Posted: 7/5/05
Brownsville man recalls truck driving job during WWII
 Hugh Rediske at his kitchen table in Brownsville Township on June 29. He is holding his discharge papers. |
By David Heiller
Argus News Editor
Hugh Rediske can still remember the wrong turn he made that day in Germany.
He was driving his 5-ton GMC truck loaded with bridge building material. He had studied the map beforehand as usual, and he knew he should go left. But the sign said right, and he trusted it, something he didnít normally do, because Germans had a habit of changing signs to trick their enemy.
Big mistake. Hugh drove past Allied tankers, past the infantry boys. Then German artillery shells started landing nearby, and Hugh realized his wrong turn.
"In the meantime they were firing at me all the time,î Hugh recalled. ìI was lucky to get out of that one.î
He ended up with seven flat tires from the shrapnel, the most he ever had in one day as a truck driver during World War II.
Hugh reflected on his service while sitting at his kitchen table on June 29. His wife, Helen, had two plates of cookies and a cup of coffee ready. They live between Brownsville and Hokah on County Road 18.
The first thing Hugh did was hand me his discharge papers. That tells it all, he said.
It did contain a lot of information. It stated his battles and campaigns: Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes, Rhineland, and Central Europe.
It gave his decorations and citations: Victory Medal, European African, Middle Eastern Theater, Five Battle Stars, Silver Star, Three Overseas Bars, and donít forget Good Conduct.
But the form didnít say Hughís feelings on the war, and the first thing to come out on that subject was perhaps the most important: those 355,000 soldiers who never came back.
Hugh said he was glad he went, but equally glad, and lucky, to get back home, because so many men didnít. The intent look in his eyes says that those men deserve to be remembered.
ìWe lost quite a few men,î Hugh said.
He enlisted on May 18, 1943, and spent most of his time driving that GMC truck all over Europe and North Africa. He hauled material for building Bailey Bridges. It put him in the midst of combat for 292 days.
Every time German soldiers crossed a bridge, they would blow out a span. Hugh and his 211 fellow 72nd Engineers would bring up six-foot-long panels, which could be pinned together and slid into place.
Drivers would pull up to the spot and unload, and they didnít dawdle. ìYou got the hell out of there,î Hugh recalled.
On big rivers like the Seine or Danube, they would work day and night. Boats and cables would be used, and the bridges would be built on pontoons. Hugh helped build foot bridges too.
It was a tough experience. He slept outside in foxholes, rain or shine. There were no bathrooms, and he washed up with water that had been boiled in coffee cans.
They would try to park in woods when they werenít working. They worked at night a lot to avoid air attacks. At first they tried shooting German planes down, but that changed. If they shot down the first plane, there would usually be a second German plane that could find their location from the tracer bullets.
Hugh said he was never scared despite his close calls. He figures his anger at the Naziís pushed fear out of his mind.
Hugh was raised on a farm near Sparta, Wisconsin, and he thinks that helped him too, because\ he could do a lot of different things.
He didnít have a favorite place from all his travels during the war, because he was constantly moving. ìAs long as the troops advanced and came to another bridge, we moved,î he said.
Hugh kept in touch with his buddies, but they are all dead now, he said. He visited WW II cemeteries in France and Luxemborg five years ago.
Hugh used to think about the war, and even dream about it. ìYou can see people. See the shells go off,î he said. ìYou believe that? Thatís a fact.î
Hugh and Helen have three sons: Vernon, Sparta; Myron, Burr Oak, Iowa; and Michael, Brownsville.
Hugh and Helen moved from Sparta and bought the old Frank Davy farm in 1953. They moved to their present farm in 1970. Their son Mike has a dairy operation on their old farm.
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