- May 2, 2024
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Sitting in his home of 40 years on the Manatee River, John Skeen fell into a trance July 29 as he recounted his steps that led to a Bronze Star during a World War II battle near Pfaffenwald, France.
Skeen, an Army sergeant, wasn't an officer, but he was a leader of men. He also was a fast runner, and more athletic than most. Being gifted in that manner, he often was being asked to "volunteer" for the most dangerous assignments.
In this case, it was early in 1945, the final days of Adolph Hitler's reign. The fierce fighting continued, though, as Skeen's 70th Infantry Division, nicknamed the "Trail Blazers," faced off against Germany's most elite troops in France.
Skeen was asked to take three other men and make a bold move toward a German bunker, where a machine gun was inflicting heavy casualties on the Americans. Under heavy fire, Skeen's group managed to get into firing range for a bazooka.
On the second try, Skeen said his fellow soldier with the bazooka had a direct hit, blowing the bunker apart, and killing most of those in it.
Two Germans managed to run from the bunker, heading toward a stand of trees and their own troops.
Now 104-years-old, Skeen's face tightened and his jaw clenched, as he talked about the next few moments on the battlefield.
"I said, 'Let's go,'" he said of telling his fellow soldiers to advance.
They ran forward, shooting at the two Germans as they approached the woods. They shot both Germans, one hitting the ground wounded. The other was face down, dead.
When Skeen got to the Germans, he used his rifle to poke the one who appeared to be dead, before rolling the body over.
It was a woman.
Both Germans had worn long, heavy coats. And while the woman could have been a soldier, Sometimes women from nearby villages would accompany solders to the bunkers.
In a world filled with death, Skeen was shaken. All the bad he had seen had been amplified in a cruel moment.
"One of the things I took away from the war was the terrible destruction all around," he said. "Everything was obliterated. Building after building. The trees looked like telephone poles with no leaves. Cows, horses dead. The carnage, the smell."
Skeen generally tried to maintain a flat emotional line while recounting the war stories, but he struggled when he talked about identifying the victim as a woman. His pain was obvious.
And yet he tells his stories.
"Recently, I have felt a big relief," he said. "People have told me, 'You are one of the few left. You are history. You have a story to tell."
On Thursday mornings, Skeen meets with a veterans group at Bob Evans restaurant, off State Road 70 in Bradenton.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Kevin Wright often records special events at the Thursday meetings or when Skeen talks to groups.
"This is a modern day scrapbook," Wright said. "We are rapidly losing our World War II veterans."
Air Force veteran Richard Koch said the group has been meeting at Bob Evans about eight years.
"In the winter, we get up to about 30 people attending," Koch said. "We all are patriots here. The guys share stories, and they also share their demons."
At the July 27 meeting, Koch set up a meeting between Skeen and Tampa's Anne Lancelle, an Honorary Consul who represents France.
Lancelle had been hoping to meet Skeen, who has a purple heart for being shot in the arm and for shrapnel injuries suffered in battle, because her mother, 86-year-old Monique Sablon, still talks about seeing the American troops march into her town in Belgium to liberate them.
"She remembers when the (American) soldiers came in," Lancelle said. "She had moved to a town near Brussels because her town had been bombed. When she hears a plane even today, she still is afraid."
Lancelle loves to hear the stories of the soldiers who helped with that liberation.
"But all the veterans are passing from that era," she said.
Skeen enjoyed their talk and remembered those liberation moments, one of the few joys of the war.
"We worked so hard to liberate them, and it was so great to see the joy in their faces and the happiness," Skeen said. "To hear them. 'Free. Free. Free.'"
Lancelle's eyes never turned away as Skeen talked about the war. He appreciated her attention, and that she knew the history.
Skeen said he often talks to groups and finds that people don't know much about World War II.
"They don't know where the Aleutian Islands are," he said.
Skeen, who was born and raised in Charleston, West Virginia, was drafted into the Army in January 1941.
He had landed a job at the DuPont factory in Charleston after an all-state high school career in baseball and football. DuPont had a high-profile, semipro baseball team that would play "all-star" games against the Cincinnati Reds' minor league team that was based in Charleston. Upon seeing Skeen, the Reds offered him a minor league contract. The draft, however, sent him on a detour.
After basic training at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana, Skeen was shipped to Alaska, where the U.S. was building up its defenses in case Japan decided to attack from that direction.
Japan took over the Kiska and Attu islands in the U.S.-owned Aleutian Islands, off the coast of Alaska, about six months after the Pearl Harbor attacks. It took some fierce fighting before the U.S. reclaimed the islands.
Skeen didn't see battle in those confrontations, but was part of the U.S. forces building in Alaska, which had yet to become a U.S. state. He was there 18 months before being shipped to Europe.
It was December 1944 when he arrived with the "Trail Blazers" at Marseille, France.
He quickly found he was colder in Europe than he was in Alaska as the 70th Infantry joined the fighting in the Ardennes-Alsace campaign and participated in the intense fighting in the Vosges Mountains.
"We suffered so many casualties," Skeen said. "On New Year's Eve, 1944, we left Philippsbourg (France) at 7 p.m. to go to Bitche. There was three to four feet of snow and the temperature was zero. Our platoon was in the lead position. All of a sudden, all Hell broke loose. The Germans were waiting for us and they ambushed us. We fought our way back to an old saw mill, and we had to carry about half our men off."
Besides enemy fire, many of the Americans had frozen feet.
"Being such a good athlete, I always was on the move," Skeen said. "That saved me. We started with 160 men, and at the end we had 30 men (who weren't killed or wounded) and three officers.
"We had those 33 men, and when morning came, we crossed another stream, went over a hill, and they put us in another company. Then we took Saarbrucken (in Germany)."
He said U.S. forces pushed forward relentlessly.
Skeen said few people will ever know what it was like to be in the infantry, especially with so few World War II veterans remaining today.
"Days and nights without a shower, filthy. You would sleep wherever you were, a barnyard, a building, the woods, anywhere," he said. "You would be in combat all night, then move out every morning. What was on your mind was to stay alive. Kill or be killed. You would see 17-year-old boys and see their faces change. Hair over their ears, dirty clothes, after a few weeks, they looked like they were in their 30s."
He said some of the top officers were after glory, and the infantry soldiers would pay the price.
"We would pray, lay there and hope," he said. "(Surviving) was luck. What about the thoughts of the men laying out there, on the ground, in a hole? We weren't thinking that we were fighting for democracy, saving the world. We thought about staying alive."
When the war ended and Skeen arrived back in port in New Jersey, he didn't spend the night celebrating despite all the sirens, lights and parades.
Instead, the father of his friend, Ray Fulcher, came to get him. Fulcher had been killed in battle near the German border, and Skeen was being asked to give as much information as possible to the family about what happened. Fulcher had been shot through the head by a sniper.
It was a hard task, but one that Skeen completed many times over the years because the families knew he would help them understand the deaths of their loved ones.
"All the information they had received was that their son had been killed in a certain place on a certain day," he said. "That's it."
Now he wants to tell those stories so they remain alive. But it forces him to think about the war.
"Sometimes at night, I might hear a voice," Skeen said. "I try to place that voice."
