A World War Two veteran who will soon turn 105 years old is sharing his story of service. Bill McIntyre lives at Stevenson Oaks retirement community in Fort Worth.
McIntyre was in Washington D.C. when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
"I was in a movie theater December of '41," he says. "When I walked out of that theater, when I went out there on the street, the boys with newspapers were hollering, 'Extra! We have been bombed.' I realized maybe I would be affected by this."
A year later, McIntyre says he was drafted and sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He was ultimately sent to Africa.
"We boarded the ship at night. When I woke up, I was seasick," he says. "We were on the ocean 15 days. We were dodging submarines, and we were all zigzagging around."
They landed in Oran, Algeria. One weekend, McIntyre says he and some other troops went to see the headquarters of the French Foreign Legion. While in Morocco, he says the group scattered. McIntyre says he took a tour of the Legion's headquarters but then could not find the rest of his group or his way back to Oran.
"I found the train station, but I didn't know any French. I managed to talk to one of the clerks. I told him, best I could, I had to get back to the base at Oran," he says. "He said, 'We don't have any passenger trains. All we have coming through here is freight trains.' I sat outside that terminal. Well, that train didn't stop. I jumped on that train best I could. Then I got to wondering how I'm going to figure out when we get to Oran?"
McIntyre says he recognized lights at the depot from his work on guard duty.
Later in the war, he was sent across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy. McIntyre was told to process information about casualties among pilots.
"Hitler was wanting to get the gasoline there for his tanks, and the Air Force knew it," he says. "But we were losing a lot of pilots."
McIntyre was then sent to Naples. He had initially worked in finance, but he says military leadership was seeking more combat soldiers.
"You might say we were confiscated. We had to go," he says.
McIntyre says they dealt with several bombing runs by the Germans.
"They'd come in at night and drop flares, just light up the whole bay," he says. "One night, we got the alert about the Germans on the way, almost ten minutes. They dropped bombs on us. They would shake us. The Italian people were running down the street screaming."
In one case, he says a bomb hit a dormitory.
"Every night we got bombed, we would lose somebody, in the motor pool or somewhere else, somebody would get hit," McIntyre says. "We had a large concrete wall. On the side of that wall, one of those bombs glanced into that building. It left an imprint of that bomb, but it didn't explode. It just fell to the ground. We are very fortunate it didn't go off."
On June 6, 1944, Allied troops took Rome, the same day troops landed at Normandy.
"We took Rome that day," McIntyre says. "Later on, I got to visit Rome. At that time, it was Pope Pius XII. I got to go into the church, and he blessed us."
McIntyre was awarded the Bronze Star for his service. He says he has twice visited Normandy.
"Those soldiers were real heroes," he says. "They held their ground there. They really won the war for us."
McIntyre says the French built a restaurant over the top of a German communications bunker on the beach. He has signed a picture of Donna Reed posted inside.
"She was almost covered with autographs, but I found her face. I put on her face, 'Staff Sergeant Bill McIntyre' and the date," he says.
McIntyre earned the Bronze Star for his service, but he says he shares his story to keep attention on those who never came home. He says he hopes his story can help people appreciate all we have now.
"You've got to love your country. I think if you do that, you'll be okay. That's what I did. I wanted to do my part. We had thousands of others who did it and lost their lives," he says. "When I was in Naples, every opportunity I had, I went to church on Sunday. Me and several other boys, we made it a point to be there. Maybe the good Lord was blessing us."
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