Robert Offenbacher was born in Lima, Ohio in September 1922. He had five brothers. He was a twin and one brother was younger. His father was a carpenter. His mother worked at home. They lived on a farm. His father worked at a carpenter shop in a cigar factory during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. They raised their own food. They were poor, but he did not know it. There was a bus that took them to school. They had a wonderful school in a little town. People were good people in those days. Offenbacher was in Fort Wayne, Indiana when he heard about Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He thought he would be going to war. He knew the draft was coming. He was drafted on 2 December 1942. The man at the draft board said he was going into the infantry. Offenbacher wanted to take a test and not go into the infantry. The test was about mechanics. He had worked in a service station for a while. He passed the test and was qualified for more than holding a gun. He was going to be sent to mechanics school. Offenbacher had worked in an office before he was drafted. He was asked if he would like to work the mimeograph machine [Annotator’s Note: a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper]. His twin brother was in the infantry in Mississippi. He tried to get his brother transferred to work with him.

Robert Offenbacher had a lieutenant who worked next to his office. Offenbacher’s twin brother did not have a job in headquarters. The commanding officer called Offenbacher into his office to say he got a letter to transfer his brother into their unit. The lieutenant said he would put Offenbacher in any unit he wanted to be in. He wanted to be in the 498th Ordinance Motor Vehicle Company, so the lieutenant put him and his brother in that unit. He was a PFC [Annotator’s Note: private first class] at the time and his brother was a private. He went overseas with them. He was the company truck driver. He hauled the guys wherever they needed to go. He worked as a mechanic for some time. When they got to India, they were put up in a hotel. They built barracks on a race track. They lived there for the rest of their time there. The commanding officer made him the company carpenter. He built a ramp for the trucks to be worked on. The monsoon rains were bad. They could not work in the rain. Offenbacher built a maintenance shed for the guys to work under. They had a blacksmith who was an American Indian [Annotator’s Note: Native American] from Arizona. He told them he needed a table saw and they made him a nice one. The lieutenant at the barracks would try to help him. His twin brother drove the bus for the men to get to and from the barracks. He was overseas for three years. They left from Newport, Virginia, and stopped in Oran, Africa. The company commander volunteered them to train the Arabs on the assembly line. They were there for two months.

Robert Offenbacher went across the Mediterranean Sea. As they neared the island of Crete [Annotator’s Note: Crete, Greece] they saw gunner planes. They saw a glider bomb headed for their ship. It hit the ship next to them. It left an enormous hole in the ship. Men jumped overboard and he could see them getting sucked under the boat. The Germans came back and used machine guns on the men in the water. The day before the war ended, they heard the war had ended. Offenbacher stopped working on the building. The next day, word came out that it was officially over. They got the day off. It would take three weeks for a boat to come in. Offenbacher worked for two weeks with the Indian people. He had an Indian foreman working for him the whole time he was over there. He drove about 100,000 miles over there. He had to go to the dock and bring the supplies back. One time he was picking up a tanker. He had an Indian child get under his truck. The tire was on the child’s arm. His arm was not broken. They took him to the hospital. On his last day of driving, he was in two accidents in 10 minutes. The next day he was cleared of both accidents.

Robert Offenbacher did not want to stay in the Army. He had his last meal in the Army at Indiantown Gap [Annotator’s Note: Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania]. The sergeant wanted them to sign up for the Reserves, but Offenbacher did not want to. He wanted to go into business for himself. He used the GI 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] and went to school for six months in Louisville, Kentucky. He applied to be a carpenter and got the job. He would go to school in the morning and work in the afternoon. He worked for six months while going to school. He worked on houses in Louisville and retired at 62 years old.

Robert Offenbacher thought he grew up in the Army. The major was tough and a big man. The company drunk took a jeep and wrecked it. The major was a great guy. Offenbacher named his second son after the major. He moved to Florida and was working at a shelf shop. The major showed up at the shop to see him. If it was not for the American soldier, Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] would have taken over the whole world. On the way home from India, their boat broke down. His generation had come from hard-working people, not like the spoiled generation today.