Bluff City veteran shares some of his many experiences while fighting in World War II

BLUFF CITY – Robert Lyon will never forget Jan. 7, 1943.

He was called up to serve America within the Allied forces’ war against the Axis powers of Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Japan’s Hirohito.

Martha Lyon lost her husband for nearly three years.

"That was the saddest day of my life when I had to leave her," Robert Lyon said while seated in his warm home, looking over at his wife of 65 years.

This year, as Americans mark Veterans Day, veterans of World War II are rapidly dwindling. Those fortunate to have survived the war’s vicious battles now die daily. After all, this year marks 62 years since the last shots fired in World War II.

They are heroes on the brink.

One of those heroes is 85-year-old Robert Lyon.

"Nobody wanted to go and leave his family and maybe be killed," he said. "I hated to be drafted, but I was willing to go and do what I could for my country."

And though Americans were by then dying while at war, Martha Lyon said that she just knew. She knew that she would see her beloved Robert again and alive back home in Tennessee.

"I never thought even one time that he wasn’t coming back," she said. "Not once."

MOUNTAIN MAN

Robert Lyon Jr. was born to Robert and Martha Maud Lyon on June 16, 1922 in the shadow of the hills of the Bluff City community of Chinquapin. The log house in which he was born, though long vacant, still stands strong. Its boards show wear from weather and age, sort of like Lyon. But also like Lyon, that old house shows no sign of going anywhere.

Lyon comes from strong stock.

His grandfather, Columbus, lived to age 92. His uncle, Arthur, clocked in at 101, and his aunt, Lina breathed her last breath at 105.

But they didn’t fight in any wars. Lyon did.

Lyon’s experiences in World War II follow, though they are considerably condensed given the breadth of stories within his stout memory.

NORTH AFRICA

Lyon left Tennessee for the U.S. Army and Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia on Jan. 7, 1943 and then on to boot camp in South Carolina. By May, he was aboard a ship bound for North Africa and his entry into World War II.

Lyon arrived in Oran, North Africa, on June 16, 1943. With little hesitation, he was assigned to a reconnaissance company, the 636th tank destroyer battalion. He was wowed upon first sight of his company’s awesome machinery.

"Seeing all those tanks and jeeps and half-tracks I thought, ‘My my, there’s enough to whip the Germans right there,’ " Lyon said. "Of course, it wasn’t."

With little time to prepare, Lyon and his fellow Allies were told that they were to embark by ship for destinations unknown. They sailed by such exotic locales as Algiers en route to war beyond belief.

ITALY

History knows the Allied invasion of Salerno, Italy as Operation Avalanche. Men such as Lyon knew it as one battle among many that seemed like hell on Earth.

"Within a few days we made the invasion on Salerno, Italy," Lyon said. "By afternoon, I was on shore. We were being bombed and shelled by German airplanes. At one time, we thought we were going to be pushed back into the Mediterranean Sea."

Intense resistance from the Germans separated Lyon and several other men from their outfit. He was lost for seven days while in Salerno.

"I had a Tommy gun, two or three rounds of ammunition, a change of underwear and socks, and some candy bars and that was it," Lyon said.

By wits and wisdom and pure old luck, Lyon survived the separation and relocated with his outfit. Then from Italy onward throughout the war, Lyon drove a jeep, oftentimes in a small section within his reconnaissance company that investigated forward destinations.

"I drove a jeep, the same jeep, 22,000 miles," Lyon said.

From Salerno, Lyon’s band of brothers traveled north to Cassino. There, high upon Monte Cassino, Germans were entrenched in an Abbey, whereupon four bloody battles of World War II occurred between January and May of 1944. Lyon was there.

"The Germans had all the high ground around there," he said. "By golly, they were hard to get out of there."

Stop, think and imagine the carnage. Remember those who did not make another step.

"We debarked in Anzio and made that invasion," he said. "When we were successful there, we moved on north to Rome. Then when we were pulled back to Naples, and then were taken to south France and helped with the invasion there."

Days were oftentimes brutal, and every curve in the road potentially dangerous. Round a bend or crest a hill and perhaps a buzzing hive of Germans were awaiting their arrival.

Nights were brutal, too. As with soldiers throughout World War II, Lyon improvised and made do with whatever circumstances each day and night presented him. He, of course, slept in many a foxhole, sometimes those filled with water. He slept in fields, on makeshift cots, on his jeep’s hood and once in a goat shed.

But you want frightening, take one time while encamped atop Mount Lungo in Italy.

"It started raining, and boy was it cold," Lyon said. "I had dug my foxhole a little deeper. The Germans were up above us, so naturally we couldn’t light a cigarette or light a fire."

Otherwise, the Germans would have cut them in two.

"Son, we suffered," Lyon said.

BRONZE STAR

While in Italy, Lyon earned a Bronze Star. He and his outfit were north of Rome, stalled while awaiting the construction of a bridge across a small stream.

"An Italian man came down to our outfit," Lyon said. "He said there were seven or eight drunk Germans in his barn."

Straight away that caught the attention of Lyon and his buddies.

"Like a fool, I decided to go up and capture them," Lyon said. "So, me and two or three of my buddies went up to this Italian man’s barn. The Germans were not drunk. We threw hand grenades up in the barn. The fragments missed them, but we rounded them up and started them back to where our battalion was located."

Hot on their heels came a roar of armed and angry Germans intent to fight for the freedom of their captured comrades. Fortunately for Lyon and his buddies, luck intervened.

"I could see about 50 Germans coming over the hill, but they were out of firing range," Lyon said. "But we got back to our battalion with those Germans that we captured."

Lyon’s accompanying letter with his Bronze Star reads in part that he received the medal "… for heroic achievement in combat on 23 June 1944 in Italy."

Just days after winning the Bronze Star and unbeknownst to Lyon, his first child was born back in Tennessee.

"[But] he didn’t get any mail for five or six weeks," Martha Lyon said.

Over a month later via a letter from home, he found out that their first child had died.

"The first letter I got was from my Dad," Lyon said. "I sat down … and it hit me hard. Then when I came back from the war and found out the rough time my wife had, that really upset me."

FRANCE

Back to the war.

"We traveled by platoons," Lyon said. "The platoons were sometimes broken up into sections to make reconnaissance on different roads until we came to the enemy."

One such encounter with the enemy in Northwest France stays burned in the brain of Lyon. Even 63 years after it happened, the day one of his buddies died within hollering distance of him remains a sad reminder of the horrors of war.

Lyon knew the fellow only as "Zook" Adkins, a cowboy from Buffalo, Wyo. They descended upon a village and encamped for the night in a house.

"We had a bunch of potatoes and onions and maybe a chicken. We had the shutters closed and blankets over the windows and a candle lit," Lyon said. "It was me and [Glen] Canfield and old Zook. I had been sitting in a straight-backed chair leaning up against the shutters at the window."

Lyon got up and Zook promptly took his seat in the chair.

"Old Zook wouldn’t let me sit in that chair," Lyon said.

Lyon momentarily left the house.

"An artillery shell landed outside the window, and it took his life," Lyon said. "I had my hand on the doorknob on the opposite side of the house. When that shell hit, I knew it was close."

Much too close. Lyon can still hear that shell today, and surely he will never forget his last sight of his buddy Zook.

"It took the top of poor old Zook’s head off, and it landed in the skillet where we had been frying potatoes," Lyon said.

Zook died single, though very much in love with his girlfriend back home, Lyon said.

"Zook had a stack of letters on him two inches high when he was killed," Lyon said. "He wrote his girlfriend every day."

Death and war fit like pain and sorrow. Lyon’s eyes saw way too much death and dying, much more than any human should ever see.

"I watched the burial detail pick up dead American men one time," Lyon said. "They had a 6 x 6 truck. They piled them up on there like you would a stack of pulpwood or logs. They would bury them side by side in a common grave with their dog tags on so they would know who they were when they went back to give them a right burial."

Lyon sat for a second, his leg crossed and hand to his cheek. His voice trembled.

"My my," Lyon said, his blue eyes welling up, "those boys had a wife and a mama and a daddy back home."

GERMANY AND WAR’S END

Lyon was shot at, though never shot. He felt the brush of death and saw the face of death upon his buddies. However, he was injured while in the German territory Alsace-Lorraine.

"We were up near the Rhine River," Lyon said. "We were making patrol on the highway, driving in the jeep in blackout, our lights out. All at once an American ambulance came down and flashed his lights."

That meant the enemy was near and attacking.

"We left the jeep and jumped in the ditch," Lyon said. "The Germans were shelling the area. One of those shells hit an apple tree. When it burst, a little piece of shrapnel hit the side of my nose. When the shelling stopped we got back up in the jeep and back on the highway."

Lyon was subsequently awarded a Purple Heart. Better still for him, war was winding down by then. He said that the fight simply left the Germans.

War’s end must have resounded among men such as Lyon as triumphantly as Gabriel’s horn. No more pain, no more death, no more watching your buddies die. Finally, home was on the horizon.

"Believe it or not I got through the war without ever having a cold," Lyon said. "But after the war was over, I got tonsillitis. I was sent to the hospital for three weeks in Augsburg. When the nurse turned me loose, she said ‘Lyon, we don’t have any transportation back to your outfit.’ "

Imagine that. An American in Germany with but a few words of the German language that he could call upon, and Lyon had only one option.

"I thumbed on the road that led back to my outfit," Lyon said. "A big German truck picked me up."

Lyon walked to the back of the truck. Shock mixed with a touch of sadness when he first laid eyes upon his fellow passengers.

"There were bunch of German soldiers, most of them amputees," Lyon said. "I had a little German .32 automatic under my fatigues in a shoulder holster. But I wasn’t afraid of those Germans. I felt sorry for them in a way.

"They all waved when I left."

That was in May of 1945, and war in Germany was over.

However, war continued in the Pacific. Lyon and his buddies expected to be sent there next.

"Yes, our outfit was supposed to train and go to the Pacific theater of operations, by George," Lyon said. "If President Truman hadn’t dropped those atomic bombs, we’d have lost a million men trying to invade Japan."

More than 16 million Americans served in World War II. More than 400,000 died fighting.

TODAY

Martha could easily have lost Robert to the war. Death was but a breath away every day while at war. But she got him back for good in October 1945. You want happy? That’s exactly what they were when after nearly three years apart, they once again laid eyes upon each other.

"Oh man alive, I love her," Robert said. "I couldn’t wait to see her again."

And Martha, she was then and remains now thankful that Robert was among the fortunate ones to have survived the war.

"There must have been an angel from the Lord watching over him," Martha Lyon said, smiling.

Life since the war has given Robert and Martha Lyon two children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Mention any one of them, and their smile spreads as wide as the world.

Ah, but no painter could paint a more accurate and vivid portrait of love than when Robert Lyon looks into the eyes of his sweetheart and wife of 60 years, Martha. They’ve stormed and survived death in the family, tragedy and triumph. They’ve lived, and yet live a good life.

Too many of Lyon’s band of brothers never had a chance.

"I thank God I made it through the war," Robert Lyon said. "We were like a bunch of brothers who grew up together. That’s how it was in our outfit."

TOM NETHERLAND is a freelance writer. He can be reached at

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For more information on World War II, visit the following Web sites:

* www.wwiimemorial.com

* www.sopromusic.com/636th/

* www.va.gov