James Wynn Sr: 100 Years of Stories
James Wynn Sr is a decorated World War 2 veteran, currently living in Greenville SC approaching his 100th birthday on January 28, 2023. Partnered with Valor Creative, we documented a few of his most memorable stories. Watch the full documentary & interview at the bottom of the page. Below are written excerpts from the interview paired with portraits of James around his Greenville home and a few mementos from WWII.
“I met my wife in 1941. She was beginning high school and I was graduating. We started going what they used to call “going together regular” after about the first two years. And, after about 1942, 1943 we began to look real good to each other.
And of course along with this the world's going full blast and there was coffins arriving back into the area. By that time I believe two of my friends in my senior class had been returned in a coffin from the war. . . and I knew that I was to be drafted in the very near future. So Alice, who I love, we’ve been “going together regular” right there by that time for about 3 years. She wanted to go ahead and get married, and of course I couldn’t refuse her. But, I knew I could be drafted whenever - in the end we decided to go ahead and get married in March of 1943.”
“Everything was settled down and we were just waiting for orders. we had nothing to do but get out and scrounge around and to find out what we could do, I was scrounging around the city center and found what looked like an ordinary building, but it turned out it to be a small church building the Nazi Party had used for local gatherings when they occupied the city.
I assumed that must have been where they awarded all of their metals and so forth to the German soldiers. I found behind the podium, a wrapped up flag real nice and left on a shelf, never used or flown.
I looked around in this area and that's where I also found these boxes of iron crosses they would present to the soldiers and Sailors. This is where i found the Nazi Regimental Headquarter’s Flag.”
“So we start firing at the enemy and of course when we did they hit the ground, there wasn't much for them to hide behind. The next we know, here comes this turreted reconnaissance vehicle, probably Czech, it wasn’t german. It pulled up across the dirt road and It turned its big 30 caliber turret at us and began strafing. Nothing we could do but keep our damn heads down.. We talked about that later on and I told em, boy my butt done pushed the bottom of the foxhole down at least a half inch. . . We had a good laugh about that. Anyhow after the turrets stopped firing, here comes this german sergeant with a machine pistol. That damn machine pistol must have weighed about 150 lbs with a big clip on it about that long. He yelled at us and we come out of there with our hands up… that was the end of our stay in the US Army. From there on we were POW’s.”
“We were being held by German forces - remember we were also fleeing from the Russian army. They were coming in. We had been listening to artillery coming closer and closer, and when they got so close it wasn't safe to hold us, they moved us from our building out to a farm in the black forest area, about 15 miles away. Just a big barn with Canadian, British, and some Italian soldiers with the US soldiers. There were about 3 or 400 of us in this big barn in the woods. We had no food. They would release us during the day to try and work for food because they had nothing to feed us with. That's where we heard the message that the war had ended and the German guard came down and told us “ I will direct you to the Americans . . . That was late evening when it came down on the radio and we were told.
Next morning we went and followed him all day, trying to find food along the side of the road. Hazlewood found this German camera film, completely unused and he decided to keep it in his pocket. The next morning the German guards were gone, but we kept going down the road, headed west. . . We drifted on into a town as a group and we were given a place to sleep inside the front of the post office. We stayed in this small town for at least a week. We were told they would get a train ready for us to send us further west. Finally there were train cars but they were all full of people - we had to hang onto the top and the outside, spent the night on top of the train car, and ended up nearer larger cities further west. We met american soldiers who took us to the square and gave us rations to eat. We met an American sargeant who had a German film camera - and Hazlewood’s film fit the camera.
The photos are proof of history to this day.
Another train took our group west to Reims, France.”
“We had been married four years before our first child was born, that would have been ‘47. She was born in ‘47, and the second child, my son, was born in ‘51. Then my other 3 sons, ‘52, ‘57, and the youngest, born in 1960. We ended up with quite a crowd of a family. In 1952 I started a business so I could work locally in Greenville and not travel so much for work.
I looked to the Lord for whatever he had in mind and he has used the business to maintain our family ties and cohesiveness of a real wonderful family. And that I think is one of the most wonderful things - the business that God provided helped keep the family together.”
“If you could leave a message to your great great great grand children, what would that be?
Just don't try to be too smart or too good, but seek the Lord and let him direct the big things in your life. And get out of the way and let the lord do it in his time and his way. You will be amazed by the blessings you will all see.”
