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Published Sunday, August 17, 2008 in Local

Photo by Alex McRae

World War II veteran Jimmy Carlisle survived the initial stages of the Battle of the Bulge before a serious injury put him out of action for good. After the war, Carlisle entered the oil business and spent more than 34 years as owner and operator of two Texaco stations and a wrecker service in Newnan.

Greatest Generation: Carlisle injured parachuting into Holland

By Alex McRae

The Times-Herald

It was a great day to see the sights. Sept. 17, 1944, was clear and sunny, and as Jimmy Carlisle's parachute floated down toward the town of Nijmegen, Holland, he thought it was a pretty day for his first combat jump.

The jump went fine. But a hard landing injured Carlisle's back and left him barely able to move.

"It wasn't good," Carlisle says. "All I could do was lay there and think about the enemy coming along any minute."

A doctor finally arrived, checked Carlisle out and said he'd come back to help when things slowed down. They never did. Minutes later, the shooting started.

"It went to heck pretty fast, and after that, my back was the last thing on my mind," Carlisle says. "The shelling started and people were running everywhere. I managed to get up and started trying to find my men and get out of there. It was crazy, but being shot at really helped, because once that happens, you know what you're going to do. We cussed when we were doing it, but all that training really paid off."

Carlisle was born and raised in Meriwether County. His dad worked for the Coca-Cola company, and when Carlisle was young, the family moved from Manchester to Woodbury. Carlisle's father was killed in a traffic accident when Carlisle was in the 10th grade, and he left school to help support the family. He worked at a service station in Woodbury and learned how to do everything from oil changes to engine repairs.

Carlisle was drafted shortly after his 18th birthday and went to basic training at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Ala. After basic, Carlisle was assigned to Airborne training at Fort Benning, where his brother was an Airborne instructor.

Carlisle expected tough training, and he wasn't disappointed.

"You never walked anywhere if you could run," he says. "It was all work, all the time." After five jumps, Airborne candidates were given the option of leaving with no penalties and no hard feelings. "A lot of them left," Carlisle says. "But I knew I was going to stick it out."

Carlisle says even the night jumps weren't bad. Getting back to the base was another matter. After one jump the men had to hike 25 miles back to Fort Benning with full packs. The weather was brutally hot, and canteens went dry quickly. Several men decided to ease their thirst with a drink from the Chattahoochee River. Carlisle knew better and wasn't surprised at the results.

"Those guys got really sick," he says.

After Carlisle earned his jump wings, his brother said he could arrange for Carlisle to stay at Benning. But Carlisle turned him down.

"I'd had enough," he says. "I was ready to move on."

After a quick stop at Fort Meade, Md., Carlisle went to New York and boarded a troop ship for England. Carlisle left the ship at Liverpool and took a train to Nottingham, where he joined the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Carlisle made his first combat jump into Nijmegen, Holland. He ignored a back injury suffered in the landing and joined his unit as they surrounded the town and starting driving the Germans out.

Resistance was stubborn, and after four days, Carlisle's unit was running out of ammo. Several supply drops missed the target and were recovered by the Germans.

After eight days of fighting, Carlisle's commanding officer was reminding troops not to shoot until they had a German in their sights and couldn't miss.

"We had to make every shot count," Carlisle says, "and believe me, it was hard to hold back when the shooting started."

The Americans finally ran the Germans out of Nijmegen, but before they had time to rest, the Germans counterattacked. And not just with troops, tanks and artillery.

A prime German target was the bridge over the River Waal. One day, Carlisle was amazed when two German jets showed up to add some aerial firepower to the fight. A British fighter plane took out one jet, but the other pulled up and peeled off, blasting away with its 50-caliber guns.

One of the rounds struck Carlisle right above the eye. He was wounded but still able to fight. When a medic came to treat him, he told Carlisle he qualified for a Purple Heart medal. Carlisle told him not to mention the injury. He didn't want a Purple Heart because he knew if the medal was awarded, his mother would be notified.

"I didn't want her to know I'd been hurt," he says. "She had enough to worry about back home."

A few days later, Carlisle was on patrol several miles outside Nijmegen when his unit walked into an ambush. A German machine gun opened up and the stock of Carlisle's rifle was hit, sending splinters and shrapnel into Carlisle's leg. Again, he told the medics he was fine and did not want a Purple Heart for his second combat injury.

Artillery attacks and unplanned encounters with enemy troops happened frequently.

"One minute there wasn't much happening, and when something did happen, it was mass confusion," Carlisle says. "Units were everywhere. We knew where we were and that's that."

On one patrol, Carlisle ran across a British armored vehicle that had been abandoned on the side of the road. Carlisle got it cranked and drove it back to Nijmegem. He says the men whooped and hollered when he showed up.

"It sounded like World War Three for a few minutes," he says. "They really got a kick out of me having that British vehicle."

The Germans finally realized they could not dislodge the Americans from Nijmegen and moved out. In early December 1944, Carlisle's unit was moved back to Rheims, France, to rest.

In mid-December, Carlisle was preparing to visit Paris on furlough when urgent orders arrived telling the men to leave all their personal longings behind, to load transport trucks and head out. Carlisle didn't realize it at the time, but his unit was headed for the Battle of the Bulge.

The 508th headed deep into Belgium. Carlisle remembers passing through Bastogne, where the 101st Airborne later came under siege but held on until it was relieved by Gen. George Patton's Armored troops.

Once they passed Bastogne, Carlisle's unit kept going, but no one was quite sure where.

"It seemed like we were moving all over the place and shooting back whenever somebody shot at us," Carlisle says. "It was crazy. We didn't know where the Germans were, and they didn't know where we were, and we'd run into each other and there was turmoil all over the place."

Short missions came and went. Once Carlisle's unit was told to head to the top of a mountain and take a small village. When they arrived, all was quiet. But when Carlisle's group turned a corner, they ran right into a German ambush. Carlisle's four-man squad had no heavy arms or grenades, and they were pinned down by a German machine gun. Minutes later, Carlisle's lieutenant showed up and took out the gun with a phosphorus grenade and things calmed down.

Another time, Carlisle's unit was patrolling a mountain road when it ran into a pair of German reconnaissance vehicles and took them out. Two Germans managed to leave the vehicles but fell by the side of the road.

Carlisle's lieutenant told him to take two men and look for prisoners. They captured one German, and were walking him back up the mountainside when two German ambulances came by on the road below.

Carlisle's group watched as the ambulances drove right past the injured Germans. Minutes later, American troops up the road reported that the ambulances had just unloaded soldiers and weapons at a small village.

When the ambulances came back, Carlisle's lieutenant said, "If they don't stop for the wounded men, take them out." The ambulances didn't slow down and were both destroyed.

"You couldn't trust anything," Carlisle says. "Sometimes it was hard to tell who was who until the shooting started, but those ambulances weren't worried about wounded soldiers."

In one village his unit occupied, Carlisle found an abandoned car. He and a pal got it running and asked for permission to drive it to Lieges, Belgium, for more blankets. They got eight blankets, came back and tried to get some sleep. It was New year's Day 1945.

About 10:30 p.m., Carlisle was shivering in a foxhole under his new blanket when the world went to pieces around him. A German shell exploded in the trees just above him, sending shrapnel and deadly wood splinters flying and leaving Carlisle's left leg shattered. Two of the other men in his foxhole were dead.

Carlisle remembers hearing a medic say the morphine was frozen and couldn't be administered. Some useable morphine was finally located, and Carlisle barely remembers the jeep ride back to Nijmegen.

He finally made it to a hospital in Lieges, Belgium. But that didn't mean he was out of danger. While he was there, Germans bombed the hospital, shattering the windows and sending cracked plaster flying. Patients crawled under beds or pulled objects over them for protection.

"It wasn't fun, but nobody was surprised," Carlisle says. "There was no such thing as a safe place over there."

Carlisle finally made it to a large hospital in Paris before being flown back to the States. From Boston, he went by train to a hospital and rehabilitation center in New Orleans. He remembers the train passing through Newnan.

While he was in New Orleans, Carlisle wrangled a pass to visit his mother back in Woodbury. Soon after he headed back to New Orleans, Carlisle's visit home was chronicled on the front page of the weekly Manchester Mercury newspaper. Normally, Carlisle's visit would have been the top story. Not this time.

The main headline reported that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had just died on April 15 at his Little White House, a few miles away in Warm Springs.

After his treatment in New Orleans, Carlisle moved on to a convalescent hospital in Daytona Beach, where he stayed until he was discharged in September 1945.

Carlisle returned to Woodbury and worked at the local mill and gas station before accepting an offer in Atlanta with Gulf Oil. In Atlanta, Carlisle ran several service stations and, better yet, went on a double date with a girl from Newnan named Geraldine Dye. The two courted briefly and married on Nov. 17, 1947. Four children, six grandchildren and two great grandchildren have since joined the family.

In 1953, Carlisle moved to Newnan and opened a Texaco station at the corner of East Broad and Pinson streets. Seventeen years later, he opened another station and wrecker service on Bullsboro Drive. Geraldine worked at his side, answering the phone, keeping the books and handling customer service.

Carlisle retired in 1987.

"I sort of enjoyed the Army," Carlisle says. I learned a lot and grew up and lot and I saw some bad things, too. But overall, I really didn't mind it at all. I think it was good for me."