Dad's War Letters: Part Nine of Nine

Germany

April 1945

Late in the war

These Germans are funny.  All of them hate Hitler, and never had anything to do with him, and are glad to see us, etc., etc.  Then we search their houses, and drag uniforms, pictures of Hitler, charter membership cards to the Nazi party, and everything else out.  What a bunch of cheerful liars.

Mom, It is Mother’s Day one of these Sundays, so this is in place of a card...  The news sounds good, and it will soon be over and finished.  Don’t worry about me, as I will be OK.  Got your letter of the 15th today.  You sounded quite worried. Sometimes I think you at home have a worse time than we do. You worry at times when we are perfectly safe.  However, there has been a time or two when I bet you weren’t as worried has you should have been.  One night in October I knew I was going within 5 minutes.  We were completely overrun by Tiger Tanks in an open field with no holes, and I was past being scared.  I was mad.  I said to myself, “I’m going to take as many of these rats with me as I can, because they’re going to hurt my Mom when she gets that telegram.”  That’s what I think of my Mom.

I would like to go home before the Pacific but I don’t know, and rather doubt that I will get to.  If I have a chance I will take the Army of Occupation for a while instead of the Pacific... 

(Note:  He was in the Army of Occupation and stayed in Europe for several months after the war.)

Incidentally, when we crossed the Rhine, our mission was to reach and cut the superhighway (Division objective).  It was 6 miles from the Rhine.  I was one of two Lts. in the platoon and our platoon was the first one in the 9th Army to cross the highway, and this bird was the 3rd man across.  (The other Lt. and one scout could run faster.).

Germany

May 7, 1945

It hasn’t been announced to the world yet, but we ceased firing this afternoon, and the lights will shine out windows all over Europe tonite, and no bombs or shells will come.  I am OK and the season on us is closed, so I can really say, “Don’t worry!”  The Captain has a bottle of ancient cognac he has been saving for a log time, so “So long...”

To read all nine parts from the beginning, click here.

Dad's War Letters: Part Eight of Nine

Germany

March, 1945

I’m back with the outfit again.  Seems like getting home.  Met quite a few of my old buddies still here.

You no doubt read in the papers how we spearheaded the 9th Army drive across the Rhine.  We came in shooting and they just couldn’t hold us...  [The papers] probably said “negligible opposition.”  It was, after we shot or captured everybody in our road.

I am sending Dick a belt from a Kraut who should have surrendered but didn’t.  Not only that, he made the mistake of shooting at somebody in A Company.

You have probably read about all the people we have set free. Soldiers of all nations (including U.S.A.) and Polish, Russ, French and other slaves.  And I do mean slaves.  These Germans had millions of slaves in farms and factories.  The English captured at Dunkirk 5 years ago were glad to see us...  All the Germans thought we didn’t have any army, and are surprised when convoys of men in trucks and tanks bumper to bumper for 80 or 90 or more miles roll into their town. They stay in their houses and pout and sulk, while the Poles and Russ are outside celebrating.  We have orders that nobody speaks to a Kraut except in line of duty, and we don’t steal their stuff or kill their kids (unless the kids shoot at us).  They don’t think it is so hot now that the shoe is on the other foot, and it is their towns being taken.  Whenever they try to defend a town we just call up the artillery and they remove the town from the face of the earth.

Here is a picture folder Janet can have.  Got it off a Jerry [German] P.X. truck going west that met a bazooka shell going east.

I wouldn’t worry about me too much any more if I were you.  It will soon be all over, and I ain’t going to get hurt in the last inning with the score in our favor and two out...  I could write a few atrocity stories, but all I will say there is that all of them are true.  These Krauts try stunts like putting 800 Poles and Russ in a barn and covering them with gasoline and setting fire to the whole works.  I saw that while it was still smoldering...  That is why I like to see dead Germans by the heaps.

To read all nine parts from the beginning, click here.

Dad's War Letters: Part Seven of Nine

England, from a hospital

December 1944

I’m enclosing 2 money orders.  Put one in my account, and take the other one and see that everybody has a merry Christmas, with lutefisk and everything...  Dad, if at any time you can use any money for anything, just get it from my acc’t, as I don’t get any interest on it and it could just as well be in use.  Also if Helen needs any, just draw it out and use it.

Say, when I was hit, I had that little Bible from Aunt Ithel and my pictures of you in my gas mask, which I also kept a few grenades in.  I had my mask hanging on a post near my hole, and a westbound .88 blew it to smithereens.  So will you get me some of those pictures we took when I was a corporal.  Or some new ones if you have them.

I am sending my “German Sharpshooter’s Medal” (Purple Heart) home.  Let me know when you get it.

Now that I’m well, I realize I was “shaken up” worse that I thought.  Saw doctor’s reports.  Not so much the seriousness of each strain, sprain, and pulled ligament, as the number of them...  No, I’m not keeping anything from you, on my word. Next time I’m going to get myself a nerve injury.  I’ve seen several.  They leave a leg or an arm temporarily paralyzed, and they have to send you to the States to have an operation to connect up the nerve, and you get several months’ leave while it heals up again.

I passed an uneventful 22nd birthday the other day.  It seems funny to think I am that old.  I should feel more grown up, but everywhere I go they nickname me “Junior” so that may be why.  The Russians are going good...  They say they killed 295,000 Krauts.  That would be quite a heap.

England

February, 1945

Getting out of the hosp. today and a 7-day leave at a resort starts tomorrow.  Then back to my outfit.

I’m a son of a gun if [my girlfriend] Betty ever misses a single bet. She is sure after me, and I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but it is not mutual, and I wish she would quit.  I don’t want anything to do with girls until I have made my first million dollars, and not with her even then.  She is a good kid, but she is like her mother, and wants to run the works and eat with 3 forks and 4 spoons and cut glass every meal.

Dick, you make sure that you have completed enough arrangements so you can join the Navy before you even have to register for the draft.  Find out what you have to weigh for your height...  Stay the heck out of the Army, as the Infantry is too hungry for men right now.  I wish I could have you with me.  You could be my runner and carry my little radio and I could teach you and take care of you at the same time.

To read all nine parts from the beginning, click here.

Dad's War Letters: Part Six of Nine

Germany

October 15, 1944

In a field hospital

After all that has been going on in the past few days I suppose you have been wondering if I was OK.  Well, I am. However, they temporarily have me back at a little field hospital.  Day before yesterday a big German shell came sailing in over my head and lit about 20 feet behind me, and knocked me down.  Kind of sprained my back, but nothing serious, and I’ll be back in a day or two.

(Note:  He had just been badly wounded but didn’t know the extent of his internal injuries at this point.  He ended up spending about five months in hospitals in France and England before being sent back to the front lines in March 1945.)

October 19, 1944

(letter written on American Red Cross stationery)

Now don’t get excited, I ain’t hurt.  They got tired of having me at one hospital, and shipped me back to this one, so you can quit worrying about me for a while...  All that is the matter is that my back hurts, and they taped me up and won’t let me walk around...  It has been released and published in the papers, so I can tell you I was in the Battle of Mortain in France August 4-10...  That was really quite a fight.  I have been in so many others since that it would take a book to tell about them.  Now that I am back where it’s safe, I don’t see how my luck ever held out. 

The way I got it the other day, my platoon was shelled...  I thought they had finished, and went out of my hole to see if anyone was hurt...  Then s-s-s-s-s-s I heard it coming, and thought I could make it to a hole just in front of me.  I took 2 steps and Blam the thing lit about 20 feet behind me and exploded and blew a hole in the ground 8 feet across and 5 feet deep.  It sent me rolling, and I thought I was killed, but the concussion just hit my back.  Darn inconsiderate not to give me a little piece of shrapnel for a souvenir.

I have a belt buckle I’m going to send home.  When I do, save it, as I got in a personal fight with a Jerry sgt. at about 10 paces range and shot him 6 times and cut off his belt buckle and insignia.  Here is the insignia.

France, from a hospital

November 1944

You read about Mortain, the Limey air force set fire to 167 big tanks with rockets.  We had those tanks covered by small arms, so they had their choice of staying in their tanks and burning up, or trying to get out and getting shot.  We were mad at them because they had been shooting at us with 88’s, and were testing out their flamethrowers at us...  Not one got away, and as fast as they came out of their burning tanks we would pick them off...  The outfit, which I have not been able to tell you before, was the “1st S.S. Panzer-Grenadier Division” also known as the “Adolf Hitler Division...”  But my unit stopped them cold...  The fight lasted 5 days, and I didn’t get a wink of sleep for 4 nights.  I was getting a little weary when it was over, but we darn near liquidated one division of SS men.   

About your cattle, Dad, since you asked, I’d not sell them before spring, unless the market goes up...

To read all nine parts from the beginning, click here.

Dad's War Letters: Part Five of Nine

France – in combat

June, 1944

Liberating France

…Don’t worry about me, though, I’m OK.  It will take more than these Nazis are dishing out to bother me.  This is pretty country here, if that will help any.

I haven’t had any mail yet.  I hope it is getting out better, and I am sure it is.  We don’t gripe about not getting mail either, because for every mail bag they leave behind, they can bring an extra case of ammunition or something, and then we can win the war sooner.  Guess Jerry is learning that it doesn’t pay to monkey around with the U.S.A.

In the last war Dad said the French were quite hospitable, etc.  Of course now they have nothing to be hospitable with.  In fact they don’t even jump up and down.  The kids do, of course, but the grown-ups just stand in their doorways, with a kind of half-smile on their faces and tears in their eyes, and the look that they give you would more than pay for whatever the war might cost.  They look up at us as they would at a vision.  They think we are angels, or gods, or something, I guess.  We Americans do not realize in what high regard we are held.

Belgium

September 1944

In combat

The kids have started back to school by now I suppose.  I wouldn’t mind being in school myself this fall instead of here.  Be sure you get some apples this fall, and make some apple sauce, and we will finish the Nazis off and I’ll come home and eat it.

Holland

September 1944

In combat

Just a line to let you know I’m still OK, and pretty handy at staying that way.  I don’t think they can get me, because I have been shot at by every known German weapon and not hit yet to amount to anything...   Those fool Germans still think they can stop us, I guess.  They keep shooting at us and we keep exterminating them.

Well, this war is still on, and we are still winning, so guess that’s all we can expect.  When this one is over we’ll fix it so they can never start another one.

To read all nine parts from the beginning, click here.

Dad's War Letters: Part Four of Nine

Camp Fannin, Texas

Winter, 1944

Dad was an instructor, preparing men for combat duty overseas.

Have carbine firing this week, and I’m in charge of all carbine instruction for the 66th Battalion...  I sure hope none of them shoot each other.  If all 850 of them shoot 50 shots each without anything happening, I’ll be very happy.

I seem to be doing quite well here.  Moe continues to assign me jobs of greater responsibility, although he continues to call me “Junior.”

Ft. Meade, Maryland

June 1944

Preparing to be sent overseas, shortly after D-Day

Just a note to let you know that I am still OK and at this same place on the east coast...  I am getting a lot to eat, and not working too hard, and feeling OK.  I don’t think that there is another soldier in this camp that feels any better about going over than I do.  I am so independent, and have even quit worrying over Dad being able to run his business. That comes of not having any girl or wife to worry over like a lot of the boys do.  Not that I am taking a fatalistic view of the deal.  I fully expect to come out OK, and all in one piece. 

Suppose you have the hay down by now.  Hope you don’t get any rain on it.  Don’t break your back on it, Dad.

To read all nine parts from the beginning, click here.

Dad's War Letters: Part Three of Nine

Ft. Benning, Georgia – Officer Candidate School - Part Two

Fall 1943 – excerpts from several letters

Those who made it to graduation became commissioned officers.

We were firing machine guns on the range today when they gave “cease firing” -- “unload” -- “clear guns” -- “atten-shun” -- “about face” and then they read us about Italy’s surrender.  It drew a good hand.  Most of the fellows here are married or engaged and don’t want to go across.  (Not that I don’t want the war to be over, but I want in it.)   

I’m still here and everything’s under control for the time being.  They kicked out 55 more men today, so our ranks were thinned a little...  Now when I get kicked out I’ll at least know some darn good men went before I did...  They tell us they’d rather kick out 5 good men than let one through that wasn’t a perfect combat officer.

I’ve gotten 2 letters from [my sister] Helen.  I think she writes because she’s a little homesick and wants letters.  Be sure to write her even if you have to neglect me to do so, as she’s young and a girl, and has absolutely no acquaintances there...  I sent her ten bucks.  I told her it was her own, and to do as she pleased with what I sent her, so if you can afford it, just pretend I’m not sending her any, and then what little I send will be extra.

Boy, am I ever a hot anti-tank gunner.  I made expert on the range.  165 out of 200...  If they would pass us on grades in tests and scores with weapons, I’d be a general.  But those little intangible things that I can’t do anything about will knock me out.  Age, for one thing, and size.  (Note:  On his army ID card he was 5’7½”  tall and 147 pounds.)  If I don’t make it, I’ll be the best non-com in the army...  

Nobody in our class has been hurt to speak of.  I got stabbed a little (don’t get excited) the other night.  A messenger and came down a path where I was fusing some mortar shells, and his bayonet caught the side of my helmet and glanced off and cut a little gash...  I bandaged it with a piece of tape and it’s all healed up now.

The dangerous part of this course is about over.  We didn’t have a single accident on the mortars.  They had been having quite a run of bad luck, but guess we broke their jinx.  Everything that happens here doesn’t make the papers.

Only 4½  weeks to go until I know one way or another about this deal.  Commission or no commission, they’ve made a man of me down here.

2½ weeks to go.  The strain is terrific.  We have started having boards at every odd hour of the day...  The 2nd one, when I walked in alone to meet one Col., three Lt. Cols., a Captain, and a 1st Lt., don’t think I wasn’t feeling like Daniel in the Lion’s Den...  I reported and they put me at ease, and told me to sit down.  The Col. asked me a few routine yes or no questions, and suddenly said:  “I’ll give you one minute to prepare a 5-minute talk on night fighting.”  I looked down for a couple of seconds and asked if I could start.  Yes, he said, so I put over a good talk...  He said, “I’d say that was right good.”  Then he said, “Do you think you could lead a night raid?”  I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “What makes you think you could?”  Me: “Because I know my stuff, sir.”  Colonel: “Could you instruct men?”  Me: “Yes, sir.”  Colonel: “Could you lead a platoon in combat?”  Me: “Yes, sir!”  Colonel: “That’ll be all for today.”

1½ weeks to go, and I’m still here...  18 men out of 50-some left in my platoon.  I think I may make it...  If I graduate, I will be the proudest boy on earth.

(Note:  He did graduate from Officer Candidate School, and was commissioned as a 2^nd lieutenant.)

To read all nine parts from the beginning, click here.

Dad's War Letters: Part Two of Nine

Ft. Benning, Georgia – Officer Candidate School - Part One

Fall 1943 – excerpts from several letters

Those who made it to graduation became commissioned officers.

I’ve talked to some ROTC boys from NY and other places who are in their 7th week here.  There are 56 left out of 250, and they have 10 weeks to go.  One nice custom they have developed of late is to pull out about ½ of the survivors on graduation day...  But I’m just going to work, and not worry, and if I get the boot anytime, what the heck.

I’m in!  Start tomorrow a.m...  This is going to be rough, and more than likely will lead to nothing.  For instance, the other day a boy back from overseas was booted for “inefficiency on the bayonet course.”  Incidentally, he had been cited in New Guinea for spearing 3 Japs in one M.G. nest.  So you see...   

Then they play tricks.  They inspect morning and afternoon.  If they can’t find anything wrong, they do something like unbuttoning a button on a shirt hanging next to the wall, or they cock your rifle on the rack...  Day before yesterday he pulled my bayonet out of the scabbard and inserted it wrong side to, but I caught it in time, so I didn’t get gigged.

Yesterday they took us out along a road, and dumped us out at intervals, in pairs.  We had to march through real thick swamps and jungles on a compass bearing and come out within 3 degrees of the destination.  Waddington and I went about 2½ miles without seeing a soul (except a coral snake, which we killed) and came out one degree to the right of perfect.

You’ve never seen such efficiency as they have here.  For example, in a demonstration on a machine gun section, the lecturer (outdoors in a grandstand) would say, “In case of air attack...” and just as he finished saying it, here would come 5 P-51’s at about 500 MPH over the hills.  It’s done by radio and perfectly timed.

I haven’t got a gig for 2 days...  Some of the fellows take it to heart, and I can see what it does to them.  For example, the last class here, a fellow got kicked out at the end of 12 wks. and came into the barracks and pulled out his bayonet and stabbed himself.  Luckily he missed his heart...  I’ll never take anything that seriously.

Man, am I getting so I sit up straight when I eat.  They watch us all the time, so I never bend my back.  Mom, you must not have used the proper training methods.

There were drills where they have expert shots representing enemy snipers.  It is quite a thrill to have a bullet smack into a tree 3 feet from your head when you expose yourself too much.  There is no danger, though, since they never have hit anyone yet.

I still don’t know about getting through.  Somebody has to, I guess, but what a bunch of big bruisers, all of them smart, and all born leaders, I have to compete with.  I myself thought they kicked out better men than me on the first board...  Just now had mail call.  Got your letter.  Don’t build the kids up on my getting a commission.  I’ll try like the dickens, though...  Sure glad to hear the crops are OK. After that late planting I was a little worried.  How are the steers and pigs.  I suppose the pigs aren’t so good if we had our usual luck with raising young ones.

To read all nine parts from the beginning:  Click here.

Dad's War Letters: Part One of Nine

Ft. Riley, Kansas—“Boot Camp.”

Summer 1943 – excerpts from several letters. 

Dad was 20 years old at the time.

I’m still at it, and we’re starting to work hard.  Today I:

Taught gun drill 4 hrs.

Drilled on Foot 1 hour

Played cageball 1 hour

Had 1 hour calisthenics

Ran 5 miles over high hills and rocks (4 miles of it thru woods) in 45 minutes

Had 1 hr. marksmanship training

Had parade.

It is now 9:45 p.m. and I think I earned my $2 today.

I wish I could bring a Garand [rifle] home for you -- You could set it on top of the barn and shoot the neighbors’ cattle up in Frank’s cornfield.  They are sardines to keep clean...  We come home, clean ALL the oil off them, and then we go back and pour oil on them again.  We do that every day...  The captain has the cleanest hands, and oil shows up on them.  Wish they’d use clubs instead of rifles in this war.  I’m wearing it out taking it apart and putting it together.

I qualified as a sharpshooter.  I would have liked to have made expert...  It takes 180 out of 210 points for expert, and I got only 174...  At least I learned to shoot right- handed.  (Dad was a lefty.)

I came within an iota of having to do extra KP next Sunday.  I don’t think corporals should have to absorb so much sass from sgts...  The mess sgt. got to griping at me and another fellow about the way we were doing things...   Anyhow he kept on about 5 minutes, and said something about college graduates not knowing anything, and I broke -- I said, “We didn’t learn this stuff in college.  The profs. told us we could hire any dummy for $20 a week to cook and wash dishes.”  That got him...  It was worth the 4 extra hours of KP just to say that one thing anyhow.

We had horse meat for dinner again today, which is nothing new.  But tonight they ground it up and we had horse-burgers.  Fort Riley has to eat 30,000 lbs. of it per day.  It’s not bad, kind of tough and dark and coarse.

They don’t think we are snappy enough, so this week we get up at 4:45 as punishment.  I don’t get the logic.  I get about 5 hours sleep.  Pitching hay bales would be a vacation.

Heat and humidity, and 12 unconscious at the side of the road Monday.  Nobody died, however...  We have been shooting the Garand.  There was never such a weapon in history.  I put 4 straight shots into a target 18 inches in diameter and 500 yards away.

I’ll be glad to get out of here.  I’ve not wanted to worry you, so I’ve never told the truth about this place.

A Young Soldier's "Personal Affairs"

After my father’s death in 1993, my sister and I sat on the floor of the living room one evening, going through boxes and drawers of his military papers, deciding what to keep.  We found a booklet entitled “Personal Affairs of Military Personnel and Dependents”—this is the front cover.  There are some notes in my father’s handwriting, which read as follows:

“Note:  In [the] event of my untimely demise, Be sure to collect these 4:

1.  Insurance,

2.  6 months gratuity ($900) lump sum;

3.  My back accrued pay.  (2. and 3. Not automatic—action must be initiated by you.  See inside of book for details.)

4.  Grab my money out of the bank (using enclosed power of attorney) before they freeze it.  The enclosed Power of Attorney lasts no longer than I do, but if you get it out before they know I’m gone, it will save trouble.  Otherwise file my will and they will come across.

This book will answer a lot of questions.”

I guess this is consistent with the fact that Dad was a business major in college before the war!  

The booklet had three pages of information about his final wishes and was meant to be left with his next of kin—in his case, his mother.  In my imagination I am picturing a roomful of recruits, headed for overseas, sitting at tables and filling in this booklet, thinking about their own deaths possibly for the first time, as it sunk in that yes, they were headed for the front lines of what we now call World War Two and might never return.

Page 1 gives basic information, including that he is 21 years old.  He carries $10,000 of life insurance, payable to his mother Sara, with his father as Contingent Beneficiary.  (That’s the equivalent of about $133,000 today.)  This optional insurance cost him $6.50 a month out of his pay—but his parents were not well off financially, and that money would have meant a lot to them—a chance to buy their own farm instead of renting, for example.

From his army pay of $150 per month (about $2,000 today), he had $50 a month sent to his bank at home, and another $18.75 taken out to buy War Bonds.  The booklet said, “If I am reported missing, missing in action, interned in a neutral country, or captured or besieged by enemy forces, the allotments out of my pay for insurance and support of my relatives will be paid by the government for 12 months.”

Page 1 of the form goes on to say that Dad had executed a will and Power of Attorney and mailed them to his father in Big Rock, Illinois.

Page 2 has blanks to fill in where he might have a Safe Deposit Box, where he left personal papers, and what debts he owed (none).  Then it says, “If I die in the line of duty, from wounds, or illness, or other causes, I have designated [here he filled in his mother’s name] as a dependent to receive  the six months’ gratuity pay awarded by the government.”  Dad hand-write off to the side, “$900.”  It then had a place for the soldier to list where they had bank accounts. 

Page 3 gets even more “real.”  It says, “I desire that my permanent place of burial be at ________.”  (Dad wrote in, “No Preference.”)  It goes on to say, “If I die abroad, my remains will be returned to the United States by the Government after the War, but not earlier.”  It goes on to give other instructions to the family as to how to retrieve the body and receive funds for burial expenses and a possible pension.  Copies of any marriage records and birth certificates of children are then asked for.

In the photo, taken at his parents’ new home in Big Rock, Illinois before he went overseas, Dad (far right) is posing with his father, little brother Richard, little sister Janet, and mother.   Perhaps his sister Helen is the one taking the picture.  He was just twenty years old when he was drafted—barely out of his teens—but forced to think about “the event of his untimely demise.”

Forgiveness and Friendship

I have written quite a bit about my father and his service in the U.S. Army in World War II.  This story took place a few years later.

After the war, my father was required to be in the U.S. Army Reserves for a number of years, and go to training camp for a few weeks in the summer.  In fact, he once told me that he very nearly ended up in the Korean War—but his card didn’t get chosen during the random drawing of one in three cards in the file. 

In the late 1940s he met my mother, Adra, and they were married in 1950.  They moved into an apartment at 620 Archer Avenue in Aurora—the downstairs of an old white frame house which has since been torn down.  (The first photo shows Robert and Adra on the front porch.)  Both had jobs within walking distance—Dad at a steel storage company called Equipto, and Mom at another steel storage company down the street called All-Steel.  

Into the upstairs apartment moved a young married couple very much like themselves—but yet so different.  Hartwig and Frieda were recent immigrants; they had arrived in the U.S. from Austria in 1952.  The 1930s had been a bad time to be a young man in Austria.  Hartwig, being five years younger than my father and therefore too young to be drafted into Hitler’s Army, ended up in an organization called the Hitler Youth.  He would have been 15 years old when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.

I wanted to find out more about being a young person in Nazi Germany and Austria.  I found this quote from Adolf Hitler on the History Learning Site.  He said this of German schoolchildren:  “The weak must be chiselled away.  I want young men and women who can suffer pain.  A young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp's steel.”

The U.S. Holocaust Museum website had this quote: 

“These boys and girls enter our organizations at ten years of age, and often for the first time get a little fresh air; after four years of the Young Folk they go on to the Hitler Youth, where we have them for another four years… And even if they are still not complete National Socialists [Nazis], they go to Labor Service and are smoothed out there for another six, seven months…  And whatever class consciousness or social status might still be left…  the Wehrmacht [German armed forces] will take care of that.”—Adolf Hitler (1938)

But back to my story:  Hartwig and Frieda moved into the apartment above my parents.  This would have been in the early 1950s.  Even in my childhood in the 1960s, my father still referred to the Germans as “Krauts”—an old habit that died hard, after spending a year of his life on the front lines shooting Germans at every opportunity and in nearly continual fear for his life.  Dad continued to have nightmares about the war for twenty years after he came home.

But somehow, the two couples ended up friends.  I wonder if they ever talked about the war, or Hitler, or what it was like in Austria in the 1940s?  I don’t know.  I do know that Hartwig worked as a night watchman in a nearby factory, while he taught himself English and studied engineering books.  Eventually he got a better job there as a spot welder, then a maintenance electrician, then a mechanic, and then an engineer.  He and Frieda had four children and had a good life in America.

But more importantly to this story—Hartwig and Frieda wanted to put their past behind them and become American citizens.  To do that, they needed American citizens to be their sponsors.  And who were the sponsors for Hartwig and Frieda?  My parents.

I remember, even after each couple purchased their own home in the later 1950s, my father and I dropping by their home or Hartwig dropping by ours.  I am so very glad that those two young couples, in their own small way, were a part of the healing, friendship, and forgiveness that needed to take place after one of the worst wars in modern history. 

The Fire

This photograph shows one of the papers from my father’s WWII military file.  I include it here not because of its great importance in the story of his military career—but rather, for the burn marks around the edges.  Anyone who has done (or tried to do) research on a WWI or WWII military ancestor may know where those burn marks came from.

My father, Robert Wallin, told me many stories about his time in WWII, and I have his letters home to tell me more.  Like countless aging baby boomers with fathers who fought in the war, I wish I had asked him so much more—and written it all down or recorded it.  So a few years back, I decided to order his military records from the National Archives.

My father was in the Army, so his records are found at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, Missouri.  (Navy records are stored elsewhere.)  Unfortunately, the NPRC had a catastrophic fire on July 12, 1973.  The National Archives website says that 80% of the records were destroyed for Army personnel discharged between 1912 and 1960.  That covers World War One, World War Two, and the Korean War—what an extensive and  devastating loss!  (Many Air Force records were also destroyed.)  No duplicates, microfilm, or other backups were kept.  And since there were no indexes, there isn’t even a good listing of what was lost.

 I found out more on the Stars and Stripes website.  The fire started on the sixth floor of the building in the middle of the night; no cause was ever determined.  It burned out of control for 22 hours as 43 fire departments battled it.  It took 4½ days and millions of gallons of water before the fire department declared the fire extinguished.  The sixth floor was destroyed, and the records on the floors below were soaked with water.  The records of 18 million veterans were lost.

About 6.5 million partially burned, water-soaked personnel files were salvaged.  Over forty years later, preservation specialists are still working on restoring them.  It takes the equivalent of 30 full-time employees to respond to the requests of those, like me, who are looking for records from the damaged collection.  Of the 5,000 requests per day that the NPRC receives, they estimate that about 200-300 are for those damaged records.  Those requests go to the specialists at the Paper Treatment Lab, who call the burned records the “B-Files.” 

After the fire, the B-Files were taken to the vacuum-drying chamber at the nearby McDonnell-Douglas aircraft facilities.  The vacuum chamber, which was built to train Mercury and Gemini space program astronauts, was now put into service in taking 8 tons of water out of each 2,000 milk-crate-sized containers of wet documents which the chamber could handle per drying session.  The files were then indexed and stored, to be handled again only if a document request is received.

I was fortunate that my father’s military and medical records (which were extensive) survived the fire—although barely, as the photo shows.  Some had burn marks and some had water damage stains, but at least I received the file.  The records for my grandfather, Sture Wallin, who served in World War One, are entirely gone, so I was told in a letter from the NPRC.  To my knowledge, no one in the family recorded any details whatsoever of Grandpa Wallin’s service, and no papers have survived.  Gone forever.

The MissouriNet website says that, incredibly, the NPRC continued to use the old building until 2012!  The NPRC “now has a new state-of-the-art building with some serious ways to prevent a fire from destroying national records.”  Thank goodness for that.

NPRC building photo:  National Archives

A Dad and a Hero

This paper from my father’s military file tells the story of something he did in March 1945.  (I will tell the story of the burn marks on his records in another post.)

The paper reads as follows:

“First Lieutenant Robert M. Wallin, 0538229, 120^th Infantry Regiment, United States Army, is awarded the Bronze Star for heroic achievement in action on 26 March 1945, in Germany.  Although enemy fire was so intense that it killed one man and wounded eight others, Lieutenant Wallin and his comrades left their sheltered positions and exposed themselves to enemy fire to evacuate three of the men to the rear where they received medical attention.  By his heroic action, Lieutenant Wallin aided in saving the lives of his comrades.

[Entered military service from Illinois.]

 
L.S. Hobbs, Major General – U.S. Army Commanding”

The amazing thing is this:  Dad had just spent five months in a military hospital recovering from serious injuries sustained on the front lines the previous October.  So it’s certainly not like he thought he was invincible…  And how could he?  He had seen more horror and death by this time than anyone should have to see—stories he told me late at night when I was growing up…  Stories of comrades dying in ways I can only hope their families never knew.  Dad’s very first day in combat, his closest friend in the unit was blown up and dismembered, and Dad had to gather the pieces and lay them with the man’s dog tags.

According to my father, stories like what happened the day he got the Bronze Star weren’t that rare.  What was rare was having a superior officer see or find out what happened, and then take the time to write it up.  Just from the few stories Dad told me late at night, I know of at least two other times where he was in this much danger.

One of them was a situation similar to this one.  Dad (a platoon leader) told me that one of his men was badly wounded during a battle.  Dad crawled across a field to the man, and realized right away that if he had run across the field standing up, he probably wouldn’t have lived to tell the story.  He had a struggle of conscience as to what to do…  The man had both a broken arm and a broken leg, so he would have to be carried back across the field, through enemy fire—and it looked like the man outweighed Dad by fifty pounds.

Dad asked the man, “Do you have a family?” and the man answered, “Yeah, a wife and three kids.”  Dad told me he remembered saying to himself something like, “Oh, crap!”—knowing what it was he thought he should do, but not wanting to do it.  But he hoisted the man onto his shoulders and staggered back across the field.  Both of them made it back alive.

In the case of the Bronze Star story, it was Dad and several comrades who evacuated three men.  We’ve all heard the motto of “no man left behind,” but it’s still incredible that young soldiers can summon up such courage in the face of such danger. 

If my father and his comrades hadn’t made it back to their “sheltered positions” alive that day, I wouldn’t be here today.  But because they did, three other men went home to quite possibly have children of their own as well—perhaps even someone who is reading this story today.

The Telegram

I was recently given a box of family papers by an aunt who was cleaning out her closets.  This telegram, sent on October 27, 1944 to my grandmother, was among the papers.  I am certain it was a day she never forgot.

The telegram informed her that her son, Second Lt. Robert M. Wallin, had been injured in action in Germany.  Since she knew that he was a front-line infantryman and platoon leader, she was aware that he was risking his life on a regular basis—and indeed, he had already earned one Purple Heart by this time.  But this was different; this was bad.  But I wonder—was she at some level relieved that he was, at least for the time being, headed to a hospital of some kind and out of harm’s way?

I heard my father talk about the day he was injured, and I have the letters he wrote home when he was able to write.  I also saw that, for the rest of his life, he didn’t walk quite straight, and his back sometimes bothered him.  But all Grandma Wallin knew that day was that her beloved son was hurt.

Here’s how Dad told it in an understated letter home, written on October 19, 1944:

“Now don’t get excited, I ain’t hurt.  They got tired of having me at one hospital, and shipped me back to this one, so you can quit worrying about me for a while...  All that is the matter is that my back hurts, and they taped me up and won’t let me walk around...  It has been released and published in the papers, so I can tell you I was in the Battle of Mortain in France August 4-10 (approx.)...  That was really quite a fight.  I have been in so many others since that it would take a book to tell about them.  Now that I am back where it’s safe, I don’t see how my luck ever held out. 

The way I got it the other day, my platoon was shelled...  I thought they had finished, and went out of my hole to see if anyone was hurt...  Then s-s-s-s-s-s I heard it coming, and thought I could make it to a hole just in front of me.  I took 2 steps and Blam the thing lit about 20 feet behind me and exploded and blew a hole in the ground 8 feet across and 5 feet deep.  It sent me rolling, and I thought I was killed, but the concussion just hit my back.  Darn inconsiderate not to give me a little piece of shrapnel for a souvenir.”

The Battle of the Bulge happened that winter, and most of the men in Dad’s platoon didn’t make it.  Perhaps being almost killed in October and spending five months in the hospital actually saved his life!  At any rate, after he was patched together, he returned to the front lines the following March, and he later wrote this: 

“You no doubt read in the papers how we spearheaded the 9th Army drive across the Rhine.  We came in shooting and they just couldn’t hold us...  [The papers] probably said “negligible opposition.”  It was, after we shot or captured everybody in our way...  Incidentally, when we crossed the Rhine, our mission was to reach and cut off the superhighway (Division objective).  It was 6 miles from the Rhine…  Our platoon was the first one in the 9th Army to cross the highway, and this bird was the 3rd man across.  (The other Lt. and one scout could run faster.)”

It’s an honor to have a hero in the family.  Thank you, Dad, for all you did for your country and for the cause of freedom in Europe.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Dad's War Souvenirs, Part Three

My father, Robert Wallin, fought in the army infantry in World War II, fighting his way—on foot—from Normandy to Germany.  Like many of his fellow soldiers, he brought home a duffel bag of mementoes which, sixty years later and long after his death, are family treasures.

Part Three:  Nazi Souvenirs

The first photo is a belt buckle that my father retrieved from the body of a dead Nazi soldier.  (He brought home a handful of this type of items with the Nazi swastika and eagle on them.)  In a letter home to his parents he said this about how he came into possession of it:  “I have a belt buckle I’m going to send home.  When I do, save it, as I got it in a personal fight with a German sergeant at about 10 paces range and shot him 6 times and cut off his belt buckle and insignia.  Here is the insignia.”   

A similar thing that Dad brought back is a belt buckle that bears the German words “Gott Mit Uns”—which is to say, “God With Us.”

The second item is made of red wool—thus the moth holes it acquired in its half century in my parents’ attic.  It is a Nazi arm band such as I’ve seen in old photographs.  He also managed to bring home a huge Nazi flag, as big as the front side of our house, which he removed from a stadium of some type after the war was over.  I remember his saying that the American troops went door to door, clearing out the Nazi propaganda from each house and making big bonfires of it in the streets.  But a few things ended up in the American soldiers’ duffel bags instead.  Dad said this in a letter home shortly after the Nazi surrender: 

“These Germans are funny.  All of them hate Hitler, and never had anything to do with him, and are glad to see us, etc., etc.  Then we search their houses and drag uniforms, pictures of Hitler, charter membership cards to the Nazi party, and everything else out.  What a bunch of cheerful liars.”

The third item came from the front of a Nazi officer’s hat.  I don’t know the story of how my father came into possession of it, but I think it’s safe to say that its original owner didn’t part with it willingly!

Related posts:
Dad's War Souvenirs, Part One
Dad's War Souvenirs, Part Two
A Big Brother's Urgent Plea
Letters from the Front Lines: Don't Worry, Please

The Military Service of Norman Mosey

Almost a year ago, I wrote my very first blog post—“For the Love of Norman.”  It was about my quest to record the family history of my father-in-law and his death in the middle of our project.  I mentioned that after he died, I finished recording the story of his military service, using the papers he left on his living room table to share with me.  Here it is, in condensed form…

Norman Mosey was in the U.S. Navy from March 1944 to June 1946.  He served in the Pacific Theatre during World War II as a “TM 3/C” (Torpedoman’s Mate Third Class).  He met his future wife Donna via letters she wrote to him during the war.  His “vessels and stations served on” included:

• Naval Training Station at Farragut, Idaho 
• Cub 15  (an advanced base unit)
• Fleet Service School (Advance Torpedo), San Diego, CA
• ABPD (Advance Base Personnel Depot), San Bruno, CA
• USS Sierra [AD18]—a destroyer tender
• USS Stevens [DD479]—a Fletcher-class destroyer

His training began with 8 weeks of boot camp at the Farragut Naval Training Station.  The 4,000-acre Farragut was the second-largest naval training center in the world.  Drilling was given in seamanship, military discipline, physical fitness, and Naval procedure.  Vessels on nearby Lake Pend Orielle were used for training on the water.  The men learned to march, row, swim, and use firearms.  Over 293,000 sailors (“Blue Jackets”) received basic training at Farragut.  It was also used as a POW camp; 900 Germans worked as gardeners and maintenance men there.

In May 1944, after a 10-day furlough, Norman was sent to the Advance Base Personnel Depot at San Bruno, California.  He says he did nothing but menial work there, so after four months he applied for a transfer to Fleet Service School (Advanced Torpedo) in San Diego, where he had 16 weeks of torpedo training in all aspects from assembly to repair in late 1944.

Norman served on the USS Sierra in 1945.  It was a “Destroyer Tender” with 1,050 crewmen that serviced destroyers and destroyer escorts.  In March 1945 the Sierra went to the Caroline Islands, then the Philippines, for anticipated strikes against the Japanese mainland, but the surrender of Japan ended that assignment.  Norman was at Leyte Gulf, Philippines when the Japanese surrendered; he remembers all the Navy ships firing off ordnance of every kind—or in the case of his ship, flares, since they didn’t have ordnance aboard.

The Sierra sailed in September 1945 for Japan, Korea, and Shanghai, China, where Norman visited a Japanese prison camp.  He was sent home on emergency leave in December 1945 due to the death of his father.  He spent much time with Donna while he was home.

After his leave he was sent to San Diego to finish out his service.  He served on the USS Stevens, a Fletcher-class Destroyer.  The Stevens had seen much action in the Pacific Theatre during the war, but at this point it was undergoing a six-month “deactivation overhaul” before being decommissioned. 

Norman was honorably discharged in June 1946.  He married Donna later that year in Clare County, Michigan.