Marine reflects on news war had ended
By: James R. Pettus, Chandler, Ariz.

I served in the Rainbow Division from May of 1944 until March 1946 as an infantryman and squad leader.  We fought in France and Germany during the Battle of  the Bulge campaign.

My best Rainbow buddy and I will be going to Germany in April of 1995 to attend the ceremonies at the Dachau Concentration Camp where the Rainbow Division will be honored guests as the liberators of this infamous camp.  We will observe the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau.  Attending will also be hundreds of former inmates from all over Europe.  We will also attend a reception by the Mayor of Munich and be guests of the Barvarian Government at a banquet on April 30.

Below is the excerpt of a few paragraphs from the above mentioned history.

"Early on the morning of December 23rd, we boarded trucks for what was to turn out to be the most miserable day in my entire life.  Nothing had ever equalled it before or has since.  I had many worse days later, as far as being scared, or seeing buddies wounded or killed, nearly being killed myself, or all the other horrors of war, but nothing was quite like this day for sheer misery.  It was bitterly cold and we were packed into uncovered trucks, in a standing position as many as could possibly be squeezed in. We rode this way for ten hours with the rushing sub-zero air cutting us to the bone.  We only stopped a couple of times and were allowed to de-truck for a ten minute break.  We were so cold and stiff that we felt we would break in two climbing out of the trucks. 

To make matters worse, it was apparent that at times we were lost, because we back tracked several times.  Our company commander, Captain "Double Time" Jones kept getting out of his jeep and stopping the lead truck, and looking at his maps and gazing at the terrain, etc.  Stories quickly circulated among us that the truck drivers, who were not from our outfit, had probably been over these routes dozens of times and if left alone could have gotten us where we were supposed to go in half the time it was taking.

After we had stopped several times and retraced a previous route, loud mutters of protest could be heard coming from men, packed like sardines, in the trucks.  Some strong name calling was directed toward Jones from men deep within the truck beds where they couldn't be identified.  Jones either didn't hear them or more likely pretended not to.

About 8:00 pm we arrived in Strasbourg, France and when the trucks stopped, Jones gave orders for us to stay put until he found out exactly where we were to go.  By this time everyone was too miserable to pay any attention to him and we all began to pile out to the ground.  We were at an abandoned French Cavalry camp.  We were assigned billets in the old stone building and immediately spread our blankets on the concrete floors and fell into an almost immediate stupor.

Just before we went to bed we were told that early the next morning we would be going to the front lines.  It would be the day before Christmas - What a hell of a Christmas present.

The DAILY JOURNAL, St. Francois County, Missouri, Wednesday, April 26, 1995.

Local man served in the Rainbow Division
in World War II

By T.RESSEL\Daily Journal Staff Writer
Jun 07, 2004 

DESLOGE - It's been almost 60 years since the end of World War II, but James Pettus of Desloge remembers well every day he spent on the front lines fighting - and fighting to survive.

Pettus was drafted into the military in July of 1943 when he was 18 years old. Pettus, who was born in Rivermines and currently lives in Desloge, came out a year and half later as a staff sergeant with a Bronze star and several medals.

Pettus, who became known to his buddies in the military as "Pete," said he wound up in the Rainbow Division or 42nd Infantry Division in June of 1944. He first went overseas in November - five months after D-Day.

Pettus said the Battle of the Bulge began while he was in France. They were rushed to the front lines on Christmas Eve of that year.

Pettus said they lost 40 percent of their unit in three weeks. He saw some of his friends get killed by both enemy and friendly fire.

After the capture of Munich, Pettus was ordered to seize what was called the (Eva) Braun Haus. When they arrived there, it was a pile of ruble but they stayed there as they were ordered.

Pettus said in the cellar they found one of the Nazi party's headquarters. No one was there but they found fancy silverware and other items with Hitler's initials and the swastika symbol.

Near the cellar were two Nazi temples containing eight bronze caskets. Pettus has pictures of the temples and the caskets which all were destroyed after the war.

Pettus said he was not personally involved in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. But he said many of his friends in the Rainbow Division were.

"It's almost too horrible to describe," he said.

He said when the soldiers first arrived, they found 50 boxcar loads of dead people who had been shipped to Dachau in the dead of winter, and for those five days, had been without food and wearing only light pajamas.

Only one person was found alive in those boxcars.

The people inside the camp weren't in very good condition.

"There were 32,000 inmates in the camp - all just skeletons," he said.

Later he found out that one of those people was 15-year-old Danny Fisher, who went on to become a doctor. He weighed 57 pounds when he was liberated from the camp. His father, mother, grandmother and sister were killed in the camp.

Pettus said Fisher has been made an honorary member of the Rainbow Division and has spoken at several of their reunions.

He said the camp had been a working camp as opposed to a killing camp were people just went to die.

Pettus recently discovered that Ella Weider, the mother of Senator Joe Lieberman's wife, Hadassah, was in that camp.

Last week, the Liebermans invited 35 members of the Rainbow Division who attended the World War II Veteran Parade on Memorial Day to a reception.

"You helped wake the world from the Nazi nightmare, and made it possible for all us to dream again," Hadassah Lieberman said last Tuesday at the reception. "The Rainbow Division helped pierce through the dark storm clouds to illuminate the hues of hope and goodness in every human being.

"You are in part the reason I am here today, the reason we are all here today. We must never forget the horror of the Holocaust. And we must never forget the heroism of the liberators - liberators such as the Rainbow Division. Thank you."

The Liebermans presented the division with a U.S. flag that had flown at the Capitol.

Going home

Pettus was able to go home in March of 1946.

"I (saw) five months of actual combat but it seemed like a lifetime," he said.

His company commander begged him to stay and become the first sergeant of the company.

"But I said no," he said. "I couldn't wait to come home."

After he got back, Pettus began writing a book about his experiences. He added onto the book after he went overseas in 1995 for the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.

The book is currently 220 pages and he hasn't tried to publish it. He knows publishing it like he wants it - with hundreds of photos - would be very expensive.

He has sent a copy of his book to the Library of Congress and several other libraries as part of the Veterans History Project.

He may end up adding more to the book since he has been invited to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau.

War stories

His war stories are not quite like that of today's soldiers.

Pettus remembers they went without a bath or changing their long underwear for three cold months from November to February.

He said the weather was the coldest in 60 years.

"It was nothing pleasant," he said.

They were outside 24 hours a day. They spent many nights sleeping on a thin rain coat, most of the time without a blanket.

He remembers finding a blanket in an abandoned jeep alongside a road. He said he swore he would keep that blanket throughout the war no matter what happened.

But that day, the Germans opened fire from the mountain and the soldiers dug holes to hide in. Pettus was one of the first to withdraw after they received orders to withdraw one man at a time. He said the last thing on his mind was that blanket.

"I didn't even have it one night," he said.

His near death experience came the next night when they went back to the same area. They were laying in fox holes near the river, soaking wet. One shell came within a few feet of his and his buddy's foxhole with sand and dirt blowing on top of them.

"We were fortunate that neither one of us was wounded," he said.

He said the soldiers were sleep deprived to the point many would march in their sleep. He said he could get in a state of near sleep while marching.

He said they hardly ever got to stay in one place for a whole night. He said they would sleep whenever they got the chance.

They also learned where to find food.

When they captured a town, they would search every house for enemies.

"We were always on the look-out for food," he said.

He said Germany didn't have much food. They quickly learned where the wives on farms hid their eggs.

Pettus said if they were not fighting or marching, the food prepared by the cooks was pretty good.

But the rations were not that great. The food ranged from potted ham to beans and hash.

Officers communicated via telephone and radios that worked half the time. Pettus said they never knew where they were going - he just followed orders.

World War II Memorial dedication.

Pettus may have even more to add onto his book after attending the World War II Memorial dedication Memorial Day weekend.

They had no tickets to the dedication so they hadn't planned to go. But they ran into Parkland resident, Lester Gray, who had a few extra tickets.

They day after the ceremony, Pettus and his wife, Rose, visited the memorial and took photos.

Rose said she was very impressed with the memorial.

"I thought it was well done and it served the purpose great," he said.

On Memorial Day, Pettus and 35 other members of the Rainbow Division marched in the parade. They were one of two groups to have a float in the parade.

Pettus was in charge of and marched in the four-man Color Guard in front of the float. Fifty Boy Scouts carried the Rainbow Division's 50 state flags. The Madison County High School Marching Band marched with them.

Later on, Pettus visited other sites such as the Arlington Cemetery and the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va. Pettus stopped along the way to visit a Rainbow buddy he has only seen four times in 59 years.

Many members of the division meet regularly for mid-year and yearly reunions. Pettus hasn't missed a reunion in 22 years.

James Pettus looks at the April 15, 2010, edition of The Washington Post in which he was featured.
The Desloge resident was one of 120 veterans who were invited to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum as part of National Days of Remembrance.

-- Pettus lost 40 percent of his group within first three weeks --
Desloge man knows the meaning of Memorial Day
By C.CLINE Daily Journal Staff Writer | Published: Sunday, May 30, 2010.

DESLOGE, MO — The year was 1943. James Pettus had just graduated from Desloge High School and was in his first year of college at Flat River Community College. The United States was engulfed in World War II and he knew his time would come to serve his country. What he didn’t know, were the atrocities he would encounter in just five months of combat or the title he would earn that he would carry with him the rest of his life.

The U.S. was ramping up its war effort against the Nazi war machine and the Axis powers as Pettus was drafted into the Army in July of 1943.

“With World War II going on, I knew it was a matter of time for me,” he said. “Like most everybody I just wanted to get over there and do my part.”

He bounced around between three organizations in the Army before he ended up with the 42nd Rainbow Division. The Rainbow Division was formed in 1917. It was comprised of National Guard units from 26 states and the District of Columbia. It got its name from General Douglas MacArthur. He said the division “would stretch over the whole country like a rainbow.”

Pettus spent six months training with the Rainbow Division in Oklahoma. Then his time came to join the war effort in Europe. The voyage overseas by ship would last more than a week.

“I got so sea sick I really didn’t have any thoughts on the way over there,” Pettus said. “The Statue of Liberty was still in sight when I began to get sick.”

Pettus hit the war front on Dec. 24, 1944 in Strausberg, France. He said the German soldiers were on the opposite side of the Rhine River as the Americans were trying to advance.

“They attacked our position in full force on Jan. 18,” he said. “We suffered 40 percent casualties in three weeks. Our artillery wasn’t ready and hadn’t arrived yet. That really hurt. Several of my close friends were either wounded or killed. We withdrew back 17 miles before we were completely surrounded. We spent 30 days resting and waiting for reinforcements. Then on March 14 we started our last push against the Germans.”

Pettus said the last stance against the Nazis was relentless as more than 6,000 German soldiers were captured. He said the Americans chased them from town to town.

On April 29, 1944, Pettus got to the forefront of what was at the very heart of the war. His unit helped liberate Dachau concentration camp, located about 9.9 miles northwest of Munich.

“There were 32,000 prisoners in all there,” Pettus said. “All of which were in starvation. There were 50 box car loads of bodies on the tracks. One man pulled out from underneath the bodies was still alive. The bodies were of men, women and children. You think about it a lot. You try to put it out of your mind, but it’s there.”

Pettus described Dachau as a work camp. He said the camp sent the workers out into factories until they eventually died from disease or starvation.

“They even made the children work,” he said. “They had a bar set on two poles. They made the kids walk underneath the bar. If their head hit bar then they were sent off into labor.”

Pettus said children who weren’t tall enough to enter the work force were either put to death or were experimented on. He said when his unit arrived there were still a few Nazis at the concentration camp.

“Some took off their Nazi uniforms and put clothes on like prisoners,” he said. “The prisoners, though, knew who they were and turned on them.”

He said they either took matters into their own hands and beat the soldiers or turned them over to the Americans. Pettus said he will never forget how happy the prisoners were to see the American soldiers. He said the prisoners made American flags out of their prison garbs to show their support.

“The prisoners had every disease known to man,” he said. “So we couldn’t just set them free. They required medical treatment and remained at the camp for several months after our arrival.”

While Pettus’ experience at Dachau lasted less than a day, the images he saw will linger with him the rest of his life.

“It made quite an impression,” he said.

In all Pettus covered more than 750 miles during his tour in Europe, most of which was marching on foot.

“I always felt like we would win the war and do it pretty quickly,” he said. “I don’t feel there will ever be another generation like the one from World War II. There were very few men and women who were in the military at that time who didn’t want to do their part.”

Pettus got out of the military in March of 1946. He left the Army as a staff sergeant with a Bronze star and several metals. Pettus went on to get a degree in geology from Washington University and worked for the St. Joe Lead Company for 24 years.

Now, 85-years-old, he lives in Desloge with his wife during the spring and summer months and spends his time during the winter in Arizona.

In April he was among 120 veterans who were invited to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. to share their stories of freeing the concentration camps. In addition, 100 concentration camp survivors also attended the event. Pettus’ picture was featured in The Washington Post as a result of the event.

Pettus remains active with the Rainbow Division and attends reunions twice a year. He admitted that their numbers are dwindling as time goes on.

“Over 1,000 World War II veterans die each day,” he said. “I’m trying to reach out to other members of the 42nd.”

He said last year the reunion in Dayton, Ohio drew about 194 veterans. This year’s reunion is in New Orleans and is expected to draw 150.

Since World War II Pettus has been back to Germany seven times. He said during his trips he has retraced all of his routes as a soldier.

His second trip back in 1995 was for the VE Day celebration. The trip led to a friendship with one of the prisoners he helped liberate at Dachau named Danny Fisher.

“I was in the hotel lobby and a man saw the Rainbow patch I was wearing,” Pettus said. “He asked me if I was part of the Rainbow Division and introduced himself. I said yes and asked him if he was a member. He said no he was a survivor of Dachau. He was just 15-years-old  when we liberated the camp. He weighed 59 pounds.”

Fisher told Pettus he had always wanted to go back to Dachau, but he didn’t want to do it alone. He found comfort in returning to the camp with the group of soldiers that had liberated him some 50 years prior. Fisher’s father, mother, grandmother and sister died at the camp.

“We became friends after that encounter,” Pettus said “He somehow ended up in the United States and became a doctor and now lives in Florida.”

The Holocaust survivor and his “liberator” remain close friends today and keep in regular contact with each other.

James Pettus, 2010

CLICK HERE to view Purple Heart Jewell Website on James R. "Pete" Pettus