Loren Anderson
A farm boy from Ohio, Loren Anderson was drafted out of Boardman High School in Youngstown, to serve in the European Theater during World War II. Anderson first reported to Basic Training at Camp Blanding, Florida, before being deployed to Europe via Scotland aboard the ocean liner the RMS Queen Elizabeth. From Scotland his unit, the 87th Infantry Division of Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army, crossed England and the English Channel and joined the front lines in France.
Anderson and the other members of the 87th fought their way through France, on its way to Belgium, where the Germans, on their march across Europe, had surrounded the little town of Bastogne, a vital highway hub in the infamous Ardennes forest. After American forces saved the town, they continued their march across southern Germany to meet up with the Russian Army.
On the edge of a small town called Neuendorf, while at the head of a patrol, Anderson's unit came under attack. He recalled, “We were on a tiger patrol and at about midnight we arrived in this field on the outskirts of the town. There was a small farm house across the road and a little Catholic chapel. We were just standing there, and across the courtyard the Germans opened up on us. We immediately took cover in the chapel and blocked the door. My buddy and I were laying along the side of the aisle under two pews and some of the other men in our unit went to the front of the church and took up a position on the alter.”
“The Germans were throwing everything in there, and they brought in some big shell, and I still remember, a big shell going down the aisle and hitting the alter where some of our men were, then the screams,” Anderson continued.
"I was wounded that night. They were throwing in all kinds of grenades, concussion grenades, my helmet was taking it, mostly. But after a while I lost my glasses and got hit with a little bit of shrapnel.”
After the fighting concluded, Anderson was shipped to a hospital in Normandy, France, where he underwent three weeks of medical treatment before being sent back to the front lines where his unit was continuing its advance along the Rhine River.
As the war began to wind down, his unit ended up in Czechoslovakia, near the German city of Plauen. It was around this time that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower decreed that every soldier should see one of the Nazi concentration camps.
Anderson’s unit was taken to Ohrdruf, a satellite camp of nearby Buchenwald, one of the Nazi's largest. "I remember the stench. I'll never forget that. It was nauseating. I asked one of my buddies for a swig of his canteen and it was beer, so I spit that out and asked another guy for a drink of his.”
Following the surrender of the Nazi Army, Loren Anderson returned to the United States, to Indian Town Gap, Pennsylvania. There, he waited to see if his unit would be shipped west for an invasion of the Japanese mainland - something that Loren admitted was worrisome for him. While at Indian Town Gap, Loren helped process discharging paperwork for G.I.s returning from Europe, before being honorably discharged himself in February 1946, two years after he had been withdrawn from High School. Along the way, Anderson had risen to the rank of Corporal, and been awarded a Purple Heart for the wounds he suffered in that German chapel.
After completing his Army career, he attended what was the Ashbury College near Lexington, Kentucky. While at Asbury he met his future wife, Helen. The couple would go on to serve as missionaries in Guatemala for nearly three decades.
Loren reflects that, “I did what i wanted to do. My Army career just delayed me a little.”