By Dale Welch
“I’ve tried to put all that behind me,” longtime Monterey resident Cecil Garrett told me in a 2001 interview. He was talking about all the dodging bullets, the marching, crawling, digging, and shooting his way across Itay, France and Germany during those horrific years of World War II.
Garrett was the fifth of nine children born to I.B. and Nancy (Nance) Garret. His father served as a constable in Monterey for more than 20 years.
Before the U.S. entered World War II, Garrett was driving a coal truck for his father, delivering coal to customers as far away as Nashville. You think traffic bogs down on Interstate 40 into Nashville now, Garret said that traffic really moved slowly along Highway 70N, traveling through each city and little community. A trip to Nashville loaded with coal around those curvy roads would sometimes take four or five hours, going 20 or 30 m.p.h.
By keeping him working, his parents were hoping to convince the government that he was needed at home to help support the family. The next thing Garrett knew—even though flat-footed and all—he wound up in the U.S. Army, training at Ft. Chaffee, AR, in the hilly western portion of the state.
“When I got there,” Garrett recalled, “there wasn’t more than a dozen barracks down in a big mud hole.”
He spent 18 months training at the camp. He made at least one important trip back to Monterey. During that quick trip, he convinced one father of a young maiden to let him bring his daughter back to Ft. Chafee and put a ring on her finger. Alma Buckner Garrett became his first and only wife of 63 years.
Then a mudhole, Ft. Chaffee is used now for maneuver training for National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve units. More than 50,000 soldiers train there annually.
“You could go across a bridge,” Garrett remembered, “and you’d be in Oklahoma.” He remembered the terrible dust storms. What he did not know at the time was the storms that lay ahead.
While at the Ft. Chaffee, soldiers received a $21-per-month salary. His wife, Alma recalled that when the men were out on maneuvers, food supplies would run low. Spouses who gather together all they had and have one big month-end feast.
After 18 months of training, Pvt. Garrett was shipped out to New York. It was only a matter of time until he shipped out overseas along with artillery, tanks, and half-tracks they needed.
Upon arrival, the 59th Armed Field Artillery did not have time to stop to rest upon the beaches. They went in shooting because they were being shot at even before they landed. In Northern Africa. Garrett said that even in the late night, the shells were lighting up the area as if it were daylight.
Fighting their way through Sicily, Garret’s unit went on a mission under Gen. Mark Clark to make an amphibious landing on Anzio Beachhead.
In the early morning hours of Jan. 22, 1944, far behind enemy lines, IV Corps Gen. Clark’s corps. Landed on the Italian shore below Rome. Between this and the Fifth Army’s May Offensive, the short stretch known as the Anzio Beachhead, was the scene of one of the bloodiest scenes of the war.
The Germans launched attack after attack to drive the Fifth Army out into the sea. Though surrounded by numerically superior forces, the Fifth Army held off every attack, held their beachhead, and spearhead forces into Rome.
That road to Rome was a long one, Garrett remembered and full of landmines.
“You’d crawl during the night,” he said. “If you felt a hump, you’d know to avoid it.”
Another type of landmine or bomb, Garrett called it a “Jumping Betsy.” Germans would lay a line across a path. When the landmine was tripped, it would jump up and shoot you. Garrett recalled he was walking along a path. When he stepped and heard a clicking noise. He immediately hit the ground, and the “Jumping Betsy” jumped up and shot over him.
Even at a slow pace, Allied forces had the eneny on the run.
“In the night,” Garrett said, “we could hear them stop. We couldn’t let them dig in, or they would kill us.”
At one point, Garrett’s unit was cut off on both sides. Some of the soldiers found a field of potatoes. Using their helmets, they dug them up and ate the raw to survive.
In one incident, Garrett was Sergeant of the Guard and was in the process of changing out the guards. He was in the middle of a field when two German fighter planes flew over. He hit the deck. When the machine gunner fired, he covered Garrett with dirt, but the bullets missed him.
Knowing that the planes would most likely come back the same way, artillery was set up awaiting their return. When they returned, Garrett said that that was as far as they got.
That was not the only time Garrett was covered in dirt. He was almost killed by U.S. fighter planes. In one town, planes flew over dropping their bombs. One plane was short of its target and exploded its bombs close to Garrett’s foxhole, caving it in. The only thing that saved him was a stick sticking up straight in the ground that allowed him enough air to breathe until they could get him out.
Garrett sadly recalled seeing dead bodies along the roads “stacked like stove wood.” In one place, he and his best friend were in a foxhole when his friend spotted an apple tree loaded down with apples. “I sure would like to have one of those apples,” his friend kept saying. Garrett pulled him back several times. However, his friend quickly got away from him, and before he could do anything, his friend was cut in half by German machine guns.
“That man had a wife and kids,” Garrett said. “And he didn’t get to go home.”
Sniper fire was also dangerous. Garrett said one day, they were taking on sniper fire from among some trees. They were ordered to blast the trees into pieces. The next morning, they discovered the dead snipers on the ground. They were women and children.
In another instance, snipers shot at Garrett.
“Had they’d been a good shot,” Garrett exclaimed, “they would have killed me. Instead, they shot the bark off a tree I was behind.”
He saw the form of a person, shot and hit his target. The dead body dropped to the ground. He said it was a “pretty young about 15-year-old blond girl.”
When his unit reached Rome, Garrett remembered seeing three big bridges. He and two or three other soldiers decided to cross over one of the bridges to see what was on the other side. As they were crossing, German fighter planes flew over, dropping bombs onto the bridge at the other side, demolishing it. They had to swim across the river to get back.
Fighting on through Italy, into Southern France and onto Germany, soldiers went sometimes days or weeks without sleep. Garrett said that to get a quick nap, they would lean up against a tree to get what they could.
By the time Garrett made it into Germany, he had been transferred into an infantry unit. One day, they lucked out while firing and cleaning their guns. A herd of deer crossed the road in front of them. They were ordered to “cease fire,” to let the deer safely cross. Once the deer cleared, they commenced firing. The deer came back as if to say, “just shoot me.” They did and had fresh meat for several days.
At another place in Germany, they had stretched a line of tin cans along some bushes inside the perimeter of their camp. They were ordered to fire if the line of cans rattled. Around midnight, they heard the rattling and opened fire. The next morning, they discovered that they had killed several cows but did not have time to stop and eat them.
Throughout the war, Garrett got to see place he thought he would never get to see, like Rome, Paris, and Berlin. Fighting his way into them meant that there was not much time to sight see. To him, there was no better place in mind than home. Though he had more points than some, others got to go home before him. His time finally came. He got to finally see his sweet Alma. They raised their family in Monterey.
Cecil Edward Garrert passed away on Oct. 23, 2006, at the age of 86 years old. His beloved wife, Mary Alma Buckner Garrett followed him on May 27, 2022, at the age of 96. They are buried side by side at the Welch Memorial Cemetery, in Monterey.
