William Scully was born in November 1922 in London [Annotator’s Note: London, England]. His family was living in London at the time. His father took a liner from Southampton [Annotator’s Note: Southampton, England] to New York. Scully went to school in England. They remained there until 1940. He was watching a cricket game when he returned to school and saw a London taxi cab. The schoolmaster wanted to see Scully immediately. His father was waiting for him. His father was an American citizen living in Europe. His father had received a letter saying that they were sending one last Atlantic Liner for him to get on. They were landing at the Port of Galway on the west coast of Ireland. They were recommending that American citizens take this last opportunity to get back to America. His father decided they should get prepared to head to America. They left just as the German bombing started in London. They took a ship across the Irish sea to Dublin [Annotator’s Note: Dublin, Ireland]. The Germans did not fire any torpedoes at them. They took a train across Ireland to get to Galway. The ship was too big for the Galway Port. Scully went to Northwestern University in Chicago [Annotator’s Note: Chicago, Illinois]. Eventually, he was drafted into the Army. He was shipped to Fort McClellan in Alabama for training.

William Scully was shipped to Fort McClellan in Alabama for training. He was taught infantry work such as rifles and machine guns. He spent 12 weeks in infantry training. Halfway through, the Army was experiencing a lack of skilled engineers and many other professions. Scully took a written examination and then went back to infantry training school. At the end of the 12 weeks, many of the men went to the Pacific or across the Atlantic. Scully was sent to a college to take engineering and mathematics courses. He went through this training until 1943. Some Congressmen threw a fit about these boys being sent to colleges instead of the front lines. As a result, Scully was sent to Camp Swift in Texas to the 102nd Infantry Division. He was near Austin [Annotator’s Note: Austin, Texas]. Then they were shipped to Fort Dix in New Jersey, and then overseas via New York. They were on a convoy that crossed the Atlantic and headed to southern England and then France. They were kept there in tents. Eventually, they were sent to the front lines by train. They entered their first round of combat between Belgium and Holland. North of them were British troops all the way to the North Sea. The first round of action they saw was in Germany at Apweiler. Scully got shot in the foot during the attack. He was in the light machine gun section of Company C of the 40th Infantry Regiment. They were facing heavy shooting. They were lying down on the ground with bullets going over them. Scully had a pack on his back and the Germans could see the pack. He got shot in the foot and there was blood all over the place. He waited until it got dark and then he crawled back about 500 yards. They were going through a hay field. Scully left the pack with 400 rounds of machine gun rounds. He found the company’s headquarters. Armored ambulances had been sent forward to pick up the wounded. Scully was sent to a hospital in England. He was hit in October 1944.

William Scully [Annotator’s Note: serving in Company C, 1st Battalion, 406th Infantry Regiment, 102nd Infantry Division deployed to Europe in September 1944, shot in the foot in combat near Apweiler, Germany in October 1944] was in Brussels [Annotator’s Note: Brussels, Belgium] for a while waiting to be sent to England. Many of the wounded were sent by train through Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France]. He remembers they stuffed wounded soldiers inside the planes. The pilot lost his way and they were in the air for a long time. Scully was fortunate to be next to a window. He could see where they were over the north side of the English Channel. The plane was running out of fuel and they had to find a place to land without crashing. They did a fine job landing the plane in a grass field. They were in the southwest part of England. The British radar was able to detect the landing. Police cars pulled up to the plane and asked how they could help. They discovered the plane was carrying 30 to 40 injured GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier]. Within half an hour several ambulances showed up and took them to a civilian hospital. They were there for about 10 days. The patron of the hospital contacted the Red Cross [Annotator's Note: Red Cross, an international non-profit humanitarian organization] and asked what they wanted them to do with all these injured soldiers. They did not know the soldiers were there. It took four days for them to be moved to a military hospital. The wound Scully had received was minor, but he could not walk. His foot was shot to pieces. He thought he was going to be sent back to the United States. They patched him up and sent him back to the front lines with the same outfit he had left. He was shipped back by rail in early March 1945 to the front lines. They were in Germany still. They were on the Rhine River. The war was practically over at this point. The Russians were attacking Berlin [Annotator’s Note: Berlin, Germany] at this time. The Russians would not tell them where their troops were as they were closing in. Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] was smart enough to let the British and American fronts move forward even though the Russians would not give any information. They called a halt at the Elbe River and then the war was over.

William Scully [Annotator’s Note: served with Company C, 1st Battalion, 406th Infantry Regiment, 102nd Infantry Division in Europe] remembers the fighting was heavy in some spots and nonexistent in others once they crossed the Rhine River. They were shipped down south to Munich [Annotator’s Note: Munich, Germany]. Scully was finally sent home in the early part of 1946. He was sent to Le Havre [Annotator’s Note: Le Havre, France]. From there, he was sent back to the United States. He ended up at Fort Dix [Annotator's Note: now Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Trenton, New Jersey] in the same barracks they had stayed in before they were deployed overseas. It took about three days and then he was out of the Army. There was an old castle halfway between the Rhine and the Elbe where the Germans were held up. It took them two days of severe fighting to bleed them out. There were several casualties. The machine-gun section was on a hill and moving to the next hill. They were near the top of the other hill where they could fire the machine gun across the valley at the castle. The castle was firing mortars [Annotator's Note: a short smoothbore gun that fires explosive shells at high angles] at them. Scully’s unit provided the heavy fire across the valley which made it easier for the troops to get closer to the castle. Scully was the first gunner on a light machine gun. He was the one doing the shooting. He was in the weapons platoon. One group was using two browning machine guns that were water-cooled [Annotator’s Note: Browning M1917 .30 caliber water cooled heavy machine gun], and the other group used three 60 mm mortars [Annotator's Note: M2 60mm mortar]. It was better for them to be further back so that they could see where they were directing the fire. They had hardly problems with jamming guns. They ran through ammunition very quickly. The German guns fired faster than theirs. The machine gun belts were heavy. It was a lot of work to get it to the front lines.

William Scully [Annotator’s Note: serving with Company C, 1st Battalion, 406th Infantry Regiment, 102nd Infantry Division in Europe] did not want to see where the Germans had killed fellow troops [Annotator’s Note: he is referring to a question the interviewer asked]. He never knew if he had actually hit anyone. He met a few Russian troops at the end of the war. They knew enough of the English language that they could talk to them. Scully did not find anything special about them. As a young man in England [Annotator’s Note: Scully was born in London in 1922 and lived there until 1940 when his family moved to the United States], Scully was not too worried about the war starting. He thinks his father did the right thing by taking them back to the United States. The Germans were sinking all kinds of things in the Atlantic. The gasoline was strictly rationed in England. This meant that busses and trains were running less. There were at least two trains an hour that went from Brighton [Annotator’s Note: Brighton, England] to London [Annotator’s Note: London, England] before the war. Once the war started they saw fewer trains. The food was heavily rationed. The consumption of alcohol was less. Scully and his family left just before the heavy bombing started. His father was a wealthy man. He had a car and a chauffeur. The problem was that the gasoline was heavily rationed. When they left England, they took the train and the car met them at the station. His mother was an English woman. She would go with his father [Annotator’s Note: who was American] to the United States sometimes. Her grandmother was an old lady. She recognized her sons would be in danger if they stayed in England. She stayed in England. They were in the United States for six months when they got a cable from their grandmother that their mother had been killed in a bicycle accident during a shelling. About six weeks later his father died.

William Scully [Annotator’s Note: born in London, England in 1922; immigrated to the United States with his American father in 1940] was in the United States when his mother died. They could not go to the funeral because the Germans were bombing England. He was studying at Northwestern University [Annotator’s Note: in Chicago, Illinois] at the time. They had one telephone per floor of the house he was living in. The Chicago Police Department was on the phone for him. He thought he was in some sort of trouble, but the officer told him that his father had passed away from a heart attack. His father died about six weeks after his mother had died. Scully was a United States citizen at birth. His father had registered him with the US Embassy.

William Scully’s grandfather came over to the United States in the mid-1800s. He used the income he got to move west and bought more farmland in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. When he died, he had the Scully Estates. It was broken split between the children. Scully’s father had inherited all the land in Kansas and Nebraska. His older brother got all the good land in Missouri. The organization leases land to farmers on a year-by-year basis. Scully’s father bought land in Louisiana and sent the soil to be examined at LSU [Annotator’s Note: Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana]. The war was something Scully had to go through. He is lucky he did not get killed while serving in the infantry [Annotator’s Note: with Company C, 1st Battalion, 406th Infantry Regiment, 102nd Infantry Division in Europe]. He was wounded [Annotator’s Note: in October 1944 near Apweiler, Germany] and taken off the front lines for a few months. He thinks museums are important to teach people about the cost and expense of the war. It is also interesting to show the equipment that was used. War is nasty, but he understands the necessity.