‘We lost a lot of men’ — Q&A with Earle A. Howard Sr.

A South Portland war hero reflects on the Battle of the Bulge, freeing POWs, and working at the same business for 66 years and counting.

Seated in front of a few of the medals he earned for service
in World War II, Earle Howard Sr., 87, of South Portland,
shows the “absolutely beautiful” letter written to his wife,
Virginia, by an Australian soldier he’d freed from a prisoner-
of-war camp, to advise that her husband was alive and well. 

SOUTH PORTLAND — When soldiers and those in solidarity with them gather for a candlelight vigil in Mill Creek Park Nov. 11, South Portland’s Earle A. Howard Sr. probably won’t be there. The 87-year-old says his legs trouble him too much now to stand for very long. But he’ll be there in spirit, he says, and few, it seems, have a spirit as strong as his.

As a young man, Howard worked in the South Portland yards where the Liberty Ships were built. He then rode one of those vessels across the English Channel to take part in the D-Day invasion. From there he fought his way across Europe with the 2^nd Infantry Division, seeing action in Normandy, the Rhineland, Northern France, the Ardennes Forest, the Battle of the Bulge and Central Europe, earning 14 medals along the way.

Upon returning home in 1945, Howard landed a job with Wigon Office Supply, in Portland, for whom he continues to work to this day. Howard and his wife, Virginia, had three children and were married 56 years, until she died in 1999.

“I feel I am very lucky,” he said. “I’ve had one job all my life and one girl all my life.  I thought that was pretty good.”

Q: Where were you born and raised?

A: I was born in Providence, Rhode Island, but I came up here when I was just two weeks old to Munjoy Hill.

Q: Why did you join the service?

A: Uncle Sam called me, on Nov. 3, 1943. I had been working in the South Portland shipyard for two years. When I got word from the draft board I went down and said, “I don’t mind going into the service, but my wife is five months pregnant and I sure would like to see the baby before I go away.”

Q: What did they say to that?

A: Where I was working in the shipyard, they gave me a one-year deferment. So, my son was five months old before I went to Fort McClellan, Ala., where I was for 17 weeks before I went overseas.

Q: Where were you assigned?

A: I went from here over to England and landed on May 20, 1944. We stayed there until D-Day, when they took us down to the coast.

Q: What was the mood like during the crossing of the channel, for the Allied Invasion.

A: Well, I went across the English Channel on a Liberty Ship, and I just prayed to God the whole time that we had built them good, because that thing was bouncing up and down like a rubber ball.

Q: What was it like to be part of the Allied invasion?

A: Oh, I just thank God I didn’t have to go in on the first wave. I went on the fourth wave and landed on Omaha Beach. The beaches had been cleared by then and I think we were five miles inland at that time, which was good.

Q: What did you do when you landed?

A: We were loading ammunition at night to go up to the front. Then this lieutenant came down from the 2^nd Infantry Division and said they needed five replacements because of casualties, so they took us up to the front. I went to Headquarters Company, which was about 1,000 yards behind the front line. From there I fought through Normandy, through all the hedgerows. That was a tough battle. We were gaining yards instead of miles.  

Q: Did you have any particularly close calls?

A: One day I came around a corner and I looked up this row of hedgerows and there was a German tank facing right down at me. I jumped over that hedgerow and right into this ready-made foxhole, where there was a German. I was about to shoot him when I found out he was already dead – I could tell by the blood on him. I could hear the thud hitting the hedgerow from the tank behind us. So, me and that German slept there all night long.

Q: I take it you were able to rejoin your unit?

A: Yes, and we finally ended up in the Ardennes Forest. We held a position there for almost a month, while the rest of the line in back of us was catching up. Finally, they gave us orders that we were going to move out. They took us about a mile behind the lines and we saw all these men from the 99^th coming back. We just assumed that we were going to take their positions. Come to find out, the Germans had overrun them and we were going up to try and fill in where they were losing.

Q: That must have been disheartening, knowing you were going in on the losing end like that. Did you jump right on the front line?

A: No. They took us up to this wooded area where our lieutenant said, “We’ll stay here for the night and check our position in the morning.” It was about six o’clock the next morning when all hell broke loose from small arms fire. The lieutenant came to me, because my job at the time was to drive the radio jeep, and said, “Howard, we’ve got to go out to the next town and find out what the 99th positions are.” So, I unzipped my sleeping bag and snow fell in on me – it had snowed two inches that night.

Q: Were you able to get info you needed on troop positions?

A: No, there were no positions. We found the command post in a church rectory, but the only person there was this captain sitting alone at a desk. My lieutenant asked if he could tell us what the positions were for his troops. He had his head in his hands and said, “I don’t know. About two hours ago I gave, ‘Every Man for Himself.’ My lieutenant turned to me and said, “Howard, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Q: What did you do then?

A: We went back two miles to our outfit. We set up out own front line and stayed there about 24 hours, and then the Germans started to overrun us. They backed us up twice. We finally ended up in Krinklet, Belgium. We started to get surrounded – we got surrounded on three sides – when, fortunately, our battalion commander found an opening he thought we could squeeze through and get to Elsenborn Ridge, which was the highest spot in that area. Some of the boys were using hand grenades to break the frost in the land so they could dig their trenches. But we set up our outfit and the Germans tried four days in a row to overcome us, and we held. This captured colonel said to our commander, “We tried for four days to try and break trough but we hit a brick wall and that brick wall was the 2^nd Division.”

Q: What was it like to be a part of the Battle of the Bulge?

A: Oh, my Lord. That was the worst part of the war because you were also fighting the elements. It was zero weather most of the time and snow one or two feet deep, and, of course, you’re fighting the Germans every day. It was bad – very bad. We lost a lot of men, and they lost a lot of men.

Q: What was the mood of your fellow soldiers during the battle?

A: Well, they knew they were fighting for their lives, because it was either them or us at that particular time.

Q: How were you personally able to hold up during those four days of life-or-death fighting?

A: I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I was scared like hell, I’ll tell you that.

Q: What was daily life like, in between the battles?

A: Well, there weren’t many steak dinners, I’ll tell you that. It was all powdered milk and powdered eggs and powdered Spam, too, I’d imagine.

Q: During that hard winter, was there anything that gave you comfort – letters from home, maybe Christmas packages?

A: We didn’t even know it was Christmas. But then they said, “If you want to go to church, there’s a barn about 100 yards back. Take four or five men at a time and crawl up the ditch and get into the barn.” We found a priest there and he had set up two bales of hay with a white cloth over the top and a chalice on top of that. So, we made our church on Christmas day and that was great as I was a Catholic.

Q: I’ve read you freed a group of POWs. How did that happen?

A: After we cleared out Duderstadt, Germany, on the way out, at the end of town, I said, “I’ll be a son-of-a-gun, there’s a prisoner-of-war camp!” We saw all these men through this wire fence, but they didn’t dare to come out because they thought the Germans were still there. I unlocked the gate and I hollered to the guys, I said, “We’re American soldiers, you men are free!” Well, all hell broke loose. The men came running out, giving us hugs and shaking our hands and everything, some looking for smokes. This one guy came up to me and said, “Sir, can I have your address in the USA?” I said, “I’ll give you my address if you’ll write and tell my wife that I’m OK.” Well, he went and wrote a beautiful letter to my wife, which I still have. His name was Sgt. Harry Richardson, from the Imperial Forces in Australia.

Q: Did you ever meet Sgt. Richardson after the war?

A: No, never again, but he kept his promise. I thought it was very nice of him to remember. He said, “I saw your husband, he even looked well-shaven. He looks like he’s in good shape.” He said, “I hope nothing happens to these boys, where it’s so close to the end of the war.”

This was on April 12. Ironically, on the 17^th I was wounded in Leipzig, Germany. A shell fragment hit me in the leg and something hit right here [points to spot a half-inch over his left eye].

Q: How did that happen?

A: This mortar shell came down and hit the road in front of my jeep and went through the windshield. I fell out of the jeep and I must have passed out, because when I’d come to, the medics had taken me to this schoolhouse that they had made into a first aid station.

Q: You must have felt lucky to be alive.

A: I was relieved in the fact that I wound up in a hospital, where I was safe [laughs]. They flew me to Bar-le-Duc, France. I stayed there for two weeks in the 95^th General Hospital and they gave me the Purple Heart while I was there. After I came out I was anxious to get back to my unit, but, while I was in the hospital, fortunately, the war in Europe ended. We were one of the first divisions to leave Europe. Unfortunately, we were going to go to fight Japan.

Q: Did you see action in the Pacific?

A: No. We came back to the States first and they gave us a 30-day furlough. During that time, the war in Japan ended.

Q: What was the feeling like, locally?

A: Everybody came down to Monument Square. It was wild. This girl from the Portland Press Herald came up to me, because I had my uniform on, and she said, “What does this mean to you, with the war ending?” I said, “What would it mean to you if you were going off to fight Japan?”

Q: What did you do after the war?

A: I got a job painting a house out in Rosemont. But on that particular day, it rained. I stood on the corner waiting for the bus to take me back home to Munjoy Hill and, I’ll be a son-of-a-gun, this fellow came along in a pickup truck and he said, “Would you like a ride back to Portland?” I said, “Yes, I’d love it!”

Well, we got to talking and he asked what I did before the war. I said I had worked in the shipyard and before that I had worked in an office as a shipper for one year.

He said, “Well, I sell office supplies and I do need a shipping clerk. Would you be interested?” I said, “Yes, I would.” This was in November 1945. His name was Joe Wigon and he had Wigon Office Supply.

Nov. 19 will be 66 years I’ve been with them. Last year my legs started to run out and I couldn’t travel anymore. So, I told my boss, “I guess I’ll have to retire because I can’t drive anymore on these trips through the country.” She said, “You’re not going to retire. You can use the phone can’t you?” I said, “Yes,” so, she said, “Well, you can call all of your customers every week.”

Q: Why do you keep at it, at your age?

A: Oh, you’ve got to have something to do. You can’t just sit in a rocking chair. I was kind of thankful that she still wanted me to do this. I call from here at home and after I make all my calls, I call and give her all my orders and she has the truck driver deliver them.

Q: What is it that’s kept you at one company all thee years?

A: I don’t know. They’ve just treated me well, I guess. They’ve taken good care of me and my family all through the years.

Q: How has your job changed over the course of 66 years?

A: Five years after I started, the Korean War broke out and two of our salesmen had to go back in the service – they were officers – and, so, Mr. Wigon asked me if I would like to try and sell office supplies. I had a walking route in Portland, right downtown, which was very different then. There was Porteous, Rines Brothers, Filene’s and many, many more.

Q: I imagine you’ve seen a lot of business come and go over the years?

A: I sure have. But there’s a lot that have remained, too. There’s this one customer, Chalmers Insurance Agency, they gave me a clock last year. Right at the bottom it says that I’ve been calling on four generations. Can you imagine? I started calling on the grandfather in 1950. One of the sons was 11 years old when I started going up there, now he’s 72.

Q: Is there any chance you’ll ever retire?

A: [laughs] I suppose a long as I can use the phone I won’t. It keeps me busy.