George L. Madden
Age: 84
Born: March 6, 1926
Hometown: Albion, Pa.
Residence: Cathedral City
Military branch: U.S. Army; 70th Infantry Division; H Company
Years served: October 1944 — August 1946; served for 20 years in the U.S. Air Force Reserves
Rank: Sergeant major; retired as captain from the Air Force Reserves
Family: Partner Richard Biever (deceased); brothers Harold Madden of Phoenix, Ariz., Paul Madden of Albion, Pa.; sisters Lois Onest of Ft. Wayne, Ind. and Marion Tiner (deceased); four nieces and 10 nephews.
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For George L. Madden being gay and a soldier in the U.S. Army during World War II was “not an issue.”
Madden said his fellow soldiers looked out for him.
“The guys were so good to me,” Madden said. “I'm an 18-year-old kid, weighed 120 pounds, not an athlete — I was in the band and choir.
“They would sometimes carry my 50-pound sack,” on long hikes.
Although it wasn't a topic of discussion among the troops, those who were gay instinctively recognized one another.
“You could tell,” he said. “One older guy said to me, ‘I think you're gay.' That was the first time I heard that word.”
While his brothers participated in sports, Madden's parents supported their son's creative interests, buying him a piano and paying for voice lessons.
“After basic training was over I remember coming home in my uniform and going to our small town church for Mass,” he said. “Everyone was really amazed, especially with my GI haircut.”
Madden, who was drafted, tried to enlist in the U.S. Navy when he was 17.
“My eyesight wasn't good enough,” he said. “I didn't even know I needed glasses.”
After enlisting in the Army, Madden was sent to Camp Croft in Spartanburg, S.C., for basic training.
“I made many friends with the other draftees who came from many areas this was my first time ever away from home and it was quite an experience,” he said.
Madden's father took the train to Camp Croft to visit his son at Christmastime.
“He had left mother to handle Christmas alone with the four other kids so that I wouldn't be by myself for the holidays,” Madden said.
Madden shipped out of New York Harbor on the George Washington — a troop ship packed with 5,000 soldiers.
“I celebrated my 19th birthday that year on the high seas going to Europe. The ship was packed and we had sling beds stacked four or five tiers high.”
After a weeklong voyage, zigzagging across the Atlantic Ocean to avoid detection by enemy submarines, the ship arrived at Le Havre, France.
“The harbor had been heavily damaged and the ship picked its way through the half-sunken ships and debris hoping not to accidentally strike a live depth charge,” he said.
Madden was sent to an area near Nancy, France and the German-Luxembourg border, where he was assigned to the 70th Infantry Division as an infantry replacement.
“The 70th had been pulled back from fighting for a rest and to fill in the missing gaps with new personnel,” Madden said.
Madden was assigned to the division's H Company and was sent to a town near Wiesbaden, Germany where the company was stationed.
“They put me in the mail room at first,” he said.
After working for a while at the headquarters office, the division was ordered back to the front lines.
“You had to think when you went in, you might not be coming out,” he said.
The division passed though Frankfurt as it made its way to the front.
“Here in Frankfurt we saw our first real devastation where whole blocks were demolished and only chimneys or an occasional wall were left standing,” he said. “The people were living wherever they could; some in rubble-covered basements of their apartments or in a building where a whole wall would be missing.”
The war ended before the division reached the front.
“I was very fortunate,” he said. “I was relieved however, I was fearful of being reassigned to a unit headed for the Far East, but as luck would have it,” he was assigned to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's headquarters in Frankfurt.
“I became a secretary to a brigadier general,” Madden said. “Every week I had to type up a report for Eisenhower. It had to be letter-perfect. No erasures and I had to hand deliver it to his office.”
Although he saw Eisenhower on occasion, he didn't have occasion to speak to or deal directly with the general.
“His secretary would always receive it, but sometimes I would lay it on his desk,” Madden said. “Oftentimes when I was there, I would see Kay Summersby, the English Red Cross worker who was Ike's mistress at the time.”
The general made a good impression on his troops.
“Everybody liked Eisenhower,” he said. “They looked up to him. You didn't hear anything bad about him.”
The brigadier general was also the commandant of the headquarters and as a result, Madden's phone rang constantly with calls from high-ranking officers needing something from the guy in charge.
“After a while, the work got to be too much, so they gave me a WAC (Women's Army Corps) secretary,” he said.
She took shorthand and did the typing and Madden handled the phone calls and scheduling.
“The general had many things on his mind, least of all my rank, so periodically, I would type up my own promotion and have him sign it,” Madden said. “I went from Pfc to corporal, staff sergeant and, finally, sergeant major.”
