When serving in World War II, 101-year-old Tom Sitter of Madison, Wisconsin didn’t expect to fight his own countrymen. Though there were tussles with a tank division during his training days, he came to learn that differences were put aside with his fellow soldiers when the going got tough.
The following story was told on May 8, 2017 at The Moth during an open-mic StorySLAM in Madison where the theme of the night was “Karma.” Here’s Tom Sitter live at The Moth.
(This story has been edited for brevity and clarity. Also as a warning, it contains strong language and descriptions of battleground violence.)
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Thank you. Hi. My name is Tom Sitter. [I’m] 93 years old and still breathing.
Now, during World War II, I found myself in France. The Battle of the Bulge had started in December of that year (1944) and continued through January.
We got there. It was pretty much over. I was in a medical battalion and we had to clean up, pretty much. We carried bodies, parts of bodies and prisoners to station hospitals into the aid tents.
Now, over there, we ran into our archenemies: the 9th Armored Division [of the United States Army]. These guys were all tankers and they were mean. We had both trained in Kansas near Fort Riley during World War II.
I was in the Cavalry at the time. In 1942, they still had horse cavalry down at Fort Riley, in addition to the mechanized cavalry. We had these great uniforms, boots and breeches, and they really turned a lot of heads and we knew it. We were pretty cocky.
Tom Sitter on a motorcycle at Fort Riley in Kansas in 1943. (Courtesy of Kathleen Sitter)
Anyway, we’d go into town. The tankers would be in these bars and we’d come walking in and they’d say, “I smell horsesh–. The 29th must be here!”
We gave as good as we got. As a result, there were a lot of fights going on, a lot of them, lot of them. We would instigate fights. We’d sing a cavalry song — bear with me, we’d sing:
“The cavalry, the cavalry with dirt behind their ears.
The cavalry, the cavalry they drink up all the beers.
The infantry and tankers and the corps of engineers,
they couldn’t whip the cavalry in 100,000 years.”
Oh, that created quite a…[cheers and applause]. Thank you. That created a lot of fights, too.
Tim Sitter of Madison, Wisconsin served as a medic, motorcyclist and bugler during WWII. (Photo courtesy of Tom Sitter)
Anyways, when we got over to Europe, we ran into the 9th Armored Division. I’ll tell you how. When we first landed with the 20th Armored Division, 12,000 men, tanks, armored cars, jeeps and everything else— the first thing they did when we landed in France was to break us up into segments. They put us (the 29th) with the First, the Third and the Ninth Army. So, we were part of the Ninth Army. Up near the Rhine [River], we were next to the British and Canadian troops.
During that time, we did ambulance duties and moved [the] wounded and dead. But we noticed when we got close to the Rhine, our hearts sank. First of all, the Germans, when they retreated after the bodies, they blew up bridges all the way. When we got to the Rhine, we saw that immense body of water. We knew — our hearts sank. We knew we were going to have to cross it, probably in rubber rafts or tiny boats. We didn’t look forward to that. My rosary got a pretty good workout during that time.
Finally, it was February of 1945. Now, the Rhine River started as a trickle in the Swiss Alps. When it goes northeasterly flowing into the North Sea, it becomes a huge river, hundreds of yards across. We just were frightened at the thought of crossing it. By early March, we had good news. Someone had captured a bridge at Remagen. It was a railway trestle bridge, and it was captured by our old arch enemies, the 9th Armored Division. Great guys.
Tom Sitter tells his story at The Moth StorySLAM in Madison, Wisconsin on May 8, 2017. (Photo by Hedi Lamarr Rudd)
So, anyway — finally — we reunited. The 20th Armored Division finally went to the point where we were going to cross. Now, the 9th Armored Division had fought terribly hard to win that. The Germans tried to blow up the trestle bridge. What happened is some of the charges — for some reason, God only knows — they didn’t go off. So, the 9th Armored had to go into that trestle, crawling under fire and had cut wires, remove charges that didn’t detonate. At any moment, they thought the thing would go up into their face. And then — on top of it — the bridge now was intact, but it was tilted and very shaky. You couldn’t get a vehicle across there.
So, the 9th Armored dismounted. [They] had crawled under fire, went across that bridge one at a time — under fire — and established a bridgehead on the other side of the river. They held that bridgehead — those lucky so-and-so’s — held that bridge long enough for pontoon bridges to be built where we were. Well, the 20th Armored Division finally was united and we were going to cross at that point.
Now, when we got in our ambulance, we started off across a pontoon — a very flimsy pontoon bridge. The big bridges, sturdy ones, were for tanks and trucks. But as we got onto this pontoon, I could tell it was shaking. We were swaying from side to side and dipping and everything else. The water was choppy, and the water was black and it was cold. It was in March. We knew that if we made one mistake, that ambulance was going to go into the water with us in it. In doing so, we’re going to wreck that pontoon bridge — which means that if we survived the water floating downstream, our own troops would have been shooting at us, who were waiting to cross the bridge, of course.
But we finally got across the bridge. We went over on the other side of the bridge and we were united.
When Tom Sitter of Madison, Wisconsin participated in the Badger Honor Flight, he visited the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of Tom Sitter)
The 20th Armored Division was attached to the Seventh Army, and we swept through Germany. We went through along Mannheim, Augsburg, and south and east and finally got to Dachau. That’s another story I won’t go into. We got to Munich, and finally, we crossed the river and got into Bavaria. As we headed towards the Austrian border, we almost reached it on May 7th, 1945 and the war ended.
Now, yesterday was May 7th [2017]. Talk about 72 years. And to this day, I’m here telling that story, because I wouldn’t be here, had it not been for the incredible bravery of those glorious bastards: the 9th Armored Division.
Tom Sitter of Madison, Wisconsin turned 101-years-old on August 16, 2024. (Courtesy of Kathleen Sitter)
To find more information on The Moth’s live storytelling events in Wisconsin, check out StorySLAMs in Madison and StorySLAMs in Milwaukee.
