Felix & World War 2
| On September 29, 1944, the XV Corps of the Third Army
was transferred the Seventh Army.
The Corps assignment of the 3110th Signal Service Battalion is still being researched. It possibly was in the XV Corps. This is probably the time period in which Felix was hospitalized with cold injuries. Several sources state that upon release from the hospital, men were not necessarily returned to their original unit. Sources indicate that transfers like this were made within Armies. In late January, 1945, the 45th Infantry Division was taken off the front line. 1,000 replacements were assigned to the 45th. On January 29th, 1945, Felix was transferred from the 3d Replacement Battalion to the 45th Signal Company in bivouac at Petersbach, France. This could have been a time that Felix was transferred to a Seventh Army unit such as the 45th Signal Company. The 45th It then moved back to the front near Wimmenau, France. At that time the front was quiet. The 45th moved to Sarreguemines for rest and training. About March 15, 1945, the 45th resumed the advance. Flint Whitlock's The Rock of Anzio: From Sicily to Dachau: A history of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division |
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Cold
+ Wet = Cold Injuries: Frostbite & Trench Foot
Historian Steven Ambrose described the winter: "It was
Northern Europe's coldest winter
in forty years...Night lasted so long in those northern latitudes. Dusk
began to come on around 1600 or 1615. By 1645 it it was full dark.
First light didn't come up for sixteen hours. It was bitterly cold,
even for GIs from Montana or North Dakota. It was frequently below zero
and generally damp, with low clouds blowing in from the North Sea and a
fog that penetrated everywhere--when it wasn't snowing. The the wind
blew like a gale, driving the pellets of snow into their faces...
"Northwest Europe in November and December (1944) was a miserable place. A mixture of sleet, snow, rain, cold, fog, short days, long nights...Rivers were at flood stage. The already poor roads were churned into quagmires by military vehicles; veterans speak of the mud as knee-deep... "Every veteran I've ever interviewed, from whatever side, agrees that this was the coldest they had ever been...How cold was it? So cold that if a man didn't do his business in a hurry he risked a frostbitten penis...It was so cold that oil in the engines froze. Weapons froze. Men pissed on them to get them working again, a good temporary solution, but one that played hell wit the weapons... "Nights ranged from zero degrees Fahrenheit to minus ten and lower. Men without shelter--other than a foxhole--or heat either stayed awake, stomping their feet through the fourteen hour night, or they froze... "The GIs, and the Germans opposite them, went through worse physical misery than the men of Valley Forge. Washington's troops had tents, some huts, fires to warm by and provide hot food. They were not involved in continuous battle. By contrast, the conditions in Northwest Europe in January, 1945 were as brutal as any in history, including the French and German retreats from Moscow in midwinter, 1812 and 1941. "The infantrymen's clothing was woefully, even criminally inadequate...Their footwear--leather combat boots--was almost worse than useless. Whenever the temperature went above freezing, they were standing in two to twenty inches of water, which the leather soaked up. "There were good boots available in Europe, of the type made popular by L. L. Bean after the war--well-insulated, with leather uppers but rubber bottoms--but...not until late January (1945) did the boots get to where they were needed... "In place of boots, the men got directives on how to prevent trench foot. They were ordered to massage their feet and change their socks every day... "Senior officers threatened court-martial to men who got trench foot...because they suspected the foxhole dwellers were getting it deliberately. They thought it was almost the equivalent of a self-inflicted wound." "Many a soldier laughed at the idea that he should change his socks when he got his feet wet. But on the western front in the winter of 1944 trench foot became a grave threat to the health and efficiency of the troops. At General Eisenhower's urgent request (to the Signal Corps) for a training film on the subject, combat cameramen in the field shot films concerning soldiers with bad cases of trench foot. The Medical Corps added instructions on prevention. Trench Foot, a useful example of a film bulletin, was rushed to completion in the record time of six weeks." From: The Signal Corps: the Outcome (mid-1943 through 1945) by George Raynor Thompson & Dixie R. Harris, pp. 549 - 550. |
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| What
Signalmen did that put them at risk for cold injury The exact units or
Signalmen are not identified. Felix served in areas near these under
similar conditions and illustrate how
Felix could
have suffered cold injuries.
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![]() CAPTION: Signal lineman
repairs wire in the Ardennes.
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![]() CAPTION: European Theatre
of Operations, December, 1944. Soldier traces a broken field wire for
splicing.
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| Photo from: The Signal Corps: The Outcome (Mid-1943 through 1945), p. 160. | U.S. Army photo from: The story of the U.S. Army Signal
Corps between pp. 114 & 115. |
![]() CAPTION: Swimming wire
across the Moselle (River in France).
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![]() Early February, 1945, in
the
Netherlands along the Nijmegen-Cleve road near the German border town
of Kranenburg. British or Canadian Signalmen using amphibious DUKWs and
Weasels to work in areas flooded when the Germans blew up nearby dykes.
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| Photo from: The Signal Corps: The Outcome (Mid-1943 through 1945), p. 132. | Imperial
War Museum photo from The Rhineland 1945: the final push
into Germany (Praeger illustration military history), Ford,
Ken, 2004,
Osprey Publishing, p. 48. |
![]() |
| Medic treating GI with trench
foot and cold injuries to his hands and face. This illustrates what
Felix might have suffered. Diorama in the Truschbaum Museum, Camp Elsenborn, Belgium. (Photo used by permission.) |