Bill Sullivan
U.S. Army
9th Infantry Division
47th Infantry Regiment
European Theater


My name is William Sullivan. I was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania on March 26th, 1925. My father served in the Pennsylvania National Guard was gassed in the First World War. He was given a year to live after the war, and he lived for 12 years. I had one sister who died in infancy. I graduated from high school in 1943. After high school I went to work for a manufacturing company in West Trenton, New Jersey. They made life rafts. On August 20th, 1943 I enlisted in the army. I was sent to Fort Dix, then down to Camp Davis, North Carolina. I was trained in anti-aircraft artillery. We were made the 329th Searchlight Battalion. We were then sent to Orlando, Florida.

The way that anti-aircraft and searchlights worked together was that the searchlight would spot the aircraft, and then the artillery would shoot at the aircraft. Everything was going nicely until they told us we were being sent to Camp Gordon, Georgia and were being placed into the infantry. My father was stationed here in the First World War. After the invasion of Normandy, they needed replacements immediately, so they sent us over. I went over the Atlantic in a luxury liner. We went to the Azores, then went up the coast to Scotland. We then went down to Southampton and then across the Channel to LaHarve. We crossed the channel on a very small ship, but I noticed the printing on the life rafts. They were the life rafts that I helped make back in Trenton, NJ.

I was not with any unit at this time; I was just a replacement. We were sent to the Bulge on Forty and Eights. The first place we arrived was in Aachen, Germany, which had just been captured by the Americans. We could see dead Germans lying around the railroad tracks. We got off the trains and boarded trucks. The driver spotted German aircraft in the distance and told us to get out of the trucks and dive into the ditch on the side of the road. They didn't get us, and our fighters started to duel with them. I joined the division just before they crossed the Rohr River. I was ordered to dig a foxhole because German artillery was not out of range. A couple days later we crossed the river with dry feet. The engineers had bridges up. As soon as we got over the river, everyday after that seemed to be a fight. Each day at 5:00AM we would head out for the next town. I called it town-hopping.

We were close to the Rhine River at Bonn, Germany. We were on the top of the hill. All night and all day we, meaning the allies, owned the skies. The anti-aircraft artillery that came out of Bonn was a very large amount. I knew that we were going to have to take that town. Instead of going into Bonn, they loaded all of us up on trucks and sent us twenty-five miles south to Remagen. Another Regiment from our division waited there at Bonn and took the town. When we got to Remagen, the bridge had already been taken by elements of the Ninth Infantry Division. This was the seventh of March. We crossed the bridge on the 8th. As soon as we crossed the river, German artillery and bombs began to fall on us. Opposing us was the Ninth and Eleventh Panzer Divisions. The Germans were short of gas, so there wasn't much German tanks to deal with. The houses in the town were just demolished by German artillery. The nights were very dark. We had to walk with our hand on the man in front of you, so you wouldn't get lost. We dug foxholes there. We were with another American division. I remember that one of our guys found a door and used it to cover his foxhole. He would roll the window down to get in or out and roll the window up to stay warm.

A couple days after crossing the bridge at Remagen all hell broke loose. This was a hilly area and Germans had positions on top of hills and had observers in the church towers. German artillery started falling and there were even German fighter craft strafing us. My friend was hit by shrapnel so I picked him up a brought him into a house. I felt wet on my backside so I felt the area and when I looked at my hand it was covered in blood. I didn't even know I was injured. We went to the aid station and my friend and I were told to stay there. I heard that the next day the company took a beating and had many casualties. We were sent through Belgium to Paris to a hospital there. I never got back to my outfit. When I recovered I was placed in a replacement depot. I went into the army of occupation and stayed in Europe 'til the end of 1946. The men with the most points were the cooks. When the cooks left the food got very bad.

I went to LaHarve and boarded the Army Transport J.W. McAndrew. We landed in Norfolk, VA and then sent up to Fort Dix, NJ and then discharged. I declined to stay in the reserves. I was married in 1954. I had two children and have five grandchildren. I moved to Upper Dublin, PA because I got a job with Standard Press Steal. I retired from there since 1989.