War hero and prisoner of war

Born: August 9, 1923.

Died: May 11, 2015.

JOHN Francis Gatens, who has died aged 91, was a Port Glasgow boy who at only 21 years old fought in the bloody 1944 Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes forest on the Belgian-German border. His parents having emigrated from Clydeside, he was a corporal in the US Field Artillery when the Nazis tried to punch back through allied lines on December 16, 1944. As a howitzer gunner, he was involved in close-range combat in what became the Americans' deadliest single battle of the war.

Gatens himself was captured and spent the last four months of the war in inhumane POW camps in Germany, but not before he and 100 comrades had put up a heroic five-day "Alamo Defence" which slowed down the Germans and saved countless allied soldiers' lives.

Hundreds of allied POWs died in the camps during the last months of the war, but Gatens, still only 21, was alive when a unit of Welsh Guards liberated his camp in April 1945. One of his comrades in the same division, the 106th (Golden Lions) Division of the 589th Field Artillery Battalion, was the author Kurt Vonnegut, who immortalised their POW horror stories, satirically, in his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse Five.

John Francis Gatens was born in Port Glasgow on August 9, 1923, to John and Mary Gatens. On 27 January 1923, while baby John Francis was on the way, his 31-year-old father, who had been working in a chemist's, set off from Yorkhill Quay, Glasgow, on the SS Columbia to start a new life in the United States. When John Francis was three, his mother took him and his elder siblings Catherine, James and Thomas from their home on Mary Street, Port Glasgow to join their father in New Jersey. A further son, Bernard, was born in the US.

Young John graduated from Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, where he became an outstanding baseball player. His baseball dream ended when the US entered the Second World War and, by then a U.S. citizen, he was called up to the army aged 19 with the service number 32770667. After training in the U.S., he joined "A" Battery of the "Golden Lions" in March 1943. He and his division landed near Rouen, France on 5 December 1944, and pushed inland through Belgium. As a field artilleryman, he was known as a "red leg" from the red stripe on his uniform trousers.

At dawn on December 16, 1944, young Gatens got his baptism of fire when the Germans bombarded his position with intense 88mm, 105mm and heavy 155mm artillery shells, the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. Some of Gatens' comrades were captured by a German patrol but one officer, Lieutenant Eric Wood escaped into the woods where he waged a one-man "Rambo-style" war against the advancing Germans before he was finally shot dead in a gun battle. He became a hero in the U.S. and a monument marks the spot where he died.

With the Germans surrounding them, Gatens' and his A Battery were ordered to defend a key crossroads at Baraque de Fraiture. With only 100 men and three howitzers, and led passionately by their commander Major Arthur Parker, they held out for five days against thousands of Germans backed by the 2nd SS Panzer Division. The crossroads at Baraque de Fraiture is now known as Parker's Crossroads and marked by a monument, featuring a vintage howitzer the locals call Gatens' Gun.

On 23 December, Gatens and some of his men were surrounded by a large force of Germans who pointed a tank gun at them from a few feet away. His war was over but the next four months were also horrific. He was taken first to the Limburg POW camp Stalag X11A (12A) and later to Stalag XB (10B) near Bremervorde, where he survived until liberated.

Back from the war, still only 22, Gatens worked in the shipyards of New Jersey, using his GI (army) benefits to study draughtsmanship at night school. He became a draughtsman with the Singer Kearfott company in Little Falls, New Jersey, where he spent his career until retiring at 65. In retirement, he returned several times to the scenes of his wartime battles, taking his two daughters and their families who said the Belgians "treated him like a King."

At home in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where he lived for 64 years, he became an avid golfer and ten-pin bowling, winning awards in both sports.

Known to his friends as Honest John, he tried many times to get in touch with his extended family in Port Glasgow. But it was only in 2005, when he was 81, that he found them. On his way to visit his wartime sites in Belgium, he sailed into Ocean Terminal Greenock aboard the swanky cruise ship Golden Princess to be met, thanks to social media contacts, by seven long-lost cousins from the Devenay family of Port Glasgow who threw a party for him.

John Gatens' wife Annamae (née Vandermast) died in 1986. His siblings also predeceased him. He is survived by his daughters Helen and Annemarie, sons-in-law Tom and Frank, grandchildren Heather, Sean, Scott and Matthew, six great grandchildren and his sister-in-law and companion Mary Vandermast.

PHIL DAVISON