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By Al Zdon
Herman Ratelle was one of those few American GIs in World War II who actually saw the one that got him.
Looking out the top of his tank on Feb. 1, 1945, Ratelle
had a very clear view of the German .88 shell, the "red onion," coming right at him. There was nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.
The fact that Ratelle was standing on a box of grenades didn't help his situation
much either.
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Ratelle was born in International Falls, and even after his family moved to Minneapolis, he continued to spend much time in the border country. One member of
his family owned the Coca Cola bottling plant in town, and Ratelle worked there.
He also got his first experience at flying with an uncle who suddenly turned the controls over to him on one flight, saying it was
time he learned to be a pilot.
His dad was an engineer and sales representative for one of the large paper making companies, and Ratelle worked at the paper mill during the summers after he graduated from high
school at Minneapolis Washburn.
Ratelle began his college career at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1941, and he was there when the war began that December. He signed up for the ROTC program and
trained at the Armory on the campus.
By the fall of 1942, it looked like Ratelle's college days were numbered. "I had almost finished the fall quarter when I realized I was probably going to get drafted because
my number wasn't very high." A professor suggested that if Ratelle enlisted, he would give him credit for that quarter.
The U.S. Army didn't call Ratelle for a physical until February of 1943, and he took his
pre-induction physical at the office of a Dr. Peter Schultz above the Salk Drug Store in south Minneapolis.
From Ft. Snelling, Ratelle worked his way across the West to Los Angeles by train, ending up at Camp
Callan, about 20 miles north of San Diego. The basic training camp also taught the young soldiers the operation of anti-aircraft guns, or ack-ack as they were known.
Ratelle was selected for the ASTP program,
which kept promising young GIs in college. He was told he was going to be an engineer.
The group was temporarily housed at the field house of Pasadena Junior College. "There were 600 of us packed into that
building, with just a dirt floor. We played a lot of cards and had a good time."
To his surprise, Ratelle was picked along with several other soldiers to go up to the Hollywood Canteen to act as escorts for
Hollywood starlets during a two day promotion. The men were to join their starlets in the morning, stay with them all day, and then join them again the next day.
Ratelle's starlet was Jane Russell. At that time,
Russell had only made one movie and hadn't achieved the fame she did after the war. It was a splendid two days for the young serviceman. "Jane Russell and I corresponded the whole time I was in the service. In about
1994, I was in a restaurant near Phoenix when a woman came up behind me and gave me a big hug. By gosh, there she was, Jane Russell, and she looked just as good as the first time I saw her."
The ASTP program
brought Ratelle to the University of Indiana, and then to the University of Cincinnati before the Army shut the program down. "We had taken some tests, and I had qualified for medical school if I wanted to continue.
But I didn't want to leave my buddies. We figured that wherever we go, we go together."
Up to this point in the Army, Ratelle knew his duty had been pretty good. Even his basic training at Camp Callan was done at
what was called the "country club" of basic training camps. The rest of the time he was a student. "I don't even know if I had an MOS (Army job classification)."
His next stop was the tank corps. Ratelle was
assigned to the 14th Armored Division at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. The division had been in training for some time, and was just about to be sent overseas to join the invasion of France in 1944.
Ratelle's training
was mainly in the kitchen early on. "When we got to France, I'd never driven a tank. I'd never fired a gun in a tank. But most of the guys already there were old cadre. They knew what they were doing. We were just
their helpers."
The 14th went to Camp Shanks in New York, and then set sail on the Santa Rosa, a converted cruise ship bound for Marseilles. "I had been in the Army long enough by then to learn not to volunteer
for anything, but the sergeant came down and asked for volunteers for sub watch. It was great. We got to bring our sleeping bags up on deck and enjoy the fresh air. Down in the hold it was awful, a real pest house,
a mess. Up on deck, we were even fed by the Navy. But we never saw a sub."
They disembarked in France after 13 days at sea in September, 1944, and were soon united with their tanks. "The tanks had been stored in
North Africa. We had to get the cosmoline off them, load them with gas, load them with ammo, the whole nine yards."
The tanks were loaded on a train, and headed off to the front. "We lived in the tanks on the
flat cars, and we saw what the Army had done to the Germans on our way up." They detrained near Dijon and hid in a forest for a few days.
Ratelle's job was an ammo loader for the M-4 A4E3 Sherman tank, equipped
with a 76 mm cannon. "Most of the Sherman's had a smaller gun. We were a little gunned up. It made us kind of special, and they sent us into action as quickly as they could. It was kind of exciting."
There are
five crew members on that tank: A driver, an assistant driver called a BOG, a gunner, a loader, and the tank commander. The driver and BOG sat in the front of the tank, and the others were in the turret. The turret
was powered, and turned the full 360 degrees.
Each tank had two 30 cal. machine guns in front, and a 50 cal. on the top. "It was that 50 caliber that was just a devastating weapon. The Germans just hated it. As a
result the tank commander took a lot of hits. He usually had his head sticking out of the tank for a better view."
"The tanks were cold. By God, they were cold. Those two big tank engines behind us sucked cold
air into the tank. It was not a friendly place to be. But it sure beat walking."
The tanks were gas powered, and tank crews were aware that fire was their greatest danger. "The Brits called them 'Ronsons' after
the lighter." The slogan for Ronson Lighters was "Lights first time, every time." Ratelle estimates that 85 to 90 percent of Sherman tanks caught fire after being hit by the enemy.
"Plus we had 75 to 90 rounds
of shells on board, high explosive or armor piercing. You wanted to get out of the tank as quickly as you could after it was hit."
The 14th Armored edged close enough to the front to hear the artillery in the
distance, and in October took a course that would take them over the mountains and into the plains beyond where tanks would be of more use.
The first combat was at St. Die, "But we just got into it a little bit.
The infantry and the French had already done the hard work."
Along the way, the tank column encountered one or two German roadblocks every day. The infantry was on the sides and in front of the tanks, and when a
roadblock was found, a tank would be called up to blow it away.
At Obernai, the tanks ran into their first real combat, and the first tank was hit with a German panzerfaust, similar to an American bazooka. The
loader on the tank, Ronald O'Donnell, was Ratelle's best friend and he was killed. "The rest of the crew got out. We were blocked and couldn't advance anymore, and we had to wait until the infantry cleared out the
town."
The Germans in the small villages would usually hide themselves on the second floor of the buildings, and then attack from very close range when the tanks came abreast of the windows.
"It was almost
constant at that time. You never dared get out of your tank, even to relieve yourself. If you did, you were taking your life into your hands. And the shelling was also constant. We used to say, 'Those 88s are
breaking up that old gang of mine.'"
The tanks went north through Weissenbourg, the old Maginot Line, and Riedseltz. "The column stopped one night, and we pulled into some yards. We were going to be able to get
into some buildings and sleep, and it had been a long time since we were able to do that."
Ratelle chose to lay his sleeping bag on the far side of the room. "There was huge featherbed in there, and it looked
inviting, but for some reason none of us got on it. I don't know why."
During the night, a German shell landed right in the middle of the room, hitting an old pot-bellied stove. "It blew the stove to pieces. The
room was just full of smoke, dust and noise. I could hear my friend, Jack Fuquay, yelling, 'I can't get out of my sleeping bag.' Luckily I had a flashlight with me, and I was able to see the huge hole in the floor
so I didn't fall in. When I got over to Fuquay, I saw why he couldn't get out. He had a body on top of him, or part of body."
It was just the torso of a man named Hoffman who had just come in the room from guard
duty.
"We got out of there as fast as we could. We didn't even take our boots with us. I managed to grab my sleeping bag. When it became daylight, I held up my sleeping back, and it was absolutely shot full of
holes. You could hold it up and see the daylight through it. But I didn't have a scratch on me."
Eventually the men got new boots, "although they didn't fit," and after advancing up the road, they came back to
Reidseltz where they again tried to stay the night. "It was a bigger house, with a fire in the stove and it was nice and warm, which was good because I didn't have my sleeping bag."
Ratelle was sleeping on a
table, surrounded by hanging sheets that the French home owner had been drying inside. He could hear his comrades talking about him. "Someone said, 'I'm worried about Herman. I think he's all shook up. He had to
pull Hoffman off of Fuquay, and he had to get blood all over himself.'
"Finally I fell asleep, but a while later I woke up. I had to throw up so bad that I just barely got to the back steps before I let it go. I
threw my guts up, and then I was okay. I felt like a new man. It was just sort of a delayed reaction, I suppose."
On Christmas Day, Ratelle, who spoke a little French, went with an officer to scout the local
villages. In the meantime, the kitchen truck had come and gone, leaving the men their hot Christmas dinner. "When we got back, my meal was there waiting for me. It was frozen solid. I made the best of it."
In
January, 1945, the Americans began to pull back their lines to better defensive positions as the Germans attempted Operation Nordwind, an attempt to push through the Americans in Alsace as all the attention was
focused further north at the Battle of the Bulge.
Ratelle recalls on New Year's Eve how he and Fuquay were left in the tank and ordered to observe a notch in the mountains where the Germans might come through.
"It was 20 below outside and there was two and a half feet of snow on the ground, and Jack and I sat there all night. Luckily we had two Coleman stoves, one to keep our socks warm, and the other to keep the coffee
hot. And that's how we got through the night."
The unit pulled back and by the middle of January, they were fully engaged in the Battle of Hatten-Rittershoffen, called the largest tank battle fought on the
Western Front during the war.
"We had our share of scares, but we got through it unscathed. It went on continuously for 10 or 11 days. We'd all stay in the line, and one tank at a time would go back for gas,
ammo and food. All we had were C and K rations."
It was during that time that his tank took a lucky hit. The German shell came in one side of the sponson and went out the other side. No one was hurt. "We heard
it, but we just kept going. We weren't sure what had happened. It wasn't till later that we found the shell hole on both sides of the tank. I guess what you don't know won't hurt you."
After the battle, in which
over 100 tanks were lost on each side, the 14th Armored was able to stand down for a while. An old friend of Ratelle's, Capt. Al Luger of the 45th Division, came by to say hello. It seemed like a good reason to have
a party.
"We were in a house that had a basement, and it was full of Alsatian wine. There were also large bags of potatoes. We sent some guys down to find the kitchen truck, and they came back with two gallons of
Mazola Oil. We had French fries like they were going out of style. It was wonderful. A warm house, a couple of bottles of wine."
At the end of January, the unit advanced to the Moder River, but had to wait until
the engineers could come and construct a Bailey Bridge across it. The entire company got across the river and advanced on Oberhoffen.
The tanks lined up, and were attempting to destroy the town's buildings in
front of them. The Germans were behind the buildings. Ratelle, by this time, was acting as both tank commander and gunner. His tank would aim at one side of a building, take out that wall, and then aim at the other
side of the building, hoping to take out that wall and collapse the building.
"I was going back and forth between being gunner and tank commander. When I wanted to look out the hatch, I needed to stand on
something, and so I was using a steel box that contained tank grenades."
Ratelle's tank had just fired a round, and Ratelle left the gun and went back to perch on the box and look out of the hatch. He didn't like
what he saw. A German tank was coming around the building they were shelling, and it was aiming its gun right at the American tank.
"I saw the big, red onion coming at us. It was an .88 shell, and it was red hot.
There was nothing we could do."
The shell hit the tank head on, just to the right of the driver. The box of grenades exploded, and launched Ratelle right out through the hatch, breaking both of his shoulders as
he went through. He landed on the back of the tank and then rolled off.
The driver's hatch was jammed, and the driver tried to climb over the transmission to the hatch on the other side, but the tank was hit by
another shell that killed him instantly.
The assistant driver found Ratelle at the back of the tank, trying to make a tourniquet out of the shreds of his socks. His left foot was blown off. On his left boot,
only the top two laces of his boot were left. Everything else was gone. His right leg was riddled with shrapnel.
"There was machine gun fire, and burp gun fire and tank fire all around me. I was just sitting on
the ground trying to make that tourniquet. I thought I was going to bleed to death."
One of his crewmates helped him hop about 50 yards to the back of another tank, and the tank took Ratelle to safety over the
hill. "I couldn't tell where I was bleeding, but it was hot and warm. There was a lot of blood."
"The loader on that tank was Eldon Drake, just a great guy. He had glasses as thick as Coke bottle bottoms. I don't
know how they kept him in the service. Anyway, he looked at me and I was laughing, laughing hysterically. I'm sure he thought I was off my rocker. He asked why I was laughing. I told him that I'd gotten the million
dollar wound, and I was heading home."
An ambulance took Ratelle over the Moder on the Bailey Bridge to an aid station. From there he was placed on a stretcher on the front of a jeep and taken to a house. As he
was carried into the house, Ratelle saw an old Frenchman by the door with a white beard and white hair. As he looked at Ratelle, he was crying and saying in French, "Poor, poor American soldier."
Ratelle said he
was laid out on a table, still on the stretcher. "They had given me some morphine, and that eased some of the pain. A captain asked me how I was feeling, and I told him, 'Not too good.' He asked if I wanted some
whiskey. I thought he was kidding.
"He reached over me to the window, and behind some drapes was a bottle of Four Roses. He had a big water glass, and he filled it up. I think I drank it in two gulps, and he
asked if I wanted more. I said I did, and he filled it up again."
Ratelle was again transported, this time to a field hospital where he was laid on the floor. By now it had been about five hours since his tank
was hit. It was about 9 at night.
"There were four lovely nurses there, and they were all dressed up in their starched khakis. They were heading for a party. I remember they had a big cake in a box. Instead of
leaving, though, they squatted next to me and talked to me. It made my day. That, and the bourbon."
The next thing Ratelle knew he was in Saarbourg, France. He woke up in the morning in a full body cast, with his
arms stretched out to his sides. His right leg was encased in more bandages, and his left leg was gone, replaced by a device that kept the skin stretched out while it healed.
His first acquaintance in the
hospital was a fellow Minnesotan named Glenn Strandberg, who asked Ratelle if he wanted something to eat. As they talked, Strandberg said that once Ratelle was healed and back home, they would have to go hunting
together.
"He was a generous, caring man, and we've been dear friends ever since. We go hunting almost every year."
Strandberg told him that the hospital was manned by doctors from the University of Minnesota.
Ratelle started naming some doctors he knew, including Dr. Peter Schultz, who had given him his first physical in south Minneapolis.
"Strandberg looked at me and said, 'He's the doctor who took your leg off last
night.'
Ratelle got to see the doctor, and eventually took a message home to Schultz's wife, who the doctor hadn't seen in three years of medical duty.
He was taken by train basically back along the route the
14th Armored had taken to the front some months before. He boarded a ship at Marseilles. "It was a glorious trip. They treated me like royalty. If I wanted food, it was there pronto. I got all the ice cream I
wanted."
Ratelle was moved to Brigham City, Utah, to a new hospital that had been set up to handle amputees and those who had psychiatric problems. "They kept us separate." He was able to fly home fairly quickly
for convalescent leave, but he returned to Brigham City for extensive rehabilitation. He had another operation in June of 1945.
He got out of the service in October of 1945, and he and his brother, Alex, who had
been in the Army Air Force, arrived home in Minneapolis on the same day. Ratelle immediately went back to school at the University.
"I decided I wanted to go to law school, but I was afraid I didn't have enough
points to get into the school. The lady at the desk looked at me and said, 'Soldier, you've got more damn points than you'll ever need. You're going to law school.'"
Three years later, Ratelle was in practice
with a couple of other lawyers, making the astounding sum of $50 a month. He was also receiving $81 a month from the VA.
He jumped at the chance to join Frank Warner in a law firm, and over the years the firm
grew. In 1970, the firm merged with another firm and the legal corporation of Moss and Barnett was created with Ratelle as the senior partner. It became one of the largest and most prestigious law firms in the state
over the years.
Ratelle eventually put most of his time into investment counseling, and, after leaving the firm, he still works at age 82 about a half time schedule. He has also been active as a director of the
Kellogg Foundation, the College of St. Benedict and St. John's School of Theology.
He's had two back operations related to his war injuries, but he has never felt he was handicapped in any way. He golfs, hunts,
and fishes.
He married Therese in 1951, and they have six children and 16 grandchildren. He considers his family his greatest accomplishment and his greatest source of joy.
Looking back to that day he was
blown out of a tank on the battlefield, Ratelle feels that he's been extraordinarily lucky in his life. "I always think that day I got hit was the first day of my second life."
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