Published Monday, August 04, 2008

Jack Wade fought through the German Siegfried Line

The Times-Herald

More than sixty years have passed since Jack Wade's image was captured in a candid photograph he keeps in a small album beside his recliner.

In the picture, he looks to be no more than a boy, though the Army uniform he dons reveals he's a young man. His cap sits off-center on his head, his posture is relaxed, casual. His upper lip lifts slightly in a lopsided grin, as if he's just finished speaking and is about to chuckle over what's been said.

Decades later, Wade has a couple of things in common with his old photograph. He still has the same head of curly hair, and he and the "boy" in the picture, taken upon his return from Europe after World War II, share a common title -- "veteran."

Wade was born in Heflin, Ala., though he grew up in Roanoke, where he swung a hammer alongside his father in a blacksmith shop. He was in the shop when he heard the news about Pearl Harbor. Wade was anxious for a piece of the action.

He was drafted two months after his 18th birthday -- "They were drafting everything back then," he said.

Wade left the state of Alabama for the first time in March 1944 for basic training in Florida. He volunteered for service as a paratrooper, but got cold feet by the time he got to Fort Benning, Ga. Instead, he was sent to Baltimore, Md. Next thing he knew, he was sailing across the Atlantic with the 45th Infantry.

After the 21-day voyage, Wade and his comrades boarded a train and crossed England overnight.

"We took a ship across the Channel, then walked five miles in the sleet and snow," only to board a freight train for a four-day trek to France, Wade said.

Wade's arrival was on the heels of the Battle of the Bulge.

"We replaced all the boys that got killed," he said.

His first taste of war came at the German Siegfried Line. Known to the Germans as the "Westwall," the Siegfried Line was more than 600 kilometers of bunkers, tunnels and concrete tank traps called "dragon's teeth." The obstacles served -- effectively -- in slowing down a ground invasion.

Wade was hunkered down in the midst of battle at the Siegfried Line when he smoked his first cigarette. The 18-year-old saw his comrade light up and demanded, "Give me one of those cigarettes."

"'Jack, you don't ever smoke,' he told me," Wade said. "I told him, 'I'm about to start.'"

Cigarettes came in the soldiers' K-rations, as did cheese and eggs, crackers and corned beef. According to Wade, ammunition was never in short supply.

It snowed nearly every day Wade served overseas. He recalled waking up in a foxhole in two inches of muddy slush, emerging to find the ground covered in more snow and ice, spending the next hours on guard duty. He spent his 19th birthday following a similar routine, as did many of his young comrades. Having been issued only two pair of wool underwear and four pair of socks, Wade's "toes almost froze" in the frigid conditions.

"They still bother me sometimes," he said.

Wade and the 45th made their way through France, crossed the Danube River, then the Rhine -- "That was rough," Wade said.

A single skirmish en route to Nuremberg, Germany was costly. More than half of Wade's company died when they met the Germans on the other side of a hill.

"[The village was] a hornet's nest," Wade said.

He remembered taking cover in a small house during the battle, the noise of shells exploding around him, above him, deafening. One fellow soldier yelled, "Get under the table, Jack!"

Wade, frightened and disoriented, crawled under the table and prayed. He watched as the door to the house exploded off the frame and flew down the hallway, and waited for the battle to end.

The memories haven't disappeared with time. When lightning struck a tree close to Wade's Moreland home a couple of years ago, the explosive noise -- "Just like one of those 88s -- those Screaming Mimis," Wade said -- resurfaced the panic he'd felt during that battle.

Wade fought his way through the Black Forest in southwest Germany to Munich. He was in Munich when the fighting in Europe ended. Wade assisted in the liberation of Dachau, a concentration camp. He guarded the camp from enemy invasion for two weeks, and the images of "people starved to death, bodies thrown in boxcars," and the furnaces where the corpses were burned have never faded.

Wade prepared to be sent to Japan where the war was still raging, but never got the call.

He returned to the U.S. and decided to stay in the service. He spent around three months guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C. Wade was stationed at nearby Fort Myers, Va.

When the Korean War started, Wade decided to retire to his parents' home in LaGrange, Ga., to help his mother and brothers after his father's death.

He met his wife of nearly 56 years, Flo, when the pair worked at a cotton mill in LaGrange.

Flo shared that her husband had nightmares for years following the war, though they've faded over time.

Wade retired from the William L Bonnell Company in Newnan after 37 years. He and Flo live in Moreland, where they enjoy spending time with their children and grandchildren. The pair stays well-fed with fresh fruits and vegetables from their garden, including watermelon, corn, tomatoes, peas and squash.