Wallace "Wally" C. Barker, a long-time Battle Ground resident, will never forget the first day he was sent to the front after joining the US Army during World War II.
"I remember the day I went to the front,’’ he said. "I wasn’t scared; it didn’t bother me a bit. I thought the war would be over in nothin’ flat. We started to go up through the mountains of Italy, and there come these weapons carriers down with boots sticking out the back. They’re bringing down the dead. Right then I began to think, ‘What in the heck am I getting into.’ "
Barker was drafted into the US Army in April of 1943 while attending the University of Washington.
"I wasn’t scared a bit,’’ Barker said recently, recalling his entry into the Army. "I didn’t think I needed to worry because I was under the impression that the British pushed the Germans out of Africa. I was kind of ambivalent about the whole thing."
Barker was first sent to Fort Bragg, NC to the field artillery training school. After 13 weeks of training he was transported to Fort A.P. Hill, VA. From there, he was sent to a troop transport in Chesapeake Bay and crossed the Atlantic.
After arriving in North Africa at the "Iron Mountain" replacement depot, he was shipped out to Naples, Italy. Barker was then packed into what he described as a cattle truck and sent to the front.
Once he reached the front and was assigned to his unit, A Battery of the 158th Field Artillery Battalion of the 45th Infantry Division, he remembered seeing a forward observer who had been hit by mortar fire and brought back down from the front.
"He said, ‘I know you guys are feeling sorry for me, but I’m the one who feels sorry for you,’’ Barker remembered the soldier said. "I’m going home and you’re going out to fight this stinking war.’ We were then pulled back in order to go to Anzio, which was Churchill’s baby. It was a big mistake in my opinion.
"We would move forward a hundred yards and they’d push us back a hundred yards,’’ Barker said. "They outnumbered us nine-to-one in our sector. It was just like World War I, just a miserable place to be. It seemed like we were being used as target practice.
"It was here at Anzio where my hearing problem started,’’ Barker said. "A German plane (probably Heinkel He 111) dropped a 500-pound bomb about 20 yards from where I was. I would have been sent home but a German counterattack had just started. I felt guilty so I started packing ammunition behind our lines."
Barker talked about the dangerous task of transporting ammunition at Anzio, under German artillery fire. He feels the Germans had superior weapons and technology, mentioning the Krupp K5 railway gun. The Americans had nicknamed it "Anzio Annie." He also got a chance to hear "Axis Sally" on the radio trying to dishearten Allied soldiers.
"The Germans had a railway gun called ‘Anzio Annie,’ along with 280mm mortars. ‘Axis Sally’ and the dropping of leaflets were German propaganda used during the war. They weren’t very affective but they spoke very much the truth," Barker said.
After Anzio he was part of the amphibious invasion of southern France, Operation Dragoon.
"We brought these huge barges with thousands of rockets on them, firing onshore,’’ Barker said. "The Germans had guns onshore big enough for me to stick my head inside, but they didn’t fire a shot. They knew we were coming. Then later, we had quite a battle at Aschaffenburg, Germany. This was a training place for the Waffen SS."
Once into Germany his division liberated Dachau concentration camp.
"We were the first ones in the camp,’’ Barker said. "There’s been so much dang controversy over who liberated the camp. Every division in the Army has claimed they liberated the camp. But we were there and had it secured before anybody else came in."
Barker is thankful he went through the war without being seriously wounded. He rarely slept in a bed for two years. He also didn’t approve of the discrepancy between the officers and the enlisted men.
"It bothered me,’’ he said. "It was like being a blind follower."
Barker is frustrated by the censorship of the terrible things he saw, and the terrible things about war; either in letters written home by soldiers, or in the books and movies about the war since.
"I never felt proud of doing what I was doing, although I did feel proud of being a part of the 45th,’’ Barker said. "It wasn’t until I started reading literature on the conflict that I understood how insane war really was. It’s not only insane, it is immoral and it promotes its own evil. The killing of so many innocent civilians; their only sin was that they were in the wrong place at the right time.
"When I got home I had to register for Korea. I was so mad, I didn’t want to go. I put in my time. So I threw my discharge on the floor and stomped on it. It seems to me we haven’t learned much from war. Why haven’t we been able to function without war?"
