We ate breakfast along the street the next morning and headed for Bastogne. They told us that CCA had headed east to halt a pincer movement that was coming around to the south. We entered Bastogne about dark, made a right turn in the city and headed out into the country toward Longvilly. They told us that we were going out in support of the 9th Armored Division. We were bumper to bumper on this black top road. The road was very narrow with a real deep ditch on the left side and a somewhat more shallow ditch on the right. That night, 18 December, German aircraft kept flying over us very low and we were told not to fire at them because we didn't want them to know we were there. It was extremely foggy. I was told to be prepared to blow a small bridge about a half mile ahead.

After a little K-ration the next morning, I got out of our 2½ ton truck and went onto the right side of the road where the hill leading from the road ditch was about 60 degrees straight up. About 10 A.M. I was lying at the base of an evergreen tree watching for someone to come through the woods as the hill was thickly populated with trees. The evergreen tree I was lying under was about 8 or 9 inches in diameter. The tree I was lying under was hit about eight feet above the ground by, I'm sure, an 88 HE shell. They probably overshot our vehicle.

I heard nothing and woke up sometime later lying on my back about 20 feet from the shattered tree. For some reason it felt like my left arm was lying across my stomach. I could feel something rapidly scratching the back of my neck, about half inch strokes and very rapidly. I was sure that I had fallen asleep while on guard duty and that some German had slipped up on me and was tickling the back of my neck to wake me up and soon as I did he would Bayonette me. I kept my eyes closed for quite awhile, afraid to open them. I finally opened them and I was looking up through the tall trees. I thought that I should get up and get going so I tried to rise but couldn't move. Nothing hurt, I was extremely puzzled. Finally I grasped a small sapling with my right hand and pulled myself up to a sitting position. When I did my left arm came tumbling down, flopping against my left side. My arm felt so odd. I couldn't move it so I finally reached over with my right hand and grasped my left wrist and pulled my left arm into my lap. It felt cold, clammy and it was really trembling. I realized then that my arm had been tickling the back of my neck when I first came to. I tried to get up but I couldn't move so I just sat there.

A medic came by and asked me if I had taken my sulfa pills. I said no so he got them for me, gave me a swig of water, said he was out of morphine and left. I looked to my right and I could see my rifle about 20 or 30 feet away and the pine tree that I had been lying under was blown off about eight feet above the ground. Suddenly two of my squad came running up from the road looking for me. One on each side they grabbed my jacket by the shoulder straps and started running out of the woods, my behind bouncing on the ground. The fractured humerus was protruding out of the ripped sleeve of my jacket. I was supporting my arm across my waist by holding onto my left wrist. As my men ran between two trees my elbow plus a small part of my fractured humerus hooked on a tree and boy did my left hand ever come up hard and slap me on the face. It sort of woke me up.

A little further, my men still dragging me through the woods parallel the road toward the rear echelon, dragged me through some water. Man it was cold. They cut down to the road, stood me up and told me to head back as I needed medical attention. The road was lined up bumper to bumper with primarily half-tracks. In the ditches were numerous slit trenches. The half-tracks were heading back. They were buttoned up, would make a few feet then have to throw on their brakes. I jumped on the fenders of some of the half-tracks but had to hold on to my arm, so I could hardly hang on to the half-track. Consequently when they threw on the brakes I would go flying off.
To my right, East, the field sloped down to somewhat of a drainage ditch, then raised again until you came to a bluff of evergreen trees. Sticking out of the bluff were two layers of rock. There appeared to be about 15 feet of top soil, covered with trees, then a layer of rock two or three feet thick, then six to eight feet of soil, then another rock layer about two feet thick, then more soil sloping back to the drainage ditch. As I looked across this half mile or so of a grass field there were balls of fire drilling the air. Artillery and mortar shells were exploding on the ground everywhere.

I kept going back and finally came to a T road or a corner. There was a radio relay half-track parked across the road to the north along with one of our tanks. I opened the back door of the half-track and asked if I could get in because I was exhausted. He said sure, so I crawled in and laid down on my back on the floor. When I did the, blood that had accumulated in my sleeve between my elbow and my wrist ran out onto the floor of the half-track and the poor radio operator started to gag. He jumped out of the half-track and I think he got sick.

In just a few minutes machine gun fire was heard and the bullets started ricocheting off the half-track. The driver said, "We had better get out of here." At that instant the tank fired and started to move so the half-track driver said, “Let’s follow them in." We came to a brick house which was being used as a field aid station. I went in and there were about twenty five men in there, many of them I knew. My arm was put in a makeshift splint made out of three eighths rod and the medic said we had better get the worst out first. Four of us were put on stretchers and into an American ambulance and we headed out.
We were going down the road, it seemed Iike 60 miles an hour, when I heard machine gun fire. I could hear the bullets hit our ambulance. We went about 500 yards I think, then down through the ditch on the right side of the road, bounced through the woods and hit a tree with our left front fender. The ambulance came to rest with the rear of the ambulance up in the air and sort of resting on its left front wheel.

I was on the top stretcher above the driver. When we hit the tree I went sailing through the air, hit my head against the windshield and was lodged head down between the steering wheel and the dashboard – my head up against the driver’s chest. He was breathing through holes in his chest. I couldn't move. The medic, I believe, was Mexican American. He was short, frail and weighed about 110 lbs. The soldier that was above him pinned him down as I had the driver, so the medic couldn't move. It sounded like the ambulance was on fire. Finally the medic got the door open, ran around and pulled the ambulance down and got us out. One of the patients was badly burned but he put his arm around my waist and I put my right arm around the medic's neck and they helped me back into the woods. They came back with a stretcher and a blanket, put me on it, covered me with the blanket and some brush and said that they would be back to get me. I also had a piece of shell fragment midshaft against my femur and my thigh that was becoming swollen and weak. I heard the medic say that the soldier who had been behind him had been killed. I don't remember being awake for more than a minute.

I awoke with a start when someone started to pull the brush off of me. I thought it was the enemy. However, when the blanket was removed, there stood Lt. Nauffsinger, of the 90th Recon. Lt. Nauffsinger had been my engineering recon section leader during Tennessee Maneuvers. I knew him very well, a great soldier. We discussed what had happened and they put me on the back of their jeep on my stretcher and headed out. It was about 1600 hours. I don't remember another thing. The next thing I knew someone was fumbling around with my dog tags. I looked around and I was on my stretcher out in the yard with about 50 or more others in front of the same brick house that was the aid station I had left about noon the previous day. I was so cold and so dry that I couldn't utter a word, however, he was on my right so I grabbed hold of his pant leg and started jerking it. He yelled to someone over by the house, "Hey this guy is still alive."

They took me inside, the doctors looked me over and said, "We've got to get this guy back right now." I'm positive we went back in a German ambulance. The doctor said it was 4 A.M. and they should hurry. As we entered the first medical aid station, I heard the radio stating that we were being surrounded and that they – the doctors – should leave everything except the most valuable medicines and equipment and evacuate all patients further to the rear. We left immediately and at the next aid station we went up about three steps to enter a room full of patients. In the far right corner they were amputating, mid femur, the right leg of a soldier. I had butchered before going into the army and was a butcher in Headquarters Company of the 55th Engr's before transferring to C Company, so I knew the color of slaughtered beef. I remember staring at the stump, post amputation, believing something must be wrong because there is just no way muscle could be that bright red.

In the center of the room there was a porcelain top kitchen table with a man lying on it face down. One medic was holding the soldiers head up and back and another medic was pulling gauze bandages through the area left from the enucleation. The gauze was placed into the eye socket and then using a pair of hemostats, the medic would reach up under the zygomatic arch with the hemostats, grasp the gauze and pull it out through a badly torn up face. It looked like one of those conditions where a soldier is crawling and he looks up and a mortar explodes in his face. As the gauze was pulled out, the stones bouncing off of the porcelain top table sounded like someone pouring the shot out of a shotgun shell. They sat me down beside him where I watched for some time, then a Captain and a Major came over and examined my arm.

A medic started an intravenous and told me to start counting. The last thing that I remember was the Major saying, "Well where will we take it off at?" When I woke up I remember checking first thing to see if I still had my arm. It was there all wrapped up in a plaster of Paris cast. I can't remember being more happy. Again they put us on stretchers in an ambulance and we headed back. The next thing that I remember I was being carried on my stretcher into a train station. When they put me down and I looked up and I couldn’t remember seeing such a high ceiling. Some Grey Ladies came along and sat me up. One lady sat behind me to hold me up and the other lady went and got me something to drink. Never have I been so thirsty. It was dark as we left for Paris via train. It was the roughest trip of my life. We would just get started and the engineer would throw on the brakes. Those wet heavy casts would pull those fractures apart and from every stretcher came cries of pain.

We finally reached Paris and I think I was put on the sixth floor of a large hospital. About every five minutes a medic would come into our room and tell us that the Germans were supposedly going to drop two divisions of paratroopers into Paris that night and that if we had any German souvenirs we had better give them to the medics, because if the paratroopers caught any of us with any German equipment they would shoot us. Before the night was over I was about as scared as I had been during the entire war. More surgery on my left elbow then on to the 8th Air Evacuation Center. We were there for several days before the weather cleared enough to fly us to England. I was in the six hundred and something temporary hospital.

-- Sergeant Wayne A. Wickert, A.S.N. 36408460

Biography of WAYNE ALBERT WICKERT
Born March 20, 1921, Eyebrow. Saskatchewan, Canada.
Education – B.S. Bacteriology 1949 – D.V.M. 1958 Michigan State University.
Military Service – Branch Army. Joined Service Nov. 6, 1942, Camp Custer, Kalamazoo Michigan. 10th Armored Division Ft. Benning, Georgia. Tennessee Maneuvers. Camp Gordon, Georgia.

P.O.E. New York. Departed Sept. 12, 1944. Arrived in European Theater Sept. 23, 1944 on the SS Sea Owl.
Participated in the Northern France and German Campaigns. Purple Heart. European- African-Middle Eastern Theater with two Bronze Stars.
Wounded in action near Longvilly, Belgium Dec. 19, 1944. Three aid stations then via Railroad to Paris, France and a large hospital.

To the Clyde River, Scotland and came home on the Queen Elizabeth. Left Feb. 14, 1945, arrived New York Feb. 19, 1945. I was sent to Billings General Hospital, Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Indiana.

I was a Corporal during Tennessee maneuvers and had an Engineer Recon Section. After Tennessee maneuvers there was a remodeling of the Division and I transferred to C Company of the 55th Armored Engineers from Headquarters Company of the 55th. There I became a buck sergeant squad leader of the 2nd squad 3rd platoon. I received an honorable discharge on July 9, 1945.

On Sept. 2, 1945 I headed for Michigan State University. I enrolled in Chemical Engineering. After two years in Engineering I transferred to Microbiology. Here I found my field. I was graduated in 1949 and went to work at Michigan Department of Health in the Bacterial Vaccine Section. We were requested to work towards our Masters Degree. After two years at the Michigan Dept. of Health I met and married Mary Jane Thomann, a fellow employee at the Health Department.

In 1951 we had our first child Wayne A., Jr. In September 1954 I enrolled in the College of Veterinary Medicine. My second son John C. was born in 1955 and my first daughter Amy Jo was born in 1957. I was graduated June 1958 with a D.V.M. I interned in Monroe, MI for six months then purchased my own practice in Reading, MI. My third son Casey T. was born in 1959.

I had a mixed practice for four years then moved to Calgary, Alberta where I joined Agriculture Canada Health of Animals Branch. My second daughter Barbara was born in 1963. After a year's training I became the District Veterinarian at Brooks, Alberta in the Contagious Diseases Division where I remained until I retired on Mar. 28, 1986. I have been farming since retirement. I raise and sell registered Quarter Horses and Maine Anjou Cattle.

Grandchildren — Wayne and Cindy have two sons. John and Irene have three sons. Amy Jo and John have two daughters. Casey and Alyce have none and Barbara and John have none.

Just prior to going to our P.O.E. in New York, the 55th Armored Engineer Battalion was in Camp Gordon, Georgia where we were called out and 55 names were called out which included mine. The balance of the Battalion was dismissed and the Battalion Commander told us that none of us were Citizens of the United States, consequently if we were captured we could be shot legally because we were Mercenaries. He said that we had two choices. We could either take an honorable discharge and go home or we could become Citizens of the United States and go overseas with our unit. All 55 of us did a right face and marched into the Court House in Bath, South Carolina and became U.S. Citizens.

Wayne Albert Wickert
March 20, 1921 – February 19, 2015
[Above biography was compiled in 1988.]

Obituary of WAYNE ALBERT WICKERT

Wickert – Wayne Albert “Doc” Wickert of Tilley, beloved husband of Jane, passed away at Sunrise Gardens in Brooks on February 19, 2015 at the age of 93. Doc was born in Eyebrow, Saskatchewan on March 20, 1921 and when he was still young they moved to Michigan. He attended East Tawas High school in East Tawas, Michigan and during World War 2 he fought and received a Purple Heart for his efforts during the Battle of the Bulge.

After the war Wayne attended Michigan State University where he received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Microbiology and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree and became employed with the Michigan Department of Health where he made vaccines for Pertussis and Smallpox. It was while working there that Wayne became acquainted with a fellow employee named Jane and on March 17th, 1951 they were married.

They moved to Canada in 1962 and he was employed as a Federal Veterinarian. They moved to a farm near Tilley in 1965 and it was there he developed a love for horses. Doc enjoyed playing baseball, blacksmithing and breeding and raising Quarter Horses. He was a story teller and had been a member of Brooks Dinosaur Toastmasters for nearly 40 years. Doc resided on the farm until moving to Sunrise Gardens in May of 2014.

Doc was predeceased by an infant son, parents Ezra and Pearl, sisters Millie and Norma and brothers William and Warren. He is survived by his loving family; wife Jane, children Wayne Jr. and his wife Cindy of Swan River, Manitoba, son John and his wife Irene of Salmon Arm, British Columbia, daughter Amy Buday and her husband John of Tilley, son Casey and his wife Alyce of Duchess and daughter Barb Gabruch and her husband John of Consul, Saskatchewan, 15 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. The family wishes to thank the staff at Sunrise Gardens for the love and care they showed Doc over the past 9 months.