“My hands were on fire, my legs were on fire, my feet were on fire, and blood was spurting out of my head,” said Naperville WWII Veteran John Prescott. “I thought, ‘uh oh, mom is really going to be mad at you guys,’ thinking I was going to die there.”
Naperville resident, John Prescott, like many veterans, seldom spoke of his combat experiences. The horrors he faced in World War II were beyond what most can imagine.
Prescott volunteers for the Navy but he “was literally, shoved into the Army.”
He started his career in the military when he was just a teenager, living in Downers Grove in 1944.
“I was notified in the middle of January of my senior year that I was going to be drafted at the end of the semester,” Prescott explained. “ I decided that I didn’t want to go into the Army, so I arranged to volunteer for the Navy.”
“My friend Harry Laman and I were together. We left Downers Grove on the train and got into Chicago, and I was shoved into the Army! I said, ‘Hey! I had enlisted in the Navy; what happened?’” said Prescott. “‘We need you in the army.’ I was literally shoved into the Army.”
From there, Prescott and Laman eventually made it to Camp Blanding, Florida, for 17 weeks of training. The two graduated from basic training on Nov. 30, 1944. Prescott returned to Downers Grove to spend time with family before being shipped overseas for assignment.
“My father got me to the Downers Grove depot to get on the train to start my overseas assignment,” said Prescott. “I remember being hugged by him, and he was in tears, which I’d never seen before in my life. He’d already sent two sons into the service. My older brothers were already there, but, yeah, that was a special moment.”
Initially expecting deployment to the Pacific Theatre, Prescott was instead sent to the staging center at Fort Mead, Maryland, where he met 29-year-old Ken Sawby, his one real friend from the war. The two waited a week before being shipped overseas.
The journey from New York to Le Havre, France
“December 31st of 1944 was my 19th birthday, and we got on the Queen Mary to go overseas,” said Prescott. “Within half a day, I was sick as a dog, and I spent the voyage on the upper deck next to a garbage can. Sawby and some other guys from down in the ship would bring some food up once in a while.”
“I think it took six days to get from New York to Glasgow, Scotland,” Prescott recalled. “We got off the ship, took a train, and then took a smaller ship to cross the channel. I got sick on that, too. I think the Lord was telling me, ‘You see, John, that’s why we didn’t want you to go in the Navy.’”
Prescott, excited to be on land, arrived in Le Havre, France, on Jan. 7, 1945.
“I was going through the chow line, and the guy that was handing out the food, was asking everybody, ‘Where are you from?’ And I usually said Chicago, but this time I said ‘Downers Grove, Illinois.’ He said, ‘Oh yeah, do you know Darlene Strong?’”
“Oh, do I know Darlene Strong, ‘Yes, I know Darlene, she gave me my very first kiss,” Prescott said.
Years later, Prescott was able to share that story with Darlene Strong. From here, however, his experiences in the war only intensified.
“A baptism of fire” when Prescott got off the truck in Bastogne
On January 14, Sawby and Prescott were transferred by truck to the decimated village of Bastogne, Belgium.
“We got off the truck, and just minutes later, we got hit by three mortars that fell right near us,” explained Prescott. “There’s a baptism of fire. I mean, it was so frightening. They were so close to us.”
Prescott was assigned to the 1st Platoon of Company C of the 50th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 6th Armored Division. His company commander was 1st Lt. Anthony A. Palumbo, of Rochester, New York, a Silver Star recipient.
“We slept in foxholes, some of which had been dug out and covered by the Germans themselves, so it was almost luxurious,” recalled Prescott.
“I can remember when, especially the 88’s (88 mm cannon), If you’re lying in the foxhole, the concussion would just lift you and bang us up against the top of whatever we had for cover, said Prescott. “It was as helpless as you can be.”
As the new guy, Prescott often served as the point man in the movement through open fields and the woods. Artillery was constantly fired, and they experienced some of the coldest winter weather on record.
Prescott’s battalion played a critical role in winning the Battle of The Bulge
The 50th Mechanized Infantry Battalion played a critical role in winning the Battle of The Bulge. At the end of January 1945, Prescott and the battalion helped hold the line along the Our (River) between Luxembourg and Germany. On Jan. 31, the battalion was relieved, and Prescott enjoyed a week of rest.
Following the break, Prescott’s company returned to the Our (River) and once again was shelled by intense artillery. For about ten days, they sat in below-freezing temperatures, suffering from hunger, fear, and horror.
“One time, they landed a shell right in a guy’s… I can’t tell you his name, because he just got back from the hospital,” said Prescott. “He was in his foxhole and took a direct hit from an 88 (88 mm cannon); it’s just terrible. And you know, why him and not me? We weren’t that far apart. Just a terrible moment.”
A moment of rest almost turned deadly
Another close call of Prescott’s came when his Company was relieved from the shelling in the hills east of the Our (river). They rested 10 miles away in Doennange, Luxembourg. One afternoon, a group of soldiers enjoyed a movie inside a barn.
“What we didn’t know was that the projector was being run off of a Jeep that was running down below, sending up these gas fumes,” said Prescott. “So when the movie ended, we stood up, but hardly anybody could walk, it was like being in a cloud. Somebody kicked down a window, and we got some air in there. We stumbled down the steps and made it out, and I’m just glad it wasn’t a longer movie. The movie was Gaslight, with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman.”
The 50th Mechanized Infantry Battalion breaks through the Siegfried Line and into Germany
On the morning of Feb. 21, Prescott and his company received half a day of training on how to clear enemy bunkers. Later that afternoon, they were ordered to cross into Germany, and Prescott was ready to be the first group across the line.
“We were assigned to break through the Siegfried Line, which was a line of concrete bunkers that the Germans had built in their country,” said Prescott.
“The object and the plan was to attack these concrete bunkers,” explained Prescott. “We have the whole battalion stretched out from left to right, looking up at these bunkers. There’s about 3 to 5, as I recall, across the top of the hill. The plan is for the engineers to bring up a supply of dynamite on an A-frame. Three riflemen would go up with them, and the riflemen would give constant fire into these slots in the bunkers.”
“Who gets to be one of the riflemen?” Prescott questioned. “It was John Prescott and another fellow from Louisiana. He’s going around saying, ‘Can you believe what they’re asking us to do? Can you believe what they’re asking us to do?’”
“All I could think of was, ‘I’m going to be dead in just a few more minutes,’” said Prescott. “When suddenly, way to the left, at the end of our line, comes this truck with a megaphone, and it goes right in back of us, speaking German, sending this loud message up to the bunkers. And ‘can you believe it?’ All of a sudden, German soldiers come out of the bunkers with white flags.”
“This, I have determined, is the luckiest day of my life,” said Prescott.
A dark night in Lunebach, Germany
On Feb. 26, Company C received new orders to pass through the village of Lunebach, Germany, and cross the Prum (river) on the other side. Prescott and Sawby were part of the lead platoon and received frightening orders to fix bayonets.
“Sawby is with me, and we’re part of the first line of offense,” said Prescott. “It starts around 7:00 at night, and it’s one of those pitch-black nights without the moon or any stars in sight. As we went forward into the village, we were holding each other by the gun belts. It was that hard to see.”
“Just before we got into the village or as we entered the village, from our left came a barrage of tracer bullets and machine gun bullets and then the lights. It looked like the enemy wasn’t going to give up their bridge very easily,” remembered Prescott.
“I was in a ditch as soon as the firing broke out, waiting to see what orders might come. Jimmy Tambora was behind me, and he said, ‘why don’t we get in that house ahead?’ I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know, we’re not being touched by any of this firepower,’ but against my better judgment, I went ahead and crawled up to the doorway of this house. I yelled out for Sawby; I said, ‘Sawby, are you in there?’ He said, ‘Yeah, we’re all in here. Come on in.’”
A massive explosion knocks out Prescott
“I got up in a crouch and got one foot into the doorway, and it blew up,” said Prescott. “Don’t know how many booby traps or bombs they were able to detonate at that moment, but it was a terrific explosion. I was not cognizant. I must have been knocked out for a while.”
“I’m sitting there in the doorway, with all this firepower still blasting, and I felt my cheek, my face; I had my glove off because my hands were on fire, my feet were on fire, my legs were on fire. Blood was spurting out of my head. I thought, ‘Uh oh, mom is really going to be mad at you guys,’ thinking I was going to die there.”
“Then I heard Sawby up in the road; he crawled over me somehow and got out,” said Prescott. “He was lying in the road yelling for help, and I had to do something, so, I yelled back at him that I was going back and that I’d try to get help. I got back in that ditch without any further wounds and crawled back about 100 yards, I first met a medic who was wondering what was going on. I never saw Ken again. That was our last message.”
After being transported to an aid station, surgeons removed shrapnel from Prescott’s hands and feet and pulled a 25-caliber bullet from his face. He couldn’t walk for ten days after the operation, and from February to May of 1945, Prescott stayed in Europe to recover.
Once back in the States, he and his childhood best friend, Harry Laman, received Purple Hearts for being wounded in combat. Prescott then stayed in the Army until he was discharged in July of 1946.
Naperville WWII veteran, John Prescott thinks back to his deployment, and life after the war
But, for 53 years, Prescott never knew if Ken Sawby made it back alive from that dark night in Lunebach. He never talked about his combat experiences until he opened up to his son, Rob, in 1998. It was the first time the Prescott family had even heard of Sawby. Rob found that he did survive that night in Lunebach and lived until 1976.
“When I think back to those days, the experiences of not just me, but World War II; I was one of 16 million people in uniform,” recalled Prescott. “When I think back to how we were deployed against so much of the world, It’s unbelievable, it gives me a patriotic feeling that I was part of such a fantastic effort. I fly that flag with much pride.”
When he got out of the service, Prescott went to college. Like all wartime veterans, he did his very best to re-adjust to civilian life.
“I grew up in Downers Grove, and when I got back from service, I found the only college I could get into was North Central College, and that’s one of the most fortunate things that’s ever happened to me,” said Prescott. “I met the woman that I married and Naperville became my town, and it’s been that way ever since.”
Despite the scars of his past, he and his wife, Elizabeth “Becca” raised all five children in Naperville. Prescott’s resilience was not just in surviving the war but also in building a life filled with purpose and love.
Have a story idea? We’d like to hear from you.
