1942 to 1945 · 16th Infantry · Big Red One
John H. Lauten
A Glendale lawyer who went to war in 1942, landed in North Africa, Sicily and on Omaha Beach, and wrote home to his wife, Ginny, and their little daughter, Linda, the whole way. These are his letters, word for word, with the scans you can zoom into and the history he wasn't allowed to write about.
Shared by his granddaughter.
Who He Was
Pittsburgh, 1913 · Camarillo, 2010John Lauten was born in Pittsburgh on August 17, 1913, and grew up in Glendale, California, after his family moved there in 1927. He studied political science at UCLA, where ROTC made him a second lieutenant, and earned his law degree at Boalt Hall in 1938. That same week he married Virginia “Ginny,” whom he had met in Berkeley.
In 1942 he was a deputy city attorney in Glendale with a daughter not yet two. He reported for duty that February and joined the 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, the “Big Red One,” as a platoon leader.
- Nov. 1942 · AlgeriaLanded near Oran in the invasion of North Africa. Bronze Star.
- 1943 · TunisiaKasserine Pass, Gafsa and El Guettar. Became the regiment's intelligence officer (S-2) that spring.
- July 1943 · SicilyAssault landing at Gela, then the march inland toward Mount Etna.
- June 6, 1944 · NormandyLanded on Omaha Beach with the regiment that led the first wave. Silver Star.
- 1944 to 1945 · GermanyThe Hürtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge and the drive into Germany. The war ended with the division in Czechoslovakia.
- 1945 · HomeDischarged as a lieutenant colonel. Also awarded the Czech Military Cross and the French Croix de Guerre.
D-Day
As intelligence officer of the 16th Infantry, the regiment chosen to lead the 1st Division onto Omaha Beach, he was one of the few officers cleared to study the invasion maps and photographs, and he helped prepare the regiment for the assault. He landed with it on D-Day and earned the Silver Star for rallying troops on the exposed beach under fire.
His job, he said later, “was not to shoot Germans but to determine what the military situation was.”
“If you were to draw it on a map, the ‘Big Red One’ was always the finger of any forward thrust.”
After the war he went back to law: assistant city attorney of Glendale, city attorney of Fresno, then general counsel of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. In 1974 he became its general manager, the first non-engineer to hold the job, and led it through the drought of 1976 and 1977. He died in March 2010.
The Letters
More chapters coming- 1942 · 36 lettersEngland and North Africa, 1942The last letter before the convoys sailed, the landing at Oran, and a first Christmas overseas.
- 1943TunisiaComing soon
- Chapter 7 · 5 lettersSicily, July 1943: Crazy Things Happen in WarThe invasion, a tank battle near Gela and a truce at an Italian villa.
- 1944England and D-DayComing soon