The closer he got, the heavier his feet felt. Each step toward the monument seemed to put another 5 pounds on each leg.

But with heavy heart he made it, the trip across the town square lawn, to stand before the monument to a man he called a friend.

"All the time it was just ripping my heart out," Orangeburg's John Cruise said. "Why did this have to happen? He'd been there since we'd landed in 19 and 44. France, went through all of that."

The road to a small town in western Tennessee began for Cruise more than 60 years ago in the fields of France and little hamlets in war-time Germany.

A recipient of the Purple Heart, Cruise served under Patton and was decorated three times for his service in World War II.

Reluctant to talk about his experiences, Cruise, who turned 85 two weeks ago, tells his story publicly now for the first time.

Born and reared in the rural community of Willis, Va., the native of the Old Dominion graduated from Virginia Tech in 1943. Having been a member of the ROTC program, Cruise was minted a Second Lieutenant when he joined the army, eventually being attached to the 50th Armored Infantry, 6th Armored Division.

"Everybody wanted to get into the fight, get into the fight," he said.

The newly commissioned officer was first sent to Camp Croft, a base near Spartanburg, where thousands trained for combat, including Lt. Richard Winters and Easy Company of "Band of Brothers" fame.

From there, they were sent to Ft. Meade, Md., where hikes of 25 miles were commonplace as were rifle practice and calisthenics.

Ft. Meade, Cruise said, was considered a "repo depot," a revolving door for green replacement troops. Cruise recalls men renting storage space for personal items before being shipped over.

"And there's a piece of paper attached to it that says who it was to go to," he said. "And, you know? Most of the guys that did that didn't come back. Strange thing."

As the voyage into harm's way drew nearer, the apprehension began to set in with the troops. Cruise said it was his job to allay those fears, although he says he was no older or more trained than the troops themselves.

"You've got this big, old, strong 22-year-old second lieutenant, you know, that the guys looked to," he said of himself.

On Dec. 23, 1944, Cruise and his platoon arrived dockside in New Jersey. They would be going to Europe.

"The ship sailed at 5 a.m. on Christmas Day," he said.

From there, the 50th Armored landed in England before crossing to France.

To help lead Cruise's 3rd Platoon was Sgt. Willie Roberts. Tennessee man. Assigned to the unit in January, 1945, Roberts became Cruise's right-hand man. Together, the two would try to lead their 42 men across Germany safely and take them back home again.

But as with the best-laid plans of men, that idea was derailed a few weeks later when the division came upon the Seigfried Line, massive concrete forts with interlocking fields of fire that ran between France and Belgium.

The 3rd Armored Division had just left Bastogne in the Belgian forest of Ardennes and crossed the Our River when they ran into the Siegfried Line, which stood between the combined American and British forces and the heart of Germany.

The Germans were manning the fo.jpgications across the way; Cruise and his men could see them clearly.

"And they (officers) said the Germans didn't know we were there," Cruise said. "I don't know about all that. I do know we weren't making a whole lot of hoopla."

At dawn the next day, the German mortars -- along with the dreaded 88s -- opened fire.

"And all of a sudden -- KA-WHAM," Cruise recalls the 1945 Valentine's Day battle. "It was just like somebody picked me up by the ankle, you know?"

Ordered to report to an aid station, the Virginian discovered he had a shell fragment buried in his back. The wound would keep him out of the war for several weeks.

At the make-shift hospital, Cruise met a soldier who had been wounded in the buttocks. The soldier claimed a deck of cards saved his life.

"A shell came in and carried a chunk of his butt off," he said. "And he felt if he didn't have the cards, it would have taken more of his, of his, you know."

But lighter moments such as this were rare. Back at the front lines, the platoon's race into Germany took them to places like Buchenwald, a concentration camp for Jews.

One day in May, Cruise went on patrol with little thought of combat. Negotiations were going on to end hostilities.

The day after Cruise's patrol, another team on patrol was ambushed by suspected SS troops. There were no American survivors.

Rage swept the Division, Cruise said. Every artillery piece, tank, heavy machine gun, rifle was turned on the village.

"Every gun we had, we gave it a T on T -- Time on Target," he said. "We wiped it off the map. We just annihilated the whole village.

"That was after we'd seen Buchenwald."

But perhaps the day that stands out came March 31, 1945.

"I can hardly talk about it today," Cruise said, his voice getting soft and low. "He saved me so many times."

The platoon was ordered to make an assault on German infantry spotted in a wooded area near the town of Werkel, Germany. Such an attack seemed senseless, to the enlisted men through the non-coms, all the way up to Cruise. The war was nearly over, lives would be lost needlessly.

In addition, the enemy infantry in the woods below were supported by at least one Tiger tank, one of the most feared tanks of the entire war.

Cruise protested vehemently to the captain ordering the assault. Roberts pulled Cruise away when the XO threatened court martial if the attack wasn't carried out.

From top to bottom, the platoon knew the commander was suffering from battle fatigue and wasn't thinking clearly. But orders were orders.

The infantry moved out slightly ahead of two Sherman tanks and two armored half tracks. Before they'd crossed much of the open field before them, in came the "screaming meemies" -- shells from the 88s. Cruise and his infantry flattened themselves in between rows of sugar beets laid out for drying.

They could hear it before they could see the thing. The barrel of a Tiger tank slowly rose over a slope below. The Tiger rumbled into the middle of the field laying down a crushing fire. The two half tracks were ablaze within seconds. A Sherman was knocked out, an ugly smoking hole in its side.

"It was a frontal assault, a frontal assault," Cruise said. "But, man, they had their Tiger tanks. They had two of my half tracks before I could get out there. The (Sherman) tanks, they were turning and leaving us. They didn't want to get hit."

Trying to live up to his promise of getting the men home safely, Cruise led the men out of the withering fire and behind the ridge. For his effort, he was awarded the silver star.

In 1995, Cruise and his wife were on their way through Tennessee when a name came to him, a name he'd tried to forget for 50 years: Roberts.

"It all just came flooding back," he said. "And when I thought about it, I thought about how his sister had tried to get in touch with me after the war. I answered her like, 'Go away; you don't need to know. War is war.'"

But standing in the town square of Lexington, Tenn. before a monument to a dead soldier, Cruise admits he stood there "with a heavy heart, and I don't mind saying, with a few tears."

As he turned to leave, he noticed "a little white-haired lady" walking toward him. She wanted to know what happened to her brother, what happened to Sgt. Willie Roberts 50 years after he was killed at the battle near Werkel, Germany.

"And she says, 'You're John Cruise,'" he said.

"'You've got to be Elizabeth,' I said. She wanted to know how he was killed. Did he suffer? Were you with him? I told her, no, he died instantly when the half track went up. I was 50 yards away."

Cruise, who turned 85 two weeks ago, believes war is cruel, unfair. But in order that humanity might not make the same mistakes again, he recommends the past be remembered by those who came after, released by those who were there.

"I keep trying to tell these veterans you got to talk it out, it's still there," he said. "You've got to tell the story wherever you go -- tell it, tell it, tell it."

T&D Staff Writer Richard Walker can be reached by e-mail at rwalker@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5516. Discuss this and other stories on-line at TheTandD.com.

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