Charles R. Ayer


	- Charles R. Ayer - United States Army - European Theatre of Operations D Co., 1st Battalion, 397th Infantry, 100th Infantry Division
	The Vosges Mountain Campaign


	Sergeant Charles R. Ayer, Company D, France		100th Infantry Division Association



by Keith E. Bonn Presido Press ISBN 0-89141-512-2 (hardcover) ISBN 0- 89141-602-1 (paperback)	397th Infantry Regiment

...A personal friend, a wonderful man...

It is an extreme pleasure to know Mr. Ayer, having met him in early 2009 via my work and I have the opportunity to talk to him almost on a weekly basis. I am honored to be in his presence. Over the course of our conversations, it was found that we have a common interest... mortars. He has provided me with a copy of his wartime diary as well as a recent letter from one of his fellow unit members who was also wounded in the same minefield that Mr. Ayer was wounded in. I had considered transcribing his diary and other information to include here but, I felt that his writings truly belong in the archives of the 100th ID Association for better keeping. I will be sending the transcription to the 100th IDA in the near future.

Mr. Ayer writes...

The War in Warmer Guise...

With the intervention of many years, the late World War II in my personal experience (as a mortarman) has gained deeper perspectives and I have been privileged to read - only in the past few years - the intimate and harrowing experiences of men who underwent a baptism of fire far more grueling than anything I had to face.

I am not sorry to have missed such challenges - I only empathize with those who could not avoid such confrontation.

My dearest friend of high school and just after died in the follow-up invasion of Europe by Allied Forces, in the Lorraine country which I have yet to visit - to commune at his graveside in the Military Cemetery there.

Even my own loss of my right foot because of a Shu Mine did not dim my optimism of life and living. This traumatic event occurred March 15, 1945, as the final launch was made against southern Germany. It happened right at the border of Germany and France and I could quip in the aftermath, when asked if I had gotten into Germany that "I got one foot into Germany".

It was only after my return by air flight to the U.S. and my further hospitalization at Atlantic City, where the Boardwalk hotels had been taken over by the Army Medical Corps, and my visits to home - and especially to visit the mother of my high school friend who had died in the fighting that I began to feel a deeper sense of involvement.

His mother had written to me, intimate and unhappy - but brave letters about her loss. I dutifully made my visits and tried to assuage her pain, but I was unaware that I could not relate to her experience in the way that I thought that I should have.

When she had said to my grandmother, with whom I had lived during high school years, that at least my grandmother had me - and was not wholly bereft, for Phil was her one and only son. My grandmother felt that this was an unwarranted criticism which she peremptorily rejected, providing further hurt for Phil's mother.

The extreme irony has come only in the past few years, when I realized that the shock of his loss had actually left me in a benumbed condition - being a reality I did not want to face.

I only regret that his mother, with whom I lost touch, has long since died - and there is not now opportunity for me to try to make amends for my sad performance, albeit it grew out of the same kind of shock routinely administered to those involved in that war.

During my brief campaign with the infantry, I kept - wholly in violation of regulations - a little diary with maps describing our paths to the field of combat and the actions which I was engaged.

Like my high school friend Phil, I had a bent for literary efforts - with a scant experience in composition, but given to trying out various techniques - and sometimes on the use of a second person "you" to lead immediacy to the account. It was untutored stuff, that rarely reaches any height of grandeur.

I have read more straight forward battle accounts which are convincing and more reportorial - though lacking in true depiction of the dramas encountered. Yet there are touches of intimacy and a wholesome picture of the life of a military unit in the field.

Worth preserving, even with its rough edges and presumptions. ...It occurred to me that you you might like to have a copy of the text of my World War II diary as an account of a mortarman in action. I have also included pages of the personally drawn maps I created to go with the text. The original diary was in a very small little notebook, about 3 in by 2-1/2 in, which I had found, I don't remember where, in southern France...

If I had to rate the total experience I would have to say that I am glad I was there and that we did perform, at times, in credible fashion. The fact that I did not find the grimness which was so characteristic of scores of others - many of whom never had chance to tell their stories - does not make me feel ashamed to add my own little saga.

The men who fought in that war were a wonderful amalgam of humanity and rubbing elbows with them affected the rest of my life profoundly.

And it is in these later years, when I am now encountering these men of my generation who were also "there" often in much more dramatic circumstances, that I have come to have a special appreciation for what fate bequeathed to me.

And a profound sorrow for those whom fate treated less kindly - and those stories we will never know.

	Although I have not yet found the photos I had hoped to unearth which were of myself in the Army, one of my relatives came up with a photo which showed me on my first leave at home in 1946 from the Army Hospital at Atlantic City. I am standing behind in the shot with my mother and my sister-in-law. I can't believe how young I looked at that time. Twenty-three years. It looks like about nineteen years.
	I had made the solo trip home on crutches since I had not then been fitted for the right leg below the knee prosthesis. I note that my left foot with shoe does show.

X February 2012 addendum... Charlie writes...

I was at a gathering of families who helped me move and one of the chaps who had searched my old apartment came up with two gems, rescued from the premises.

One was the box containing my Purple Heart and Bronze Star medals - I was afraid I had lost this box.

The other much greater find was the small note book in which I had kept the diary of my combat mission from October 1944 to March 15, 1945 when I was wounded. I had not been able to find that little notebook. It represents my illegal action in maintaining a diary - something we were warned against doing under any circumstances. The later typed version of this is what you have a copy of.

X via a different email and discussion of the town in Germany that I was stationed in (Neu-Ulm)...

If you had been in the steeple top at Munster cathedral you probably could have had a beautiful view of the battle in which Napoleon defeated the Austrians around 1805...

Stuttgart, which you mentioned, was the goal of the 100th Division which I would have seen if I had not been wounded back at the border.

Mr. Ayer is retired from the newspaper industry and today is one of the most prolific digital photographers that I know. Truly, a wonderful man.