Stephanie Croston

    Robert Wilcox was not happy to be called to serve in World War II.
     "I thought it was a waste of time," he said. "But it had to be done. I don't believe in war. I think everyone loses."
     Wilcox was drafted at age 22 in November of 1942. At the time, he and his wife Doris had a three-month-old son.
     "It wasn't fun," Doris Wilcox said. "I was a widow for three years."
     Robert Wilcox was placed in the 9th Armored Division and went to basic training with the division in California. He was then assigned to a supply battalion.
     Once basic training was done, Wilcox and his battalion boarded a train from California to New Jersey. It was such a long trip, he said, they got left behind.
     "When we got there [to New Jersey], the convoy of Liberty ships didn't wait," he said. "We went on the Queen Elizabeth."
     The Queen Elizabeth docked in Scotland, and Wilcox was stationed in Tidworth, the storage point for all the D-Day equipment. Wilcox did not go to Europe until 20 days after D-Day, however.
     His battalion helped open the port at Cherbourg, France. Wilcox was responsible for compiling figures. He was impressed with those in charge of Cherbourg.
     "The major in charge got just what he wanted," he said with a smile.
     While in Cherbourg, Wilcox was checking trucks at the dock one day when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower drove by in a staff car.
     "I saluted, and he saluted back," Wilcox said.
     While Gen. George Patton crossed the Brittany Peninsula, Wilcox went along with the Red Bale Express. After that was completed, he returned to the 1st Army in Belgium.
     "We were under enemy air attacks all the time," he said, adding that they used buzz bombs for 175 days.
     He still has a copy of a certificate from the town where he was stationed, commemorating the attacks from 1944 to 1945.
     He was in Belgium when the Battle of the Bulge started, and one of his responsibilities was taking a patrol to watch for paratroopers. He didn't see any, he said.
     After the battle, his unit went into Germany and shuttled supplies to the front and prisoners to the back. One trip took four semi trucks loaded with landing craft to Omaha Beach, he said. The Germans were fortifying an island in the harbor, and the landing craft were floated to the island. The Germans finally surrendered, he said.
     Wilcox was primarily involved in convoys. He was in Adendorf, Germany, when the war ended, living in a castle with a moat, he said. After the end of the war, he was sent back to COM2HQ in Rhiems, where they redeployed troops, sending some home and others to the South Pacific based on a point system.
     "I had 88 points," Wilcox said. "I had five battle stars."
     He was able to help repatriate English prisoners of war who had been prisoners since Dunkirk and helped free a lot of the slave labor in France, he said.
     He returned home in November of 1945.
     On the way home on a Liberty ship, the route went through the Grand Banks and they answered an SOS from another Liberty ship that was breaking up. The situation was so bad, his ship almost went down, too, Wilcox said.
     The road to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he was discharged, went back through Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. He went back to his home town of Kearney, where he had sold shoes before he was drafted. Although the store was supposed to hold his job for him, it was sold while he was gone.
     "It was hard to come back with no job. I didn't know what to do," Wilcox said.
     He moved his family to Grand Island to live with his sister and then was offered a job in Hastings working at Brock's Shoe Store. The family moved again and spent the next 60 years in Hastings. Eventually, he ran the shoe store.
     Doris worked for the Hastings Tribune for 27 years.
     They moved to Heartland Park Assisted Living after Robert had a stroke. Their son Jon works at Laminated Wood Systems in Seward, and their son David is the head of the trust department at Union Bank in Lincoln. Their oldest son, Mike, was in the Navy and lives in Holdrege.
     The couple met at a dance in Pleasanton, Robert Wilcox said. Doris was dancing with a girlfriend when she caught his eye.
     "We danced the rest together," he said.
     They dated for more than a year before getting married when she was 20 and he was 21. They celebrated their 66th anniversary in June.