Lloyd L. Goss

Lloyd L. Goss was born at his family home on New Bedford Road in Wall Township, New Jersey, in June 1921. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he knew that he was going to be drafted. Goss left his cabinet working job for an auto mechanic position at a Ford shop in Asbury Park, New Jersey. His manager at Ford offered to get him deferred from the service, but Goss declined and went to the draft board in Belmar, New Jersey, to see if he could speed his draft process up. They told him to get on a bus for Fort Dix the following Saturday, February 6, 1943.

Goss spent about four days at Fort Dix receiving all his vaccinations and army clothing before being shipped to Aberdeen, Maryland, where he received technical training for the automotive assembly of trucks, jeeps, and trailers for about three months. He and several other soldiers would also be instructed in how to drive tanks and motorcycles. Goss had ridden a Harley Davidson motorcycle as a civilian, making him a prospect to become a motorcycle dispatch rider overseas. His duty would have been to deliver pertinent information from a General in the field back to the current headquarters via motorcycle. However, his superiors never assigned him to that position. After completing training in Aberdeen, Goss was sent to the Atlanta Ordnance Depot in Atlanta, Georgia.

Initial training for the assembly line program that would streamline delivery of trucks, jeeps, and trailers to the front lines took place in Atlanta. Goss and his fellow soldiers were taught how to troubleshoot and fix truck engines in various situations. From Atlanta, they were sent to the “middle of the desert” in Texarkana, Texas, for training and experience using a field assembly line.  The training continued until December 1943, when they were sent to Massachusetts, where Goss received news that his wife had delivered their daughter. A captain allowed him a very brief furlough to see his newborn. Goss was given a piece of paper listing all the trains he needed to catch to make it there and back in time. He was told that if he missed a single train, to turn around and come back, because it would no longer be worth it. Thankfully, Goss was able to make it home to his family at about two a.m. and spend eight hours with them before returning to Massachusetts. On the day of his return, December 29, 1943, his outfit, the 148th Ordnance Motor Vehicle Armament Company, boarded a ship for Britain.

The 148th traveled in the largest convoy to cross the Atlantic, and arrived at the Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland, on January 8, 1944. After four days aboard the docked ship, Goss’s outfit was sent to Aintree, England, where they set up an assembly line to begin building two and a half-ton GMC trucks, along with jeeps and trailers for the aftermath of D-Day. The soldiers converted horse stables into barracks, then worked on the assembly line in Aintree until after D-Day. Goss’s outfit would not cross the English Channel until D + 10 (10 days after D-Day). He vividly remembered the considerable number of dead bodies still on the shoreline as he arrived at Omaha Beach. The 148th then set out to locate a secure position to set up an assembly line in France.

Goss was the lead driver in the convoy, transporting the tools necessary to set up the assembly line. Somehow, he got too far ahead of the rest of his unit. The Jeep that was right behind him turned back to locate the rest of the vehicles, leaving Goss all alone with his .45 caliber automatic pistol and .30 caliber carbine for his first night in France. He heard bullets crack over his head all through the night, and jumped at every movement he sensed; but, he made it through the whole night without any interaction with the enemy. The convoy caught up to him the following day, and the first vehicle was assembled within thirty-three hours after the 148^th landed in Normandy. Goss and his outfit kept working on the vital assembly line while remaining undetected by German surveillance planes.

One bomb was dropped in the field where the assembly line was located, yet did not detonate; Goss and several other men dug it up very carefully. While the assembly line was in France, it produced forty trucks daily, an impressive number and a significant reason for the United States and its Allies’ success in the war. The 148^th was awarded two campaign stars for how efficiently the unit could build and get trucks to the front. As the western front of the war was pushed back into Belgium, the assembly line followed.

The Germans were still trying to locate the assembly line and destroy it but were unsuccessful. One German plane was shot down in a lake near the line. The unit reached its highest output level at Camp Tophat in Antwerp, where it remained until the end of the war, averaging about fifty trucks assembled daily. During the Battle of the Bulge, the line worked twenty-four hours a day. The 148th Ordnance Motor Vehicle Armament Company had three total casualties throughout the conflict, an impressive number compared to many other outfits. Goss was shipped back to Newport, Virginia, aboard a Liberty ship on November 6, 1945, and arrived in the United States nine days later. He was so excited to get home that he slipped down the stairs getting off the ship. Goss was at Fort Dix within twenty-four hours after landing, where he received an honorable discharge from the army. When he was asked to reflect on his time at war, he told the interviewer he would do it all over again.

After the war, Goss became a police officer in his hometown of Wall Township for fifteen years before retiring due to an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound in his leg in 1961. He stated that his department had issued him a revolver that was old and worn out, and his supervisor told him there were no funds for a new one. The result was a misfire when Goss drew it, striking him through the left leg and right ankle. He would also be diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 1969, but miraculously recovered after the tumor was removed from his lung. Goss remained heavily involved in his local VFW and even took on his own project later in life. A fellow soldier, Lieutenant Martin, had secretly filmed the assembly line during production. When Lieutenant Martin passed away, Goss took it upon himself to copy and distribute the film to other veterans and the Library of Congress. If not for him, the film would not have seen the light of day again. From that point on, Goss made it his mission to share the significance his outfit had on the outcome of World War II.  

Lloyd Goss passed away on December 15, 2013, at the age of ninety-two, leaving behind a remarkable legacy told by no other but himself.