CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

At 99, Berks County WWII veteran still remembers the way it was

Reading Eagle - 10/10/2020

Oct. 9--On a cold January morning in 1945, Staff Sgt. Edward W. Mull measured each step carefully as he crossed a snow-covered field somewhere in Belgium.

Land mines, among the foot soldiers' most dreaded hazards, lay concealed beneath winter's crisp white blanket.

Despite knowing it had been mined, a young lieutenant ordered Mull's platoon onto the battlefield in a critical operation during the Battle of the Bulge.

"Seven mines went off," recalls Mull. "Twenty-two men were injured and three killed, including the officer who gave the order."

Mull was one of the wounded, and the shrapnel embedded in his left ankle provides a constant reminder of that fateful day during World War II.

Mull, who turned 99 Thursday and whose family will celebrate the birthday Saturday, recalled the incident during a recent phone conversation from his Bern Township home.

Though afflicted with mesothelioma, a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos, Mull remains in good spirits and has vivid memories of wartime experiences that happened more than 75 years ago.

"My father remembers so much about World War II. It's amazing," said Barbara Miller, with whom he resides. "He remembers the names of the guys in his unit, the weapons they used and the ammo they carried."

Until illness and death narrowed their numbers, Mull would regularly attend reunions at an Army buddy's home in Emmaus, Lehigh County.

As the only remaining member of that exclusive club, Mull's memories are the last vestiges of a handful of young men who rose to their country's defense at a critical moment in history.

Answering Uncle Sam

Remembering Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt's dictum that young men who enlisted early could choose their branch of the armed services, Mull thought he was destined to wear an Army Air Corps uniform when he signed up in June 1942.

"When I landed in Camp Forest in Tullahoma, Tenn., I didn't see any airplanes around," Mull recalls with a chuckle. "Instead of the Air Corps, I ended up in the 80th Infantry Division."

A student in the school of hard knocks, Mull took the disappointment pretty much in stride.

He'd spent much of his childhood at Bethany Children's Home near Womelsdorf.

After graduating from Womelsdorf High School, he'd worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era public works program, building earthen dams and fighting fires in Glacier National Park.

Just prior to enlisting, he worked at the beryllium plant in Muhlenberg Township. His job was to bust ore rocks with a sledge hammer and toss them into a vat of acid.

That down-to-earth civilian experience would pay off on the battlefields of Europe, where he would rise from private to sergeant and witness events unimaginable to a 20-something from Berks County.

Death and life

One somewhat eerie incident, in particular, remains permanently etched in his consciousness.

The night before his unit was to go into battle somewhere in France, Mull and others noticed that one soldier had a strangely calm aura about him.

Hyman, a Jewish boy from Washington washed and shaved as if he were about to go on leave. He sat down and wrote four letters home.

What's going on, Mull and others wondered.

"He told us, 'I'm going to die tomorrow,' " Mull recalls. "We all tried to talk him out of it, but he had his mind made up."

At 10 a.m. the next morning, Mull says, Hyman fell victim to a volley from a German machine gun nest. Mull still remembers the bullets whizzing over his head, then turning to see that the young soldier's premonition fulfilled.

"It was so sad," Mull said. "He was such a good soldier."

Incensed by the loss, Mull's unit advanced in search of the German machine gun crew.

The Germans were nowhere to be found when Mull's unit reached the farmhouse the enemy soldiers used as a fortress. Ironically, instead of death, Mull's unit found life in that isolated farmhouse.

"When we arrived," Mull recalls, "the 18-year-old farmer's daughter had just given birth to a baby boy."

Purple Heart, postwar

Following the tragic incident in the minefield, Mull was taken to a field hospital.

There were so many wounded, Mull lay unattended for 17 hours.

"I remember the blood running down my ankle when they took off my boot," recalled Mull, who was awarded a Purple Heart.

By train, he would go to a hospital in Paris. Then, as was Army policy, to England for convalescence.

When he rejoined his unit, none of his former comrades were there. They'd all been killed or wounded.

"I was the only original member left," he recalls. "The new men in the unit were all strangers to me."

After the war ended in Europe on May 7, 1945, Mull's unit was assigned to an installation in Kempton, Germany.

He knew enough Pennsylvania Dutch to communicate with German civilians. He was particularly fond of one family, from whom he gained insight into life in Germany under Adolf Hitler.

"They were not members of the Nazi Party," he said. "They told me that if you were a member of the party you got real food, and if you weren't you got powdered food."

The family lived in fear of the Nazi SS, whose members could commandeer their home at will, he said.

In fall 1945, more than three years after Mull had enlisted, he was ordered stateside.

Thing was, there was a maritime strike and Mull spent a month in France awaiting a ship home.

The voyage across the Atlantic Ocean aboard a Liberty ship turned out to be as scary, maybe more, than combat.

"We hit a hell of a storm," Mull recalls. "We were up in the air, then down below the waves. We were all scared."

She waited for him

On Feb. 2, 1946, Mull and Ruth Weand joined hands in wedlock at her parents home in Reading.

They were engaged before he left for the service. They decided to wait to tie the knot because, as Mull puts it, "you never know what can happen in war."

"She waited nearly four years for me," Mull recalls, emotion in his voice.

They went housekeeping in the 1000 block of North 12th Street in Reading, where they lived for more than 50 years.

Mull worked a route for Bond bakery before getting a job as an electrician with the Reading Railroad. He worked in the Reading shops and other railroad operations for 20 years.

The Mulls would have two children, Barbara and the late William Mull. Ruth passed in 2009.

In the years after the war, Mull tried to write a memoir. Amid the demands of work and the responsibilities of raising a family he never finished it.

About 10 years ago, Mull told his story to a journalist who videotaped the interview and sent a copy to the Library of Congress.

Breakfast with Poppy

Regularly on Fridays, a grandfather-and-grandson reunion takes place at Crossroads Family Restaurant in Muhlenberg Township.

Coming off the night shift at a local hospital, Gregory Mull of Laureldale takes his grandfather to breakfast.

Ed orders his standard short stack of blueberry pancakes and decaf coffee. Greg's standing order is a cheesesteak omelette with sauce and white toast.

The chatter ranges from old war stories to Ed's favorite TV program, The History Channel's "Ancient Aliens." Oh, and the latest plight of his favorite team, the Philadelphia Phillies.

"My grandfather's never at a loss for words," Greg confides.

For Greg, 46, the weekly get-together is about more than war stories and baseball talk. His father William, Ed's son, died young and unexpectedly.

"I had no time to say goodbye to him," Gregory Mull says. "With Poppy, I have this time to talk, and ask any questions I want."

Decked out in a baseball hat emblazoned with "Purple Heart, WW II," Ed is accorded celebrity status at the restaurant.

"People come up to him and say thank you for your service," Greg said. "Recently, a total stranger came to our table and picked up our check."

___

(c)2020 the Reading Eagle (Reading, Pa.)

Visit the Reading Eagle (Reading, Pa.) at readingeagle.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.