When I was a child, I once asked my father, Artemus Edgar Ward II, the date upon which the tide of World War Two turned against the Axis powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan.
“It happened on September 9, 1942,” he answered me.
“What happened then?”
“I was drafted into the United States Army.”
He was, of course, joking, but he certainly did his part. Soon after reporting for basic training at the Presidio in Monterey, California, my father began to notice a disparity between his living conditions and those of commissioned officers. “Why can’t I become one of them?” he thought. Without any college education, he had scored an outstanding 139 out of 160 in the Army General Classification Test (AGCT), which all new army recruits took upon entrance. His platoon sergeant soon saw his potential. It didn’t hurt that the sergeant was also a jazz aficionado, as was my father. He recommended Private Ward for Officer Candidate School (OCS).
Upon graduation from twelve weeks of basic training, my father commenced OCS on January 2, 1943, at Camp Barkey in Abilene, Texas. He received his commission as a Second Lieutenant twelve weeks later on March 24, 1943. From there he went to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas for ten weeks of medical corps specialty training. After two weeks of leave, he reported for his first assignment at Camp Grant, Illinois, where he served as a basic training platoon leader and an instructor in chemical warfare.
His “favorite” activity at Camp Grant was in an igloo shaped room called The Gas Chamber. He would lead a contingent of men wearing gas masks into it. The door was shut and the room was filled with tear gas. The men had to remove their masks, open the door, and exit. As the officer in charge, my father had to be the last man out. He also enjoyed leading the new recruits in his platoon on full pack hikes. The jaunts were three miles at the beginning of training, stretching to twenty-five by the end.
A war was raging and my father couldn’t stay in America forever. In July he departed from Norfolk, Virginia for Casablanca, Morocco, his first overseas duty station, where he arrived on August 7, 1943. His first job was as a courier, delivering sealed orders to officers all over North Africa and the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. On one of those excursions, he was aboard a two-engine DC3 bound for Corsica. Over the Mediterranean one of the engines quit. They made it to Corsica and no one was hurt despite a rough landing.
In early October he received a permanent assignment as commander of the 599th ambulance platoon in Bizerte, Tunisia. The 599th consisted of ninety men, with thirty ambulances. Wounded men from the Sicilian and Italian campaigns were constantly being shipped across the Mediterranean to North Africa by ship or plane. The mission of the 599th was to pick up those men upon arrival and ferry them to hospitals. Enemy wounded were often among them.
Being a platoon commander made for some interesting responsibilities. It was my father’s job to make sure that no information useful to the enemy was disseminated from his platoon. He had to read all the mail that his men sent home. They handed him their correspondence in unsealed envelopes. He would scan the contents to make sure that no information about their location, their platoon strength, or their intentions was compromised. Occasionally, he had to excise a sentence or two. Their letters were private and he kept their contents confidential. He did, however, relate one letter to me that came from an imaginative soldier.
“Last night we were bombed again. The gutters ran red with blood…” The 599th, being a medical unit, never saw any kind of combat at any time.
No one scrutinized my father’s letters. Rank had its privileges. Rank also came in handy when it came to immunizations. Soldiers going overseas had to receive an array of shots. After getting their shots, they were signed off by medical personnel. Without getting any of them, my father signed off on his shots himself. No one was ever the wiser and he never got sick. In all the years I knew him, he maybe got sick twice.
Always near the American army in North Africa were our allies, the British. While my father’s unit was engaged in softball games, the British soldiers, who got less off duty time than the Americans, would be marching and drilling. But when they were off duty, a group of British officers often came to watch the Americans play fastpitch softball.
One day they approached my father and challenged his platoon to a “match.” Of course, he accepted. The first thing the British did was to throw down “those bloody mitts” the Americans loaned them. They wanted to catch everything barehanded. The British officers were fine athletes and learned fast, but they lost. It wasn’t their game.
The 599th traversed the North African coast westward from Bizerte, Tunisia to Oran, Algeria. Oran was a big, modern French city. There my father often went to movies at the downtown theaters. Unlike anything he or any of us may have ever experienced, he was given an assigned seat when he purchased his ticket.
In Oran his platoon was expanded into a company. To reach company strength, he needed another thirty men. The Repo Depo was the place to claim them. The Repo Depo was a recycling place for soldiers who had been wounded too badly to return to combat, but not badly enough to be sent home. Included also were battle fatigue casualties, soldiers who could no longer endure the stress of combat. On the list of the men from which he had to select were their names, ranks, AGCT scores, and a little about their preferences. My father had two criteria governing his picks. He wanted the brightest and the best ball players for his team. The various companies in his area had an organized softball league and dad wanted to win.
“There’s a guy still in the hospital who’s a pretty good ball player,” he was told.
There my father met Corporal Frederick John Patterson. The two talked for a while. Corporal Patterson had been through hell and looked it. In my father’s words he was “the worst case of battle fatigue I had ever seen.” He had been in four major battles, had been captured by the Germans, and had escaped. Fred’s story of how he wound up in the Repo Depo is told in a three-part blog already posted on this website.
My father saw something in Corporal Patterson and decided to take him as an ambulance driver. At first, some of the other men in the company were afraid of him. He still had that “thousand-yard stare” that men who had been in heavy combat possessed. He had killed people. But when Corporal Patterson showed leadership ability, my father made him a squad leader and a sergeant, in charge of six ambulances.
One day Sergeant Patterson approached my father with a photograph. In the picture was a beautiful young lady standing in front of a fence post.
“Who is this?” inquired my father.
“This is my sister Peggy,” Sergeant Patterson replied.
At that time sister Peggy was working in a munitions factory making hand grenades in Indiana, Pennsylvania, doing her part for the war effort. She was also corresponding with half the men of the 1941 Homer City High School senior class, who were off to the war, most of whom wanted to marry her once they got back—if they got back. Every day she returned from her job to find a stack of mail from lonely servicemen all over the world. In addition to the Homer High people, Fred had given her address to several of his buddies.
“Don’t give out my address to any more GIs,” sister Peggy wrote to Fred.
“All right, but I really think you should answer Lieutenant Ward’s letter,” came his reply.
After spending nearly a year in North Africa, due to the prolonged Italian campaign, the 599th moved to Corsica in July, 1944. Once there, my father was told to get his ambulances in good repair and wait. The order came in early August for the 599th to board an LST (Landing Ship Tank). He still did not know where his unit was going. Midnight two days later they landed in southern France. The invasion of southern France (Operation Anvil) had taken place only the day before, but there hadn’t been much fighting. The south coast of France had been weakly defended and the Germans there simply retreated to escape capture. To deny potential food to the allies, they destroyed all the livestock in the area before leaving. The stench in the invasion area told the tale.
My father was given a map and ordered to report to a place called Mirabeau, about twenty miles distant. Because it was still considered a war zone, headlights on all the vehicles had to be turned off. Trusting no one else to lead his column, he took the wheel of his Ford jeep, folded down the windshield, and crept ahead on a narrow, two lane coast road. The road wound uphill, staying by the coast until they were some 400 feet above Mediterranean Sea, quickly accessible down a sheer cliff.
Suddenly, before him loomed a dark area, not ten feet distant. He stopped his jeep and walked forward to investigate. The dark area turned out to be a huge crater, where the right lane of the road had been. Had he driven into it, he would have plummeted down the cliff into the water below. Now the entire unit had to back up, beginning with the rear vehicle, as they had bunched up when halted. My father personally directed every vehicle around the crater and then caught up later. Finally, they reached Mirabeau.
Early in the morning an officer rode up on a motorcycle and asked my father if his unit was the 599th. “Yes sir,” came his reply.
“Congratulations. You’re right where you’re supposed to be.”
“Isn’t everybody?”
“No.”
His was one of the few units that had found its proper place. My father always had an uncanny sense of direction. On the many trips I went on with him during his lifetime, I cannot recall a single time that he was lost.
The 599th moved north behind the combat units, tending to their wounded. During the northward surge, a prison camp was liberated and my father met a group of British officers who had been captured at Dunkirk. He was surprised that they were in such good health and saw to it that they got to the British lines.
About this time my father got an offer to command a larger company. It was a good opportunity that might lead to faster promotion, but he turned it down. He liked his men and wanted to stay with them. Later he learned that the officer who did take command of the larger company was strafed and killed by a German fighter plane.
In November, 1944 he was promoted to First Lieutenant. By then the 599th was in northeast France, near the German border. His job required him to know what American combat units were in his immediate area. In December, 1944 he discovered that the First Battalion of the 242nd Infantry Regiment of the 42nd Rainbow division was nearby. Knowing that his brother George was with the First Battalion, he decided to look for him during his off-duty hours. He drove his jeep to a point near a French built fort on the Rhine River, about ten miles south of Strasburg, France. From there he got a sergeant to drive him in a clearly marked ambulance on a road along the Rhine to the fort. The Germans were on the other side of the river, about 300 yards distant. He hoped they would not fire on an ambulance. They did not.
Once at the fort, my father spotted his brother almost immediately. George had no idea he was coming and expressed concern for his safety. “The Germans shoot at us sporadically,” he said. “Last night our company commander was wounded by a mortar round.”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” my father replied.
They spoke for about an hour before it was time for my father to leave. His brother gave him a candy bar and the two parted company. George wrote their mother about the meeting. When my grandmother May got his letter, she reported it to the local newspaper. They printed the story about the two brothers meeting in France.
Shortly after that meeting my uncle George Ward saw his first combat and became a prisoner of war. His story is also in the archives of my blogs here.
My father entered Germany in March, 1945. The 599th’s first duty station was in Bensheim, about fifty miles south of Frankfurt. Later they moved southeast to Heilbronn, and then on to Kaufbeuren, near the Swiss border. While they were in Kaufbeuren, Germany finally surrendered on May 6, 1945.
At last the war in Europe was over, but my father had to remain in Germany as a part of the occupation army. He went successively to Donauworth, Schwabisch Hall, Darmstadt, and finally Bad Mergentheim. From 1970 to the middle of 1972, I was stationed in Darmstadt while in the United States Air Force. My duty station was on the other side of a farm field from his.
One distasteful duty my father was given involved the forced eviction of German families from upper scale homes to make room for high ranking American officers. He took a couple of enlisted men with him and selected the homes to be occupied. When the inhabitants answered his knock, he politely told them that their homes were being temporarily confiscated. They were given time to take a few personal belongings with them. My father felt bad about doing it, but he had his orders. The German families felt bad about it too, but they were in no position to do anything about it.
In the fall of 1945, my father was promoted to captain. He had a chance to remain in Germany, perhaps earning himself another promotion to major. But winter was coming on and my father always hated the cold. There was also a certain woman named Peggy with whom he had been corresponding, courtesy of his acquaintance with Sergeant Patterson. It was time to go home. He was transferred to a unit that was heading back to the states. In December, 1945 he boarded a Victory ship in LaHavre harbor and headed home.
The voyage home over the mountainous winter seas of the north Atlantic was perhaps the most miserable experience of his life. The ship pitched from side to side, forward and backward, and up and down. When it reached the crest of a swell, the propellers would come out of the water, causing the whole ship to shake violently before it plunged again to the bottom of the swell. This went on constantly for all but two days of the crossing. My father spent nearly the entire time in his bunk, wretchedly seasick and unable to eat. Most of the other officers were in the same condition.
None too soon they landed in Boston. My father went to Camp Miles Standish and from there boarded a train that took him all the way across the continent to San Pedro, California. In San Pedro he was processed out of active duty in the army.
Somewhere along the way, he re-established contact with Sergeant Patterson, who had returned to America soon after the war in Europe ended. His older sister Ellen was living in Burbank, about forty miles northeast of San Pedro. Fred and his sister Peggy had come out to California from Pennsylvania to see Ellen’s new daughter Kay.
In Burbank my father met Fred’s sister Peggy for the first time in the flesh. Twenty-five days later they were married, which is how I am able to tell this story.

My father passed from this world on April 29, 2002 from a sudden heart attack. My mother passed three and one-half years later. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss them.