Shine Bryant Recalls War
(Editor’s Note: McIntosh State Bank again this year plans to salute all Jasper County veterans. However, The News thought a good way to lead up to the observance of Veteran’s Day would be to talk with some World War II veterans. Many of them will be highlighted in the November 10 section, and The News plans to talk personally to several as well. This is the first in a series on World War II veterans.)
As Veterans Day approaches our thoughts turn toward World War II, that titanic struggle of good versus evil in which 16.5 million Americans served, and which ended 60 years ago.
Today, fewer than 3.7 million veterans of that Great Generation are still alive. And, they are dying at a rate of 1,500 each day.
Some veterans surmise that the importance of that great war, and the sacrifices of so many, is being lost on today’s school age children, as well as several generations older than them.
To put the magnitude of WWII in perspective, it is estimated that more than 50 million people died because of Hitler’s aggressive fascism in Germany and expansionist militarism in Japan, starting in the late 1930s. The number of U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines killed in battle totaled 292,000.
Another 114,000 were killed in war related incidents. And the wounded came to a total of 671,000. There are no statistics available to measure the sense of loss, heartbreak and suffering endured on the home front.
One of the stalwart defenders of freedom and Great American survivors of WWII is 82-year-old Jasper County resident Claude “Shine” Bryant, who served from January 1943, through December 1945. Mr. Bryant was first deployed to Naples, Italy, in June 1944, right after the Allied invasion of Normandy. After that he spent the next eight months on the front line.
He served with Company K, 142nd Infantry, 36th Infantry Division. As a private, his base pay was $44 per month. After achieving the rank of Tech Sergeant, it increased to $96 per month plus $10 combat pay. His division had 27,343 casualties, the third highest of any U.S. Army division. They captured 175,806 enemy soldiers, received 10 Presidential Citations, and was the proud division that took the Hawk’s Nest, Hitler’s hideout.
Citations and medals Mr. Bryant was awarded included the Presidential Unit Citation for his company’s capture of St. Marie, France, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. He was wounded three times, but only one of them was serious enough to keep him out of action for more than a day.
During this time the only method of communicating back home was by mail, and according to Mr. Bryant, sometimes an entire month would elapse before his mail was delivered. Food was the only item which was delivered to the front, and even that was irregular sometimes. He still has the can opener used to open his c-rations.
He tells of one occasion when he opened a can of grisly beef stew and found there was no juice in the can. Later on he found a hole in the can and a small piece of shrapnel inside. He still has it.
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“I can only remember eating two times a day, and that was before daylight and after dark.”
When asked about the hardest thing he had to endure, Mr. Bryant said, “It was the lack of sanitation on the front line. At one time we went 32 twenty-four hour days with constant contact with the enemy. During that period we didn’t have a hot meal, a shower or a shave.
You didn’t care about the time. You didn’t remember what day, week or month it was, whether it was Monday or Friday, you didn’t care. Your concern was with that day and that day only. I would ask the Lord to look after me today and the next day I would start all over again.
Festung Landsberg was the prison in which Adolph Hitler spent 14 months in 1923-24, writing his famous Mein Kamph. However, when Tech Sergeant Bryant arrived there it was a different kind of prison.
“The most traumatic experience I had was at a place called Landsberg. We were briefed the night before and told that it was a political prisoner camp. My platoon was the first one in.
“We found two sealed box cars on the siding.
These box cars were called ’40’s or 8’s,’ meaning they would hold 40 humans or eight horses. I shot the seal off the first one I came to and pulled the door open.”
Mr. Bryant paused briefly at this point to control his emotions, then he held his hand to about mid-thigh as he described the height of the human bodies stacked inside.
“But then I saw movement in the back. It was a little girl, eight or nine, skin and bone. She came out and I passed her to a medic, and then I saw another movement. Out of that box car, piled high with human bodies, only two little girls had survived.”
Mr. Bryant continued, and almost shivered when he told about the extreme cold. “Oh yes, I remember the weather. We were in the Bosgees Mountains in France, where we had snow and freezing rain. Eighty percent of my group had frostbite and some had frozen feet. After four days of that we finally received winter gear and it served us well after then.”
Camaraderie among soldiers ceases to exist in combat, as Mr. Bryant explained, “It starts out that way, but you had to change. If you became attached to a guy and then lost him, it hurt. You would know them and their names, but because of what you knew could happen, you wouldn’t do that. In an infantry rifle company on the front line you would get hit. You were concerned about them, but you had to detach yourself from them. It only took me a couple of weeks to figure that out.”
In comparing the difference of the nation’s attitude toward the war effort today as compared to during WWII days, Mr. Bryant said, “Back then a young man walking the streets was looked at with disdain and people would ask why he wasn’t in the service. Today, people ask why a young man is in the service.”
When asked how it felt to get home, Mr. Bryant said simply but emphatically, “Good!”