WORLD AT WAR
World War II medic Bill Wahl of Chagrin Falls reunites with fellow members of 661st Tank Destroyer Battalion - A World at War
Sunday, September 28, 2008 Brian Albrecht
Plain Dealer Reporter
Once, when veterans of the Army's 661st Tank Destroyer Battalion gathered for their annual reunion, the beer flowed in pitchers of combat memories . . .
Of shells slamming into pillboxes and towns and the roar of Hellcat tank engines echoing across the snowy fields of Belgium and Germany in the waning months of World War II.
"We'd have two or three beers and win the war all over again," quipped Bill Wahl, 85, of Chagrin Falls.
But time has trimmed the number of old soldiers attending these reunions to a handful and has quenched their thirst for reloading their recollections of bygone battles.
For their latest gathering earlier this month, rather than visit some local military display as in previous years, the former tankers toured the museum at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Brook Park.
Nowadays they're quaffing heart medicine instead of suds, and they've seen enough guns to last a lifetime, Wahl noted.
The former medic added, "Although I didn't use any in the war, to me there shouldn't be a single damn gun in the world."
Back in 1943, Wahl could have gotten a draft deferment if he had been willing to work on a dairy farm. The job wouldn't have been much different from chores on his family's farm in north-central Pennsylvania.
But with the world at war, "the last thing I wanted to do was stay on a farm," he said.
He wound up in the 661st, attached to the 69th Infantry Division, where his first-aid training in prior jobs was enough to get him assigned to the medics.
He was soon headed to Europe to fight Germany - a country where his grandfather had served in the military in the 1860s.
Wahl's unit hit the front lines shortly after the Battle of the Bulge. It joined in the Allied advance from Belgium, crossing the Rhine River and battling through a succession of towns - including a tough siege at Leipzig - before meeting Russian forces advancing from the east at the Elbe River.
Along the way Wahl developed a soldier's eye, seeing beauty in the waves of U.S. bombers passing overhead - so many that "they'd blot out the sun and just roar your ears apart," he said.
He said the beauty was that those bombers would obliterate a target ahead, making the ground troops' job that much easier. The next best thing was heavy artillery, with similar results.
Wahl's unit encountered few German tanks still left to destroy, so their guns provided close support for the infantry.
Most of the wounded he tended were foot soldiers, injured by assorted bullets, shells and mines. Wahl said he had seen the results of armor-piercing shells that blew a hole into a tank before exploding inside the steel confines. "No, no wounded come out of a tank," he softly said.
German rockets - missiles the soldiers called "screaming meemies" for their high-pitched shriek in flight - were also fearsome weapons, according to Wahl.
But on a sunny afternoon some 63 years later, rockets were tools of space exploration in the eyes of the five former soldiers who toured the NASA center.
Michael Blair, a NASA aerospace lecturer, welcomed and thanked the vets for their service. "We really appreciate what you've done for us, and hopefully, in a small way we can return the favor," he said before launching into an overview of the space shuttle program.
And instead of looking over mothballed militaria, the men viewed museum pieces representing a time when once-warring nations build space stations together.
Mike Kotnik, 84, of Elyria, a former 661st tank commander, nodded to the many family members who accompanied the vets on the tour. Their children and grandchildren are keeping the reunion tradition alive, he said.
To Wahl, that role is a much more fitting legacy for the three children he and his wife, Mary, raised, and for their five grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.
No more talk of death-bearing nicknames like "screaming meemies" or "bouncing Betties" - landmines that leapt from the ground to spew waist-high shrapnel.
"This might sound funny, but now we mostly talk about the times we weren't fighting," Wahl said. "We talk about going down and robbing that German chicken coop, stealing the eggs, or when we went over the Rhine and found those wine cellars."
All in all, good times and bad, "I wouldn't have missed it for the world," Wahl said. "I'm glad I went.
"But I never want to go again."
World War II medic Bill Wahl of Chagrin Falls reunites with fellow members of 661st Tank Destroyer Battalion - A World at War - Cleveland.com
World War II medic Bill Wahl of Chagrin Falls reunites with fellow members of 661st Tank Destroyer Battalion - A World at War
