ALFRED B. MERCADO
Age: 87
Born: Sept. 1, 1923
Hometown: Detroit
Residence: Cathedral City
Military branch: U.S. Army; Third Army; 1301st Engineer Regiment; Company C
Years served: Aug. 5, 1943- January 1946
Rank: Corporal
Family: Wife Eleanor; three children, Patricia Magana of Palm Springs, Martin Mercado of Redlands and Alice Spadaro of Monroe, Mich.; eight grandchildren; eight 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 tomorrow
U.S. Marine Corps veteran Ed Glennon of Palm Springs.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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U.S. Army engineer Alfred Mercado cleared minefields and helped build bridges on the battlefields of Europe during World War II.
Mercado, a member of the 1301st Engineer Regiment, supported Gen. George Patton's Third Army through France and up into Germany.
When Mercado and the regiment arrived in England, German buzz bombs were still menacing the country — especially in London. Trains were stopped when a buzz bomb approached and didn't start up again until the bomb hit somewhere and exploded. “We saw them originally in Hyde Park,” Mercado said.
Arriving in England about two months before the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, the engineers set to work right away.
“We built a stockade for prisoners,” he said. “After completing it we saw the invasion airplanes around the area and tanks in the woods. The next day, everything was gone. We saw the invasion from there and a couple days later, the prisoners started coming.
“We gave blood, helped with the wounded — mostly the 101st Airborne. There were a lot of them there.”
Twelve days after the invasion, the engineers crossed the English Channel and landed on Omaha Beach, where Mercado saw the remnants of battle scattered all around — on the shore and in the water. “Armament, parts of tanks, parts of this and that,” he said.
The men had to wait on the beach until their equipment arrived before they could move forward. “Dozers, water tanks, compressors — all that heavy stuff for repairing holes in the road or putting bridges up.”
“I was a demolition man,” he said. “It was a battle between the German engineers and us. They put the mines in, we pulled them out.
“We cleared anything that was on each side of the bridge so they could build it. You build it while they're shooting at you.”
“I buried people that were on the bridge,” he said. “Germans are lying there on the top. We put them in foxholes and put the rifle on top to show someone was there.”
Mercado's company primarily built Bailey bridges — portable, prefabricated truss bridges made of steel — that were strong enough to carry tanks. The bridges were constructed using interchangeable parts, much like the popular toy Erector sets were assembled.
They also built pontoon bridges — floating footbridges built for pedestrian, automobile and truck use.
“Patton moved so fast,” Mercado said. “Whatever obstacles were in the way, we got rid of them. You see parts of bodies on the side of the road, mostly Germans and animals,” killed by strafing and bombing. “You have to clear it.”
He went into the Battle of the Bulge. When the Germans broke through Allied front lines on Dec. 16, 1944, the troops had to beat a retreat from the advancing German Army.
There had been warnings that enemy soldiers, dressed in American uniforms, were heading in their direction. Everyone passing through the area was scrutinized.
“We stopped a jeep and asked them for ID,” Mercado said, describing one incident. “The guy in the back seat said, ‘Keep going, keep going.'”
Mercado went around to the back of the jeep, while another soldier remained at the front of the vehicle. “We clicked our rifles,” Mercado said. “The guy in the back said, ‘Hold it Eagle, Eagle,'” — the code word at that time.
“It was a colonel. He was in a hurry.”
One night, Mercado and other engineers on patrol slept under a flatbed vehicle between railroad tracks. Mercado noticed someone walking in their direction.
“There's a German soldier with his dog, just walking down the road, nonchalant,” he said.
The dog, walking a distance from the soldier — the railroad tracks were above the road, where the soldier was walking — trotted over to where the engineers were sleeping.
Mercado grabbed his sleeping buddy's rifle, which was nearby.
“As the dog came by, he just sniffed at me,” Mercado said. As soon as he saw the dog, he pointed a rifle right at the approaching canine.
“The dog didn't bark — he just walked right by,” he said. The German soldier was apparently oblivious to the Americans' presence.
“Why he was there, I don't know,” Mercado said. “That was strange.”
Mercado's company was in Nuremberg, Germany, when the war in Europe ended.
“We took boxcars from Germany to Marseilles, France,” a six-day trip, he said. “We gambled, we played cards to pass the time away.”
The men boarded the SS Sea Quail and set sail for the Pacific on July 19, 1945.
They were on the high seas when the atom bombs were dropped and the war officially ended. The ship landed in Tacloban, Leyte, on Aug. 29, just days before the Japanese signed the surrender documents aboard the USS Missouri, in Tokyo Bay.
Mercado reflected on the difficulty of reconciling the act of killing on the battlefield with the Bible's teachings, especially the Ten Commandments.
“I couldn't understand it. ‘Thou shall not kill,' and you're killing, and being a Catholic and you're doing it, and the priest comes and gives you confession,” he said, shaking his head.
