funds to enroll at Weber Junior College. Because of the looming war, I had to cut my education short. I received a relatively high draft number and believed my entry into WWII was sometime in the distant future. During this period, I married; and my wife Mildred and I had an enjoyable few months together before the draft board started taking notice. We decided to get a jump on the draft and enlist with the hope of 'guiding' future assignments. To anyone who knows the military, this was wishful thinking. After a few days at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City, I was on my way to Camp Callan on the Pacific Coast for basic training as a 'buck private.' This was, to say the least, quite an experience, but I survived it well. I even received a little preferential treatment because of the military knowledge I gained (thanks to my good ROTC indoctrination by Ed Holloway), and I got a shot at OCS (Officer Candidates School) at Camp Davis in North Carolina. While not a snap assignment by any means, it was not all that tough; and I left Camp Davis a brand new second lieutenant of artillery. Back I went to California, this time to Camp Hahn near Riverside and six months of tough training in the hot Mojave Desert right next to Death Valley with the unit I was assigned to for the duration of the war. I really knew what hot was! Days and weeks on end with temperatures ranging as high as 130 degrees in the shade. We were training for future service in Africa, but this never panned out. After fully equipping our unit with 90 millimeter cannons and ancillary equipment, our journey by train took us across the United States to Boston, Massachusetts, and from there we boarded a ship for England in early 1944. On the trip across the U.S. we had a stop in Ogden. The military being as strict as it is, I wasn't even allowed to get off the train to see Mildred and my family. We could only wave to each other through the window. We landed in Liverpool, England, and traveled to Northern Wales. Rumor had it we were going to be in on the invasion of the European continent. On June 1, 1944, we found ourselves at the Port of Southampton with thousands of other troops. We were destined for the first wave of the invasion, but we didn't know exactly when or where it was to be. Wait, wait, wait - this is what we did for four or five more days with activity escalating all around us. Finally the morning of June 6 came the word - the invasion commenced, and my unit was left sitting on the beach in England. We learned that we didn't have sufficient vehicles to move all of our equipment at one time. It seems as though we sat there for eight to ten days while the vicious fighting on the beaches of Normandy was going on. Finally enough equipment was provided to move my artillery battalion to France. We traveled to Utah Beach on landing craft-and aside from losing one ten-ton truck loaded with artillery shells which disappeared immediately into a huge bomb crater, all went well. The crew of the truck made it out safely, but the truck simply disappeared into a sea so dirty we couldn't see the crater the ship was grounded against. From the landing and for the next several weeks, we participated in many artillery fire fights as we moved across France toward Paris. At one of my unit's locations on the Brest Peninsula, during an exchange of fire with a German artillery unit, I was dislodged from my observation perch on a French hedgerow. My knee was shattered, and I spent the next five months in a military hospital in England. How I made my own way back to that English hospital is a long story I needn't go into. By January of 1945, I recuperated enough to be released from the hospital. I made my way alone across much of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg to rejoin my unit. We then went to Holland to spend the last several months of the war. On the journey back to my unit - most of which was by hitchhiking in military vehicles - I passed through Bastogne one week following the end of the Battle of the Bulge. What an awful battle that was. I could visualize what had happened because the evidence was still there. In Holland my unit participated in the defense of the Port of Antwerp, Belgium. This was the last remaining resupply port available for our combat troops. The Germans fought like 'you know what' to take that port. They used the V-2 or 'Buzz-Bombs' launched from sites in northern Holland and nearby Germany to try and take the port out of action. The job of many artillery units, mine included, was to knock these bombs out of the sky before they reached Antwerp. Let me give an idea of what these bombs were: pilot-less and guided by gyroscopes to provide direction, altitude, and speed. They were loaded with enough fuel to keep the motor going until the target was reached. When the fuel gave out, down went the bomb onto the target. Our artillery was such a success that the vast majority of these bombs were exploded en route or were disabled. What fireworks there were when we exploded one! Just imagine two thousand pounds of TNT blowing up in your backyard. My unit alone was responsible for destroying 519 of these bombs. That's 519 bombs times 2,000 pounds - well over a million pounds of explosives my unit alone took care of. The total amount destroyed in the battle, which lasted almost until the armistice (VE Day) in May 1945, was well over six million pounds. It was quite a noisy few months. 134 I have made no attempt to go into the gory details I witnessed during the war. History of this has been chronicled for all to see. What I can simply and honestly say from personal experience is that war is truly hell. Willis Dean Wynn Willis served in the Army with the rank of first lieutenant from April 8, 1943, to June 1, 1946. He completed his basic training at Camp Barkley, Texas, and then went on to complete OCS (Officer Candidates School) in the Medical Administration Corp also at Camp Barkley, Texas. He served in the Italy Rome-Arno Campaign. He also served in the Southern France Campaign, Northern France Campaign, and Ardennes-Alsace Campaign. He received a commendation for the care of sick and the wounded. Dilworth R. Young - KIA_ From S. Dilworth Young: General Authority, Scouter, and Poet, published by Covenant Communication. Dil's 104th Infantry landed in Normandy September 6, 1944. The division's history, Timberwolf Tracks, records that Dil's regiment, the 415th Infantry, 'took up guarding 'railroads, pipelines, pumping stations and warehouse docks,' with orders to 'shoot to kill.'' 'Black market looters had been tapping thousands of gallons of gasoline out of the pipelines; hijackers had been raiding trains and trucks for Army food and cigarettes. It was not long until the 'Old Faithful' Regiment had reduced these losses to a mere trickle.' The record then tells of another surprise visit from someone from home. 'Dan Bradshaw, Dil's scout camp friend, walked seven miles to look him up for a visit. Dil met with him with a smart salute, after which they got down to some 'good old bull sessions.' Dan said the non-LDS soldiers admired Dil, and the LDS ones looked to him for spiritual guidance. 'I just won't forget how he impressed me with the fact that God lives, that he guides and directs men who live a clean life with an honest and pure heart.' Dan reported, while he enjoyed the company 'of a man I knew had not lowered to the... little habits of the Army so unpleasant in the sight of God." (Dan was later killed, on April 22, 1945, while approaching Berlin. How very sad this was to happen after ten months of off-and-on combat with the end of the war coming only two weeks later. Dan left a wife and baby to mourn his loss.) The record continues: 'The division shipped out on October 16 and 17 for Vilvorde, north of Brussels, Belgium. Dil's regiment rode freight cars, forty men to a car, like his father twenty-six years before. Dil first saw battle the night of October 24, 1944, just over the Holland border southeast of Breda. Friends differed as to what happened. Peter T. Bardin says early in the morning of the 25th, Dil was hit lightly in the shoulder by machine gun fire. Peter talked to him and found him in good spirits, though he thought him in shock from the loss of blood. Dil, bandaged, and three others, tried to crawl up on the machine gun nest when a grenade landed nearby. A fragment nearly severed his arm and shoulder. A medic re-bandaged him, and over Dil's protests, gave him a shot of morphine, then left him in the field. Dil later walked several hundred yards down the road fainting just as the medics arrived in a Jeep. He died soon after reaching the aid station.' From the Weber College newspaper, The Signpost of November 15, 1944 Dilworth Young Now Listed In Ranks of Honored Dead Pfc Dilworth R. Young, age 20, of 1506 24th Street, Ogden, Utah, has been reported killed in action in Belgium on October 25, according to word received by his parents from the War Department. Those who knew Dil Young are struck by the inadequacy of this newspaper statement of fact, by the poverty of any words we could choose to explain the meaning of what has occurred. Weber will recall him as a big boy with a contagious laugh and a shirt tail that wouldn't stay tucked in. They 135