Robert L. Berrier — WWII European Timeline

18 Aug 1944

Entered service, Dallas TX

19 Jan 1945

Arrived European Theater

1 yr 5 mo 15 d

Overseas service

29 Jun 1946

Separated, Fort Sam Houston

I.Map of Key Points

Route reconstructed from his diary, discharge papers, and 10th Armored Division records. Blue = journey to the front • Red = combat with the 10th AD • Green = occupation period (probable 9th Infantry Division assignment).

Journey (Jan–Feb 1945) Combat, 10th AD (Feb–May 1945) Occupation (May 1945–Jun 1946) Line shows approximate order of movement; exact routes are inferred. Numbered pins match the badges in the tables below.

II.NARA Enlistment Record

Retrieved from the National Archives Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File by serial number 38633397. It independently corroborates the DD-214.

NameBERRIER, ROBERT LEE

Serial number38633397 (prefix 38 = Eighth Service Command draftee, TX region)

Enlisted18 Aug 1944, Dallas, Texas

ResidenceMcLennan County, Texas

BornTexas, 1926

Grade / componentPrivate • Selectee, from civil life

TermDuration of the war + six months

Education / status4 years high school • single, no dependents

"W228" matches no Army serial format; most plausibly it is the McLennan County clerk's filing reference for the discharge recorded 3 Jul 1946 (or an insurance-form number) — undetermined.

III.Pre-Deployment (Context)

Date	Location	Event & Notes
18 Aug 1944	Dallas, TX	Entered service. [DD-214] [NARA]
18–28 Aug 1944	Fort Sill, OK	Reception and processing. [DD-214]
28 Aug – 23 Dec 1944	Camp Fannin, TX	Infantry basic training near Tyler. Volunteered for airborne (Ft. Benning), but orders were cancelled when the Battle of the Bulge began; sent to Europe as an infantry replacement instead. [DD-214] [Interview]
23 Dec – 1 Jan 1945	Bruceville-Eddy, TX	Home leave for Christmas. [Diary]
1 Jan 1945	Love Field → Fort Meade, MD	Flew east in a C-47 transport (no seats). [Diary]
6 Jan 1945	Camp Myles Standish, MA	Left Fort Meade 4:30 a.m. for the staging camp. Minor discrepancy DD-214 records "departed U.S. 6 Jan 1945," but the ship did not sail until 8 Jan — likely an administrative date. [Diary] [DD-214]
7–8 Jan 1945	Boston Harbor, MA	Boarded the troopship Île de France; sailed 8 Jan, 4:15 p.m. The liner was then in active Atlantic trooping service under British operation — consistent. [Diary] [IDF]

IV.Voyage & Arrival in Europe

Date	Location	Event & Notes
14 Jan 1945	1Firth of Clyde, Scotland	Arrived (likely Gourock/Greenock — the Île de France's usual UK trooping terminus). Diary's "Scotland Yard" likely misheard/miswritten. [Diary] [IDF]
16 Jan 1945	1Ashore, Scotland	Ferried ashore on the tender King George V (a real Clyde steamer used as a tender — plausible); boarded boxcar trains south. [Diary]
17 Jan 1945	2London (passing through)	Through London at midnight in an unheated boxcar, on his 19th-birthday journey. [Diary] [Interview]
18 Jan 1945	3Southampton, England	Arrived 5:30 a.m. [Diary]
19 Jan 1945	3English Channel	Boarded the old coal-fired "slave ship," recorded as the Antenor — a British troopship that had served off Normandy; sailed 10:30. DD-214 logs ETO arrival 19 Jan 1945. [Diary] [DD-214] [ANT]
~20–21 Jan 1945	4Le Havre, France	Landed ("Lahar" in diary); marched up a steep hill in ~2 ft of snow to a tent camp (~50 tents, ~200 men) — consistent with the "cigarette camp" replacement depots above Le Havre. Exact camp unknown. [Diary] [Interview] [CIG]
Late Jan 1945	Replacement pipeline	Unknown Days between Le Havre and Metz are unaccounted for; he was likely moving through the replacement depot system. —
Early–mid Feb 1945	5Metz, France	Trucked to Metz; joined HQ Co, 20th Armored Infantry Bn, 10th Armored Division as a replacement. Video adds: machine-gun training "in the old town south of Metz" — he became an ammunition bearer in a 5-man .30-cal machine-gun squad, part of a 3-half-track convoy-guard section. Matches history The 10th AD reassembled and rested at Metz in early Feb 1945 after the Bulge, rejoining XX Corps on 10 Feb. He says "Fourth Army" once in the video but self-corrects later to Patton's Army — Third Army is correct. [Interview] [VID] [DD-214] [CMH] [WIKI]

V.Combat with the 10th Armored Division

Date	Location	Event & Notes
~15–19 Feb 1945	6Saar-Moselle Triangle	"First combat about the middle of February." Division's attack opened 20 Feb; some elements engaged earlier — plausible. [Diary] [CMH]
20 Feb 1945	6Saar-Moselle Triangle	Awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge — the exact day the 10th AD's offensive opened. Strong corroboration [DD-214] [CMH]
22–27 Feb 1945	6Saar River (Ockfen/Serrig)	Division reached and crossed the Saar near Saarburg. Video adds his own account: an assault-boat crossing under fire (four men per boat, ~30-ft river, an unlocatable German machine gun) "just about on the border between France and Germany," immediately after his Metz training. Discrepancy (weakened) Diary entry read as "crossed the Sauer River, April 1st, 1945." The 10th AD crossed the Saar in late Feb; on 1 Apr 1945 the division was already east of the Rhine. The video's placement of the contested crossing right after Metz further supports the late-Feb Saar reading — the 1 Apr entry may refer to the Neckar, or be misdated/misread. [HYPERWAR] [CMH] [VID]
1–2 Mar 1945	7Trier, Germany	Division captured Trier. Source conflict CMH chronicle prints 15 Mar; most sources say 1–2 Mar 1945. [USHMM] [CMH]
Mid–late Mar 1945	8Kaiserslautern → Rhine	Drive across the Palatinate. His convoy-guard duty in half-tracks, the point-blank 88s, the strafing near an aqueduct, and the "Screaming Mimi" episode fall somewhere in the Feb–Apr fighting; exact locations unknown. [Interview] [CMH]
28 Mar 1945	9Mannheim, Germany	Crossed the Rhine (not mentioned in transcript). [CMH] [WIKI]
Early–mid Apr 1945	1011Heilbronn / Crailsheim	Fighting in Württemberg: Oehringen, Heilbronn, the Crailsheim salient. [CMH] [WIKI]
~Apr 1945	Field hospital, location unknown	Hospitalized ~2 days for an infected foot wound — a fellow soldier's thrown bayonet stuck in his foot. Rifle turned in; offered and refused a Purple Heart; "by the time I came back the war was just about over." New from video Not enemy-inflicted. Potentially verifiable in the WWII Hospital Admission Card Files (Ancestry/Fold3) under serial 38633397. [VID]
23–25 Apr 1945	1213Danube River / Oberammergau	Crossed the Danube; took Oberammergau. [CMH]
Late Apr – 8 May 1945	1415Bavarian Alps / Austrian border	Drive into the Alpine "Redoubt" — Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Mittenwald, elements toward Innsbruck. War ended with the division on the German-Austrian border, matching his account of guarding that border. Matches history [CMH] [WIKI] [Interview]

VI.Occupation & Probable Unit Transfer

Date	Location	Event & Notes
May–Sep 1945	14Southern Bavaria	Occupation duty near Garmisch / the Austrian border; served as chaplain's assistant (Tech 5, ~4 months). [DD-214] [Interview] [WIKI]
~Sep–Oct 1945	16Austrian border area	His unit was ordered "up to Munich"; a captain ordered him to box the medical supplies and stay behind — he became a de facto medic with no medical training. Probable unit change The 10th AD sailed from Marseille 3 Oct 1945 and was inactivated 13 Oct 1945 — but he stayed in Germany until Jun 1946. As a low-point 1944 inductee he was almost certainly transferred out around this time. [Interview] [WIKI] [CMH]
~Oct 1945 – Jun 1946	17Munich / border areas, Bavaria	Diary places him with 9th Infantry Division Artillery — consistent: the 9th ID remained on occupation duty in southern Germany (Ingolstadt area) until Jan 1947. Video names his station: "we moved on down to Munich," and details the sequence — HQ clerk (typing transfer forms) → chaplain's assistant (~2 months) → medics in a requisitioned restaurant-theater → the Munich headquarters aid station (private quarters, jeep, ambulance; staff sergeant as overseer of ~5 medical stations). Also: medic and clerk-typist NCOIC duties per separation papers; escorted a German civilian's steam truck relocating displaced persons' furniture. Paperwork discrepancy Discharge papers list 20th AIB / 10th AD even though that unit left Europe in Oct 1945 — separation forms often listed the principal wartime unit. [Diary] [DD-214] [Interview] [VID] [9ID]

VII.Return Home

Date	Location	Event & Notes
14 Jun 1946	18Likely Bremerhaven, Germany	Boarded ship home — "went straight from Germany to New York." Port and ship name unrecorded; the interview's "Île de France" answer referred to the outbound 1945 voyage, and Army troopship manifests were destroyed in 1951. Ship unknown Bremerhaven was the US Army's port in occupied Germany, and documented Germany→NY sailings in spring 1946 all left Bremerhaven aboard Victory/"Marine"-class transports on ~8–10-day passages — his 8-day crossing (14→22 Jun) fits exactly. By 1946 men shipped home individually as "returnees," not with their units, so no 9th ID Artillery-labeled sailing would be expected. [DD-214] [Interview] [TROOP] [BHV]
22 Jun 1946	New York, NY	Arrived; returning soldiers' names were read on the radio — his family heard his. [DD-214] [Interview]
Late Jun 1946	Train NY → San Antonio	Jumped off the train briefly at the Eddy rail yard on the way through. [Interview]
29 Jun 1946	Fort Sam Houston, TX	Separated from service; held in inactive reserve to 30 Jun 1949. Rank at discharge: Sergeant on DD-214, Staff Sergeant on other papers — minor inconsistency. [DD-214]

VIII.Narrative History — The Units, With His Stories

Unit movements below are drawn from official and published histories [CMH] [WIKI] [USHMM] [HYPERWAR]. The gold boxes are R.L. Berrier's own recollections and diary notes from the interview, placed where they most plausibly belong. Quotes are close paraphrases of the transcript.

A replacement in the coldest winter. The German Ardennes offensive of December 1944 tore huge gaps in American infantry ranks, and the Army's response was to strip training pipelines and rush riflemen to Europe. Berrier's experience was typical: infantry basic at Camp Fannin cut short two weeks, airborne school orders scrapped, and by 8 January 1945 he was aboard the Île de France — one of the big liners fast enough to cross the Atlantic unescorted — bound for the Clyde. From Scotland it was two days of unheated boxcars to Southampton, an old coal-burner across the Channel, and a snow-covered tent camp on the bluffs above Le Havre, in what was one of Europe's coldest winters of the century.

From the interview — the "slave ship" & the stove The Channel steamer was so old the men called it a slave ship — it seemed to take "as long to cross the English Channel as the Atlantic." Somewhere en route, freezing men jumped off, grabbed a stove they found, and hauled it aboard: "These are people going to war — what can they do to you?" He was careful to add: "I didn't do it. We got cold — we got warm."

From the interview — Dentyne for Doris Before shipping out he'd bought ten packs of Dentyne gum — unbuyable in wartime — wrapped and addressed for Doris back home. With no way to mail it from the troop train, he tossed the package to children playing near the tracks, hoping they'd send it on. The video interview completes the story: the children took it to their mother, who rewrapped the soaked package, mailed it on to Doris, and corresponded with her afterward. The family still has the gum packages.

The Tiger Division he joined. The 10th Armored had been in Europe since September 1944. It fought through the Metz campaign that November, and its Combat Command B earned lasting fame holding Bastogne alongside the 101st Airborne in December. When the Bulge was over, the battered division reassembled around Metz in early February 1945 to rest, refit, and absorb replacements — which is exactly where and when Private Berrier, trucked in from the Le Havre depots, joined Headquarters Company of the 20th Armored Infantry Battalion.

From the interview — joining up He was never issued a division patch and never sewed one on. "All they gave me was a steel helmet — and told me to keep my head down."

The Saar-Moselle Triangle, February 1945. On 20 February the division attacked the fortified triangle between the Saar and Moselle rivers under XX Corps. It broke the German line in a day, overran the triangle within 48 hours, and reached the Saar; assault boats went across near Ockfen under fire on 22 February. Berrier's Combat Infantryman Badge is dated to the offensive's opening day — his baptism of fire came with the division's most celebrated set-piece attack.

From the interview — riding the half-tracks HQ Company's job put him in a three-half-track convoy guard — squads posted front and rear of supply columns bringing rations and gasoline forward, protecting the rolling kitchen everyone depended on. He was an ammunition bearer in a five-man .30-caliber machine-gun squad — two crews per half-track, a .50 on the ring mount over the cab. He remembered German 88s firing at the column point-blank — one round knocked the tracks off the middle half-track — and diving for cover when artillery came in: "Duck for cover — or dig."

From the video — the river crossing His most vivid combat memory is an assault-boat crossing of a ~30-foot river under fire from a German machine gun nobody could locate or knock out — four men to a boat, hunkered down, tearing across. On the far bank he saw a soldier pick up a steel helmet, dump out what was left of its owner, and put it on: "He wanted the helmet that bad." Then the mortars found them, and he wished for a shovel more than his rifle. This is almost certainly the 10th AD's Saar crossing at Ockfen, 22 February 1945.

Trier and the race to the Rhine, March 1945. The division wheeled north and took the ancient city of Trier on 1–2 March, seizing a Moselle bridge intact. Later that month it drove through Kaiserslautern with Third Army's sweep across the Palatinate and crossed the Rhine at Mannheim on 28 March.

From the interview — the house search and the "Screaming Mimi" Clearing a small town, he searched the home of an elderly couple; the man reached to the mantel and produced a pistol hidden inside the family Bible. Their grown daughter, in perfect English, demanded: "What are y'all doing over here? Why don't y'all stay home?" — "Lady, I'd be happy to." Out behind the shed, a German rocket — the howling Nebelwerfer round GIs called a Screaming Mimi — came in louder and louder while he flattened himself against a concrete walk, until it passed overhead and burst far beyond.

From the interview — strafed at the aqueduct A lone German plane dove on the convoy near a stone aqueduct that looked like a highway overpass. The men bailed out of the vehicles; the pilot's bursts stitched the fields on either side and hit nothing. "If he'd wanted to do harm, he'd have come up the length of the convoy — he was trying to get away before somebody got a .50 on him."

Württemberg and the Danube, April 1945. Across the Rhine the division turned south with Seventh Army: Oehringen, the bloody fight for Heilbronn, and the exposed Crailsheim salient, then across the Rems and Fils rivers to Kirchheim against fading resistance. It crossed the Danube on 23–25 April and took Oberammergau at the edge of the Alps.

From the interview — the bracketed trench Resting in a zig-zag trench the Germans had dug and abandoned, he took his turn on guard, then gave up his spot on a mound of soft dirt to another soldier. Shortly after, German shells began bracketing the position — one over, one short, the third right on target. In the video he confirms what the first interview left unsaid: the soldier who took his sleeping spot was killed.

From the video — the bayonet and the refused Purple Heart His only wound wasn't from the enemy: a soldier showing off threw his bayonet into the ground — through Berrier's foot. The men kept it quiet until it got infected, sending him to a hospital for a couple of days around April 1945; his battered rifle was turned in for good. They tried to put him in for a Purple Heart. "I ain't telling nobody about this" — he refused it. "I couldn't lie to them about it."

The Alps and the war's end, May 1945. The final drive went into the mythical "Alpine Redoubt": Garmisch-Partenkirchen surrendered to the Tigers, elements pushed to Mittenwald on the Austrian frontier by 9 May, and division spearheads reached Innsbruck as the war ended. Berrier's memory of standing guard on the German-Austrian border matches the division's exact final positions.

Occupation, and a new outfit. The 10th Armored occupied southern Bavaria through the summer of 1945 while the point system sent long-service men home; Berrier spent about four months as a chaplain's assistant. When the division sailed from Marseille on 3 October 1945, low-point men like him stayed behind — his diary places him next with the 9th Infantry Division Artillery, which garrisoned Bavaria until 1947. The video pins down where this chapter played out: after stints as headquarters typist and chaplain's assistant, he "moved on down to Munich" and ran the headquarters aid station there.

From the interview — "You are now." As his outfit prepared to move up to Munich, a captain told him to box up the aid station's medicine. "But Captain, I'm not a medic — I'm just filling in here." — "You are now." He was left running medical supplies for scattered detachments with no medical training whatsoever, making rounds in his own jeep, billeted in a big private bedroom with its own bath.

From the interview — how he made sergeant (twice) A colonel brought his German girlfriend to the aid station at night with a bad cut; Berrier patched her up, kept quiet, and checked the wound again the next evening — and the colonel put him in for sergeant. Later a lieutenant had him type up his own promotion to staff sergeant and signed it. "You could have kept typing all the way to general."

From the interview — the steam-truck escort Postwar orders: every German truck moving displaced families' furniture needed an American soldier aboard. His was a charcoal-fired steam truck that had to stop constantly to stoke; driver and escort shared no language. Nights, he'd bunk at whatever Army post they passed — or once, way out in the country, in a stranger's farmhouse bedroom, sleeping with his carbine in the bed: "If I'm going to sleep, nobody knows where I am."

Home, June 1946. After seventeen months overseas he was released for return — most likely by rail to the Bremerhaven staging area and an eight-day crossing on an Army transport — docking in New York on 22 June 1946, where a radio ship-reporter read out the returning soldiers' names and his family heard his. A week later he walked out of Fort Sam Houston a civilian.

From the interview — jumping the train at Eddy The troop train home to San Antonio ran right through Eddy, Texas. He and a buddy jumped off in the rail yard, dashed for the bus station to buy tickets home — then saw their own train coming, sprinted back, and climbed into the same boxcar. "Nobody ever missed us."

IX.Key Discrepancies & Transfer Assessment

Summary of discrepancies

"Sauer River, April 1st 1945" (diary) vs. the 10th AD's Saar crossing in late Feb 1945 — likely a misdated or misidentified river (possibly the Neckar, crossed early April).
Trier capture date — CMH chronicle says 15 Mar; most other sources say 1–2 Mar 1945.
Return voyage, Jun 1946 — ship and port unrecorded (the transcript's Île de France mention was the outbound leg; official troopship manifests were destroyed in 1951). Bremerhaven departure aboard a Victory/Marine-class transport is the best-supported inference.
Unit on discharge papers (20th AIB, 10th AD) vs. diary (9th Inf Div Artillery) — the 10th AD left Europe in Oct 1945 while he stayed until Jun 1946.
"Fourth Army" (resolved) — he says it once in the video, then self-corrects to Patton's Army; Third Army is correct per unit records.

Was he loaned out to another unit?

Yes — the evidence strongly supports a unit change (not merely a loan) around Sep–Oct 1945. The 10th AD's departure from Europe in Oct 1945 is irreconcilable with his documented presence in Germany until 14 Jun 1946, and his own diary names the 9th Infantry Division Artillery, which stayed on occupation duty in Bavaria into 1947. The post-war anecdotes (medic duty, chaplain's assistant, clerk-typist NCOIC, refugee escort) most plausibly belong to that second assignment. During the combat period (Feb–May 1945) his account is fully consistent with HQ Co, 20th AIB, 10th AD — no evidence of an earlier loan-out.

X.Sources

[DD-214] Discharge / separation papers read in the interview.

[Diary] R.L. Berrier's wartime diary read in the interview.

[Interview] Spoken recollections, Greg interview transcript.

[VID] Video interview — edited transcript, RL_Berrier_Video_Transcript_Edited.md (recordings RL1–RL3).

[NARA] NARA AAD, WWII Army Enlistment Records — record for serial 38633397.

[CMH] US Army Center of Military History, 10th AD Combat Chronicle.

[WIKI] Wikipedia, 10th Armored Division (United States).

[USHMM] Holocaust Encyclopedia, The 10th Armored Division.

[HYPERWAR] The Last Offensive, Ch. VII: The Saar-Moselle Triangle.

[IDF] SS Île de France (Wikipedia); ssmaritime history.

[ANT] SS Antenor, 1924 (Wikipedia).

[CIG] Cigarette Camps (Wikipedia); National WWII Museum, Camp Lucky Strike.

[9ID] 9th Infantry Division history; Wikipedia, 9th ID.

[TROOP] ww2troopships.com, 1946 crossings (Jan–Jun) — crowdsourced; official manifests destroyed 1951.

[BHV] US Army in Germany — Bremerhaven Staging Area.

XI.Changelog

Version 1.1 — 3 July 2026

Incorporated the video interview (source tag [VID], edited transcript RL_Berrier_Video_Transcript_Edited.md).
Metz row: machine-gun training south of Metz; role refined to ammunition bearer, 5-man .30-cal MG squad in the convoy-guard section.
Saar crossing row: added his assault-boat crossing account; "Sauer, 1 Apr" diary discrepancy downgraded — late-Feb Saar crossing now better supported.
New timeline row: ~Apr 1945 hospitalization (infected bayonet foot wound; Purple Heart refused; location unknown).
Occupation station identified as Munich; occupation duty sequence detailed (clerk → chaplain's assistant → medics → aid station).
Discrepancy #5 added and resolved: "Fourth Army" self-corrected by RLB to Patton's (Third) Army.
Narrative: new story boxes (river crossing; bayonet/Purple Heart); trench story completed (the soldier who took his place was killed); Dentyne gum story completed (it reached Doris).

Version 1.0 — 3 July 2026

Initial timeline from the Greg interview (DD-214/diary readings), NARA enlistment record for serial 38633397, and unit histories; interactive map; narrative history; voyage-home analysis (likely Bremerhaven); correction that the Île de France was the outbound ship only.