Roland Oscar Wells. He was born Sept. 18, 1914 in Hanna, Okla. Grandpa enlisted in the Oklahoma National Guard in 1940. He used to tell me that was when he got his first pair of shoes.

After Pearl Harbor, his Guard unit, like so many others, was called up and placed on active status. He became a medic with the 45th Infantry Division.

Grandpa and his unit trained at several bases, Ft. Sill, Ft. Chaffee and Camp Barkley, before shipping out to England. He would tell of how miserable he was on the troop ship.

Grandpa was in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, Southern Italy, Anzio, Southern France, the push into Germany and Austria.

After the invasion of Southern France, the 45th was attached to the 3rd Army. He didn’t say where most of his war stories took place but after doing my own research, I was able to determine the location of some of the stories.

One of the stories he told happened right after they hit the Anzio beachhead. The Germans began firing at them with a huge gun hidden on a mountain. This gun was nicknamed “Anzio Annie”.

After reading about the area, I found out the artillery were a couple of German K5E railroad guns called “Leopold” and “Robert” by the German gun crews. The guns fired a 28cm projectile over a long distance. The “Leopold” gun was recovered and is now at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.

Grandpa was also at Monte Cassino and saw the destruction of the Abbey. The Battle of Monte Cassino was fought by the Allies with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome. He would tell of seeing the bombers flying over.

One of my favorite stories was the time Grandpa and a driver were going through a rail yard in Germany and found crates of P-38 pistols. They stripped the holsters off and strung as many as they could carry on wire through the trigger guards and then carried them to the nearest street corner. They sold the guns to GIs walking by. He kept one and it is still in the family.

Grandpa talked about getting minor frostbite on his feet during the winter of ‘44-’45, seeing the Autobahn and hearing the German jets flying over. He saw the horrors of the concentration camps and the joy of people being liberated.

When the war ended, Grandpa stayed until he could get back on a troop ship because he was afraid of flying.

A few years ago, he went to see a doctor about back pain. The doctor x-rayed his back and discovered old injuries to the vertebrae. The only time Grandpa could remember hurting his back severely enough to cause this sort of damage, was during the Anzio invasion. He recalled going to help a wounded GI and an artillery shell hit dose hit dose by and the concussion of the blast threw him against the barrel of a knocked out German antitank gun. He said that he was too scared to notice any pain in his back and continued helping the wounded GI.

Nearly all my memories of Grandpa are good. Like the ice cream maker incident, the “only squirrel on the place”, raising thickens in the living room, eating frog legs, and the smile on his face when I would bring him fresh fish for dinner.

My Grandpa is gone now, and we all miss him terribly. Whether it was doing our handshake routine or just sitting and talking, I will always remember spending time with him. I wrote this to honor his memory and his service to his country.