George C. Gutschke was born on April 29, 1924 in Yorktown, TX. The second youngest of seven children, he was the son of German immigrants, Amil Gutschke and Olga Semmeler. George grew up in Orange Grove, TX, but has lived in San Antonio for the majority of his life. He graduated from Orange Grove High School in 1943 and immediately joined the Army. After serving his country and participating in the D-Day invasion at Normandy, France, George returned home. George worked a few odd jobs before gaining employment as a mechanic for Cadillac, and later with the motorcade at Fort Bullis and Ft. Sam Houston. He has been married to Mildred Maxine Robbins since 1951 and has three children. George retired in 1988 and resides in Adkins, TX. He is my grandfather.
How long after you graduated from high school before you went into the service? A month.
One month? Yep, (laughing) I graduated May of '43 and went in in June. The war broke out when I was a junior and I knew that the draft was gonna get me 'cause I had just turned eighteen in April. I knew that the draft was gonna get me so I told my mother, " Just go ahead and sign the papers and let me go 'cause they're gonna pick me up anyway." So she signed the papers and I went in in June, 1943.
And uh, what's the exact process that you went through? Were you shipped somewhere originally...? I had to come to San Antonio to take my physical. Took my physical and they classified me as 1-A. And then they called me up and I went to Dodd Field to be inducted, take my shots, and do the paper work. Then I was shipped to Camp Walters to take my basic. Basic lasted eleven weeks. Then they allowed me to have a, I think it was five day delay en route. I was supposed to go to Fort Mead, Maryland to ship out. So I had a five day leave and then I shipped to Maryland. I caught a boat in New York Harbor. Then I went to Glasgow, Scotland. I went through Scotland down to the southern part of England, and that's where I was put with the 29th Division. And we were stationed at South Hampton, England. That's were I took my training for the invasion. I was there from the early part of '44 until June of '44 until the invasion started. That was June 6, 1944. We landed in France early morning of June 6th. I was in the second wave. The first wave had a hard time getting to shore. So um, I spent all day there on the beach fighting. And later on we got inland. We moved on up the coast and we were supposed to cut up the Sherbet Peninsula to help the troops land our supplies there at that port. Three days later, June the 9th, I got shot.(long pause, I stop the tape)
(Continued) When we went to take the little town we saw a bunch of Germans crossing the street about 1/4 mile down the road carrying big guns. And then another kid got up on a bridge and we got pinned down by a sniper.(very quiet, a long pause so I stop the tape again)
(Continued) We got pinned down there for, I guess, all morning long. This kid and I, every time we would raise up, this sniper would shoot at us. So we couldn't go nowhere so we stayed behind a brick wall about two feet high. We layed there. There wasn't much we could do. About that time, Americans moved a tank up behind us, about twenty yards behind us. And then the Germans started laying in the 88(caliber) shells. One fell short... and it hit my legs, broke both legs. So a buddy came and picked me up and threw me on the back of a tank. They took me back to the beach to the evacuation hospital and they waited till they got one of these small boats come and got the wounded. It took us back to the hospital in the channel. And uh, the nurse and doctor were working on me and asked me where I was from and I told 'em. I remember them operating on me and then it was seven days before I woke up again. I was in England on July 3rd. Then they shipped me back to New York and I landed in New York on July 4, 1944. I spent about a week in New York at the hospital. They treated us real good. Had good doctors and good nurses. They had orders to send me to Temple, which was an... amputation(choked up)
Yeah, but they didn't amputate, though.
No, they sent me there to cut my leg, but they didn't do it. So I stayed there till the latter part of '44. Then they sent me up to Brooks Field. I mean Brooks Army Hospital to heal the bone in my right leg. They tried to heal up my left leg, but there wasn't no bone in my left leg to heal 'cause it was all torn out by the shell. So they tried to heal up the leg, but they couldn't heal it up, so in 1945 they sent me to El Paso to a skin grafting hospital. They skin-grafted my left leg and then I got retired. They let me out of the army in, I think it was May of 1945. Then they turned me out and I went home.