A day to remember

Knox man witnessed liberation of Paris

By FRED BROWN, brownf@Knews.com
August 22, 2004

On Aug. 25, 1944, the day Paris was liberated, Sam Benton was about 15 rows back, marching in a grand military parade with the U.S. 28th Infantry Division, 110th Regiment.

His outfit was leading the spectacle of might and was recorded in a famous photograph of U.S. soldiers in rank and file procession along the joyous Champs-Elysees with the Arc de Triomphe rising proudly in the background.

"It was quite a day," says Benton, remembering World War II 60 years ago when he was a 20-year-old combat medic.

He had already seen quite a few bloody days with the famed 28th, the nation's oldest division, which can trace elements of its history to 1747, being organized by Benjamin Franklin.

Benton joined the Army in 1943 and trained as a surgical technician after graduating from Central High School in Chattanooga. He shipped out in June 1944 and arrived in England in early July with the 28th Infantry Division's 110th Regiment.

He began treating the wounded after the division landed in Normandy and began fighting its way across the deadly hedgerow country of the Calvados region of France. The 28th battled its way across western France, at times in street-to-street combat in such places as Percy, Montbray, Montguoray, Gathemo and St. Sever de Calvados.

After those savage engagements, the infantry moved north toward the Seine River in late August, and then was among the first American troops to enter Paris.

The battle parade, he says, down the Champs-Elysees was something to remember.

"The French people were just very gracious," says Benton, 80, who became a ceramics engineer after the war, spending 40 years with Union Carbide and Martin Marietta in Oak Ridge. He retired in 1989 and lives in Knoxville.

"There were lots of flowers, lots of wine, lots of girls, lots of kisses," he says. "They all wanted to shake your hand."

As he and his fellow troops marched by, they were saluted by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and French Gen. Charles De Gaulle.

"Just after we passed them, we began double-timing (running)," Benton says.

The fun and hilarity of liberation were about over for the 28th.

The unit got to spend the night in Paris, but by the next day, it was moving out, heading for even bloodier fighting than it had experienced. Ahead for the 28th was the Siegfried Line and Hertgen Forest, two casualty-ridden campaigns not only for the 28th, but also for many other American forces.

After crossing the Meuse River into Belgium, the division moved into Luxembourg where they faced the famous "dragons teeth" of the Siegfried Line, a series of German troop and tank defenses located between the French and German border.

By Sept. 11, 1944, the unit had crossed into Germany, becoming the first American troops to do so.

The 28th suffered heavy casualties at the Siegfried Line, where they were pinned down for days. It was here that Benton earned his Bronze Star as a combat medic.

"After we got through the 'dragons teeth,' there was thick fog. We couldn't see. Then it lifted. And the Germans were looking down on us. They immediately opened fire with machine guns and killed six (U.S. soldiers) right away. Two of them were medics.

"This was our first experience fighting with pillboxes. The Germans were on the slopes in front of us. It was interlocking fire and the pillboxes were well-defended," he says.

He had to treat and rescue wounded soldiers under blistering fire, and at one point as the infantry tried to dislodge the pillboxes, he and other medics scurried up the hillside with a litter to retrieve downed soldiers.

On one evacuation, he and another medic worked to save a wounded soldier in the midst of battle. "The medic got shot in the right hip, and I guess the bullet went up through his chest. He died there," he says softly. "He was a friend."

The really heavy losses came in the Huertgen Forest in late September 1944. Trees in the forest looked like rows of soldiers in a line they were so straight and uniform. Rain created quagmires of mud up and over the boot-line, Benton remembers, even up to the frames of the jeeps.

"The trees were so thick, you couldn't see 10 feet. It was a 50-square-mile forest. You lived one day at a time," he says quietly.

"We would just walk and fight. We got very little sleep. Sometimes, we had to fight at night, and then dig in during the day because the Germans were shelling us."

The Huertgen Forest was also a killing ground for medics. They stood out with the bright red crosses glimmering on their helmets. And, they didn't carry weapons, only their combat medic's bag.

"German snipers had no respect for medics. We lost a lot of them in the forest. It became so bad, we had to remove the crosses from our helmets."

The 28th spent more than three weeks in the forest, battling Germans who were making a determined counter-offensive against advancing American and Allied troops.

By the end of the fighting in the Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge, the 28th had suffered more than 15,000 casualties.

In Benton's unit alone, of the 12 medics who began the campaigns from July 1944 through February 1945, six were killed.

The 28th Infantry Division was awarded five campaign streamers for battles in Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes-Alsace, Rhineland and Central Europe. In addition, it also won Frances' Croix de Guerre.

Benton's own individual awards include the Bronze Star and the Combat Medic's Badge with three battle stars, of which, he says, he is the proudest.

"That means you were a medic in combat," he says.

It also means he was a hero to many of the wounded, and for some, his were the last eyes they saw.

"I have always called him my hero," says Bettye Benton, his wife of 59 years.

Senior writer Fred Brown may be reached at 865-342-6427.