WWII veteran: 'I never once thought about not making it home'

Tim Clark, Correspondent

Veteran: Frank Ruth, age 93

Branch: United States Army

Service period: October 1943 to December 1946

“I never once thought about not making it home. It just never crossed my mind.”

Those are pretty strong words coming from World War II U.S. Army veteran Frank Ruth, considering the combat he saw in Italy; his unit, the 339th Regimental Combat Team’s field medics, saw 50 percent casualties in its ranks.

Ruth, originally from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, received his draft notice during his junior year of high school.

“Back then, in Pennsylvania, if you had seven of your eight semesters, you could get your diploma. When my class graduated in June of 1944 I was already in Italy. My parents were invited to graduation and my mother accepted my diploma.”

Undergoing basic training?

Camp Croft, a replacement training center located just south of Spartanburg, South Carolina, was where the young soldier underwent basic training.

“I loved it,” he said. “The drill instructor was Sergeant Pepper, I’ll never forget his name, and he was tough as nails. When we’d run the obstacle course, he ran it right along with us, and he was 35-years-old or so. Seventeen weeks, I think it was. They trained us on firing just about every weapon, but I was trained as an anti-tank gunner, we used 37- and 57-millimeter weapons.”

After completing basic, Ruth said he came home on a 10-day leave.

Reporting to?Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia?

“Then I reported to Camp Patrick Henry, which was a port of embarkation.” The camp, located in Hampton Roads, Virginia, was a staging area for troops bound for the war. “Nobody knew where we were going, but because we were leaving from the East Coast we all knew it was probably going to be Italy.”

Frank’s huge convoy – “there were ships as far as you could see” – crossed the Atlantic Ocean and entered the Mediterranean.

“That first morning (in the Med) we came under attack from the Germans (aircraft). There were ack-ack (anti-aircraft) guns going from all these ships; we literally saw a ship behind us get hit by a bomb. I don’t know how bad it was, but it looked bad. That trip took about 28?days to get over there because we were constantly zig-zagging because of German submarines.”

The convoy ported in Augusta, Sicily.

“The docks and facilities were pretty much destroyed in Naples, where we were supposed to go, so we anchored in Augusta for a few days, then went to Naples and unloaded. Then we went to a replacement depot.”

It was there that Ruth learned he wouldn’t be an anti-tank gunner.

“They really didn’t need them because the terrain was mountainous and hard for tanks to navigate. I was trained to carry a BAR (Browning automatic rifle, which fired .30-06 cartridges), and it was heavy.”

When he was assigned to?the 85th Infantry Division?

Frank Ruth was assigned to the 85th Infantry Division.

“They took us up to Anzio on destroyer escorts (Navy combat ships). On the way up there, guys were being interviewed about what they’d be best suited for. The officer asked me, ‘How would you like to be a medic?’?because I’d had some first aid training in the Boy Scouts. I said, ‘Well, what does that mean?’ and he said I would be a litter-bearer.”

Litter-bearers were soldiers assigned to medical units whose prime responsibility was evacuation of wounded soldiers from a battlefield. “All the other training (anti-tank and BAR) meant nothing at all, they made me a medic, which is what we (litter-bearers) were considered. That’s how I became a medic.”

The 339th was in combat at Monte Cassino, outside of Rome, when Ruth arrived.

“We were trying to break through the Gustav Line (series of well-fortified German and Italian positions). I didn’t know it at the time but the group I went with, the 1st Battalion (medical team), had a higher percentage of casualties than the infantry companies. Every aid station had four litter squads, at full strength; when we got there, they were down to two squads. We got them back up to four (squads), but within five days we were back down to two again.”

Removing wounded soldiers

Removing wounded soldiers was a highly dangerous assignment, routinely carried out while under enemy fire.

“Technically, we were never supposed to be ahead of the infantry. A lot of our missions were volunteer missions, in that they’d ask ‘Which squad would like to go?’ Three of the four?of us (litter squad) were 19 years old; the other guy was an old man, he was 22 and married,” Ruth laughed. “But they’d say ‘We need someone to go out,’?and I always said ‘I’ll go.’ I never had any concern that I wouldn’t come back. I had a faith that I was raised with and I just never had any question.”

Why he was awarded a?Bronze Star

Frank recounted an incident that has stayed with him for more than?60 years.

“A squad (of infantry) had gone out on patrol and got caught in a mortar attack. There was a guy out there that they thought was still alive and asked if we’d go get him. My squad volunteered to do it. We went out, up this path in the mountains; the wounded man was in like this valley between two mountains. One side was Americans, the other side, Germans, and there was a lot of shooting and mortar fire. Our guys, they stopped firing when we went out there; from the German side, the fire just kind of died off.

"Pretty soon, there wasn’t a sound at all. We could see the Germans in their (positions) and they were just sitting there. We found the guy, picked him up out of a mortar shell hole and he was in pretty bad shape, delirious. We got him on the litter and got him out of there. We no more than got out of sight and the whole damn war started all over again, all the firing and mortars. To me, that was eerie. That had never happened before and never happened to me again.”

For his action evacuating wounded soldiers under fire, Frank Ruth was awarded a Bronze Star.

He was also given a Purple Heart after suffering shrapnel wounds from an exploding mortar round while recovering wounded soldiers. “A lot of guys we carried out deserved a Purple Heart a lot more than I did,” Ruth said.

'We captured 200,000 German soldiers ...'

The 339th Regiment was preparing to enter Austria when the war ended, at a place called Brenner Pass.

“We captured 200,000 German soldiers; well, they surrendered, I should say. I couldn’t believe the stacks and stacks, just huge piles of (German) weapons.”

Not having enough points to rotate home, Frank stayed in Europe as part of the occupation force.

“I was in Italy most of the time. While I was in Trieste we had it pretty good; we occupied a school and we had a gym, swimming pool and cafeteria.”

His life after serving in World War II?

When Frank finally came home, he used his military service to go to college.

"I went to Westminster College (Pennsylvania) on the G.I. Bill.,” he said. He also met his wife, Caroline, while there; they married in June 1951.

Frank Ruth spent his entire working life in the advertising and sales field, employed by corporations such as McGregor Sporting Goods, Rupp Manufacturing, Westinghouse, Tappan and OPW. He retired in January?1993.

After raising son Jeff and daughter Debra, the Ruths now live quietly on Mansfield’s southwest side. Though not being able to golf as much as he’d like, Frank thoroughly enjoys the sport.

“I had a hole-in-one down at Pleasant Hill,” he smiled, an event that happened 15 years ago.

It’s a much more pleasant memory than the ones he has of Italy during the Second World War.

Tim Clark, a retired local law enforcement officer, is now a freelance writer and has a blog, Through an Old Cop's Eyes. Clark can be reached at [email protected] .

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