Vernon Breen was born in Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois] in March 1925. He grew up in River Forest, Illinois during the Great Depression years. His father was a salesman for a printing ink company, and was able to provide for his family until World War 2 when manufacturing for civilian purposes practically ceased, and the business fell on hard times. After he returned from the service in the spring of 1946, Breen went to Loyola University [Annotator's Note: in Chicago, Illinois] on the G.I. Bill in the evenings and worked in the ink plant his father managed during the day. While working there, Breen and his brother developed effectual ink for advanced offset printing applications, and built a successful business.

When the Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], Vernon Breen was in the library of his family home listening to the radio. He recalls that he wasn't impressed with the news, because to him Pearl Harbor seemed like some "outpost." It wasn't until later that day that the seriousness of the situation became clear. At the time, Breen was nearing draft age, but he was still in high school and didn't feel it would affect him right away. But, in November 1943, he received his draft notice and was sworn in. He was called to active duty on 31 March 1943 at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. He was sent to Camp Robinson, Arkansas for nine weeks of basic training, after which he was tested, and learned he would go into Army Intelligence and Reconnaissance. At first he thought this meant he would be well behind the lines, "sticking pins in a map." After eight weeks of I and R [Annotator's Note: Intelligence and Reconnaissance] training, he was sent to Fort Meade, Maryland and from there to Camp Gruber, Oklahoma where he was assigned to the "42nd Rainbow" [Annotator's Note: 42nd Infantry Division]. Breen remembers the unit having a distinct salute that "looked a little silly." They made a big sweep of the hand in the form of a rainbow, a fabrication of their commanding officer. Then Breen joined five other enlisted men and two officers, and they all trained with rifle companies on map reading, radio work, compasses and interrogating prisoners. The unit was sent to Camp Kilmer [Annotator's Note: Camp Kilmer, New Jersey] and after a week it moved to Hoboken, New Jersey, where they boarded the Edmund B. Alexander [Annotator's Note: USAT Edmund B. Alexander)], a pre-World War 1 German luxury liner that had been converted to a troop ship, for the trip across the Atlantic [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean].

Vernon Breen says that during the trip across the North Atlantic [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean], the weather was extremely rough, and almost everyone was seasick. Food on the 14 day trip was meager, as the convoy in which his ship traveled zig-zagged [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] its way to Europe. Breen remembers boxing matches on the ship, where the rules of segregation were ignored, and they ended in a "fierce" race riot that was broken up by destroyers that came alongside and water hosed everyone on deck. The soldiers were confined to quarters for a couple of days, which was horrible; the ship was "dank and dark," and Breen was situated in the bow, where the ship narrows to a point, making it more claustrophobic. In the rough seas, that part of ship would rise in the water and come down with a loud "clap." The bunks were stacked six high, and with everyone seasick, there were lots of "ups and downs." Vomit was everywhere. Breen went on to describe the latrine facilities, and said it wasn't a good trip. They traveled from New Jersey to Marseilles [Annotator's Note: Marseilles, France], close to 4,000 miles at 17 knots. The ship arrived at Marseilles during the night, and offloaded early the nest morning. Breen's first duty was to move duffle and barracks bags on flat boats, unloading them onto trailer trucks in a cold rain. Sometime during the night he burrowed into the duffels and fell asleep. Once everything was offloaded, the division [Annotator's Note: 42nd Infantry Division] settled into an encampment known as CP2. Breen's division had deployed as three regiments that formed Task Force Linden, without artillery or their commanding general, who was still back in the United States. Infantry was badly needed when they arrived on 9 December [Annotator's Note: 9 December 1944], and some guys were anxious to get into action, but not Breen. The war seemed to be winding down, and Breen thought he might be part of an occupying force, until they got word about the struggle that would later be known as the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. All the veteran divisions were "sliding north," needed to fill the gaps left by Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] outfit. Initially Breen's unit [Annotator's Note: Intelligence and Reconnaissance Section, Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division] was assigned to Patton's 3rd Army, but was switched to the 7th Army. Half the troops went north into combat on train cars; the other half went in truck convoys.

Vernon Breen knew a little about driving a car, but when he was assigned to transport a captain and a radio communications officer in a jeep, he was "frantic," because he had no idea of how to operate a four wheel drive jeep that had "a knob for every star in the sky." They started out with Breen's jeep the lead of a "serial," a long caravan, and pulling a trailer. He had only gone a short distance along the old, narrow French road when he hit and killed a dog. "Not a good start," according to Breen. He had to work the windshield wiper on the open jeep by hand, until he was forced to drop the windshield because of the sleet and ice. He notes that there was a piece of angle iron on the front of the jeep to protect passengers from the piano wire the Germans were "in the habit of using." The trip was a little over 400 miles from Marseilles [Annotator's Note: Marseilles, France] to Strasbourg [Annotator's Note: Strasbourg, Germany], and took two full days. Along the way they were alerted to the fact that the Germans were dropping paratroopers in American uniforms, and Breen had to turn his jeep and trailer around to warn the rest of the caravan. They arrived on Christmas Eve [Annotator's Note: 24 December 1944] at Fort Crown Prince [Annotator's Note: Feste Kronprinz; one of the strongpoint in the foretess city of Metz, France], "an elaborate affair the French had built," that had no heat in any of the six floors of underground dungeons where the soldiers stayed. They were supposed to get a Christmas dinner, but the cooks got lost and it was close to midnight when they arrived with frozen food. On the next day they moved into Strasbourg and occupied an empty, unheated tobacco factory across the Rhine [Annotator's Note: Rhine River] from the German city of Kiel. Along the river's shore were German pillboxes, and everybody started to fire at the Germans who were going in and out, hoping to get some target practice, but the pillboxes were out of range. The Germans answered with fire, and blew out the factory windows, which let the cold wind in, so they "knocked that off in a hurry." After about a week, they left in a convoy on a journey of about 22 miles that seemed much longer in the cold and with the rough road conditions. They stopped in a large town and billeted in a factory for a short time, still not at the front. During the night, Breen was awakened to perform patrol duty, and while he was walking back and forth in a blizzard, he saw a ton-and-a-half weapons carrier that had "a jumble of mounded things" in its cargo area. Curious, Breen examined it more closely and saw about 20 dead GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] in all sorts of contortions, laying the way they fell. He knew then how deadly the war could be.

Traveling on, Vernon Breen says he thinks the next town they approached was Achensee {Annotator's Note: assume he is referring to Achensee, Austria], and Breen's I and R unit [Annotator's Note: Intelligence and Reconnaissance Section, Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division] was broken into teams. Breen's teammate was Curtis Mathews, and the two were ordered out into an orchard about a half-mile out of town, to watch and phone back reports on any activity along a straight narrow road. It was snowing, and the two sat there all day with nothing happening. The unit moved on to Kafanak [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling], where Breen was put on guard duty, and he could see there was a lot of action in the area. Civilians who could speak a little English asked if the soldiers were leaving, but, of course, Breen couldn't answer. The locals feared German retribution, but the Americans didn't want them to evacuate and block the roads. Breen was sent again to watch the long, narrow road, this time on a truck that had a .50 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun] mounted on its cab, and the driver knew how to operate it. Sometime during the night, they could hear rumble of vehicles down the road, and the truck driver opened up with the machine gun. Within a few minutes, there was an explosion on the road, and the rumbling sounds stopped. They loaded up and went to the highway, where thousands of American vehicles, as well as the loaded farm wagons of the civilians, were traveling on the slippery road. Farm wagons were falling off the road, and big trucks purposely pushed them out of the way. It took all night to move on to Neuburg [Annotator's Note: Neuburg, Germany], a quiet, medium sized town. There, Breen's unit was billeted in farm house, along with a Major Wilson [Annotator's Note: no given name provided], who dominated the conversation about the political interactions between French and American officers. All of a sudden, Breen heard the sounds of his first artillery attack. The roof of the farmhouse fell in, and everyone ran outside, then down to the headquarters of the 3rd Battalion.

With his partner Curtis Mathews, Vernon Breen was assigned to take a phone down to a "T" in the road to observe the railroad and the Moder River. They were down on their stomachs on either side of the road, Breen next to a long wall. There was what seemed like a clap of lightning and thunder, and a five-foot diameter hole opened up in the wall. Breen thinks the projectile, which was likely from a an 88 [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] or a rocket, didn't explode, otherwise he would have been killed. Breen's unit [Annotator's Note: Breen was a member of the Intelligence and Reconnaissance Section, Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division] then joined forces with K Company [Annotator's Note: Company K, 3rd Battalion, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division], and marched down the Moder River toward Haguenau [Annotator's Note: Haguenau, France]. They stopped at several places where bridges had been blown and the Germans were trying to rebuild them. They fired their rifles to try to slow them down. Breen remembers going to a rest area, and he and Mathews were assigned to a billet run by a French woman, who invited them to dinner. He had seen dead rabbits hanging up, half dressed. Their hostess set the table with a dead rabbit's head as the centerpiece, and Breen had his first roast rabbit dinner. He couldn't eat it, and covered it with his vegetables. From there, they moved from town to town, and did patrols and engaged in "various skirmishes." Late in February [Annotator's Note: February 1945] their division was "filled in" by reserves, and their commanding officer, General Collins [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Harry John Collins], had arrived. He wanted to change the mode of operations from defense, and initiated patrols into the foothills of the Hardt Mountains [Annotator's Note: Haardt Mountains, Germany]. One patrol Breen went on was to find mines and other impediments, and the patrol found the road mined, as well as the forest. The patrol went deeper into the woods than they had thought, and their sergeant decided to stay in the barn of a farmhouse overnight. In the morning there was movement in the loft above them, and they discovered "a bunch of Germans up there." One of the guys could speak a little German and ordered them to come down. Nothing happened until he fired his rifle, after which "a bunch of rifles" dropped down. The prisoners resisted a little, but eventually settled down. The farmer came out, and furnished them some eggs; the Germans contributed coffee, and the Americans added their K-rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals] that contained ham and cheese; they all had breakfast together and became "very social." At daylight they all marched back to their unit, and the prisoners were taken to the stockade.

Somewhere before Vernon Breen crossed the Rhine [Annotator's Note: Rhine River] and got to Worms [Annotator's Note: Worms River, Germany], his unit [Annotator's Note: Intelligence and Reconnaissance Section, Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division] was marching alongside a convoy when they saw a formation of airplanes. Somebody shouted, "they're ours," but when the aircraft circled, they realized the planes were German, and everyone ran out into the farm field. The trucks in the convoy were strafed by 11 German planes that made one pass then left, but did a lot of damage. While he was in the field, Breen saw a German soldier that he took for dead. Breen sat on his helmet to eat a K-ration [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals], and saw the man move, then watched other GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] strip the German, who was probably unconscious, of his valuables. Breen has never forgotten that no one made an effort to help the wounded German. After a short time, they got back on the road, and the artillery started "to play leap-frog" moving toward the front, putting the Germans "continually under the artillery." For the most part, the German artillery and supplies were pulled by horses and mules that died by the hundreds, and because the weather was getting a little warmer, and the dead animals would swell up. Breen said the GIs took "great pleasure" in firing their M-1s [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand] at the bellies of the beasts, and "it would make a screech like you wouldn't believe." When he reached Worms, Breen says it was the most devastation he saw through the whole war. The city was flattened. They continued to Wurzburg [Annotator's Note: Wurzburg, Germany], and after initial difficulty crossing the Main River, reached the city. Breen's teammate Curt Mathews, who was traveling separately, was killed when he jumped on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers. The unit moved on to Schweinfurt [Annotator's Note: Schweinfurt, Germany], which was heavily surrounded by 88s [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] that made the approach very difficult, and they had some losses there. When they entered the city, they witnessed women committing suicide with their children by jumping out of tall buildings. Breen says he saw some gruesome sights along the way, like the body of a German soldier who had fallen in the road, and had been run over all day by tanks. But, he says, to see a German mother jump out of a window "with her offspring" was "unusual." Breen describes his relationship with his buddy Curt Mathews, and how Mathew's death was "shocking."

The next shocking thing Vernon Breen remembers was that as the war was winding down, a lot of the Germans got out of their uniforms and tried to blend back into their own society. Breen says the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] were "mean people," and distinguishable by a lightning configuration under their arms. One of the line companies found and SS soldier and, according to Breen, the company "had it in for the SS right at that moment." They dragged him to a railroad track embankment and shot him. Just at that time, the SS soldier's wife came running down and yelled for them to stop, but he was already dead. Nobody had heard of Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau Concentration Camp complex near Dachau, Germany], but the division commander, General Harry J. Collins, nicknamed by his division "Hollywood Harry" because he did everything with flair, wanted to be the first to Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany]. By 21 March [Annotator's Note: 1945], on the division's approached to the city, they noticed the odor. When they reached the camp, Breen was outside the fence and he could see German guards being beaten to death by the inmates. They even attacked the guard dogs "with their bare hands." Not far from Breen was a long freight train on a siding, and when the doors were opened, bodies fell out. It turned out there were about 3,000 dead in the rail cars. Breen says soldiers from the 45th Division [Annotator's Note: 45th Infantry Division] went through the camp, found the gas chambers and saw the conditions, and were furious. So they lined up the Germans, set up a machine gun, and shot them. Breen notes that his information was sketchy, because he heard several different stories, but continues the story of the camp's liberation. Breen never made it into the camp, but says, "The stink was unbelievable." General Collins still wanted to get to Munich before the 45th Division, so Breen and the other soldiers were loaded back on the trucks and took off.

Vernon Breen somehow became the bugler for his company [Annotator's Note: Breen was a member of the Intelligence and Reconnaissance Section, Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division], but he didn't know anything about playing the instrument, and although he "tried a couple of tunes," he was soon relieved of the duty. When he returned to the United States, he went to Camp Kilmer, [Annotator's Note: Camp Kilmer, New Jersey] then went to Fort Sheridan [Annotator's Note: Fort Sheridan, Illinois] and turned in his uniforms except for what he was wearing. He was asked if he wanted to continue in the Reserves, but he declined. He was discharged on 8 May 1946 at the rank of sergeant. He called the trip back on the SS Mahanoy City Victory "paradise." Harking back, he recalled that the division got into Austria and crossed the Danube River and the war ended. Combat had been sporadic on the way to Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau concentration camp complex near Dachau, Germany], and there was absolutely none after they left there. Reflecting on his close calls, he included an event at a town called Ernstweiler [Annotator's Note: Ernstweiler, Germany], where there was a dogfight high in the skies above them, and there was ground combat going on, with all kinds of firing. Breen was taking cover in an archway, and a .50 caliber round hit right next to him and fell within reach. It burned his hand when he picked it up, and he carried it around in his pocket for about eight months, eventually losing it when his laundry was done. After the Germans surrendered, Breen recalls that his division accompanied a long column of prisoners headed for the stockades, noting that they were typically not held for very long.

In Salzburg [Annotator's Note: Salzburg, Austria], Vernon Breen participated in a Mass for the Fallen in the city's famous church. He stayed in Salzburg from 20 May until mid-July [Annotator's Note: 1945], then went to Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria]. There, he and a buddy spent an anxious evening among some Russian soldiers before being rescued by American MPs [Annotator's Note: Military Police]. Breen remembers that over three months after the war ended, there were still bodies of Russian dead in the public parks, and even some of the remote streets. He comments that, "They were really a crude people." Things got worse between the Russians and the Americans, Breen says, and the Russians cut off supplies until the Americans armed the trains. It became a diplomatic issue. Breen mentions that he collected small arms throughout the war, and names the many types of guns he amassed in his barracks bag. When he was leaving Bremerhaven [Annotator's Note: Bremerhaven, Germany], however, the weapons were all confiscated except for one. Breen kept a Luger. He got home on 4 May 1946, having served almost a year on occupation duty because he didn't have enough 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] to return home earlier. Overall, Breen thought his experiences in Austria were quite enjoyable.