James T. Lingg - WWII
Page 19 - In the 787th AW Battalion

We reached an agreement that I wouldn't go back to the Infantry. I had talked to Willie J. I met him out on the road. He told me what all had been going on and that the casualties had been going to beat the band. He suggested that I not come back to the Rifle Company because it wasn't going to be very healthy.

I decided Willie was right so when they said I wouldn't be going back to the Infantry, I said that was okay. They put me in an Anti-Aircraft Battalion, A Battery, 787^th AW Battalion which is an Automatic Weapons Battalion. They have eight sections in the Automatic Weapons of the Company. Anyway, I was in Section Eight.

We had one Bofer 40 millimeter gun, which is a single shot 40 millimeter; a Quad 50 towed mount, which was towed on a trailer; four 50 caliber machine guns that you interdicted the fire out about 1,000 - 2,000 yards and this is where you were supposed to aim to shoot at whatever you were shooting at.

At the time I joined them, they had just been assigned into one of the bigger organizations to be on the "Buzz Bomb" lanes to shoot at Buzz Bombs. There were two types of Buzz Bombs. The V-1 was a flying bomb, built like an airplane. The Germans knew how far it would go on a given amount of fuel. When the fuel ran out the V-1 would crash and explode. When they came in we heard a high pitch, steady drone sound.

The V-2 was actually a rocket. The only sound heard would be two "clicks". When we heard the first click, we hit the ground because immediately following the second click it would explode. The explosion was tremendous; the concussion could be felt quite a ways. One blew out a small landing craft in dry dock ½ mile away. The first one I ever heard blew me off the edge of a trailer ¼ mile away from the explosion. I heard the clicks but didn't know what they were. After that I knew and didn't wait to hear the second click.

They were no longer going to be shooting at aircraft and we were sent to Antwerp, Belgium. From Antwerp, we were sent to Steenburgen, a little town in Holland. In Steenburgen, we were to fire out across the water at the Buzz Bombs as they were shot up in the air - not to go to England but apparently to come down someplace in France.

Remember this was early 1945, after the breakthrough that the Germans made and that was in December 1944. They thought they were going to fight to the very end. After that time it was just a short time before the Germans would no longer be fighting the war.

We spent most of our time traveling between Antwerp and Steenburgen. Then as the war was starting to wind down, we were sent to Reims, France. We stayed there to watch one of the people who came to sign for the Germans to end the war. An airplane came in and they wanted to make sure nobody fired on it. They watched us like hawks and came around to warn us that if anybody shot at it, that would be all she wrote for them. The plane came in and the German war ended.

From that point, the 787^th AW Battalion went to Augsburg, Germany and down there all we did was mark time. During the time I was in the 787^th AW Battalion, Tim B. was probably my closest friend. My Platoon Sergeant, who was an Ex-Infantryman like I was, was Sgt. H. and we were very good friends. So we had a very good set up with them. Pvts. Paul H., N. and C. were all members of Section 8.

With the 787^th AW Battalion, after the war ended, we didn't have anything happen. We stayed there and attended classes. We were all notified of our points. Those people who had no points were to be sent to the war in the Pacific. I had enough points to stay in Germany. On 5 October 1945, I was transferred to Battery D, 184^th AAA Gun Battalion at Kassel. Here we didn't do anything but kill time because we were on the way home on the point system. When the war in Japan was over, we went from Kassel to Le Harve, France and from there I took a boat home.