By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com


U.S. Army Capt. Robert M. Davis of Newtown remembers Dec. 16, 1944 as if it were yesterday.
First, Davis, then a lieutenant, was a forward observer in the field artillery. Then, he served as an air guard observer. “That means bringing the tactical air right in front of the tanks,” he explained. “Tactical air would mean bringing the P-47 where they would most benefit the advance of the tanks.

“A lot of people would say I was under Gen. Patton. The way they moved divisions around, he was with the Third Army,” he said. “You might be in the Third Army one month and sometimes elsewhere. I was in Patton’s Army, but I was in other armies, too.

“I was in the middle of ‘The Bulge’ in Belgium and Luxembourg – more Belgium,” Davis said.
“We were in the Saint Vith area in Belgium, about 25 miles north of Bastone,” he said. “I was wounded in France...in front of Metz and once in ‘The Bulge.’”

Davis was outside of the tank the first time. “I was caught right in the middle of a mortar barrage, and a piece of shrapnel dug itself into my back right where the vital organs are. It missed all of them,” he said.

The shrapnel measured three inches long and two inches wide. “They dug that right out of me,” Davis said. “It had a bunch of little fish hooks on it.”

After six weeks of recovering from the serious wound, Davis joined his outfit again just in time for The Battle of the Bulge.

“It was the Germans,” Davis remembered. “It was their last big thrust in the Ardennes Mountains and they attacked with approximately 20 divisions. Many of what would be armored Panzer divisions. It’s a German armored division and they pushed us back, and just put a big bulge in the line.

“They didn’t break through, but they put a bulge in the lines and we had to fall back.
“It was over by the middle of January 1945,” Davis said. “After that with the coming of the spring of 1945, it was just a motor march through Germany.”

“In the spring, we advanced with very little opposition,” Davis said.

He was in Europe for about a year. “We did not cross ‘The Channel’ with the invasion and were in the dash across France,” he said.

Davis was in Germany when peace was declared. “That’s when they dropped the A-bomb over in Japan,” he continued. “I can just say we were greatly relieved.

“Whether that was morally correct or not, I can’t say. I can say it saved a lot of lives on both sides,” Davis said.

Looking back, he has memories of good and bad times.

“After you’ve been in a conflict, when it’s all over, it’s a great feeling when you talk about what different people did at the time.”

One story that he shared was about sleeping in a tank. There were five men. “Somehow or another, I stuck my foot out and it hit the fire extinguisher,” Davis explained. “It made a sound like someone had shot a bazooka at us.

“All of us jumped out of the tank,” he continued.

“When we talked about that, we got a big bang out of it!”

While in France, Davis was in “champagne country.” The French were so happy the Americans were there that they gave countless bottles of champagne to them. “I remember one of my friends saying, ‘I got so much, I was cleaning my teeth with champagne!”

Before heading to Europe, Davis saw a lot of the U.S. — northern California was the most beautiful place for him.

“I always said I was going to go back there. I have never gone back,” he said.
“It was in the Gold Rush country,” Davis said. “There were all sorts of rivers there that had many fish. There were pheasants galore and also ducks. That was a great place.”

Though Davis did not return to California, he did return to Europe a couple of times.
“Bob and I have made several trips back,” said Dorothy, his wife. The couple now lives at Pennswood Village, a retirement center near The George School in Newtown. Another time, he traveled to Europe with a good friend.

In France, the people hugged them, Dorothy recalled.

“When we went to the beaches, we had a wonderful time,” he said.

At one point, they were with a group of people in Belgium. “They toasted ‘The Liberation.’ We toasted the people of Belgium. We toasted. They toasted.”

Davis has medals and photographs, which help him to remember his time in the service.
He has two purple hearts, three bronze stars and five battle stars, including The Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.

Davis, a graduate of Princeton University with a degree in geology, would later go into farming.
He had a ranch with Dorothy in Wyoming. Then they had a dairy farm in New Jersey. They bought the Newtown Hardware House on State Street and they lived down the street.
The couple ran the popular store, still a centerpiece in town, for three decades.

Davis went into the Army in 1942. “I would have been 20 then,” he said. “I was discharged in October 1945. I was 25.”

This month, Davis celebrated a milestone: turning 90.