Provided photo
Leon Swenson / Denise Goolsby, The Desert Sun
LEON SWENSON
Age: 91
Born: Oct. 13, 1918
Hometown: Salina, Kan.
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Army; 35th Infantry Division; 161st Field Artillery Battalion; Battery A
Years served: Dec. 23, 1940-Oct. 14, 1945
Rank: Motor sergeant
Family: Wife Rosie (deceased); four children: Dudley Swenson of Palm Desert, Mary Alice White of Bonita, Michelle Tucker of Bermuda Dunes and Joan Swenson of La Quinta; four grandchildren; five 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 Wednesday
U.S. Marine Corps veteran Carl Mahakian of Palm Desert.
LEARN MORE
Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
More
Leon Swenson volunteered for the Kansas National Guard on Sept. 18, 1940 — “I was going to be drafted anyway,” he said.
But just three months later, the then-21 year old found himself on active duty in the U.S. Army after the national guard was federalized.
It was two days before Christmas.
But Swenson landed a plum job on his first assignment — “I was assigned the battery commander driver,” he said — which meant he got to escort his captain around.
Swenson was driving the captain's 1936, six-cylinder Chevrolet station wagon to an Army base in Little Rock, Ark., when the car conked out.
Two brothers, who were supposedly mechanics, couldn't fix the vehicle, but Swenson came to the rescue.
“I was born and raised on a farm,” he said. “I knew equipment.”
He instructed the guys to take the number three and five spark plugs and “cross them.”
Something in the carburetor got cleared out, and they were back on their way.
“The captain said, ‘How do you know how to do that?' From then on, “I didn't have to go on guard duty or KP duty,” Swenson said.
In October, 1941, the battery commander offered Swenson the opportunity to attend David Rankin School of Auto Mechanics in St. Louis, Mo.
“(Then) war was declared,” he said. “I stayed in school a little over three months — I got to go home for Christmas.”
Swenson took a troop train cross country where he eventually joined-up with his battalion in San Luis Obispo.
“All these guys — the old fogies — they were getting out when the war was declared,” Swenson said. “That's when I got the job of motor sergeant.”
“They put us on coast guard duty — from Fort Ord down to El Cajon,” he said.
There were four artillery guns in the battalion — one was stationed in Catalina and another was in San Pedro.
“I got to go to Catalina one time and San Pedro a couple of times,” he said. “It was good duty — I didn't have to do anything,” he said, laughing.
The battalion moved on to El Cajon, near San Diego, “After there, we were really on the go,” he said, adding, “We got ready to go to England — finally.”
On May 12, 1944, the battalion boarded a big troop transport ship for the transatlantic crossing. The battalion stood guard duty during the 11-day voyage as the ship zigzagged across the ocean.
The ship landed in Liverpool, England, then headed up the coast to Manchester, where they spent 39 days before crossing the English Channel.
The battalion landed on Omaha Beach on July 17 — about six weeks after the Allied invasion landings.
“We were lucky — not a shot fired,” he said.
But evidence of the invasion surrounded the recently landed troops, including damaged ships, lying just off shore.
“It was horrible,” he said.
“The next day we moved into our first gun position,” he said. There wasn't much action there but, “We moved to our second position, and that's when we really got it — just before Saint-Lô. This is where I got my baptism. I found out I had the job of clearing the dead.”
His first encounter with death during war occurred when he encountered two infantrymen who had been killed in a foxhole.
The temperature was hot, and the bodies were in bad shape.
“We pulled the guns away from them,” and then tried to pull the bodies out using a makeshift tool.
“Their legs just separated (from the bodies),” he said. “I begged the captain, ‘Can we bury 'em here?'”
The captain said the bodies had to go back to the Bureau of Graves Registration.
“It was my job all through the war,” he said.
Enemy fire was intense as German 88s poured round after round at the troops. The battery returned fire with their 105 mm howitzers. An enemy shell hit a truck carrying small arms ammunition, and the vehicle was burned to the ground.
After replacing 11 flat tires and the drive shaft of a truck damaged by shrapnel, “The captain told us to get ready to move. That's when the air force came in. Saint-Lô was flattened to the ground ... after that, we started moving awfully fast.”
Along the way, the men discovered a cache of 300 gallons of liquor in a distillery. Canteens were filled with the 190-proof alcohol, but “The medics took most of it,” Swenson said.
“We were going so fast, the infantrymen were riding on the fenders of our trucks,” he said.
“We were in Metz for Christmas,” he said. “The day after Christmas we pulled into Bastogne. It was so cold in that place. It was pretty much a cleanup (job). They had pushed the Germans out. We followed behind the infantry as support.”
By the end of the war, Swenson's battery had logged 1,535 miles in combat.
“The sea was so rough,” on the way home, “I was sick 11 out of the 13 days. I only ate hard-boiled eggs and ice cream,” he said.
Swenson's wife Rosie, now deceased, was also a veteran of World War II, serving in the WAVES, “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service,” a division of the U.S. Navy. The couple moved in June 1948 to Indio, where they owned and operated S&M Ranch and raised crops including grapes and citrus until 1952, when he began working for the Coachella Valley Water District. Swenson retired in November 1980.
