July 23, 2025 • 35 mins
Alan Kinder was waiting to be drafted into the military during World War II, but when he arrived at the Army recruiter, he was told his eyesight was too poor. The next time he tried to join, his eyesight wasn't any better. This time, the Army took him anyway.
Kinder was trained in sound ranging as part of the 14th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. His job was to determine how far away the enemies were and what vehicles they might have with them. The battalion landed at Utah Beach just a few weeks after D-Day. Months later it would be part of the Battle of Nancy, in eastern France, and the Battle of the Bulge.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Kinder explains how sound ranging worked and how his unit helped to chase the Nazis from Normandy to the eastern edge of France. He will take us inside their work at the Battle of Nancy, almost being killed near the Battle of the Bulge, and his memory of the cost of war from the Bulge that he's only been able to talk about in recent years.
Kinder will also share his memories of crossing the Rhine and the final weeks of the war before the German surrender.
Kinder was trained in sound ranging as part of the 14th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. His job was to determine how far away the enemies were and what vehicles they might have with them. The battalion landed at Utah Beach just a few weeks after D-Day. Months later it would be part of the Battle of Nancy, in eastern France, and the Battle of the Bulge.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Kinder explains how sound ranging worked and how his unit helped to chase the Nazis from Normandy to the eastern edge of France. He will take us inside their work at the Battle of Nancy, almost being killed near the Battle of the Bulge, and his memory of the cost of war from the Bulge that he's only been able to talk about in recent years.
Kinder will also share his memories of crossing the Rhine and the final weeks of the war before the German surrender.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in
this edition is Alan Kinder, a US Army veteran of
World War Two. Mister Kinder specialized in sound ranging and
served with the fourteenth Field Artillery Observation Battalion. His unit
arrived at Utah Beach just weeks after D Day, helped
to chase the Germans across France, and was part of
(00:33):
the battles for Nancy and the Bulge. Alan Kinder was
born on January twenty sixth, nineteen twenty five. His formative
years were spent in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
A little mining town in Washington State, out east of Seattle.
Seattle'll be many years home. We were just about Mount Rainier.
The town is no more. It was a small mining town.
They stopped mining coal in that area. Was in a
very good grade, at least I think they stopped, and
(01:04):
the Seattle Watershed grew in around us, and finally the
village of twenty people was condemned, bought out, and we
moved in towards the city.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Kinder was just sixteen years old and largely oblivious to
the wars in Europe and the Pacific when Japan attacked
the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor December seventh, nineteen
forty one.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I was sitting in a living room at home doing schoolwork,
and the radio I remember it was right here, and
Roosevelt came on, and of course as a kid, I
knew it was important, but it really didn't sink in
at all. I don't think it did on anybody at
(01:48):
first few days. But I do remember early on, maybe
within the next day or so, somebody's saying to my dad, well,
you don't have to worry there. Alan's so young, it'll
all be over by the time he grows up. Because
I was sixteen. That didn't turn out to be quite true.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Even though they were too young to serve, Many kids
Kinder's age were immediately eager to enlist, but Kinder had
other priorities at the time.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I didn't even think about it. I just graduated from
high school and my next thing was to start college.
So I started college at seventeen, and no matter what
was happening in the war, at seventeen, you just don't
get quite entangled in it. We knew was going on,
(02:38):
and we knew it'd be going in. But my worst
problem right then was getting through my first year of college.
So I went in at seventeen. I turned eighteen halfway
through my first year, but they let me finish because
I was taking pre engineering. I became eighteen when I
(02:59):
finished that here and I was drafted soon after that.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
But by the time he neared his eighteenth birthday, Kinder
fully expected to be drafted, and he was very eager
to serve. But his first attempt to enlist did not
go according to plan.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I was waiting to be drafted. There's a story there.
I went in and they turned me down. My eyes
were bad and nearsighted. I was crushed. I mean, you
want you had to be in and you know, please, sir,
what do I do? Well, you go home and you
(03:36):
eat carrots for a couple of months and if you
want to come back come, you know, try again. And
looking back, carros had nothing to do with it. Myopia,
nearsighted and this has to do with the shape of
your eyes. Carrots didn't enter into it. But I was
so desperate my folks. I never thanked him for this,
(03:58):
for their sacrifice. But every time I ate a carrot,
I was singing it getting in and when they ate
a carrot. They were I hope, worry about me going in.
But at the end of two months, my whole family
was yellow. We looked like we had jaundice. And I
went back and my eyes hadn't changed a bit, but
(04:19):
they maybe needed somebody that day. I was drafted, but
I volunteered in a way. But I had trouble with
getting in, but I was I had to do it.
You just had to.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
From there, Kinder was off to basic training at Camp Roberts, California.
For many new recruits, basic is a bit of a
culture shock, and most soldiers don't like it, and that's
what he expected as well, but Tinder was surprised to
find he actually liked it, and he believes young Americans
could benefit from that kind of experience.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
I enjoyed it. It was as kids we'd always left,
you might say, shouldered lives, and I thought I would
resent the structure, the tightness of it, and yet you
get used to it. It feels good. I wish sometimes
kids could do it today. It's just part of growing up.
(05:15):
I thought I would, I say, I thought I might
resent it, but I liked it very much. Looking back,
it was tough in physical and so on, but I
liked it.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
After basic, Kinder was assigned to a survey instrument Battalion,
which did the work of sound ranging. Kinder explains how
it all worked.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
When I left Seattle to go to Camp Roberts, there
was a train car load like thirty forty people and
apparently the one year of engineering I had surveying among
my other things. And out of that group, two of
us went into instrument and survey a basic the rest
(06:02):
who went into infantry, and I was very happy to
I've had breaks all the way through. Fortunately two of
us went to instrument's survey. Again. We learned physical surveying,
you know it just but instrument work also again I
drew it did because they had to think a little bit.
But at the end of that they sent me then
(06:25):
to Fort Lewis, Washington, where I joined the fourteenth Observation Battalion,
and I never used my surveying from then on, although
a lot of surveying went on. We resurveyed part of
Europe as we went across our headquarters battery did I
(06:47):
ended up we had microphones in the ground. They were
placed carefully in a row, surveyed in or put in
carefully and facing the front. So we had five microphones
and each one of those was attached to by wire
to a silograph. A machine had a light in it
(07:09):
and film came through was developed as it came through
developed and it printed out tape like EKG tape. As
each microphone would sound would hit it, there would be
a wiggle, and we learned to for example, if the
base was like this one, two, three, four five, if
(07:32):
the noise was over here, it would hit here like
this out here, it would hit in the middle, and
there was somebody out a few blocks or a few
meters ahead that would pick out. They say they'd hear
a gun over here. They they kind of We learned
what to look for, and we'd pick up a pattern,
(07:53):
and then we plotted out between each microphone that we
had four lines out and they would meet out anything
up to seventeen eighteen miles and they'd cross and that
would be the location we assumed, after corrections for wind
and this and that, and then we'd send it back
(08:13):
to the battalions and we hoped they fired on them.
I guess they did. We win the war.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
The guys in the Instrument Survey Battalion carried car beings,
so Kinder was surprised and a little stressed when he
and his men were told they had to prove their
proficiency with another weapon.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
We had car beings, that's all we had. But I
had one scare somewhere along the line. They had time
for the whole battalion to go in to the gun
range and wanted us to qualify with the infantry gun
to be him one. So we'd get there, and the
(08:52):
guy was so interested in so good, telling me, you know,
you wrap your hand around, and I've seen one before.
But we shot, and a couple of months, a couple
of weeks later, the listing came out. It was alphabetized,
and on the page there were our battalion, about four
(09:13):
hundred plus people only, and so their names just singled
right together. There were about this many numbers at the bottom,
and I wasn't there, and there's another group here and
I wasn't there, and I thought, I know I was there.
Up at the top there were eight rifle experts, And
(09:35):
for months I worried that if the war went on,
they were going to need a rifle expert more than
they needed a geodetic computer, because that's what I actually did.
I didn't survey. I just computed and called it geodetic
computer because that had to do with surveying.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Finally, in early June nineteen forty four, Alan Kinder and
the other soldiers in the battalion in began the long
trek across the US to make an even longer journey
to Europe.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
We were in Fort Lewis on d Day. We left
on the seventh of June. We went across the state,
across the country. It took us a week to get
there because of the shuttling and this and that our
car was shuttled. We lived in glory on the way.
(10:25):
We hadn't done a thing, but patriotism was rife at
the time, naturally, and we were met at airport at airports,
trained depots. We were clapped out, we were shaking hands
with we were cheered, and we hadn't done a thing,
but it was nice. And it took us about a
(10:48):
week to get to New York, and we were there
for a couple of weeks getting ready to go overseas.
So it took about a month's a month to get
to New York, and it took another month to get
to England. We landed at Liverpool, took a little cream
car down to a town in south west England near Bath,
(11:17):
and we stayed there for a month to reorganize. We
stayed there a month before we went across, but as
the time we went across it was two and a
half months. And from D Day.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
That's Alan Kinder, a US Army veteran of World War
Two specializing in sound ranging. In just a moment, Kinder
takes us from Normandy all the way to eastern France.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
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Speaker 1 (12:47):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is Alan Kinder. He's a US Army veteran
of World War Two who specialized in sound ranging while
serving in the fourteenth Field Artiller Observation Battalion. In late
July nineteen forty four, just a few weeks after D Day,
Kinder and his men arrived at Utah Beach and the
(13:10):
fighting was still not very far away.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
When we landed on Utah, the battle was in about
twenty miles. We could hear their artillery, but we didn't
set up. We were just waiting and we landed on
the seventeenth and twentieth something. The British were slow taking Khan.
(13:33):
They were to the east of us. We landed at
Utah by the time we got there, the Americans had
gone down south and turned east and the British were
still trying to get through Khan on their landing area,
and by the time we got down around the corner,
(13:55):
our group came back up and met the British at
what was called a Fallet's Gap. That closed up and
setled off a lot of Germans, and that was pretty
much the end of the battle, part of the of
the invasion. But we took advantage of the Third Army
(14:17):
then just shoot across the We just chased people across,
we chased tanks, everybody. At that time, they were all
going back to Germany, so we we traveled the same
route they did and we uh we met a lot
of prisoners coming back. But for again a couple of
(14:39):
weeks we still didn't do anything because we were moving.
Everything was we were on the offensive. So we finally
stopped at the Moselle River east of Nancy, west of
the of the of Germany. We set up our first base,
our sound base, and we were there for abottom month
(15:00):
because we were regrouping. Of course, at the same time
the Germans were regrouping, so there was a lot of
back and forth firing. So we were quite.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Busy after the chase across Europe, and those weeks spent regrouping,
the inevitable clash came in early September nineteen forty four
near Nancy. Kinder describes the fighting there and his satisfaction
now for how the sound ranging work that he and
the others did there is gaining more appreciation.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And the most interesting thing that happened at the time,
if if anybody looks up Mark Felton Productions on Google,
he has hid the story of what I would call
the Battle of Nancy. Nancy was taken by us quite easily.
(15:54):
There was not a lot of damage to it. So
about the time we got there laughter Patten, who had
moved his headquarters to there, and after another week or so,
apparently according to this thing and this felt and thing
I'm talking about, they figured it was safe enough in Normandy,
(16:18):
was safe enough for Eisenhower's group to come in. So
they sent two or three thousand people in start setting
up headquarters schafe headquarters in Nancy. But during this time
the Germans were regrouping and if you remember Big Bertha
in World War One, the big gun they had the
(16:39):
Germans called according to this article slender berths. There were
six or eight inches, but they were way back. They
could shoot like forty miles or fifty miles. So they
started shooting into Patent's headquarters and soon to be Shafe headquarters,
and they were bracketing the city. They'd be here, then
(17:01):
they'd be over here, and they were getting close, closer
and closer. We were fifteen miles from Nancy and we
were ranging to the east, and they called from from
Nancy and said tonight or tomorrow, I can't remember. But
the next night there no Allied guns fired at the Brittiant.
(17:28):
They came out on the prescribed time every night, and
five minutes or two minutes before that there were no
Allied guns. There'd be no British, American or French guns
along the front, so if we picked up any noise
it would be theoretically big Bertha. Well, that night we
(17:50):
sat up our board, went about seventeen miles and we
got a beautiful pattern. The problem was we had to
put we had to take a piece of cardboard on
our board because it was twenty some miles out there.
We'd never before or since, never caught anything that far out,
(18:10):
but we got it. We called it in and thought
nothing of it. But a few days later Stars and
Stripes reported that the Air Force had destroyed it, and
we still didn't get any credit. But in this Felton
production thing, they do say that the Air Force couldn't
find it, but they used sound ranging to get there
(18:36):
for the Air Force. So we our pr wasn't as
good as the Air Force, but we liked to think
we helped somebody. From then on we got a lot
of attention. It was from the artillery. From then on
we worked steady on through the Bulge.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
That's Alan Kender. He's a US Army veteran of World
War Two who specialized in sound ranging. With a survey
instrument battalion coming up. Kinder explains how enemy shelling nearly
cut his war short near the Battle of the Bulge.
The painful memory he's only now just beginning to talk about,
and what happened in the final weeks of the war.
(19:13):
I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans' Chronicles. This is
Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest is US Army
veteran Alan Kinder. He served in the European theater of
World War Two with the fourteenth Field Artillery Observation Battalion,
specializing in sound ranging. Kinder says he and his men
(19:35):
did not hear about the Battle of the Bulge until
days after it started. He believes they arrived at the
fight on December twenty sixth, ten days after the Germans
launched their shocking offensive. Once they had orders to move
in that direction, he says, the quickest path was through Luxembourg,
and Kinder remembers that experience.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Well, Okay, we'd lived in the Nancy area and a
gone east. We were still we were on the border.
We were on the Magino line. We were in a
big bunker. The Germans were retreating yet and we figured
we're looking back. Maybe a lot of them were heading
(20:14):
up to the Bulls. We were in in Germany about
ten miles a place called Saga Mines and the Bulls
was on the sixteenth. On the twentieth, we got word
of it to load up, get back. We tore down
our base, headed back, went up to Luxembourg City in
(20:35):
a day or so with our head lights on and
everything got to Luxembourg City. It was a madhouse traffic
I mean, everybody trying to get north through Luxembourg. The
lights were on in Luxembourg. It was like an American city.
We hadn't seen house lights in months. In the America
(20:55):
is an interesting time. It should have been almost interesting,
but it was scary because the Germans, the rumor was,
and it turned out to be true. The Germans had
taken uniforms from American prisoners and had dressed a whole
(21:16):
lot of their people in American uniforms, and it infiltrated
back into Luxembourg. So our stay in Luxembourg that was
very beautiful, was very scary because we didn't know who
we're talking to.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
And before moving on towards the Bulgs and returning to
the grim reality of warfare, Kinder warmly remembers a delightful
respite with a family in Luxembourg.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
One of the memorable things to me was it was
just before Christmas, and so we just stopped wherever we
could find. It was cold, it was snowy, and Luxembourg
people were very welcoming. Normally, normally we had set places
for our equipment and so on, but we were on
(22:03):
the route, so we just stayed in this little corner
tavern in the little town of Fishbox, north of Luxembourg
with a family mom, dad and two little kids. We
had Christmas there. There's MP's were stationed at this crossroads.
They brought in a Christmas tree. They had electricity. They
(22:25):
brought in a little Christmas tree for the bar and
we had Christmas. They had a jukebox and had we
all shared food with everybody. It was a thrill. And
then the next night from there that was our best
night ever. It was like something out of Disney. I
(22:46):
wish I could see those little kids would be eighty
something now, but I wish I could see them.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
The next day it was a very different story. Kinder says.
The battalion moved much closer to the fighting at the
bulge and found themselves staying at a spot that provided
two inviting of a target for the Germans. It's how
his best day of the war was immediately followed by
his worst.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
But the next day was my worst day. We shouldn't
have been in this place. It was a three story
mansion of some sort in a little town near a
little town called Stegen. It was about twenty five miles
or thirty miles from bas Stone. But we were still
en route. We didn't have any permanent thing, so it
(23:31):
was cold, and we arrived late. And the best place
on a sitting in a building like that out by itself,
because you know that they're gonna if they were gonna
check their guns, they're gonna try a target that might
mean something. But we were there because it was so cold,
and we got in late. So we were on the
(23:53):
third floor. There was an attic above us, so we're
on the third floor. The best place, and the thing
like that was the first floor on the back. We
were the top next to it. And I know I
was just getting ready for bed with there were beds
in that room. It was a private residence that we
(24:15):
had taken over. And I remember I was bending over
to untimely shoes and I don't remember anything, and then
I came to and I had a mattress on top
of me and a shell had hit in the attic.
It killed I think three infantry men, injured several and
(24:39):
in our room of four of us, two of them
went home with bad injuries. Two of us weren't touched,
I mean by musette bag, my gas mask, everything hanging
on the wall were shattered. I remember standing up. I
don't remember anything. I know it was good cushion shock
(25:01):
or what.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Kinder says that explosion is one of the reasons he
still cannot remember much of what he saw or did
at the Battle of the Bulge, but he continued his work,
and he painfully remembers a graphic demonstration of the cost
of war.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
The twenty six our records show that we made our
first setup out of bas noon, so I know I
worked because somebody had to. I know I was there,
but I literally don't remember anything there for days. The
only thing I do remember about the bulge, and I
(25:38):
couldn't talk about this even two years ago when I
first got into this time of excitement, you know, of
being recognized. But I remember we worked in it again,
a building by itself, and his steps going up the front,
two windows, and I remember going in out, but I
(26:00):
don't know where we stayed. Did we stay in that
building or did we stay someplace and come back. I
don't know. All I remember is the building, and the
bad part of it was the building was two stories
high a plane wall, and in those days at that point,
(26:22):
the not search and rescue, but the people that picked
up bodies hadn't really got organized yet, and of course
it was freezing. It was cold, and they used that
building as a as a gathering spot. So I say,
I couldn't talk before it. Thanks to this I can.
(26:43):
They started leaning them against the building just they brought
them in in trucks and just dumped them. They were
frozen and physically, and you know, there's the bodies. They
just dumped them against the building. And the building was
like this, and it kept growing like this, and just
(27:07):
I saw I remember. Maybe that's why I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
In addition to the vicious fighting, the terrible losses, and
the eventual repelling of the German offensive, the Battle of
the Bulge is also remembered for its bitter cold. But
Kinder caught a break entirely because of his job.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
I was lucky in that they couldn't take care of
all the men, obviously in the cold, but they had
to take care of the equipment because it was water
in it, the developer and so on, and of course
the equipment was valuable, and in essence I was part
(27:45):
of the equipment because I was reading it. You know,
where the equipment when I went vice versa, Neither one
could work without the other. So I was kind of
with the equipment and it had to be under shelter
some how. Wherever we went, I had as good as
conditions as existed. So we must have been inside somewhere
(28:08):
because the equipment had to be. But whether I stayed
with the equipment or whether I lived stayed to building,
but we would have been inside personally. During the bulls,
I remember was cold, but nothing like the infantry had.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
After the Battle of the Bulge, the next major goal
for the US was getting across the Rhine River, and
except for some arrant munitions from American planes, Kinder says,
the crossings went smoothly for him and the battalion.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
We were on the course west side of the river,
and we ranged across into Germany. I don't know how
much we accomplished because the air Force by this time
started coming in. It was like a John Wayne movie.
You just can't We couldn't believe the airplanes coming across
(29:03):
thousands or hundreds any out of time they were dropping.
We couldn't see them dropping it because they were into Germany.
By this time, we were still sound ranging into Germany.
We were probably getting mostly tanks and so on. I'll
never know, but once in a while we'd have a shortfall,
(29:26):
which is embarrassing. They drop one on our side of
the river, but we were close to that. But I
remember the night, in the night of the crossing, we'd
done all of our sound ranging and loaded up all
of our equipment because they said some hours before the
Rhine crossing, they told me that everything would be quiet.
(29:49):
So we sat there. They said at a certain time,
all the guns, all the Allied guns would open at
one time. Of course, the air force had already shattered
everything that we could see in Germany, and so we waited.
Was quiet, and all of a sudden the loudest noise
(30:11):
you can imagine. I remember this sitting there thinking I've
got to remember this because I'll never hear anything like
it again. But it was quite a noise. And we crossed.
The engineers put up pondum. They did amazing jobs, because
we crossed twenty four hours after the first barrage, and
(30:36):
we went on a pontum bridges that looked terrible, but
they carried a lot of trucks from there.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Kinder says, the Germans resumed a rapid retreat, reminiscent of
their dash across France. He shares what those final weeks
of the war were like and finally meeting up with
the Russians near the Elbe River.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
So we got into Germany by this time, and the Germans
were really moving, really retreating. So from then on we
had a little bit north and then straight east towards Berlin.
I mean we were directly west of Berlin. We went
(31:18):
straight east and our only activity at that point was
picking up prisoners of war and passing them back. We
didn't know what to do with them. We were at
Brunswick and the airport there, the German airport, and three
(31:38):
jet planes different names came in and surrendered to us,
and so we spent most of our time shepherding prisoners
of war back to somebody, because we didn't set up.
We just again, it was like across across from France.
It was just they were retreating. We were catching up
(31:59):
in every day. So we got as far east as Magdeburgh.
On the was the ill but I can't remember rivers now,
but we were ninety miles west of Berlin where we
were to meet the Russians who were coming this way.
That's why where there's so many Germans were surrendering to
(32:19):
us by this time. They didn't want the Russians. We
waited for a week or so at Magdeburg at the
river for the Russians to come. We never saw them.
They didn't come right to the river. We met them
at that point, and that was I can't remember dates now,
(32:41):
but it was March, no May on May fifth, I
think the official v day I think was May seventh.
To us, it was May fifth because that's when everything stopped,
but it was in May. Any that was over.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
In January twenty twenty five, Alan Kinder turned one hundred
years old, so eighty years after the war. What is
he most proud of about his service?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Just being there? Everybody did something. When they first talked
to me about coming, I said, they're talking about going
to the ball to the invasion. I said, well, isn't
it kind of presumptuous? And they said no, because I
figured that with half a percent of us still alive
(33:38):
out of roughly four hundred and some odd, statistically, there
would be two of us left. I don't know who
the other one was, but at that point I started
thinking that way, that we're taking the honor for them,
and there was no particular thing to be proud of,
(34:02):
because we all did what we had to do. There
were so many people that had it risks, so much,
lost so much, worked so much harder than I personally did.
That I still worry about it, But when I think
that I'm all that's left of a bunch, it's easier.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
He's also eager for others to learn from his story,
starting with those closest to home.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Particularly to my great grandson. I'm lucky I didn't know
either of my grandfather's very well. I saw him summer vacations,
you know. Here I am with my grandson in his thirties,
and he's more interested in this than he ever would
have been. And I've got a seven year old great grandson,
(34:53):
and it means so much.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
That's Alan Kinder, a US Army veteran of World War Two.
He specialized and sound ranging with the fourteenth Field Artillery
Observation Battalion. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi,
(35:18):
this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow
the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're
at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube
(35:39):
channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course,
please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get
your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join us
next time for Veterans Chronicles
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in
this edition is Alan Kinder, a US Army veteran of
World War Two. Mister Kinder specialized in sound ranging and
served with the fourteenth Field Artillery Observation Battalion. His unit
arrived at Utah Beach just weeks after D Day, helped
to chase the Germans across France, and was part of
(00:33):
the battles for Nancy and the Bulge. Alan Kinder was
born on January twenty sixth, nineteen twenty five. His formative
years were spent in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
A little mining town in Washington State, out east of Seattle.
Seattle'll be many years home. We were just about Mount Rainier.
The town is no more. It was a small mining town.
They stopped mining coal in that area. Was in a
very good grade, at least I think they stopped, and
(01:04):
the Seattle Watershed grew in around us, and finally the
village of twenty people was condemned, bought out, and we
moved in towards the city.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Kinder was just sixteen years old and largely oblivious to
the wars in Europe and the Pacific when Japan attacked
the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor December seventh, nineteen
forty one.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I was sitting in a living room at home doing schoolwork,
and the radio I remember it was right here, and
Roosevelt came on, and of course as a kid, I
knew it was important, but it really didn't sink in
at all. I don't think it did on anybody at
(01:48):
first few days. But I do remember early on, maybe
within the next day or so, somebody's saying to my dad, well,
you don't have to worry there. Alan's so young, it'll
all be over by the time he grows up. Because
I was sixteen. That didn't turn out to be quite true.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Even though they were too young to serve, Many kids
Kinder's age were immediately eager to enlist, but Kinder had
other priorities at the time.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I didn't even think about it. I just graduated from
high school and my next thing was to start college.
So I started college at seventeen, and no matter what
was happening in the war, at seventeen, you just don't
get quite entangled in it. We knew was going on,
(02:38):
and we knew it'd be going in. But my worst
problem right then was getting through my first year of college.
So I went in at seventeen. I turned eighteen halfway
through my first year, but they let me finish because
I was taking pre engineering. I became eighteen when I
(02:59):
finished that here and I was drafted soon after that.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
But by the time he neared his eighteenth birthday, Kinder
fully expected to be drafted, and he was very eager
to serve. But his first attempt to enlist did not
go according to plan.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I was waiting to be drafted. There's a story there.
I went in and they turned me down. My eyes
were bad and nearsighted. I was crushed. I mean, you
want you had to be in and you know, please, sir,
what do I do? Well, you go home and you
(03:36):
eat carrots for a couple of months and if you
want to come back come, you know, try again. And
looking back, carros had nothing to do with it. Myopia,
nearsighted and this has to do with the shape of
your eyes. Carrots didn't enter into it. But I was
so desperate my folks. I never thanked him for this,
(03:58):
for their sacrifice. But every time I ate a carrot,
I was singing it getting in and when they ate
a carrot. They were I hope, worry about me going in.
But at the end of two months, my whole family
was yellow. We looked like we had jaundice. And I
went back and my eyes hadn't changed a bit, but
(04:19):
they maybe needed somebody that day. I was drafted, but
I volunteered in a way. But I had trouble with
getting in, but I was I had to do it.
You just had to.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
From there, Kinder was off to basic training at Camp Roberts, California.
For many new recruits, basic is a bit of a
culture shock, and most soldiers don't like it, and that's
what he expected as well, but Tinder was surprised to
find he actually liked it, and he believes young Americans
could benefit from that kind of experience.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
I enjoyed it. It was as kids we'd always left,
you might say, shouldered lives, and I thought I would
resent the structure, the tightness of it, and yet you
get used to it. It feels good. I wish sometimes
kids could do it today. It's just part of growing up.
(05:15):
I thought I would, I say, I thought I might
resent it, but I liked it very much. Looking back,
it was tough in physical and so on, but I
liked it.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
After basic, Kinder was assigned to a survey instrument Battalion,
which did the work of sound ranging. Kinder explains how
it all worked.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
When I left Seattle to go to Camp Roberts, there
was a train car load like thirty forty people and
apparently the one year of engineering I had surveying among
my other things. And out of that group, two of
us went into instrument and survey a basic the rest
(06:02):
who went into infantry, and I was very happy to
I've had breaks all the way through. Fortunately two of
us went to instrument's survey. Again. We learned physical surveying,
you know it just but instrument work also again I
drew it did because they had to think a little bit.
But at the end of that they sent me then
(06:25):
to Fort Lewis, Washington, where I joined the fourteenth Observation Battalion,
and I never used my surveying from then on, although
a lot of surveying went on. We resurveyed part of
Europe as we went across our headquarters battery did I
(06:47):
ended up we had microphones in the ground. They were
placed carefully in a row, surveyed in or put in
carefully and facing the front. So we had five microphones
and each one of those was attached to by wire
to a silograph. A machine had a light in it
(07:09):
and film came through was developed as it came through
developed and it printed out tape like EKG tape. As
each microphone would sound would hit it, there would be
a wiggle, and we learned to for example, if the
base was like this one, two, three, four five, if
(07:32):
the noise was over here, it would hit here like
this out here, it would hit in the middle, and
there was somebody out a few blocks or a few
meters ahead that would pick out. They say they'd hear
a gun over here. They they kind of We learned
what to look for, and we'd pick up a pattern,
(07:53):
and then we plotted out between each microphone that we
had four lines out and they would meet out anything
up to seventeen eighteen miles and they'd cross and that
would be the location we assumed, after corrections for wind
and this and that, and then we'd send it back
(08:13):
to the battalions and we hoped they fired on them.
I guess they did. We win the war.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
The guys in the Instrument Survey Battalion carried car beings,
so Kinder was surprised and a little stressed when he
and his men were told they had to prove their
proficiency with another weapon.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
We had car beings, that's all we had. But I
had one scare somewhere along the line. They had time
for the whole battalion to go in to the gun
range and wanted us to qualify with the infantry gun
to be him one. So we'd get there, and the
(08:52):
guy was so interested in so good, telling me, you know,
you wrap your hand around, and I've seen one before.
But we shot, and a couple of months, a couple
of weeks later, the listing came out. It was alphabetized,
and on the page there were our battalion, about four
(09:13):
hundred plus people only, and so their names just singled
right together. There were about this many numbers at the bottom,
and I wasn't there, and there's another group here and
I wasn't there, and I thought, I know I was there.
Up at the top there were eight rifle experts, And
(09:35):
for months I worried that if the war went on,
they were going to need a rifle expert more than
they needed a geodetic computer, because that's what I actually did.
I didn't survey. I just computed and called it geodetic
computer because that had to do with surveying.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Finally, in early June nineteen forty four, Alan Kinder and
the other soldiers in the battalion in began the long
trek across the US to make an even longer journey
to Europe.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
We were in Fort Lewis on d Day. We left
on the seventh of June. We went across the state,
across the country. It took us a week to get
there because of the shuttling and this and that our
car was shuttled. We lived in glory on the way.
(10:25):
We hadn't done a thing, but patriotism was rife at
the time, naturally, and we were met at airport at airports,
trained depots. We were clapped out, we were shaking hands
with we were cheered, and we hadn't done a thing,
but it was nice. And it took us about a
(10:48):
week to get to New York, and we were there
for a couple of weeks getting ready to go overseas.
So it took about a month's a month to get
to New York, and it took another month to get
to England. We landed at Liverpool, took a little cream
car down to a town in south west England near Bath,
(11:17):
and we stayed there for a month to reorganize. We
stayed there a month before we went across, but as
the time we went across it was two and a
half months. And from D Day.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
That's Alan Kinder, a US Army veteran of World War
Two specializing in sound ranging. In just a moment, Kinder
takes us from Normandy all the way to eastern France.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
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(12:28):
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Speaker 1 (12:47):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is Alan Kinder. He's a US Army veteran
of World War Two who specialized in sound ranging while
serving in the fourteenth Field Artiller Observation Battalion. In late
July nineteen forty four, just a few weeks after D Day,
Kinder and his men arrived at Utah Beach and the
(13:10):
fighting was still not very far away.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
When we landed on Utah, the battle was in about
twenty miles. We could hear their artillery, but we didn't
set up. We were just waiting and we landed on
the seventeenth and twentieth something. The British were slow taking Khan.
(13:33):
They were to the east of us. We landed at
Utah by the time we got there, the Americans had
gone down south and turned east and the British were
still trying to get through Khan on their landing area,
and by the time we got down around the corner,
(13:55):
our group came back up and met the British at
what was called a Fallet's Gap. That closed up and
setled off a lot of Germans, and that was pretty
much the end of the battle, part of the of
the invasion. But we took advantage of the Third Army
(14:17):
then just shoot across the We just chased people across,
we chased tanks, everybody. At that time, they were all
going back to Germany, so we we traveled the same
route they did and we uh we met a lot
of prisoners coming back. But for again a couple of
(14:39):
weeks we still didn't do anything because we were moving.
Everything was we were on the offensive. So we finally
stopped at the Moselle River east of Nancy, west of
the of the of Germany. We set up our first base,
our sound base, and we were there for abottom month
(15:00):
because we were regrouping. Of course, at the same time
the Germans were regrouping, so there was a lot of
back and forth firing. So we were quite.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Busy after the chase across Europe, and those weeks spent regrouping,
the inevitable clash came in early September nineteen forty four
near Nancy. Kinder describes the fighting there and his satisfaction
now for how the sound ranging work that he and
the others did there is gaining more appreciation.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And the most interesting thing that happened at the time,
if if anybody looks up Mark Felton Productions on Google,
he has hid the story of what I would call
the Battle of Nancy. Nancy was taken by us quite easily.
(15:54):
There was not a lot of damage to it. So
about the time we got there laughter Patten, who had
moved his headquarters to there, and after another week or so,
apparently according to this thing and this felt and thing
I'm talking about, they figured it was safe enough in Normandy,
(16:18):
was safe enough for Eisenhower's group to come in. So
they sent two or three thousand people in start setting
up headquarters schafe headquarters in Nancy. But during this time
the Germans were regrouping and if you remember Big Bertha
in World War One, the big gun they had the
(16:39):
Germans called according to this article slender berths. There were
six or eight inches, but they were way back. They
could shoot like forty miles or fifty miles. So they
started shooting into Patent's headquarters and soon to be Shafe headquarters,
and they were bracketing the city. They'd be here, then
(17:01):
they'd be over here, and they were getting close, closer
and closer. We were fifteen miles from Nancy and we
were ranging to the east, and they called from from
Nancy and said tonight or tomorrow, I can't remember. But
the next night there no Allied guns fired at the Brittiant.
(17:28):
They came out on the prescribed time every night, and
five minutes or two minutes before that there were no
Allied guns. There'd be no British, American or French guns
along the front, so if we picked up any noise
it would be theoretically big Bertha. Well, that night we
(17:50):
sat up our board, went about seventeen miles and we
got a beautiful pattern. The problem was we had to
put we had to take a piece of cardboard on
our board because it was twenty some miles out there.
We'd never before or since, never caught anything that far out,
(18:10):
but we got it. We called it in and thought
nothing of it. But a few days later Stars and
Stripes reported that the Air Force had destroyed it, and
we still didn't get any credit. But in this Felton
production thing, they do say that the Air Force couldn't
find it, but they used sound ranging to get there
(18:36):
for the Air Force. So we our pr wasn't as
good as the Air Force, but we liked to think
we helped somebody. From then on we got a lot
of attention. It was from the artillery. From then on
we worked steady on through the Bulge.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
That's Alan Kender. He's a US Army veteran of World
War Two who specialized in sound ranging. With a survey
instrument battalion coming up. Kinder explains how enemy shelling nearly
cut his war short near the Battle of the Bulge.
The painful memory he's only now just beginning to talk about,
and what happened in the final weeks of the war.
(19:13):
I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans' Chronicles. This is
Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest is US Army
veteran Alan Kinder. He served in the European theater of
World War Two with the fourteenth Field Artillery Observation Battalion,
specializing in sound ranging. Kinder says he and his men
(19:35):
did not hear about the Battle of the Bulge until
days after it started. He believes they arrived at the
fight on December twenty sixth, ten days after the Germans
launched their shocking offensive. Once they had orders to move
in that direction, he says, the quickest path was through Luxembourg,
and Kinder remembers that experience.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Well, Okay, we'd lived in the Nancy area and a
gone east. We were still we were on the border.
We were on the Magino line. We were in a
big bunker. The Germans were retreating yet and we figured
we're looking back. Maybe a lot of them were heading
(20:14):
up to the Bulls. We were in in Germany about
ten miles a place called Saga Mines and the Bulls
was on the sixteenth. On the twentieth, we got word
of it to load up, get back. We tore down
our base, headed back, went up to Luxembourg City in
(20:35):
a day or so with our head lights on and
everything got to Luxembourg City. It was a madhouse traffic
I mean, everybody trying to get north through Luxembourg. The
lights were on in Luxembourg. It was like an American city.
We hadn't seen house lights in months. In the America
(20:55):
is an interesting time. It should have been almost interesting,
but it was scary because the Germans, the rumor was,
and it turned out to be true. The Germans had
taken uniforms from American prisoners and had dressed a whole
(21:16):
lot of their people in American uniforms, and it infiltrated
back into Luxembourg. So our stay in Luxembourg that was
very beautiful, was very scary because we didn't know who
we're talking to.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
And before moving on towards the Bulgs and returning to
the grim reality of warfare, Kinder warmly remembers a delightful
respite with a family in Luxembourg.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
One of the memorable things to me was it was
just before Christmas, and so we just stopped wherever we
could find. It was cold, it was snowy, and Luxembourg
people were very welcoming. Normally, normally we had set places
for our equipment and so on, but we were on
(22:03):
the route, so we just stayed in this little corner
tavern in the little town of Fishbox, north of Luxembourg
with a family mom, dad and two little kids. We
had Christmas there. There's MP's were stationed at this crossroads.
They brought in a Christmas tree. They had electricity. They
(22:25):
brought in a little Christmas tree for the bar and
we had Christmas. They had a jukebox and had we
all shared food with everybody. It was a thrill. And
then the next night from there that was our best
night ever. It was like something out of Disney. I
(22:46):
wish I could see those little kids would be eighty
something now, but I wish I could see them.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
The next day it was a very different story. Kinder says.
The battalion moved much closer to the fighting at the
bulge and found themselves staying at a spot that provided
two inviting of a target for the Germans. It's how
his best day of the war was immediately followed by
his worst.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
But the next day was my worst day. We shouldn't
have been in this place. It was a three story
mansion of some sort in a little town near a
little town called Stegen. It was about twenty five miles
or thirty miles from bas Stone. But we were still
en route. We didn't have any permanent thing, so it
(23:31):
was cold, and we arrived late. And the best place
on a sitting in a building like that out by itself,
because you know that they're gonna if they were gonna
check their guns, they're gonna try a target that might
mean something. But we were there because it was so cold,
and we got in late. So we were on the
(23:53):
third floor. There was an attic above us, so we're
on the third floor. The best place, and the thing
like that was the first floor on the back. We
were the top next to it. And I know I
was just getting ready for bed with there were beds
in that room. It was a private residence that we
(24:15):
had taken over. And I remember I was bending over
to untimely shoes and I don't remember anything, and then
I came to and I had a mattress on top
of me and a shell had hit in the attic.
It killed I think three infantry men, injured several and
(24:39):
in our room of four of us, two of them
went home with bad injuries. Two of us weren't touched,
I mean by musette bag, my gas mask, everything hanging
on the wall were shattered. I remember standing up. I
don't remember anything. I know it was good cushion shock
(25:01):
or what.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Kinder says that explosion is one of the reasons he
still cannot remember much of what he saw or did
at the Battle of the Bulge, but he continued his work,
and he painfully remembers a graphic demonstration of the cost
of war.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
The twenty six our records show that we made our
first setup out of bas noon, so I know I
worked because somebody had to. I know I was there,
but I literally don't remember anything there for days. The
only thing I do remember about the bulge, and I
(25:38):
couldn't talk about this even two years ago when I
first got into this time of excitement, you know, of
being recognized. But I remember we worked in it again,
a building by itself, and his steps going up the front,
two windows, and I remember going in out, but I
(26:00):
don't know where we stayed. Did we stay in that
building or did we stay someplace and come back. I
don't know. All I remember is the building, and the
bad part of it was the building was two stories
high a plane wall, and in those days at that point,
(26:22):
the not search and rescue, but the people that picked
up bodies hadn't really got organized yet, and of course
it was freezing. It was cold, and they used that
building as a as a gathering spot. So I say,
I couldn't talk before it. Thanks to this I can.
(26:43):
They started leaning them against the building just they brought
them in in trucks and just dumped them. They were
frozen and physically, and you know, there's the bodies. They
just dumped them against the building. And the building was
like this, and it kept growing like this, and just
(27:07):
I saw I remember. Maybe that's why I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
In addition to the vicious fighting, the terrible losses, and
the eventual repelling of the German offensive, the Battle of
the Bulge is also remembered for its bitter cold. But
Kinder caught a break entirely because of his job.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
I was lucky in that they couldn't take care of
all the men, obviously in the cold, but they had
to take care of the equipment because it was water
in it, the developer and so on, and of course
the equipment was valuable, and in essence I was part
(27:45):
of the equipment because I was reading it. You know,
where the equipment when I went vice versa, Neither one
could work without the other. So I was kind of
with the equipment and it had to be under shelter
some how. Wherever we went, I had as good as
conditions as existed. So we must have been inside somewhere
(28:08):
because the equipment had to be. But whether I stayed
with the equipment or whether I lived stayed to building,
but we would have been inside personally. During the bulls,
I remember was cold, but nothing like the infantry had.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
After the Battle of the Bulge, the next major goal
for the US was getting across the Rhine River, and
except for some arrant munitions from American planes, Kinder says,
the crossings went smoothly for him and the battalion.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
We were on the course west side of the river,
and we ranged across into Germany. I don't know how
much we accomplished because the air Force by this time
started coming in. It was like a John Wayne movie.
You just can't We couldn't believe the airplanes coming across
(29:03):
thousands or hundreds any out of time they were dropping.
We couldn't see them dropping it because they were into Germany.
By this time, we were still sound ranging into Germany.
We were probably getting mostly tanks and so on. I'll
never know, but once in a while we'd have a shortfall,
(29:26):
which is embarrassing. They drop one on our side of
the river, but we were close to that. But I
remember the night, in the night of the crossing, we'd
done all of our sound ranging and loaded up all
of our equipment because they said some hours before the
Rhine crossing, they told me that everything would be quiet.
(29:49):
So we sat there. They said at a certain time,
all the guns, all the Allied guns would open at
one time. Of course, the air force had already shattered
everything that we could see in Germany, and so we waited.
Was quiet, and all of a sudden the loudest noise
(30:11):
you can imagine. I remember this sitting there thinking I've
got to remember this because I'll never hear anything like
it again. But it was quite a noise. And we crossed.
The engineers put up pondum. They did amazing jobs, because
we crossed twenty four hours after the first barrage, and
(30:36):
we went on a pontum bridges that looked terrible, but
they carried a lot of trucks from there.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Kinder says, the Germans resumed a rapid retreat, reminiscent of
their dash across France. He shares what those final weeks
of the war were like and finally meeting up with
the Russians near the Elbe River.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
So we got into Germany by this time, and the Germans
were really moving, really retreating. So from then on we
had a little bit north and then straight east towards Berlin.
I mean we were directly west of Berlin. We went
(31:18):
straight east and our only activity at that point was
picking up prisoners of war and passing them back. We
didn't know what to do with them. We were at
Brunswick and the airport there, the German airport, and three
(31:38):
jet planes different names came in and surrendered to us,
and so we spent most of our time shepherding prisoners
of war back to somebody, because we didn't set up.
We just again, it was like across across from France.
It was just they were retreating. We were catching up
(31:59):
in every day. So we got as far east as Magdeburgh.
On the was the ill but I can't remember rivers now,
but we were ninety miles west of Berlin where we
were to meet the Russians who were coming this way.
That's why where there's so many Germans were surrendering to
(32:19):
us by this time. They didn't want the Russians. We
waited for a week or so at Magdeburg at the
river for the Russians to come. We never saw them.
They didn't come right to the river. We met them
at that point, and that was I can't remember dates now,
(32:41):
but it was March, no May on May fifth, I
think the official v day I think was May seventh.
To us, it was May fifth because that's when everything stopped,
but it was in May. Any that was over.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
In January twenty twenty five, Alan Kinder turned one hundred
years old, so eighty years after the war. What is
he most proud of about his service?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Just being there? Everybody did something. When they first talked
to me about coming, I said, they're talking about going
to the ball to the invasion. I said, well, isn't
it kind of presumptuous? And they said no, because I
figured that with half a percent of us still alive
(33:38):
out of roughly four hundred and some odd, statistically, there
would be two of us left. I don't know who
the other one was, but at that point I started
thinking that way, that we're taking the honor for them,
and there was no particular thing to be proud of,
(34:02):
because we all did what we had to do. There
were so many people that had it risks, so much,
lost so much, worked so much harder than I personally did.
That I still worry about it, But when I think
that I'm all that's left of a bunch, it's easier.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
He's also eager for others to learn from his story,
starting with those closest to home.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Particularly to my great grandson. I'm lucky I didn't know
either of my grandfather's very well. I saw him summer vacations,
you know. Here I am with my grandson in his thirties,
and he's more interested in this than he ever would
have been. And I've got a seven year old great grandson,
(34:53):
and it means so much.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
That's Alan Kinder, a US Army veteran of World War Two.
He specialized and sound ranging with the fourteenth Field Artillery
Observation Battalion. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi,
(35:18):
this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow
the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're
at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube
(35:39):
channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course,
please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get
your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join us
next time for Veterans Chronicles
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