Jack Moran was born September 3, 1925 in Superior, Wisconsin. He served with the 347th Inf. Reg. K-Company; he enlisted in 1943 and was discharged in 1946. Jack recalls a great childhood with a mix of fishing, hunting and swimming; as was normal for any teenager of the time, he attended school and experienced the Great Depression.  Jack was 16 on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and by the time he was 18 he was enrolled in the U.S. Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, though that program was phased out when manpower needs became apparent. In September 1943 he attended basic training at Ft. Benning, GA and Ft. Jackson, SC.; now assigned to the 87th Inf. Div.,  Jack was sent to Europe on a 6-day transit aboard the Queen Elizabeth. He was stationed in Knutsford, England for a time and later transited the English Channel via Southampton.  Once in France, he participated in the Saar Valley campaign, where Jack remembers that “all hell broke loose.” He recalled the Hill 360 attack as the “saddest day in his life.” From Hill 360 Jack was off to engage the enemy in the Battle of the Bulge, Belgium.  On arrival, Jack dug in a snowbank, and he ate a frozen turkey leg and spent the night in a chateau. At one point he was trapped behind enemy lines and under heavy attack by German forces, a situation he was lucky to escape.  Later they crossed the Rhine River on 8-man wooden boats, where many of the men did not make it. The rest of Jack’s war took place in Germany itself, where a powerful memory included his entry into Buchenwald concentration camp, where he observed the ovens, barracks and severe conditions of the survivors. By May 1945 Jack was in Czechoslovakia, where he finally had good food and slept in a tent.  Jack arrived in NYC on July 11, 1945, and he was able to rejoin his family in Wisconsin in short order – permanently after the Japanese surrender was official..  In January 1946 Jack was discharged, and he had no problems transitioning back to civilian life.  He met and married a young woman, and they began their family and later moved to California.  Jack Moran was interviewed by Crestwood students over zoom in January 2025.