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ONE Turning Points: 1944 and 1969 1944 N ineteen fortyfour. The things people remember about that year. It was the one and only time the Cardinals and the Browns, the two professional baseball teams from St. Louis, ever met in the World Series. Naturally, the Cards won. The mighty Army backfield tandem of Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis, Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, coasted through opposing linemen in black-andwhite newsreels. And Americans swayed across the land to the Andrews Sisters' "Rum and Coca-Cola," which came close to becoming a national theme song. When thoughts turn to the images of Yanks fighting and bleeding and dying on the battlefields of the European and the Pacific theaters, "Rum and CocaCola " always seems to be playing in the background, somehow making the terror of it all go down smoother. They came from all over to fight in World War II, and for every American in uniform, life never would be the same. Many did not return home. Others made it back torn and scarred-some broken for good and an equal number more determined than ever to still make something out of the rest of their lives. For a few, their taste of battle would leave them bathed in glory. Nineteen forty-four. The year that the war dealt a trump card for many. It could occur so quickly, in a flash. A thousand times a day, every day, including December 13, 1944. That was the day life changed violently in a split second for a spunky kid who had dropped out of Yale University to enlist in the army at the age of nineteen. , By the time he arrived in France late in October 1944, the Allies were moving steadily across that war-ravaged country, pushing the Germans back to their own border and toward their eventual surrender in early 1945. But the action was still hot and heavy in those waning days of 1944, and Dick Ogilvie, the erstwhile Eli, was in the middle of it, right where he wanted to be. A thirst for military life was in Ogilvie's blood. He had yearned to go to West Point or, failing that, to the Virginia Military Institute. But poor eyesight barred him from both places, Keeping him out of uniform, though, was another matter. The final days of 1944 were pivotal ones in what was known as the European 1 2 . TURNING POINTS theater. By then, the young man from Yale had become Sergeant Ogilvie, a tank commander in Company B of the army's 781st Tank Battalion. His unit, which had been activated less than two years before at Fort Knox in Kentucky, had a motto, "Duty Before Self." It could not have been more appropriate for the guys in the tanks. The truth of the matter was that many soldiers shied away from duty in the hundreds of thousands of tanks that rumbled, clanking and growling, across the landscapes of World War II. Being confined in a cramped armored box without windows for lengthy spells could cause a soldier to lose his bearings. Limited visibility was just part of the problem, though. The tankers lived in morbid fear of hearing, through the whine and clatter of their machine, that earsplitting clang from a round that could mean the destruction of their vehicle and death for its occupants. Tank duty was not for the fainthearted. Getting a taste of combat was a long time coming for the 781st battalion. While other units were going overseas, the 781St seemed mired at Fort Knox, where it spent long days and nights testing tanks and other equipment in the countryside. Contact with the Germans still was nearly two months away when the officers and men of the battalion, their stomachs filled with Red Cross doughnuts and coffee, set sail for Europe in mid-October 1944. They would reach Marseilles by the end of that month, but much of the unit's necessary supplies would not. So the 78rst would remain at the French port for a month, while the tedious job of reoutfitting was carried out, before finally departing by truck and rail for the battlefront up north. Even that expedition appeared to be as slow as molasses. According to a history of the battalion, "engineers stopped the train to drop into a brasserie for a cognac or visit a friend along the way." However, "the French were probably no less surprised by tanks so massive that they fell through...

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