Voices of Veterans: Major John McFall shares his story of service in the US Army, Texas National Guard
Born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, McFall said he joined the U.S. Army in September 1943, following his membership to the religious order, Brother of the Christian Schools in the Catholic Church. While he joined the Army, his first two choices wouldn't take him because of an unknown vision problem.
"I decided I'd leave the order and I came home to where my mother lived, and the war was going on, and I thought that I was really healthy and everything, and so I went down to try to enlist in the Marines and they wouldn't take me because I had a bad eye, and I went to the Navy and they wouldn't take me because I had a bad eye," McFall explained. "I found out that I was born with a congenital cataract in my right eye and I didn't know that at the time."
McFall said he figured he would give it one last chance and went to volunteer for the U.S. Army and if he didn't get accepted, he would go back to college. As fate would have it, they took him and, as a result, McFall would be part of some of bigger battles throughout Europe, Rome and Southern France.
"I figured well, I'll get into something, even I could get into military intelligence or something that would really be good, you know, for the Army and it wouldn't be too much danger to me, although I wasn't really concerned about that too much. I didn't want to get killed, of course," he said when asked about his initial thoughts on joining up. "I kind of spoke French and being a Catholic brother and all, I was really good at Latin and I had a little Spanish, and I thought maybe I, the Army could make use of some of my language like interrogating prisoners of war or something. I was fairly optimistic about it."
McFall said once he joined, he was sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas before being sent, almost immediately, to Camp Blanding, Florida where he received basic training as a rifleman, a position within the Army that requires good eyesight but something McFall knew he didn't have.
"I couldn't fire a rifle with my right eye because I couldn't see the sight, but they let me fire left handed down in basic training," McFall said. "It was 13 weeks and I was a pinup corporal. They put, I was a recruit or a private, but I was a squad — they made me a squad leader and they gave me corporal stripes to wear around and I had the charge of a squad in basic training."
McFall said after his 13 weeks of basic training, he quickly was sent overseas because, at that time, things were starting to heat up for the for Army. Once he arrived, he remembered his first duty assignment well.
"There were 36 of us came in as replacements to one company of Company E, the 141st Infantry of the 36th Infantry Division which had really been clobbered at Casino, and probably lost half their regimental personnel in the Division in two attempts to cross the Rapido River," McFall recalled. "So there was a massive replacements came into this company and so I, there was one opening in the mortars and I said I wanted the mortars. So I was a crewman on a 60 millimeter mortar in the rifle company of an infantry regiment."
McFall said the first combat he saw as part of the 36th Division, which was 13,000 men, when they were sent to the Anzio Beachhead, located roughly 17 miles south of Anzio, Rome.
"The Germans didn't know it was coming or anything like that and when they found out, the way they found out about it was when the Americans and English unloaded and got there. But Hitler sent a whole bunch of Panzer divisions down there to contain the Anzio beachhead because he didn't want Rome to fall," McFall explained. "Rome was the big, would be the first big, you know, capital that would fall to our troops."
McFall added they lost a lot of men along the way and recalled a moment the Germans tried their best to stop his unit, firing artillery shells as they crossed a field.
"I heard it come in, so I hit the ground, and I put my head down and I put my arms around my helmet so that my face would be kind of protected as much as possible. I was just lying on top of the ground and this shell came in and I thought it was gonna hit me right in the head, but it went right over me and hit my buddy — well it hit between me and my buddy who was on the ground behind me, and it really hurt him bad," McFall explained, adding he did everything he could to help him before he was sent to a hospital in North Africa but later, he said, died because of that attack by the Germans.
Click here to listen to Maj. John McFall tell his story.
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