Lauren S. Brown

He was sixteen years old and fresh out of high school. Lauren S. Brown had decided to finish high school and graduate from Burlington Edison high school in May 1943.  Before he graduated from high school he had applied for the Air Cadets; but they denied him because he had flat feet.  Yet, later, in August of 1943 his flat feet no longer mattered, and was drafted into the army.

January 1944 Brown was sent to the 70^th infantry and the Cadet Core finally accepted him.  Lauren then went to Colorado for two months of training.  Brown was then sent back to infantry and then entered the 42^nd Rainbow infantry division.  There they trained him as an 81 millimeter Mortar Gunner in April 1944.  On Thanksgiving Day 1944 Brown and his infantry sailed from New York to southern France.  They arrived December 9, 1944. There were about 8,000 troops aboard the ship.

Once the men arrived to France it was going to take them about two weeks to get all of the equipment ready to fight.  But only one week later the Germans attacked starting the Battle of the Bulge.  So the Americans sent all of their trained men to the battle lines to fight.  The Rainbow Infantry Division stayed in combat until March 15.  This battle had started on Christmas Eve.  On January 1, 1945 the Germans attacked again trying to take back the Alcsas.  Brown stated, “…and we fought them for 25 days and lost 25% of our men.”  The Germans stopped fighting and they failed their mission.  On March 15, 1945 they started to attack Berveria and fought them until Wurzburg.  “April first was my 20^th birthday and that’s the day that we crossed the Rine River.”  Lauren stated this right before he told me that the morning of April fifth he got into a firefight and was shot.  He also stated “I was wounded and that was the end of the war for me.”  He was shot in the left arm, it recherché through a few ribs and exited his body about 1/4^th of an inch from his spine. 

Because of this battle Lauren S. Brown received a Bronze Medal Star and a Purple Heart.  Once Brown was out of the hospital the war was over.  When Pearl Harbor happened brown was listening to the radio, and it worried him because his brother had to report back to his station and immediately after the bombing there was a black out.  Lauren says, “I was really worried!” he says he was so worried because at the time he was living in Bay View near the water.  He also says, “There was a sense of paranoia with the Japs living next door.”

During the war Brown had a girlfriend back home.  Once he came home all he had was heart break.  She told him that he wasn’t good enough for her and she bet him $5 he would never finish college.  Brown said with a smile, “I never did collect.”

He did finish college and became a veterinarian.  I asked brown his opinion on the dropping of the Atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He immediately answered with no hesitation, “it saved millions of our lives!”  Then I asked him if he had any regrets about anything that happened during the war.  He said, “No regrets what-so-ever!”  Lauren said his most lasting memory of the war was staying alive, and he had no complaints about that. Lauren S. Brown is happily married and still belongs to the 42^nd Rainbow infantry Division.