Remembering Ozark County Veterans . . . WWII machine gunner Skip Payton survived 344 days on the front lines


Puxico native Skip Payton was drafted into the Army in 1943 and trained at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis. He served with the Fifth Army’s 88th Infantry Division as it fought its way up the length of Italy.

Editor’s note: This story about World War II veteran Emmit “Skip” Payton is reprinted from the Oct. 12, 2011, edition of the Times. Payton died June 17, 2017, at age 95. His widow, Margie, now 94, still lives in their house on Rainbow Ridge near Haskins Ford. 

 

In 1943, Emmit “Skip” Payton shipped out to North Africa with the Fifth Army’s 88th Infantry Division known as the “Blue Devils.” They would spend 344 days on the front lines before VE Day ended their ordeal on May 8, 1945.

A Puxico native, Skip Payton was one of seven sons in a family of eight children. He was living in St. Louis when he was drafted and summoned to nearby Jefferson Barracks. Before the war ended, five of the Payton sons would serve in the military.

Payton doesn’t remember the exact dates he was drafted or when he left for war. But he knows he was already in Oran, Africa, on Dec. 25, 1943 – his 21st birthday. 

The 88th Infantry trained in the mountains of Africa before shipping out to the Italian front. 

 

A machine gunner on the Gustav Line

In Italy, Payton, a machine gunner, and his fellow soldiers faced the Germans along a front called the Gustav Line. “We dug foxholes, two men to a hole,” he said. “It was like Ozark County – a lot of rocks.”

He was at the front on Easter Sunday 1944, when a chaplain set up loudspeakers and conducted a service in both English and in German. “The guns stopped during the service,” Payton said, “and both sides listened. When the service was over, the shelling started up again.”

He saw his first “big battle” a short time later, on May 11, 1944, near Naples. The American guns started firing at 9 p.m., Payton said, “and we began moving out.”

Battles and movement along the Gustav Line lasted for weeks, with the Allies constantly fighting their way northward, pushing the Germans out.

“The Germans always had the higher ground, up in the mountains, so they could see us. That’s why we mostly attacked at night,” he said. “There was snow, and we were constantly wet. A lot of men got trench foot. We curled up and slept together for warmth. There weren’t many blankets. I think it was six weeks before we had baths or a change of clothes.”

Payton’s assignment temporarily changed during this time from machine gunner to mortar wireman. “I had a roll of wire and two phones,” he said. “I was assigned to a sergeant with the leading attack platoon. One phone stayed with the sergeant, and then I would unroll the wire and carry the second phone to the mortars, maybe 100-150 yards back. They would fire a smoke shell so the sergeant could see where it landed. When they got it right, they fired the mortars as fast as possible.”

The Blue Devils “attacked mountain by mountain, going over one and on to the next one,” he said. The battle to take Mount Grande decimated Payton’s unit. “We only had 60 men left out of 200 when it was over,” he said. “The rest were killed or wounded.”

 

‘75 miles of mountains’

In one of the most ferocious battles, Payton and another solider were sent out to a fence row with a machine gun. “We had American riflemen on the right and left of us for support. It had been raining, and it was cloudy. But there was a full moon, and when the moon appeared through the clouds it was like daylight,” Payton said. “I heard German voices talking and giving orders, and I let go with the machine gun and my carbine and threw grenades. The Germans yelled and screamed and scattered. But then one German soldier crawled up with a flamethrower and lit us up so they could see us, and they threw grenades.”

Shrapnel from a concussion grenade hit Payton in the face. “It knocked out the machine gun and knocked me unconscious for a while. The other gunner was hit too. The riflemen had pulled back, and the Germans had overrun our position,” he said. “The captain called in artillery on their former position, and the American tanks were firing. But the other guy and I were still there. And now the Germans were shelling us too. It was something else. We had to run back through a minefield and through our own artillery. Sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. an ambulance finally took us to the field hospital.”

Payton spent about three weeks in the hospital and then was sent back to his outfit. He lost track of the other machine gunner. 

The Blue Devils fought their way through “75 miles of mountains, digging foxholes forever,” Payton said. “One time a shell fragment went through my steel helmet and stuck in the liner,” he said.

At one point the Germans broke through the lines and captured Payton’s colonel and the battalion’s headquarters staff. “It was dark, and we were dug into foxholes,” Payton said. “We heard the colonel yell, ‘I’m being forced to say this: Everyone lay down your arms and come out.’ We were about a hundred yards in front of him in our foxholes. No one came out.”

Another time Payton was part of the 88th’s attack on a line of German foxholes. “They were four or five feet deep, and the Germans were shooting flares so they could see us, and firing artillery too,” he said. “I ran for a foxhole, and as I jumped in, a German jumped out. Neither of us fired. We were too busy getting where we were going.”

 

Too weary to celebrate

Suffering shell shock, Payton and his sergeant were pulled off the line temporarily and sent to Pisa, Italy. “They put us to patrolling an airfield,” he said. I walked by the Leaning Tower of Pisa every day,” he said. 

He can’t be certain what city he was in when victory in Europe was announced, but probably still in Pisa. “I remember it coming over the loudspeaker, saying the Germans had surrendered,” he said. “Some guys were shooting craps, and one guy grabbed the money and threw it up in the air. That was about all the celebrating I remember. We saw so much, and we were so weary, there wasn’t much cheering.”

He rode a troop ship back to New York, took a train back to Jefferson Barracks and then a bus partway back home to Puxico. “I had to hitchhike partway and rode in a stock truck,” he said. 

He thought he would be sent to the Pacific front, but his furlough was extended, and the war ended before he could be deployed.

He returned to his former employer, Sunnen Products in St. Louis, for a while but suffered what now is recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder. 

“It was rough getting adjusted after I came back,” he said. “I had nightmares about the war. I was going to the doctor, and they were going to give me shock treatments but then didn’t.”

 

A hero at the farmers market

Eventually things got better, especially after he met a beautiful girl at the Casa Loma Ballroom. He and Margie Klorer, a St. Louis native, were married in 1952. 

Skip’s next job was processing war bonds for the U.S. Treasury. Later he joined Schulze and Birch Biscuit Co., where he worked in sales for 27 years.

He and Margie fell in love with Bull Shoals Lake and vacationed here often while they lived in St. Louis. They had a vacation home at Theodosia long before they moved here in the early 1990s.

Skip enjoys his big garden and sells his produce at Gainesville’s Tuesday farmers market on the square. “I do it mostly for the exercise, and I enjoy meeting the people at the farmers market,” he said. “I usually have good vegetables – I don’t sell anything that’s not worth eating.” 

To shoppers at Gainesville’s farmers market, Skip Payton may be a familiar produce vendor. But those who’ve heard his story know he’s also a lot more. He’s a hero.

Ozark County Times

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