Marvin Klapper
Age: 85
Born: Aug. 1, 1925
Hometown: Indianapolis
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Army; 294th Field Artillery Observation Battalion
Years served: Dec. 27, 1943 - April 1946
Rank: Corporal
Family: Wife Debbie; three children, Beverly Schatz of Agoura Hills, Ivan Greenhut of Tarzana and Alan Klapper of Indianapolis; four grandchildren.
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Marvin Klapper talked his way into the Army after being told, under unusual circumstances, that he'd been assigned to a different branch of the military.
“I'm standing there stark naked at the physical,” Klapper said. “They wanted to put me in the Navy. They said I had all the qualifications to go in the Navy. I said, ‘I don't want to go in the Navy.'”
Klapper told the bearer of the bad news that he received field artillery training through the ROTC program at Purdue University and that he was better suited for the Army.
“When he heard that, he reconsidered,” Klapper said.
Klapper took his basic training at Fort Sill, Okla., where he was assigned to an observation unit — the 294th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.
The unit, comprised by 120 men, was tasked with identifying enemy gun locations by “flash” or “sound” methods.
Klapper was assigned to the “sound” unit — the group that went forward and buried “very primitive” microphones into the ground that would record the sound of the shells flying over the front lines.
The sounds — taken from different points along the lines of the battlefield — were transmitted back to headquarters, where a readout of the sounds appeared on an oscilloscope.
“When those lines (on the screen) intersect from different locations, that's the point where the gun is firing from,” Klapper said.
“The flash unit had to go out and dig trenches,” crawl into the holes and watch for the flash of the guns, he said.
The men would determine the location of the flashes and report this information back to headquarters.
“You end up with the same results, only different,” methods, Klapper said.
The observation battalion landed in Le Havre, France after traveling across the Atlantic in the dead of winter.
“We went over on the First of January in '45,” he said. “You don't want to go on a trip in the north Atlantic in January.”
The rough seas wreaked havoc on the voyagers.
“Everybody I knew got seasick, except me,” he said.
The troop ship — a converted cruise ship filled to the gills with about 5,000 men — zigzagged across the sea to avoid German submarine attacks.
“A four- or five-day trip turned into about a two-week trip,” Klapper said.
Once in France, the battalion assembled at Camp Lucky Strike, where it remained from Jan. 15 to March 26.
The battalion was not attached to any particular Army division, he said.
“We went where they sent us,” Klapper said.
The battalion eventually ended up in Ruhr, Germany, where, according to historical records, at one point, they were attached to the 82nd Airborne Division — during a time when the division held a defensive position along the west bank of the Rhine River facing the Ruhr Pocket.
The battalion was in Danzig, Germany in late April as the war in Europe was winding down.
After the war ended, “We were a small part of the occupying force,” Klapper said.
“We met the Russians,” he added. “They were pretty friendly, but big. They were huge.”
The battalion eventually received orders to return to the States and was scheduled to arrive in New York on July 4, 1945 for a short furlough before heading back into action.
“Last in Europe, first in the South Pacific,” Klapper said.
Klapper was at Camp Bowie, training for battle in the Pacific, when the war ended.
“We were only there one or two weeks and they dropped the atomic bomb — and they dropped it again.”
“I was stuck in Camp Bowie, Texas until April 1946 — doing absolutely nothing,” Klapper said. “I didn't have enough points to go home. We didn't do anything. They just moved us around My number didn't come up until the First of April.
Klapper, who graduated early from Shortridge High School — so he could get a couple of semesters of college under his belt before Uncle Sam came calling — returned to Purdue University on the GI Bill.
Klapper completed his junior year in college, but by that time — it was 1948 — “I was burnt out on school,” he said.
He checked out the going wages and found out the pay for electrical engineers, fresh out of college, wasn't anything special.
So Klapper took his dad up on the offer to join his business, Klapper Shoes — his dad established the shoe store in 1923 — based in his hometown of Indianapolis.
“I went in with him in 1948,” he said. “He and I got along real well.”
Klapper worked as a bookkeeper, with a starting salary of $40 a week.
“When I got married in 1952, he raised me to $100 a week,” he said. “I thought I was a millionaire.”
Klapper retired in 1989 and moved to Sun City Palm Desert with his wife, Debbie, in 1995.
He stays active as a member and treasurer of Sun City's model railroad club — Model Railroaders of the Desert — and Fun City Bowlers.
