MAX L.
NOE
Patriot, Chapter 1919
(ARMY,
WWII, Europe) Article March 2006
Max Noe
was born in Uvalde, Texas in 1916 and he was raised in the Lower Rio Grande
Valley. His family moved from Rio Hondo to Austin in 1934. Max graduated
from Austin High School and went to work for the Post Office. He had five
years experience as a postal employee when he entered Army active duty on
January 29, 1943. After Basic Training at Camp Robinson in Little Rock,
Arkansas, Max was assigned to the 28th Infantry Division and he joined them
in training at Carrabelle, Florida. The 28th Division sailed for England on
October 8, 1943, arrived safely on October 18th, and was stationed at Tenby
in Wales.
Max Noe
was a Sergeant in APO 28 (APO stands for Army Post Office), the postal
section of the division headquarters when the division went ashore at Omaha
Beach about ten days after the D-Day invasion. The division’s first combat
and first battle casualties happened at Avaranches, and from there they
continued to fight across France. They were 20 miles south of Paris when
the city was liberated, and the 28th Division had the good fortune to be
selected to parade through the city. Max
Noe was part of
that parade and witnessed the ecstatic reception given by the emotionally
expressive people of Paris. He later said that if there was any glory in
the war—that was it.
Their next major
battle was in the Huertgen forest, on the Belgium-German border, in late
November and the 28th Infantry Division suffered 4,000 casualties.
Following that, the division was sent to the Ardennes in the belief that it
would be a quiet sector where they could gradually recuperate their
strength. The division was spread over a 25 mile front. In early December
the weather turned bad, planes were grounded, reconnaissance was
impossible. On December 16, 1944, the Germans achieved complete surprise,
launching a massive offensive, the Battle of the Bulge had begun.
The Germans sent nine
divisions pouring through the thinly spread 28th Infantry Division. At the
Headquarters near Wiltz, Luxemberg, the Division Commander, Major General
Norman D. Cota, hurriedly formed a provisional company to mount a defense.
All available men from the band, the MPs, the admin clerks, and the APO; a
total of 118 soldiers including Sgt Noe, all under command of the Captain
who was the director of the division band, were ordered to dig in on the
side of the mountain just outside Wiltz. There was only one machine gun and
Max Noe was the only one among them to have qualified on the weapon. There
was no tripod, so he used an apple box for a gun rest. As General Cota left
the area, he radioed back, “Headquarters is pulling back to Bastogne. Hold
out to the last man!” and after a long pause, “Good bye and good luck.” Max
says that must have been one of history’s most discouraging pep talks.
This rag-tag outfit
held the Germans out of Wiltz for 18 hours. Sgt. Noe’s machine gun bounced
all over the place and if he did hit a tank it was like throwing rocks on a
tin barn. The Germans then overwhelmed the defenders with mortar fire and a
force of paratroopers. All the men but Max and two others were dead,
captured or incapacitated by wounds.
The three survivors
slipped into the forest and managed to evade the German troops. They moved
through the Ardennes in an attempt to work their way back to the Allied
lines. They were without food and their only way to rest in the snow was to
try and sleep leaning against a tree on the hillside. After three days they
had nearly reached U.S. troops. They reached the outskirts of Bastogne, but
were then detected by the Germans as they tried to make a dash through the
lines, and taken prisoner.
The three men were
briefly interrogated and then force marched over 200 miles back to Germany,
crossing the Rhine River at Koblenz. Noe’s best break was that he was
captured just five months before the German surrender. Even so, he lost 60
pounds, and Army doctors later told him he would have been dead in another
month. He remembers Christmas dinner was a cracker and a spoonful of
syrup. At one point, he went five days without food. Another time, Noe and
six other prisoners feasted on a single loaf of bread, drawing lots to see
who would get to eat the slightly larger slices. He dreamed about food, and
says he didn’t laugh the whole time he was a prisoner.
On April 11, 1945,
with heavy bombing all around Braunschweig, Germany, prison camp where he
was being held, Noe’s German guards fled the scene. The next day, the
prisoners saw Allied tanks tear through the camp gate. The POWs that went
streaming out to meet them were the crummiest wretches imaginable.
Max Noe
ran up to one big GI, about 6 foot 2 inches, grabbed him around the neck and
just hugged him for a long time. Noe said, “It was the happiest day of my
life.”
Max then spent two
months in the 250th General Hospital in Nancy, France before he was well
enough to be returned to the United States, where he arrived on July 8,
1945. He was home in Austin on two months convalescent leave on V-J Day,
and Max says, “I went down to Congress Avenue and celebrated the end of the
war with everybody else in town.”
Max Noe
was discharged from the Army in October 1945 and went back to work at the
Post Office. He retired with 41 years of service from the U.S. Postal
Service on December 31, 1976 as the Postmaster of Austin. He has been a
life member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart since signing up
shortly after Chapter 1919 was chartered in Austin.
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