Lynchburg World War II Veteran, recalls time as medic during Battle of the Bulge

John Burch Jr., a native of Lynchburg, Virginia, and World War II Veteran, will be the first to tell you he’s no hero. He repeats the phrase often because for him the sobriquet belongs to those who didn’t return from war, and the doctors – they were heroes.

In a small glass-fronted case in the living room of his Lynchburg apartment, are photos and mementos from the war, to include medals, dog tags, and French script – American-printed money that GIs used to buy goods in the recently-liberated France.

On another shelf there are printed programs, photos and a glistening medal with a signature red ribbon that distinguishes Burch’s service – it’s the Legion of Honor (Chevalier), the highest award the French government offers to its own citizens or foreigners who have provided civil or military services to France. It was an honor from the President of France presented to Burch during a ceremony in Florida in 2011 – 67 years after the allied invasion of Normandy.

Burch, who will be 99 on January 12, 2024, maintains that his is not the story of a hero – but rather that of a young man who was doing his job. Suitably, he begins his story in a men’s clothing store in Lynchburg in 1942.

“I knew I was going to be taken in (drafted), so I tried to volunteer before it happened. They told me to wait for officer training school, but a gentleman I worked with was being taken in and I thought I should go at the same time, thinking, naively, we would go to the same unit. Turns out, he was disqualified. I gave up my officer training school to go in the regular Army.”

Burch’s adventure began in posts in Virginia where he spent a total of thirteen weeks training as a medic before boarding a train – possibly bound for Europe.

“There were only twelve of us and we thought we were going overseas. We ended up at Fort Andrews in the harbor of Boston and we thought we were safe there. About three weeks later we were being transferred again, and I thought surely, it was overseas this time.”

The train Burch and two dozen others boarded continued north until it stopped in Burlington, Vermont.

“We stopped at Fort Ethan Allen, and I joined the 99th General Hospital. It was a beautiful town, and the barracks were brick which was something we hadn’t seen. We were treated royally, and about twenty of us were transferred to various hospitals for training as it pertained to surgery and that lasted nearly a full year.”

After a quick stop in Maryland for more training, Burch finally boarded a British ship bound for England.

“The boat was in convoy, and we had a lot of storms on the way, and we were subject to being bombed; torpedoed I should say. We finally reached England in April 1944 and were sent to a town in north Wales.”

Not long after, Burch along with a dozen medics and doctors, moved to Southampton, England. As a Technical Sergeant, he helped open clinics for civilians and American service members involved in training exercises leading to the invasion later that spring.

“I think the main thing we did was issue what we called puke bags,” Burch recalled. “It was a bag, I would say two or three pounds with plastic on it or whatever, for the trip over.”

The medics of the 99th were attached to various units on the continent and in the late afternoon of June 6, 1944, Burch and about 60 of his comrades boarded gliders for the trip to St. Mere Eglise, France.

“I tell you, I guess you’re scared. All of a sudden, I started singing, ‘off we go into the wild blue yonder…’ and one of the 82nd (Airborne) guys in the back said, ‘would somebody shoot that dumb young man.’ Although what he said was a little worse than that. But I never said another word.”

Of all the units he worked with in France, two stuck out for Burch – the 82nd and the 101st Airborne. “The 82nd were the most organized group of soldiers,” he said, “they respected the doctors and medics and tried to keep you safe. But the 101st, they were the fightingest group you ever saw.”

Under the Geneva Conventions medics were not allowed to carry weapons and were not supposed to be targeted. “The Germans didn’t respect that at all,” Burch said. “We were ordered to Reims to establish a hospital and so we took a medical train, red crosses everywhere, and it was bombed and strafed, and we were wrecked about 30 miles out of Paris.”

Sitting in his armchair safe from the sweltering heat of summer 2023, but firmly in the grasp of winter 1944, Burch looks toward his cabinet of memorabilia, but he’s not really seeing it. He’s seeing the past through the articles lining the shelves.

“I remember that because (after we got out of the train) we were ordered to not go near it – it was leaning. But a man was heard from under the train, begging for Last Rites. I saw the (priest) Father Patrick Brennan, he was the chaplain, reach into his pouch, preparing to find the man. He was told no one was to approach the train and I’m told he said, ‘my orders come from higher up.’ He walked to the train and a Jewish doctor walked up and asked him, ‘do you have enough religion for both of us, Father?’

The whole group dug and crawled under the train to reach the man. The surgeon was able to sedate him, and they cut him out.” Burch never discovered what became of the soldier they rescued.

Father Brennan, it should be noted, was serving as a missionary in Korea in 1938 and was held captive by Japanese forces after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was repatriated to the United States and joined the Army, serving in Europe and earning the Soldier’s Medal for bravery. After the war he returned to Korea, and was taken prisoner and killed by North Korean forces in 1950 in Taejon prison. (Sources: Wikipedia, findagrave.com)

In Reims, where the Germans had just been ejected from the town, Burch said the hospital was in a state – blood and body parts littering the rooms and halls; but the medics moved in and used it as a barracks while cleaning and fixing it for use.

In December, the 101st who were using Reims as a resting area, got short notice orders to move. The Germans had counterattacked – the Battle of the Ardennes, or as it is also known, the Battle of the Bulge, had begun.

The Germans planes attacked the area so often Burch said he could tell the difference between the machine gun fire of German and allied planes. “Nobody knew where the front lines were,” Burch said. “Germans were dressed in American uniforms over their own and were dropping into areas by parachute. (Once) some came in two ambulances dressed in American uniform and greatly hurt the medical staff of the 101st – they murdered really, the medics and we found out then it was not wise to be known as a medic. The general of the 101st met with our commander and said, he couldn’t order us to carry weapons, but he advised that it was up to us. So, we taped over our steel helmets that had red crosses on them and hid our identification and were given pistols. We didn’t really know how to use them, but … we never put on our red crosses again.”

During his time in Bastogne, Burch said that when they arrived, they were given permission by the local priest to use a church, but later that day the bishop over-ruled him, and the medics were forced to find another shelter to use for surgery. That night, the church was bombed and destroyed by the Germans.

Even without the church, the medics found it easy enough to give praise to the doctors who worked tirelessly to save young soldiers.

“Our doctors, I have never seen such talented hands - they were like artists. (They had) no X-Ray, and half the time we didn’t have proper equipment. We were surrounded but didn’t know it - we had Germans walk into the surgical tents. But we worshipped our doctors. They would go to a full 12 and 14 hours and someone would come and say, ‘we’ve got another one,’ and we would find the strength. We had to determine who got the treatment because the doctors were all busy.”

Medics operated in tents and trenches – anywhere they could, sometimes taking over homes and using basements and whatever surgical equipment they could find or improvise.

“They (the doctors) did stuff that was impossible. They were the heroes. We just did what we were told. We got along beautifully with them, and they never called us by rank. They called us by our last name, unless we made a mistake and they’d say sergeant or your rank, and then it was all over. That’s when we were really tested.

“When I got there (Bastogne) on the 23rd I believe, the weather was so bad they tried to drop medical supplies, but they came down between the Americans and the Germans. The brave men of the 101st would go out at night across the ice, to try to get as much as they could bring back.”

When thinking of the war at all, Burch goes silent for long stretches when he considers the men who came to the hospitals and clinics.

“Most of the men gave their lives trying to save their buddies and the one thing the doctors told us, was that if they were conscious enough, ask them no questions, but just talk to them. Don’t ask if they’re married or have children – as that might influence our decisions – don’t ask any questions of that nature. Most of the time, if they were conscious, most of ‘em just wanted a cigarette anyway.”

The nature of wartime medicine for a 19-year-old from Lynchburg, Virginia still elicits halting recollection from Burch – even after eight decades.

“I remember calling a doctor from the operating table – we were doing ‘shock’, what you would call triage now, but we called shock – and it was the third time I’d called him, and he said, ‘sergeant, you’ve been trained well enough, you have to make a decision.’ From then on, we did exactly that. If we felt they could be saved, the doctors got them, and if we didn’t, they were put on the side to be transferred. One man, as I was cutting off his clothing, was just conscious enough to say, ‘don’t cut my flag.’ I said to the doctor, ‘can you imagine being that near death and you’re thinking of your flag?’ He said to me, ‘Burch, most ‘em have one, even if it’s a part of a flag; some of ‘em have a religious medal and it’s very sacred to them.”

For all the pride he has for what his generation accomplished, Burch has never watched a movie about World War II, and never read a book on the subject. He carries the war inside him and wonders, still, if he made the right choices as a teenager in the fury of war as he sorted men based on whether they’d make it to the surgeons.

As the war drew down and soldiers started to be shipped home, Burch was offered a chance to take a field commission and open a hospital in Germany for Americans and Germans.

“I decided it was something I didn’t want to do, and my unit was heading home, so I secured a Jeep and went to Verdun where my unit was waiting to go home. I came home in September 1945 and thought, thank God I’m through with this!”

Burch spent his time on leave but still on duty until November 18. “They put us on 15-day leaves, but they were waiting to see how the war went in the Pacific. We were already assigned to go to Camp Gordon, Georgia to take six weeks of paratroop training to jump into POW camps – thank God it ended.”

After the war Burch got married and began a career as a CPA. He has two daughters, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, and through a successful career and a number of adventures, including briefly being photographed by the side of American singer and actress Ethel Merman, he has never lost his love of medicine.

“I wanted to be a doctor. After the war I was offered medical training at the Mayo Clinic, but we couldn’t afford it. Also, at the time, it took 15 years before you were a surgeon.”

After he retired, Burch moved to Florida in the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic was at its height. He joined a charity and worked for years raising money and helping start a group called Tuesday’s Angels. “We raised over $3 million and never one dime went to anything except directly to the patients. It was tough – none of our patients lasted more than seven or eight months. They (the AIDS patients) were mothers, they were grandmothers, they were husbands, they were single. It got near you, but it was what I was trained for.”

Now back in Lynchburg, Burch got in touch with the VA through his nephew, a Vietnam Veteran.

“I’m more than pleased with the VA. The doctor’s I’ve had here (at the Lynchburg CBOC), if they were in (private) practice, I’d be going to them; I’m tickled to death with him.”

Burch admits he’s not an easy patient because he asks questions. He’s kept up with medicine as a matter of personal interest and he knows what he would tell a group of VA providers if he had them gathered in a room.

“Be an old-timey doctor. Touch them. Use your hands because that’s what a lot of them (Veterans) have been used to. Talk to them, not down to them. Now, I’ve not had one occasion at the VA where this has not happened – they touched me, they examined me, they talked to me, and never down to me. You don’t know what that means; the doctor here, he spent an hour with me. I’ve never had one of them hurry me. They listen.”