Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans’ Eyes

Ep 15 Liberators of the Holocaust Part 1 - Buchenwald Concentration Camp

Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution” was carried out in 42,400 concentration camps, ghettos, and forced labor camps spread out throughout Europe.  An estimated 15 to 20 million people were murdered in these camps including six million Jews. For the young American GIs who liberated them, the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps far outweighed anything they had experienced in war.  Tasked with the welfare, James S. Moncrief was one of the first GIs to arrive at Buchenwald.  He quickly reported back to Major General Robert W. Grow, that the horrors he saw at Buchenwald were worse than anything he could have imagined.   Robert Muhler stayed at Buchenwald about one week, restoring order and standing guard.  He found himself drawn to the skeleton men walking around, and yet repelled.  He had never seen such emaciated people.  John M. Williams was given a ghastly tour of  Buchenwald by one of the inmates, Mr. Bernstein, who showed Williams the various methods the Nazis used to murder Buchenwald’s inmates including inoculating them with disease, crushing their skulls, the gassing method, shooting, and the nail method.  Seeing a dead soldier didn’t bother Williams, but the walking dead at Buchenwald were ghastly.  After the B-24 bomber he navigated was shot down over France, Art Zander spent seven weeks in hiding, until he was double-crossed by a Frenchman and turned over to the Gestapo.  Zander was horrified to learn that instead of being sent to a prisoner of war camp, he was one of an unlucky 870 American soldiers deemed terror fliers by Hitler himself and ordered to concentration camps.  At Buchenwald, Zander and his fellow GIs avoided the wife of the camp’s commandant.  Nicknamed the Bitch of Buchenwald, she walked around the camp admiring the men’s tattoos.  If she saw one she liked, she had them murdered and skinned.  Those stories and more in Part 1 of a 3 part episode on Liberators of the Holocaust, the most important podcasts yet in the Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans' Eyes series.

Liberation of Buchenwald

       

Buchenwald Barracks - Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and author of NIGHT is highlighted.  

The Nazis experimented on prisoners inoculating them with toxins and disease germs to provide serums for German soldiers

 

Wooden shoot where prisoners had their heads crushed and their bodies flung down to the basement.  Notice the meat hooks where bodies were hung until they stiffened.

Nail Method - Prisoners were lined up next to the wall as an executioner pushed a lever shooting a nail like object out of the wall into the prisoners head killing them

Crematorium - 10 ovens were installed at Buchenwald.  The same type were later installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The ashes of the dead were spread in the surrounding area like garbage.

     

Prisoners were often forced to watch executions

Ilse Koch, the Buchenwald commandant's wife, was a sadist who would wander through the camp searching for prisoners with interesting tattoos.  If she saw one she liked, she had the bearer shot and skinned.  She made book covers, lampshades, pocketbooks, and bags from the human tattooed skin.  After the camp's liberation, her macabre collection was put on display by the GIs so that local residents could see the depths of her depravity.  

Ilse Koch, the BITCH of Buchenwald, on trial for war crimes

 

James S. Moncrief and his wife Jerry.  Moncrief arrived at Buchenwald just hours after Captain Keffer found the camp to assess what was needed to care for the liberated prisoners.

Robert Muhler spent a week at Buchenwald caring for the prisoners.  He found himself "...drawn to those skeleton men walking around, and yet repelled."  He considered what happened at Buchenwald to be a "demonic evil."  After the war Muhler became a pacifist and a Presbyterian minister.

In 1946, just one year after he helped liberate Buchenwald, John M. Williams wrote a brilliant, unpublished essay  called "Concentration Camp Chaos" for a class he took at Texas Christian University.  Williams described the macabre tour of the camp that Mr. Bernstein, an English speaking Jewish survivor of the camp, gave him.  Williams is pictured with his wife Phyllis. 

 

 

 

  

Ep. 14 - Shattering the Siegfried Line

The Siegfried Line which spread from the Netherlands to Switzerland was Nazi Germany’s 400 mile westernwall, a heavily fortified defensive line that took the Allies six months to pierce.  David Saltman remembered the Siegfried Line as a formidable opponent in itself.  Robert Maxwell  regained consciousness after throwing himself on a grenade to save his buddies only to find himself alone in an abandoned house.  Maxwell found a lieutenant who helped him walk to a medic station.  Along the way, his heal was blown off by another grenade.  After having been pulled off the front line and sent back to the regimental headquarters, Edward Rychnovsky regularly checked the piles of corpses brought in on trucks for men from his company.  When Nicholas Oresko’s platoon was ordered to make a third assault on a German position near the Siegfried Line, Oresko gave the order to attack, but no one in his platoon moved.  Oresko decided to go by himself, and took out two machine gun emplacements that were pinning his men down.  Stan Davis’s armored division took Trier, which had previously been thought impregnable.  A seemingly peaceful apple orchard near the Sieg River proved deadly for Ralph Keller’s company, which took devastating losses. Byron Whitmarsh’s squad was engaged in a fierce firefight in and around a German cathedral.   Furious that the Allies could use the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen as a bridgehead across the Rhine River, The German forces waged an intense ten day battle to destroy the bridage with everything they had.  Lloyd Huggins, Rex Whitehead, Byron Whitmarsh, Clarence Taylor, and Barney Zylka rememembered the fighting at Remagen as some of the fiercest of the war.  Those stories in more in this the 14^th episode of Always Remember – World War II Through Veterans Eyes.

 

David Saltman

Robert D. Maxwell, Medal of Honor Recipient

Henry Heller

Nicholas Oresko, Medal of Honor Recipient

Stan Davis

Ralph Keller

Byron Whitmarsh

Lloyd Huggins

Rex Whitehead

Clarence Taylor

Barney Zylka

 

 

Episode 13 - Typhoon of Steel: The Battle of Okinawa

The final battle before the anticipated invasion of mainland Japan, Okinawa became the deadliest battle for US forces in the Pacific with savage fighting on land, air, and especially sea.  Nicknamed the Typhoon of Steel because of its intense artillery fire and bombardments on land, air and sea, the battle for Okinawa cost 49,000 US casualties including more than 12,000 deaths.  For the Japanese soldiers, the battle for Okinawa was far worse with 90,000 deaths.  As always, civilians suffered the most with an estimated 150,000 dead.  William Agen recalled the terror of kamikaze attacks that occurred three or four times during the day and even more often at night.  Raymond Goron and Phil Klenman both lost their best friends in kamikaze attacks.  23 servicemen received the Medal of Honor for their heroism at Okinawa.  This podcast features the stories of six Medal of Honor recipients.  Kamikazes set the LCS that Richard M. McCool commanded ablaze and resulted in 50% casualties amongst his crew, yet McCool still managed to rescue some 98 men from a sinking destroyer.  Richard E. Bush threw himself on a grenade to save the wounded men in his squad.  Elsewhere, a wounded Robert E. Bush gave his lieutenant a life saving transfusion of plasma with his one hand, while he used his other to fire his pistol at the advancing Japanese who were less than 30 feet away.  Angry that the Japanese had his riflemen pinned down for too long on Hen Hill, Clarence Craft led a heroic attack against the Japanese defensive line killing an estimated 25 Japanese soldiers.  Atop the 400 foot Maeda Escarpment, conscientious objector Desmond T. Doss rescued an estimated 75 soldiers lowering them 35 feet below the escarpment in a rope supported litter tied to a tree stump, all the while under enemy fire as he did so.  While the bloody battle for Okinawa raged on, Staff Sergeant Henry E. "Red" Erwin was flying bombing runs over the Japanese mainland.  On a mission to bomb a chemical plant near Koriyama, Japan, the phosphoresce smoke bomb Erwin was supposed to drop to signal to B-29s that they had reached their target exploded prematurely in the launching chute, shooting its 1300 degree Fahrenheit flames into the aircraft and, more precisely, into Erwin's face blinding him and destroying his nose.  "Open the window!  Open the window!," Erwin yelled as he attempted to throw the burning bomb out the window to save his aircraft.  Those stories and more in this 13th episode of Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans' Eyes.

 

William Agen

Raymond Goron

Richard M. McCool

Richard E. Bush

Robert E. Bush

Clarence Craft

Desmond Doss

Henry "Red" Erwin

Henry "Red" Erwin receiving the Medal of Honor

 

 

 

Ep. 12 - Prisoners of War

Millions of Allied and Axis soldiers became POWs in WW II.  His weight down to 90 pounds, sick with malaria, Edgar Kuhlow overheard two German guards talking about his condition – “He is going to stay laying here in Germany.”  Forced to work in railyards 2 – 3 times a week in Munich, William Ledeker knew he was better off than the concentration camp prisoners he would occasionally see from nearby Dachau.  Recovering from being shot in the back and the shoulder, Jim Lingg was still loaded onto boxcars along with other POWs by the SS. While trying to liberate the Belgium town of Viller-La-Bonne-Eau, Michael Cannella and six others were separated from their company.  Badly outnumbered with an intense fire fight taking place outside, Cannella’s makeshift squad took refuge in a cellar.  Unbeknownst to them, it was already occupied by nearly a dozen German soldiers.  Together they all made a pact, they would lay down their guns and surrender to whoever took over the town. When the Russian forces liberated his camp, Paul MacElwee found he went from being imprisoned by the Germans to now being imprisoned by the Russians.  Seldom reported in the official records of the war, opposing forces in WW 2 sometimes did not abide by the Geneva Accords and took no prisoners.  American GIs like James Spaulding couldn’t forget the senseless killing of soldiers who should have been taken prisoners of war. 

Edgar Kuhlow and John Ulferts

William Ledeker

James Lingg (standing far right)

Michael Cannella

Paul MacElwee

Murray Shapiro

Robert Erhardt

James and Eva Mae Spaulding

Ep. 11 - The Battle of the Bulge

With the Germans seemingly on the run everywhere in Europe, the Allies had hoped WW 2 would be done by year’s end 1944.  Those hopes were shattered when the Germans launched their largest counter offensive on the western front, the Battle of the Bulge.  A frustrated Tom Carr, who served as a scout, had warned his officers for weeks that the ermans appeared to be preparing a sneak attack, only to be ignored.  The Germans weren’t the only enemy American GIs faced.  Samuel Erlick recalled it was all he could do just to stay warm and avoid frozen feet.  Still, David Kitchen was grateful for the bitter cold that kept the war dead that littered the Ardennes Forest refrigerated avoiding the stink and maggots that would have been present otherwise.  German soldiers dressed as American GIs tricked David Kitchen’s squad into giving them their rifles.  Frank Caruk recalled that when German soldiers dressed as American GIs were caught they were summarily executed.  Mevlin Biddle took out three German snipers and three machine gun nests single handedly his actions earned him a Medal of Honor, though Biddle did not want to celebrate the killing he had done.  The Bulge desensitized a young Ross Rasmussen who afterwards was ashamed of his callousness recalling eating his lunch on the frozen corpse of a German soldier.  Separated from his unit, Murray Shapiro escaped German capture thanks to an old German woman.  Stan Davis spent 30 nights in his tank protecting Bastogne.  Their stories in more in this 11^th podcast of Always Remember – World War II Through Veterans Eyes.

Tom Carr

Samuel Erlick

Frank Caruk

Melvin Biddle

Murray Shapiro

Stan Davis

 

Ep.9 - Sand in Our Shoes: Island Hopping in the Pacific Theater

As the Allies embarked on their island hopping campaign growing ever closer to the Japanese mainland, they soon discovered that their enemy in the Pacific was adept at presenting new challenges on every island.  Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, Leyte would all forever be ingrained in WW 2 veterans memories - and in their nightmares.  Richard V. Morgan remembers Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman,, who stood atop a heavily garrisoned Japanese bunker directing demolition charges despite his being mortally wounded.  Bonnyman would receive the Medal of Honor posthumously.  For Dennis Olson, his poems helped him cope with the horrible losses he endured at Tarawa.  Later, at Peleliu, 19 year old Arthur Jackson volunteered to secure a position in the shallow enemy trench system wiping out 12 pillboxes and killing 50 Japanese soldiers.  He would receive the Medal of Honor for his actions from President Truman himself one year later.  In the Philippines, a young L.W. Clark and his buddies lose their appetite as 100 Filipino villagers stumble across the rice fields towards their dispensary seeking medical help after having been bombed by the 11th Airborne, who believed Japanese soldiers were still hiding in the village.  Amongst them, a soldier carried a still baby whose guts were hanging over the side of his body, his stomach ripped open by a mortar shell.  James Spaulding recalled Manilla was torn to pieces when they finally liberated it.  Leo "Red" Gavitt was instructed to pick up "Just the live ones boys" as he helped pluck 150 American sailors from the sea after the Battle of Leyte Gulf.  Roy Parks returned from the Pacific with a souvenir he never asked for - jungle rot - which left blisters all over his hands, and made his finger nails and toe nails fall off.

 

Richard V. Morgan

Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman, Jr.

Dennis H. Olson

Arthur J. Jackson

L.W. Clark and his wife Ella

James Spaulding and his wife Eva Mae

Roy and Penny Parks

 

Ep. 10 - Minorities in World War II

The African Americans who served on the USS Mason destroyer had already endured 90 mph winds and 60 foot waves that split the Mason's deck as they shepherded convoys to safety in the Atlantic when their beloved Captain Blackford was replaced with a racist captain who claimed the African Americans sailors he led smelled, couldn’t swim, and were hard to educate .  1st Lieutenant Vernon Baker, also an African American, destroyed six machine gun nests, two observer posts and four dugouts at Castle Aghinolfi in Italy only to see Captain Runyon, his white commanding officer who abandoned the firefight, receive the Silver Star.  An illegal immigrant to the US, Jose Lopez, a Mexican American, saved his company at the Battle of the Bulge by single handedly taking out over 100 German soldiers with his machine gun fire.  Iva Ikuko Toguri, a Japanese-American who had the misfortunate of being in Japan when the war broke out, found herself nicknamed Tokyo Rose and accused of being a traitor even as she tried her best to help the American POWs and fighting force anyway she could behind enemy lines.  Ira Hayes, a Native American, raised the American flag at Iwo Jima, but afterwards could not dispel the terrible combat memories that haunted him when he got home.  Hattie Brantley joined the Army Nurse Corps to see the world, but was instead imprisoned under the harshest conditions in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines for almost the duration of the war.  Their stories and more in this 10th podcast of Always Remember – WW 2 Through Veterans Eyes.

James Graham

Lorenzo Dufau (left) and James Graham (right)

Medal of Honor recipient Vernon Baker

Vernon Baker later years

Medal of Honor recipient Jose M. Lopez

Iva Ikuko Toguri

Ira Hayes

Hattie Brantley in the Philippines

Hattie Brantley's tombstone 

Ep. 8 - Bloody Red - Blood-soaked Omaha Beach Remembered

Bloody Omaha Beach bore the brunt of D-Day’s savage fighting with more casualties than all of the other D-Day beaches combined.  Aware that the men he led in one of the first waves to land on Bloody Omaha Beach had no prior combat experience, Staff Sergeant Walter Ehlers single handedly took out several German machine gun nests even while he was in their crossfire.  Ehlers was at first elated when he was told he would be receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions, but he was soon brought to his knees upon learning the terrible loss he suffered on Omaha beach. Trying to sleep after having witnessed so much death and suffering on Omaha beach, Charles Toole’s buddy told him that 24 hours from now there’d be a lot more dead in their own company.  Toole’s buddy’s words proved eerily prophetic.  Thanks to two Texas Rangers, there were far less dead on Omaha beach than there would have been otherwise.  Leonard Lomell and his buddy Jack Kuhn climbed the 100 foot cliffs of Pointe du Hoc even as Nazi soldiers fired down upon them, threw grenades, and cut their ropes.  Lomell and Kuhn knew the lives of countless Americans depended on them finding the huge 155 mm coastal howitzers the Nazis had hidden above, capable of firing five miles or more out to sea, far enough to hit the troop ships landing for the invasion.  Nothing in their 18 years of life could have prepared Frank Caruk and Mark Wilson for all the suffering they witnessed landing in the initial waves at Omaha beach.

Walter Ehlers

Walter and Roland Ehlers

Charles Toole and the podcast host John Ulferts

Frank Caruk and his wife Janet

Leonard Lomell