D. Clarke Evans Photographer

Warren Milner

Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army
1944-1946

SSgt. Warren Milner
Italy, 1945

I joined the 133rd Infantry, 34th Division in Italy one afternoon, and the next day we walked to the front. On the way we saw a Jeep pulling a trailer stacked with dead GIs. We were the replacement troops.

  I was born in 1925 and grew up in Vernon, Texas. I played football in high school. The draft board talked us into flunking one subject to play football for one more year. That was 1943. They were figuring on us winning State.

I went to Lubbock when I was drafted, and I asked the feller for the Navy but he said I was in the Army. I had basic training at Camp Hood. I went into the Army in March, 1944 and overseas in September. I joined the 133rd Infantry, 34th Division in Italy one afternoon, and the next day we walked to the front. On the way we saw a Jeep pulling a trailer stacked with dead GIs. We were the replacement troops.

I walked all the way across Italy. I was in the battles of Po Valley, North Apennines and the Rhineland. I was in combat infantry for eight or nine months. I got to be a squad leader because I was the only one left in the squad. The troop turnover was kind of high. They were shelling us all the time, and airplanes would strafe us at night.

There were three times I should’ve been dead. One time I was standing at the corner of a building and an artillery shell hit pretty close. The force of the blast knocked me out. When it dawned on me that I was alive, I got up and joined what was left of the outfit.

Another time, we were going through a town with a short bridge going across a river. I was on that bridge and we were ambushed. I’m a real strong believer in God because God spared my life. When I heard those shots, I hit the ground, but the guy in front of me and about seven in front of him were killed. The guy right behind me was killed, and I looked back down that street and it was loaded with dead and wounded GIs. I had a Thompson submachine gun. I’d see some movement in a window and shoot. Then I’d have to sit down and play with it to get it to where it would shoot again. One of our tanks came in and put a jillion rounds through those buildings. It wasn’t long before everything got real quiet.

We had some pretty rough days. One time the Germans were about a half mile from us. Here come three American P-51 airplanes. They passed us and turned. We had yellow smoke grenades, and only one person is supposed to throw one if we got in a situation like that. Yellow smoke meant friendly forces. When they got into strafing position, everybody threw their grenades. The way they were positioned, they would have killed every one of us.

Every now and then we would get off the line out of artillery range, and in December, 1944 our Christmas stuff had come. My mama sent me candy. Another fella’s aunt sent him a pair of Sunday-go-to-meetin’ shoes. We got a big kick out of that. The last time he saw those shoes, they were lying in the mud. Old Sam Nix got a letter from his sister that his family was fighting over who was going to get his insurance money when he got killed. He was alive when the war was over. We came home together.

After the war our job was law enforcement. We were in Trieste and the Yugoslavian communists were still doing demonstrations. We’d run a truck right down the middle of the street to scatter them. Of course, some got hit. Those truck drivers weren’t exactly Sunday School teachers.

We were discharged in January, 1946; I was a staff sergeant. I had two football scholarships. I went to Baylor to play football and graduated in 1949. Virginia and I got married in 1957. Then I got a job with an insurance company making oil field inspections. I retired in 1995. We raised three boys. {12-12-2018 • Comfort, TX}