The war-time letters of Charles Lowry

My grandfather Charles Lowry had a long career as a Federal employee, which included almost two years in the United States Army. It probably wasn't by choice that he entered the Army. Like almost 10,000,000 other men between 1940 and 1947, he was drafted and declared 1-A - Available for unrestricted military service.

Once drafted, he entered Basic Training at Camp Blanding in Florida. He would spend several months there learning basic soldiering before receiving leave and returning to his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. His leave finished, he took a train for Fort George Meade, Maryland. Just outside of Washington, D.C., he visited with friends and took in the sites before shipping out for England. He was assigned to a replacement unit, a Casual Company as it was known, and it was a boring life. Guard duty, sleep, uniform inspection, eat, repeat.

The real action started when like so many others, he was assigned to a fighting unit. In this case, he was assigned as an ammunition bearer in a squad and platoon of Company D/Heavy Weapons, 1st Battalion (Lt. Col. Ben Chapla), 28th Infantry Regiment (Anderson), 8th Infantry Division (Stroh), XIII Corps (Middleton), United States Third Army (Patton), Twelfth United States Army Group (Bradley), Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (Eisenhower) [Commanders when Chuck entered the fight in Aug 1944].

Charles Lowry was a replacement. Replacement troops prior to 1943 were used to fill slots in new units being created and sent overseas. By 1944, when Charles went through basic training, recruits weren't just filling new units, but were used to replace combat casualties from units fighting in Europe, the Pacific and in Africa.

The letters Charles wrote home capture a basic painting of Army life. He was restricted from providing his location most of the time. Asking questions to his mother was the best way to get information of home.

Charles was wounded during the early stages of Battle for Brest, France when a hand grenade detonated near him, causing the ammunition he was carrying to explode and sent shrapnel fragments into his legs. He had been in France for eight days and on the front line for three hours. He was lucky if he knew the first names of the men he was fighting with. Friendships were non-existent for replacements (later called reinforcements because of the harsh connotation of the word 'replacement' in a military unit that had suffered casualties). The chance a replacement would be wounded or killed in his first 14 days of combat was nearly 70%.

Chuck was removed from the line, first sent to a casualty collection point, before a truck ride to field hospital. He was then transported to England for care and eventually to Fort Benjamin Harrison Army Hospital in Indianapolis where he spent nearly a year in recovery of his wounds.

If you have questions or comments about the letters, I encourage you to post them in the comments section.