Bill Keegan: The last medic of Patton's army on serving in western Bohemia
The story of American wartime medic Bill Keegan has a Czech connection. He ended his service in Europe in Rokycany and the Plzeň region, where he spent several weeks that he still fondly remembers today. He is one of the last surviving combat medics of the Second World War, and his memories are a window into how both war and peace shaped the life of an ordinary soldier.
American veteran Bill Keegan celebrated his 102nd birthday this month. He was born on 1 June 1924 in Slatersville, Rhode Island. Half Irish and half Danish — or, as he jokingly puts it, a Viking. Keegan graduated from high school shortly after the outbreak of the war. After a brief period working in a machine shop, he was drafted into the U.S. Army in March 1943. Although he had hoped to join the Navy, the draft board assigned him to the Army infantry instead.
Following basic training, he was attached to the 78th Armored Medical Battalion of the 8th Armored Division, known as the Thundering Herd, where he served as both a medic and an ambulance driver. His unit was new and Keegan was among its founding members as it reorganised into an armoured division. He underwent specialised medical training in Louisiana.
"The first thing the doctors taught us was how to stop bleeding, nothing else matters if you can't stop the bleeding," Keegan recalled during an interview at his Florida home earlier this year.
Dangerous missions behind the front lines
Keegan did not arrive in Europe until January 1945, when he arrived in France. By then, six months had passed since D-Day, but the war was far from over. The 8th Armoured Division fought in Alsace before advancing into Germany, supporting the 94th Infantry Division and operating across Belgium and the Netherlands. The division endured fierce combat and suffered heavy casualties.
"The first thing the doctors taught us was how to stop bleeding, nothing else matters if you can't stop the bleeding."
Keegan's role was unique: as an ambulance driver, he generally operated several kilometres behind the front, however, he was regularly sent forward alongside advancing tank battalions, often working alone among unfamiliar troops. His responsibility was to evacuate wounded soldiers through traffic of armoured vehicles, navigating roads and open fields in complete darkness.
He relied largely on instinct and luck. "One night, while transporting three wounded men on stretchers, I drove into a shell crater. The impact twisted the rear doors of the ambulance so badly they wouldn't open. I had to walk through the darkness until I heard the tracks of an armoured vehicle. I stood in front of a half-track without knowing whether it belonged to the Americans or the Germans and stopped it. The gunner behind the mounted machine gun could have reflexively shot me. Fortunately, they were Americans." The half-track used its winch to pull his ambulance from the crater. Keegan never learned what became of the three wounded men he had been carrying.
In the spring of 1945, the 8th Armored Division pushed deeper into Germany and helped liberate the Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp, a sub camp of Buchenwald where prisoners had been forced into labour for the Nazi war industry.
The division's medical personnel worked to save the lives of the surviving inmates, many of whom were severely malnourished and ill.
"I picked up those who needed to be transported and took them to the hospital. That was my job," Keegan said of the liberation. Around five thousand prisoners had passed through the camp.
These are not memories he enjoys revisiting. He prefers to speak about what came after the war.
A Czech chapter: Service in the Plzeň region
After Germany's surrender, soldiers of the 8th Armored Division were assigned occupation duties in western Bohemia. Units were stationed in places such as Starý Plzenec and Letiny, while Keegan found himself in Rokycany, near the demarcation line separating the American and Soviet zones.
"The war was over. You didn't have any combat duties anymore. You were simply happy because you knew you would soon be going home. After months of winter, mud, and uniforms that were never washed, it felt like a vacation," he recalled.
"I picked up those who needed to be transported and took them to the hospital. That was my job."
Men from Company B were housed in a large school building in Rokycany. Keegan believes it may have stood opposite a detention facility where Czech women accused of collaborating with German soldiers were being held behind barbed wire. "The local people were ashamed of them, and we kept our distance as American soldiers," he said.
He does not remember anyone in his company forming close relationships with local residents. The soldiers existed in a kind of happy limbo; caught between the war they had survived and the civilian lives waiting for them across the Atlantic. They played baseball. They drank beer — entire barrels brought in by truck from Plzeň and enthusiastically consumed in their barracks. "We were all completely drunk," Keegan laughed. "That beer never lasted very long."
According to him, the Czech people wanted to thank the American soldiers for helping liberate their country, and the soldiers rarely had to pay for anything.
Rokycany lay close to the line dividing the American and Soviet forces. "Some of the men from our unit secretly went over to trade with the Russians," Keegan recalled. "The Russians wanted cigarettes and watches, and they paid well for them." While in Germany, Keegan had acquired a wristwatch without realising it was an Omega. "I handed it over to one of the traders and got two hundred dollars in return," he said of a transaction that took place during the summer of 1945.
"They were more or less our allies," he said of the Soviets. "Everyone was cautious, but we needed allies, and they were allies. I never personally met a Russian. I just knew they were nearby."
Happy memories and life after the war
What Keegan remembers most vividly about Rokycany is playing football and baseball and drinking beer. He cannot recall whether he slept on the floor of the school or with local families. He does not remember whether there was a church nearby. He remembers the baseball field. And he remembers being happy.
Although he served under General George S. Patton, he never actually met him. "As a soldier, you don't see very much," he reflected. "You live in your own small world. You don't know exactly what's happening or where you are on the front line. As a soldier, there's only one thing you know: 'Yes, sir.'"
Keegan left the Army with the rank of Private First Class. He was awarded the Bronze Star and received the Combat Medic Badge for his service. When people call him a hero, he simply shakes his head. "I was just doing my job. That's how I see it."
Today, Bill Keegan is one of the last surviving veterans of the 8th Armored Division and one of the final surviving frontline medics of the Second World War. He married in 1948 and worked for many years as a machinist. After living in Connecticut, he eventually settled in Vero Beach, Florida.
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