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Were there any times when you were driving back casualties to the EVAV hospitals that German soldiers or aircraft interfered in any way?

Sometimes there would be, but we ourselves were never bothered.

Anyway we traveled on across France, constantly working. For instance we were never in reserve. A lot of these people would go in reserve but we weren't. If the fourth armored was pulled back for a breather, then they'd send us off to the fifth infantry division or maybe the ninetieth division so we never on a rest period, constantly at work and we lived in the ambulance, we slept in the ambulance, we ate what food we could find. The only good hot food we had was when we went back to the MASH unit or EVAC hospital, and they had cooks there fix hot food, we get a hot meal.

Were these MASH hospitals located in towns?

Not necessarily—they could be along side the roads. What they could do they would, in Korea, or in that movie MASH, they'd stay in one place pretty much, but these EVAC hospitals, when they filled up and got a full contingent of wounded, then they would evacuate those people back, and they would jump over, leapfrog ahead of the other ones. So they kept leapfrogging along and they would go back to a more station hospital, where somebody would set up in a building, some people would set up in a village somewhere. So that's how that went across there.

Then we came to Verdun which was a First World War where we beat the Germans again. I don't know how we kept beating the Germans. They just didn't have as much materials as we had. Anyway, then we went on east to a place called Metz on the Moselle River and we were, I remember this one, we were asked to go into this town on the Moselle, to evacuate some little old ladies from a rest home. We were up on top of a hill behind the trees and then every few minutes one of us would go down this road that was under artillery fire. We thought sure we were going to get it then, but we didn't. We made it down to the bottom, went into the town, picked up the little ladies, and took them back. I think back to Bordeaux, but they didn't really want to go with us and they were always trying to get out the back door. Finally I went back and put up the step, so they couldn't get it open.

Did they speak English?

No, they didn't speak English, and we didn't speak French. Of course that's where the U.S. Army- the third army- got stopped at Metz, during the winter or the fall of 44. We were east of Metz, in a town called Burley. In fact, I came back through there later, a few years ago. I went out one morning- there was snow on the ground- to warm up the ambulance and I saw these four planes coming from the east. I thought two of them looked like P47s and the other two didn't quite look like it. As soon as they got over the town, they peeled off and there was a rail station just down ahead. They dropped their bombs. When I saw those bombs, I thought they were coming right at me. When you see them come out you think they are coming at you. Missed me a long way.

American or German?

German. The Germans had captured two P47s during that period of time—during the Battle of the Bulge. They had a couple of Focke-Wulf planes that had the same radial engines. Nobody fired at them until they pulled out of the dive.

The electricity was cut at this point - film crew switched to all batteries, thus lighting changes here.

Where did we leave off when the power when out?

At Boulez we saw the bombs come out and I thought they were coming. I didn't know whether to run back to the ambulance or to run into the building.

Keep on going.

At about that time, the so-called Battle of the Bulge started where the Germans invaded up in Belgium try to get through to Antwerp. There were some new divisions that were up there. One new division on the Schnee Eifel and they were overrun. The Germans started to pour through the Ardennes with their tank columns, just like they did in the first part of the war. They'd come through the Ardennes and actually by-pass much of the Maginot Line that was built to protect France. France of course lost the war, the Second World War there. That's probably one of the reasons we came over too. We were down at this city called Metz. Its actually in Alsace-Lorraine which was either German or French, whatever you decided it was to be by whatever person was in charge. We were ordered to go up to Belgium and get up as fast as we could. We went up with our headlights on, which I told you before was the first time we had driven with headlights. We got up there and sat there for a few days up in Luxembourg city and then went on up into Belgium. We were with the fourth armored division when they relieved the city called Bastogne, which the Germans had been trying to capture. We had a group of 101st Airborne and some other various units that held it while Bastogne was surrounded by the Germans, but they never ever captured it. We were with the fourth armored group that went up to relieve the city. It was pretty much devastated. In fact, a lot of the towns in France were damaged but not to the extent the German cities were.

From Bastogne after this campaign was finally over and they pushed the Germans back into Germany, we entered across the Our and the Sauer rivers into Germany which was a city called Bitburg. All the time we were continuing to carry casualties back from whatever outfit we might have been with. Maybe the 4th, but a lot of times with the 5th infantry where we would go to the battalion aid station and work with them carrying their casualties back. We got to Bitburg and we stayed a couple of days, I remember.

Are you in Germany right now?

We got into Germany. We finally got into Germany ?

When you were in Germany did you come across a lot of German civilians?

Yes, a lot of German civilians.

How did they treat you?

With indifference. I am sure they knew we were going to come. I'm sure by that time—by that time, after the Battle of the Bulge—that most of the civilians in German knew that the war would be over, was over for all practical purposes. But the military still wanted to try to defend the Homeland, the Fatherland. Which was just becoming impossible for them because we had free run of the cities with the bombers. I mean the destruction was incredible. Every German town that we went through of any size at all was pretty much blown up. Especially the rail yards and anything that had to do with building military equipment.

So we made it down to the Rhine River and that’s where I hurt my knee. I didn't get a purple heart for it because its what we called a retrograde movement. You know a retrograde movement means that you are retreating as fast as you can. We set up in this building—a schoolhouse again—with an aid station and we started getting shelled. Shells were coming in. So we headed for the basement, and someone had thrown a table down the basement stairwell, and we were jumping over it. I jumped over and landed on my left knee and it collapsed sort of. Of course the fluid built up. Of course I was driving an ambulance. If the fluid got too big, there was a medical doctor who pulled the fluid out. I kept going cause it didn’t bother me. So that’s my only war story on wounded, but I wasn’t wounded. I was running for the basement. We found out later, that we had gotten ahead of the line. We had gotten ahead of where we were supposed to be and it was our own artillery shelling us, we found out later.

Okay, the night we crossed the Rhine. We are down to the Rhine River now. Of course a lot of things have happened in between, but we are down to the Rhine River now and the night we crossed the Rhine. We are down to a town called Oppenheim which is across on the west side of the Rhine from Darmstadt. The 5th Infantry has gone across on boats and secured the other side. Then the engineers came up and put a tread way bridge or a floating bridge across the Rhine. The fourth armor then moved across the Rhine, and we were in the back of the column. We always were in the back of the column, which was a good thing. By the time we got to the bridge, it was nighttime because they were crossing. Some of the guys had been drinking schnapps. There were enough sober guys to drive the ambulance, so I drove our ambulance and Lockhart went over and drove another ambulance. We got across. It was the only time I saw a German plane actually attack the bridge. It was nighttime and they hit him and he was all aflame. It looked like, here he goes, it went right into the Rhine, and we never saw him again, but he missed the bridge.

We got off the other side of the bridge and came onto the autobahn. It was the first one. We turned right and there was a row of German columns in the meridian and they were burning. I remember—I'll never forgot it of course—opening a door and a German fell out. Of course he as dead. Then there was fire burning and all of a sudden we hear a lot of people shooting. There was a German motorcycle with a sidecar with two people in it and they came roaring by on the other side of the autobahn. Everybody missed them all the way down. They got to an overpass bridge where there was a tank on the other side and they got hit, so they almost made it. So, the armored division usually does not run at night, they circle the wagons like the old western people and protect themselves, but they kept going that night because they wanted to get further away from the Rhine. So we kept going until early in the morning and we pulled into a field and there were some Germans. Why did the Germans keep dong that? We bypassed some eighty-eight millimeter guns and they were firing at us. We dug a foxhole, so we were in the foxhole, but it was a plowed field, so the shells would go in and blow up but they went in so deep they would blow up some dirt, debris. Some of the fourth army tanks went back and eliminated the artillery, the eighty eight guns.

But that same morning, there were other German planes because they didn’t know we had gotten that far across evidentially. But the guys were all missing them. All the fifty caliber guns on the halftracks, they were missing all the German planes. Then here comes an American P-47 over the hill and by golly they hit him. An American plane. The guy just came in and made a belly landing with his gear up. He wasn’t hurt. We went over and picked him up and he was okay, but we ruined his airplane. But we did see a German bomber get shot down that morning. He didn't know we were there and the guys kept shooting, just filling him full of lead and finally he just plunked down, he came.

So, what I am trying to say is that by that time, why were they still being active, why were they still going? It was over. Come on, let's go home. So, from there we moved up to Frankfurt and followed the autobahn as I mentioned before. First Beldon, to Gotha, to Weimar, to Yenna. That's when we came across the concentration camps that we did not know anything about. No one had told us. Now all this time remember, there were refugees along the side of the road. DP's we called them or displaced persons. They were either moving this way or that way. I don’t know where they thought they might be going, but they were looking for something. Maybe they thought they were going home, maybe some were Germans, but we did not see any of the concentration people at that time. It wasn't until we got to Gotha, that we started to see people that had liberated themselves from concentration camps. Because as we came up the road, the Germans knew it. The ones that were smart took their uniforms off and went home.

When exactly was this?

This would probably been the first part of April. Probably the 10th or 11th, 12th, or 13th, somewhere in there. Any questions?

Of what year?

1945.

You said you went to all these different cities in Germany. What did you exactly do there?

Traveling.

Just traveling?

Following the column. As soon as they'd take a town, we'd move on.

I believe in your SHOAH interview you—I may have my timing off—you talked about seeing prisoner of war camps. Was that before or after this?

That was somewhere along in the same time. American POW camps.

Can you talk a little bit about what you did?

Actually, all we did was to stop there and see some of them. They were really not in that bad of condition. I mean, they were thin but the Germans did not have the food. They did not have the food for their own people, so these guys were getting by on Red Cross packages and whatever they could get.

Is there any more you can tell of what you saw in these prisoner of war camps before getting to the concentration camps?

Just that they were so happy to see us, happy to see us.

What would it look like if we were walking into a POW camp?

American?

Yes.

Celebrations. The American soldiers, like the tankers, and the rest of us were throwing out any food we had, any k-rads?, or packets, anything. Of course right away they were spent. Right away the quarter master came up and left food for them. Shortly they got to go, got to leave and go, shortly, from these camps. I don't ever remember stopping to carry any of those people back to a hospital. I'm sure there were people that needed one, you know? That needed a hospital. But we didn't deal with them.

Ok, so we're up into central Germany and we're coming to Gotha and we were there for a couple days and then someone ordered us to go down to Ordruff, the town of Ordruff, to visit this work camp. Of course I read later—you didn't want to know any later stories—but Ordruff was a work camp out of Buchenwald. Buchenwald had about fifty work camps around the country, some building military equipment, some working in the fields, some working in the factories, whatever. So someone had ordered us to go down there. We went down to see this place that we didn't know anything about and drove in through the gate. Your man said he was taking care of people there but we were there maybe a day after the fourth armored had actually gone into that camp and we didn't see anybody alive. We didn't see anyone alive. Jack talks about it here in the book, that he didn't see anybody alive and he actually was on the ground there. We never got out of the ambulance because this jeep convoy came in with all the higher ups, Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, so we just decided to get out of there because there wasn’t anything we could do anyway.

Did you actually see that convoy come by?

We saw them come into the camp. We knew who it was, you know, we could identify them. We also knew that they had a full colonel and a machine gun on them in the rear jeep. Full colonel and a machine gun?