World War II Vet Oral Nichols Remembers
By Bob Weaver
Oral Nichols of Grantsville has died.
Funeral services have been scheduled for Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Stump Funeral Home in Grantsville with the Rev. Harry Sears officiating. Interment will be in the Egypt Ridge Cemetery in Roane County. Visitation 6-8 pm Saturday. (See OBITUARY PAGE)
The devoted community servant and director of the Senior Center Choir, passed suddenly of an apparent stroke.
The center will miss his devout nature, generous smile and and love of music.
During a Veteran's Day celebration at the Senior Center last November, it was time for Oral Nichols to tell his story from World War II.
He had put it off a long time, telling it all.
He was a little uncomfortable, although he was standing before friends from the community.
His words were clear and sincere.
Oral's story was the kind
of story that make books, movies and legends, but more importantly it was a story about a Calhoun farm boy who was snatched into a global war of momentous proportions.
Here are some excepts of of his remembrances from the Fourth Annual
Veteran's Day Celebration:
I was a 20-year-old poor boy from Calhoun, a hard worker, skinny as a rail and a
Christian, when I was drafted. I had shaved twice when I went into the 83rd
Infantry.
I fought through five countries and went one month without taking my clothes
off.
I had just checked into my barracks, when this large soldier named Clark came to
my side, checked me out and said "We've already lost the war. They're sending
children in here."
I helped guard FDR when he came through West Virginia on a train, over at
Grafton.
I know you hear this, but I must tell you it is true - war is a terrible, terrible
thing.
God was always on my side, and it helped me be strong. Once three large shells fell
right in front of us and they did not explode.
We landed at Omaha Beach and my Jeep went so deep into the water, only my
nose was sticking out.
During the battle, I ran onto on my really good friends that I had not seen for a
while. Their looks had changed. They were so angry they didn't look like
themselves. It took them a while, but they told me what was up ahead : Our
soldiers hanging by their thumbs in trees, castrated.
Every fifth shell was a tracer, and sometimes there were so many rounds
humming, you could read a newspaper.
I was sent out in a Jeep after a battle, and I had to run over dead soldiers, both
German and American. It was then I saw an old woman run across the road and
cut some meat off a cow, and rush back to her house.
These are things you don't forget.
Gathering up the body parts of my friends, and collecting their tags.
Many heroes are honored for the number of the enemy they kill. My heroes were
the people who saved others from getting killed.
A friend of mine stood on a "bouncing betsy," which was supposed to fly up in the air
and explode. It saved us, although it blew his leg off as he went into the air.
Taking a telephone wire through a bombed out town, I heard a crying baby. It had a
burning blanket around it, and its face and leg were burned. I didn't know what to
do with it, but I spotted an old women, handed it to her, and walked away.
Another time I opened a barn door to find a German standing there with a gun. I
didn't have a weapon, and he indicated to me he wanted to surrender. If I would
have had my weapon, the story would have been much different.
There is no amount of money that would return me to that war, but I suppose it has
changed and moved me in directions that may have helped me in my lifetime, he concluded.
If there were important changes in Oral Nichols, we have all been extended the grace of his life these many years in our tiny community.
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