Joe Genualdi
Battle of the Bulge
Joe Genualdi
Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army
1943–1969
1stLt. Joe Genualdi
Korea, 1951
We landed in France on December 16, 1944. We would be joining General Patton’s Third Army in Bastogne.
I was born in Chicago on October 19, 1924. My parents were in an accident with a streetcar that day and I was born premature. I spent several months in an incubator. My aunts said that when my parents took me home, I fit in one of my grandfather’s cigar boxes.
In 1926 my father and grandfather bought a farm northwest of Chicago. I sold fruit and vegetables with my grandpa and worked on a neighbor’s farm. I graduated from high school in 1942. I wanted to enlist in the Army Air Corps, but I was only 17. My father wouldn’t give me permission. In late 1942, the draft age changed from 21 to 18. I received orders to report to Fort Sheridan in January, 1943.
I was one of two men selected from 400 to attend the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program. After a month of school my mother died. When I returned from the funeral I was too far behind to catch up. The captain sent me to Santa Clara University to start over. When the semester ended, we learned the military was closing the program for engineering students.
We joined the 11th Armored Division, and on September 29, 1944 we headed to England. I visited London on a 3-day pass. The sight of bombed-out buildings and the sound of German V2 rockets was my first impression of the war. I became the company commander’s Jeep driver. I drove in all weather with the windshield down and no lights.
We landed in France on December 16, 1944. We would be joining General Patton’s Third Army in Bastogne, Belgium. On December 23 we arrived in the combat zone. We drove parallel to the front line for four hours listening to the guns. My first night in the combat area another soldier and I were ordered to stand guard at the edge of the woods. My companion wouldn’t stop talking and I was afraid the Germans would hear us.
During the Battle of the Bulge our company provided ammunition to the artillery batteries. The armored division broke through German lines and was heading east. The captain decided to go back to the ammo depot with four trucks to pick up ammunition. As we followed the route the division had taken, we came upon a village with German vehicles and soldiers carrying rifles. We couldn’t turn back because of the trucks behind us. The Germans didn’t seem to pay attention to us and we went through without either side firing a shot. How lucky can you get?
We were near the Rhine River—wine country. An infantry unit had just liberated a wine cellar and soldiers were giving each vehicle a few bottles of wine. Just before the war ended, one of our patrols came across the concentration camp of Mauthausen. The Austrians from the village were rounded up and made to visit the camp. They claimed they didn’t know that such things were going on there.
On May 8, 1945 the war in Europe ended. For about a month I was assigned the duty of taking an officer around Austria to find quarters for general officers. Finally we found a castle with modern conveniences adequate for a conquering general. The 11th Armored Division was disbanded and I was reassigned to a signal battalion going to the Pacific. Fortunately, the war ended before we shipped out. I then became part of the Army Occupation of Germany.
I was discharged on March 12, 1946. I worked for a small mail order company and I went to school. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and accepted a regular Army commission in the Corps of Engineers as a second lieutenant. I later received my master’s in civil engineering.
I served in both Korea and Vietnam and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1969. {04-10-2019 • San Antonio, TX}