WALSTONBURG — Some experiences in life remain etched in the mind forever.
Harold Bailey of Walstonburg may be 92 years old, but he hasn’t forgotten the memories of World War II.
While attending college at UNC Chapel Hill, he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 when he was 19-years-old.
He was sent to Fort Hood, Texas, where he trained for 18 months to be a replacement of any soldier that had fallen either in the Pacific or Europe.
“I was among the first group of trainees at Fort Hood,” Bailey said.
He spent another 13 weeks learning to be a tank destroyer and shoot with a .30- and .50-caliber machine gun. His first overseas stay was in England.
“I was just there waiting because I had no specialty,” he said.
The Army moved him to France where he waited again for an opening as he trained how to find bombs and traps.
If the U.S. had lost air superiority there, he would have had to put that training to use, but the Americans held onto the air space.
Then came the Battle of the Bulge, the last major offensive the Germans launched in December 1944.
“They came in and said, ‘thou shalt go to the war, the real war’,” Bailey said.
He said many of the soldiers hadn’t been fully trained, but they were shipped out on Dec. 24 to fight.
Bailey was a forward observer with the 313th Field Artillery and was sent to a foxhole during the battle.
“Mortar fire from the Germans hit my foxhole,” he said. “… Fortunately, the bomb hit my rifle.”
Bailey was hit on his hand with a piece of shrapnel.
“They were going to send me back,” he said, “and I said no. I didn’t want to go back.”
The next day, he and a buddy went to get batteries for a radio. On the way back, they came upon two Germans. Bailey pointed his rifle at them and realized the barrel of his weapon was bent from a piece of shrapnel. However, the Germans were unarmed at that point.
“They had been hiding,” Bailey said, “and they saw two Americans coming, so they gave up.”
Bailey humbly said many other “boys” went through much worse.
“I was very fortunate,” he said. “My contribution was very small compared to a lot of them.”
Still, his injury in the foxhole earned him a Purple Heart.
The war in Europe was coming to a close after that battle, and Germany surrendered in May 1945. When the war in Europe was over, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered some American troops to see for what they had been fighting. Bailey was one who was sent to visit a Nazi concentration camp near Munich, Germany.
“There were a lot of people saying the Holocaust never existed,” Bailey said, “but I know it did.”
To his surprise, he ran into a nurse who happened to be a distant cousin of his from Saratoga. She was helping clean up some of the people at the camp so they could leave.
“So we saw the ovens where they cremated the remains,” Bailey said.
One starving man he saw was so emaciated, he fell over and died before Bailey’s eyes. One healthy-looking man had the job of running the crematoria ovens and told him he was fed well to keep the ovens burning. Bailey said he wasn’t sure if the man was Jewish.
Eisenhower had hoped the visit would leave an impression on the soldiers who fought, and it certainly did for Bailey.
“Man’s inhumanity to man,” he said, “is hard to comprehend. Well, it was quite shocking, of course. It’s something you won’t forget.”
Bailey returned to Walstonburg in October, 1945, co-owned a service station for awhile, then got a job and married Hetty, now deceased. He went back to Chapel Hill to complete a degree in political science and returned home to find he out he had friends there willing to help him if he needed a financial start.
After working various jobs, he retired after 18 years working for the N.C. Department of Revenue in 1986.
Bailey said war is different these days and there’s a lot of things happening people aren’t being told.
“The powers-that-be are supposed to know what they’re doing,” he said, “but you’ve just got to take their word for it.”
Meet Me Monday
Who: Harold Bailey
Age: 92
Resides: Walstonburg
Military: Army, 1942-1945
Family: married in 1947 to Hetty Bailey, deceased; son, George, 51
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.