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By Al Zdon
John Finnegan grew up helping his family run a large hotel in northern Minnesota. In the Army he trained as an engineer. When he got to Europe during World War II, he
became a communications wire layer.
And, as he completed his service time in occupied Germany, he finally got to do what he wanted to do all along — be a journalist.
Finnegan eventually became the
executive editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press in his newspaper career, but in 1944 and 1945 his skills were mainly applied toward making sure the commanders at headquarters could talk to the outlying companies.
He also learned how to fire his bazooka. Well, he fired it once anyway.
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John R. Finnegan's family owned the Chase Hotel in Walker, a huge, 130-room classic set
next to Leech Lake. Finnegan would work at the hotel in the summer months and go to school in Minneapolis the rest of the year.
In January, 1943, he graduated from Central High School in Minneapolis. He had been
co-editor of his high school newspaper, and after graduation he became the editor of the Robbinsdale Post. He was 18.
"They were shorthanded because of the war. I did a little bit of everything including selling
advertising."
He was soon drafted, however, and was first assigned to be trained as a medic. He entered the Army's ASTP (Advanced Specialized Training Program) program, though, and applied to work in
intelligence.
The Army, however, decided he would become an engineer. "I figured it was typical army to put me in an area I had the least interest in -- math.":
Finnegan was sent to the Rhode Island State
College where he studied algebra, calculus and advanced calculus. He also reverted to form and started his own newspaper for the students in the ASTP program.
"Eventually, though, they closed the program down
because they were short of infantry." Finnegan was assigned to the 78th Lightning Division, which had served for some time as a training division. At this time, though, it was being reconstituted as a full-fledged
infantry division and being readied for action in Europe.
Many of those transferred into the 78th came from the closed-down ASTP programs or from the Air Corps cadet training program, another casualty of the need
for infantrymen. "There were so many sergeants and staff sergeants that it was impossible to get a promotion in that division. I went in as a PFC and I came out as a PFC."
Finnegan did accelerated training in
radios and Morse code, but then was put in charge of a wire laying team and assigned to the 311th "Timberwolf" Regiment, 2nd Battalion headquarters company. His job was to lay the telephone line between the
headquarters and the outlying infantry companies so there would be direct communication.
The 311th Regiment boarded the SS Carnarvon Castle in late 1944 for a 12-day trip to England. "We didn't encounter any
submarines, but we were weaving and bobbing all the way over. I spent a lot of time up on deck, and a couple of times I slept up on deck because a lot of guys in the hold were sick, and the stench down there was
something awful."
The ship arrived in England on October 25th, 1944, and the division bivouacked in Bournemouth, about 100 miles south of London. The training continued, but the men were soon loaded on LSTs at
Southampton for the trip to France.
"The English Channel is just awful at that time of year, with huge waves and lots of rain. We didn't get very far before our LST was rammed by a hospital ship. It stove in the
side of the LST pretty good, and just curved around the boxes of ammunition."
The landing ship had to be towed back to Southampton and all the gear and men were loaded into another LST.
It wasn't the end of
LST worries, though. The pounding of the ocean was beginning to make the second LST come apart as it plied the English Channel. "A weld had broken on the deck and you could look through the seam into the
hold."
And then just as the LST was about to make harbor in Rouen, the ship ahead of it hit a mine causing further delays. Finnegan's unit eventually did catch up with the rest of the regiment and was transported
to Duclair.
The stay in rural France was anything but a vacation, though, as the rains quickly changed the pastures into mud. "That was awful. The mud was four or five inches thick. You had to move around in the
mud, sleep in the mud, and we didn't have our overshoes or rubber boots yet."
Soon the 311th was transported, via the same 40 and 8 boxcars that had been used in the First World War, to Tongren in Belgium to
serve as a reserve unit for a time. On Dec. 9th, the 78th Division was ordered forward into the Hurtgen Forest to take over a section of the Allied front line.
The 78th arrived at the end of the fighting in the
Hurtgen, one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Their first greeting was the occasional screeching of the Nazi buzz bombs overhead. "Once the engine stopped, you could count one, two three, four, five... before
the explosion. That would tell you how many miles away it was. Of course, if it hit you, you would never know it was coming."
One of Finnegan's first jobs was an order to raise the wire over a road so that the
trucks could pass underneath.
"Sitting beside the road were these guys who had been through the battle. They were all these Bill Mauldin types, dirty and unshaven. We all were still fairly clean. I got my spurs
on and was walking over to where I had to climb a tree to raise the wire and one of these guys says, 'See you later.'"
Finnegan puzzled over the cryptic message, but set out to do his duty. "I climbed up one tree
and moved the line up about three feet. All of a sudden, I could hear something whizzing through the air. And then I heard it again.
"I went over to the other side and moved that line up about three feet and I
heard something else whiz by."
Finnegan finished his chore and was heading back when one of the Hurtgen veterans called him over. "Hey kid," he said. "Did you notice anything strange up there?" Finnegan told the
GI he had heard this whizzing sound, and the soldier replied, "Yeah, we've lost a number of guys to snipers right there."
"I said, 'Thanks a lot.' He could have at least told me before I raised the wire. But then
again, thank God he didn't tell me."
The 311th stayed in the Hurtgen for three or four weeks. Finnegan's job was to run the switchboard which was installed in one of the pillboxes left over from the Siegfried
Line.
The conditions were snowy and very wet and the fox holes and trenches were filling up with water. "I think we lost more men to frost bite and trench foot than we did to battle wounds. The medical tent was
near my pillbox and there were scores of guys who were barefoot over there. You couldn't even put a blanket on their feet because it was too painful."
Finnegan's pillbox had a foot of water on the bottom, and so
he had to raise the switchboard above the water line. "I did what they told me and took off my boots every day. It was a crank-operated switchboard, and since I couldn't put my feet down, I figured, what the heck, I
might as well make use of my feet. So I turned the crank with my foot. Then I would move the wires with my hands."
He became adept at the procedure. "But I still have a little space between my big toe and
the next toe where I would turn the crank."
The Division was just on the edge of the German offensive in the Battle of the Bulge. "Just south of us, we did lose some guys. The Germans captured them in their
foxholes. They must have wanted them for intelligence purposes. But other than that, they went right by us. We were like a thumb sticking out there."
As the Bulge wound down, the unit advanced to Simmerath, and
came under constant enemy shell fire, about 300 rounds a day. They called one intersection that the German's had zeroed in "88 Corner." Because of the constant shelling, the phone lines were being constantly cut and
Finnegan and the other wire men found themselves often in no-man's land stringing new wire.
"The way we would do it was to get in a jeep with a big wire reel and take off and go as fast as we could go." The men
tried to lay the wire at the edge of the road where it wouldn't get run over by the vehicles.
At one point, the HQ lost contact with F Company. Finnegan and his crew were ordered in the middle of the night to
lay some new wire. "We got about a quarter of a mile down the road. It was one of those cold, crisp nights where you could hear the crunching of the jeep on the snow for miles. They started lobbing in mortar shells
at us. One landed right in front of us, and that stopped us pretty quick."
The men bailed out of the jeep and dove into the ditches on either side of the road with the mortars exploding all around them.
"All
of a sudden, something hit me hard in the back. I thought it might be shrapnel, but when I reached around there was no hole and no blood. I looked down and saw I'd been hit by a frozen hunk of the road that the
mortar had kicked up."
The men were yelling back and forth to each other to see if they were all right. One of Finnegan's companions yelled back that he was okay, but he had found himself with his face wedged up
against the rear end of a dead horse.
The men continued running the wire and got back without further incident.
Finnegan was assigned a rifle as his primary weapon, but he also had been issued a bazooka just
in case. While training one day, Finnegan was called upon to fire his bazooka at a cardboard tank.
"My loader tapped me on the head and I fired it. Then somebody said there was a hole starting to burn in the tent
behind us. I guess we had been standing a little too close. That was the only time I fired my bazooka, and I almost burned down the headquarters."
The division played a key part in several actions, including the
capture of the Schwammenaul Dam. On March 8, 1945, the Allies were surprised to have captured the Ludendorf Bridge across the Rhine intact. Known as the bridge at Remagen, the Allies took advantage of the windfall
by trying to quickly get a regiment across the bridge.
The regiment chosen was the 311th. It was the first complete American regiment to cross the Rhine and enter Germany. "By the time we got to the bridge, it
was in pretty bad shape. I rode across the bridge on a tank, and I remember hoping that the bridge would only hold together until I reached the other side."
Once across, the Americans began getting ready for a
push up the east side of the Rhine. First things first, though, it had been reported that there was a warehouse nearby containing wine and spirits. Finnegan and others were ordered to take a jeep and see if this
military intelligence was true.
"The warehouse was stacked with German and French wines and champagnes. The sergeant and I took a look, and then he loaded me up with wine bottles just like I was carrying
cordwood. On the way back to the Jeep, though, I looked up and here came a Stuka strafing the road. Normally, you'd dive for cover, but I carefully got down on one knew and then on the other knee. I didn't drop one
of those bottles. The Stuka flew right over me, but it missed me. I got back with every one of those bottles and I got a lot thanks from the guys. For the next couple of days, we were drinking champagne out of our
tin cups."
A sidelight to the encounter was not so happy. One of the Stukas was hit by American fire, and the pilot bailed out and was parachuting down. "As he floated down, guys opened up on him from both sides.
He was killed before he ever touched the ground. I was shocked by that, but that's what war is like. He was trying to kill us, and some of the guys figured he had it coming."
To this day, Finnegan has never seen
the movie based on the capture of the Bridge at Remagen. "There was a time when I never wanted to see any war movie. I'm over that now, and maybe some day I'll see it. Probably not."
The last major assignment for
the 78th Division was to take part in the capture of the Ruhr Valley, Germany's industrial heartland. "We were taking in prisoners by the droves by that time, but they were usually either 12 or 13 year old boys or
old men. I suppose they were part of the home guard.
"We interrogated some of the prisoners, and they said they had been told if they were captured by the Americans they would be re-armed and sent against the
Russians."
The Ruhr was the last major action for the regiment after over 130 days of continuous combat. The unit set up as an occupation force near Fulda and Hunfeldt. "The people were very gracious. They were
thankful that the war was over for them. They were very cooperative."
True to form, as the rigors of battle were taken away, Finnegan again started his own newspaper for his battalion. He was soon called on the
carpet, though, and questioned why he was doing a newspaper when there was already a regimental newspaper. The commanding officer eventually decided that Finnegan's skills would be better used by creating a
Regimental history.
The book was done over the next several months and Finnegan was able to pick his own crew. "I got six or seven guys, some were photographers, some were artists, and a couple were people who
spoke German because we had to deal with the local printers. And one guy was a scrounger, and his job was to find enough quality paper to print it on. He did it, and I never asked him how he did it."
One of the
problems was that the local Linotype operators didn't speak or understand English, and so the Americans had to stand over their shoulders and correct the copy as it was typed.
The book traced the progress of the
311th through is journey across Europe and recorded such things as the number of killed in action, 414, wounded in action, 1,785, and total casualties, 2,454. The 311th started with 3,207 men and 1,863 of those were
still in the company at VE Day. The regiment captured 17,178 prisoners in the war, and accounted for 618 enemy dead.
Before the book was done, though, Finnegan's father died, and he was sent home on an emergency
discharge to help his family run the hotel.
In 1946, since neither he nor his brother wanted to be in the hotel business, the property was sold and Finnegan entered the School of Journalism at the
University of Minnesota. He graduated in 1948 and began work at the Rochester Post Bulletin. He also married his wife, Norma, that year.
In 1951, he joined the staff of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and
spent time covering the Legislature and city politics. He eventually became an editorial writer and then assistant editor of the editorial page.
In 1969, he made the big leap from that job to assistant to the
executive editor, and a year later he became the executive editor of Minnesota's second largest newspaper. He served on the boards of both the Associated Press Managing Editors Association and the American Society
of Newspaper Editor. He retired from newspapering in 1989.
Finnegan has kept very busy serving on the Legislative Committee for the Minnesota Newspaper Association, and on the board of the Catholic Spirit
newspaper serving the Twin Cities area. Finnegan has won host of Freedom of Information and Freedom of the Press awards through the years, and is considered a national expert in those areas. He also teaches as an
adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota. He is also working on a book.
He and Norma have six children, and they reside in St. Paul.
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