Small Town America in World War II: War Stories from Wrightsville, Pennsylvania

Chapter 8: Pfc. Glenn Blouse

Chapter 8 Pfc. Glenn Blouse 2d Plat., D Co., 1st Btn., 135th Reg., 34th Infantry Div. Born on April 1924, at Long Level, a small community on the Susquehanna River just south of Wrightsville, Glenn Blouse was the only child of Ora and Paul Blouse. Almost immediately after graduating from high school in June 1941, Glenn had to register for the draft as the country drifted toward war. On 23 April 1943, the Army called him to active duty. After stateside basic training, Glenn was sent to Italy where he joined the 34th Infantry Division as a replacement. He spent the rest of World War II in Italy, participating in the Naples-Foggia Campaign, the RomeArno Campaign, the Northern Apennines Campaign, and the Po Valley Campaign. While fighting in the Apennines, Glenn was the recipient of the Bronze Star. His story offers a graphic description of the miserable fighting conditions endured by infantrymen as they slowly struggled up the Italian Peninsula, Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s “soft underbelly of Europe.” After the war, Glenn married, settled in Wrightsville, and raised a son. He died on 21 July 2000, the victim of a hit-and-run driver.1 132 SMALL TOWN AMERICA IN WORLD WAR II As the country drifted toward war, Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, and Glenn, like almost all eighteen-year-olds, had to register with his local draft board. With the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, Glenn more or less marked time because he knew that he would soon receive his induction notice: “I graduated from high school in 1941. When I left high school, I thought that I would be eventually drafted because the government brought out a program where eighteen-year-olds had to register for the draft. I was one of the first eighteen-year-olds to sign up. Then I worked at various places because I knew that eventually I was going to be inducted. Eventually, I did get drafted, about a year-and-a-half after the war started. I guess it took awhile until they finally decided that they were going to take people as young as I was. I turned nineteen years old, and a week later I went into the service. I left on a Sunday. “My dad never said too much about my going into the Army. He never said too much about anything. He kept his thoughts to himself, but I knew that it was awful for him, that his only son was going into the service. But my mother showed her emotions, and she was very upset; but she knew it was something that had to be done because it was for the country. I was inducted in Harrisburg, and the following Sunday they had a big dinner for me. A lot of relatives were there because it was ‘kickoff’ day. After induction, Glenn went through the same Army basic training that thousands of other young men experienced. He believed that basic training taught him the fundamentals of being an infantryman and molded him into top physical shape, but it in no way prepared him for the realities of combat he was to face in Italy: “We were first shipped to Ft. Meade, Maryland, and we were there for two days or something like that. Ft. Meade was sort of like an induction point. Then we boarded a train for Camp Wheeler, Georgia, for basic training, and I was assigned to a heavy weapons company. We did take Pfc. Glenn Blouse 133 rifle drill. We fired the rifle for effect, so to speak, to learn how to operate it. We fired the machine gun quite a bit, but I never fired the mortar, which was part of our weaponry. We had 81-millimeter mortars and .30caliber Browning water-cooled heavy machine guns. Eventually, I was assigned as a machine-gunner, and I had no choice in that decision. Basic training lasted sixteen weeks altogether, but it did not prepare me for what I was to experience later in combat. I’m only saying this for myself, but if I had followed ‘the book’ [Army regulations and training manuals] in combat, I personally don’t think that I’d be having this interview with you. I will say, though, that when we came out of basic training, we were tough physically. “I did have one choice, or thought I did...