 |
Interviewed by: Katie Bertrand |
| I was in medical school when we were
given our commissions for the Army and I went into service directly after finishing
medical school and internship training. I joined my unit in Belgium in November of 1944
with the rank of Captain, and served in Europe (Belgium, Germany, and Czechoslovakia)
until March of 1946 as a Battalion Surgeon in the 146th Combat Engineer
Battalion. Combat Engineers are armed soldiers with all kinds of responsibilities within the battalion. They are responsible for building roads, of course, also for land mines – putting them down and taking them up. They supplied water to the men in the fields, built bridges, things of that nature. One time they operated a sawmill and did work in a quarry. They also acted as infantry when necessary. Most of our days were rather typical. First of all you have to understand that the days as we know them, over there, are somewhat different light-wise. Europe is north of the United States. So it was dark by about 4:00 and it didn’t get light until about 9:00 AM. We’d start our day at 7:00 or 7:30 and it was still dark. We had a breakfast line and we’d get our food and find a tree stump or something to sit down on to eat. After breakfast – sometime around 8:00 – we’d have sick call. I was the doctor for this battalion. We’d have three aid men per company – our aid station had eight or nine men. If the aid men couldn’t take care of a problem they’d bring the soldier to us. Then about 10:00 or 10:30 our intelligence officer would come back from his meeting at the headquarters where he was told what was going on. There were two parts to the intelligence report: one part was what was going on in front of us in our immediate area, and the second part was the general situation in Europe. The rest of the day we didn’t do much. A lot of times I would go with some of the officers out to the companies to see what was going on with the men. A common health problem was diarrhea. If say, two or three reports of cases of diarrhea came in from one company I’d go out there, check it out, and usually make them clean up their kitchen. A field kitchen was a trailer with everything in it that the cooks used and it wasn’t the most sanitary thing in the world. Mess sergeants did not like to see me coming because they knew I meant trouble for them. Because, you see, I made them knock their kitchens down – go through them, scour them out, start all over again. Part of the job of a battalion surgeon was to keep the men healthy. Another problem we had was with lice. We handled that by taking the soldiers in to the decontamination center, which was located in a nearby town that was used for supplies. The soldiers would go in with their clothes and blankets and all their clothes and blankets would be taken away and they would take baths and get their hair cut. I mean that they really got their hair cut short. They’d get new clothes and bedding, and their old stuff would have to be sterilized. We actually had to wait several days for their appointments at the decontamination center, because there was only one decontamination center for the whole area, and that was also where all the men went for their weekly baths. The soldiers were supposed to have baths once a week, but they were lucky to get one every two weeks. There was one other problem that was really pretty bad – especially for soldiers in the infantry. It was called "immersion foot." Specifically what it was, if the men would walk through a watery place, and their shoes would get wet and their socks would get wet, and it was cold, that would freeze – or near freeze. That would impede the blood flow to their feet. So these men would come back in and if they weren’t taken care of immediately, they were in trouble for life. Some men have an awful time walking to this day, and some men lost their feet to gangrene as a result of immersion foot. It was a major problem. Of course, I treated battle casualties too. You’ve heard of the Battle of the Bulge, haven’t you? Well, we were stationed between Eupen and Monschau in Belgium, very near the German border. Our camp there was really pretty nice for a field camp. We had a "corduroy road" made out of logs that were lashed together, so we weren’t walking around in the mud. We had these dugouts that were there, we had our tents, and a captured German generator so we had electric lights. For a field camp we were reasonably comfortable. One morning of this otherwise relatively normal day, some of our people who were operating a water point came in and said there was something going on where they were--that the German Army was there! That was the first thing we knew that something might be going on. Later in the day some high-ranking officers came out and moved the company closer to the German line. The Cavalry Reconnaissance Unit was already there checking things out. The Cavalry Recon was a light unit that used armored cars that would go backward and forward. They were very well armed – they had machine guns and lightweight cannons. Our job was to lay out a minefield. Now there are several different kinds of mines. There are some that will blow up when people step on them; there are some for cars – that take something heavier to detonate them, you see. Some, a car can drive on, but it takes a tank to blow it up…so there are different levels. We had to put out what we called a "hasty minefield" because we had to do it in a hurry. Now, when you lay out a minefield you should always keep track of where you place the mines, so you can go back later and dig them up or detonate them. The Americans and Germans both used signs around their minefields that used code to indicate the placement of the mines. But this was a "hasty minefield" so we didn’t take time for that. Officers then rounded up anybody and everybody from the headquarters – cooks, clerks, everybody – and stationed them all around this area along the German border for approximately 24 hours. There were four main attacks before regular infantry came in to relieve us the next day. This was at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge, and our line at the extreme north prong of the three prong attack held – it’s in the history books – our particular line at the front held, you see. We claim that it was the minefield that held them back – no one is going to go through a minefield unless they have to. A few days later, three of our men were on their way to breakfast when they disappeared. We didn’t know what happened to them until several days later when they returned. Seems the Germans had dropped paratroopers in our area and they captured these three men. One night while everyone was sleeping these guys escaped – just got up and walked away – and returned to our camp. One of the men had very bad immersion foot from walking through creeks and everything else. After we knew the paratroopers were out there, the officers got everyone they could to scour these thick woods. We were shooting them out when we got a radio message that our fellas found them. We captured about a dozen of them and three or four of them were injured. We patched them up and sent them back through our medical channels. I could speak German, so one of my jobs was treating the prisoners of war. After all this, about 4:00 in the afternoon on December 26th as we were listening to the news on the radio, we got an artillery hit. It was not unusual in the area, but it was pretty close, very close. A little while later, there was another one…pretty regular for a while, and very close. Then, by 8:00 or 9:00 they were coming down two and three at a time…very regular--really coming down. We had a lot of people getting hurt. This was in thick woods, and they had the fuses set for "tree bursts." Instead of the artillery going to the ground and exploding it would hit the trees and blow up up there, and these jagged pieces of metal would come raining down on top of our men.
So we finished what we were doing and got these people out. The next guy in command of the unit said "Get everybody out of here, comb the area, be sure we’re not leaving anybody there." Then he told us where we were to meet up – a place where we had heavy equipment. So we all took off, because you’re not going to stay on the target. When I got there I went down to the medical battalion to see how everybody was. By that time it was midnight or later. It was cold, miserable and wet. All the fellas were asking, "How’s so-and-so? How’s this? How’s that?" They all wanted to know what was going on, you see. I told them the best I knew. Then someone handed me a canteen cup that was filled with a good amount of scotch whiskey. You needed that at that point, you know. So I drank it and found a quiet place on the floor of this church we were meeting at and went to sleep. The next day we went back to our camp and everything was all smashed up, our tent was shredded. The only one there was our dog. When the artillery started exploding the dog took off, and now she was so glad to see us! We set up a temporary camp at another place – had to get new equipment and everything. So for all practical purposes we didn’t do much for a couple of weeks. It wasn’t until later we learned that some of the German paratroopers had gotten back to German lines and reported that something important was going on in our camp. Because, you see, most units did not have electric lights and we did. So they thought we were a headquarters or artillery control center. That’s why they had targeted our camp and tried to knock us out. Our electric lights turned out to be not such a good deal after all!
We built a lot of roads and bridges over there. Once up near Remagen the American soldiers needed to get across the river on an old railroad bridge. The bridge was supposed to have been blown by the time our soldiers got there, but it wasn’t. Our job was to improve this road that ran up to the bridge, level it, so more infantry and supplies could get up there to cross. We had a whole infantry division – 15,000 men – working under us to clear a 10-mile stretch of road. The soldiers worked to clear the road while they were waiting to cross. Our battalion commander said "I feel like a 4-star general with all these men." After that we had another job – to build a pontoon bridge across the Rhine River. We joined with one or two other battalions to get the job done. It was an interesting operation. These motorboats would take these pontoons out into the river and hook them up to each other. Then, after the pontoons were in place, they would drop big, heavy weights attached to heavy steel cable down to the bottom of the river to hold the pontoons in place. Sometimes the current would take one across so they’d have to cut that cable and put another one in. This only took about four or five hours to put the whole thing in. Oh, they moved fast. Then the troops moved right across the bridge, over the river. We really had quite a bit of interaction with the civilians, too.
One town in particular There was another time in…I think it was in Marburg…we were sitting alongside the road waiting for a bridge that had been destroyed to be rebuilt so the tanks could get across. We had our Red Cross flag out, and a woman comes up: "I need your help." The woman’s having a baby. she said in English. We took over a nearby house and the aid men along with some German women delivered the baby. The woman who requested our help had lived in New York and returned to Germany to see her sick mother. When the war started she couldn't leave. Being Jewish, she hid out as a maid in someone's house. The woman who had the baby wanted to know my name. Supposedly named the baby after me. I got a lot of respect from my aid men after that. They didn’t know how to do anything about that! There was another sad occurrence someplace around there. When things were disorderly some of the guys would be taking things that they weren’t supposed to, such as German money – which was pretty worthless, anyhow. Well, there we were, parked somewhere – I don’t remember exactly where – and there was a big explosion. We went over and found two soldiers who tried to open a safe with a bazooka. A bazooka is a weapon that they used to shoot at tanks. So they shot the bazooka at this safe to blow it open. It hit the metal and bounced back at the soldiers, and killed them. Those guys weren’t from our company, though. Our guys were very respectful around explosives, they didn’t monkey around with them. At one town, supposedly cleared of the enemy, we had a prolonged artillery barrage. Fortunately none of our people were injured but many civilians were hurt. They were brought into our aid station. We, in turn, took them to the civilians hospital where there was an older doctor and a younger one in a German army uniform. They requested that I give the one in the uniform a note that saying that he had surrendered to me and I had detailed him to care for the civilians. Later we learned that there were several thousand German soldiers in the nearby woods. Some of our people said they probably thought the German army would return, find him, consider him a deserter without that paper. They knew more about the local situation than we did.
You mentioned that in these pictures our clothes looked nicely pressed. Well, do you know we kept our clothes neat over there? We would keep our change of clothes rolled up in our bedding rolls by day; and at night they would be flat underneath the bedding. One time we were moving pretty fast and didn’t have time to have hot water or shave. People were growing beards. They would say: "we might not be shaved, but we have pressed clothes." I mentioned earlier that we had a dog. Some of our line soldiers went into this bombed-out building and found this dog. She was mangy, starving…and they brought her in to us. We took care of her as best we could with what we had…eventually got everything under control. So then we tried to teach the dog tricks, and decided it was the stupidest dog you ever saw. But one day somebody walked through the place and said "Achtung!" and that dog sat up, paid attention, and we finally realized we had to teach the dog English. It only took about a week to transfer that dog’s language from German to English. I’ll tell you, when she had pups they were really in demand …everybody wanted a dog.
This is a great story about how some guys I served with on the German/Czech border at the end of the war (one of them is still a friend of mine today) got hold of a whole jeep-full of German Army pistols: This was at the end of the war, and these two officers from our unit were out looking for a place for us to move. They went east and decided to get off on a side road. They went further and further and they came upon a city called Carlsbad. Now they weren’t supposed to be there because Carlsbad was supposed to be Russian. They went in and were greeted by a German Army MP who happened to be Czech. He handed them his pistol and said, "I was never so glad to get rid of something in my life." Our officers found out that there was no mayor, no General. Nobody was in charge in Carlsbad. So they took this Czech to City Hall and registered him as Mayor to keep order, because you have to have somebody there to keep order. This Czech tells our guys where they need to go which was down to a town that was relatively close called Eger, in Germany. On the way there, they came across a German Army column because their jeep was faster than the Germans’ horses, of course. They told the Germans: "Do you want to surrender to us, or do you want to wait for the Russians? They’re about an hour behind us." These guys stacked their arms and drove off. They left their pistols and drove off. Next thing, these American officers came up on another column, same thing – Germans surrendered their weapons. But these fellas also told them, "You’re going to have a problem in Eger because there are SS in there and they might not surrender." So our officers joined this German Army column, went into Eger and talked to the commanding officer. They said, "We’ve got to straighten this out. Either you’re our prisoners or we’re your prisoners, but if you want to come with us, fine, because the Russians are right behind us." These guys were glad to surrender to the Americans, so our officers collected the pistols and headed back to headquarters. I saw them come in with all those guns that night and they told me what happened and gave me one of the pistols. I still have it. Most of our officers and soldiers were very nice gentlemen. Sometimes there were some that weren’t so nice, but really, for the most part they were pretty good guys. A good book that you might want to look at if you’re interested is called Spearheading D-Day. You can find it in the library. It’s got a lot of information. It tells about the composition of the units, the training they had, and it has lots of pictures. You can get a good idea of things just by looking at the pictures. It’s a very good book. Permission Granted for use by Stanley Goldman © 2001 |
Thanks for visiting! Do you have any questions? Comments?
E-mail us nbosch@aol.com,
web editor
Last update 05/09/01 03:21 PM
Copyright © 2001 Nieman Enhanced Learning Center
Stanley Goldman
So we were busy. We had men coming in with all kinds of injuries; if they
were serious we were giving them plasma. Our battalion commander kept coming in:
"Who’s here? What’s going on? How bad is it?" "That one knocked
the air out of me" He was covered with blood, so we started a plasma infusion. One of
our aid men, Hansen, was standing there holding a plasma bottle, looking kind of pale and
the commander said, "Something’s wrong." And we looked at Hansen, and he
was bleeding – one of the tree bursts had hit him. 
Scattered around in the woods along the German lines there
were different defensive structures that the Germans would build. There were "pill
boxes" which were reinforced concrete fortresses built into the ground. Some were
large and went down three or four floors, and some were small. They were all well armed.
Another thing they had we called "dragons teeth" – big triangular pieces of
concrete that stuck out of the ground, point up. They were supposed to keep tanks from
going across. Do you know how we handled those? We built bridges over them.
stands out in my mind. The kids would come over to look at the trucks and
everything, and we always had candy – a lot of candy. Every week we would get our PX
rations; there was candy and cigarettes and all kinds of things, but a lot of candy. We
gave the kids candy and chewing gum, and we let them take home whatever was left over from
our meal rations, too. One of the men in the town said to us: "We’ve been told
that when you come you’re going to kill us all." And I said, "No, as long
as no one’s bothering 
us, we’re not going to
bother the people. Some of your chickens might disappear, but as long as you’re
not bothering us we’re not going to be bothering you. And as suddenly as we came
we’ll suddenly leave." After that, this man spread the word around that we
weren’t going to hurt anyone, and so the people stopped hiding behind their curtains
and doors and started coming outside.
Here’s
a picture of something else we saw over there. Do you know what those are? Bodies. One day
one of our company officers told us he saw something strange going on. He told us where it
was and we went over…and it was a concentration camp. It was already under control by
American forces, so we looked around for a while until the MP’s chased us out. I
don’t remember where it was – someplace in central Germany – an awful thing
to see.
Do you know who these people are in this picture?
They’re Russians. This picture was taken in Pilsen. The Russians were portrayed as
our great buddies, but the truth was they were very suspicious of us. It wasn’t like
the way the newspapers wrote it up. The Russians weren’t very good to their
prisoners. Of course, the Germans weren’t very good to theirs, either. At the end of
the war the Germans preferred to surrender to the Americans because we would treat their
prisoners civilly and let most of them go within six months or a year or two. The Russians
kept their prisoners for several years and made them clean up Russia. They really worked
them hard.