Wynn Bauer was born Clay Center, Kansas in September 1923. He grew up on a farm. He went to a two-room school with about 66 kids. He had four brothers and two sisters. They all farmed. They went through the "Dirty 30s" [Annotator's Note: nickname for the Dust Bowl conditions in the 1930s American Midwest]. It was tough times. All five boys served [Annotator's Note: in the United States military] at one time or another. They were in Southwest Kansas, but the dust came over them and it would get like night. In the dry years, they were lucky if the corn got knee-high during the Dust Bowl [Annotator's Note: period of severe dust storms that damaged the ecology and agriculture of American prairies during 1930s]. He graduated high school in 1941. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bauer what the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941 meant to him.] For everybody his age it meant you either had to sign up for the draft or get a farm deferment. He got a deferment. His brother was in the Navy Air Corps and he could not stand the dive bombing. He was sent home. Bauer went to the draft board and they gave him his number. Eight days later, 22 of them went down to Leavenworth [Annotator's Note: Fort Leavenworth in Leavenworth, Kansas]. He learned there that he was colorblind. He was told to go home and try to figure it out. Ten days later he came down and took the test again. Not long after that, he went by troop train to Camp Blanding [Annotator's Note: now Camp Blanding Joint Training Center in Clay County, Florida] for basic training. They had Thanksgiving dinner on the train.

[Annotator's Note: Wynn Bauer went to Camp Blanding, now Camp Blanding Joint Training Center, in Clay County, Florida for basic training in November 1943.] The barracks had no heat or shutters. On the dry fire range, it was 31 degrees. They only warmed up in a hot shower at night. He enjoyed it. There was a German prisoner camp nearby [Annotator's Note: on the grounds of Camp Blanding] and every morning they would be singing. It was beautiful. He would get up at four o'clock in the morning to be able to call home. He broke his collarbone in hand-to-hand combat practice with a college wrestler. That set him back almost a full month. Most of the men who went on without him went to the 30th Infantry Division. When his collarbone got better, he served in the officer's mess. He was transferred to another training session. He had to do the 25 mile march. In his first outfit, they had a 25 year veteran who was old Army [Annotator's Note: as their Drill Instructor]. The next guy was about six-five. He was a good guy. He always had donuts and coffee when they got back. Bauer went home for ten days after basic. He had his ticket to go to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. He loaded a boat in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. One of the big ships, like the RMS Queen Elizabeth, was there and took off. Those ships took a few days [Annotator's Note: to cross the Atlantic Ocean]. Bauer's ship took two weeks. He did not mind the voyage. He was on an old Italian luxury liner. There were 36 boats in the convoy. They did drop depth charges [Annotator's Note: also called a depth bomb; an anti-submarine explosive munition resembling a metal barrel or drum] two or three different times. They docked in England. He was a replacement troop. They stayed in tents and were quarantined for 14 days. On the day 13 he was in a boat heading across [Annotator's Note: the English Channel]. It rained every day, and the moon shone every night. He went in on Omaha Beach [Annotator's Note: Omaha Beach, Normandy, France]. The replacements were told to follow some men. There were nine of them. He was placed with the 3rd Armored Division. The first vehicle that got across was the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment [Annotator's Note: 36th Armored Infantry Regiment, 3rd Armored Division]. They handed out the C rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food] and boiled the water. He says Nescafé [Annotator's Note: brand of instant coffee] is not good coffee.

[Annotator's Note: Wynn Bauer was assigned to the 36th Armored Infantry Battalion, 3rd Armored Division.] He was in half-tracks [Annotator's Note: M3 half-track; a vehicle with front wheels and rear tracks] handling ammunition. They had three half-tracks and three tanks. They had a machine gun platoon, anti-tank platoon, and mortar platoon. He stayed until they got the M4 tanks [Annotator's Note: M4 Sherman medium tank] and needed an assistant driver. He volunteered to do that and was accepted. The tank has a crew of five and his was a good crew. They took off to Saint-Lo [Annotator's Note: Saint-Lô, France] and Mortain [Annotator's Note: Mortain, France] and all. Tank companies usually led the way, and he was surprised they were moving with them. It was not cold. The Germans knew where they were and had systems of knocking them out. He read a book about the 3rd Armored and the number of tanks they lost. Getting into the hedgerows [Annotator's Note: man-made earthen walls that surround a field that are often overgrown with impenetrable vegetation] was tough. The Germans would knock out the first tank and then the tenth or twelfth one. They could then go down the row and clean them out. Watching a guy trying to crawl out of a tank that had exploded, is a terrible thing. His tank was never fired upon. Once, he was on guard and big shell landed behind it. He says it stood on end. You have to give credit to the maintenance people. They got them ready to go in no time. When the Battle of Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] started, they were just south of Aachen [Annotator's Note: Aachen, Germany] and were moved in one night. They had heard rumors of what was going on. The Bulge started on the 16th [Annotator's Note: 16 December 1944] and on the 18th [Annotator's Note: 18 December 1944], they were on their way to it. In the 3rd Armored book, they give credit to General Rose [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Maurice Rose; commanding officer of the 3rd Armored Division]. Bauer and his outfit went up the road the 106th [Annotator's Note: 106th Infantry Division] had been in. The destruction was something to see. On the day after Christmas, they had their Christmas dinner. Whatever they fed them gave them the "GIs" [Annotator's Note: slang for diarrhea]. For the battle, the high headquarters just did not know what was going on. If the infantry got hit, they got hit more than once. They ended in Houffalize [Annotator's Note: Houffalize, Belgium] on the last day of the battle, about dark. There was a machine gunner off a ways and he kept them pinned in the tank for quite a while. As it got light, they saw 17 new German tanks 250 yards away on the edge of town. At noon, they were walking around a building. They heard some murmuring and told them to come out. There were 23 Germans there that they marched out. Bauer figures he took around 100 prisoners during his time.

[Annotator's Note: Wynn Bauer served in the Army as an assistant driver on an M4 Sherman medium tank in the 36th Armored Infantry Battalion, 3rd Armored Division.] The M4 had a 75 howitzer [Annotator's Note: 105mm main gun] on it. Bauer called it a rifle. Their anti-tank gun was a little 57 [Annotator's Note: M1 57mm anti-tank gun] they called the "BB" [Annotator's Note: a BB is a small metallic ball projectiles] gun. He does not know the range of the howitzer but when they were parked outside of Durn [Annotator's Note: Durn, or Düren, Germany], they shelled it for quite a while. They had a 90 Day Wonder [Annotator's Note: derogatory slang for a newly commissioned graduate of officer candidate school]. Their first guy [Annotator's Note: commanding officer] was told to keep moving. He said they could not move because they were out of gas, so he was demoted. The 90 Day Wonder took over and he was calling in artillery strikes. They told him to come back because they were certain they were shelling their own people. They moved into Germany fast. They went into Cologne [Annotator's Note: Cologne, or Köln, Germany] and sat for about a day and a half and then crossed [Annotator's Note: crossed the Rhine River] at Remagen [Annotator's Note: Remagen, Germany]. He gives credit to the engineers because they got that bridge across and the water was extremely high. They moved fast and they went off their map. They had to wait two days. They would have been dead ducks if the Germans had known where they were. In those two days, he saw his first guy go crazy. He dug his foxhole so deep he could not get out [Annotator's Note: and he was yelling]. One of the big guys went over and knocked him out. Bauer felt sorry for the infantry men when they were moving that fast. They surrounded a town that had prisoners [Annotator's Note: American prisoners of war]. Some eight inch guns [Annotator's Note: M1 eight inch gun; towed heavy gun] were brought in and direct fired [Annotator's Note: firing an artillery weapon directly at a target within the line of sight of the operator] them there. The Germans surrendered. The men were from the 30th Infantry Division and they gave them their blankets. He felt good about that.

[Annotator's Note: Wynn Bauer served in the Army as an assistant driver on an M4 Sherman medium tank in the 36th Armored Infantry Battalion, 3rd Armored Division.] They came to a camp with Polish prisoners [Annotator's Note: Nordhausen Slave Labor Camp, Nordhausen Germany, 11 April 1945]. Starvation. What they did to the Jews was even worse. He ended up at the Elbe River and they were made to sit there for two weeks to wait for the Russians to take Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany]. Bauer had had a toothache for six weeks and had never complained. He could not sleep at night. He was taken back to the dentist. He always thought a lot of that guy. He pulled his tooth with a pair of pliers. He never saw the Russians. They would have been in Berlin the next day they were moving so quickly. There were deer galore there and a pig sow with little ones. They did not get close to her. He was right there when the Germans surrendered. The rumor right away was that they were headed for Japan. He went to a smaller town. Most of his crew was in two houses and were fed well. They got peanut butter and orange marmalade that they mixed together. He went to Stuttgart [Annotator's Note: Stuttgart, Germany] for a while. Bauer drove a truck to get coal and also to Le Havre {Annotator's Note Le Havre, France] to get cars of people who had gone home. On VJ-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945], everybody celebrated. The 3rd Armored [Annotator's Note: 3rd Armored Division] had been dropped and they were assigned to the 6th Armored [Annotator's Note: 6th Armored Division]. He does not know how long they had been fighting but there were not good feelings with that bunch. Bauer was in charge of the four trucks that took them down to Southern France to come home. He got home in the middle of February [Annotator's Note: 1946]. The water got rough as they came into Norfolk [Annotator's Note: Norfolk, Virginia]. They got on trains and had a break in Saint Louis [Annotator's Note: Saint Louis, Missouri]. He got off at Camp Chaffee, Arkansas [Annotator's Note: now Fort Chaffee Joint Maneuver Training Center in Fort Smith, Arkansas]. A lot that happens is luck. He got to go to an armored school instead of something else. They had two man foxholes. They were in a pasture on a hill and they got hit heavy that night. There was a large thud. The next morning there was a dud shell eight feet from them. A tank that got hit when he was standing guard. Once, a guy he knew had a truck with gasoline parked nearby. He had walked over to talk to Bauer when a German plane bombed his truck dead center. If he had been at the truck, he would have been killed. Bauer saw a dead man whose scalp had been peeled back and he could see his brain. That really hit him.