AL , S MEMOIRS

Chapter 6

man the gun. One truck out of six had a machine gun mounted on it. The man that operated the machine gun stood on the passenger seat in the truck. From Luage, Belgium they moved to Asch, Belgium where they built a camp in a forest area by the air base. The funny thing about that camp and forest was that they were not allowed to chop down trees for firewood. If they did, they would get fined. They lived in a tent and built a shop for a place to work on the trucks.

The air base was known as Y29. On New Year’s Day, the German planes came over to raid the air base. It happened that the P-47 was just taking off on a mission and the P-51 was just coming in so the Germans didn’t have much of a chance. They were all shot down.

The next move was to Munster, Germany in about April. They were there until the end of the war hauling supplies from France. They crossed the Rhine River, over 1800 feet long, on a pontoon bridge, using only one lane and the travel was very slow. The Army built a wooden bridge across that river. It took them two weeks to build the bridge over 1800 feet long that would carry a tank weighing over 90 tons. When the war ended, the 2487th Quartermaster Truck Company was disbanded.

After typing up Al’s memoirs in this publication, I reached out to Paulette to see if she had any photos of just her dad from the war. She provided one with him at Airfield Y29 in Asch, Belgium. The main cover photo for this chapter shows Al standing in front of his tent at Airfield Y29. I had the pleasure of meeting and spending time with Al and his wife Ann when I