Wilson Shoughrue, Jr. was born Springfield, Massachusetts in September 1925. His parents separated when he was seven years old. His mother took him and two of his sisters and moved them to Daytona Beach, Florida where they stayed until Shoughrue was in the ninth grade. His mother then moved the family to Delaware where Shoughrue completed the tenth grade. After tenth grade Shoughrue was enrolled in a prep school between Springfield and Boston from which he graduated in the summer of 1943. During the summer of 1943, Shoughrue hitch hiked to Wilmington, Delaware and to Philadelphia trying to enlist in one of the service branches. Every time he tried to enlist he would be given a Japanese colorblind test which he always failed. Shoughrue went back home and waited to be drafted. He got his draft notice and when he reported he was given his choice of service branch. He chose the Army. He ended up at Fort Dix, New Jersey in the first week of January. He was then sent to Camp Croft, South Carolina for 17 weeks of basic training. From Camp Croft, Shoughrue was set to go overseas to fight in Europe. The Normandy invasion took place on 6 June [Annotator's Note: 6 June 1944] and men were needed, however, President Franklin Roosevelt had declared to the mothers of America that no 18 year old would see service on foreign soil. Shoughrue and the others with him had turned all of their gear in to the quartermaster and boarded a train for a port of embarkation. Before the train pulled out all of the men were told to get off the train and go back to the quartermaster to get their gear. They were all too young to go overseas at that time but by September they would all be 19 so that is when they would go.

Wilson Shoughrue and the others went overseas aboard a British liner. The trip took about five days after which they landed in Glasgow. From there they went by train down to England then, in November 1944, they crossed the English Channel. When they arrived in the area of Le Havre the men went down cargo nets onto LCIs, Landing Craft, Infantry. When they got ashore, they lost three men when they stepped on mines that had not been cleared. They left Le Havre in trucks and were taken to a place where they were told to pitch their tents. Shoughrue and his combat buddy decided to spend the night in a nearby barn. He told his platoon leader about it and the whole platoon spent the night in the barn. When Shoughrue woke up the next morning the barn was gone. Other troops in the area had taken the barn apart piece by piece and used it for firewood. When they got up, they got onto trucks that took them to the Siegfried Line where they relieved the 2nd Infantry Division. This was around 10 December [Annotator's Note: 10 December 1944]. The soldiers of the 2nd Division had dug large bunkers which Shoughrue's group would be taking over. Shoughrue spoke to members of the 2nd Infantry Division who told him that they knew the 106th Infantry Division was coming. They had heard about it from German soldiers they had captured during patrols out in front of the lines. When Shoughrue's group arrived at the front there had not been any big activity since British and American air drop into Holland back in September. In November there had been some activity in the Hurtgen Forest. The fighting in the Ardennes started on 16 December. When Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: US Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower] had the 106th Infantry Division moved to the Ardennes. The division was to cover a 27 mile front. Shoughrue believes that the 106th Division was put on the line as bait. On 16 December the weather in Europe was clouded over. When the Germans attacked there was no air cover for the 106th Division.

[Annotator's Note: Wilson Shoughrue served in the Army as a rifleman in Company L, 3rd Battalion, 424th Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division.] The 106th Infantry Division had been on the line for about a week when the battle [Annotator's Note: the German Ardennes Offensive, also known as the Battle of the Bulge] began. The German attack commenced early on the morning of 16 December [Annotator's Note: 16 December 1944]. The months of December and January were the coldest winter in Europe in 100 years. When the Germans attacked they shone large searchlights up at the clouds. Then they sent cattle toward the American lines but that was not very effective. Once the Americans started shooting, the cows ran the other way. The attack lasted until around noon time in Shoughrue's sector. He was in the 3rd Platoon, which was somewhat to the rear. The 2nd Platoon was in front of them and it was wiped out to the man. That afternoon, Shoughrue and several others came across what they initially thought were a bunch of dead Germans. They soon discovered that many were just wounded. When they stopped to help some of the wounded enemy soldiers, the wounded German officers all sat up and shot at the Americans with their Lugers [Annotator's Note: Luger P-08 9mm pistol]. Fortunately, none of them were hit. Around five that evening they got orders to withdraw. Every officer in Shoughrue's company took off with all of the company vehicles, leaving all of the enlisted men stuck without transport. At the time there were two syndicated columnists, Westbrook Pegler and Drew Pearson, who both wrote about the scandalous conduct of the officers of Company L, 3rd Battalion, 424th Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division on the late afternoon of 16 December 1944, according to Shoughrue's mother. She saved articles they had written for him when he got home from the war. They fell back from their positions and headed toward St. Vith. The platoon crossed a clearing and entered a tree line. Shoughrue decided that he did not want to continue following the mass of troops. He and several others spent the night where they were then moved out the following morning.

[Annotator's Note: Wilson Shoughrue served in the Army as a rifleman in Company L, 3rd Battalion, 424th Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division.] The next morning, they crossed the bridge over the Meuse River shortly before the engineers blew it up. When they got to the other side of the river they linked up with the rest of their unit. They were now on one side of the river and the Germans were on the other side. From that point on they continued to fall back in the direction of St. Vith, Belgium. On 18 December [Annotator's Note: 18 December 1944] the 422nd and 423rd Infantry Regiments were out of food and ammunition. The regimental commanders decided that the best course of action was to surrender which they did. The 422nd and 423rd Regiments were captured almost intact and marched off to prisoner of war camps. Shoughrue and the men he was with managed to slip through the lines and were able to avoid being captured. He did not realize that the units had been captured until later. The edge of Shoughrue's position was at the edge of a forest. Just past the 2nd Platoon's position was an LP, or listening post. The platoon sergeant took Shoughrue out there on the night of 14 or 15 December. While in the LP they could hear movement to the east of their position. Shoughrue believes that the intelligence passed back from soldiers in LPs, as well as information gathered from captured German soldiers, was not heeded intentionally. He feels that the military higher ups wanted the Germans to attack that 27 mile front in order to stir up something. While moving back from the LP to the platoon position, Shoughrue tripped a wire that had C ration cans attached to it with pebbles inside of them. This was a primative early warning system. When he hit the wire one of his own troops opened fire on his group. Finally they made it back to their positions. During the German attack the enemy troops never got close to Shoughrue. Their .30 and .50 caliber machine guns held them back. Additionally, the Germans did not fire any artillery into their position nor did they experience any tank attacks.

[Annotator's Note: Wilson Shoughrue served in the Army as a rifleman in Company L, 3rd Battalion, 424th Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division.] As they made their strategic withdrawal toward St. Vith, German 88mm guns harassed them the entire way. The Germans also fired buzz bombs on them. Many of the artillery shells were set to detonate in the trees to create additional shrapnel. When Shoughrue got back to New Orleans he went to see a dentist who told him that he had shrapnel in his gums. The dentist suggested that he leave the shrapnel where it was. Shoughrue's hand was also bloodied severely by shrapnel. Shoughrue was finally taken off the line in January [Annotator's Note: January 1945] because he was suffering from frozen feet. At first, the military was awarding Purple Hearts for frozen feet but stopped doing so. When Shoughrue's group got to St. Vith they hooked up with the 7th Armored Division which had been brought in to help shore up the line. At St. Vith, they held out for a while but eventually had to fall back. St. Vith was a mess. All the buildings were bombed out and the roads were all muddy and sloppy. Many of the roads were impassible by then. St. Vith is a crossroads town. Many of the roads were not built to handle heavy vehicle traffic.

Wilson Shoughrue was pulled off the line in the last week in January [Annotator's Note: January 1945]. The clouds cleared out the first week in January so they went back on the offensive. They were pushing the Germans back and straightening out the bulge. In one village in Belgium, Shoughrue's group ran the Germans out of town. Later that day, the Germans returned and ran Shoughrue's group out. Shoughrue's group captured the town again around four that afternoon and held it that time. Shoughrue and his combat buddy went into a farmhouse. Farmhouses in the area had the stables attached to the kitchen where they housed their chickens, pigs and cows. The two went out into the stable area and saw that the cows were ready to be milked. Shoughrue and his buddy milked the cows and let the milk flow right onto the ground but they did catch some of it in their canteen cups and made chocolate milk by adding melted D bars. Shoughrue's group fought alongside several airborne units. His 424th Infantry Regiment was hooked up with the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Around the end of the first week [Annotator's Note: the first week of the German Ardennes Offensive, also referred to as the Battle of the Bulge] the Germans dropped paratroopers behind the American lines, many of them had graduated from college in the United States and spoke perfect English. Shoughrue encountered these Germans on a few occasions. One time, during a fight, Shoughrue's hand was frozen so badly that he could not get another clip of ammunition for his M1 rifle out of the bandolier. Sometimes they would come across a Sherman tank that had been knocked out and they would climb inside and take the M3 Grease Guns [Annotator's Note: M3 .45 caliber submachine gun] out of them. Anytime an officer saw them with the Grease Guns they would take them away from them. Shoughrue had been trained to fire the carbine, M1, .30 caliber and .50 caliber machine guns, bazookas, 60mm and 81mm mortars and the flame thrower. Those were the basic weapons of an infantry unit.

[Annotator's Note: Wilson Shoughrue served in the Army as a rifleman in Company L, 3rd Battalion, 424th Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division.] They went on the offensive during the first week in January [Annotator's Note: January 1945]. The hopped from village to village. When they would stop, the platoon sergeant would yell for the guys to dig in. When they were halfway through, the platoon sergeant yelled for them to stop digging and move out. They would move a few hundred yards then stop and start digging in again. Shoughrue and his combat buddy got tired of digging so about the fourth time they stopped they decided not to dig in. All of a sudden they came under 88mm artillery fire. Shoughrue and his buddy hit the ground. The shells exploded all around them but fortunately they were not severely hit. That may be when Shoughrue got some shrapnel in his gums [Annotator's Note: see segment titled St. Vith]. Shoughrue was pulled off the line during the last week in January and was sent to an aid station. One of the sergeants from the squad took him there and dropped him off. At the aid station he was told to take off his boots and socks, both of which were soaking wet. The guy at the aid station asked him why he had not been changing his socks. Shoughrue had not changed his socks since 16 December. Shoughrue was taken by ambulance to Liege. From Liege he was put on a hospital train to Paris. During the trip a nurse came down the aisle of the train and told Shoughrue to turn over. She gave him a shot of penicillin. It was the first actual treatment he had received. In Paris they were put on ambulances which took them to an airfield from where they were flown on a hospital plane to England. Shoughrue arrived in England at the end of January or beginning of February and was in a hospital there until April. At the end of April he was on his way back to the front lines. Eight days after he got back to the front, the war ended. After the war, Shoughrue spent time in Le Havre and Cherbourg where he was responsible for overseeing German and Italian prisoners who were put to work loading and unloading cargo ships. Most of this work was done at night. Shoughrue returned to the United States aboard a hospital ship in April or May 1945. Shoughrue goes to the VA [Annotator's Note: Veterans Administration] every three months for check up. During those visits, the doctors stick needles in the bottom of his feet and ask him if he can feel it, which he cannot. The nerves were all frozen. Occasionally at night he has a burning sensation in his feet. Shoughrue was discharged with 50 percent disability. That was later dropped to ten percent. Shoughrue feels that the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] glorifies war. His grandchildren asked him one time if his hands were frozen as well as his feet. He jokingly told them that after emptying his weapon he was unable to reload it. During the second or third week, before they went on the offensive, Shoughrue was on the ground in the prone position in the snow. About 50 yards ahead of him was a German machine gun nest with three enemy soldiers in it with their backs to him. Shoughrue heard someone calling his name and looked back at the soldier crawling up next to him. He told the guy to be quiet and pointed out the enemy position. The man whispered to him that he had only come up to tell him that he had been promoted to corporal. Since they were outnumbered on the lines they never fired their weapons if they could avoid it because the Germans could trace the sound and would know where they were. Shoughrue's combat buddy was a full blooded Indian from Oklahoma and used to tell Shoughrue that he wished he had a bow and arrow. That way he could kill the Germans and they would not know where he was.