Photo by Ruth Heide Joe C. Trujillo, Alamosa, is a well-decorated veteran of World War II. His medals include The Bronze Star, Army Good Conduct Medal, European African Middle East Campaign Medal, WW II Victory Medal and Army of Occupation Medals.

Trujillo is lucky to be alive



By RUTH HEIDE

ALAMOSA — When U.S. Army Infantryman Private First Class Joe C. Trujillo returned from the battlefields after World War II, medals and honors were not as important to him as being alive.

Narrowly escaping death on more than one occasion, Trujillo was just grateful to be back in the San Luis Valley.

This year, however, more than six decades after his return, Trujillo, 83, received The Bronze Star Medal, one of many he earned in combat. He also earned the Army Good Conduct Medal, European African Middle East Campaign Medal, WW II Victory Medal and Army of Occupation Medal. In addition, he received the Combat Infantryman Badge, Bronze Service Stars and service lapel button for World War II.

The Bronze Star Medal recognizes Trujillo for meritorious achievement and exemplary performance in active ground combat while serving in the 259th Infantry Regiment, 65th Infantry Division in the European Theater of Operations.

The highly decorated WW II veteran was just an 18-year-old Capulin teenager when the Army drafted him in 1943. Before the war was over, the young Valley teen would literally see many of his buddies die beside him as U.S. ground troops traversed the rivers, villages and forests of Germany.

“We fought all the way through Germany,” he recalled.

He would see rivers such as the Rhine and Blue Danube that he had only read about in schoolbooks. His memories of those rivers, however, would include the sight of fellow GI’s wiped out while crossing, or after crossing, them. He thought he would like to take his wife Julia back to Germany on a different kind of trip someday but never had the money, and now does not have the inclination.

Trujillo carried rosaries in his helmet and promised God if he made it home alive he would go to church every morning for a month. God spared his life, and Trujillo kept his promise. He remains a faithful churchgoer, never missing a Sunday.

“I am still alive, so God’s been good to me.”

One of the most traumatic narrow misses for Trujillo occurred in a quiet German village where he and a seasoned soldier had advance patrol duty for the area they would be entering the next morning. The village was extremely quiet. The two men decided it would not be wise to go further. As troops from both sides advanced on the village the next day they discovered the bodies of two soldiers who had conducted the same type of duty from the other side of the village and had gone too far. They had been shot in the head and drug through the streets.

“That could have been us if we had gone further in,” Trujillo said.

The scene would be one of many to give Trujillo nightmares for years. “When I came out, I couldn’t sleep at night,” he said.

On another occasion, Trujillo and a buddy were digging a foxhole, and his buddy left the foxhole to relieve himself, refusing Trujillo’s offer of his helmet as a makeshift latrine. The buddy was immediately killed.

In another shallow foxhole near a castle in central Germany, one of Trujillo’s buddies froze to death beside him. “Living here in the Valley was so cold I survived. That night we lost almost all the company, my company.”

In still another dramatic near-miss, Trujillo was called for patrol duty in the German woods but was bedded down for the night in the hay of a local barn and missed the assignment. None of the six men who went on patrol in the woods that night came back.

“I was pretty lucky,” said Trujillo, adding that he believed it was more than luck. “I prayed to God nothing would happen to me. My prayer helped me, but I did lose quite a few buddies of mine in the foxholes.”

Trujillo recalled the taking of Frankfurt, Germany, where the Germans housed jet planes and atomic research facilities.

Trujillo remembers the morning he woke up in Germany and the war was over. They had lain down for a few hours of rest in a house in a small village on the other side of Linz Austria. The men awoke to the news that Germany had surrendered.

Trujillo remained in Germany with the occupation forces and recalled how the German prisoners he was guarding were so destitute they would pick dandelions to eat. Prisoners would tell Trujillo that they only fought in the war because Hitler made them fight.

One of the German prisoners traded photographs he had taken in the concentration camps for cartons of cigarettes.

“It was pitiful to see them.”

Trujillo brought those photos home with him but believes his mother later destroyed them.

“My mother couldn’t believe that a human being could do that to another human being.”

Trujillo’s mother had four sons in the service, two in the Pacific, one stateside and Joe in Germany.

Joe Trujillo never wanted any of his children to go into the military. “I know what I went through,” he said.

His grandson was in the Marines but served during peacetime.

Trujillo said it hurts him to think of young people going to war today because he questions the purpose of it. “With World War II, we had to fight for that war. The Germans had already taken France, all of Europe. The Germans were trying to take England. If they would have taken England, the next would have been the United States.”

After the war, Trujillo returned to the San Luis Valley and soon moved to Alamosa where he has resided ever since. He and Julia have been married 60 years and have four children, Andy, Joleen, James and Tammy. They also have seven grandchildren and eight great grandchildren.

Trujillo has always been a hard worker. For 25 years he worked for the Alamosa Milk Company and would work a second job landscaping in the afternoons, since his AMC job was from 5 a.m. to 1-2 p.m. He also worked for 8 1/2 years for the hospital and continues to keep busy in his retirement. “I feel if I am sitting here, I am just wasting my life.”

Until recently he served in the firing squad to provide the gun salutes for special military observances.

His health has remained fairly good although he has diabetes, with good days and bad days.

Although never physically wounded, he suffered severe mental wounds during World War II.

“I went and I did my part,” he said. “I was just lucky to come back alive. I went through hell.”