Samouce, Wellington Alexander, COL

TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE, WHAT INFLUENCED HIS/HER DECISION TO JOIN THE ARMY?
I was born in 1903 on a huge estate in Poltava, the grain center of the agriculturally rich Ukraine. I was named Valentine Aleksandrovich Samouce-Skitski. In 1907 my father left the Ukraine in search of a more suitable place to live with a family of a wife and five children. I was then 4 years old, next to the youngest of the children. After living in Montreal, Canada for several years we made our way to Lynchburg, Virginia. I grew up speaking Russian at home and English at school.

I went to Elementary School, High School, and studied for one year at Lynchburg College until I was fortunate in beating out the competition of eight candidates for a vacancy at West Point by a slim margin of 0.13 of one point. Four years later I graduated No. 67 in a class of 670 (266 of the class didn't make it--deficient primarily in Math and English). I particularly wanted to go to the US Military Academy as my older brother, James, was graduating from USMA in 1920. Additionally, my two eldest brothers, Nicholas and George, had both recently returned from Europe where they served with the 29th Division during the Great War.

TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE, PLEASE DESCRIBE THE DIRECTION OR PATH HE/SHE TOOK IN HIS/HER MILITARY SERVICE. WHERE DID THEY GO FOR BASIC TRAINING AND WHAT UNITS, BASES OR SQUADRONS WERE THEY ASSIGNED TO? WHAT WAS HIS/HER REASON FOR LEAVING?
I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Field Artillery in 1924. My first assignment was a 2-year tour of duty at Fort Hoyle, a small sized Army post 20 miles north of Baltimore. It was commanded by a Brigadier General and the home of the distinguished 6th Field Artillery Regiment. At Fort Hoyle we played Polo on Sundays in competition with Cavalry and Artillery teams from Fort Myer and numerous civilian teams in the Baltimore area.

My next duty was with the 11th Field Artillery Regiment in Hawaii. The Hawaiian Division was completely motorized but we still had 14 polo teams on the post. I was captain of the 11th Regimental team consisting of five 2nd LTs. with zero handicaps. After diligently training our ponies for over a year, we entered the annual Post tournament, winning every game up the line until we confronted the mighty Division team captained by Major George S. Patton--a 13 goal team. Believe it or not, we whipped them by 13 goals on the flat (I played forward and scored 10 goals).

In 1934 I was assigned to the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The first of my six years at Fort Sill was uneventful. I finished the Regular Officers Course and was one of three officers in the whole Army selected to take the grueling Advanced Course in Horsemanship--eight hours in the saddle daily for nine months. Graduates of this course were designated as "Super Horsemen." I graduated No. 1 and was given the coveted assignment as Director of Horsemanship and Executive Officer of the Department for the next four years.

IF HE/SHE PARTICIPATED IN ANY MILITARY OPERATIONS, INCLUDING COMBAT, HUMANITARIAN AND PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS, TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE, PLEASE DESCRIBE THOSE YOU FEEL WERE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT TO HIM/HER AND, IF LIFE-CHANGING, IN WHAT WAY.
In January 1945, I received orders for just the assignment I was hoping to get, to command an Artillery Regiment fighting in Italy. During the next two months, we had routine bombardments primarily at German Artillery positions and at the same time stacking up huge piles of ammunition in preparation of chasing the Germans out of the mountains onto the flat Po River Valley where we could really maul them with our Artillery and Tanks. For this preparation firing, I had my own two Howitzer Battalions and borrowed 14 more Battalions from Divisions not participating in the principal attack. For the first 3 days of the attack, all 16 battalions conducted their fire through my Fire Direction Center and we expended over 10,000 rounds of ammunition of all types and calibers. It was more like an earthquake than a bombardment. Trees and bushes around our gun positions died because their roots were severed from the constant vibrations.This was the beginning of the end of the war. The German units withdrew from the Apennines Mountains into the Po Valley and our Artillery and Tanks chased them for 14 days (leaving the Infantry foot soldiers behind) across the Po River to Verona then north toward Munich and West via Brescia, Bergamo, Como, Milano, Novara and ended up near the French Alps ending the war in Italy on May 2nd - 6 days before VE day in Germany. We captured 330,000 prisoners of war including 96 German Generals. General Crittenberger (formerly my Tactical Officer at West Point), our Corps Commander pinned a Bronze Star with Valor on me at his headquarters in Milan and appointed me the Governor-General of the Province of Novara where Mussolini built his modern capital after being chased out of Rome, complete with Treasury and Arsenal.

FROM THEIR ENTIRE MILITARY SERVICE, DESCRIBE ANY PERSONAL MEMORIES, YOU MAY BE AWARE OF, WHICH IMPACTED HIM/HER THE MOST.
In the Fall of 1943 it became obvious to General Marshall that the war in Europe was coming to an end, that more emphasis should be placed on strategy to defeat the Japs. Stalin had promised Roosevelt that the Red Army would help in the war against Japan. Our military representation in Moscow had to be augmented so, the minute attache offices were abolished and the U.S. Military Mission to Moscow was born. Because of my fluency in Russian, I was promptly promoted to Colonel and given the mission of assembling a specially selected group of 16 General Staff officers as a nucleus for the Mission.

In June 1944 when our U.S. Military Mission was at full strength--30 officers and 150 men--we devoted most of our time in conducting four complicated "war games" on maps of Serbia and Mongolia; I played the role of Stalin. These formal presentations were monitored by the Ambassador, Gen. Deane, Gen. Spalding (the lend lease czar) and Admiral Olsen.

In early December, we had a one-week state visit by Sir Winston Churchill and Sir Anthony Eden from England. Knowing Sir Winston Churchill's appetite for cigars I went to the Metropole hotel where the press was billeted and got one stale old White Owl cigar from Edgar Snow, a famous writer, and correspondent at the cost of 30 seconds worth of my bug spray because he was being eaten up by bed bugs at the Metropole. At the appropriate moment, I presented the cigar to Sir Winston Churchill, apologizing for its staleness. He thanked me for it, saying, "Don't apologize, young man, I smoke any GIVEN brand."

It was shortly after this event that I received orders sent from Stalin through Molotov, through Ambassador Harriman and General Deane to "get Col. Samouce and Lieut. Col. Prince de Sakhnovski (one of our Intelligence officers) out of Moscow, and tell them never to return to Russia." This was good news as I felt the futility of knocking my brains out against the Kremlin War, and I was anxious to get some combat service before the war ended. We returned in great style. Our replacements arrived in Air Force 2, the plane used by Wendall Wilkie during his campaigning trips prior to the elections, which he lost. It had two Simmons bedrooms, a gourmet chef, and many special comforts. Our trip took up ten days with stopovers at Tehran, Cairo, Casablanca, the Azores, Iceland, Labrador, Springfield, Mass. and Washington. After being debriefed in Washington and making several speeches about what was really going on in Moscow, I was able to finally rejoin my family in Fayetteville, NC just before Christmas. It was the happiest three weeks vacation I ever had during the War.

HOW EFFECTIVE HAS TOGETHERWESERVED.COM BEEN IN HELPING YOU RECORD YOUR REMEMBERED PERSONS MILITARY SERVICE? DO YOU HAVE ANY ADDITIONAL COMMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS YOU WOULD LIKE TO MAKE?
Togetherweserved.com has enabled Col. Samouce's grandson, Col. Sam Russell, to share with his extended family and lost comrades his recollections of thirty years of service in uniform, long after departing this life. Answers to the previous questions were adapted from recollections that Col. Samouce wrote down in 1989 for a chapter in an unpublished memoir that his wife, Erica, was writing. She passed away later that year, and he followed in 1990. Col. Samouce also authored an unpublished book in 1948 on his experiences in Russia with the Military Mission to Moscow and later with the Army of Occupation in Vienna, Austria. That manuscript is entitled "I Do Understand the Russians."

DS 6/23/17