thought that he would survive. He credits this attitude on his faith. Huber writes articles about World War 2 in his church newsletter. He also talks to senior groups and school kids about the war. Huber feels that if called upon to do so, the current generation could fight a war like he did. He also feels that there should be mandatory military service. Huber did not start attending reunions until 1998. When he got home from the war he became a machinist and machine builder and worked for 45 years before he retired. For Huber, it was good seeing some of the men he served with at the reunions.