Duel Elmore

ASN:38517397

Duel Ethred Elmore registered for the draft on July 31, 1943. Born July 31, 1925, he was from Belleville, Arkansas. This eighteen-year-old was 5-10, 160 pounds with a light complexion, blue eyes, and brown hair. 

Enlisting in the Army on October 9, 1943, PVT Elmore received his initial training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Completing advanced training at Fort Bragg, he was shipped out to the European Theatre of Operations arriving in England in May 1944. He would soon be assigned as a replacement soldier, MOS 531 - antitank gun crewman, to A-Battery, 319th Field Artillery Group, 82nd Airborne Division effective June 2, 1944. The 319th was stationed at Papillon Hall, Market Harborough, England. 

“Company Morning Reports” were produced every morning by the individual Army units to record personnel matters. The following events were reported for PVT Elmore: June 2, 1944, Market Harborough, England, reported to A-Battery, 319th Glider Field Artillery, 82nd Airborne Division, from the HQ 18th Replacement Depot.

Company Morning Report

PVT Elmore fought in the following battles and campaigns: Holland, Northern France, Ardennes, Rhineland, and Central Europe campaigns.

The US Army used the Adjusted Service Rating Score (ASR) at the end of the war to determine when soldiers were eligible for discharge. By August 1945, PVT Elmore was now stationed in Berlin, Germany for occupational duty with other 319th soldiers having an ASR score of less than 85. They were housed in what had formerly been a Nazi SS barracks.

PVT Elmore and the A-Battery soldiers returned to the USA in late December 1945. They entered New York Harbor after nearly three weeks crossing the Atlantic.

PVT Duel Elmore and A-Battery soldiers, June 1945, France - courtesy of Mahlon Sebring.

In a 2004 interview Duel Elmore recalled the fighting during Operation Holland. On October 1st and 2nd, 1944, A-Battery alone fired 2,037 Howitzer rounds at the attacking Germans. The gunners in the battery remember it as a mesmerizing ordeal of continuous loading, firing, and reloading. “We was firing at will,” recalled Duel Elmore. “Just as fast as you'd put one in, you'd side step and then it'd go. We burned up the slides on the gun that night that one time. I mean, they wouldn't even fire the next day. Couldn't move. It melted them off.”  

Elmore remembered one round which cost him some of his hearing. “A gun went off in my ear. I was setting the sights on it and the guy that was pulling the lanyard, he pulled it before he should have. I seen him jerk and I turned my head and missed the gun recoil. It went off in my ear. If I hadn't moved, it would of hit me right in the face. I come home, I couldn't hear a watch ticking. I still can't hear in my right ear.”

Near Goronne, Belgium, December 29, 1944, German artillery was searching for the American gun positions. Duel Elmore remembered this barrage well and later observed, “You could hear the rounds hitting the ground, but they didn't all go off. You could hear them hitting the ground and that's when you hit the fox holes. Well, you're only thinking of one thing, getting down as low as you can.” The freezing weather was also an enemy, Elmore described taking straw from barns and haystacks to use at the bottom of their foxholes and dugouts, typically covered by tarpaulins.

After hostilities ceased the 319th was stationed in Berlin on occupational duty and the men had more time for personal matters. Duel Elmore made a small enterprise and later explained it in some detail. “I got into the tailor business, pressing pants and did some sewing, you know, buttons, all this and that. You'd get fifteen, twenty-five or fifty cents, maybe. Didn't have a machine. Had an iron and an ironing board but that was it. I used parachute thread most of the time to sew the patches on with. You get those parachutes, you know, they got strings with nylon and then on the inside, there's silk thread. You take that outside off and inside you can get the thread out of it and it sews real nice.”

PVT Duel Ethred Elmore was awarded 3 Bronze Battle Stars, Bronze Arrowhead, Good Conduct Medal, the Belgian Fourragere, Presidential Unit Citation Badge, Purple Heart, Victory Ribbon, and the European-African-Middle Eastern Theatre Ribbon. 

Duel Ethred Elmore, 93, died April 22, 2019.

God Bless this hero.