Jack

By John R. Finnegan Sr.

I was born in northern Minnesota just two years after my grandparents opened their new hotel, The Chase, in 1923 in Walker. My parents, William and Isabel Finnegan, were helping to run the long white building on the shores of Leech Lake so I joined my siblings Katherine and Bill, as a member of a resort operating family. We spent our winters in Minneapolis where all three of us went to school. I went to St. Stephen’s elementary, Bryant Junior High and Central High.
Most of those years were during the Depression and the family had to watch its dimes and nickels. Dad, when he wasn’t working at the hotel during the off-season, took a job as a butcher – a trade he had learned as a kid when he lived with his uncle in Grand Rapids. When he couldn’t fill in at a butcher shop, he would hire on as a wholesaler peddling ripe olives. Neither my siblings nor I were required to work during the school year although I tried my hand at selling magazines on several occasions and when I was older I sold the Minneapolis Star at the Nicollet Field ballpark, the Millers home field. I remember that Ted Williams played there, eventually becoming a star.
Summers, both Bill and I worked various jobs at the hotel – bellhop, desk clerk, janitor. At about 3 p.m. every afternoon I would put on a white dress shirt, white pants and my best shoes and sit in the hotel lobby waiting for guests to drive up. They would come from Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas and even Arizona. Some of them arrived in their Buick town cars or new Hupmobiles. Most of these people had money and the tips for the bellhops usually were pretty good. My sister, before she fell ill, typed the daily menus for the hotel dining room.
We still had time for fishing, swimming, boating and even playing pool. Brother Bill and a Walker friend fashioned a sailboat out of an old 18-foot wooden rowboat. Later, we built a ping-pong table and a canvass covered canoe that we used for exploring the many lakes and rivers near Walker. One of the hardest jobs we took on was building a clay tennis court next to the hotel. Fortunately, we got to play on it whenever the guests were not using it.
In my teens I even tried my hand at fishing guide.
But my real interest was in journalism. We published a paper in my sixth grade class at St. Stephen’s and I wrote a man-in-the-street column on student reaction to the Hindenburg crash in New Jersey in 1937. In high school, I wrote feature stories for the Central High News becoming co-editor of the weekly publication in my senior year. After my graduation from high school in January of 1943, I worked as editor of the Robbinsdale Post community newspaper and filled in occasionally as a printer in the back shop because most of the older men were serving in World War II. Within three months I was drafted into the U.S. Army and reported to Fort Snelling for my own induction.
I got my basic training in the medical corps at Camp Joseph T. Robinson in Arkansas and later transferred to the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). The program I was in was designed to train engineers. It had accelerated college courses in math and physics. To say I was bit overwhelmed would be an understatement but I calmed myself by focusing on publishing a newspaper for the ASTP participants at Rhode Island State College in Kingston. That stint did not last too long because the U.S. military in Europe needed additional troops so ASTP programs were shut down and all personnel were sent to infantry units for retraining and shipment abroad. We ended up at Camp Pickett, Viginia at the 311th (Timberwolves) Infantry Regiment of the 78th Division in March 1944.
In addition to regular infantry training, I was assigned to radio school where we focused on communication particularly, learning radio transmission skills including Morse code. By September we were moved to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey to make final preparations for embarking to Europe. That fall my father died and I got an emergency leave home for his funeral. The funeral, however, was postponed several days because my brother, Marine First Lieutenant Bill Finnegan, had to fly home from Hawaii. As a result, I almost missed our scheduled departure for Europe aboard the HMS Carnarvon Castle which held 3,200 Timberwolves and 1,600 supplementary troops consisting of division quartermaster, artillery and signal corps personnel. The journey took 12 uneventful October days to cross the Atlantic. We were routed to Bournemouth on the channel coast of England about 100 miles from London where we stayed for more than three weeks before we were ordered to Southampton to embark for France.
The rest of the regiment left Southampton November 18 for Le Havre but not me. I was assigned to an LST to accompany the 2nd Battalion vehicles across the channel. There were two ships tightly loaded with all the trucks and other rolling equipment for the entire regiment.
I was aboard the second ship heading out of the harbor, getting a second cup of coffee from the ship’s cook. It had been chilly on deck that foggy morning and I was trying to warm up. Then it happened. A loud thud and the sound of metal being ripped and torn as I was thrown across the galley.
A hospital ship also leaving the harbor had rammed us on the starboard side tearing a huge hole below decks. The good news was that the hole was above the waterline. The bad news was that torn metal had wrapped itself around some of the ammunition stored in several trucks. The hospital ship carefully backed away while we moved as many vehicles as possible to the port side of the ship.
The captain moved the LST back to dock safely and we reloaded our equipment onto another ship. The next day we headed into the channel again. But the weather had turned bad. The wind picked up and huge swells slowed the crossing. This LST obviously needed repairs. Every time we crested a wave and then slammed into the trough, you could see through the deck seams into the hold below. Scary.
As we entered the river taking us to Le Havre, a ship in front of us hit a mine and sank. Eventually, we worked our way around the hulk safely and docked at our debarkation point.
It had taken us five days to cross the Channel. We joined the bulk of our convoy outside of Rouen on November 25 and left immediately for Piringen, a tiny Flemish town 40 miles from the front. We were part of the Ninth Army reserve.

Getting Ready for Combat

“Everyone out for bazooka practice,” was the sergeant’s command.
We were stationed at Piringen near Liege, Belgium and were scheduled to go into the Hurtgen Forest soon to replace the 13th and 28th Infantry Regiments. Many of us in the 2nd Battalion Headquarters Company had never actually fired a bazooka before. It was time we learned since the German 88 --- the tank with a mean gun --- was hard to stop. A bazooka round in the treads was one way to halt the beast.
Since we were limited in the space we had, the target range was near the Battalion Headquarters and the commander’s tent was directly behind the shooting range. Unfortunately, it was too close to the range. And when I was ordered to fire my first bazooka round at a moving tank target, the backwash from the tube started a fire in the wall of the commander’s tent. Nearly burned it down.
The commander came storming out of the tent demanding to know what “son-of-a bitch” was trying to barbecue him. The sergeant smoothed things over and I was never charged with attempted murder of a superior officer.
Oh, and I hit the target. Never fired a bazooka again, though. For some reason, they never allowed me near one.

The Hurtgen Forest


I was now a switchboard operator and wireman for the Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 311th Regiment of the 78th Division and our first combat assignment was the Hurtgen southeast of Aachen. It was Dec. 9, 1944. We stopped at our bivouac area located in a tall clump of trees. Telephone wires hung across the entrance to the area, blocking our 2 and 1/2 ton trucks.
“Finnegan, get out and raise those lines,” the company commander ordered.
I left the truck and found a pair of climbers, strapped them on and walked over to the trees at the bivouac entrance. As I did, I passed a line of weary, unshaven, dirty GIs who obviously had suffered during their weeks in the forest. They were straight out of the Bill Mauldin cartoons that appeared in Stars and Stripes.
I reached the first tree, stomped my spurs into the bark and began the climb. When I reached about 8 feet I began hearing strange whizzing noises in the trees. Not bees in this weather. Winter was here. I ignored the sounds. I raised the wire another several feet, climbed down and went up the tree on the other side of the road. Same sounds as I reached the top. I ignored them.
When I returned to the ground and walked back to the truck one of the GIs called me over. “Hey, kid,” he said. (I was 20). “You notice anything funny up there?”
“Only some whizzing noises,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, kid,” the GI said drawing on a cigarette butt, “we’ve lost a half dozen men lately from sniper fire who were doing what you just did. You were lucky.”
I didn’t ask him why he hadn’t warned me about the potential danger before I went up the trees but I guess it was just as well. I’m not sure how I would have reacted if he had.
Our stay in the Hurtgen Forest ending in two weeks . We moved south to Simmerath, which was just east of the Belgian border and the northern end of the German antitank fortifications, the Siegfried Line.
Our battalion was strung out in a series of pillboxes and foxholes just north of the Kall River. The Germans had planted the forest with all types of land mines: anti-tank and anti-personnel including bouncing Betty’s. Those were the mines that once set off by a GI’s foot, sent another charge into the air that exploded, showering shrapnel over a large area about waist high. A number of our troops lost feet and legs to those weapons.
Our battalion headquarters was located in a shattered German pillbox. While it provided cover from the occasional shelling that we were subjected to, it did not protect us from the elements entirely. Winter began just as we entered the Hurtgen. First cold rain, then heavy snow pushed by a bitter cold wind. We learned quickly that the pill box leaked. As we warmed the interior, that melted the snow and small rivers snaked inside the concrete walls. Within several days, there was six inches of ice-cold water covering much of the floor.
Most of us had overshoes since combat boots only hold out the water and cold for so long.
It was tougher on the guys in the foxholes who had to stand in ice water nearly 24 hours a day.
The order came down: massage your feet every couple of hours and try to dry your feet and change into dry socks. A lot easier said than done. Most of the men had only three or four pairs of socks, few places to dry the wet ones and few places to go to dry their feet.
I was more fortunate. Since I was working the switchboard in the pillbox, I sat in a chair out of the water and could hang my wet socks on the board while I massaged my feet.
I soon discovered that I could operate the switchboard with my feet. I found I could pull the cords from the board or put them in the proper connections by running the cords between my big toe and the next digit. I could also ring up the recipient of the incoming calls by turning the hand crank the same way. To this day there is still a gap between the big toe and the other digits on my right foot.
We did lose a number of men to trench foot. For a number of days those casualties outnumbered the wounded in the battalion first aid tent near our pill box.

Laying Wire

The sky was clear; the moon bathed the crystalline snow with yellow light. At 10 below zero, the snow crunched like Rice Krispies under my combat boots.
We hadn’t heard from G Company for several hours; a radio call finally confirmed that the wire lines had been cut. New lines must be established quickly. It was obvious that the Germans were intending some kind of action – there had been a great deal of activity in their front line areas for the past several days. G Company had lost several outposts and phone contact to others had been repeatedly cut. No one thought that any major operation was imminent but it was clear that we needed to keep all our communications links open.
It was my turn to assist in the wire run. Although my primary job was to operate the switchboard at Second Battalion headquarters, I was part of the wire team rotation. That meant that every two or three days I would help crew the jeep assigned to run wire out to the infantry companies. Three men were needed. One driver and two to keep the wire running smoothly off the large metal reel located in the rear of the jeep. We weren’t fastening these wires to telephone poles. In our combat situation you laid the wire down the side of the road as fast as you could without breaking it. It was important to keep a steady pace since the Germans had the roads targeted with their mortars and shot at any vehicle that moved.
Normally it was safer to run the lines at night. Darkness gave you better odds for success.
But this night, with a full moon and no wind, you could see and hear for miles.
John Campbell and I hooked up the new wire to the switchboard and joined Bill Everett in the jeep. “Just keep it going fast and smooth,” John said to Bill as we climbed into the jeep for the start of the run.
We moved through the streets of Simmerath quickly making certain that the wire was not getting hung up on roadside debris. We quickly cleared “88 Corner”, so named because the intersection of several roads had been zeroed in by German tanks and artillery. G Company was located about three miles up the road that ran along the crest of a small ridge. I felt as though we were like moving ducks in a carnival shooting gallery.
A mile out of town my fears became reality.
German mortars began laying down fire on the road. The first rounds dropped several hundred yards short of us. The second batch cratered the side of the road a hundred yards ahead. It was the third round that landed in the center of the road within 50 yards that brought our jeep to a halt. Everett leaped out shouting, “Take cover!!”
I hit the ditch on the left side of the road and Campbell and Everett took the right. A shell landed directly behind the jeep in the center of the road and threw shrapnel and icy clogs of dirt into the air.
Something struck me in the middle of the back, momentarily taking my breath away. I reached back expecting to find a bloody wound. Only frozen mud.
“You guys okay?” I yelled.
“Yeah,” said Everett.
“John? You alright?”
There was a long pause. “I’m okay.” Another pause. “But I’m looking up the asshole of a dead horse.” It was one of the horses the Germans used to haul some of their equipment; they left the carcasses of the dead animals lying where they fell. Fortunately for Campbell the carcass posed no problems in the dead of winter.
The shelling stopped --- we never learned why. The jeep was fine except for a few shrapnel holes in the side and the wire reel was intact. We completed the run and reestablished phone contact with G Company.
Less than a week later, the Battle of the Bulge began just south of our position. For all of December and most of January we spent in defensive positions and by January 30, the Bulge had been flattened and we began our march east to the Rhine River. The going was tough and bloody. Resistance was intense. Towns like Kesternich were heavily mined and ringed with barbed wire. German armor was everywhere. We lost a lot of men on the snow-covered terrain. But the enemy lost more.

Remagen Bridgehead

Our regiment was the first to cross the Rhine River on the Remagen bridge on March 7. The bridge was in poor condition when we started across with our vehicles and armor. The bridge area had been secured by others and we were assigned to take up defensive positions on the east bank of the river. Just across the bridge there was a large warehouse where the Germans had stashed a lot of materials they had looted from other areas of Europe, including wines and champagne. It was obvious that someone had broken into the building and some of us took a few moments to see if there was anything we could use. Someone suggested we liberate some of the wine stored in the place. My sergeant loaded my arms with numerous bottles of wine and champagne. He stacked it like cordwood and sent me out onto the highway. As I began walking toward one of our jeeps, two Stuka dive-bombers appeared, strafing the road. I carefully got down on my knees in the center of the pavement while one of the planes passed overhead, guns blazing. I escaped unharmed. For the next several weeks, our unit had wine for dinner.
The pilots in the planes were not so fortunate. Both were shot down by GIs on either bank of the river. One man, who parachuted from his stricken plane, was killed before he reached the water. And the bridge was intact for other units to safely cross.
The regiment turned north up the east bank of the Rhine and fought some of the wars most intense battles. Casualties mounted. Our second battalion lost 13 per cent of its strength on one day in March when we entered the Siebengebirge (Seven Mountains). Toward the end of March, the regiment began its mop-up operations in the Ruhr pocket. The capture of Wuppertal on April 16th signaled the end of the 311th Regiment’s combat duty. We had taken 15,000 thousand prisoners from 43 German regiments, captured 256 towns, and two army corps. We had been in continuous combat for 130 days.

The Occupation

During the occupation of Germany, I launched a battalion newspaper. I assembled a staff and we published four editions before I was called up to meet with Col. Chester M. Willingham, the regimental commander.
“Finnegan, why are you publishing a battalion newspaper?” the colonel asked. “We have a perfectly good regimental newspaper. Why don’t you work on that?”
“Because,” I explained, “the editor and I don’t get along and I don’t think the regimental paper is very good.”
He thought a moment. “Well, you do put out a good newspaper but we can’t have two papers in the same outfit. Doesn’t look good. But I do want to have a regimental history done. Tell you what. If you drop the newspaper, you can edit the regimental history.”
Since it was obvious we weren’t going to have two newspapers in the regiment any longer, I agreed. I asked that I be permitted to select my own staff and that we would be provided with housing until the work was complete.
I chose one private who was adept at scrounging. He could talk an Eskimo out of his parka at 50 below zero. We set him to the task of rounding up as much usable paper (heavy weight, book quality) as he could find. I didn’t ask him what he was using for trade goods when he returned with the necessary materials. But I suspect that the motor pool was out of gasoline, oil and maybe a few spare parts. The company’s candy and cigarette allowance was mysteriously depleted for several months. But we had paper. Of course some of it was white, some ivory, some a pale yellow. But availability, not consistency, was our primary need.
I selected two men who spoke and wrote fluent German which was necessary because the printers and linotype operators we used at the Frankfurt printing plant spoke little English and no American. During the production process, the “translators” had to be at the shoulders of the printers or German language characters would sneak into the galleys.
Others selected were a photographer, an artist and two writers/editors. We all lived in the same house in Hunfeld and took our meals at the battalion mess hall. We had no other duties; no kitchen police, no latrine cleaning, no field inspections.
It wasn’t easy going to the mess hall though. We had to pass a small house whose owner kept a flock of geese. For some reason the leader of the flock took a dislike to me and whenever I showed up and the geese were outside the owner’s fenced property, they attacked hissing and bobbing and weaving.
After more than a month working with no officers in command at our little house the regimental commander decided to provide us with “leadership”. The 78th Division was moving to a new assignment farther north and the colonel knew that he had to leave us near the printers. We were put on detached assignment and given a major to oversee our project. He knew nothing of writing, graphics, or production. We ignored him and he stayed away most of the time, only checking in to be sure we hadn’t deserted or gone too far in seeking necessary resources.
I had to leave the project before it was completed. I was granted an early discharge for “hardship” reasons. My father had died in 1944 and my mother and grandmother were running the hotel in Walker, Minnesota and they were anxious to get me back. But before I left I instructed the staff to print a few copies of the history in a cloth-bound hard cover and imprint the names of the recipients in gold leaf if we could find any. The recipients of the special books were the regimental and battalion commanders and my staff. I wasn’t sure the staff could pull it off but they did. Two copies of the book, one with my name in gold leaf, arrived at Walker just before I left to start my college career at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The GI Bill

The Chase Hotel was sold in 1946. Neither my brother nor I wanted to run the resort and my mother and grandmother felt they could not handle it themselves. After the sale, we returned to Minneapolis, bought a house and I started for school. I would have gone to college without the financial support of the GI Bill but it certainly helped with my expenses. With transfer of some credits from my ASTP work, my scores on entrance exams at the U of M, and taking courses throughout the summer months, I graduated magna cum laude from the university with my BA degree in a little over two years. In the summer of 1948, I joined the Rochester Post Bulletin as a reporter, got married in November of that same year to Norma Tomte of Minneapolis and started a family.
After three years in Rochester, I moved to St. Paul as a reporter for the Pioneer Press. I stayed at the Pioneer Press and Dispatch for 39 years working as a reporter, editorial writer, assistant editor, executive editor and assistant publisher retiring in 1989. I taught journalism as an adjunct professor for 16 years at the University of Minnesota.
In the fall of 2007, my wife, Norma, and I will celebrate 59 years of marriage. We had six children and have lived in the same house in St. Paul for 46 years.