91 years with Uncle Sam

By Roy Manning Barber

At 91 years old, I still remember getting papers off the press and carrying them down Main Street and to the shoe factory area in Cape Girardeau (1932-1937). Then Uncle Sam called me to serve in Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army in World War II.

With Veterans Day coming up next month, I have written an eyewitness account of combat in Europe. This may be of interest to readers.

My grandmother, Columbia Manning; my parents, Roy and Prudence Barber; and my wife, Oma Barber, are all buried at Lorimier Cemetery, which I visited Sept. 27.

May God help America now.

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During World War I my mother, Prudence Manning Barber, sang:

Your Uncle Same is calling now

To every one of you.

If you're too young or old to fight,

There's something you can do.

I drank lots of milk and ate plenty of cornbread, so I was physically fit to be drafted in World War II.

On the way to England, a German torpedo was shot at our troop ship in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. The U.S. Navy sacrificed its ship and 18 sailors to save 3,000 Army troops, including me.

As a member of the U.S. 3rd Army, we broke through German lines at St. Lo in France. That made Hitler so mad he sent wave after wave of Luftwaffe bombers to destroy us. I still remember how the earth shook in my foxhole as bomb after bomb fell nearby.

We moved on, but at Metz the Germans stopped us. Their artillery wounded many men. I worked hard treating our wounded and received the Bronze Star.

We stopped the German counterattack, known as the Battle of the Bulge, on the south flank by firing all our artillery. The we drove east to Pellingen.

On March 6, 1945, the German 6th SS Mountain Division attacked us, killing three and capturing eight of our men, including my friend, Eugene McGinnis. He still lives to tell how God saved him when he and seven others were about to be machine-gunned.

Recovering from the loss of 11 good men, we drove on to Mainz, where Army engineers had constructed the largest pontoon bridge across the Rhine.

On Good Friday before Easter, we crossed the Rhine and drove on to Weimar. Near that city we liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. We arrived too late to save hundreds of Jews whose bodies were piled in ditches outside the camp.

We drove on to the Inn River and Braunau, Austria, where Hitler was born. We were there when the Germans surrendered May 9, 1945.

Back home, Uncle Sam provided the GI Bill, paying for my tuition to the University of Tennessee Medical School. I completed training and received my M.D. degree in 1949, just in time for Uncle Sam to call me into service in the U.S. Air Force for the Korean War. My son was born in Lackland Air Force Base Hospital near San Antonio, Texas.

After the Korean War, Uncle Sam called me to work in the Kennedy VA Hospital in Memphis from 1953 through 1976.

In retirement I have written music for 25 of King David's Psalms. I think the music put Uncle Sam to sleep.

Psalm 92

It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High, to show forth thy loving kindness in the morning and thy faithfulness every night. O Lord, how great are thy works, and thy thoughts are very deep.

Roy Manning Barber, formerly of Cape Girardeau, resides in Memphis.