Diz Kronenberg:I flew 21 missions out of Italy. And after 21 missions, our crew was transferred to the 8th Air Force in England. Flying with the 8th Air Force, I flew 20 missions. So, I ended up with 41 missions. One of the other crew members was a ball turret gunner. I was the tail gunner. And he didn’t like the ball turret, so I volunteered to take it. And I liked it, because in combat, flying in the ball turret, you could see almost everything that happened. I ended up my tour of duty on June 5, the day before D-Day. And flying across the English Channel, we saw the ships. There were literally thousands of ships, every shape, every size. And as far as you could see, there were ships. Unbelievable. And I couldn’t help but think at that time that I was all done with my combat, and the fellas down there were just starting theirs.

Narrator:There had never been an invasion like it. Over 3,000 ships and 12,000 aircraft launching more than two million soldiers to battle their way to Berlin. And if they were lucky enough to survive, they all had stories.

Major funding for Wisconsin World War II Stories was provided by the Ho-Chunk Nation, whose people have always shown great respect to their warriors and are proud to recognize the men and women who served the United States during this period of great danger; the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, honoring the men and women of the World War II generation who brought their trade skills home from the war to build a post-war America; and by an advised fund of the Community Foundation of Southern Wisconsin; and Philip J. and Elizabeth B. Hendrickson; with additional support from the Evjue Foundation, the Boldt Company, Duard and Dorothea Walker and the Hamilton Roddis Foundation.

D-Day

They had a radio beacon, the pathfinder jump that was supposed to set it in the drop zone. Then, when the planes came in, they would come in on those beacons. Everybody was off, you know, but we got ourselves oriented. And then, when the other troops came in, they were spread all over the country. It just did not go as good. They dropped some of them in the swamps. Before the invasion, the photograph showed that this was just a swamp, but the Germans raised the water level, like 16-feet deep, and quite a few of our men drowned n the swamps.

Milo Flaten:My Higgins boat was the first one to go with E Company. And the first platoon and the first squad and the first scout was me. So, I was the first guy to land in Normandy as far as I know. I presume that there were others. I didn’t see anybody else but me when I landed. And I ran down the ramp and went into the water way over my head. I never could touch bottom. So, I immediately dumped everything except my clothing, my pack, my helmet, anything that would weigh you down, and I swam ashore.

By then, there were Army craft coming in, and those guys were getting killed and wounded. They died like flies. So, I went over and got a rifle and a helmet. And we were getting an accumulation of soldiers.

There was a lieutenant from the 1st Division, and he was crying and sobbing and telling how awful it was. And my training was as a squad leader, and I just naturally did the things I took in training. I said, okay, now you guys see if you can find the ammunition, made sure everybody had a rifle. Pretty soon the captain, an old guy, must have been 27 or 28 years old, he said, Flaten, you take your men and go down here. I said, “My men? I’m a private. I don’t have any men. I’m a man.” And he thought because I was directing the people that I was a non- commissioned officer.

Larry Kubale:There was no helicopters at that point. And when the troops went in, they could bail out of a plane, but how would they get the jeeps on the ground, you know, all the stuff that they needed. So, the gliders were the ones that were going to bring them in. In fact, in Normandy, I had a jeep and a trailer full of ammunition and ten men, fully-armed paratroopers, but no parachutes. That scared the hell out of these guys, because most of them never landed in a plane. They got up in the plane, took off, bailed out and that was it. They were scared. The landing was going to be hell to them. They didn’t know what to do. We took off at 9:30 at night on June 6, on double tow. Two gliders, one rope would be 75 feet shorter than the other one, you know. They actually tried triple tow for a while when we were in flying school. But the guys got fooling around trying to braid the rope and catch hell. They wouldn’t let us do that any more.

When you got the red light, then a green, the next red light, well, that was cut loose, then you started making a 270 turn to the left. And theoretically, the spot that you cut loose from is the spot that you’re going to be landing in. It looked like a good field, there, 11:00 at night, five after 11:00, we landed, it’s kind of hard to see where you’re going. But there’s enough anti-aircraft stuff going, you can see some light, you can see something. But the worst thing is when we got down on the ground and we saw what was ahead of us. It was a great big woods, trees about the size of an elephant’s back end. You know, what the hell are we going to do here.

I was flying with a guy by the name of Herbie Carter. We were going 90 miles an hour when we cut loose. We hit the ground still doing 90, and he said, “How fast are we going now? Here comes a tree.” Ninety miles an hour. He said, “Oh, God.” Stuck the nose between two trees, and the ditch ahead of the trees took off the nose wheel. A split second later, the wings got sheared off and the two other wheels busted and went flying off. And the thing just slid into, just nicely hit the ground, and I looked around, “Where’s everybody? How’s everybody doing?” Everybody was, “Good landing, good thing…” “Where’s Herbie?” Herbie’s out the front of the damn glider. He got shot right out the thing, had the controls in his hands, and feet on the rudder cables. He was wrapped around a wooden gate. All he had was a busted leg.

The fellows that were just behind us landed on the other side of the woods, and they never got out of the glider. There was 30 men in that plane, and they were shot. Not a man got out of there alive.

Milo Flaten:We landed with 201 men. There were 14 left when I got back to the company. And the rest were killed and wounded. We had such casualties in Normandy, that we’d send for replacements at least once a week of 50 men, sometimes three times a week. And it was terrifying. I was never so scared in my life. I was terrified to the point where I was never anything but terrified. By then, I was a platoon sergeant. When you’re promoted not because of your valor or bravery, or the leadership qualities, you were promoted because you were the guy that was left.

Larry Kubale:Daylight’s coming up. You figure you got ‘er made in the shade now. We were 15 miles behind the enemy lines, you know. We didn’t know we were in a nest of Germans, but the paratroopers did a fairly good job of clearing them out.

Thomas Lucas:You were on the ground, paratroopers with just the infantry soldiers. This was all hedgerows here. Tanks couldn’t even go through. These hedges rows had been there for 600 years.

Milo Flaten:Literally, thousands of men died because they didn’t tell us about hedge rows. A hedgerow is an earthen berm, trees on them, tall bushes, bramble bushes with spikes on them. And each one of them had a gate on each end. We used to go through the gate. And of course, the Germans on the other side would zero in on the gate.

Everybody would fire like crazy and holler and yell, and then, we’d go like cowboys and Indians. And the Germans would get so scared of us, I guess, that we would get there and they’d be gone. Unless we ran into an SS unit. And those are terrible. The SS units would hear us and they’d come at us. We’d get halfway across a field and there they’d come with their burp guns and rifles with bayonets on them. They were tough.

Larry Kubale:The paratroopers had it fairly well cleaned out. They were working their way back down to meet the landing forces from the sea. And that was the order of things. You try to make contact with the people coming in.

Thomas Lucas:As the troops from the beach moved forward, the division, the Air Force was bombing ahead of them. And of course, we were trying to move toward them, so, we were caught between the Germans and our own forces. It got a little risky. And of course, we were pretty no shaving, no nothing, no baths. Hungry. Even when you’re scared, you get hungry. We’d scrounge around for food. I don’t think there was a live chicken in all of Normandy.

Larry Kubale:Before we went in, they told us that 50 percent of the guys leaving England would never make France. Of the 50 percent that made France, 50 percent of them wouldn’t get back to England again. But the law of averages, you know, I made three landings and I was ready to go on the fourth one, but they wouldn’t let me go.

Milo Flaten:We had replacements coming in. They finally pulled our regiment back and got us new uniforms, gave us showers. Then they had a show, a USO show. And a singer called Dinah Shore was going to stand on the back of the truck. And this is, mind you, 200 yards from the Germans. She stood on the tailgate with a microphone and it started to rain. She said, “I’ll stay here as long as you guys want.” Well, where could we go? We’re in the rain anyway. We were animals. We turned our helmets upside down and sat on our helmets. And the makeup was running on her face. And the guy inside the truck, with kind of a cover was playing the piano. He was dry. But she was singing. She sang for two hours. I admire her for that.

I remember one day, bombing an area like northern Wisconsin, somebody yelled, “Medic,” and everybody’s dug in. So, I get up and I start running, and I’m going by. I could just see everybody was looking to see how good is Rod going to be here on all this.

Elizabeth Baehr:I was born and raised in Janesville. And to think here I am in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium. We were moving all the way along, moving on to the next field. The ambulances were very small. There’d be six nurses in each ambulance. And you had little windows in the back, and we’d all try to peek out to see where we were. We were sitting on these little, narrow benches all the time, riding hours and hours on those, through mud. And then, we’d get there and it was dirty and muddy, and the floors, and the doctors and the enlisted men, we’d all say let’s clean up this place and get going. There’s ambulances waiting out there now with the patients, you know. You just did, you did the work. And you didn’t hesitate at all.

Roderic Campbell:And all of a sudden, they yelled, “Here they come,” and holy smokes, down the thing about three blocks away there was about 12 tiger tanks, looking right down the barrel. Well, then it’s medic time. What do I do? The tanks are coming this way, there’s guys ut there in front that are getting hit.

And so, I run over to take care of one of the fellows. And oh, gee, he was shot. You know, you get shot, you get shot in so many places; it’s a real challenge to stop the bleeding. And so, that’s what I was doing. And I didn’t see or pay any attention to that battle at all. I looked up and I saw about five or six of the German tanks all up in smoke. And they evidently had an anti- tank gun. They had a real tank battle out there and we had won.

You are doing your job and things happen. You might get killed in the process, but you’re certainly not sitting there worrying about, “Oh, my God, I might get shot here.”

Elizabeth Baehr:One occasion, infantry and armored tanks pulled up. And we heard Bing Crosby was going to be there with his entourage. And I was in the operating room, and I was circulating, so I could peek out of the tents every now and then. I was waiting for his command car to come up, and sure enough, it did. And then he said, “Hello, nursie.” Well, I was thrilled to death.

He sang some of his songs. And we could barely hear him, but we had to stay in that operating room, we keep going. All these casualties that came in, and the GIs were really great to us. They were so appreciative of what we did. “You nurses are great,” [they said]. And there was so much satisfaction in caring for these men, because they were giving up their lives.

Roderic Campbell:All of a sudden, just all hell broke loose, and a bang came in, and all I remember is I got hit in the ankle &##151; ow! did that hurt. Then somebody yelled, “Medic,” and I crawled over and there was two other guys that were hit. One was dead and the other one was severely wounded. And I tried to stop the bleeding, but he was hit in so many places.

And more shells came in and I got hit again. And I thought I don’t want to get hit in the face. I was holding my helmet, crawling down in the ditch, it’s wet. And all of a sudden I look up and there’s Lt. Doyle. And he crawled down to get me. And he said get up on my back and I’ll piggyback you in. And so, I did. And somehow or another, it’s all kind of a blur, but when we got into town, they were there in a jeep, took me back to the aid station. And of course, all my buddies are there, and they’re opening me up. I thought I was just scared. And when I woke up, I was in a fairly large ward. And the message to my mother said I was seriously wounded in action. So, I don’t know whether it was serious, there were a lot of people worse than me, but most of them weren’t.

Elizabeth Baehr:And I’ve seen the infantry take off into the woods, which was so disheartening, to see them with their guns take off into the woods and think, how long are you going to be here? Because I’m in a pretty safe place, I’m in an operating room in a hospital, and we have big red crosses on our helmets. So, we were kind of protected, I always felt. There was a little security there. Where the GIs, they went off, and waved.

Roderic Campbell:My heart goes out for a doughboy, I don’t care what side. They’re not big kickies. They’re not rich. They’re not anything. They’re just poor guys trying to protect their country. Everybody believed that freedom doesn’t come free. And they lived like dogs and they died like dogs. Did I have any choice of what I was doing? No. Did I like what I was doing? Yes. Would I do it again? Yes. Do I believe in patriotism? Yes. And do I feel sorry for myself? No. Did we accidentally kill our own guys? Yes. That’s all part of the ball game. That’s life. And do I feel lucky? Wow! I’ll say so.

Elizabeth Baehr:But it was an interesting time that I had, both good and bad. But life isn’t easy. And there are ups and downs and lots of pain that we go through.

Akira Toki:I met six other Oriental boys. We were all kind of segregated, but I didn’t know any Japanese boys at all, so I didn’t know how to act toward them or I didn’t know what reaction they’ll have toward me, ’cause I talked just like a Midwesterner, you know. Then, when we got done with our basic, they sent all the Caucasian boys to other camps, and they left all the Oriental boys doing nothing. I guess the orders out of Washington came out that said, at that time, we were unfit for combat duty. In the meantime, there’s 100th battalion, all Hawaiian boys, Oriental boys. Those 100th battalion boys were trained for combat duty. And they went overseas and proved that they were, could be trusted. So, they gave us our combat training. We were sent overseas from there to replace casualties that came out of the 100th Battalion.

Ruben Hale:During World War II, the military was still segregated. And my outfit was all black, except the officers. All the officers were white. It was nothing new. I was used to it. I knew it wasn’t right, but I was used to it.

Akira Toki:Then we got called up for the lost battalion. They were trapped. They were surrounded by the Germans. They couldn’t go backward, forward or nothing. And we were under-strengthed, but the general told us we were supposed to get those guys out in a week’s time. And we dug ’em out of there in five days. The 100th Battalion was known as the purple heart battalion because that’s how high the casualty was. Like in my company, we had 21 guys left out of the whole 200 guys. And I was in charge of a squad. I came back with one man.

Ruben Hale:Well, you know, when we wasn’t building bridges, we was free to go into the city. They had what they called a no fraternization law. That meant that we didn’t fraternize with the Frauleins. But you know, that law didn’t hold up. We had no problem with Europeans. We had no problem with the French people. The Europeans didn’t show any segregation to us at all. Our problem was with our own white soldiers. We would get into fights with them. You know, some of them would try to hold segregation up, “You can’t fraternize with that woman because she’s white,” and you know, there’s no black women there. I used to tell the people I was Joe Louis’ cousin. I had good muscles and a good build, you know. I could throw a punch. We would fight each other. And then, when it came time to fight the Germans, we’d work together. When it was over with, we’d fight each other.

Akira Toki:The general told us to keep moving, moving forward, forward, forward, forward, because he was one of those generals that was looking for glory. After the lost battalion, he wanted a dress review to thank us for what we did. I think at that time, there was about 800 of us guys left, out of the whole regiment. And I heard that general ask the colonel, “Where in the hell are the rest of the guys? Are they on pass, furlough? What?”

Ruben Hale:Lena Horn came over to entertain the troops, you know. They set it up, they put the white soldiers in the front, they put the German prisoners in the middle and they put us in the back. And I got up and walked out when I was chastised by the captain. He chastised me for walking out because he said my action would start a riot among the soldiers. I said I don’t care what it started, I’m not going to sit here and watch this show sitting in the back of the prisoners.

Akira Toki:What can we do? We can do nothing. We have to just prove that we were good citizens. And that’s why, I think, we lost so many guys. High casualty because we were all gung- ho to prove that we were good citizens and good Americans.

Ruben Hale:I would think about why am I here fighting when I have no rights back home. But I still felt that I had a duty. Whether white people thought it was my country or not, I felt it was my country. And I felt I had a duty to defend it.

John Cumming:We were in charge of the ordnance. And of course, it was ammunition, guns, all kinds of tools and equipment, caterpillars, you know, every kind of instrument of war. The colonel said we better move over to Aachen, because we could serve the troops better there. When we arrived, there were a lot of important dignitaries, movie stars and everything were there, sort of living it up in Aachen, getting acquainted with the war. And I’ll never forget the first day I was there, and all of a sudden, there was a plane, you know, popped over the horizon, came right down over the main street. And I thought, oh my god, what’s that plane doing? And it started firing. It was a German. They really fought back at that point. All the movie stars, everybody left, tore off the commanding generals and their big cars took off. And we were left with the empty city.

Phil Stark:The Bulge started December 16. That’s when the Germans broke through the 106th Division, just wiped them out, took prisoners, went right through them. The front line in the war is just a company, a platoon, a regiment. But it’s only that wide. So, when you break through it, there’s really nothing back there.

John Cumming:We were an ordnance battalion headquarters. So, we had a layout of the lines, the emplacements, the troops. The line went from Aachen, and then in between, was the area of the Bulge. Oh, gosh, it must’ve been 100 miles. I was, you know, just a corporal, or something. But I was the board man, keeping the lines. And one day, a colonel came in and said, “What the hell are you doing here? We’re not down that far,” in France, or wherever it was.

Phil Stark:There were Germans all over. There were pockets behind us. But this was the recognized line. And we attacked in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. We were to go across this flat space, up this hill, take that position and hold it. It wasn’t very scientific or anything, you just got up and ran. And of course, then you’re totally exposed. We saw lots of machine gun tracers coming at us. That’s when you suffer most of your casualties, but nevertheless, you overwhelm them. We were told Americans had held that position before and there would be foxholes there. But when we got there, we found that the holes were there, but they were filled with dead American GIs. They had been overrun, killed in the hole, shot in the hole, and they were lying dead in the holes.

John Cumming:There was a lot of guesswork. We never knew exactly where the line was, because, you know, the troops moved up and down and in and out. We had people that, in a jeep, you know, they’d go out and check and see if a line was there. The Germans had tanks and they could drive through a position, you know, just like that. I maintained a picture of it, so that the commander and other officers could come in and make decisions. But it was terribly important, because people would be killed if you didn’t have the right information.

Phil Stark:On the morning after Christmas, the fateful morning for me, it was dark and I was on watch. And suddenly, I saw, just as the light was coming, right in front of us I saw figures. So, I quickly put the machine gun in full operation and started firing. That opened up the battle. We had infantry that had come across stopped. But here came three German tanks across the field behind them and they were headed right for my position. At some time during this process, our whole company retreated. But I never got the word. I was awarded the Silver Star, but I’m certainly not a hero. I just never got the word. But I knew I had to keep firing, so I kept firing. And I was now running out of ammunition. A bullet came in and hit the side of my machine gun as I was firing it, broke up and sprayed the left-hand side of my face with small pieces of the bullet. At that moment one of the shells, I think from our own artillery, hit between my hole and the tank, which was right in front of me. And there was a lot of smoke went up. I just hoisted myself out of the hole and ran as fast as I could toward the rear. Then I ran into two guys, and they wound some bandage around my head. Then we knew we had to run across this open field. The Germans now had gotten the top of the hill and they were firing at us as we ran. We zigzagged. And part of the fellahs went down. I never knew what happened to them. The only thing you could do was just keep running. And I did. And I got back to an aid station and then to a series of hospitals. And that was the story of my rather difficult last two days in combat.

Bob Balliet:I was shot down on the 19th mission.

Cliff Syverud:The crew was in their 21st mission, and I was on my 23rd.

Jim Magruder:We wound up at this new camp, Stalag Luft IV

Cliff Syverud:Stalag Luft IV.

Bob Balliet:But they called Stalag Luft IV. Stalag “Luft” is “air” and it was number 4. Stalag is prisoner camp.

Cliff Syverud:At night, we could see the flashes of light. We knew that was the Russian Front. They were advancing 15 miles a day. And if the wind was right, we could hear the booms from the artillery. And we knew something was going to be happening. And I talked to one of the guards. He was a nice old gentleman. He said that you’re going to be walking. And I gave him cigarettes. I traded them for a backpack, which is the smartest deal I’ve ever made in my life.Bob Balliet:One night, about 3:00 in the morning, he told us to put our blankets around our neck, we’re going to start walking. That was the march that we went on. The Russians were coming down and they didn’t want us to be captured by the Russians, because we’d go fight against the Germans, then.

Jim Magruder:Then we got a notice we were going to have to evacuate. The camp leader was Francis Troy, who was a leader and a half. He wasn’t afraid of ’em. He stood up to try to get the best for his men. And he said, “I’ve got a lot of men in here in bad shape. They can’t be walking, just can’t. Can you provide some wagons for them to do it?” They said, “They’ll walk. They’ll walk.” On February 6, we were lined up to leave the camp, and it was supposed to be a two-day march. And that two days lasted 86 days, and that is called the Black Death March. The group I was with consisted of about 1,500 all together.

Bob Balliet:Oh, there were thousands. But it was just parts.

Cliff Syverud:I think we had 100 and some men in each group, about eight guards.

Bob Balliet: Cold, it was. The snow was, oh, heck, it was one of the worst winters that Germany had.

Jim Magruder:One of the worst winters Germany had had in years. And we slept out on the ground so many times.

Bob Balliet:Well, if we could, luckily, get in a barn, that would be nice. And then, we’d sneak down and get all the oats we could that they fed the horses with. That’s all we had to eat. And then, we’d march on, get up the next morning and start marching. Where they were leading us, we had no idea. And I know they didn’t know, either, because we would back up on the places that we would be, already there. They were just walking us, walking us, walking us.

Cliff Syverud:Constant walking, and starvation, and 30 below zero. It was just impossible to stay warm. We had guys with frozen feet that couldn’t walk anymore. I remember one morning when we were in a barn. He’s a young guy, was sitting there, and I said, “Hey, get your shoes on, the guards are coming in.” And they’d come in with their bayonets and they’d poke you. And I said, “The guards will get you if you don’t get out of there.” And he said, “I can’t do it.” And he pulled sock down and his feet were, his foot was purple and his toes were black. And he says, “I can’t do it.”

Bob Balliet:We couldn’t go through the big cities because of the people would attack us, which is right. What the heck, they didn’t like us for bombing ’em. We weren’t happy about it. We had a hay wagon on the tail end of the march being pulled by two oxen. Anybody that started to get woozy or dizzy, or whatever you’d want to do, they’d pick him up and throw him on the hay wagon and shoot ’em, and that was it. So, you didn’t want to do that. So, you’d sort of buddy-up. If somebody was in trouble, you’d sort of, arm around you and you’d walk with them.

Jim Magruder:I don’t know what heroes are, you know. And you hear so much about heroes. But I saw some men do some things that, to help others. We had blankets. You’d take the GI blanket, and if they couldn’t walk anymore, we’d put ’em on the blankets and three guys on each side, and we’d carry ’em. And then another six would take their place, trying to save these guys. It was just unbelievable. And they were really barely able to walk. And yet, they were ready to help somebody else. I never saw anybody any more courageous than they were.

Cliff Syverud:We walked for two days into Holland. And the people in Holland tried to get food to us. And for some strange reason, they turned us around and were heading back into Germany. We were walking east and the German soldiers were retreating east, and the English Air Force, the RAF, had complete control of the skies. And walking with them was pretty risky. And shortly after the first of May, two spitfires flew right over our heads and fired rockets in the POWs ahead of us. They made us sit down alongside the road, an hour and a half, two hours. They picked six of us for burial detail. They said 29 POWs had been killed. There were bodies, there were body parts. We pieced them together best way we could. We didn’t have a Bible. Somebody started saying the Lord’s Prayer, and we kept saying the Lord’s Prayer over and over as we pieced them together and put them in a grave. I went to pick up, I think it was about the fourth or fifth guy I went to pick up and it was a guy that had shared a sandwich with me the day before. I didn’t know him at all. I remember nothing about that anymore after that. I just draw a blank for a couple of days. I don’t know what happened.

Bob Balliet:We were in this small little barn and it was right in the middle of this little village.

Jim Magruder:And I heard this noise. And the first thing I did, I looked up in the air to see if there was an airplane overhead. And there was no airplane there.

Bob Balliet:I was right by the door. And I heard this racket and I couldn’t believe what the heck it was.

Jim Magruder:You’re not going to believe this. This is a true story, so help me god. Here comes a limousine down this dirt road into the barnyard where we were at.

Bob Balliet: One of the guards was a good guard. We called him Slim. He was tall and thin. So, I went and I pushed the door, and the door opened. And slim was out there and he handed me his gun. And he says, “Good luck.” And I thought, “My gosh.”

Cliff Syverud:And we looked out through the cracks in the door and we saw the English taking the guns away from them. We knew it was over.

Jim Magruder:And everybody was just completely stunned. I mean, you just stand there with your mouth open. You just don’t know what to think.

Bob Balliet:It was the British tanks that were going through this little town. And they were just going so fast. They had the Germans on the march. And boy, they just made all the noise, you know, I can imagine how fast they were going. They’d throw off candy bars and they’d throw off socks, stockings and stuff like that to us.

Jim Magruder:Some guy started crying and then this guy started bawling, another one started crying and we started hugging each other and shaking hands with each other and it was just a joyous time, just something. What a day.

Bob Balliet:But it wasn’t like, yeah, we didn’t do anything extra. There was a lot of guys that had it a lot worse than we did.

Cliff Syverud:The good memories, they fade away. But those bad ones just stay with you.

Jack DeWitt:I got my commission, and shortly thereafter, I was transferred to a line outfit, Company A with the 19th Armored Infantry. The idea of armor was to avoid getting into a bogged down, in the fight that the infantry could do just as well. The idea is to try to avoid the town, move around it as fast as you can and get to the enemy’s rear if you can, cut ’em off, and then let someone else come through and mop up. I learned to what you call lean on your own artillery, you know, because if you keep the enemy pinned down, they don’t want to be up shooting at you when your artillery is hitting them. And then, as you move in with the tank and start pounding, and then, as the tanks keep them down, you’ve got your own machine guns. And we can close in on the enemy that way, or they get the hell out of there because it’s too hot for them.

Jay Parish:I was a sergeant at that time and a forward observer is supposed to be a 2nd Lieutenant or a 1st Lieutenant. But the first day at Looneyville, we lost our officer. So then I took over. And then we got another officer, and we lost him the first day. I was offered a field commission and I refused it. “Why won’t you take this?”

And I said, “Because I’m still alive and I want to stay that way.”

Arden Gatzke:We got a new 2nd Lieutenant in the company, fresh out of school, no combat experience or anything. So, they put him in my tank and I went back to being a 75mm gunner again. But he was a good one. He said, “Sergeant,” he says, “you run the platoon until I know how.” We got along fine. He was in the tank for a month, then he got his own tank. Every time we’d reconnoiter, he’d always call on me. One time, a town had a creek in front of it, so we went out to find a way to get through. Him and I walked and we stood in the middle of the square looking around. He looked at me and said, “You know, Sergeant, one of these days we’re going to get our ass shot off doing this.” He was wrong. He got killed when his tank ran over a pile of mines. Five of them got killed.

Jack DeWitt:We started retreating, pulling back, okay to pull back. The Germans had tanks up there. We didn’t have any tanks with us. So, they were firing down in the street. Tanks were firing from all directions, so there was a crossfire. The men got across, and there was myself, my platoon sergeant and the two guys carrying this wounded man. The question, “What do we do with the wounded man, Lieutenant?” I said, “Well, it’s four men’s lives against one. He’s been shot through the head. We better leave him, hope the Germans will take care of him. It was a terrible decision, you know, but what are you going to do? You’re supposed to never leave your wounded, but you’re thinking about more than one man there, and you’re thinking about what you need to do. So, it’s something I’ve had to live with. But I’m not going to waste another man’s life on trying to get another who’s probably dying anyhow. So, we left him there. I’ve thought about it a lot. Still do.

Arden Gatzke:We got up to Hammer, and there was a bunch of German Hitler Union in there. These were these 12- and 13-year-old kids. They wouldn’t give up. They knew that they were going to die, but they would still. They would make believe that they were dead, and when you got by them, they’d get up and they’d shoot you in the back. The only way you could get past them was to shoot them. The infantry in us, we decided it was going to be them and not us, so we killed a whole bunch of them. That was the hardest day of the war, shooting those kids. But they just wouldn’t give up.

Jay Parish:I fired a mission, which is on a target, and I think we probably killed between 150 and 200 people, which is not very nice, if you know what I mean. We sat there then, all day long. This happened in the morning. We sat there all day long and watched the German medics go down in this hole. It happened to be battalion headquarters, and they were going down in there and pulling people out one after the other, you know. And we had to sit there and watch this, of course.

Jack DeWitt:We had such great artillery. We could really pound them, we had a lot more material. I don’t care how good their soldiers were, we just keep bringing it on. We had a lot of advantage over them. But we’re just as dead if one of those 14-year-old kids shoots you as if Max Snelling shot you. So, you’re sweating it out every day. If you’re lucky, you make it. If you’re unlucky You don’t even question being smarter or braver or something like that, it’s mainly about luck. But you’ve got to, obviously, play the odds.

Jay Parish:The war for us ended on the 6th of May. We drove the German 19th Army under General von Rundstedt right up to the Swiss border. And that’s where he gave up, 19,000 people gave up, the whole army gave up. And we had piles of rifles like mountains. Had a lot of trouble after that. When we were in combat I was immortal. I never thought of getting killed, you know, that was an impossibility. And now, all of a sudden it dawned on me, what if I get shot after the war’s over. And it was terrible.

Arden Gatzke:We were happy we got through, but then everybody was afraid they were going to get killed before they got home to be able to tell what they’d been through. And quite a few of them did, too.

Jack DeWitt:You’re so delighted just to know that you made it. Still, you know, you never know. No one wants to be the last casualty.

Jay Parish:I think one of the reasons why the German Army lost the war is because they were so regimented that if they lost their officer, they were lost. They didn’t know what to do. Where if our officer got killed or wounded, the sergeant took over. And he knew immediately what to do. And if he got wounded or killed, the corporal took over. And when the corporal got killed, the privates knew exactly what to do.

John Regnier:Buchenwald, Dachau and Auschwitz are probably the best known. But within Germany they had about 180 of these slave labor camps. And in occupied territories, they had over 200. So, there were close to 400 slave labor camps, mostly Jews, of course, but they had everything from college professors to political people that were believed dangerous to the Nazi system.

Elizabeth Baehr:But I guess the worst time, at end of the war, was before I came back, to go in the concentration camp. It was just so unbelievable, I can still see those people crawling around. And they had the crematoriums there, and where they hung them. And they’d tell us their stories. And they’d show us their numbers, if they had numbers on their arms. And then there were some nurses, German nurses, from the little towns, they’d round them up. They had to come in and help us. I didn’t treat them very nice. But I felt, you’re to blame for this.

Bob Swanson:The people that were in concentration camps, of course they were trying to get back to their homeland. Well, when they would get back there, they would usually find it wasn’t there. The houses and everything had been burned down. And there must’ve been a lot of cases of people that, well, they were very happy to be released, but they were in bad shape health-wise, they had no jobs or anything. In our Army chow lines, we would be outside usually in the summertime, and you’d go through with your mess kit. And then, at the end of the thing was a place where you could dump your garbage. And there were always people standing there that took the stuff out of the garbage.

John Regnier:There were tremendous numbers of German casualties that had been wounded and hadn’t had any medical care. There was a young SS officer, as I remember, he was early 20s, 22 or 23 years old, spoke a bit of English. But he had been hit by an artillery shell in the shoulder and his arm was blown off, his right arm. He hadn’t had any medical care. It was badly infected and in terrible condition. But he was still conscious. A surgeon took a look at him and told the technician, “If we have any chance of saving this guy, he’s going to need whole blood and he’s going to need it fast.”

And this young man feebly raised is left arm and asked the doctor, he said, “What kind of blood is it going to be?”

The doctor said, “What difference does that make?” And he said, “Well, if it’s Jew or Negro blood, I don’t want it.”

And the doctor threw the sheet. He said, “Set this man aside. There’s people here that want to live more than he does.” But it was just hard to comprehend the degree of racial prejudice that was indoctrinated into those people.

Elizabeth Baehr:I’ll never forget. I thought if only the American people could see what we’re seeing here. It was a shock. And the Nazis. They’d say, “Oh, those Nazis.” Of course, my husband is as German as I am Irish. But I had no hatred, but some of the nurses did, they’d say, “Those little Kraut kids, they’ll start another war in 20 years.” Well, you know, they were looking at us. And they wanted candy bars and gum. And you know, they were sweet little children, and I couldn’t hate them. But some of them did. They said, “What do you bother with those kids, their parents started the war. That’s why you’re here.” Little things like that were said.

Narrator:They had seen things no one should ever have to see. They had done things no one should ever have to do. They were old when they should have still been young. And it wasn’t over yet.

John Regnier:I was 23 years old, single of course. And we were told not to plan on those in my age group and situation, as far as marriage and family, not to plan on going back home.

Bob Swanson:And then we were announced as being occupation forces in Austria. So, we thought this was a really good deal, because there were about three million American soldiers that were there with nothing, really to do.

John Regnier:A lot of units from the European theater that had won the war there were slated to be regrouped into new units in France and with large convoys to go through the Mediterranean and around for the invasion of Japan.

Bob Swanson:Somebody, a lot of somebodies were going to have to run up the beaches in Japan and fight people that were not going to give up. The Germans, near the end of the war, were surrendering. But we had the feeling the Japanese would not.