Hal Power
Hal Power was born in Brooklyn in 1924 into a family of first-generation immigrants. His father came from a large family in Russia, later returning to bring over his relatives, and bore a scar from a Russian soldier's whip. His mother came from Poland with her own mother. Hal grew up on West 10th Street in a neighborhood of Italian, Irish, Jewish, and Greek families, playing simple street games. His father worked as a millinery operator and, after being beaten for refusing to join the union, made ends meet fixing sewing machines and reselling undeliverable postal boxes. From the age of eight, Hal sold newspapers and picked crops in Connecticut, sleeping in a barn to save money.
Hal attended Lafayette High School, where he was on the tumbling, swimming, and cheering teams and was voted most popular boy most likely to succeed. He met Rita Thurman when he was seventeen and she was fifteen, and they became engaged at her sixteenth birthday party. Facing the draft, he attended photography school in Manhattan, paying his way by cooking at a lunch counter. Soon after graduating he was drafted, trained in the 505 Military Police Battalion, and transferred to the 106th Infantry Division. Sent overseas, he reached the front lines in December 1944, spread dangerously thin along the Ardennes.
During the Battle of the Bulge, Hal's division was overwhelmed and nearly wiped out. He was wounded repeatedly, captured, and moved through hospitals, work camps, and prison camps including a large camp near Limburg. He survived a bombed hospital that broke his back and ribs, forced marches, boxcar transport, and beatings, secretly recording German military sites on a scrap of paper. He eventually escaped with a fellow soldier named Monty and, aided by a German civilian, made it back to American lines. After the war he underwent five years of psychiatric treatment for post-traumatic stress. He married Rita, became a photographer for Shell Oil and others, took up sailing in 1962, and later returned to Europe on an Honor Flight to visit the graves of his fallen comrades.
Full Transcript
all right hal 1924 brooklyn new york let's go back when you're just a little boy what was life like when you were a little kid in brooklyn well i played on the street with a lot of other kids who were italian irish jewish greek and we had lots of foe he played johnny on the pony hide and seek games that were very simple our parents were all first aliens that came over from russia and poland with my mother and father others from greece others from italy and we grew up on west 10th street in brooklyn new york which is about 10 miles north of coney
island a mixed neighborhood we knew nothing about other than that block that we lived on what did your dad do for a living my dad came over he was a millinery operator on ladies straw hats wouldn't join the union so he was beaten up because he wouldn't join the union and after that he fixed sewing machines from the factories that broke down and then would buy unopened boxes that were undeliverable by the post office for a dollar or two he'd bring them home and try and resell it there were two occasions that i remembered one when you opened the boxes they were all high button
left shoes what do you do with one the left shoe so that night we were all taking shoelaces out of the high button shoes pairing him up and then he went door to door to sell him the next time he came home he opened the box it was peanuts we had penis for breakfast peanuts for lunch peanuts for dinner so it was the union people that sent people out to be actually literally physically beautiful he came home bleeding like i said they don't know i was watching when he was in the bathroom and the blood was flowing from his head and my mother was with
him wow and i was peeking in through the open door now did your folks ever tell you about their journey from russia to here to the states they did my mother didn't my dad went back to russia to bring over he came from a family of 13 brothers and sisters and so he went over to bring over the balance of the brothers and sisters and his mother and father my mother came over with her mother her father had passed away she came from poland and he talked about the programs he showed me the scar he had on the back of his head where a russian
soldier had whipped him and he lived i think in the town of tourev i tried to trace it i couldn't find it but he was a lovable guy and would make the blitzes at all for the family when he would buy a sack of potatoes and cook all day yeah now did your folks they didn't meet until they were in the united states they didn't meet till they were the united states and after i was after my sister was born i was five years later and when i was eight years old i was selling newspapers and magazines from door to door making a penny here
and a petty there and in the summer i would hitch a ride to connecticut where i would pick beans and strawberries tomatoes and corn and made a deal with the farmer that i could sleep in the barn because i had no place to sleep and that way i would make about oh five cents a bushel of whatever yeah yeah and then that helped me buy a used bike after four or five years for twelve dollars wow [Laughter] now you know you were born you were a little kid around the great depression time yep did your folks ever tell you how that affected the family the
depression no they never talked about money my dad didn't try to go to california so we all got in a bus un un air conditioned and it would have to stop every now and then because the engine would overheat we finally got to california he rented a bungalow 212 a vendome street and tried to get a job there after a year it didn't work in the meantime somebody was trying to pick up my mother and so they would go to the park and they would take me along and in order to keep me out of the way her her so-called other chap would get got
me a saw and said this cuts water so there i was in a lake cutting water with a saw anyway i went i then ran back home got into a uh thick tree and they caught me in the fig tree they didn't know where i was i was eating figs yeah yeah yeah so did you guys stay in california then only for a year and then he came back we stopped the indian reservations at all he rented the house again for like thirty dollars a month right and uh your folks stayed together they said oh yeah they stay together love a loving couple um very
loving family you couldn't say how how courageous they were when they didn't have a pot to pee in and uh they were just lovable do you remember getting your first automobile first automobile was after i got married it was a studebaker i picked it up for i think 35 or 45 dollars it smoked like all hell and i had to get rid of it because it just dropped out and then the second automobile was a plymouth which i got about 10 years later yeah yeah where'd you go to high school high school was lafayette high school okay and that was within walking distance we didn't
have buses in those days i wasn't in the athletic arena i was on the tumbling team the swimming team the cheering squad mrs gray's math club the spanish club and i was voted most popular boy to succeed i almost graduated i was at a friend's house and he had to return a book and so he went around the corner to return the book to personally borrowed from who was rita thurman and i took one look at her and my heart just went my god she is fantastic she was 15 years old i was 17 years old but she had a boyfriend who gave her a
ring who said he's going to marry her so she was not available about three months later i was invited to a christmas party and it was a mutual friend of rita and her boyfriend i didn't have a girlfriend so i checked around they were all taken except for one who looked like marilyn monroe walked like marilyn rowe but had no brains between the ears but she was absolutely attractive if she'd walk down the street guys would just follow her all the way we got to the christmas party and rita's boyfriend within a half an hour had my girlfriend up upstairs in the bedroom and they
disappeared for an hour when they came down he was brushing himself off she was fixing her dress and rita fairman said forget it no more and i moved in like flynn and about three months four months later we were engaged at her 16th birthday party after that i wanted to go to college but the draft board advised me that i'd only have a year i'd be drafted out of college so i went to photography school which was about a year it was on lexington avenue and 57th street and there was a rexall drugstore diagonally across on the north west corner and the school was on
the south east corner and so i would be flipping hamburgers and pancakes and giving out pills behind the counter in order to pay for the school because my folks couldn't afford it so i paid for my schooling and uh was what i would call a flapjack cooker for the year and then graduated and about a month or two after i graduated i think was may or june i was drafted went into the army said goodbye to my fiance we had gotten engaged at her 16th birthday party and i had to borrow a hundred dollars for my mother in order to buy a ring um anyhow
i was put into the 505 military police battalion and got the basic training and then some added uh judicial how to make a civilian arrest how to do a quick kill how to disarm somebody with a knife a gun a pistol or whatever and then transfer to the 106th infantry division who was building up the division to go overseas and i found out later on it was to replace the second army in europe the second army had pushed the germans back to the national line and that was in november when that happened we went overseas on the queen mary i think and was set up
in a village near oxford england for about a month and then went over to france and it was raining so we were pup tents for uh about a week and then taken by truck to the front lines now at any time were they telling you what you were going to be doing what you would be seeing or was it just every day this is what we're doing today you didn't even know what you're doing today they would say get on a truck we're going to the front line so when you're going to the front lines you're a kid what are you thinking well i was
looking at the various buildings that had been blown up uh various pieces of hardware army hardware that had been blown up it was on the side of the road and they would get v for victory when you go through some towns and another town the people would go into their houses and it was an all-day trip on the back of a truck until we got to the front lines when we got to the front lines we were replacing the 106th division was replacing the second army that had 26 divisions on the front line from luxembourg to belgium roughly 26 miles 106 division replaced them so
just imagine how thin we were spread out my first assignment was outpost duty so you had to go along a very narrow path through minefields to get to your outpost position where you could see what's happening across an open field oh two or three football fields once you got through the woods which was very tight the dense forage was trees were very close it was winter the trees were loaded with snow and then the overcast was coming in we were reporting back through our our non-coms that we could see tanks coming out of the woods and then going they could go through the woods they
had to come out to the open area tanks cannons uh troops and we reported back that there was a lot of activity and that went up to shafe and the word came back forget it they're only doing a merry-go-round to make you think they're building up little did we know and our intelligence was unbearably poor that hitler had put together a plan for the battle of the bulge he brought in five or six generals and each one had a different part of the front and they were to bring in troops ammunition tanks and pulling the german troops from russia to the front lines and he
was waiting for the right time to break through and what he was after predominantly was our fuel they did not have fuel they much of their vehicles were using wood chips for fuel and so they were lining up and the uh december 10th i hit the front and outpost scar duty and at night you'd hear snow coming off you wouldn't hear the snow coming off but we had barbed wire ahead of us with tin cans the snow would hit the tin cans and you get a rattle and so there you are out there with one or two other individuals you have a gun with eight
rounds of ammunition oh we were given at the time a clip or two clips of ammunition and every fifth or sixth guy would get a hand grenade that was our ammunition no one no one there had had previous war experience we were all brand new including our officers and non-cubs that was december 10th on december 16th i was reporting back every day that they were bringing troops in and they said not to worry it's a quiet zone on the 16th the night of the 15th i was told i was transferred to headquarters company and that i'd been upgraded from private to private first class and
i said what did i'm supposed to do at headquarters company he said i have the slightest idea but we'll take you there tomorrow came back on the 16th of december 1944 and i was told fixed bayonets take off all patches look through your wallet so you have nothing that identifies you we're surrounded by two german panzer divisions and we're going to head out try to get back to our lines so we fixed bayonets we put the clip on a five i had eight rounds of ammunition others had eight rounds then every other fifth guy had a hand grenade and we're going off to try and
get back to our lines not realizing that nobody knew where our lines were i mean i i found that out later we walked about oh two football fields to the left flank going north northwest and we came to a clearing we got across the clearing and all of a sudden you looked over your right shoulder there were tanks machine guns mortars cannons and they opened up on us as if we were a shooti gallery and they killed about four to five thousand on that first day easily i was covered with shrapnel i hit the ground with two or three others that were around me and
i got as close to the ground as i could get and this machine gun with tracer bullets was coming at me and came within inches of my nose and stopped about an inch away from my nose as it dug into the dirt and then everything got very quiet at which point i crawled as best as i could back into the woods with the two other guys we got to a snow bank and that night we heard germans on the other side we had no ammunition what do you do with no ammunition we decided we would get out next morning as soon as it got light
we took off i took out off in one direction going the way they started to move north northwest not realizing that i was going through minefields in the ardennes forest that was that was on the 60th on the 17th i was going through the ardennes forest still hadn't stepped on a mine i was covered from head to foot bleeding all over on the 18th i noticed a clearing and on the other side of a stream about the width of this half the width of this room a shallow stream covered with ice i could see american truck and i figured oh i got back to the
american lines it was on the side of it it was on a dirt road and there was a hill that came behind it that was clear so i was thinking of how do i get across and i figured oh i'll make it as best to dash as i could as i stepped out into the stream i got midway and my feet got stuck about ankle deep in the ice in this shallow stream at which point i was trying to get my legs out when i was hit on the side of the helmet with a sniper's bullet german sniper's bullet which went around the inside of
the helmet came out and cut me across the right eye and fell to the ground i finally got across they ripped my helmet off i picked my helmet up i was bleeding a blood coming all with it i got the other side and the chap behind the truck said dig in we're surrounded by panzer divisions i couldn't dig in so that night which was the 18th of december 1944. i got to the space that was at almost the top of the hill about a half a foot from the top of the hill i couldn't dig in i said my prayers to my fiance to my mother and father to my sister and fell asleep the next morning i got up there was a blue sky there were birds chirping it was quiet as could be and the soldier next to me said stand up as best you can we're we have surrendered and so i couldn't get up i think i was up halfway at the bottom of the hill which was like a submarine you could
look right down the edge was clear were two german officers one was drunk as could be the other was sober the drunk one was on my left and he said all your americans on the right side of the hill step down here light up they lined up and then he took his burp gun out and shot them all killed them the other officer had me and one other wounded chap put in the back of a truck and he says you're going to interrogation they spoke english very well and i got the back of the truck and as we're going along here's this open field that
as far as the eye could see where bodies frozen in the snow body parts i don't know if they were germans or americans i i just i could see that to this day finally got to schoenberg with the interrogation which was a farming community he went back into a barn that had doors that were about 16 feet high the doors opened up i was ushered into the first disc and before i could say i was already given my name rank and serial number before i could say where he says you're stupid americans he said you're in 106 division he's telling me he said you had
no ammunition you had no no weapons he said we had our germans going behind the lines cutting your communications which is why you couldn't get your your artillery the lines have been cut this is before that we had uh walkie-talkies and before we had wireless communications they cut the lines they came through with american uniforms with mp beds on they got behind us and they were pushing or redirecting all the traffic that was coming in with whatever ammunition or warm clothing that was being sent to the front lines as we were told they were sending them back they were mps americans speaking english he said
i used to be a taxi driver in chicago he said we knew all about your outfit he said you took the place of the second one division he says stupid he says your division has been wiped out it was 106th division was the only division wiped out completely in the battle of the bulge at which point i didn't have to give him my name i didn't give him my serial number he didn't ask for anything didn't look at any what what what outfit here with and i was taken in a uh a vehicle to geralt stein which is east of schoenberg in germany taken to
a hospital this is now on the 19th of of december 1944. i get to the building and that building was designated as a surgery i was taken in and the doctors they took all the shrapnel out from head to foot and i was clean as a whistle i just got scars all over from where the shrapnel was taken out i was taken up to the fourth floor each floor it must have been a sports arena because the floors had polished wood like a basketball court and they had hay lined rolls with german wounded on all of them i got up to the fourth floor take it to the end of the uh building under a baby grand
piano with a bust of hitler i could see that bust of hitler to this day right at the edge of the baby grand piano and there was another american under there with me and that was on the 19th each day we would hear bombs drop not too far from the building that we were and on december 25th 1944 christmas day the young kids from geraldstein were handing out candies and goodies to the wounded soldiers and every day at 11 o'clock the bombing would take place i didn't realize then that we were only about a mile or less from the railroad station and they were bombing
the railroad station on the 25th of december christmas day at 11 o'clock a bomb hit that hospital dead center or wherever it hit it i went from the top floor down to the basement i was out something had pinned me down my back had been splattered i found out later after i got back to america all my ribs on the left side had been broken my back was broken and when they took me out they thought i was german because every everyone else in the hospital was german so i was taken out on a stretcher black is the ace of spades and as i got
out there were german bodies all over the place and some were saying health and health so i don't know how long i was buried before i was taken out and taken around to a theater and the stretcher was put on the arborist next to a wall that was coming in on me two days later they found out i was an american after i'd been cleaned up and when they found out i was american things had quieted down had they had they found out i was in america in the day that they took me out i'd have been shot right then and there the town was
angry and americans i was taken to the railroad station and put in a warehouse by the tracks next to another chap who was lying there and i don't know how long we were there but every day we were either strafed or bombed i couldn't move i was paralyzed and then one day a large boulder came through the roof and opened up his gut and he died at some point and that this is a part that my memory is a blank i don't know how i got to a march where the america is being marched from gerald stein to whitley none of us had any clothes
i'm on the march and as you as guys were falling out they were shot right there in the spot so i was trying to drag and carry as many as i could midway we were given a rest near a and since it was a dirt road there were farms all along the way and there was a pig pen that i was up against with the chicken wire and i saw sugar beets and frozen potatoes they're all frozen and so i reached underneath to try and get the sugar beet and the pig came out and with its claws was pulling it back the pig won i
didn't get the sugar beat but in the interim i had a a piece of paper that i was pin pricking i put in where garel stein was and then from there i was putting in v2 sites that we came across buzz bomb sites that we came across ammunition dumps and i did that all the way until i escaped which was about four months later i got to whitney i was separated from everybody in the group and put into a civilian prison for one day all by myself i couldn't figure out why and then from there take it to another prison which was for pows and
then take it on a train from there up to either kokum or koblenz which was northeast of whitley and there i was taken out to a work camp that they were chopping wood for the wood-burning vehicles and my job was to take tree limbs and bring them over to the guys that are making smaller like max book sized chips one day they i don't know how long this was at night we slept in the attic of a and they'd bring us each a slice of horse meat which we cooked on the potbelly stove i don't know how long i was there but one day they
asked me to lift a log to bring over and the log was very heavy i tried to lift it up and i passed out i didn't come to until that night when i was in the back of a volkswagen being driven with two guards in the front drove all night long until we got to vod bear trick bart patrick was a summer or year-round tourist attraction for hot baths the buildings there had been taken over by the germans for surgery for rehab for a host of reasons it was no longer a tourist attraction i was brought into the schneider hotel came in and we i
was put down in a stretcher at the base of the staircase that went up and at the end was a door and during the entire day we got there in the morning during the entire day they're bringing out body parts legs arms with casts and it wasn't until night until dusk that i was taken in and i had taken a picture of my bride-to-be when i was in photography school on a one-shot camera which is you have three glass plates they're black and white and you dye them into into three different dye plastic sheets of film after you've enlarged them and then you have to
put one on top of the other and it's all pigment so that you have a a photograph with pigments which doesn't fade so i've and i but i had one picture taped across my chest and when they looked and said they're hoops which means very pretty and then they pushed and pulled and the next thing i know i was going upstairs my ankles were wrapped and then weights with canvas strips that were put over rods and then weights on the other side to stretch they were stretching my spine i don't know how long i was there at some point whether it was three weeks or
four weeks i don't remember at some point i was up on crutches and i heard that there was an american on the floor below so i went down they had cut off his legs one below the knee one above the knee they never put bandaging on it just wasn't done right so i asked to see the commandant i went to take her down to the commandant's office i complained about the america that did not have proper badging and he said to me don't worry we take care of it so that should back out this happened for three days and the guy pat passed away so
i went down to complain saying i told you he would die he said i told you we would take care of it as i walked out two burly german guards took me down into the potato cellar a real potato cellar beat the daylights out of me i was out they pulled my left arm out of its shoulder socket they pulled this one out partially and the next thing when i came to i was tied in the center of a tandem bus filled with wounded german ambulatory patients and as we were going down the road american p-47s came down to strafing they all got out i
couldn't get get out i was stuck in there fortunately they came down the center and the bullets would go on the outside seats so i i was just straight but never hit when they came back they yelled your comrades they shot i go back and i try to think of i just sat there totally numb i finally got to cologne it was taken off the bus and it was the church the big church in cologne which the army had taken over i was taken in there with the guard and i had to go to the urinal so i went to the yard there's a window
and i'm looking out the rear window and there's a great big camouflage net and out comes two non-propeller planes i had never seen a plane before without a propeller i didn't know about jet planes they came out they turned around they went back in again so i put down a little marker i put down about four four little pricks there got back and the next thing i'll do is i'm taking in a car up to dietz germany i get to teach germany and that's a prison camp first president logan i think it was 12a everybody there slept on straw they must have had about 14
15 000 americans they had russians they had italians they had belgians they had french it was a big prison camp and i so i i took the blanket i went outside and slept on the stone plank not realizing the blind was loaded with lice so the next day i was loaded with lice and i would punch out the little we the seeds from the hay to to eat and one day i noticed that the non-cubs were sleeping on cots behind chicken wire about five non-comes and all the soldiers were on the floor there were some doing their bidding i couldn't figure out what the hell's
going on then i was called in to do some bidding and i said what do you they were friendly with the germans so the germans got them extra food and everything i was taken out taken outside tied to the bottom of the building and the temperature then was farad i looked it up afterwards what the temperature was it was 20 degrees fahrenheit and i was left out there tied because a lot of the guys i found out that didn't do the bidding or couldn't do it anymore were taken out and disappeared so there i am and i figured how do you stay alive i i
ate the snow for liquid and i punched to continue to punch the seeds out of the hay that was all around the place and i was there for like three or four days i already had frozen fake frozen hands and i could hear in the distance a lot of cannon fire artillery everything else and the next day i was taken in and i tried to hide they were taking out the soldiers i tried to hide under the hay but they were going around with their bayonets and they so i finally popped up we were put into boxcars about 70 to a box car no windows
at the railroad station in dietz which was near limburg a pail was in the middle of the boxcar nobody could get to the pail so what you whatever you had to do was done where you were standing or lying train took off it stopped on the siding i could see through the crack and the wood that we were on a parallel with another trade about a little twice the size late to this room and then american planes came down and strafed that on the train it was loaded with it blew up like the fourth of july then they took after our trade we couldn't get
out the doors were locked finally somebody opened the doors i got out no one else got out of my car they were either dead or wounded and couldn't move i was the only one that could get that was able to get out of the car we formed a pow and then we got the tipping of the wings and they took off that night we were put uh roughly 100 soldiers that were still alive i don't know how many lines there were with two guards in the front two guards in the back it must have been about two three o'clock in the morning and as we're
marching along the river lawn i said to the chap next to me i can remember his name like was just yesterday monty i said monty now is the time to escape you take care of your guard i'll take care of my guard let's ease back from the line as best we can three of the guys ahead of us heard it and they eased back with us so i pushed my guard into the river he pulled me in with him i had hardly any clothes on i mean we all had torn shirts tart pants nothing that you'd say would be warm enough the water was freezing
remember i was on the swimming team and the guard was had his heavy coat he had his rifle over his shoulder he had his helmet on and i figured now is the time to use what i learned when i was in the 505 combat village release a quick kill it worked he disappeared i crawled out got out and said monty said yeah we took the other three guys who went up the top of the hill we were in the town of wyldberg work on the lawn right by the bridge that crosses over the river german troops are marching towards the front line you could hear
the cannon fire off in the distance then i hear about americana and i figured quickly if he wanted to all he had to do was raise his voice he would have been killed right there i said yeah i didn't know what the hell that meant he but he said come we figured okay so he followed and it was up to a maternity hospital middle of the hill he took us in brought us up to the attic brought us each hot water it wasn't soup was hot water i think and a slice of bread and he said and he disappeared we stayed up there we could
see out the window the germans now were trying to blow up the bridge across the lond river and parts of it were being blown up the second day they were halfway up the hill and then the third day or fourth day they were at the top of the hill americans were coming in across the bottom of the hill and then smoke grenades went off above the hospital i had been so bombarded by bombs and strafing and i no longer was in my right mind when i saw the smoke grenades up over i had to get out of there i i was section 8 at the
time i didn't realize it like they now post traumatic syndrome i went down there was a white medics coat hanging i took the white menace coat put it on my shoulders walked out with my hands up as best i could as you notice i don't have the ability to raise them too high walked out made a left turn and all the fiery was it was like a shooting gallery utter quiet got down to the bottom of and the american god said halt and i said i'm an american p.o.w where's your command post he said one block to the right upstairs got to the right one
blocks the right couldn't get upstairs i think i crawled up there finally got up there and i said to that that hospital is a maternity hospital we have four americans up in the attic and a civilian that helped us escape don't cut off the artillery from bombing it and then i gave a clue of where the germans were at the top of the hill that we could see out the window and then i said i have a piece of paper here where i have buzz bomb sites v2 sites and i showed i said this is out of geralt stein he said oh that's all in
american hands now don't worry about it we'll take care of it at which time a wagon pulled across with pork chops and fruit salad and i looked out the window and i puked my guts out after i had the future pork chops they took me to the core and that night a plane went overhead and they say i jumped out these are the stories they told me i jumped out of the cot that i was sleepy and started to dig and cry like a baby into the ground a week later i was they couldn't move me so a week later i was flown to a
hospital in england chichester and i was put behind locked doors truly section 8. before i left i told them to take care of our guys and take care of the german who took care of us make sure he has lots of food and all i got to tissue behind the glock doors and i'm being treated for i think the list was like 80 different things from malnutrition i'd lost 90 pounds i wasn't quite in my right mind and almost every night or every other night i was picked up in the town of chichester in my pjs having escaped from the hospital and i was there for like three months before i was shipped back to the states where my child bride and i got married and then i had a 60 or 90 day furlough with hospital care in asheville north carolina we were staying at the biltmore hotel had a wonderful trip there it was a honeymoon then was sent to little rock arkansas and then sent back to virginia beach before i was discharged on december 7th 1945.
then i had five years of psychiatric treatment from dr francis terrence on a one-to-one basis i didn't realize that they never looked at my dog tags which has an h on it hebrew i think they were trying to save individuals who had some ability of power to chop the wood to do things for them and i guess i was one of those since i demonstrated i could carry live i have a a letter that someone sent me a year after uh i was discharged and after he was discharged he found out my home address in brooklyn he's from birmingham alabama wrote me a a letter
of thanks for saving his life he says i don't know how you carry me i didn't realize that my dog tags were behind the picture they never saw the dog tags they never took the picture off i came home with the picture now the five years of psychiatric help how did rita do with all this going on to get you back into normalcy if i were her i would have divorced me i couldn't get into elevators i couldn't get into trains i would walk home i had three i had to get three jobs because she got pregnant rather quickly so we had a son and
i was i was nothing like you'd call a human being we'd go to the beach and i'd play would go over i would start to cry and dig into the ground if i were her i would have divorced me said get the hell out of here how long did it take do you think before things were normal for you uh well after the psychiatric treatment i began to manage and that took another a couple of years but i was able to manage it and uh i was very strict even my daughter will tell you i was very very strict the why of that strictness i
don't know but everything had to be just so until i got to be an old old man when did you feel that you were in normal life in america i mean what was your main part part of your career and where did you guys settle down i think it came gradually after i got i couldn't get a job easily but then i was hired by shell oil company as a pr photographer and i created i began to use my inner creative juices and i walked up to 39 flights to the office right and down and then i had a job at because we had the
kid and then i had another job mixing chemicals at someone's photographic studio anyway i would say it happened about 1950 1950 52 53. someone's in there so about five six years yeah after the war ended that but not like it is now yeah yeah it was totally different i i took up sailing in 1962 and my wife bless her heart went along with it she was not a sailor she loved to get books and so she would read while were sailing and then we went to the caribbean on windjammer cruises and i would take the kids at that time for many years and it was in that environment where i just became relaxed totally relaxed did you ever head back to europe did you ever go back yes i
was back there uh two years ago on a honor flight they took me back to where i was captured oh and while i was there i always wondered why there was nothing in the history books about the guys that were shot that were with me on that hill the locals took their bodies took their dog tags buried them got large stones and then had copper brass plates made with their names on it from their dog tags and there are three graves they're multi-graves but three greys that may have 10 to 15 names on it on the stones and we went back there and that's exactly
where they are but the government is doing it it was the locals and they get flowers they keep it cut they treat it like it was their old and schoenberg is no longer a farming community it's a delightful small village when you went back any memories flood back oh yeah the whole thing comes back but nothing serious you take it in uh having gone back to you can't believe that it's been 70 some odd years since you've been there yeah and uh and then shortly after that they took me on another flight to washington and then they took me they went to see the two
of the unknown soldier at arlington national cemetery well my wife's buried up there and they made a special trip around to where her tombstone is so i could see her and there's there there she was a city on the top of the hill overlooking washington dc in a wonderful spot so what advice would great granddad want to leave for the next generation to my next generation what after all you've been through i have left as my daughter knows i have not tried to interfere with their lifestyle or what they want to do