Training for War

Company F was mobilized on the Moores' seventh wedding anniversary as war spread around the globe. On March 2, 1941, the town of Villisca gathered at the Burlington train depot to bid farewell to the 114 men under Moore's command as they left for training at Camp Claiborne, La.

Tucked inside the 36-year-old captain's gear was a Dick Tracy magazine that Nancy had inadvertently set on a stack of clothes as he was packing.

During training and through the war, townsfolk kept up on their servicemen through reports written for the Villisca Review and the Adams County Free Press in Corning by Sgt. Milo Green.

"Captain 'Bob' possessed the magic touch which won and kept the admiration, respect and cooperation of all his men," Green wrote from Camp Claiborne. "He often told me that he'd much rather have a word of praise or a trusting glance from his MEN than a two-page memorandum of commendations from some high-ranking brass hat."

Moore insisted that his men keep in touch with their families. Don Patton recalls being summoned to the headquarters tent at Camp Claiborne. "Patton, how come you haven't written your folks?" the commander inquired. Patton promised to be a more faithful correspondent, and Moore wrote a letter "bailing me out, saying I'd been really busy," Patton recalled.

While Company F trained, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. In May 1942, the troops left for Europe. Company F trained in Northern Ireland at a camp so infested with rats that Green wrote, "I sometimes wondered if the Pied Piper hadn't passed that way."

Michael Croxdale's father also was sent overseas, though not with Company F. Ed Croxdale, a doctor, was sent to the Pacific with the Americal Division.

In July 1942, Company F was inspected in Northern Ireland by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, now the Queen Mother of England. Moore served as the queen's personal escort during her visit, serving tea and saving the cup, saucer and spoon (stamped with "US ARMY" on the handle) for posterity.

Moore and his family back home kept in touch through regular letters. "When I get back," he wrote to Nancy on Aug. 4, 1942, "you and I will go swimming every day - Won't we?"

"Dear Daddy," Nancy wrote back, expressing the universal plea to daddies away from home, "Are you going to send me something? I wish you were home to play with me."

Company F moved to Scotland, and yes, Daddy did send something, Scottish tartan fabric. "Mommy can make you a skirt like the little 'boys' wear over here," he wrote.

Dorothy made Nancy a kilt, held together in the front by a large safety pin. A generation later, Nancy bought a similar skirt for her own daughter.

Moore also sent home the Dick Tracy comic and some new comic books, exhorting his daughter to read: "I want to see you get all A's on your report card - you must study and learn. ... Remember your Daddy loves you with all his heart and thinks of you many times a day."

War in the Desert

Soon after that letter, Company F was on shipboard, heading for a landing in Algeria on Nov. 8, 1942. Moore, a major and executive officer of a battalion, earned a Silver Star for gallantry in the Algerian landing. Though not in command of a unit, he rallied some scattered men and directed a flanking action that destroyed a machine gun nest.

The Iowa troops were met in Africa by German forces led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the famed "Desert Fox." The inexperienced Americans took heavy losses against the seasoned Germans in the mountains of Tunisia.

The commander of the 2nd Battalion was wounded at Sened Station and Moore assumed command. The battalion was assigned to protect a key lookout post on the mountain of Djebel Lessouda. "The Germans gave us everything they had - infantry attacks, tank fire, mortar shells and artillery blasting - for two days," Moore later told an AP war correspondent. "But we lost only three men."

American troops below, though, were captured or forced to retreat, leaving the mountain surrounded by Nazis the evening of Feb. 15, 1943.

Before being captured, one of the commanders sent his superiors a grim assessment of Moore's situation, scrawled on three squares of toilet paper:

"Enemy surrounds 2d Battalion ... Forty tanks known to be around them. Shelled, dive-bombed and tank attack. ... Germans have absolute superiority, ground and air. Unless help from air and army comes immediately ... infantry will lose immeasurably."

At dusk an American P-40 fighter flew over Moore's troops, dropping a typed note from the regimental commander: "Tank destroyers and infantry will occupy positions T*6363 at 2200 hours tonight to cover your withdrawal. You are to withdraw to position to road west of Blid Ghegas where guides will meet you. Bring everything you can."

To fight their way past the German tanks would have been suicide. And the noose of Nazi forces showed no gaps through which 400 Americans might sneak. A captured German officer told Moore he was heavily outnumbered and should surrender. The stubborn Iowan didn't answer.

Moore decided that the best way to save the lives of his men was to march right through Nazi lines. Under cover of darkness, the Americans set out to march past the enemy.

"We walked past a German 88-millimeter gun position so close we could have touched the gun," Moore told the AP correspondent. "The gun crews must have thought we were Germans, because they did nothing."

A couple of times, Germans called out to the Americans but didn't react when they kept marching in silence.

Near the spot where they were to meet the American troops, Moore heard voices from a clump of bushes and walked ahead to meet them. A man speaking German stepped from the bushes, and Moore turned and walked away. The Germans opened fire. Moore's troops scattered in the darkness, following his plan and confusing the Germans.

"Some big shells were bursting over us then, but they were high and outside," Moore told Midwestern Druggist magazine.

They escaped without casualties, though some previously wounded men and a chaplain who had stayed behind with them were captured.

What the Americans couldn't haul down the mountain on their backs or in their arms they left on the mountain, disabling weapons so the Germans couldn't use them.

"The one thing I didn't leave behind," Moore told the AP, "was a bed-sack I bought in England and carried all over Africa. I decided to bring it along if it was the last thing I ever did."

In the homecoming picture, the bed-sack rests at Moore's feet as he hugs Nancy.

Sgt. Green wrote home about a colonel's effort to order Moore's men back into battle immediately: "Then and there Major Moore proved his sterling worth as both an officer and a considerate and humane gentleman. 'These men are tired, sick and nerve-wracked,' he replied, 'furthermore, half of them have no guns or equipment for combat and I'm not relinquishing one of them for any more action until they're properly rested, fed and re-equipped.'

'I said turn those men over to me and that's an order!' barked the colonel. 'I'll do nothing of the kind. I'll stand court martial first. Those men are exhausted and deserve a good rest and I'm going to see that they get it!' was Major Moore's retort. The men got the rest and new equipment and Major Moore, who soon after became a lieutenant colonel, was not court martialed, I'm happy to report."

Moore also endured a tirade from legendary Gen. George S. Patton, whose son-in-law was among the many troops taken prisoner at Faid Pass. Moore despised Gen. Patton, telling a story of how he once insisted that Moore take an objective "even if he had to send back a truckload of dog tags."

Moore returned to battle soon after the escape from Lessouda, and a bomb exploded 15 feet from him on April 9, causing a concussion that made him lose his eyesight for several days.

Green encountered Moore, "a sad and worried man," on his way back to the front: "He spoke several times of his wife Dorothy and of little Nancy and wondered if he would ever see them again."

Moore's time to see the family was fast approaching. The Army was learning costly lessons in the desert battlefields and needed to teach those lessons to new troops training back in the States.

Bob Moore was needed at the home front.

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