JOSEF CITRON
Age: 85
Born: March 25, 1925
Hometown: Los Angeles
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Army; 3rd Army; 4th Armored Division; 51st Armored Infantry Battalion; Charlie Company
Years served: April 1943- April 1, 1946
Rank: Tech 4
Family: Wife Lenore; six children (one deceased); nine grandchildren; one great-grandchild.
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 Nurse Corps veteran and centenarian Jo Stelle of Palm Desert.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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An 88 mm shell blast blew Josef Citron off the roof of a farmhouse, knocking him out and shattering his left wrist in eight places, while fighting in enemy territory during World War II.
Not long after, while still recovering, heavy losses necessitated his return to battle.
Citron, an armored infantryman, was a member of the 4th Armored Division. The division, equipped with tanks and half-tracks (armored trucks with tank tracks and a mounted .50-caliber machine gun), battled in Europe with Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army.
“We landed at Omaha Beach a little less than two months after the D-Day landing,” Citron said.
The fighting had moved inland since the June 6, 1944, Allied invasion of Normandy, as troops pushed the Germans back through France.
“We climbed up that hill” that Allied troops stormed during the invasion, Citron said. “We all thought, ‘Imagine doing that under fire.' We found out soon enough.”
After six months of pushing the Germans across French hedgerows, Citron's division crossed into Germany and into the Saar region in early December 1944.
On Dec. 7, Citron and four other squad members found themselves cut off from the rest of the platoon.
“Five of us had taken shelter in a farmhouse Across from us, in the other direction, was what we figured to be at least most of a platoon of Panzer Grenadiers (German armored infantrymen) sheltering in the woods that surrounded the farmyard. We were on foot, as our half-track had been knocked out of commission.”
The half-track was sitting between the enemy and the farmhouse.
“One of my buddies got very tired of being pinned down, as we were, and decided that he could sneak out and get our .50-caliber machine gun from the half-track, haul it back to the house where we could set it up inside,” and keep the Germans at bay until help arrived.
The Germans caught sight of the soldier as he was dismounting the machine gun. He never made it back to his buddies.
The remaining men determined there was no way out the back and started searching for alternate escape routes. One of them discovered a hole in the backside of the roof — the result of a previous shelling, Citron said.
The men went up to the attic, inspected their “escape hatch” and checked to make sure the Germans weren't waiting for them behind the house. One at a time, they boosted each other out of the hole. The first man clambered out onto the roof, and since he didn't draw enemy fire, the next made his way through the opening.
“My turn,” Citron said. “Just as I was coming out of that hole, the world turned a brilliant, orangeish-yellow, I went deaf and felt as if I were flying — where to, I had no idea.”
Citron said he also had no idea how much time passed, but gradually became aware of a nearby voice shouting.
“The next thing I knew, I heard a voice saying, ‘Hey! This one's alive,'” Citron said.
“Things remained very mixed up to me, but I eventually learned that the shouting chap was from a Graves Registration unit who was bagging up what was left of my buddies, when it became my turn for bagging,” he said.
“I must have moved or made a sound, causing him to jump back,” Citron said, adding the man looked startled. “When I began to become aware of what was happening, I tried to assure him that I was indeed alive, but by then I started going into shock.”
Citron later learned he was the sole survivor of the attack.
“How in the hell that happened, as I was in the middle, I'll never know, but what I did know was that was what helped convince me that I led a charmed life, and that I was not going to get killed in combat,” he said.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I had developed a habit, while under fire, of repeating to myself my version of Psalm 91:7: ‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and 10,000 at thy right hand, but it shall come nigh thee.'”
Citron was sent to a hospital in France where he had surgery to repair his wrist and remove the shrapnel imbedded in his knee. He was later sent to a hospital in England. Told that he would soon be going home, Citron was unpleasantly surprised when a major paid him a visit.
“He said, ‘Son, this is one of my most difficult jobs,'” Citron said, recalling the conversation. “We're sending you back to your outfit.”
Citron protested that he wouldn't be able to hold his rifle up with his bad left wrist.
“He said, ‘I feel terrible. I have a terrible job. But you're needed up on your line.' It was the first and only time I swore at an officer.”
The prospect of going back into battle “was horrible,” Citron said.
Before he knew it, he was on a ship heading across the English Channel, bound for France. From there, he hopped on a truck for a ride to the front.
“They actually took me back up to the 4th Armored Division,” he said.
The names of the men serving in his company had been painted on the tanks. If a man died, his name was crossed out and the names of the replacements were added.
Citron had been away from his division for 2
“All my buddies were gone,” he said.
