GENE MCGOVERN
Age: 88
Hometown: Chicago
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Army; First Battalion, 409th Regiment, 103rd Infantry “Cactus” Division, Company C
Years served: 1941 - 1945
Rank: Staff sergeant
Medals: Three Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, Combat Infantry Badge
Family: Wife Margaret (deceased), three children, three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II Wednesday through Sunday through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
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U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Gene McGovern and the men of the 103rd Infantry “Cactus” Division faced a constant barrage of artillery fire as they battled their way across Europe during World War II.
“We fought from Southern France, all through France and into Germany,” McGovern said. “It was hell on earth.”
On its way to drive the Germans out of Selestat, France, the division had to cross a river.
As soon as Company B crossed over, the Germans blew up the bridge and “killed most of them,” he said.
Company C — McGovern's company — was on the opposite shore when the bridge exploded and had to swim across.
While lying in wait to attack its next target — an area where sick or injured German “higher ups” were hospitalized — shells from enemy artillery were falling around them.
McGovern told his friend and fellow staff sergeant, Jim Gervais, that it was time to move.
“I finally said, ‘Jim, we got to get the hell out of here.'”
The men sought shelter inside a row of houses at a crossroads — McGovern and his group in one, Gervais and his men in another next door.
The Germans turned their tanks on the houses and started blasting away at the Americans.
“We had bazookas — we were firing at the tanks but the shells in the bazookas weren't working properly,” McGovern said. “They were blowing up the house out from under us.”
The soldiers eventually abandoned the crumbling structures and McGovern and Gervais took their men in separate directions, with plans to meet at a pre-determined location.
But Gervais and his men never showed up.
“That night — because Jim is my best friend and he even stood up for me at my wedding — I went out looking for him,” McGovern said.
He borrowed some slippers and wrapped them in tape to hold them tight on his feet, like track shoes, he said.
“I felt that if I could run, they couldn't catch me,” he said.
When he got back to the row of houses, McGovern said he could hear tanks moving around in the brush.
“I was in a gully on the side of the road,” watching from the distance as the Germans brought their tanks forward. “I could see there was going to be a big problem.”
When McGovern finally slipped inside the house Gervais and his men occupied, his friend was nowhere to be found — but U.S. Army equipment had been left behind.
Gervais and his men had been captured.
McGovern ran back and radioed headquarters, calling in the enemy's location to direct U.S. artillery fire.
“They blew the hell out of them,” he said. “We led the balance of the company in there and drove them off.”
The division moved on, through the mountains of Saint-Dié-de-Vosges, France, on the way to attack the village of Dambach near the German border.
They spent the night in the mountains in preparation for a dawn attack on the Germans.
“We slept with the trees between our legs so we wouldn't slip down the hill,” McGovern said with a laugh.
That morning, “we shot 'em away,” and chased them off, he said.
Gervais, a POW, was released when the war ended and now lives in Oklahoma. He and McGovern talk on the phone at least once every month.
