Maurilio Saldivar
Age: 85
Born: March 29, 1925
Hometown: Ventura
Residence: Indio
Military branch: U.S. Army; 395th Infantry Regiment; 99th “Checkerboard” Infantry Division
Years served: May 31, 1944 — May 31, 1946;
Rank: Private first class (World War II); sergeant first class (Korean War)
Family: Mother Jessie Saldivar, age 104, of Ventura; wife Gloria; son Gregory Saldivar of Ventura; son Carlos Raigoza of Richmond; daughter Sabrina Ortega of Los Angeles; two grandchildren.
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Maurilio Saldivar's mom worried about her son dying on some faraway battlefield and tried to talk him out of joining the Army during World War II.
“My mother told me, ‘You don't have to serve. You lived in Mexico,'” Saldivar said.
Saldivar, who was born in the U.S., went to Mexico with his father when he was 6 and returned to his home in Ventura when he was 13.
“I said, ‘Mother, I was born here. This is my country. I'm going to serve.' And that was the best decision I ever made,” he said.
Saldivar shipped out to Europe in December 1944 while the Battle of the Bulge was in full swing.
The Allies were taking a beating and replacement troops were desperately needed to shore up the shattered front lines.
In Boston, 15,000 troops boarded the RMS Queen Mary for the seven-day trip across the Atlantic to Glasgow, Scotland.
From Glasgow, the men traveled by train to Plymouth, England, crossed the English Channel, landed in Le Havre, France, and hustled to the battlefield.
“From Boston all the way to the front lines in Belgium took 13 days,” he said.
The men trudged to their positions through waist-deep snow.
“You had to stay on the path or you'd get lost going to the post,” he said. “When I got to the front lines, they put me in a foxhole with two men.”
The men hunkered down for their daylong shift, scouting enemy positions. After 24 hours, the men were relieved and went back to the company until their next shift.
“We were fighting and (Gen. George) Patton came and broke through the German lines,” Saldivar said.
“We had a lot of troops,” he added. After the breakthrough “we took the Germans within six months.”
In March, the division was on the move, crossing the river at Remagen.
“We were crossing the Rhine River on a pontoon bridge,” he said. “Remagen Bridge was to our right and the Germans were trying to bombard it. The Germans were shooting at us with anti-aircraft guns and they were not that effective.”
At one point, Saldivar was upstairs in a house that sat on one side of the Rhine River, across from enemy troops.
One of the soldiers told Saldivar he was going to shoot at the Germans.
Saldivar cautioned the man, explaining the German position was out of range of their M1 rifles.
“The soldier didn't pay attention to me,” he said. “See, I was well-trained. Some of them didn't get” enough training.
The soldier didn't accomplish anything other than giving away their location.
“The Germans came back with mortar fire,” Saldivar said.
Continuing on through Germany, “One of our men, Blaylock was his name, he was a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) man and he got killed by a shell,” Saldivar said.
Shrapnel from the blast tore into the soldier's stomach.
“The medics couldn't do anything (to save him),” Saldivar said. “He died right there. Artillery fire was coming on. We were on the road and we couldn't dig in or nothing. We had to keep going.”
The troops continued their push across Germany, attacking the Ruhr Pocket. Fighting against fierce opposition, the pocket collapsed in mid-April. The war in Europe ended just weeks later.
“I killed one German,” Saldivar said. “He was on his motorcycle and he was getting away.”
Saldivar aimed his rifle, pulled the trigger and downed the fleeing enemy.
“The motorcycle went one way and he went the other way,” Saldivar said.
Although survival depended on taking the life of the enemy, the duty weighed heavy on the young soldier.
“It was very hard,” he said. “Even though you saw a lot of Germans killed.”
“In Frankfurt, we were fighting in the streets,” Saldivar said. “My sergeant told me to ‘go over there' and bring fire so we can see where the Germans are. I said, ‘I already know where the fire is coming from.' He didn't believe me. He went out on the street and got shot and killed. If he had survived, he probably would have court-marshaled me.”
Five years after receiving an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army, Saldivar decided to sign on to serve in the Korean War.
“I couldn't find a job so I went back in,” he said.
He joined the paratroopers, “Because they were paying more,” he said.
Saldivar was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division.
But when Saldivar completed his paratrooper training, he wasn't sent overseas, he was assigned to an exhibition jumping group.
He jumped at events in locations including Tennessee and Texas.
“I paraded in Washington, D.C., for two presidents — (Dwight) Eisenhower and (Harry) Truman,” Saldivar said.
The 82nd was not sent overseas during the Korean War. Presidents Eisenhower and Truman kept the division in strategic reserve in the event of a Soviet ground attack anywhere in the world.
