I was in the 78^th combat infantry unit, an anti-tank outfit. I attained the rank of PFC, passing up on Sergeant because it would have meant three more years in Germany after the war had ended. To this day I know my military ID bracelet number like I know my social security number. I saw 120 days of combat right on the line, with no relief. We went from the Ardennes, to the Forest, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, fought at Remagen, we crossed the Rhine River and went on into Berlin. We were the first infantry division to cross the Remagen Bridge, in a very famous battle that spelled the beginning of the end for the Nazis. I am very proud of that. I’m also very proud that I came home alive. In my unit of 12,000 men, we had a 35% casualty rate – that’s a lot of soldiers that didn’t come home. On the march to Berlin, we saw the Dachau concentration camp two days after it had been liberated. We had heard rumors about it, but it was an unimaginable, unspeakable horror to see it. The stench from all of the burnt bodies was awful. The German townspeople nearby all said they didn’t know what had been going on there. I don’t see how, it’s only five miles outside of town and that smell--it is amazing to me now that some people actually don’t believe that the Holocaust occurred. I saw it.

While I was in combat, my main feeling was fear. No matter what anyone tells you, in battle you are scared all the time you might be killed. Because we were an anti-tank unit, we didn’t see much direct killing, although we did see plenty of already dead people. The first night I got called up for action I remember crawling on my belly across the ground in the middle of the night, touching a guy to ask what was going on, and realizing he was dead. It’s a very funny feeling, kind of scary, although you somehow kind of become immune to it over time. And it was cold! We were unprepared for how cold it would be.

I have a funny story: the ground was frozen so we couldn’t dig, we had to use our artillery to blow up huge holes in the ground for shelter. We’d drag trees over across the top and light a fire in an oil drum for heat and stayed pretty comfortable – as long as the Germans weren’t shooting at us. One night the soldier stationed on guard duty outside of the hole swore he saw a German. He shot at it a bunch of times and it fell over. The next morning we discovered it was another soldier’s long underwear that had been washed out and hung out on a tree to dry. They were frozen solid and – now – shot full of holes! Sadly, that same soldier was shot and killed not long after that when he mistakenly raised his head up too far out of the tank while we were trying to shoot a bunch of SS soldiers out of their position in a cave.

I never doubted we’d win, you just had to know you were on the side of the right. Of course, the German soldiers felt that way, too. We thought about home all the time. I wrote my wife, Amanda, at least one letter every day I was over there. We’d write letters and read letter by candle light at night. You may not know about "V-Mail." Because of the huge amount of correspondence going to and from the soldiers, the Army devise a kind of mail system, where you’d write on a tiny slip of film that would be microfilmed along with countless others, sent overseas, and then un-microfilmed to read. They were tiny, and hard to read, but we used them up, every bit of space on the tiny card we’d fill.

Once my unit got to Berlin, my duty was interpreting. I speak German, Russian and Polish. I sometimes had to go to the front lines with a line company to interrogate prisoners. We were sometimes even behind the lines. When the war in Germany was over, I was on occupation duty in Berlin as an interpreter, escorting Russian soldiers from the American zone of occupation to the Russian zone of occupation at Leipzig. The transportation method was open-top coal freight trains. It was all they had that could fit everybody. A funny thing would happen when the trains stopped from time to time to add water. A bunch of Russian soldiers would inevitably climb up out of the cars and try to escape back to the American side of the zone. I later found out why. The Russian government interred their own soldiers for 3 to 4 months in concentration camps of their own, to reindoctrinate them since they had been "exposed to Western civilization."

At around this time I reached by magic number of points. Enough points to get to go home. You got points for enlisting, points for active duty, extra points for combat, for being married, etc. I was delighted to go home. When I got back I found certain things were hard to come by, like soap, laundry detergent, chocolate bars and – of all things – Mickey Mouse watches! The soldiers used these things as commodities in the black market exchange economy with the Russians and other soldiers. The Mickey Mouse watches were an especially hot commodity. The biggest post-war impact on my family and me was definitely the GI Bill. This program allowed all soldiers to go to any college they wanted. The government paid for all tuition, all books, plus a living allowance of $90 per month. I already had my degree, but they also paid for graduate school, so I decided to get my Masters Degree at Columbia University in New York. Imagine living in New York with a wife and child on $90 a month! Our rent was $35, bus fare to school was another $35, leaving $20 for everything else. After that I attended Rockhurst College, got my doctorate at KU and became a teacher.

Currently, my old unit, Division 78 has a very active alumni group. I’ve also been very involved as a board member for the new World War Two monument in Washington D.C. This will be the only federal World War Two monument in the country, and will be located on the Capitol Mall, between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument. If I had to sum up my experiences and thoughts about war in one quote, it’s the one by General Sherman in the Civil War, when he said, "War is Hell." It is, but sometimes people and governments have to be willing to stand up to the world’s bullies, like the Nazis. It was the right thing to do.