Interview of James Pfleger
Transcript Number 023

FEBRUARY 12, 1999

INTERVIEWER: We're doing an interview for the Veterans Heritage Project and our interviewee today is Mr. James Pfleger. Hello, Mr. Pfleger.

MR. PFLEGER: Good Morning. 

INTERVIEWER: Welcome to the project.

MR. PFLEGER: Thank you.

INTERVIEWER: I'd like to start off this morning with you telling us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, where your family's from and lead into where your education was and things like that.

MR. PFLEGER: All right. I was born in Racine, Wisconsin and my father changed jobs a couple of times. He took us to Stamford, CT, for a while and then to Muncie, IN. I spent most of my teenage years in Muncie and graduated from high school, there. Before the war, I went to Ball State University for a year and after the war I came back and went to Purdue for three additional years to obtain a degree in mechanical engineering. That's the background that I think that you need. 

INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me where you were when you heard of Pearl Harbor?

MR. PFLEGER: Yes, I was at home in Muncie and my family, particularly my brother and I were listening to a program on the radio. I don't remember what it was, but they broke in with the news that the Pearl Harbor had been attacked. I was still in high school at the time so it didn't mean too much to me at that point in time. When I read more about it in the following days, I realized it was a very serious situation. 

INTERVIEWER: How did you join the service?

MR. PFLEGER: Can I hold the answer to that question for a while?

INTERVIEWER: Sure, no problem. Go right ahead.


MR. PFLEGER: Well, I served in the Army in the European theatre of operation. I served in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. Now, that's kind of an overview. I was usually in Patton's 3rd Army and I was wounded twice. The first time was a very slight wound in the leg, which kept me out of action overnight. It was just a band-aid kind of repair. The second time was more serious and took me out of combat. I should say, I did have some serious doubts about making this video and my first reaction was, why bother? But then, I got to thinking, I really want my grandchildren to know about what I did in WWII, which was a very momentous occasion in our country's history. My youngest grandchildren are 5 and 6 2 right now and I can't talk to them about wartime experiences because they're too young to understand. When they're old enough to understand it, I may not be able to tell them because I may be dead, get Alzheimer's, or have a stroke. So, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to tell my grandchildren about what I did. I have a granddaughter who is 20 years of age, but right now she is not very interested in war. So, in time, maybe she will want to find out what I did. You'll notice that I'm looking down from time to time because I have notes so that my remarks don't become too rambling. I want to try and keep some continuity to my story. So really, this video is for my youngest grandchildren, maybe 10 to15 years from now, and for my son. Their father will determine when it's proper for them to see it, if I'm not here. Now, I can answer some of your questions.

MR. PFLEGER: I graduated from high school in 1942 and I was 17 years of age. I was too young for the draft but I did want to get one year of college in before going in the service. I was afraid that if I started college, I might well be drafted mid-term and that would kind of be a waste of time and money. I made arrangements with the Army in a program they had for people who were pretty much in my situation. If I joined the Army and volunteered to join the regular Army at age 18, that protected me from the draft. The Army put me on inactive service until that first year of college was finished and then I was called up for service. The reason that I went into the Army is because I didn't want to go into the Navy. The reason for that is because I have a phobia about being in water over my head. I don't mind being on water over my head, but when I was a child, I almost drowned and I've never been able to get rid of that problem.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

MR. PFLEGER: The Navy was not for me, so I went into the Army. In this video, what I mainly want to talk about, is the specific action that occurred three days during the month of December 1944. In order to provide some continuity to my remarks, I'm going to start at the point when I went into active service.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.


MR. PFLEGER: OK, I went into infantry training originally in South Carolina and it was in the winter. After 4 to 6 months, I took advanced infantry training in Wisconsin, and that was kind of nice because I was in the south during the winter and up North in the summer. So, I was lucky from that standpoint. After finishing the training in August of 1944, I was sent overseas as a replacement for soldiers that had been killed or wounded in the infantry over in Europe. I clearly remember the troop train that picked us up in La Crosse Wisconsin, which was the nearest town to our camp where I was training. It was late in the day when we left La Crosse, and by the time we got to Chicago it was dark. There were all kinds of rumors about whether we were going to the East Coast or to the West Coast, but nobody knew. There were probably ten or twelve cars on this particular troop train. When we got to Chicago, we got shunted back and forth in the railroad yards, and there were blackout conditions. We soon had no idea whatsoever, which way we were going until about a 2 hour after we left the yards. We could tell that because of the motion and the speed of the train. I saw, through a crack in the blackout blinds on the Troop train, the word "Gary." Gary, Indiana is east of Chicago, so I knew we were headed to the East Coast. I think everybody on the troop train, certainly everybody in the car that I was in, was delighted with that because none of us wanted to go through the jungle warfare condition that was going on in the Pacific Theatre of operations. So, if you have got to go one way or another, we were lucky enough to go in the right direction. I crossed the Atlantic on a ship called the Mauritania. This was an elderly ocean-liner built and owned by a British company. It was built before WWI as a matter of fact, and had been converted into a troop ship for WWII. This was true of all the British passenger liners, they were converted to troop ships. I was lucky enough to have been assigned to an anti-aircraft gun crew. Now, the gun itself was operated by British sailors, but they needed ammunition handlers, passers, and suppliers because it had a fearful rate of fire and used up ammunition like you wouldn't believe. Anyway, this was a real benefit to me because I wasn't down in the hold but I was on the deck. We had little quarters. The gun crew was essentially a close-knit organization. We were not allowed to roam the ship at all. I don't think any of the troops could roam the ship and we had to stay within 50 yards of the gun, in case we were needed at short notice. Since we were, in effect, part of the British Navy, we got British Navy food which really wasn't all that great, but in comparing notes with the people who were down in the hold of the ship, it was a lot better than what they were getting. We could sleep on deck, out in the open, because we had beautiful weather and it was a lovely crossing. It was kind of like a cruise ship in a way, but the food wasn't that good. We never had any occasion to have to use the anti-aircraft gun, other than to practice. There were no sub-marine scares that, at least, none that were broadcast throughout the ship. We went over unescorted, because the liner, as all of the passenger liners did, because the speed of the liners was our defense against submarines. Convoys went about 5 miles an hour or 5 knots, if that much. Our liner was probably going 15-18 knots. 

After we landed in England, I was soon sent across the channel to France and my combat experience began. I'd like to read two quotations. One was by General Sherman of the Civil War fame who said, "War is hell" and he was right. The other quotation is from one of the famous Generals in the European theatre of operation, General Omar Bradley. He was highly respected and he described a combat soldier as: "The rifleman trudges into battle knowing that statistics are stacked against his survival. He fights without promise of either reward or relief. Behind every river there's another hill and behind that hill is another river. After weeks or months in the line, only a wound can offer him the comfort, safety, shelter, and a bed. Those who are left to fight, fight on. Evading death, but knowing they have exhausted one more chance for survival. And sooner or later, unless victory comes, the chase must end in the litter, on the litter or in the grave." Our introduction to combat was really rather easy. I was part of Patton's 3rd Army and we were chasing Germans across France towards the German border as fast as they could retreat, and as fast as we could move forward. So, I really saw very little action. During this period of time, I made no friends, really, in my new outfit. I had been assigned to the 90th Infantry Division, Company I of the 357th regiment. At first, this kind of bothered me. I knew I was the youngest guy there, the newest recruit in the raw and I thought that I just wasn't being accepted. After a few weeks went by, I realized nobody had any really close friends and everybody was kind of a loner. I realized what was happening was the attrition rate of soldiers in the infantry was so high, that if you made friends, you would probably lose them one way or another, and then you felt a personal loss. So, it seemed that the people in my outfit, and I think this is true of any infantry type organization, whether it be in the Marines, airborne troops, paratroops, or the infantry, eventually, everyone gets on the ground with a rifle. So, I felt a little bit better when I came to realize that they weren't excluding me, they were just distant, doing their job, and didn't get involved, too much. I did get close, as close I did to anybody, to one soldier. I thought it was kind of interesting and his name was Vernal Morgan. He was from Utah or Colorado and he was a conscientious objector. He was a little bit older than I was and he was a strapping, strong man. As things would have it, he ended up carrying what we'd call a BAR, which is a Browning Automatic Rifle. That was the most potent weapon that the infantry platoon had. It had a high rate of fire, was very accurate, but it was a heavy weapon and required a lot of ammunition. Vernal was the kind of person who was agreeable to do anything, so he got the job of carrying and lugging this thing around. I asked him one day, "Vernal, why are you carrying the most potent weapon we have and you're a conscientious objector?" He said, "Oh, I don't fire at them, I fire over their heads." It was still a value to our platoon, because if the Germans knew that we had this weapon, it made them react accordingly.

We were chasing Germans across France and most of the chasing was actually done by motorized infantry with tanks. Really, what the infantry was doing was walking as fast as we could and mopping up little pockets of resistance. When we got to Metz, which is in France, near the border of Germany, it had been turned into a stronghold for the Germans and my fighting days really began at that time. The worst part of infantry experience, to me, was artillery and mortar fire. I'll talk more about that a little bit later. The weather turned cold and rainy. The rivers were all full either at flood or above flood stage. We made several assault crossings at night using wood framed, collapsible canvas covered boats. They'd put about 12 men in a boat and this was really terrifying for me, because I knew that if a piece of a tree came floating down this river that was swollen and hit the side of the boat, it would surely go through the canvas. I knew with the heavy boots, all the heavy clothing, my ammunition belt, and all that kind of stuff, my chances of survival on something like that were pretty slim, but nothing ever happened. Several times after we made assault crossings like that, the next day I would look back across the river and say, "My God how did I make it. How lucky could you get." The other thing I mentioned that really scared me were the artillery and mortar barrages. It would seem like they would go on for hours, but they probably only lasted 10 to 15 minutes. The value of a foxhole became evident to me very quickly. A foxhole is a small hole that a soldier digs in the ground so that he can get down below ground level and the only danger is that of a direct hit by an artillery or mortar shell. A foxhole is only three foot square. The worst thing that happened to me while I was in a foxhole during an artillery barrage, was that I got showered by mud and little rocks. One time, there was a shell that landed close enough that it affected my hearing for a while, but not permanently. My hearing came back in a couple of hours. It was during one of these artillery barrages, and I did get a piece of shrapnel that cut my leg. It didn't even require stitches, but I went back to the aid station and they put a large band-aid on it, wrapped the leg, and sent me back the next morning. 
I'm getting to the point of the main thrust of this video. In December of 1944, my division, or at least my regiment and company, made an assault crossing of the Saar River. Naturally, it was high water with a swift current, and once across the river, we immediately ran into the German Siegfried line. The Siegfried line consisted of thousands of individual pillboxes stretching for several hundred miles along the border between Germany and France, and Germany and Belgium. The Saar River was the traditional border between France and Germany. My company, which was company I, had three rifle platoons.

(Brief Pause)


MR. PFLEGER: Well, one of the first assignments for my company, once we got across the river, was for each of the three platoons in Company I to test the strength of resistance of the three pill boxes immediately to our front. The furthest one out, was perhaps a 2 mile from our line. I happened to be in the platoon assigned to test the pillbox that was furthest from American lines. So, before daybreak one day, all three platoons coordinated our activities, so that at daybreak, each of the platoons would be at a pill box, and see what kind of resistance the Germans were going to put up. When daylight came, we were in position at our pillbox, and believe it or not, we found the German Garrison of our pillbox, outside doing morning calisthenics. We outnumbered them and their rifles and guns were on the ground. It was a golden opportunity, it was very easy to drive them away, and they put up no resistance. Then the leaders in my platoon, which was a Lt. and several senior Sgts., made the decision to keep it so we wouldn't have to capture it a second time. We had not started out that morning with the intent of staying very long, so later that morning, several of us, went back to our lines for food and ammunition. As we returned to our pillbox, the Germans had come back and were starting to assault the pillbox. We came up and they didn't expect to see us and we didn't expect to see them, as far as that was concerned. We got into a brief fire fight and we were unable to carrying all of our rations and ammunition into the pillbox. We had to drop most of it just to save our lives and get into the pillbox. That didn't turn out to be quite the disaster as it might seem, because the Germans had supplied the pillbox with some food and ammunition. Of course, the German ammunition didn't fit our guns, but there were German guns in the pillbox, including a machine gun, so we weren't too concerned. There was a little well in the pillbox. For the next two days, the Germans attacked the pillbox with small arms fire and with a flame-thrower. The small arms fire was just not effective against the 3 foot reinforced concrete walls of the pillbox. It was just more of an annoyance than anything else, because we felt perfectly safe. However, in the evening of the third day, we received direct fire from a large U.S. artillery piece. We were getting short of ammunition at that time, and we had sort of a counsel of war, if you will. I was a private and I had as much say as the Lt. did. We jointly decided that we were unable to hold out in the pillbox for very much longer. We couldn't fight the Germans, our own people, and the lack of food. We decided that somebody had to go for help. The Americans, obviously, did not know we were in that pillbox, and the main reason for that, was because we were using German ammunition. They thought Germans were in the pillbox and the German weapons sounded considerably different than the weapons of the American Army. We decided that we had to do something, so we decided to send a person out through the German lines to get to the American lines to get some help. Two people, myself and another fellow, Victor, volunteered. Victor was kind of a big fellow, a lumbering kind of guy, and I was very small and agile. I could speak a little bit of high school German. This pillbox, I'm referring to the whole area, was in farm country. I was raised in farm country in Indiana and went hunting in the winter. I knew how to move quietly and sensibly, and Victor was a city person, from Minneapolis. Then, I told a little white lie to the platoon leaders who were going to make the decision as to who went. I told them that I had had special infiltration training while in the States, but they didn't know that. So, with all of those factors, that I thought were in my favor, the platoon leaders reluctantly agreed to let me try. They were reluctant, and I could understand why, because I was the youngest and least experienced man in the platoon. There were about twenty of us in this pillbox now, but I presented a reasonably good case and they allowed me to go. That evening, I stripped down to just clothing, because I wanted to move as lightly and quietly as I could. It was a perfect night, from my standpoint, because it was cold with a light rain. It was just the kind of night where sentries were paying a lot more attention to how they could keep warm and dry, than they were on the look out for some guy sneaking around. So, late that night, about 10 or 11 o'clock, I slipped out the back door of the pillbox and moved very slowly and cautiously, often on my hands and knees. I was never upright, even though it was pitch black. I thought there was always a possibility that I might be silhouetted against a skyline if the might suddenly appear. I spent a lot of time on my knees listening. The only time, I might have run into difficulty, was soon after I left the pillbox. I smelled tobacco smoke, but I could have been wrong. In any case, I felt it had to be German and I moved away from that odor. When I got to the American lines, I knew it was American because I heard Americans talking. They were not at all willing to let me in at first because they didn't know whether I was a German, or as I claimed, an American soldier. So, they asked me name, rank, and serial number. I hesitated in giving the name Pfleger because that is very Germanic in background, and they might realize that. My middle name was Richard, so for a little while, my name was James Richards. They asked me my serial number and I told them 15106902, or something like that. Anyway, the "1" is a critical figure because it represented that I was a regular Army soldier. All draftees had the prefix "3" and they didn't understand that. So, I had to explain to them why I was in a prefix "1" as opposed to a "3." I guess they bought that, but then the next thing they asked, was what the password was for the day. I had been incommunicado for three days and how was I going to know the password. I was able to give them the password for a couple of earlier days, but that didn't exactly convince them, because I still could be a German and know the old passwords. So, then they started questioning me. Where was I from? Indiana. What are the names of the two professional baseball teams in Chicago? The Cubs and the White Sox. What's the name of the racetrack in Indianapolis? The Brickyard. There were a couple of other questions and they finally let me in. I wasn't about to stand up, so I crawled in. They took me to Battalion headquarters and by that time, they saw my dog tags and realized I was an American soldier. When I told them my story of what I was doing there and where I was from, they immediately got the Col. of the regiment out of bed because it was about two o'clock in the morning. The Col. came, interviewed me, and was delighted to hear that he still had twenty men out there that could be saved, because they had given us up for loss, either captured or killed. I thought my job was over because I had gotten word to the Col., but it didn't work out that way -- things in the Army seldom do. What had happened, unbeknownst to me, is that the entire division, as well as other divisions in the same operation crossing the Soar River and assaulting the Siegfried Line, were being pulled back across the Soar River because of a large German buildup to our north and we were in a very exposed position. The river being in flood stage, the engineers were never able to get a bridge across that was large enough, heavy enough, or had the capacity to hold tanks. All we had on that side of the Soar River was small cannons and self-propelled weapons. The Col. did not have forces at his disposal, to make a power move forward, and he explained this to me. He said, "First of all, I want to make you a sergeant because you're gonna lead some troops." He asked me if I would do this and I agreed. He gave me a few men and got me a helmet and a rifle. He wanted me to go back to the pillbox. He told me that if we did run into any resistance, to just protect ourselves and come back. Well, we did not get very close to the pillbox at all, before we were discovered. We were sent packing back to the American lines. The Colonel was disappointed, but not surprised. He said, "I want you to get a little rest and we'll try the same thing in about an hour." The reasons I had to lead these patrols back, was because if we did reach the pillbox, the people inside would have to hear my voice. After a little rest, we tried again, essentially the same thing using a slightly different route, with the same results. So then the Colonel said, "Well, go get some more rest and we'll work something out." I dozed off and when I awoke, there was a Captain there and it was getting into daybreak. He told me what they were going to do and they gave me the support of a self-propelled cannon. It was a 105mm cannon with a large barrel and it was an impressive weapon. That self-propelled cannon was to fire on the first two pillboxes, which were still held by the Germans, and that would keep them occupied and out of the picture. In addition to that, I had at the Captain's disposal for my use, a mortar platoon, whose purpose was to lay a barrage around the outside of our pillbox and drive away or kill the Germans who were besieging the pillbox. So, at first light, the guns and the cannons started firing and the mortar barrage got close enough that in about 15 minutes that I was given the signal to go ahead. Meanwhile, somebody had given me several of what they call satchel charges, and these were high explosive charges, about 10 to 15 pounds to each satchel. A satchel is like a carryall with a strap and you put one over one shoulder and one over the other. These were to destroy the pillbox after we got our people out. The plan worked perfectly and the Germans wouldn't enter the action, because of the cannon out there. There were no Germans around our pillbox, so I called to the fellows inside. I explained the escape route to them and why it was safe. When the last man was out, I set the satchel charges where I was told to put them, I set the fuses for 30 to 40 seconds, and I got out. Before I got back to our lines, I heard this big crump in back of me and knew that the pillbox had been destroyed. The platoon was out of the pillbox and we were given a few days to rest up and then we went back into combat. As I mentioned, we had to re-cross the Soar River. However, this time there was a foot bridge and we did not have to use those damn assault boats. Shortly after this, I was nominated for and did receive the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism. This is the second highest award that the Army issued.

Now these remarks are directed to Nathan and Benjamin, my grandsons. Your dad will inherit a scrapbook. It will have a lot of newspaper articles and official documents of the action I just described. A typical page will look like this. It's kind of falling apart, because it's getting kind of old and I hope it lasts for them. Here's some of the newspaper articles. These were the Sergeants stripes that the Col. gave me.

INTERVIEWER: Is that you in that picture? 

MR. PFLEGER: This is me. 

INTERVIEWER: Oh, lets get a close up of that. 

MR. PFLEGER: This is me and this is my brother. 

INTERVIEWER: Wow! 

MR. PFLEGER: This was something else, but here's more articles and other memorabilia that I have. Now the reason that I'm mentioning this, Benjamin and Nathan, is that if you read the newspaper articles and accounts, there will be differences between what I just told you and what the articles say. That's because of two things: First of all, there was a lot of literary license taken by the wire service when I was being interviewed by them. The other thing, there were some censorship restrictions still in place. Essentially, the story is still the same with no major differences. 

If you recall that quotation I read by General Bradley, I'd like to talk now about when I was wounded badly. Oh, wait a minute, before that, I'd like to talk about a couple of unusual experiences that I had in the Army before I got wounded. My platoon had dug in, prepared foxholes, and we were under ground. We were in a heavily wooded area and it was not a lot of fun to dig foxholes with all the roots, but it can be done if you really want to do it -- grenades will help loosen up the ground. We received a really heavy barrage of German artillery. Being in this heavily wooded area, most of the artillery shells exploded while they were in treetops. The unusual part was that the danger we had was from falling heavy limbs and treetops. Theoretically, a person could have been badly injured, but I don't think anyone was. It was so unusual to be in a foxhole and hear these huge portions of trees crashing down around us. There was a good side to that in that the greenery made excellent mattress material for the bottom of the foxhole B it was nice, soft, and green. Another time I had an unusual experience, was when I was leading a small patrol of 5 or 6 men. Our objective was to go down a country lane in a semi-wooded area to see if we could make contact with the Germans, so we would know where they were. It was a dark night and we were moving as quietly as we could. I could barely see the dirt road most of the time, but I would usually feel when I had left the road because I would be stepping in grass and vegetation. We were moving very quietly and I heard German voices, so I deduced that we had run into a German strong point and I needed to do something. I didn't want to go forward anymore because we had made contact with the Germans and that was what we were out there for. My first inclination was to take a grenade and throw it at the voices, but what happens if the grenade hits a tree and comes back to me and my people? Then I thought, maybe I can get us all to turn around and sneak back out. Well, you can't give hand signals in the dark and I was afraid of trying to tell my people what I wanted them to do, because that would give our position away. So, I finally decided the best thing to do was to open fire. I had a submachine gun, so I just opened fire, and fortunately, most of the fellows who were in my patrol realized the predicament, and they opened fire with their rifles. We laid down a good hail of bullets and I think we were successful. I don't know whether we killed any Germans or not, but apparently we made them get their heads down because there was no return fire whatsoever. Then, we had another time I was leading a patrol as sergeant. Once again, we were in a position and wanted to know where the Germans were up in front of us. There were several patrols sent out along our front and we were one of the patrols. I had two men with me and our objective was to see who could make contact with the Germans. Well, we went out quite a distance and we're moving slowly because of the fallen trees and other obstacles. After we'd been gone ten to fifteen minutes, the guys with me say, "Hey Sarge, I think we've gone far enough. Haven't we?" I said, "No, we need to go a little further. We haven't gone that far." So we went a little further and they complained again, "Sarge, I think we're lost. I think we need to start back. There's no Germans out here." Just a little further, we did find a telephone wire strung out on the ground like the communications people would lay wires, so we knew their was somebody else in the area, but couldn't tell whether it was German or American. I decided that we had finally gone out far enough. As we started to come back towards our lines, the two guys with me said, "Sarge, do you know where we are? I think we're lost. Are you sure this is the right direction?" I wasn't going to admit it, but I didn't't know anymore than they did. It was just a guess on my part and we walked back, but it didn't take us so long to walk back because we didn't have to be so quiet. Our lines knew that the patrols were out and they weren't't going to fire at us without knowing that we were not Germans. Unbelievably, we came back into our lines no more than 50 feet from where we had left and this wasn't anything but good luck. I am not claiming any great trail blazing qualities, but the interesting thing was that after I reported to the Captain and came back to my platoon, I overheard one of the soldiers that was with me telling a friend of his who was not on the patrol, what a great job I had done. He thought that I knew what I was doing all the time. The next morning, I noticed a difference of attitude on the part of the men in my platoon. There was a new respect that hadn't been there before, and I'm the youngest and least experienced guy. That made me feel good. 
About this time, the captain of our company talked to me about whether or not I would be interested in asking for or trying for a promotion to 2nd Lt. I gave it some thought, I think about 15 minutes, and I decided not to. The biggest reason was that I was still alive and essentially in one piece, and I knew a lot of 2nd Lts. that weren't. That's why I was leading the platoon. You seldom had enough 2nd Lts. to go around. The strength of the platoon was down to probably 12 or 14 men at that time. The normal complement for a platoon was 36 people, but we never had enough and I don't think any infantry outfit ever had a full complement of soldiers. The other consideration was that I had signed up for a specific period of time when I first entered the Army, and then, if I did become an officer, I would probably have to sign up for another hitch and I didn't want to do that. 

Now, I'd like to tell you a little about the time I was wounded that took me out of combat. I'm not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me in any way, because as you'll learn as we go through this, I was extremely lucky and things could not have turned out better for me. My platoon was advancing through a lightly wooded area and I saw a German soldier step out from behind a tree, aim his rifle at me, and fire. I couldn't do anything because it was so quick and I didn't have time to react. I had a sub-machine gun and you have to use your imagination. (Here Mr. Pfleger is showing and describing a mock-up of his weapon, which he made to help the viewer understand how his injuries occurred.) There was a pistol grip kind of arrangement with a trigger back here. The way this weapon was held, this black thing is the magazine cartridge for the bullets to be fed up into the operating mechanism. This is the barrel and this is about the size of the weapon. This is a lot lighter, but it's about the general size. The way I held it was with one hand on the magazine, the other hand back here, and I would aim in that direction. When the German soldier fired at me, I was holding the weapon, probably about like this. His bullet went through my thumb and hit the magazine that still had some bullets in it, which caused some of them to explode. The bullets or the shrapnel from the bullets did further damage to my hand and sprayed some of it up in this general area of my neck. It was February and I was wearing a lot of heavy clothing, but I didn't have anything around my neck. So, a lot of the shrapnel, and these are tiny pieces, did damage. None of the shrapnel hit either the carotid arteries, my jugular vein, my esophagus, or my larynx. It did not get up into my eyes, but it got in my earlobes. I think one of these ear lobes still has a piece of shrapnel in it. So, as I said, I was extremely fortunate. Seconds after I was hit, I dived for cover behind a little embankment and somebody got a medic over to me. As of this point, I didn't hurt at all. The body has some defense mechanisms to kill or prevent the pain from occurring for a short time after the trauma has occurred. I think they are called endorphins and they will protect the body against pain for maybe 5 or 6 minutes. I knew that I was hurt because this part of the thumb was hanging down by a flap of skin and I could feel blood coming down into my shirt. A medic came and started to stop the bleeding in both places and he gave me a shot of something, presumably morphine, before the natural defenses were used up. They got me back to the aid station and I could walk at that time. Of course, I was in shock, so they helped me back. The aid station did a little better job of bandaging and they put me into an ambulance. I think it was a jeep and they put me on a stretcher in back. We went to the battalion aid station where they checked things out and decided that I needed to go for further hospitalization. I want to mention that another thing that was extremely important. The German bullet, having hit my magazine, did not travel into my body. It's conceivable that the bullet could have gone through and hit my organs or my spine, and that really would have been disastrous for me. Then, I went to the battalion aid station and they re-bandaged and put a splint on my thumb to keep it in place. I slept for a while, but I do remember the ambulance stopping at some point and the doctor going through the ambulance. I think there were four to six of us on stretchers, and I remember the doctor came in and said, "How are things?" He pulled the bandages down and looked at my neck, but he seemed satisfied. My thumb had a great big bandage on it, and he smelled it and said it smelled all right. Later, I found that he was sniffing to see whether or not the wound had turned septic and gangrene had begun to set in. It smelled all right to him, so we took another ambulance ride. The next thing I remember clearly was being out of the ambulance, on the ground, in front of a large building in France, and there were other stretchers with people on them. I saw German soldiers and I panicked. I tried to get up off the stretcher, but I was too weak to do it. An Army nurse came over and tried to push me back down on the stretcher. She told me not to worry about the Germans, because they were prisoners of war who were at the hospital acting as orderlies. So, then I went out semi-conscious for a while. The next thing I remember, was being on the operating table in this big building and they worked on me some more, but I don't know what they did. The last thing I really remember was they put a mask over my face and I counted down from ten backwards. I think I may have counted to five or six and then I woke up in a bed in a ward. It wasn't too long after that, that the doctor who had worked on my neck, came by to check things and told me that they had been able to clean out the worst of the wounds and stitch me up, but there were many small fragments of lead that they had not made any effort to get out. He told me the fragments would probably never bother me, but if they did, they could be removed later. The doctor looked at my neck and said, "You're damn lucky." Sometime later, the doctor who worked on my hand came by and told me that they had decided not to amputate the thumb and they thought it could be reconstructed. They couldn't do it at that hospital and I would have to go back to England. So, shortly after that, I took my first airplane ride flat on my back, but I did get to England.
In the English hospital, they grafted some flesh from here (indicates arm) to fill up the missing part of the thumb. The doctor told me that he thought that the flesh graft would take and that I would probably be able to save the thumb, although it would never be much use, but it would look much better than without the thumb. When I talk about the thumb, I am just talking about this part, not the whole thing, just from here on up. He told me that if the graft didn't work, they would have to amputate. He said it was going to be sore for a long time and if it got to be too much of a problem, they could always take it off. There were times when I was tempted, because it was just in the way. When you get a sore thumb, no matter what you do, you hit something with it. I'm a slow learner, in some ways. So, I stuck with it and am certainly glad that I did because I can actually move it a little bit, now.

INTERVIEWER: Wow!


MR PFLEGER: In spite of that, it doesn't hurt and it is just normal. One thing that was disappointing to me when I got wounded, was that I had been scheduled to go back to the United States with some other medal recipients to speak at bond rallies at factories and schools. We were to tell them our experiences to work up enthusiasm to either join the service or to buy war bonds. When I got wounded, that opportunity went by the boards, because the war bond group was to leave in mid-March, and I was still in the hospital system in England. After getting out of the hospital, I was assigned to a desk job. The unit to which I was assigned, didn't know what to do with me because I didn't have any clerical skills. I felt like a round peg in a square hole, because the people I was working with were not combat. It was a different war for them and I just felt completely out of place. I asked for a transfer back to a combat outfit and I was refused. In retrospect, that was the right thing to do. My thumb really precluded my being in combat, but I wasn't at all happy. When time came to be discharged, I was more than ready. I was very anxious to get home before Christmas and that was my goal in life, at that time. I returned on the Queen Mary, and again, it was another converted troop ship, but things were considerably different. The food was even worse than I had on the Mauritania going over. The Queen Mary did have a PX, which was well supplied with chocolate candy bars and so forth. So, between the hard tack that was available and the chocolate, I think I lived on that diet for three days coming back. We had a beautiful crossing. This was in December and the Atlantic Ocean in December is normally rough. I was discharged a week before Christmas and I was home shortly before Christmas. One thing I did overlook in my notes, the medal presentation was done in England after I was out of the hospital. 

INTERVIEWER: Now who's giving you the medal in that picture? 

MR. PFLEGER: Pardon. 

INTERVIEWER: Who's putting the medal on you.

MR. PFLEGER: Oh, I'm reading on the back of it. It was a Lt. Col. Stephen M. Battori, a United Kingdom base ordinance officer. 

INTEVIEWER: Where was this done?

MR. PFLEGER: This was done somewhere in England. It was at the Headquarters of the United Kingdom Base in London. There's a lot of writing on the back about the occasion and a short summary of why and who did it, but you can hardly read the writing.

INTERVIEWERS: Actually you can. 

MR. PFLEGER: Oh, you can.

INTERVIEWERS: We're reading it right here. Siegfried Line, yes.

MR. PFLEGER: Anyway, this is one of the items in the scrapbook and I just wanted to show you in case you're interested. This concludes my video and I hope that, especially Nathan and Benjamin, will find this of interest and will know a little bit more about their grandfather. My granddaughter Christina, can view this anytime, because she's old enough. Thank you for listening.