MERLE HUTCHENS

Merle Hutchens was born and lived in Pomeroy until 1941.  He graduated from high school in 1936, worked on his folks' ranch, then registered for the draft in the fall of 1940.  On April 7, 1941 his number came up and he was drafted into the Army.  He reported to Spokane, then took the train to Ft. Lewis, near Seattle, where he was taken to the main fort to spend three days, according to Merle "in a lot of buildings giving out a lot of information."  All the men who reported were sent to various groups, over seven hundred going along with him to North Fort Lewis for the next three months.  They were divided into battalions of three hundred and fifty men, each battalion filling four barracks.

The 144^th Field Artillery had recently moved north from Santa Barbara.  That unit was composed of service, headquarters, and three heavy artillery gunnery batteries. Merle was assigned to gunnery battery C.  There were four gun sections in each battery, and twenty-two trucks in each battery.  When he told them about his farm experience, he was put in the motor section, spent six weeks doing a little bit of everything, then worked in truck maintenance for the next two years.

He did, however, have an occasional change of venue after December 7, 1941.  Every two to three weeks the Army rotated battalions back and forth from Fort Lewis out to Westport, on the Washington coastline.  He and the other soldiers in his unit were sent to guard the coast against Japanese planes and boats, many of which were spotted in the months after Pearl Harbor was attacked. 

"We got some," Merle said, speaking of the Japanese under siege by the 150 heavy artillery posted on the coast, "and then they drew back after about three months."

About mid-1942, Hutchens was sent to the desert of California for further artillery training.  He was told he would be sent to North Africa to support the British.  After four months, he was shipped to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri where he was preparing to go to Africa.  Then England gained victory and there was no need to send more American troops to Africa.  Hutchens was supposed to be in Missouri one week, but ended up being there three months, during which time he got two weeks leave and went home.

In November he was on the move once again.  The 144^th Field Artillery sent Merle off to Camp Miles Standish near Boston and the word was he would be catching a boat for Europe.  That finally happened on December 29, 1943.  His unit was the first to load so they got billeted on the top deck at the back of the boat.  The next day the C.B. Alexander finished loading up and headed for England. 

"They told us the trip would take seven days, straight across," Merle remembers.  They were part of a convoy of boats so thick all around the Alexander that there were ships as far as he could see.  "Then we heard there were a lot of German subs in the Central Atlantic, so we circled north.  The trip ended up taking nine days."

They landed in Liverpool on January 9, 1944 and boarded trains for a forty mile trip to some empty buildings that had been converted into barracks.  They remained in England until June 6, 1944 when they shipped out to Utah Beach on the Normandy Coast of France.  He was there on July 16 when the St. Lô breakthrough established American domination on the northern shores of France.  Merle remained in Normandy for six weeks hauling supplies and maintaining trucks on the battlefield.  The 144^th then began to move across Northern France to Brussels, Belgium, close to the coast where boats and artillery were coming in from England.  He and the men in his unit moved supplies for eleven weeks along a 75-90 mile stretch of ground that was constantly under fire.  This assignment was known as the Red Ball Express.

"Then we got to Germany," Merle said quietly.  That would have been December 16, 1944 when they pushed through to Achen and Bastogne on the border and then on into Cologne, Germany on the Rhine River.  He saw Buchenwald, the first concentration camp he was to see, in April after it had been converted for use by occupation troops. 

The 144th pushed on into the middle of Germany, to Heidelberg with Merle Hutchens working along the front lines keeping motor vehicles repaired and moving ahead while under enemy fire.  He tells the story of a time when they were moving down into Germany.  They had stopped in a little town for two or three days.  He had parked his service truck behind a building and dug a hole he planned to sleep in that night.  He was then told he had to be inside a building.

"Well, the rooms were all full but I noticed a stairway to what looked like it might be an attic.  I climbed up there with my bedding.  There was just an open space at the top of the stairs big enough to lie down.  The roof formed kind of an A-shaped space overhead, oh about ten feet long and six to eight feet wide.  There was a window on each end up at the top of the peak.  So I laid down and fell asleep.  Along about daylight a German shell came through that A-shaped roof, coming in one window and out the other.  It hit a house across the street, going through that roof the same way.  No one was hurt.  If I had been standing, it would have got me.  That was the closest I came to getting hit."

Hutchens went on to say, "We were in five major campaigns: Normandy, Northern France, Battle of the Bulge, Rhineland, and Ardennes, and also in the occupation campaign in Central Europe.  Out of the one hundred and eighty men in our battery, only one was killed, and that wasn't in combat.  A young kid from California was coming down a hill in a service pickup.  It tipped and rolled and he was killed.  Other than that, we all came back.  There were lots of close shaves and I dug a lot of fox holes.  We were always close to the front lines and faced land mines and German artillery, but we all made it through except that one kid."

Merle was discharged September 29, 1945 having attained a Technician Fourth Grade rank.  He received the European-African-Middle Eastern Theater Ribbon, an American Defense Ribbon, and a Good Conduct Medal.  He shipped out for New York and then flew from New York to Fort Lewis.  He came to Colfax where his folks were then farming in Green Hollow.  He farmed until October before going to work for Jones Truck and Implement for twenty years repairing and maintaining International tractors, combines, and trucks.  In 1967 he went to work for the State Highway Department doing vehicle maintenance for fifteen years before he retired.  Meanwhile, in 1947, he married Louise Leinweber.  They have one daughter and one granddaughter.