101 Year-Old Veteran Shares Memories Of WWII And Returning To Normandy 78 Years Later
WWII Army Veteran, Buddy Reynolds, recently shared his life story with the Washington DC VA Medical Center's Office of Public Affairs. These are his memories that were recorded as a part of the VA's "My Life, My Story" campaign.
Buddy Reynolds -
I was born in Lithonia, Georgia. But I grew up between there and Union, South Carolina. I spent a lot of time at my mother’s or my grandmother’s homes. I had nine aunts and uncles and many of them were around my age. The whole family were sharecroppers until they moved to Pennsylvania to join the Steel Mills with the promise of a better life up North.
I joined the Civil Conservation Corps when I was 17. We cleared the road from Jacksonville to Daytona with just shovels and axes. We didn’t have that fancy equipment they have now. It was about 6 hours of forced labor and two hours of military training.
One day I was driving my guys home from work, and we picked up a white officer to give him a lift. When we pulled up to his house, one of my guys shouted ‘Hey baby’ to his white daughter. He didn’t like hat at all. He demanded I tell him who said it, but I knew they were gonna kill him, so I refused. A lot of the officers thought I did the right thing by protecting my men, but they dishonorably discharged me anyway.
After that I moved around for work. By the time the war in Europe reached us, I was living in South Carolina. Suddenly, the Army forgot about my dishonorable discharge and invited me to serve. But it wasn’t really an invite. They wanted to draft me. My family was in Pennsylvania by then, so I headed up there instead. They found me. I went to Cleveland, they found me there too. So, I headed back to join up out of Union, South Carolina. The black soldiers in the north were being sent to the Philippines but the ones in the south got to go to Europe because the Queen liked our Black Southern boy manners. That’s why I went south to join up.
I was promoted to Corporal and then Staff Sergeant after I finished my training. I was assigned to the 838th Engineer Aviation Brigade as a motor pool mechanic but I also ran a laundry unit.
When we finally went to Europe, it took us 14 days to travel from New York to England on our ship. We spent a month half-drunk there, waiting to join the fighting in France. The Germans were bombing Liverpool and London so much we couldn’t get across the channel. So, we drank, and we got in a lot of fights. Sometimes we’d win and sometimes we’d lose. Can’t win em’ all.
We landed in France 30 days after D-Day and became a part of the Red Ball Express supply line. It was an all-Black convoy of trucks. We weren’t allowed to fight but we were in charge of supplying the front lines with ammunition and fuel in five-gallon tanks. That was dangerous too. We weren’t allowed to stop, no matter if there was a person lying in the road. One time I even changed a tire on a moving vehicle.
Everyone was getting shot at. We had nothing but the clothes on our backs, our shovel to dig a fox hole and our gun. As we moved, we used German foxholes when needed so I never had to dig my own, thankfully. I saw a guy get shot in the chest, it was the luckiest shot in the world. It missed his veins, arteries, heart, and lungs. He asked me to turn him over to see if it had gone through. It had gone through and left a giant hole. We got him to a Field Doctor who patched him up and sent him to a hospital on the back of an MP truck. He survived, but I never saw him again.
They tried to segregate us because that’s how it was in America, but over there we didn’t pay that no mind. Many times, a white soldier would pull me back just before I stepped on a mine. We helped each other. When we pulled into a rest area, we would all sit and have a drink together. Segregation wasn’t as much of a thing in Europe as it was back home.
The French people were always happy to see us coming. The Germans, not so much. The Air Force was backing us up some. They would bomb and spray machine gun fire at the Germans while we were on the move. During one of the supply runs, I fell off a truck and was injured. They took me to a French Hospital. Three days later, I was laying in bed, looking out the window when everyone started shouting and celebrating. We won the war.
I remember a German prisoner of war explaining the difference between us once. He told me, ‘If you don’t fight, they’ll throw you in jail. If we don’t, they’ll kill us.’ And they had been fighting like that since 1936. They were tired. I think that’s why they finally gave in.
After the war was over, they sent me back to Charleston, South Carolina to heal. If I hadn't been wounded, I'd have stayed - I loved serving. But anyway, I headed back to Pennsylvania. I married my wife, Maggie in 1946 and we had our first son that same year. Had three more boys and then a girl after that.
I worked in the steel mills for awhile and then in several oil refineries as an mechanic before starting my own business. I worked on appliance and small engine repairs throughout Beaver County into my 80's. Around that time my wife had a stroke so we moved to Florida to be near my daughter’s family. Her husband is a Colonel in the Army, so when he got stationed in Maryland, we moved here with them.
I lost my wife in 2016 and then survived Colon Cancer. I can’t eat much more than veggies these days but at 101 years old, I still live independently in a senior living community. I'm close to my family here.
This year, I got to go back for the anniversary of D-Day, and my son and daughter came too. The Best Defense Foundation flew 29 of us back for the 78th anniversary. I was the only black WWII Vet in the group. Just like back then, the French people were so happy to see us. They threw big parades, drove us around the beaches in jeeps and took us to see all these historical sites. 20,000 people attended the D-Day parade, and we had these cards with our photos and our bios on them. I signed 900 autographs.
I told them, just like I said back then, “You French people are always drinking your champagne and cognac and then getting into trouble and then we have to come get you out of it.” Ha!
They really took care of us though and treated us like royalty. The best part of all of it was the kids. We went to some schools to talk to the kids, and they were so knowledgeable about their history and our part in it. And so thankful. It was a great experience.
They took us to the cemeteries too, but I didn’t go inside. It made me sick to my stomach to see it. It brings back too many memories I don’t want to remember. I want to remember them as they were, not like that. When we left back then, they had these little white wooden crosses, now they have big beautiful white stone crosses. There are so many, and still, I know, many more of them were lost in the ocean and never found. We left too many over there. I just couldn’t go inside.
Overall, though, I’m thankful I went. It was my first time back since 1945 and I got to show my kids a part of my history. It’s important that we remember, and that we pass that on, you know? How can they know where they're going if they don’t know where they came from?