HUGO G. GOODERUM JR.
Age: 85
Born: Sept. 16, 1924
Hometown: Canby, Minn.
Residence: Cathedral City
Military branch: U.S. Army; Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army; 76th Infantry Division; 304th Infantry Regiment; 2nd Battalion; F Company
Years served: May 1943- February 1946
Rank: Private first class
Family: Wife Norma; four children, Gary Gooderum of Westchester, Jane Bockhacker of Yorba Linda, Marilyn Shulman of Morgantown, W.Va., and Paula Gooderum of East Highland; five grandchildren; two great-grandchildren.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II 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
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Army Air Corps veteran Harold Hanke of Palm Desert and Atlantic, Iowa.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at www.mydesert.com/WWII
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U.S. Army advance scout Hugo G. Gooderum Jr. was awarded the Silver Star for “gallantry in action” after capturing 10 German soldiers on a late February evening in 1945.
Under cover of darkness, near the Prum River in Germany, Gooderum and several other scouts advanced toward the German lines.
“We needed more information about the strength of the enemy. Word was out — we gotta get some prisoners.”
Gooderum was advancing through 8-foot-tall brush when he heard a terrifying sound. The enemy was near.
“They were rushing right at me,” he said. “I had to do something or I was dead.”
From his mind, he quickly pulled out what he called “Plan C” — something he'd thought up long ago and mentally rehearsed many times over.
Gooderum carried a German-English dictionary with him and, in his free time, he'd invent phrases in German.
The right words flew out of his memory within seconds.
“I shouted out in German, ‘I have 200 American soldiers behind me and if you don't surrender right now, we'll kill you,'” he said.
“I just about collapsed. I heard all these noises in the brush. I heard all these guns hit the ground. I couldn't talk for a couple of seconds. My knees buckled.”
Gooderum figured only 25 feet separated him from the closest German soldier.
“I hollered and screamed, ‘I got some prisoners!'” Gooderum said.
The scouts didn't answer.
“They were so scared they didn't move,” he said. “I cussed and swore. Way off over there, two blocks away,” he heard a superior yelling, “‘Gooderum, shut up! You're going to tell the Germans where we are.'”
Gooderum, who finally received some assistance, found that he'd bagged 10 German soldiers headed by an officer — and one of the soldiers had a machine gun.
“That was the most scary moment in my life,” he said.
Gooderum, a member of the 76th Infantry Division, arrived in England in December 1944. After some additional training, the men were shipped across the English Channel.
“We landed in Le Havre, France, in a blinding snowstorm at the start of the Battle of the Bulge,” he said. “We had to sleep on the ground.”
The men slept in little more than a half-tent on snow and slush during one of the coldest winters in decades in Europe.
Gooderum's division was committed to an area near Liege, Belgium, on the west side of the bulge, he said.
“(Gen. George) Patton got ahold of us and took us around to the east side of the bulge and we attacked in Luxembourg,” he said. “There was heavy fighting all through the mountains and forests in Luxembourg, stopping at the Saar River in Echternach across from the German border.”
In foxholes at the river's edge, the men found themselves directly across from the Siegfried Line — Germany's heavily fortified border defense system.
“We stared at 26 concrete pillboxes that we could see on the side of a 900-foot mountain,” Gooderum said.
In front of the artillery-loaded pillboxes, there were four rows of trenches, barbed wire and a mine field.
Cross-firing machine guns — set up six inches above the water — provided another layer of protection from the advancing U.S. forces.
The Germans showered the U.S troops with artillery fire every day for three weeks, Gooderum said.
Gooderum, a member of the division's 304th Infantry Regiment, said he survived the “luck of the draw,” when another division regiment, the 417th, made the first approach across the river.
The boats pulled ropes across the river, constructing a rope foot bridge, which Gooderum's regiment eventually used — but it came at a high cost.
“The 417th was decimated,” he said. “When I crossed, I stepped on dead bodies to get through the mine field safely. The water puddles were red with blood.”
After the heavy assault on the Siegfried Line, the division pushed into Germany, fighting at night in heavy mountain slopes and across many rivers swollen with melting snow.
Soon after the assault, Gooderum encountered those German soldiers.
The men were able to slowly, but steadily, advance through Germany, gaining about 200 to 300 yards each day.
“In three months, we reached the Moselle and Rhine rivers,” he said. “In three months, I probably had two showers.”
Gooderum later graduated from the University of Minnesota as an aeronautical engineer. He was one of several engineers to manage the Lockheed U.S. Air Force SR-71 Advanced Reconnaissance Aircraft program. The aircraft set world speed and altitude records in July 1976.
