Robert Mero was born in December 1924 in Canastota, New York, the youngest of the family's three sons. During the Great Depression, the family moved to Long Island [Annotator's Note: Long Island, New York] where his father, a carpenter, took the only available work, moving graveyards to clear space for the highways. His mother was a schoolteacher, and later an assistant principal, making her the main breadwinner in the family. Mero grew up in a diverse neighborhood, and had a pleasant childhood, relatively unaware of the economic hardships of the times. He was working at a part-time job as a theater usher when the news broke about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. His high school Italian teacher came into the theater crying, and put her arms around him saying, "oh poor Bobby, you're going to have to go fight in the war." It wasn't until later, when he was 18 and a freshman in college, that he was drafted into the Army. He finished his studies for the year, and was inducted in June 1943, following his two brothers into the armed forces. He was sent to Fort Niagara, New York for a few days, they went to Camp Wolters, Texas for basic infantry training. After completion, he had a seven day furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], then went to the University of Missouri at Columbia for six months of ASTP [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program] training in mechanical engineering. Mero also played in a dance band while he was there, and found this part of his training a "wonderful time."

When the ASTP [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program] was disbanded in March 1944, Robert Mero was sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, then to Camp Rucker, Alabama where he was assigned to the 66th Infantry Division whose symbol is the Black Panther. By the time Mero got there, all the newly arriving recruits were college kids like him, and he felt some of the old timers held their education against them. Mero joined G Company, 4th Platoon, 2nd Battalion, 263rd Infantry Regiment [Annotator's Note: 4th Platoon, Company G, 2nd Battalion, 263rd Infantry Regiment, 66th Infantry Division], as a light machine gunner. His weapon was an A4 machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M1919A4 .30 caliber light machine gun], which used a tripod and a 250 round belt [Annotator's Note: a belt holding 250 rounds of .30 caliber ammunition]. At this point in the interview, Mero compared some of the German and American World War 2 weapons. For a time, Mero instructed new recruits on the use of the machine guns, and also became a guidon bearer, so he had a fairly easy time for a while. Once, when he was bearing the company flag during maneuvers, he was caught off guard and quizzed by the division general about why he was studying a French vocabulary book. Mero replied that it might be useful wherever he was deployed. Some time later, the same general remembered the incident when he pinned a Bronze Star on Mero in France.

From Camp Rucker, Alabama, Robert Mero went to Camp Shanks, New York for embarkation to the European Theater in late October 1944. He sailed in a convoy, and landed at Bournemouth, England. Mero felt ready to go into combat, but was billeted at Lyme Regis, England for a couple of months before going to the continent. While there, he got a pass to visit his brother who was at an airfield in England and as he traveled through London, Mero experienced a V-2 rocket [Annotator's Note: German Vergeltungswaffe, or Retribution Weapon 2, ballistic missile] bombing. When he returned to Lyme Regis on 24 December, he immediately left for Cherbourg, France. They were in sight of the port when the ship they were following in convoy was torpedoed and 790 soldiers were lost. Mero remembers spending the day after Christmas, his 20th birthday, on the shore pulling in bodies. All of Mero's equipment was lost in the confusion and he was issued a grey Canadian blanket to wrap in so he could sleep a few hours. One night when he and a buddy were on guard duty, they were approached by a Frenchman on a bicycle who traded them a bottle of Normandy apple brandy [Annotator's Note: Calvados] for American cigarettes. The division [Annotator's Note: 66th Infantry Division] moved on to Fay-de-Bretagne to hold the 120,000 elite German troops trapped in the Saint Nazaire-Lorient Pocket.

When his company [Annotator's Note: Company G, 2nd Battalion, 263rd Infantry Regiment, 66th Infantry Division] got to the line, Robert Mero was positioned in a barn with his machine gun camouflaged by a haystack. He covered a no-man's-land [Annotator's Note: an area of unoccuppied ground between the static positions of oppossing forces], bordered on the near side by a cabbage patch. He said there was "a lot of excitement every night" when the soldiers would launch grenades into the garden where they saw movement, and most often it turned out to be feral cats prowling for field mice. Mero said they were a lot of inexperienced soldiers, and there was no way to tell if something was actually happening or if it was the reaction of someone who was frightened by motion or a noise. One young gunner put several M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand] rounds into a pair of long johns that had been laundered and hung on a line to dry. Nonetheless, the company did have frequent alerts when the Germans tried to find weak spots through which they could break out of the Pocket [Annotator's Note: Saint-Nazaire Pocket]. Mero described another position from which they defended that was behind a dirt bank of a hedgerow. They lived pretty rough. Sometimes they supplemented their diet of Spam and French bread by taking a walk into the nearby village to buy horse meat. The GIs [Annotator’s Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] rubbed a little gun oil into the bottoms of their mess kits and fried the meat over a campfire. Occasionally they were issued C-Rations [Annotator's Note: pre-cooked combat ration] or, more rarely, K-rations [Annotator's Note: pre-cooked combat ration]. They didn't see officers very often. Mero went out on a couple of patrols, which meant he was entitled to shoepacs [Annotator's Note: also referred to as shoe pacs; water resistant boots] that kept his feet warm. On one patrol the soldiers fell back after their lieutenant was killed trying to find a route through a suspected mine field; when they returned to retrieve the man's body, the Germans carried it to them on a ladder, and accepted a few cigarettes in recompense.

In February 1945, Robert Mero volunteered for another patrol that involved an assault group and a support group. He took along a M1919A6 machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M1919A6 .30 caliber light machine gun] and an assistant gunner with extra ammunition. When the assault group's scouts went through the hedgerow, they were seized by the Germans on the other side. The sergeant saw what happened and pulled the rest of them back. He told Mero to find a hole, and lay down some fire. Mero spotted a machine gun nest and knocked its gunner down. He flushed out two more and "nailed them" too. The patrol than came under intense mortar fire from both sides, as well as German machine gun fire. The radio operator who was right next to Mero was killed and Mero's assistant gunner was severely wounded. When Mero attempted to take over on the radio, he found the microphone embedded in the dead man's chest. The sergeant of the assault group radioed that he had a prisoner and they were withdrawing. Mero was left, alone and afraid, to provide the covering fire that allowed the support patrol to fall back without suffering any additional casualties. The company [Annotator's Note: Company G, 2nd Battalion, 263rd Infantry Regiment, 66th Infantry Division] was brought back to the rest area and given a steak dinner. For his actions that day, Mero was awarded the Bronze Star [Annotator's Note: the fourth-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy]. He was also given the opportunity to move from a weapons platoon to an easier outfit and he jumped at the chance to serve in the intelligence section of the Headquarters Company [Annotator's Note: Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 263rd Infantry Regiment, 66th Infantry Division].

When the war ended Robert Mero was still in the rifle company [Annotator's Note: Company G, 2nd Battalion, 263rd Infantry Regiment, 66th Infantry Division], which had been moved down the Brittany coast to La Baule, France. While his platoon [Annotator's Note: 4th Platoon; Weapons Platoon] was living in a three story house on the beach, he and a buddy went into the former enemy's territory and "liberated" several German guns. Mero describes the weapons and discusses the intricacies of getting their prizes home. On 1 June 1945, Mero was sent from France to Koblenz, Germany as part of the Army of Occupation, and bivouacked [Annotator's Note: a temporary camp] on an airfield. He had a brief visit with his brother, an aviator, while he was there, and together they flew over the area to get a view of the terrain. Later on the same day, Mero was decorated [Annotator's Note: see clip titled Earning the Bronze Star], and his brother flew loops over the parade that was arranged to commemorate the event.

From the area of the Rhine [Annotator's Note: Rhine River], Robert Mero was sent Marseilles, France among all the vehicles of war that were waiting to be shipped back to the United States. He was in Special Services, doing guard duty on the equipment. While he was there, he enjoyed a show put on by Mickey Rooney [Annotator's Note: born Joseph Yule, Jr.; American entertainer]. On a couple of occasions, he flew with his brother over the Mediterranean, and once, they went into Cannes, France to deliver live lobsters for General Eisenhower's [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] table. Mero was in Marseilles for about two months, and eventually got the assignment of running the enlisted men's club that he helped to build, furnish and operate. Then, he was awarded a trip to Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] to attend a school in technical instruments. He was there for about four months, helping to develop a prototype for a pneumatic chronometer, and had a "great time" while he was there. He returned to the United States and was discharged in April 1946.

Through the "Stars and Stripes" [Annotator's Note: American military newspaper] newsletter and other means, Robert Mero said that the soldiers in Occupied Europe kept up with the war in the Pacific from V-E Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945] in May to V-J Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945] in August 1945. Because he had been in combat, he was not among those being re-deployed to the other side of the world. After he finished his course in Paris, France, he was assigned to United States Forces Austria in Vienna. He spent about a week there, drawing maps, then he was sent to Salzburg, Austria to open an office for geographic and photographic intelligence. Through his position, he gathered information that contributed to the peacetime transition for Austria, and enjoyed numerous privileges, making him feel he had come a long way from the muddy fields of combat. He went on to describe the escapades he had in a big car he acquired from the private automobile collection of a deposed German official.

Robert Mero's decoration [Annotator's Note: see clip titled Earning the Bronze Star] gave him an advantage in the points system and he went home about five months before the rest of his company. He had a good trip back to the United States, sailing from Calais, France on a ship full of soldiers gambling heavily on crap games, and arriving in New Jersey. He was discharged from Fort Dix, New Jersey around 1 April 1946, and his aviator brother flew him home. At a 66th Infantry Division reunion, Mero ran into a veteran who knew the fate of the Mercedes he had the benefit of using during his assignment in Austria. Post occupation the car, which had originally belonged to Baron von Ribbentrop [Annotator's Note: German Foreign Minister Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop], one of Hitler's [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] closest advisors, was transferred to California, and eventually sold for a huge amount of money.