Ol'Harry

GUILFORDIAN SERVED WITH HEAVY ARTILLERY

Herman “Red” Osborne, at 90, still walks softly, but he doesn’t carry the big stick his 741^st Field Artillery unit carried during World War II.  His hair isn’t as red as it once was, but his eyes are still bright and engaging, especially when recounting his unit’s 227 days of continuous combat. 

Before being drafted in April, 1943, Osborne punched several Guilford tickets – he was born in Glenwood, lived in Colfax for a while, on a Climax tobacco farm after that, and back into Greensboro for work with J. A. Jones Construction Company until Uncle Sam called.

By his own admission, Osborne’s family was different, “In addition to my one brother and one sister, my parents raised one of my first cousins and one boy they took in from off the streets.” 

Osborne also punched several Army tickets – Fort Jackson, Camp Hood, the Tennessee Maneuvers, Camp Forrest, Liverpool, Normandy, and into the war zone. 

HERMAN OSBORNE HELPED CARRY A "BIG STICK"

“We moved 75 miles on September 14, 1944 to come in range of the enemy.  That night we surveyed our site, laid wire, positioned our guns, and at 10:30 fired our first combat round.  We had practiced a lot at Fort Jackson, and the folks in Columbia sometimes complained about the noise our guns made – but we made more noise the night of September 14 than all our practice firing combined,” recalls Osborne.

The standard light artillery piece in World War II was the 105mm howitzer, which had a 4.1 inch projectile.  Next largest piece was the 155mm howitzer, known as “Long Tom,” with a six inch projectile. 

Then there was the 203mm “big stick” of Osborne’s 741^st Field Artillery Battalion, with an eight inch projectile.  According to literature provided by Osborne, “The eight-incher could change battle fortunes in short order.  It was ideal for clearing out concentrations of enemy troops and/or defeating fortified positions.  It was the largest self-propelled artillery piece available to us at the time.”

OSBORNE'S ARTILLERY PEERS ADDED NEW MEANING TO "HEAVY ARTILLERY!"

Typically, a crew of 14 operated each gun, which could fire an average of one 200-pound projectile each minute with a range of over 11 miles.

With the enemy in retreat, the 741^st moved faster and more often.  “On April 25 we moved three times, no sooner than we set up, we took down and moved out,” says Osborne.  Other records show they took six positions in eight days, and on another occasion, moved five times in one week.

Osborne had a moment of doubt when they were ordered to cross the Moselle River on a temporary pontoon bridge, “Our guns weighed 17,000 pounds each – we gave one up for a test, but the bridge worked just fine.”

V-E Day (May 8, 1945) found the 741^st in Augsburg, Germany.  Even though Osborne’s unit had been bombed, shelled, and strafed in their foray from Normandy to Augsburg, they had suffered minimal casualties.  Sadly, one of Osborne’s favorite officers was shot by a German civilian in late April and died on May 5. 

Osborne reflected, “Even after the surrender, German soldiers were hiding out all over the place, we never knew when we would run into one, or what their disposition would be.  One cornered himself in a haystack and would not come out, but others came forward willingly to give themselves up.

We fixed up a German motorcycle retrieved from a lake.  As we rode it around town, several enemy soldiers surrendered to us.  Occupation duty wasn’t all work, Bob Hope and Jack Benny put on shows for us, plus we visited Munich, Dachau, Oberammergau, Berchtesgaden and Paris.”  

The 741^st spent the first week of August, 1945 on the firing range, ramping up for deployment to the Pacific theater for the invasion of Japan.  Even after V-J Day, the unit remained on occupation duty in Germany, returning to the states on January 6, 1946.  They wore campaign decorations for Normandy, Northern France, the Rhineland and Central Europe.

Two corporals from the 741^st wrote, “A History of Charlie Battery,” quite a definitive combat journal.  Besides Osborne’s, the only other copy I could locate is in the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, PA.  

OSBORNE "WALKS SOFTLY," BUT AS A GREAT AMERICAN

On November 1, 1947, Osborne married Jean Loman.  They are members of Emmanuel Wesleyan Church and have three daughters, one son, eight grands, and nine great-grands.  Osborne worked as a heating and air conditioning technician with Dick and Kirkman for 38 years.

For the record, the two other boys from the Osborne household also served in World War II – Carl Osborne as a B-24 gunner and Tommy Younts as a paratrooper.