French honor Emporia veteran
By Bobbi Mlynar
Originally published 01:20 p.m., November 8, 2007
Updated 01:20 p.m., November 8, 2007
The Veterans Tribute USO show will stop the entertainment Friday night to take time to honor a local veteran, who will receive a medal from the Republic of France.
A representative of that nation will accept Warren Horton into the ranks of the French Legion of Honor.
Horton, 82, served in Company K of the 346th Regiment, 87th Division — part of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army in the battle across France and into Germany.
According to information from the 87th’s newsletter, U.S. veterans who participated in one of the four major campaigns in the liberation of France — Normandy, Southern France, Northern France and the Ardennes — are eligible to become chevaliers — or knights — of the Legion.
Veterans who applied for consideration were required to furnish copies of separation papers. Previous military awards, such as the Congressional Medal of Honor, Silver or Bronze Stars, and the Purple Heart, would indicate meritorious actions during combat operations.
The applications for the Legion of Honor were reviewed by the Legion of Honor Committee in Paris. Approximately 100 of the medals are awarded annually, the newsletter reported, and applications still are being taken.
Horton said that he and his daughter, Bonnie Horton, of Kansas City filled out the extensive paperwork required on the application. The consul general of the French consulate in Chicago, Jean-Baptiste Main de Boissiere, notified Horton on Aug. 3 that he had been selected to receive a medal. That letter was followed by another on Aug. 21, containing details about the award. This time, the letter came from the French ambassador, Pierre Vimont.
“This award testifies to the President of the French Republic’s high esteem for your merits and accomplishments,” Vimont said in the letter. “In particular, it is a sign of France’s true and unforgettable gratitude and appreciation for your personal, precious contribution to the United States’ decisive role in the liberation of our country during World War II.”
The French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte created the Legion of Honor in 1802 to acknowledge services rendered to France “by persons of great merit,” Vimont wrote. “The French people will never forget your courage and your devotion to the great cause of freedom.”
For Horton, his time spent in southern France is something he would like to forget and can’t.
It is difficult for him to talk about what he saw there; the machine-gun bursts that sent men diving to the ground, the tanks and mortars, and the deaths of comrades.
“The first day in combat, we lost a man,” Horton said of his introduction to battle. “He was hit with machine gun fire, and the rest of us were pinned down.”
No one could reach the soldier who, by the time the battle ended, had died from loss of blood. It was difficult to bear then, just as remembering it is now. Horton was featured speaker at a meeting recently and tried to talk about those times. He found he couldn’t.
“I could take being shot at, but, boy, I couldn’t take being in front of that crowd,” he said. “It’s pretty hard to tell about somebody being killed. ... It’s parts of the fighting that I’d just as soon forget.”
When Germans broke through in Belgium in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, Horton said, Patton volunteered his men to turn back the attack. Horton’s unit in southern France swung around and drove north into Belgium.
“We rode in open trucks in sub-zero weather,” he said.
A hot Christmas dinner was delivered to the troops in a Jeep that, as it approached, tipped over when a mortar round struck nearby. The dinner was salvaged, dirt and all, and eaten by the homesick, hungry — and by then, angry — troops.
The unit reached its new station in Tillett, Belgium, where a new lieutenant, from battalion supply, took over. The unit need not have worried about having an office worker as its leader, Horton said.
“He was a great guy,” he said. “He said, ‘If you see me making a mistake, just tell me.’”
Horton carried the radio equipment and fell in behind the lieutenant. Soon, they were peppered with machine gun fire, and quickly found a “shell hole” to take cover. The hole, he said, was a relatively small cone dug into the earth.
“To me, it didn’t look much bigger than a wash tub,” Horton said. “I dropped in on top of the lieutenant.”
A staff sergeant ran up to the hole and tried to join them. The lieutenant initial told him to find another hole.
“He said, ‘Scoot over, I’m coming in.’ Three of us in that hole and there wasn’t room for one. But when you’re being shot at...”
Some time later, part of the unit went on a foray to a nearby town and found a three-story home. The lower area was for keeping cattle, the second floor was for cooking and dining, and a stairway led to a third-floor sleeping area. A large hole in the house’s foundation allowed the men to enter briefly. They pulled out and went back to their outfit, making noise all the way as they walked on 10 inches of crunchy, crusty snow.
“We gathered up men and went back to the building,” Horton said. Half of the men went inside and the other half went to a building on the opposite side of the street.
“It aroused the Krauts and they came out of there just like a bunch of fleas,” Horton said. Grenades and guns eliminated some of the Germans. The other enemy soldiers called in a tank that was using ammunition with smokeless powder. That made it difficult to find the tank’s location as it shelled at the house Horton and the others were leaving.
“I had been a pretty good shot with a rifle,” Horton said, describing why he chose to linger a little longer in the house, hoping to get a glimpse of where the tank was shooting from. Standing on a stairway landing, he heard a shell landing on the stairway near a bedroom.
“If I had moved about 10 inches to my left, I would have been OK. If I had moved 10 inches to my right, I’d probably be pushing up daisies,” he said.
The shell sprayed iron fragments into his right arm and right leg. Eventually, after multiple surgeries, doctors would remove 13 pieces of cast iron from Horton.
“I had them for a long time,” he said.
He was taken to a first aid station, then on to a field hospital, and finally to a building that had been converted to a hospital in Reims, France. He had first come to France in late October or early November 1994, he said; he was injured on Jan. 7, 1945.
Soon, he was put on a hospital train and sent to Cherbourg, then on to England to catch a hospital ship home.
“I got clear back to England and they couldn’t figure out why I was sticking to the bed sheet,” he said. “Lo and behold, one place where the steel went through my thigh, it had never been dressed.”
The blood and pus had crystallized and acted like glue. The sheet had to be pulled away from Horton’s injured leg.
“You know, I’d been through so much pain before that, I didn’t worry about it,” he said.
The ship taking him back to the United States lost power somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, and was stalled for about 24 hours until repairs could be made, causing some concern about German submarines that might still be patrolling and find them. Complicating the trip was a supply of bad mackerel that inflicted a severe lower intestinal disorder on most of the people on board.
“That was a mess,” Horton said, describing the aftermath of a large number of people trying to use a small number of restrooms.
It was with relief that he landed in Charleston, S.C. Expecting to be sent to a hospital in Topeka or Wichita, Horton had spent $7.50 to call his parents and let them know he would be coming home soon.
The following day, he made another $7.50 long-distance call to Lyon County; the military was sending him instead to a hospital in Walla Walla, Wash., by train from South Carolina.
After multiple surgeries then and later, including one that transferred an elbow tendon to the thumb on his right hand, Horton was restored to health and civilian life.
He said he doesn’t like to think about the war, but he doesn’t regret his military service. Anything else wouldn’t have been tolerable for him.
When he was 18 and about to be drafted, the farmer he worked for put in for a deferment that would exempt Horton from the draft.
“He put in for a deferment for me and I found out, and I said, ‘Nope, I want to go.’ I said I didn’t want that name, staying home — draft-dodger,” Horton said.