Hide Article Text (OCR)
Monday, May 1, 1995 Burlington, N.C. Times-News A5(WarContinued from A110,Mironasheto do,’ ” she says, pausing to chuckle and cast a glance across the table to where her husband sits. “I would write every day, but he would get a bundle of mail and he wouldn’t have time to read it.”Geraldine and the other wives of soldiers in the 91st Chemical Mortar Battalion kept in touch while their husbands fought in the Battle of the Bulge, Central Europe and the Rhineland under Gen. George Patton.“We would all write a certain woman who had a chain letter going around. So we kept in touch with each other, and a lot of the husbands wrote more detailed letters than mine,” she says, glancing again at Tate with a stern look of disapproval that might have been believable if not for the smile that came along with it.“It didn’t matter. I heard from him,” she adds quickly.And then, more softly, “I still have all those letters, too.”Tate smiles. The Clemson graduate who came to Burlington from Columbia, S.C., in 1936 has been leafing through a company scrapbook that details the 91st's activities during the war. His medals, pictures and other reminders of those days long past are spread out on the couple’s dining room table.The unit was activated on Feb. 15, 1944 at Camp Robinson, Ark. They sailed from Camp Miles Standish, Mass., on Oct. 11 and docked eight days later at Liverpool, England.The unit then moved across England by train to Southampton, crossed the English Channel and landed on Omaha Beach Oct. 21. They stayed at a staging area in France for almost two months.The Germans, meanwhile had launched a last-ditch effort in the Ardennes Forest.“We didn’t know anything about the Bulge at that time,” Tate recalls now. “When the Bulge started we were in a small French town getting ready to go up to the actual front. And we heard about all this and were going to move up to Luxembourg. We don’t know what the problem is but we’re moving up. The Germans launched the Battle of the Bulge and I think they were (at)Bastogne by Christmastime. Wemoved up to the front at Christmas, the 24th of December. We were at the southern anchor point of the Bulge.”The four companies in the battalion were sent to different places — wherever they were needed along the front.“We were closing in, then it started crumbling and the Germans retreated about the time we were ordered to active duty on the southern end,” Tate recalls. “We were subject to artillery fire and that kind of stuff, but the Germans in the southern part were already moving back toward their homeland.”“I was so naive, Geraldine injects. “I thought they werehe Germans ... were going to hang on to the bitter end, it looked like. That’s how it seemed at the time. They were going to hang on, until Mr. Hitler's demise, and then they started surrendering.”B. Tate Hortonassisting the infantry and I thought they would be behind the lines. And I was just so happy that he wasn’t up in the front.”She pauses a moment before continuing. “He said sometimes they would go into a town and there’d be no tracks at all.They’d be the first ones in to a German town.”Dust and ashes from artillery left a film over everything, Tate says, then stops, waiting for Geraldine to finish.“Nothing had been there ahead of them,” she says. “It’s sort of frightening. Thank goodness I didn’t know all this.”After the Battle of the Bulge, Tate’s unit continued to chase the Germans back toward Berlin, clearing out pockets of resistance as they came across them.“The Germans didn’t have the petroleum or ammunition,” Tate recalls. “But they were going to hang on to the bitter end, it looked like. That’s how it seemed at the time. They were going to hang on, until Mr. Hitler’s demise, and then they started surrendering.”The official end to the war in Europe on May 7, 1945, did not bring much joy to the hearts of either Tate or Geraldine.“We knew they had to (surrender),” Tate recalls. “It was all over. But I really don’t remember if I did anything differently that day or not.”Back in Burlington, any relief Geraldine felt was short-lived.“There was not that much jubilation because we knew they’d only go from one part of the hemisphere to another,” she says. The war with Japan, you see, was still going strong.The unit returned to America on July 10 “We were going to rest for a month and then head for Japan,” says Tate, who will turn 78 on Saturday. “But during that period they dropped the surprise on Japan.”Tate’s unit didn’t have to go to Japan. And in 1946 when his battalion was to move to Washington state, the lieutenant colonel decided it was time to retire and return with his family to Burlington.
Newspaper Details
Burlington Times News
Burlington, North Carolina, US
Mon, May 01, 1995
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Brewer H.
USA 14 Apr 2019
Other Publications Near Burlington, North Carolina
Burlington Daily Times News
Burlington Daily Times
Burlington Saturday Times News
Burlington Sunday Times News
Burlington Daily News
