Jose Noe Mendez
Battle of the
Bulge veteran
Jose Noe Mendez
Technical Sergeant, U.S. Army
1940-1963
TSgt. Jose Noe Mendez
Germany, 1946
I had come from Texas, I was 7,000 miles from home and I didn’t come over here to surrender to anybody.
I was born in Tampico, Mexico in 1925 and we moved to Texas. My grandfather had a ranch in Duval County. I grew up milking cows, trapping animals and selling skins. I went to school through eighth grade and wanted to be an aircraft engine mechanic. My dad and his brothers were mechanics. At 17, I came to Corpus Christi and went to the Navy aircraft engine school. I was one of the top mechanics.
When I was drafted, I wanted the Army Air Corps. I ended up on the front lines in Germany in November, 1944 with the 1st Infantry Division in the Hürtgen Forest. We took a real bad beating there and lost about half of the group. I was put in for a Medal for saving my squad, but I had a problem with my lieutenant. We got ambushed by the Germans and my lieutenant wanted to surrender. I told him I had come from Texas, I was 7,000 miles from home and I didn’t come over here to surrender to anybody. I had an idea our guys would hear us shooting and they would come help us out. Just before daylight we started firing our guns. They heard us and the Germans shooting back. Here comes a tank with eight infantrymen behind it.
After 28 days in the forest we got a break. I was assigned to a machine gun squad. Then the Germans broke the lines at the Battle of the Bulge. We went past Bastogne, north of the Bulge and dug in. On Christmas the snow started coming in heavy. The German patrols were sneaking through the lines at night and we had to keep them back. The temperature dropped so low that everything froze. We were ordered to ram the bolt of our machine gun every ten minutes to keep it working. If the Germans had known our guns weren’t functioning, they would’ve come after us.
I was wounded in January, 1945 and spent two months in the hospital in England. I got a purple heart and three battle stars—Hürtgen, the Bulge and Central Europe. Patton sent word to the hospital saying, “Any man that can walk, I need him back in Germany.” They released us and gave us 10 days to get back to our outfits. We had no money and didn’t know anybody. We were like stray cats. I took a train to the English Channel, got to France and traveled by convoy to my unit.
We were in Nuremberg when the war ended and had a big powwow with the Russians for three days. We were assigned as guards at the Nuremberg trials, then they sent me to Frankfurt. The captain knew I was a mechanic and they needed a transportation officer. He gave me 16 men and 7 vehicles. I was spoiled. I was like a little king. I had plenty of gasoline and supplies. I spent almost a year there. When I was discharged in 1947, I was a tech sergeant.
I came back to the ranch in Texas. It was hard for Hispanics in those days. I came back fighting for my rights. We organized a group called the Freedom Party in Benavides and we applied for government assistance to open a veteran’s school for mechanics. At one time we had 112 students. Later I went to work for a dealership in Alice as a mechanic for two years and got married. My wife and I were married 62 years. I came to Corpus Christi and worked at the Naval air station. Then I operated my own shop called Mendez Automatic Transmission for 47 years. {09-13-2019 • Corpus Christi, TX}