Signal Corps InsigniaTechnician Fifth Grade Frank R. LautenbergArmy Service Forces
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Frank R. Lautenberg

Open Wire Repair Section, Company C, 3185th Signal Service Battalion, Army Service Forces

January 23, 1924 to June 3, 2013


1941

1942

June 30:
Registered for the draft

1943

T/5 Frank Lautenberg described his Signal Corps training in his oral history.

1944

Antwerp was liberated on September 4, 1944 with its port facilities intact.

Access was secured by November 26 and Antwerp became a major supply facility for the Allies.

Units of the 3185th was deployed to the Belgium port of Antwerp.

To disrupt the Allied supply the Nazis bombarded Antwerp almost continuously including with with V-weapons and jet bombers.

Over 1200 V-1 and V-2 weapons hit Antwerp between October, 1944 and March, 1945. 

They were militarily ineffective as they rarely hit the military targets of the harbor, port, and supplies.


Instead they mostly hit the civilians of Antwerp.

Senator Lautenberg's oral history of a V weapon attack between December 1 and February 5, 1945 while he was working on a pole

So, we went to work everyday, down on the docks, which was part of the need for both, the Allies, and a target for the Germans.

We were fortunate.

I got knocked off a telephone pole one day.

I was up there splicing wires, typically, or testing wire, and you had to do it; you wore these spikes as you know, strapped on your legs.

The poles, typically, were thirty or thirty-five feet, in the ground about seven or eight feet, so you might be twenty feet in the air, or something like that, a little more.

So, I was up there doing my job, and you carried a testing phone with you.

You got the spikes set; you got a little junk around you.

I heard the V-1, and it was a sound we were accustomed to.

For several years after I came back to civilian life, when airplanes, jet planes were just beginning to fly, and if it was a foggy day, I would get edgy if you heard it through the fog.


Anyway, so you continue, typically, to work through it, except when you see people on the ground starting to scatter.


I'm up there twenty or twenty-five feet.

Your body, figure maybe your feet are down, so it's twenty feet, and you're up there, and now, all of a sudden, I see soldiers running and everybody else. I say, “I better get the hell out of here.”


So, because I got kind of anxious, my telephone wire, the testing phone, got caught in my spike as I was trying to get down, and I couldn't quite manage, and, finally, this thing hit and blew with considerable force.


You could see debris flying, and everything else, and I fell off the pole; fell on my back on the dirt.

At first, people thought I was hurt. It hurt, but it didn't last, and I was lucky because they checked me out to see if I had a serious injury; fortunately, it wasn't. 

But it scared the hell out of me.

1945

Oral History

Rutgers University Oral History Archives

Blog Post

3185th Signal Service Battalion veteran Senator Frank Lautenberg dies by Leonard H. Cizewski
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