[Annotator's Note: The interview begins with the interviewer explaining what he will be doing during the interview. There is a skip in the video when Jenkins begins talking then the interview continues. Samuel Jenkins was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1924. His father worked for the L&N Railroad [Annotator's Note: Louisville and Nashville Railroad] at Lebanon Junction. His mother had tuberculosis and doctors suggested the family move to a drier climate so the Jenkins family moved to El Paso, Texas when Jenkins was three. His father had a difficult time finding work with the railroad because of the Great Depression. When he was a junior in high school, Jenkins' mother passed away from tuberculosis. After graduating high school, he attended Texas A&M University for two semesters. Jenkins was drafted in April 1943, but he was not surprised. He chose to join the Army because he was in ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] in college. He was sent to Ft. Bliss, Texas and served under the legal officer in a new aircraft outfit for six months. He signed up for the ASTP [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program] at Baylor University. He still keeps touch with some of the men he met there. When the Army started running out of troops, they transferred Jenkins and the other men in the ASTP to Camp Maxey with the 99th Infantry Division. He was placed in a rifle company in the 394th Infantry Regiment. He completed basic training there. He was chosen by Lyle Bouck for a new I&R [Annotator's Note: Intelligence and Reconnaissance] platoon and taken out of the infantry. [Annotator's Note: Lieutenant Lyle Bouck was the commanding officer of the I&R Platoon, Headquarters, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division. Bouck's interview is also available on this Digital Collections website.] Jenkins saw ASTP as training them to rebuild governments of countries that had taken over, like Germany would be. Several colleges had these programs. When they closed it down, the military had a lot of new bodies. Jenkins was in his sophomore year of college at Baylor studying civil engineering. After the war, he went back to Texas A&M to finish his education. Jenkins feels Lyle Bouck was a great leader and a great man. They became good friends later in life. Bouck put the men through intense basic training.

In September 1944, Samuel Jenkins and the others [Annotator's Note: the other members of the I&R Platoon, Headquarters, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division] loaded trains and shipped out to Boston, Massachusetts. Jenkins had been a PFC [Annotator's Note: Private First Class] during training, but was promoted to corporal and performed as an assistant squad leader. George Redmond was his squad leader. From Boston, they boarded ships and sailed to La Havre, France. They went into Belgium in the middle of the night in late September or early October 1944. Jenkins hated being aboard a ship. Everyone got sick and there was not much space. They only had two meals a day. He went down to the kitchen one night with some of the other men and begged the cook to give them something to eat. The cook made the men an onion sandwich. He does not remember the name of the ship, nor does he want to remember it because it was that horrible. It took them around ten days to get to France. From France, Jenkins went to Belgium. They stopped near Eupen before moving into Hünningen, France where headquarters was stationed. They stayed in Hünningen for a few weeks doing patrols. He remembers the men trying to shoot down German rockets with their M1 rifles until someone shot one down and it landed near a group from the regiment. Sometimes they were able to sleep in the headquarters building, but most of the time they slept in their foxholes. The weather was very cold and it rained most days. They were not well prepared for the winter weather. Jenkins did not have any interaction with the civilians in Belgium. Their main priority was making foxholes secure. He remembers being on patrol and having to sneak to the German border and seeing the German pill boxes. They heard a lot of vehicle traffic and noise coming from Germany and knew it was not a Ghost Front [Annotator's Note: a front made up of decoys to trick the opposing army].

Samuel Jenkins recalls being in Hünningen for about a month before moving to Lanzerath, Belgium. Bouck [Annotator's Note: Lieutenant Lyle Bouck, commanding officer of the I&R Platoon, Headquarters, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division] and Major Kris [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Kriz] scouted the positions for the first couple nights before Slape [Annotator's Note: Technical Sergeant William L. Slape] came and got Jenkins and the rest of the men. The men thought everything was fine, there was no indication that the Germans were going to attack. They had one road to protect and they had to fortify their positions and foxholes. The 2nd Infantry Division had built the foxholes earlier in the year. Jenkins and his platoon cleared out the foxholes, dug them deeper, and reinforced them with logs. From his position, Jenkins could see the town [Annotator's Note: of Lanzerath, Belgium] and the movements of the anti-tank guns. He felt like they could not hold the town for long against a large attack from their position, but would only be able to delay the Germans for a short period of time. Jenkins and the men rigged some booby traps. Bouck found a Jeep with a .50 caliber machine gun on it and Jenkins and Robert Preston had a BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning automatic rifle] and their M1 rifles. He remembers Preston as a very quiet person, but a very nice man. On the morning of 16 December 1944, Jenkins woke up to heavy shelling from the Germans in the town. Some of the men, including Bouck and Slape, went into the town and caught a man relaying messages to the Germans. The Germans started coming up the road from the town. They had no idea that American troops were waiting for them. The Germans received a warning and the shooting started shortly after that. This was the first time that Jenkins had experienced any combat shelling. They were under fire for an hour and a half. They stayed in their foxholes. The men stayed composed.

Samuel Jenkins does not remember hearing the fire fight in the next town over because of all the shelling in his position. He remembers the tanks pulling out of Lanzerath, the last line of defense between them and the Germans. He was furious and confused watching the tanks leave. They were told to stay put, they did not retreat. He first saw the Germans when they were marching into the town. He never thought about dying in the field, it never crossed his mind. At one point, he was told to make contact with the division [Annotator's Note: the 99th Infantry Division] at Buckholtz Station. Jenkins and Preston [Annotator's Note: US Army Corporal Robert Preston] left their foxhole and looked back at it when they were a few yards away. They saw it take a direct hit from a mortar. After the Germans charged up the hill toward them, Jenkins saw only dead bodies on the hill. Jenkins believes that there were four attacks that day. They ran out of BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle] ammunition at one point. They only had their M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. They walked all night to Buckholtz Station, but when the sun rose they found themselves in the middle of a German army. They had to hide from the Germans all day. The Germans had everything. They had tanks, men and even horse drawn artillery. They walked all night and lost their position. They found a barn and covered themselves with hay in the loft and fell asleep. Jenkins and Preston awoke when they heard German voices in the loft. The Germans started searching the hay with their bayonets. Jenkins sat up after a bayonet brushed against his leg and Preston did the same. The Germans captured both men.

Samuel Jenkins was captured by German forces. They were lucky that they were not SS Troops because they would have been killed on the spot. An officer came over and asked Jenkins if his men took their valuables, which they had. They took his watch and high school ring. The officer ordered his men to give them back, but the German sergeant took them again when the officer was not looking. He never got them back. They marched Jenkins and Preston to a small town where they were holding other allied prisoners. A few days later, they were back with their men, who had also been captured. Almost the whole platoon was captured, including Bouck [Annotator's Note: Lieutenant Lyle Bouck was the commanding officer of the I&R Platoon, Headquarters, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division], who was wounded. [Annotator's Note: Lyle Bouck's oral history interview is also available on this Digital Collections website.] Jenkins was happy to see them. The Germans tended to the wounded men, they didn't leave them to die. They took them close to Nuremberg, Germany. The first night they were there, Allied planes bombed the city. Jenkins had never heard anything like it. The Germans then put them on trains and took them to a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] camp. They had nothing to eat. Jenkins was relatively healthy, except for his feet. He couldn't walk. Aubrey McGeehee had to carry him when they reached Hammelburg, Germany. In the camp, the Germans made them go out and cut wood. Jenkins had to share a mattress with McGeehee, but he didn't mind because McGeehee kept him warm. He was a big man. Jenkins remembers several men that were morale savers, including George Golden from Dallas, Texas. They had barely any food and all the men lost weight rapidly. The Germans divided the men into two camps, enlisted and officers. Jenkins felt there was no quality of life in the camp because they had no food and the conditions were terrible.

Samuel Jenkins remembers the raid on Hammelburg. [Annotator's Note: The Hammelburg Raid or Task Force Baum was the unsuccessful rescue mission set up by U.S. Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton in late March 1945. The goal was to liberate the prisoners of war, or POWs, in Oflag XIII-B, near Hammelburg. Jenkins was being held in the adjacent Stalag XIII-C.]. Jenkins and the other POWs had no idea what was happening until an officer told them that the Americans were close. They had two choices; they could leave and fend for themselves or stay in the camp and wait. Most of the men waited for the US troops, including Jenkins. The raiders were captured and taken back to the camp. More men came into the camp and made conditions worse. After the raid, morale was even lower. The Germans came back after the raid. Jenkins does not know how long it was after the raid failed that they took them out of Hammelburg. The Germans emptied the Air Force POW camp and transferred those POWs to Hammelburg. The Germans then took the men that were in Hammelburg camp, including Jenkins, to another camp. They marched from Hammelburg to Moosburg, Germany [Annotator's Note: to Stalag VII-A]. By this time, Jenkins was able to march with ease because his feet had healed. The fresh air was a welcome change after being in Hammelburg. During the march to Moosburg, allied planes strafed the columns of their own men, but the airmen had no clue who they were. The Germans had dogs that would attack anyone that tried to run. Conditions in Moosburg were just as bad as Hammelburg. They had little to eat and Jenkins heard later that the Germans had 300,000 prisoners there at once. Americans liberated the camp. They gave the American prisoners food and Red Cross packages. Jenkins saw a man he went to high school with when he went to get a Red Cross package. They were told they were going back to the United States. They put him on a truck with other men from west Texas and New Mexico. One guy jumped out of the truck when they reached Le Havre, France and followed a French woman home. They sent the men to Camp Lucky Strike to gain weight before going home. Jenkins weighed 140 pounds when he went into the Ardennes Forest. He was 115 pounds after being liberated from Moosburg. McGeehee [Annotator's Note: US Army Corporal Cpl Aubrey P. "Schnoz" McGeehee] went from 225 pounds to 150. It was unbelievable to see his own men liberating the camp.

For Samuel Jenkins, returning to the United States was much easier than going to Europe. He just laid in his bunk and ate. When they got back to the United States, the Army gave him a 60 day leave. He visited with friends from high school at Fort Bliss, Texas. After his leave, Jenkins reported to Camp Roberts, California to train recruits. He kept thinking that he was going to go to Japan with his recruits, but the war ended before then. He was at Camp Roberts from August to December 1945. He was discharged on 15 December 1945. He had an enough of the Army by that point. Jenkins again discusses Lanzerath. He had no idea what was going on around him, and mentions German troops using .50 caliber machine guns. He was the farthest away from Bouck [Annotator's Note: Lieutenant Lyle Bouck was the commanding officer of the I&R Platoon, Headquarters, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division] and the other officers. [Annotator's Note: Lyle Bouck's oral history interview is also available on this Digital Collections website.] Bouck only came over to him once during the battle and that was to tell him to go to Buckholtz Station. He thinks that Bouck picked them to go because they were in the last foxhole and it would be the easiest, or maybe he just wanted to get rid of them. When the Germans came to get their dead during a lull in the fighting, they left them alone, except for a medic that was radioing back to the Germans, so he was shot. When Bouck came to get them, he told Jenkins and Preston [Annotator's Note: US Army Corporal Robert Preston] to make contact with headquarters and to bring help or get orders because he lost his radio. He thinks about the battle occasionally, especially around 16 December and when he talks to the other men who were there. He tried to get it out of his mind when he got out of the service. Going back to school kept his mind off of it. He regrets loosing contact with McGeehee [Annotator's Note: US Army Corporal Cpl Aubrey P. "Schnoz" McGeehee] for a while. McGeehee lost his mind.

Samuel Jenkins stayed in touch with some of the men he met during the war. He kept in touch with Carlos Fernandez because they both lived in El Paso, Texas. In 1971, some of the men from the platoon [Annotator's Note: I&R Platoon, Headquarters, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division] came to El Paso for a meeting. They had a larger reunion in New York in the early 1980s. George Steinbrenner arranged the reunion after reading a story about one of the men in Parade magazine. Jenkins remembers the belated awards ceremony in which many men received military honors. Slape [Annotator's Note: US Army Technical Sergeant William L. Slape], Bouck [Annotator's Note: US Army Captain Lyle Bouck was the commanding officer of the I&R Platoon, Headquarters, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division], and some of the other men received the DSC [Annotator's Note: Distinguished Service Cross], some received the Silver Star, and the rest of the men, including Jenkins, received the Bronze Star. He recalls that his most vivid memory of the battle of Lanzerath was the artillery, the sound and the damage. The worst part of being a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] was the hunger and unsanitary conditions. The Germans were initially brutal to the POWs, one tried to hit Jenkins with the butt of his rifle, but they were not that cruel for the duration of his stay in the camp. He still does not know where he was captured. He returned to Lanzerath in 1989 with his wife, Bouck and his wife, and Fernandez and his wife.

Samuel Jenkins has only been back to Belgium once. It was a very eerie feeling. They saw where their foxholes had been. He did not have any bad memories surface when he returned. He met some of the local people. Jenkins was visiting there for 30 days. He would love to go to Berlin. He went to Moosburg and Dachau. There was not much left in Moosburg, only two buildings are still standing. He enjoyed Munich very much. He had a great time in Belgium and Germany, despite his past experience.