MOWW Silver Patrick Henry Medallion Recipients

Proposal and Engagement

How did you propose to Sara?

We never had a formal proposal. We just sort of assumed. As we just got to know each other better. We met on July the 25th, 1943... and I gave her an engagement ring on December the 25th, 1943... and we were married February 27th of 1944. We knew each other 6 months before we were formally engagement. [Sara: He got me a very pretty one. Showing her ring]. We married in February after we had met in July. 

Michelle: That was pretty quick!

Colonel: Yeah! Yeah!

Sara: He lived at Fort Benning and there were gobs of guys!

Michelle: He had to snatch you up quick!

Sara: Yeah! Yeah! I knew two ladies that were in charge of the USO that would have parties for the guys. Little dances, or something else. And they were always calling me to come over and bring some friends so we could have some girls there for the boys. So I could meet lots of guys! But I didn't meet him that way. 

See this link to find out how they met!

GI's

One of my good friends was a GI. When I reported to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, the Commanding Officer was a Colonel Bruner. B-R-U-N-E-R. He told me I was a one person order and I was scheduled to go to the First Battalion of the 417^th Infantry as the Plans and Operations Officer. But he sat there at his desk and said, ‘I’m going to change that’ and called in the adjunct. He said, ‘I’m changing the orders for Captain Busch. He will become the Commanding Officer of the Antitank Company’. That’s all he said! It was changed! That was it! They have all sorts of authority! So the adjunct called the company, ‘Send someone over! You have a new Commanding Officer!’ So they did and I went in. I went in the First Sergeant’s room and sat down. We had a First Sergeant who the senior, non-commissioned Officer. He was a Staff Sergeant, one rocker. Eventually as I got to know him, I said, ‘Where is the First Sergeant?’ A First Sergeant is two rockers. He said ‘He is down at the Motor Pool’. ‘Motor Pool?’ ‘Yeah, the guns needed cleaning, he took a detail.’ ‘Well, who is running this outfit?!’ I learned that that Staff Sergeant was a stevedore off the docks of New York and he was running it! The First Sergeant was taking orders from a non-commissioned staff Sergeant.

So I got rid of the First Sergeant, made this guy the First Sergeant, and so on. 

Sara interjects ‘I bet they loved you!’

VJ Day

I was in Kemnitz, Germany. I was in South Hampton, loading the Queen Mary when the Japanese surrendered. Another thing on VJ day, puzzled. I never saw so many fireworks over the harbor, over the bay than that night. Where those GI’s got all of the fireworks, I’ll never know. They weren’t fireworks – they were machine gun shells! And everything of that nature. The sky was all lit up. But where these GI’s – we called them GI’s, government issued, enlisted men/personnel.

Where they got all the ammunition, I’ll never know. But I stood on the decks of Queen Mary and the whole sky lit up with machine gun fire. They were celebrating the dropping of the atomic bomb. That’s what they were doing.

We were married in Columbus, Georgia and the Supply Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, a GI, I guess it was my last day at work; I was a Captain at the time. He said, ‘The Captain will have a need for some linens.’ And he had scrounged linens. He took bed sheets and cut them in half. And he turned in two halves and got two whole sheets! He scrounged that way. These GI’s will do that! So he gave me two solid sheets, which he had gotten from the supply, you know. They are full of those things!

So where they got all the ammunition to light up the harbor, I will never know.

Smoke Screen over the Sauer River

I was in Echternach. Echternach is a town in Luxembourg. I was with an infantry outfitting General Patton’s third army and on the night of February 6th and 7th, we were scheduled to cross the Sauer River and into and through the Siegfried line – with all the pill boxes you have read about in history and so on. We had moved up under the cover of darkness and were ready to put the boats in the water.

An EXCELLENT smoke screen was created along the banks of the river. And we actually put the boats in the water under the smoke screen and we got halfway across under the smoke screen before the Germans knew we were coming. We took advantage of everything we could from this smoke screen. We heavy casualties, sure, but years passed, years passed. I am at a meeting of a Service Club in West Chester and they introduced me to a fellow, I’m trying to think of his name – black man.

He said, ‘You were in WWII, where did you go?’ I said, ‘Went to Europe.’ He said, ‘Where?’ and I started telling him. And I learned at that moment, that that black man was one of those that put up that smoke screen. He put up the smoke screen.

The black troops in WWII were used in that capacity: to drive trucks, put up smoke screens, etc. They were not used in the close combat situation. They were used for things of that nature.

How many years later was that?
Well D-Day was June 6th, 1944, and then was shortly thereafter.

PSC Senior Canvas Jacket

Self Drawn!

Front

Back

Sleeve: First two names are his roommates.

Zoomed:

PSC Entrance: Via the Registrar himself!

How did you get into the military? 

When I graduated I hadn't the faintest idea what I wanted to do. The principal at the high school said, ‘You ought to go to college!’ I was 5th in a class of 126, so he said, ‘You ought to go to college!’. [Sara: I’m not surprised!] I said, ‘Where?’. He said ‘Well, they have a good school up at Penn State. It’s a land-grant college’. And I didn't know what ANYTHING meant. He said, ‘I’ll see that you get an application’. So I got an application, filled it out. Didn't hear a thing. Didn't hear a thing. The summer went by, its September. Didn't hear anything. And my mother and father, we didn't know what to do! So I enrolled in Pierce Business School in Philadelphia. Took a train from Valley Forge into Philadelphia to go to Pierce Business School. Ugh! Didn't like it at all! And I’m home one weekend, I ran into my high school principal. He said, ‘How’d ya make out?’ I said, ‘I didn't hear a thing.’ ‘Didn't hear a thing?! That means they didn't accept you.’ I said, ‘Okay, okay.’ He said, ‘Let me give them a call.’ So he called them and I get a telegram. And that telegram said to report IMMEDIATELY – this is the middle of October. So my mother and father picked me up. Put a footlocker in the trunk and away we went! I forget how many hours we rode, and we were only 5 miles from home. We had taken the wrong turn! This is before they had route signs! (IE: Route 322) And so we wound up in Downingtown and its daylight. So turned the car, headed north, went to Penn State.

I was overwhelmed by the campus, but we found Old Main, the principal administrative building. And first person we talked to, I told them what the problem was and they took me down to the registrar’s office. So I walked in, whoever I don’t know, I told them my name was Howard Busch. Their eyes lit up, ‘Ohhh, yes!’ They took me in, my mother and my father and they brought out the registrar himself! And he sat across the room, the table, from me and apologized that they had made a mistake. They had given somebody else my grades, my high school grades, and refused me admission. He was so apologetic, and carrying on and on and on. It was almost embarrassing. I just wanted to go to school! He said to me, ‘Howard, what is it you plan to study?’ and I was as silent as you are. There were no such things as guidance counselors in those days. But I knew I liked to fool with trees, cutting trees, eh, this and that, so I blurted out, ‘Forestry!’ He said, ‘Fine. The freshmen forester’s spent their first year at Mont Alto. There is a military man taking a car to Mont Alto tomorrow. We will put you in a dorm tonight and tomorrow morning you will go to Mont Alto.’ So I got caught up, they gave me an ROTC uniform and I was in business.

I took a minimum, absolute minimum, in forestry courses. I took everything else in civil engineering, that’s what I enjoyed. And that’s what I did. I did a very little bit of forestry, but I enjoyed the civil engineering.

The depression was still fading away, it was still active. This was fall of 1934 and there was still depression there. I graduated 1938, and jobs were still scarce. But there was a man from the Soil Conservation Service who came to Penn State and went to the Dean’s Office and he wanted to pick up 3, actually, student trainees for the summer. And so, they gave him my name along with two others, an interview, and I got a job at the Soil Conservation Service on the basis on my degree in forestry. They sent me to Lancaster. Lancaster, PA where they had a CCC camp – Civilian Conservation Corps – doing work on farms, and so on. They didn't know I was coming, that’s how well organized everything was. I always thought that they closed the door and talked among themselves and said, ‘what are we going to do with that kid that came in here?’ They agreed that they would send me out among the Amish. So I go my first work among the Amish of Lancaster County – enjoyed every moment of it. When the three months were up, they extended it, and they extended it. And finally after 18 months, they said, ‘We can’t do any more of this extending. It’s just not in our authority to do that.’ So I took an engineering job, went to work for the War Department, Civil Engineer. And that’s where I was until the summer of 1941. My roommate, close friend, Eugene Forquer, we were both distinguished military graduates from the ROTC program of Penn State, and we always kept in touch. He was from Washington, PA, Carmichaels. So Gene and I sat up all night, ya know, when you’re 22 years old you know everything in the world, you know what’s going to happen, we sat up all night, when daylight came - this was in 1941 - we said to each other, there’s a war coming and we are going to be involved. Let’s go in now so we have a choice of what we do.

So we called Fort Meade the next morning, and they were anxious to get two 2nd Lieutenant Infantry. Real anxious! ‘Come on down, come on down!’ so we waited a day until we got caught up on our sleep and then we went down. They said to Gene, ‘We’ll take you right now, if you’re ready’. They looked at me and said, ‘We have to get a release from the War Department, you’re doing engineering work for them, they have their rights to you for 60 days. We can’t take you until after the 60 day period has expired.’ So Gene and I separated. We had gone arm in arm together, ya know, in the service. So we went outside, talked it over. We came to the conclusion that Gene would go and I would catch up with him later on. [Long pause] That is the last I saw of Gene. He went in. Was assigned to the Pacific Theatre, died on a prison ship on the way to Japan, a rough way to go. They took me in September and first to Fort Meade, and then to Fort Benning and then to other places and then I went to Europe. That was the last I saw of Gene. Kept in touch with his mother for a short period of time. But that was it. So life puts you through a lot of different experiences.

[Sara interjects: they sent you down to me! Fort Benning!] We met on July the 25th, 1943.

MOWW

I am involved with an organization called the Military Order of the World Wars. It was created in 1919 by General Jack Pershing of the WWI. The American Expeditionary Forces in Europe during WWI. The organization is on the decline. It consisted of WWI veterans, WWII veterans, we picked up a few from Korea, and very few from Vietnam... they have their own organization and they just aren't oriented towards a bunch of old, WWII veterans. But we do exist and we work for scholarships for ROTC and things of that nature. We have a memorial fund right now close to 300,000 dollars and we have a $36,000 budget every year. 94% of the budget goes toward ROTC scholarships. There are 12-13 schools – University of Pennsylvania, Widener, Drexel, Temple, I would have to think about it – have ROTC programs. There are also junior ROTC, for high school. I guess there are now 6 of them here in Chester County. The school board pays the salaries and provides the room and they are very successful. They have to have 100 students to be maintained. They are a very active group. So we are able to take them to lunch once a year. All the schools, different months. In February, we bring the Marines... and in March we bring the Navy... and so on, to a central place and have a military speaker from their branch of the service who provides a good day for them. I've kept active in that capacity.

ROTC at PSC

How many years total did you serve in the Army? 
38 years. Of course that goes back to the days I graduated from Penn State!

How was the ROTC program at Penn State? 
Aside from the actual education and classes itself, what was the additional training?
We had an armory at Penn State. So those of us that were seniors were doing a lot of the instructing. We went to summer camp after our junior year at Penn State. I went to school every summer. Once to forestry school/camp, once to military training, and once to engineering camp – so I had all three summers filled up. We were 3 months at Fort Washington down near Bowling Field in Virginia for military. 3 months living in pyramidal tents, sleeping on folding cots, and it was a good experience, it was a good experience. Those of us that were in ROTC spent any free time we had in the armory. That’s where our buddies where! As so that’s where we spent our time.

On graduation from college:
When we graduated we were commissions BEFORE graduation. The professor of military, science and tactics were schred enough to swear us in to get a date of rank that was earlier than most of the ones graduating from college. So we had an earlier dated rank. On graduation day, when we went across the stage with our sabers, and shook the president, just like everyone else.