Goodrich native Richard D. Horton learned to operate tractors and heavy trucks’fairly routine for a young man working on a farm during the 1930s.
However, those skills learned as a teen would pay big dividends for thousands of Allied prisoners of war held deep behind German lines near the end of World War II.
Born at Wheelock Hospital Nov. 5, 1921, Horton graduated from Goodrich High School in 1940. He was employed by Michigan Bell Telephone company after school, and married Goodrich resident Barbara Scranton in 1942, six weeks after she graduated from GHS.
Following the United States? entrance into WWII in 1941, Horton enlisted in the Army Signal Corps, and over the next year-and-a-half was stationed at numerous encampments including Camp Crowder, Mo., Camp Barkeley, Texas, Fort Polk, La. and Ft. Sam Houston, Texas. He also spent a year in the Army specialized training program at the University of Cincinnati, learning math skills.
‘They sent me back to the troops assigned to the 14th Armored Division in Fort Cambell, Ky. I was glad to get out of Cincinnati, ? he said. ‘I told them I would not mind being in a tank since I drove a gravel truck back in Goodrich before the war. The next thing I knew I was driving a Sherman (tank). I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing in this tank???
Horton went on to the east coast near Camp Shanks, N.Y., where he departed for France on small merchant ship, the Santa Rosa.
‘We sailed out of New York Harbor at dark and were at sea for 17 days crossing the Atlantic in a convoy heading to Marseilles, France, on the south side of the country. I recall a bad storm just off the coast of Gibraltar’the waves were so high the ship’s propellers were coming out of the water between the waves. Many of us were seasick.?
In November 1944, Horton, along with the 14th Armor, moved north from the area of Marseilles to Epinal, France via the railroad. Assigned to the M4 Sherman tank, Horton and a crew of five were heading east toward Germany and the Rhine River.
In January 1945, Horton was part of the Battle of Hatten-Rittershoffen in two small villages in France at the center of Hitler’s Operation Northwind’his last attempt to halt the Allied advancement.
‘There was not a whole lot of combat until Hatten,? said Horton. ‘I knew it was getting serious then’we lost 47 tanks in our division. I had two tanks I was driving destroyed during that battle, which lasted about two weeks. It was very cold, and after the battle the town was flattened. We had the Germans on the run after that.?
On Easter Sunday, April 1,1945, the 14th Armored Division moved across the Rhine River on a pontoon bridge into Wurms Germany, and continued pursuit of the retreating Nazi troops through Lohr, Gemunden, Neustadt, and Hammelburg.
‘We rolled into Hammelburg (Germany). I was ordered to crash over a fence and berm into an area of buildings that looked like barracks. It was an Allied prisoner of war camp’all these POWs rushed out toward my tank’Poles, Americans, Brits’they were freed. I remember the cheers. Someone told us the Germans heard us coming down the road and took off running. Many were ready to surrender at that point.?
The division earned the nickname, ‘Liberators,? during the last days of WWII when they liberated some 200,000 Allied prisoners of war from German prison camps. Among those liberated were approximately 20,000 American soldiers, sailors, and airmen, as well as an estimated 40,000 troops from the UK and Commonwealth.
‘As we moved across Germany I saw Nazi soldiers dead along the road’some were just kids, maybe 12 years old. The war was over, I don’t know why Hitler did not just quit. We liberated a POW camp located just north of the town of Moosburg in southern Bavaria, Germany at the end of April in 1945. There had to be 100,000 prisoners in there. One POW I spoke with said they boiled grass in water to eat’he told me he’d lost 70 pounds since he’d been in there.?
Horton was in Muldorf, Germany when the war ended, and returned home in November 1945. Since the war, he returned twice to the towns of Hatten-Rittershoffen and to France for a reunion visit.
‘I met a German soldier during one of my visits,? said Horton. ‘He spoke a little English and we talked’it just happened that he, too, was in a tank division at Hatten-Rittershoffen’the same battle as me.?
‘Many of the French townspeople came out when us WWII veterans arrived, they waved American flags and cheered us. I never realized that many of the residents were Jewish’they never forgot.?