VE Day Memories

George Hyde of East Bethel fought for more than three years in World War II, crossing Europe with the 29th Division as the Allies ended German resistance and produced Victory in Europe Day, May 8, 1945. (Herald photo / Amelia Lincoln)

Sixty years ago, on Sunday, May 8, 1945, celebrations lit up the skies in Europe and America, as Germany surrendered to the Allies. World War II continued in the Pacific, but victory in Europe Day still carries tremendous meaning. That’s especially true for George Hyde, longtime shop teacher at RUHS, who for nearly a year fought the retreating Germans through Europe. He was interviewed by his Randolph Center neighbor, Mary Lincoln.

In December, 1941, George Hyde thought he was pretty well situated in life, newly married and the recent purchaser of a store and post office in East Bethel. The one thing he was sure he didn’t have to worry about was military service. He’d been turned down because of a finger lost in his father’s sawmill. And besides, he had a hernia.

Listening to the radio on Dec. 7, he heard about Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and was inducted into the Army in 1942.

"A whole bunch of us from around here went to Ft. Devens," he recalls now. "We were assigned alphabetically. Everyone up to the name of "Hungerford" was sent to the signal corps. I got put in the medical corps."

After marching around Camp Pickett, Va., for basic training, he was sent to Pennsylvania to prepare for assignment in the Pacific. "That’s when the Army discovered I had a hernia!"

He later crossed the Atlantic. "Hey, I want you to know I traveled in style—went over on the Queen Mary." In Bodman, England, his first housing was in a former insane asylum. "So I felt right at home," Hyde says.

On June 7, 1944, D-Day Plus One, Hyde was in an LCI in the English Channel headed for Omaha Beach as the coxswain went around in circles. "He didn’t know where to go. so the Captain gave up. He said ‘Just take us ashore’."

Now 85, Hyde was 25 then, and he doesn’t remember if it was raining or sunny or warm or cool. What he remembers is dead Americans. "On one part of the beach, they were stacked three deep for about six hundred yards."

His unit, the 104^th Medical Battalion, was attached to the 175^th Regiment of the 29^th Division—the division later made famous by the movie "Saving Private Ryan." The division’s history, published in 1948, details its accomplishments and losses.

The 175^th’s objective was St. Lo, and at dusk the men passed a schoolhouse, and on a blackboard inside, Hyde recalls wistfully, someone had chalked "Vive Les Americains!".

The battle for St. Lo took several weeks. "We kinda’ got held up there," says Hyde with Vermont understatement.

"The way it worked was that the infantry was up front with their aid guys. We were about 500 yards behind, ahead of the artillery. Infantry Aid got ‘em to us, we did what we could, and then we transported them further back somewhere. What people call MASH units now—they were way back. We patched ‘em up as best we could, and if they could walk and speak, they were sent back to the line again."

The division record notes contact with the enemy for 45 consecutive days. On one, June 18, the 175^th had 334 casualties. "It was pretty bad," he says simply.

He was supposed to be a company clerk and driver, but he learned triage from the doctors, and quickly recites the categories sixty years later: frontal brain; occipital brain; traumatic amputation; sucking chest…

Replacement troops came from "Repo Depots." Then it was on to Brest, a port city with a German submarine base. "The roads were full of shell holes. All the civilians were hiding. The children were the first ones to come out.

Moving Forward

The infantry kept moving forward, and with them the doctors and medics and drivers, the jeeps and ambulances and personnel carriers with red crosses painted on the sides.

What was the toughest part?

"Oh," he says, shaking his head, "the hedgerows were the worst by far."

Julius Caesar had encountered those hedgerows, and 2,000 years later they were impervious to almost everything the Allies had available. "The Germans would be dug in on one side, and our guys were on the other, coming up. We could hear them (the Germans). Once a colonel pulled the pin on a grenade and threw it over to the other side, but he forgot to count before he threw it, so a German had enough time to throw it back. The guys put him (the Colonel) on a litter and he said, ‘This is a helluva war’ before they carried him away."

The Yanks modified their tanks to plow through the hedgerows and the fight for northern France ended on Sept. 14.

"The nearer you got to the front lines, the more the officers were like us," remembers Hyde. "We would turn our jackets inside out at night because the linings were darker and that made us harder to see. Then an order came from the rear that we were supposed to dress according to regulations, but Captain Williams said to forget it, and that if any more orders like that came up, he’d take care of it.

"There was a swell guy, Captain Williams. A country doctor from Ridgeway, Penna. But Command sent us orders by ambulance driver instead of using the regular channels and Captain Williams never got the word that we were pulling back. He was killed when he was looking for a place to have a forward aid station.

"We built a ball field in his honor," adds Hyde, looking at a snapshot of the field’s dedication.

"This is Captain Leve," he says of another photo. "He was the psychiatrist for the Divison. We had a man come in who was shaking so hard he couldn’t talk. It took us five minutes just to get his name. Captain Leve said ‘I’d rather see a wound. Witih a wound, he could be OK, but this man may never be all right again.’ In the First World War, they called it shell shock, but in World War II, they called it combat exhaustion. We had quite a few of them."

Into Holland

The regiment advanced into Holland. There were no hedgerows for concealment, so soldiers flattened themselves between rows of beets and other vegetables. In November it rained 28 out of 30 days and the men lived in mud. Luxury was dry socks or a blanket; there was no lighting between dusk and dawn unless someone found a candle.

By late December, the 175^th’s manpower was down by 30%; the unit was relieved and sent to the rear. .But when the Germans burst through the Allied lines in the Battle of the Bulge, they moved forward again.

Spring brought unimagined horrors. "The guys liberated a camp. one of the men went down there and came back and said to Captain Leve, ‘Aren’t you gonna’ go see? You won’t believe what they did!’

"But Captain Leve shook his head and said ‘I don’t have to see it to believe.’"

When word came that the war in Europe was over, the 175^th, with 3,251 men on June 6, had suffered 6,909 casualties.

Servicemen returned to the States according to a point system. Hyde left Germany in October, 1945. "It wasn’t like goin’ over. Five days over on the Queen Mary and two weeks on an LST comin’ back. That was some trip! I sure was glad to see the Old Lady in New York harbor."

George and his wife Betty raised three sons and a daughter. After 63 years together, they can finish each other’s sentences and read each other’s thoughts. He completed his education and became a shop teacher at RUHS. He has also run a television and antenna business for decades and climbs ladders with amazing agility.

One more thing: What does he think of Tom Brokaw’s term, "The Greatest Generation"?

"Oh, I was just doin’ my job, I guess."

By Mary Lincoln