Not Forgotten

Centurion Consulting Group centurioncg.net

Presented by: Centurion Consulting Group

For nearly 60 years, Paul Wilson never spoke of his experiences in World War II. The reason was simple.

“I was surrounded by death and dying,” Wilson explained solemnly. “I just didn’t want to remember it.”

That changed one day as Wilson found himself asking his son if he’d ever told him about the war.

“He said no,” Wilson recalled. “I said, ‘sit down, I’m going to tell you.”

Wilson had a lot to tell. In January 1944, the U.S. Army came calling on Wilson with a draft notice. In order to earn an extra $50 per month, he volunteered to be a paratrooper, andhewasassignedtojump school at Fort Benning, Ga.

Wilson’s first incursion into the war would not come from the sky, but by ground.

Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army punched a hole in the German front following their offensive in the Ardennes Forest, and that victory led to the Battle of the Bulge. When Wilson went into battle with the 17th Airborne Division, it was baptism by fire when he found himself in what became known as the Battle of Dead Man’s Ridge.

“Guys were dying all around me,” Wilson remembered. “We were under heavy fire, and we were running right up to a ridge where Germans were shooting.”

Wilson took cover behind a small mound of dirt he found. He remembers a German artillery round passing close by his head.

“I heard it whizz by,” Wilson said. “It was less than an inch away. I never saw it, but I heard it. If it had been an inch closer, I would have been dead.”

Wilson used the mound for cover, and he was under constant fire until a mortar round landed nearby and created a large crater. He decided it was time to move his position.

“I ran to the crater, and I was there for hours,” Wilson continued. “I kept using my bayonet to push my helmet up. Every time I did, I’d see dirt fly up. A German sniper must have been trained on me.”

After a period, he stopped drawing fire, so Wilson made a run for safety. Along the way, he and another soldier brought an injured American soldier to an aid station.

At the end of his first of day of fighting at the ridge, Wilson was one of only 16 survivors from his company, which started with 130 men.

The Battle of Dead Man’s Ridge was part of the Allied counter offensive in the southern part of the Battle of the Bulge, and over the course of the battle, Patton’s division suffered nearly 1,000 casualties.

Wilson, a devout Christian, credits God for his survival.

“I know without question I survived because God just predetermined it,” Wilson said. “I don’t know why, but it was just that way.”

Wilson would take part in a number of other battles and suffered severe foot damage from cold, wet conditions, trench foot as he and his fellow soldiers called it. For his bravery in battle, he was awarded the Purple Heart, WWII Victory Ribbon,

Good Conduct Medal, American Theater Ribbon, European-African-Middle Eastern Theater Ribbon and three Battle Stars for campaigns in the Ardennes, Rhineland and Central Europe.

In June 2016, he was awarded France’s highest honor, the Medal of the Knight in the Historic French Order of the Legion of Honour.

After discharging from the Army, Wilson went on to letter in tennis at Oklahoma City University and established a successful real estate business in Central Oklahoma. He and his late wife of 64 years, Greta, had three children. - 19SM