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Charles Ralston
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Private First Class Charles W. Ralston

Rifleman

I Company, 142nd Infantry Regiment

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     Charles W. Ralston was born on April 2, 1923, the youngest of three siblings into a working-class family in rural Waterloo, New York. His father worked a variety of jobs in the small town, from a stove works molder to a gas station attendant, providing for their modest family as Charles grew up throughout the Great Depression. When war broke out in December of 1941, he was attending Waterloo High School. Here was a very active boy participating in the school’s radio club, art club, photography club as well as the school’s archery and riflery teams. After graduating in 1942, he registered for the draft and within seven months of doing so received notice to enter the U.S. Army in January of 1943. 

     Ralston traveled to Texas for his basic training and went through specialized training in ordnance. In the fall of 1943 he shipped out, leaving the United States around September, for service in England. Upon arrival he was attached to the 810th Ordnance Base Depot Company at Tidworth in Wiltshire. In early 1944 he attended an advanced school for ordnance personnel at Depot O-640 before returning to his typical duties. It is unknown which unit he served with for the next several months, but it is assumed he returned to the 810th. It was in this logistical capacity that he worked overseas until he was reassigned for combat duty in the spring of 1945.

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     With heavy casualties being taken as American forces drove towards the German heartland, Ralston was detached from his ordnance service and put into the 3rd Reinforcement Battalion sometime around February or March 1945. Despite his ordnance training, he was slated to join an infantry unit and received his official orders to join Service Company, 142nd Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division on March 28, 1945. Ralston was attached as a rifleman with the Service Company in Siebeldingen, Germany, as they were the designated company for sorting replacements into line rifle companies. Siebeldingen was only a few miles north from where the division had broken through the Siegfried Line just a week before, the latest of the division’s successful campaigns.

     On April 5, Ralston transferred to his primary combat unit, I Company of the 142nd Infantry Regiment, as the entire regiment transitioned into a brief period of military policing duties while the rest of the U.S. 7th Army drove forward into southern Germany. He joined them in the small village of Langmeil, just north of regimental headquarters in Kaiserslautern. Most of April was spent around the region performing guard duty, overseeing prisoners of war, policing the local civilian population under a strict military regimen, and participating in regular company training. One of the most important tasks the company undertook was to visit towns across the region and gather enemy weapons, vehicles, munitions, and other equipment of war so that it could be confiscated and passed up to the proper authorities. 

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     I Company moved by truck back to Kaiserslautern to continue in its duties on April 9, taking in another batch of replacements in the process. Within two weeks, I Company had gained nearly seventy fresh men. While the replacements were sorely needed to replace those lost in the Vosges, Alsace, and Siegfried Line campaigns, unit cohesion always suffered with such a large influx. I Company did have a unique unifying trait, however, in their unofficial company tactical marking, a yellow lightning bolt which was painted across the T-Patch on their helmets. This marking was designed by company commander Captain Alban E. Reid back in February of 1945 during the fighting near Bischwiller. I Company, with a long and distinguished combat history, had proudly adopted the symbol and appears to have encouraged its use among replacements as well. It did prove troublesome during this occupation-focused period, however, as German civilians reportedly believed they had some connections to the SS. Despite the regimental commander’s desire to remove the markings, they were kept by the proud men of the company, Ralston likely included.

     A day after their arrival in Kaiserslautern the company moved another fifteen miles east to Weidenthal, another small village. They remained in the town performing guard duty while training up new guys like Ralston until ordered to move another thirty miles to Kircheim on April 18, to perform many of the same activities. Towards the end of the month the company began receiving relief from elements of the 28th Infantry Division and initiated its trek eastward to reach other 36th Division units for renewed combat operations. They traveled nearly 170 miles to Kunzelsau to join the rest of the regiment. Word spread among the company of a future battle, with rumors of German soldiers holding up in the Bavarian and Austrian mountains for a fanatical last stand. On April 26, Ralston’s battalion loaded up on jeeps and trailers to move fifty miles south to Aalen as the regiment began jumping unit by unit deeper into Germany. By the 28th they had reached elements of the 63rd Infantry Division at the Lech River near Landsberg. I Company ended up in a nearby bivouac area south of Lamerdingen and Unterigling where the old and new men of the company encountered an entirely new type of horror.

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     In the days prior to I Company’s arrival, the area around Landsberg had been quickly swept by the 12th Armored Division. Unable to stay due to the continued drive into Germany, a local monstrosity remained for I Company to discover. According to testimony from Captain Reid, later in the evening on the 28th the company moved south along a main road mirroring Landsberg. The men set up in a wood while Captain Reid and some of the officers took over a nearby house and sentries were placed. After a little while in these positions, a “panic-stricken” blue and white striped figure wandered into the company lines. Although they did not know it at the time, this man was a prisoner from the nearby Kaufering VII sub-concentration camp of Dachau. He was afraid of the American soldiers and a near skeleton by the time he reached their position. Captain Reid and other I Company soldiers tried giving him soup and food while placing him near a fire, but he could not keep any food down. One man in the company was fortunately able to translate the Polish he spoke, allowing him to describe the camp he came from to the men, which sat just a short distance away through the woods.

     At daylight on April 29, Captain Reid, Ralston, and the rest of I Company moved down the road following the prisoner’s directions. They soon came across a fenced enclosure near the road hidden away in the forest. Bodies of male and female prisoners laid around on the ground, some with very slight twitching movements in their fingers from the small amount of life still within them. The camp was lined with dozens of small, crude huts built into the ground for housing the prisoners all surrounded by a series of barbed wire fences. An unforgettable stench of death and decay permeated the camp as the men of I Company slowly worked their way through it, trying to wrap their minds around the horrible things they saw. Some prisoners were able to speak to the GIs, detailing how the Germans had evacuated the camp, marching prisoners able to walk to a nearby rail line where they were loaded onto boxcars and shipped away. Captain Reid recalled how all the men were utterly appalled at what they had seen, remaining speechless as they walked through the camp. It was simply “unreal.” 

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     Word was sent back to battalion headquarters about this camp they had found. Reid described how deuce and a half trucks were sent with male civilians from the nearby village who were ordered to process and bury the bodies. Unfortunately, I Company could not stay to further help the prisoners as they were to continue the leap-frogging advance. They left what supplies they could and began mounting up for the move, but were still in utter shock at the life-altering things they had just witnessed. 

     I Company continued their drive by truck, moving sixty miles to Kleinweil, a small village to the south. Here they remained for two days performing guard duty before driving yet another eighty miles to Kufstein on May 3. It was on the outskirts of the town, nearing a bridge, elements of the company were fired upon by SS stragglers. This was likely Ralston’s first time under enemy fire. No casualties were taken, but they advanced forward, driving the SS troops away, only to find an abandoned SS warehouse that they had been guarding. The building was full of finely ornate presentation pistols and shotguns and, surprisingly, hundreds of pounds of looted silver taken by the Germans. The horde contained jewelry, ingots, leg bands, ornaments, Jewish religious items, and, most shockingly, teeth with silver fillings. Reid recounted that the men were quite surprised at the find, but “knew” that these valuable objects likely came from the same type of people they had just seen at the concentration camp. Reid notified battalion headquarters of the find and before long Major Cader C. Terrell, the regimental intelligence officer, and Sergeant Harold H. Fried of the 142nd regimental headquarters came by and took the silver under their control, loading it onto their jeep and driving off. Later, in the fall of 1945, the regimental commander decided that the silver, impossible to return to its original owners, was best put to use by making a large punch bowl and 150 silver goblets, one for each officer in the regiment engraved with their unit insignia, companies, and battles. The set became famous in the division and still today resides in the Texas Military Forces Museum. Captain Reid, however, was never a fan of it and recalled his distaste for the possibility that the set was made using the stolen silver from victims of the Holocaust.

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     Ralston and his comrades remained in Kufstein for several days before mounting up on tanks of the 753rd Tank Battalion and trucks from the regiment for one last push into Austria. It was now May 5 and word of an imminent surrender was everywhere as broken German units streamed into the division lines hoping to be captured by the Americans. As I Company moved southeast to the fork below Kufstein, they were about half-way to the junction of the Soll-St Johann road when Captain Reid stopped at the head of the column to investigate a blown bridge. Preparing to turn them around and advance a different way, a bullet zinged from across the river and hit the windscreen of his jeep. The company quickly fell back, not wanting to take any casualties so late into the war. They eventually arrived in Fernberg and moved from there to Wald im Pinzgau, Austria, on the day the war ended, May 8, 1945.

     In the days immediately after the surrender, I Company processed a number of German prisoners taken into their custody. At one point they even found an entire unit of Russian conscripts who had taken up residence in a nearby ski resort. Rather than surrender, these troops wanted to join the American army to fight the Soviets who they believed would continue the war. Unfortunately, Captain Reid was unable to convince them otherwise and it took a higher officer from division headquarters to take their surrender. I Company also came across a group of former German officials from Berlin who had been hiding out in another mountain resort.

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     As occupation settled in, the 36th Division moved back to Germany and sent all of its companies to occupy various towns around Munich and southern Bavaria. Ralston remained with I Company throughout the occupation, participating in its many policing duties and enjoying the fruits of a long-fought but victorious war. I Company became quite popular during occupation as they managed to find several German breweries and restart them, providing much-needed drinks to their fellow T-Patchers. Beyond the typical occupation libations, however, much of Ralston’s time in Germany was spent maintaining order in the civilian population and processing captured German military equipment. 

     During the occupation, 36th troops often had time to enjoy Germany and many took the opportunity to utilize local German tailors and craftsmen to make souvenirs. A popular practice was to decorate uniforms with American insignia made by the Germans. Ralston partook in the trend and, uniquely, decided to get the I Company tactical marking, the yellow lightning bolt, embroidered across the 36th Division patch on his dress uniform, mimicking the design painted upon their helmets. The lightning bolt was still the pride of I Company and it is understandable why Ralston wanted to use it on his uniform. The company had even painted rocks and laid them out in the shape of the insignia near their headquarters for the duration of occupation.

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     Ralston returned to the United States in the fall of 1945, receiving his official discharge from the army on December 22, 1945. He went back home to Waterloo and moved back in with his parents, finding work as a welder in a local machine shop. In 1950 he married Betty June Ide, with whom he had three children. He raised his family in Waterloo and nearby Canandaigua, spending the length of his career welding for the Dolomite mining company in Walworth. He passed away in January of 2001 and remains buried in Waterloo.

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