To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up; A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing; A time to gain, And a time to lose; A time to keep, And a time to throw away; A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak; A time to love, And a time to hate; A time of war, And a time of peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
“For with God nothing will be impossible.” Luke 1:37
But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26
This is the second segment of my interview with WWII Veteran Joe Meiners.
In my first post, I wrote about Joe’s start in the army, and how he came back to life after being pronounced dead due to heat exhaustion during his training. I also wrote about what he experienced as he landed on Utah Beach in Normandy on D-Day, June 6,1944. To read this first segment of his story, please see Veterans Day WWII Vet Joe Meiners Part I.
Joe was on Utah Beach for eight days before his company landed. He said while he and his partner were there, they could hear the Germans talking just on the other side of the sea wall. Had the Germans been aware of their presence, Joe said they could have just tossed some grenades over the wall, and that would have been the end. Yet Joe and his partner, along with their truck (with no bullet holes in it!), remained hidden from the enemy day and night for over a week.
When Joe’s company arrived, they put Joe in charge of following at the end of the convoy as it moved inland, away from the beach. The company commander was leading the convoy, his jeep being driven by a master sergeant. Joe stated that the French roads were quite narrow, and their convoy took up the entire width of the road. When they were only a few miles away from the beach, Joe realized that the commander had taken a wrong turn.
“I told my partner, ‘We’ve got to get him stopped. He’s heading right into German lines.’ We had no way of contacting them, so we were driving up on the edge of the banks, trying to reach them at the front. We drove across fields. I found out later that two of those fields were mined. I talked to one of the engineers who came after us to de-mine the fields. He asked me: ‘Were those your tracks that went across those fields? You know, your tire tracks ran right square over two of those live mines, and didn’t set them off. You must be leading a charmed life.’
‘“No,’ I told him, ‘the Lord was with me’ – I tried to get that in there,” Joe chuckled.
“Anyway, we finally caught up to the company commander. I drove up to him and said, ‘Sir, you’ve got to get this convoy stopped. You’re leading them right into German lines.’
“He said, ‘Look, soldier. I got a map here, and I know how to read it. Now you fall back into position.’
“I said, ‘No sir!’ I just put my little truck right in front of him across the road so he couldn’t go. Mad! Oh, was he mad. He was just steaming mad. He was just purple. He said he’d have me court-martialed for holding up a convoy in time of war, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
“About twenty yards away from the road there was a bombed-out French farmhouse. It had been a brick house, and one wall was still standing. There was an American tank next to the brick wall, and a lieutenant colonel standing next to the tank. The lieutenant colonel walked over and said ‘Captain, we got to get you turned around. You’re heading into the German lines here.’
“The captain was going to argue with the lieutenant colonel. Then the lieutenant colonel said, ‘Captain, look right up the road there.’ It was less than a quarter mile away. ‘Do you see that German command car setting there? That’s the German front lines!’
“The commander just went to pieces. He started shaking. I thought he was going to pass out. He was just out of control. So that master sergeant that was driving him had to take charge.”
The lieutenant colonel said the big field in front of the farmhouse had been de-mined, so it was safe for everyone to turn around there. Joe and his partner had to wait for everyone to turn around, so they could take up their position at the rear of the convoy. Joe said he told his partner that they needed to go and thank that lieutenant colonel driving the tank, otherwise they’d have all been dead by now.
“It had been raining a lot,” continued Joe, “and the field was really soft. Some of the trucks in the convoy had been sinking in 8-10 inches of mud, but they all got turned around and started back. So, we turned to talk to the lieutenant colonel, but he and the tank were gone. We walked to where that tank was, by that brick wall, and uh, there’d never been a tank there. The grass was standing about a foot high. That heavy tank would have been sinking into that wet sod. There was no sign that a tank had ever been there. My partner was just shaking his head.”
“There has got to be a logical explanation for this,” he said.
“I’m a Christian,” Joe replied to his partner, “and that lieutenant colonel was an angel sent here by God to get us stopped. Otherwise, we’d have all been destroyed.”
Joe and his partner caught up to the convoy. When they bivouacked that night, I was telling some people about it. “Oh, I got the dangdest razzing you’d want to hear. ‘This guy’s crazy. Let’s give him a Section Eight and get him out of here.’”
So, Joe took some of the men back to the place to see for themselves: a second lieutenant, the master sergeant who had actually talked to the guy from the tank, and a couple of other guys. Joe said he stood back and watched the men walk to the spot. They kept shaking their heads and looking around, saying that this was impossible. The second lieutenant said that there was something supernatural that took place, but stated that he wasn’t going to tell anyone about it. Then they made a pact between themselves not to ever tell anyone about this, lest they too get a “Section Eight”. Joe said they all shook hands to seal their pact, and tried to get him to vow as well.
Joe refused to join them. “No,” he told them, “I know what happened here. And I’m going to tell people about it.” Joe chuckled again.
Joe told me that the French roads were lined with 4–5-foot banks of dirt. He said when the American tanks would go up and over these banks, the Germans would destroy the tanks by hitting their undersides with artillery. So, the army used bulldozers to punch holes in the banks so the tanks could safely pass through. But when a bulldozer got disabled, Joe and a partner were sent out to repair it. He did almost all his work in no-man’s-land, between the American and German lines. He stated they were within rifle range, sniper range, of the German lines. One time while Joe was working to pull a track back on a dozer, some Germans opened fire on him with a machine gun.
“The first burst of bullets went past my left side and into the dozer,” explained Joe. “The second burst went right between my legs as I straddled the dozer track. The third burst hit my partner. We scrambled to get under the dozer. My partner said ‘That was a close one.’ And then he died – just that quick. The shock of being hit took a moment before it killed him. He was the first partner I lost.
“My second partner was hit by a sniper bullet while we were working together. I grabbed him and held him and prayed with him as he died in my arms. I had his blood all over me, but that didn’t matter. I needed to hold him and pray with him.”
Joe told me of another harrowing escape he had from death. “Once, right before the Battle of the Bulge, our truck, along with two others, went into this ravine. Then the Germans cut us off. We were surrounded. We could see the enemy closing in. I wrote in my little Bible that we would be killed any moment now. They were within about two hundred, maybe three hundred yards, and we could see them coming. Then the American infantry battalion broke through their lines and got us out of there.”
Once while he and his partner were traveling to another battalion to repair some equipment, they came across several dead Germans. Joe said they were just frozen in place, one man leaning on his motorcycle, others sitting inside a vehicle. Their bodies were charred. Joe figured they must have gotten hit with some type of incendiary bomb. Joe began to cry at the sight. His partner asked why, since these were all Germans, they were all their enemies.
Joe told me that he knew that they too had wives and girlfriends and family that they had wanted to return to, just like Joe and the rest of the Americans did. These Germans were forced to join the war, or they’d have been shot by the Nazis. “I didn’t see an enemy here,” Joe said softly. “I felt God loved these men too, same as He loves me.”
~~~
I plan to write more of my interview with Joe as he related another near-death experience in the Battle of the Bulge, liberating a POW camp, his time on KP duty, and his experiences when the war ended. But this is enough for now.
I have lived in, and visited third-world countries where the citizens do not know the freedoms we have in the US. I have also worked with wounded vets in Alaska (Veterans Day – The Beating Heart of a Patriot). Both experiences were very humbling to me. Seeing first-hand some of the tremendous price men and women have paid for my freedom, together with spending time with people like Joe has made me very thankful for the nation I live in.
Perhaps you or someone you know is facing what we would call an impossible situation or circumstance. As you’ve just read here (and in my first post about Joe), God can do the impossible. Please take a moment to read the Scriptures at the beginning of this post again. God offers you the chance to live the life He designed you to live. If you have never trusted the God Who can give you eternal freedom from the penalty of your sin, and a promise of being in paradise with Him forever, you still can. Please see Got God?
When you see a veteran, please take the time to thank him or her for their service to help keep you and this country free.
Hope you have a great day.