PFC John E. Seidell
U.S. Army - Infantry
45th Infantry Division
France, Germany
1942 - 1946
U.S. Army - Infantry
45th Infantry Division
France, Germany
1942 - 1946
John Seidell was born in Springfield, MA in 1924. John and his family lived in West Springfield, MA. He was one of 11 children and that seemed normal to him since there were two families in the neighborhood with 12 children each. Three of his younger brothers served in the military after the conclusion of WW2. West Springfield had two major industries. Gilbarco was a major manufacturer that made boilers for ships and gasoline pumps for service stations. It was also a major train hub for transporting commercial products. At this time there was still a significant amount of farmland.
John’s father had a job with the Town of West Springfield working on the trucks. There he learned how to be a mechanic. John recalled helping his father. It was his job to clean the oil pans on the vehicles. “At that time if you had the money to buy a car you were really well off, but you didn’t have the money to change the oil. That pan had grit about this thick. That was my job to clean that thing up.” During the depression jobs were scarce. “If you found a job as a policeman or in the post office or as a custodian boy, you were set for life.”
His father usually had three jobs to make sure the family had enough money. During the Depression. John said “in the neighborhood we lived in we were all poor”. My father always had a joke and said to my mother ‘did you wave a chicken over the pot to make this soup?’ We always had food and clean cloths. You had new cloths for school and Easter.” John recalled that if you didn’t have food at home, you could get a bean sandwich in school. “We always had a lot of gardens.” As World War II approached his father found a job as a machinist at the Bosch Manufacturing Company in Springfield.
In 1941 Pearl Harbor was bombed. John recalled the student body being assembled in the school auditorium Principal Cowing announced the news in school. “It was unbelievable. We all thought, how could the United States be attacked? We were very patriotic and thought we had the best military. Then it turned to anger.” I asked John about the feeing in the country was at the beginning of the war. “It was always we were going to win.”
John remembered Eugene, his next door neighborhood. “All he wanted to do was join the Navy and be in submarines. He was an only child and his parents doated on him.” Eugene enlisted in the Navy and his parents eventually received a telegram from the War Department that they believed he was lost at sea.
John Graduated from West Springfield High School in 1942 and tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps. Everyone thought being an Airman would be glamorous and there was always a long line at the recruiting station. John was unsuccessful in volunteering, and he eventually received his draft notice and was ordered to report to Fort Devens. Just before he was to leave to report for duty his sister Peewee contracted Scarlet Fever. Concerned he would also contract scarlet fever; the Army told him not to live at home. John went to live with his grandmother in Springfield. Grandma Nickols home was like a resort. A big library of books to read, he had his own bed and there was candy and fresh fruit. All good things must come to an end and the Health Department gave him the ok to report to Fort Devens. When he arrived, his original group had already departed and somehow his records were misplaced. He remained at Fort Devens for two extra weeks and was officially inducted on February 17, 1943.
John went through Basic Training and was then sent to William Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso, Texas. He went through eight weeks of training to be a surgical technician. He was then sent to Ashman General Hospital in McKinney, Texas. Life was rather routine and “boring at times”. John and a group of buddies decided to apply to become air cadets. John passed the physical, hearing and eye exams. He passed the aptitude test and the last test to take was a written exam. Before he could take the last test, he received orders to ship out immediately. John is sure the Army sent them off to the infantry to keep them out of the Air Corps.
John was sent by train to New Orleans for infantry training. This training was much more intense than boot camp. Extensive training in shooting his rifle and using grenade launchers. “It was the real thing.” John was assigned to carry and use the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). John recalled weighing 140 pounds and it felt to him like the BAR weighed the same. At the conclusion of training the soldiers were loaded into trains and taken to board the Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic. “It was a beautiful ship with a ballroom.”
On the second night of the voyage a German submarine was tracking them. The ship had to take evasive action by zig zagging rather than sailing in a straight, predictable course. There was plenty of food, but it was very bland. The ship docked in Northern Scotland and the troops loaded onto a blackened-out train. When the train came to a stop, they found themselves in Southampton, UK. From there they loaded onto local fishing boats for a rough ride across the English Channel. The seasick GI’s step onto land in Le Harve, France sometime after September 1944. Le Harve is on the northern coast of France at the mouth of the Seine River. The troops checked into Camp Chesterfield.
John recalled all the receiving camps were named after cigarette brands. In a stroke of marketing genius, the American tobacco companies provided the GI’s with small packages of two cigarettes when they arrived at their camp. This was the first introduction to smoking for many GI’s. Back home, many of these GI’s would not have been able to afford to buy cigarettes.
John recalls France being very peaceful at the time he arrived. Soon after arriving John recalls boarding a boxcar referred to as “a 40 and 8”, meaning it could hold eight horses or 40 people. John recalls traveling through the French countryside. Many of the simple home were burned or showed other signs of the combat. There were a few farm animals. Those animals he saw were all looking uncared for and undernourished. At every stop along the way the French people were looking to sell or barter for just about anything. The ravages of war had left them with little to subsist on. The children loved to receive American chocolate and the adults often used cigarettes as currency. The GI’s often found three or four missing from the pack. The French had learned to remove the cigarettes and use a match to reseal the cellophane. Of course, the GI’s learned to place full packs of cigarettes on the top of the carton and empty packs filled with stones or sand on the bottom layer. Buyer beware, as all is fair in love and war.
As John and his unit made their way through France and Germany. On their way to Munich, they encountered very little resistance. One night they came under a grenade attack but they were safely in foxholes and there were no injuries. There was an encounter with a 14 year old Nazi sniper who surrendered when his overwatch position came under Allied canon fire.
When the 45th Division arrived in Munich they found a city in shambles. Most buildings in the downtown area had been completely destroyed and those that weren’t completely destroyed were eerie shells. No streetlights, no sidewalks, no fire hydrants and virtually no populace. Rubble, debris and garbage everywhere. Army Engineers used bulldozers to clear the streets. The mission of the 45th was to secure and guard certain sites where the Nazi’s had stored records. The concern was the records would be stolen or set on fire in order cover up the atrocities committed over the last several years.
The 45th also had responsibility round up the Displaced Person (DP) and put them into DP camps. They guarded the DP camps to make sure the DP’s didn’t wander off. The concern was the DP’s would track down and beat or kill the Germans who had held many of these people in forced labor roles.
While on patrol in Munich they entered a very old Cathedral that, aside from a hole in the roof and a two foot burn mark from an incendiary bomb, had somehow emerged from the bombing mostly intact. The GI’s headed up to the belfry tower that the Nazi’s had once used as an observation tower and sniper position. On the way down a small man surprised the GI’s and was quite fortunate that he was not shot. The man was the curator and he offered to give them a tour. The GI’s gave the curator some chocolate as payment for their tour.
The war ended on May 7, 1945 and the troops started to head back to the USA. John took a train from Munich to France where he boarded the Algonquin which he described as a troop ship with none of the luxuries he had on the trip over. After another rough trip the seasick GI’s disembarked in the states and their seasickness disappeared. John took a train to Fort Devens and was discharged two weeks later.
John and his high school classmate John Cotton took a train to Springfield and arrived at 2am. No buses or taxis could be found at that hour, so they decided to walk down the middle of Main Street with their duffle bags slung over their shoulders and singing Army songs. When John reached his house at 126 Orchard Street, he received a big welcome. His family was waiting up for him when he arrived before the sunrise. “Everyone was happy to see me back and the neighbors were bringing over casseroles and cake. It was a very nice, warm welcome.” He took off his uniform and dog tags and put them away. “I had done my time; I served the country and that was the end. Now I had to get on with my life and I think that’s what most of the GI’s figured. We’d been two years, three years and four years nonproductive for our personal advancement for marriage and kids and so on.” It was time for the next chapter in life.
Before John left for the service, he met his future wife Leatrice. He was in Hinsdale, New Hampshire to say goodbye to his aunt and uncle. John’s cousin asked her friend Leatrice to come and help entertain her cousin. They all went to the movies and had a bite to eat and “I was really taken with her.” John and Leatrice wrote to each other every chance they could over the course of John’s enlistment. The couple was married in 1946 and had two sons and a daughter over their 60 years of marriage. John now has six grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren. John recalls Leatrice was a fabulous cook and a terrific Gardener.
John looked back at the years ’41 through ‘46 and recalled, “We had pride we were serving our country. We never thought we would get out of the country. It was a big adventure. We thought if we got a good job at the post office, that was the extend of our horizon. When all the GI’s came back, they said, ‘we can do a helluva lot better. We can outpace our grandfathers and our fathers and our uncles’. The other thing that came through was the GI Bill. That was a Godsend.”
John used the GI Bill, went to college, and decided to become a teacher. He had a 38 year career as a teacher and a principal at the elementary school level. John had some advice on how to have a long and happy marriage. “You always have to be kind and considerate of your mate, occasionally bring flowers for no reason, when you come home have a big hug and when the kids go to bed have a 30 second dance.”
John also authored ‘From 126 and Back in 2 Years – 10 Months – 22 Days.’ This is his memoirs of his time in the military. The reference to 126 is his address, 126 orchard Street, West Springfield, MA.
Thank you, John, for your military service and sacrificing four years of your life. You helped save the world from tyranny and oppression.
John’s father had a job with the Town of West Springfield working on the trucks. There he learned how to be a mechanic. John recalled helping his father. It was his job to clean the oil pans on the vehicles. “At that time if you had the money to buy a car you were really well off, but you didn’t have the money to change the oil. That pan had grit about this thick. That was my job to clean that thing up.” During the depression jobs were scarce. “If you found a job as a policeman or in the post office or as a custodian boy, you were set for life.”
His father usually had three jobs to make sure the family had enough money. During the Depression. John said “in the neighborhood we lived in we were all poor”. My father always had a joke and said to my mother ‘did you wave a chicken over the pot to make this soup?’ We always had food and clean cloths. You had new cloths for school and Easter.” John recalled that if you didn’t have food at home, you could get a bean sandwich in school. “We always had a lot of gardens.” As World War II approached his father found a job as a machinist at the Bosch Manufacturing Company in Springfield.
In 1941 Pearl Harbor was bombed. John recalled the student body being assembled in the school auditorium Principal Cowing announced the news in school. “It was unbelievable. We all thought, how could the United States be attacked? We were very patriotic and thought we had the best military. Then it turned to anger.” I asked John about the feeing in the country was at the beginning of the war. “It was always we were going to win.”
John remembered Eugene, his next door neighborhood. “All he wanted to do was join the Navy and be in submarines. He was an only child and his parents doated on him.” Eugene enlisted in the Navy and his parents eventually received a telegram from the War Department that they believed he was lost at sea.
John Graduated from West Springfield High School in 1942 and tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps. Everyone thought being an Airman would be glamorous and there was always a long line at the recruiting station. John was unsuccessful in volunteering, and he eventually received his draft notice and was ordered to report to Fort Devens. Just before he was to leave to report for duty his sister Peewee contracted Scarlet Fever. Concerned he would also contract scarlet fever; the Army told him not to live at home. John went to live with his grandmother in Springfield. Grandma Nickols home was like a resort. A big library of books to read, he had his own bed and there was candy and fresh fruit. All good things must come to an end and the Health Department gave him the ok to report to Fort Devens. When he arrived, his original group had already departed and somehow his records were misplaced. He remained at Fort Devens for two extra weeks and was officially inducted on February 17, 1943.
John went through Basic Training and was then sent to William Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso, Texas. He went through eight weeks of training to be a surgical technician. He was then sent to Ashman General Hospital in McKinney, Texas. Life was rather routine and “boring at times”. John and a group of buddies decided to apply to become air cadets. John passed the physical, hearing and eye exams. He passed the aptitude test and the last test to take was a written exam. Before he could take the last test, he received orders to ship out immediately. John is sure the Army sent them off to the infantry to keep them out of the Air Corps.
John was sent by train to New Orleans for infantry training. This training was much more intense than boot camp. Extensive training in shooting his rifle and using grenade launchers. “It was the real thing.” John was assigned to carry and use the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). John recalled weighing 140 pounds and it felt to him like the BAR weighed the same. At the conclusion of training the soldiers were loaded into trains and taken to board the Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic. “It was a beautiful ship with a ballroom.”
On the second night of the voyage a German submarine was tracking them. The ship had to take evasive action by zig zagging rather than sailing in a straight, predictable course. There was plenty of food, but it was very bland. The ship docked in Northern Scotland and the troops loaded onto a blackened-out train. When the train came to a stop, they found themselves in Southampton, UK. From there they loaded onto local fishing boats for a rough ride across the English Channel. The seasick GI’s step onto land in Le Harve, France sometime after September 1944. Le Harve is on the northern coast of France at the mouth of the Seine River. The troops checked into Camp Chesterfield.
John recalled all the receiving camps were named after cigarette brands. In a stroke of marketing genius, the American tobacco companies provided the GI’s with small packages of two cigarettes when they arrived at their camp. This was the first introduction to smoking for many GI’s. Back home, many of these GI’s would not have been able to afford to buy cigarettes.
John recalls France being very peaceful at the time he arrived. Soon after arriving John recalls boarding a boxcar referred to as “a 40 and 8”, meaning it could hold eight horses or 40 people. John recalls traveling through the French countryside. Many of the simple home were burned or showed other signs of the combat. There were a few farm animals. Those animals he saw were all looking uncared for and undernourished. At every stop along the way the French people were looking to sell or barter for just about anything. The ravages of war had left them with little to subsist on. The children loved to receive American chocolate and the adults often used cigarettes as currency. The GI’s often found three or four missing from the pack. The French had learned to remove the cigarettes and use a match to reseal the cellophane. Of course, the GI’s learned to place full packs of cigarettes on the top of the carton and empty packs filled with stones or sand on the bottom layer. Buyer beware, as all is fair in love and war.
As John and his unit made their way through France and Germany. On their way to Munich, they encountered very little resistance. One night they came under a grenade attack but they were safely in foxholes and there were no injuries. There was an encounter with a 14 year old Nazi sniper who surrendered when his overwatch position came under Allied canon fire.
When the 45th Division arrived in Munich they found a city in shambles. Most buildings in the downtown area had been completely destroyed and those that weren’t completely destroyed were eerie shells. No streetlights, no sidewalks, no fire hydrants and virtually no populace. Rubble, debris and garbage everywhere. Army Engineers used bulldozers to clear the streets. The mission of the 45th was to secure and guard certain sites where the Nazi’s had stored records. The concern was the records would be stolen or set on fire in order cover up the atrocities committed over the last several years.
The 45th also had responsibility round up the Displaced Person (DP) and put them into DP camps. They guarded the DP camps to make sure the DP’s didn’t wander off. The concern was the DP’s would track down and beat or kill the Germans who had held many of these people in forced labor roles.
While on patrol in Munich they entered a very old Cathedral that, aside from a hole in the roof and a two foot burn mark from an incendiary bomb, had somehow emerged from the bombing mostly intact. The GI’s headed up to the belfry tower that the Nazi’s had once used as an observation tower and sniper position. On the way down a small man surprised the GI’s and was quite fortunate that he was not shot. The man was the curator and he offered to give them a tour. The GI’s gave the curator some chocolate as payment for their tour.
The war ended on May 7, 1945 and the troops started to head back to the USA. John took a train from Munich to France where he boarded the Algonquin which he described as a troop ship with none of the luxuries he had on the trip over. After another rough trip the seasick GI’s disembarked in the states and their seasickness disappeared. John took a train to Fort Devens and was discharged two weeks later.
John and his high school classmate John Cotton took a train to Springfield and arrived at 2am. No buses or taxis could be found at that hour, so they decided to walk down the middle of Main Street with their duffle bags slung over their shoulders and singing Army songs. When John reached his house at 126 Orchard Street, he received a big welcome. His family was waiting up for him when he arrived before the sunrise. “Everyone was happy to see me back and the neighbors were bringing over casseroles and cake. It was a very nice, warm welcome.” He took off his uniform and dog tags and put them away. “I had done my time; I served the country and that was the end. Now I had to get on with my life and I think that’s what most of the GI’s figured. We’d been two years, three years and four years nonproductive for our personal advancement for marriage and kids and so on.” It was time for the next chapter in life.
Before John left for the service, he met his future wife Leatrice. He was in Hinsdale, New Hampshire to say goodbye to his aunt and uncle. John’s cousin asked her friend Leatrice to come and help entertain her cousin. They all went to the movies and had a bite to eat and “I was really taken with her.” John and Leatrice wrote to each other every chance they could over the course of John’s enlistment. The couple was married in 1946 and had two sons and a daughter over their 60 years of marriage. John now has six grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren. John recalls Leatrice was a fabulous cook and a terrific Gardener.
John looked back at the years ’41 through ‘46 and recalled, “We had pride we were serving our country. We never thought we would get out of the country. It was a big adventure. We thought if we got a good job at the post office, that was the extend of our horizon. When all the GI’s came back, they said, ‘we can do a helluva lot better. We can outpace our grandfathers and our fathers and our uncles’. The other thing that came through was the GI Bill. That was a Godsend.”
John used the GI Bill, went to college, and decided to become a teacher. He had a 38 year career as a teacher and a principal at the elementary school level. John had some advice on how to have a long and happy marriage. “You always have to be kind and considerate of your mate, occasionally bring flowers for no reason, when you come home have a big hug and when the kids go to bed have a 30 second dance.”
John also authored ‘From 126 and Back in 2 Years – 10 Months – 22 Days.’ This is his memoirs of his time in the military. The reference to 126 is his address, 126 orchard Street, West Springfield, MA.
Thank you, John, for your military service and sacrificing four years of your life. You helped save the world from tyranny and oppression.