Paul D. Greenland Sr.

Paul D. Greenland was born in Philadelphia in October 1924. His family moved to New Jersey, and he graduated from Cape May High School in 1942. Greenland’s family members were quite concerned about Hitler’s aggression in Europe, and whether Americans were going to be involved in combatting it. He and his friends were playing Monopoly when the radio broke the news about Pearl Harbor. They were shocked and knew they were prime candidates for military service.

Two of Greenland’s friends went into the Army Air Forces and became a bombardier and a navigator, and a third served in the Navy. In May 1943, Greenland was drafted and sent to Camp Campbell, Kentucky. His family was apprehensive about him serving in the military, but at the same time proud that he served. He remembered Basic Training as “hard, but not as bad as it might have been.” While in basic firearms training, he fired a .30 caliber Carbine, as well as the .30-06 M-1 Garand, 45-caliber Model 1911 pistol, and the M-3 45-caliber sub-machine gun. According to Greenland, he was “a better mechanical person than an intellectual person,” and the one thing that he said really helped him in the service was learning how to type. Following his stint at Camp Campbell, he moved to Fort Meade and Fort Monmouth; and, after a total of thirteen months training, he was sent overseas.

Greenland left for Great Britain on the USS New Amsterdam, a passenger liner converted to a troop transport, which was the fourth-largest ship in the world at the time. The New Amsterdam left the United States on June 4, 1944, and arrived in Glasgow, Scotland on June 8. The soldiers were lodged in staterooms with no furnishings but hammocks. Greenland was uncomfortable in a hammock so slept on the deck, which led to sore spots on his hip and shoulder.

Greenland was initially stationed in a small town in Britain, where vehicles were prepared to drive through water. He was then sent to France on an LST and landed on Omaha Beach, where he saw the effects of the June battle, including damaged buildings and fortifications. The fact that during part of his training Greenland was assigned as a driver for a British major facilitated his next assignment. On July 8, 1944, Greenland was appointed as a light vehicle driver in the Headquarters Company of the 3rd Armored Division’s 36th Armored Infantry Regiment. His division was called the “Spearhead Division” because it was the first to engage the enemy in many campaigns, and would lead attacks across Germany.

One of Greenland’s assignments was to interact with local civilians, and on one occasion when a group of farmers had to bury a horse, he had to go with them, a mission he described as “a little bit different than the average duty.” Greenland also recalled a day when he and his fellow soldiers noticed a ¾-ton vehicle parked near the Rhine River. They wondered why the vehicle wasn’t moving, so they approached the truck and discovered that the driver had been shot by a sniper. The bullet went through one side of the soldier’s head, leaving a bullet sized entry hole, while the whole other side of his head was blown away by its exit, a not uncommon result of a bullet spinning in the target.

Greenland’s initial combat experience occurred when his unit was shelled by German artillery, which became an occasional feature of his life for the remainder of the war. Prior to the Battle of the Bulge, his division was out of action for a while to reorganize and replace lost equipment. During this break, he experienced an episode with a German V-1 “buzz bomb,” (the precursor of the guided missile) that apparently landed short of its target, Antwerp. Greenland and some other soldiers were in a house when they heard a loud screaming noise. They all scrambled to get in the basement, and he had not quite made it when the bomb landed in the bottom of a little gully next to the building, where its explosive force erupted skyward. Greenland and his comrades were very lucky, as they were unharmed.

On the night of December 16, 1944, the division was notified to prepare to reenter combat, and the next day moved out towards the front. Greenland remembered the weather being cold and wet and the division moving from place to place until it ended up close to a town somewhere near the northern edge of the Bulge on Christmas Eve. Late in the afternoon, bullets fired from a woodlot 300 yards away cracked by him. He realized he was the target, hit the dirt and crawled behind the front wheel and engine of a jeep, crouching there until it got dark.

One night in Germany, Greenland was laying on the ground when a German tank and some infantry broke through the defense perimeter. The Americans woke up to hear yelling in German; and, after that, bullets flew everywhere, so he stayed flat on the ground. They didn’t stop the tank, but shot some Germans before they withdrew. Before the firefight, Greenland laid his helmet on the ground next to him, with his wallet, pen, and some papers in it. When he woke up in the morning, he noticed a bullet hole in the back of the helmet. The bullet had shattered his pen, cut his wallet in half, and tore up the papers Greenland was carrying. At the time of his interview, he still had the pen, his last souvenir of the episode.

Several days later, Greenland’s unit entered a small German village on a dirt road. He was driving the second jeep in the convoy when the lead jeep was hit by a shell from a German tank on the other side of town. The soldiers in that jeep were killed as it literally exploded. Greenland’s vehicle was twenty yards behind the destroyed jeep, and he and his crew jumped out and ran to the side of a nearby house for cover.

As the 3rd Armored Division advanced through Germany, the Americans enforced an order directing civilians to turn in all weapons. In one town, there was a pile of firearms over six feet high, with every kind of gun imaginable. Greenland had no problems with any of his issued weapons and equipment, but said there were a lot of problems with American tanks. He recalled that the Germans were “good machinists; they really could manufacture good equipment.” Their tanks were superior, and they knew it. Despite this, the morale of the men of Greenland’s unit was high, and they all were confident that they were going to win the war.

The day the war in Europe ended, Greenland was in a town in Germany where someone turned on a switch that activated a hot water heater, which exploded and set the building on fire. After that excitement, he relaxed. Greenland mentioned that soldiers really appreciated the Stars and Stripes newspaper, which provided information and jokes, and added “it really was a great morale booster to see the Stars and Stripes.” From time to time, there was information about what was going on in the Pacific, but not many details.

The war over, Greenland was transferred to another division, because he did not have enough service “points” to go home yet. On Christmas Day 1945, he was in a camp in Marseille. It was army policy that every man would have turkey on Christmas Day, and on his turn in the chow line, Greenland got a huge pile of turkey. He was issued a pass to go to Paris, which was quite an experience, because he got to see the wonderful sights there. Greenland also went to Cologne, Germany on temporary military police duty.

In 1945, the First Army sponsored a track and field meet in Munich, Germany. Greenland had been on the track team in high school as a pole vaulter and javelin thrower, so he signed up for the meet, along with about twenty other soldiers from his unit. He did not compete in the pole vault, but won third place in the javelin throwing contest and was awarded a medal. Greenland also remembered getting a pass to Frankfurt, Germany, where he jumped off a 10-foot diving board and momentarily thought he broke his back. Before he left for home he toured a former concentration camp, a sobering experience.

Greenland traveled back to the United States on the same ship, the USS New Amsterdam, that he had gone off to war on. It was a 10-day trip; and, he recalled that “it was quite a sight when we saw the Statue of Liberty.” After debarking, Greenland and his fellow soldiers went to Fort Monmouth, from where he was discharged on January 16, 1946. For his service, he was awarded the World War II Victory Medal, the American Theater Ribbon, the Good Conduct Medal, the Combat Infantry Badge, and the European-African-Middle Eastern Theater Ribbon. A civilian again, the first thing Greenland did was visit his friends.

In late 1946, the 308th Anti-Aircraft Battalion, a New Jersey National Guard unit, was created, and Greenland decided to don the uniform again. He joined the 308th in 1950; and, with his experience, he was appointed Supply Sergeant of Battery C and remained in the unit for several years.
Greenland was married in October 1949. He owned and operated Paul’s Arco Service Station and Cape Truck Center for thirty-five years, was a member of the Hereford Masonic Lodge, the Cape May County Shrine Club, and a patron of the Wildwood Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star. 

Paul D. Greenland, Sr. passed away on July 12, 2011, and is buried in Cape May County Veterans Cemetery.