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After my father died, I found an old diary of his when I was cleaning out his apartment to vacate the premises. As the executor of his estate, it was my duty to locate anything of value and I did. It was in a box on the top shelf of his linen closet.
In the box, there was a blue insignia patch with an arrow going through a figure 8, a Purple Heart, and a small book with a hard black cover, which I picked up and opened. It was his handwriting, his words, his voice. I sat at the edge of his bed for a while with the little book in my hands. It had been a few days since he died but it was the first time I cried.
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It took more than a year before I was able to finish reading it. My father stayed with us a very long time. He was quite old when he died. We used to say he couldn’t bear to leave us, me, my sisters, our families, the people he loved. I felt that he knew I would miss him and that he left the diary as a way to stick around and talk a little while longer.
He wrote exactly what he saw and what he thought mostly about the war. Sometimes his observations were about himself. I read these words written by a very young man long before I was born and still I see someone I know. He flinched from nothing. All his traits are there.
Because the writing was my father’s description of incidents he never mentioned it had personal interest for me. The final entry left me wanting to know more.
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I began a search for historical records and learned that my father served in the 12th Engineer Combat Battalion of the US Army 8th Infantry Division. The Engineers, as he called them, were responsible for logistics, supply lines, organizing and moving things around, functions that are vital to the combat operation and that fit my father perfectly. It was work that stayed with him for decades throughout his life.
On July 4, 1944, the Army 8th Infantry Division landed at Utah Beach in Normandy which had been taken almost a month earlier. The diary entries match perfectly to historical records. They proceeded south, took the city of Rennes, then headed west the entire length of the Brittany peninsula. The Germans held the important seaport city of Brest and when they surrendered it after 6 weeks of fighting, it was completely destroyed.
The 8th headed east across northern France toward the Hurtgen Forest near Belgium’s border with Germany. Today some historians say that the three months of fighting there could hardly be called a win for the Allies. Some say it was a blunder. Many lives were lost. When it was over, the 8th was inside Germany and it headed north to Aachen. Allied forces stretched in a line that extended far to the south along the front that marked the extent of their advance.
The Germans saw the weakness in the Allied position and they tried to punch through the front south of Aachen. There was a lot at stake for both sides. The fighting there came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. There’s a three month gap after the entry dated 12/25/1944 before the writing resumes on 3/23/1945.
That explains the long gap between entries. He had to be evacuated all the way back to England to get patched up but he was durable. Ironically, when he returned to the ‘Engineers’ they hadn’t advanced very far but they had fought through what was the worst of the war for them. I’m glad he missed most of that even if he was hurt.
On March 30, 1945, the 8th crossed the Rhine and continued north, then east.
On May 2, the 8th was approaching the town of Ludwigslust, about 125 miles northwest of Berlin and there they came upon the Wöbbelin concentration camp. Thousands of people had been imprisoned there in unimaginable conditions, with no food or water. At least 1000 people were dead, their bodies just left where they were. Many more were barely alive.
Wöbbelin is notable for the confrontation in the following days between the Army 8th Infantry and the 82nd Airborne, and the people of Ludwigslust. The town’s officials and a delegation of its citizens were ordered to Wöbbelin. They were shown the conditions there and they were asked to explain them but they said they had nothing to do with it and they knew nothing about it.
People who were living in a clean well-kept town comparable to any small town in America, with comfortable homes, and food to eat, said they went about their own business without knowing what was happening just 4 miles down the road. The story that sticks with me involves one of the town’s men who thought he might find sympathy if he explained a bit more. In his statement, he said that he was a German who couldn’t even get a loan at a bank at one time because they were all controlled by Jews.
The last entry of the diary was written on the date when the people of Ludwigslust were made to bury the dead bodies in mass graves at Wöbbelin. The defiant who refused were coerced. Word reached Gen. Eisenhower who ordered a proper burial for the remaining dead at Ludwigslust’s cemetery including the customary solemn ceremony for the dead, to be attended by the entire town and a group of German military leaders who had been captured nearby. The burial took place on May 7, 1945, the date of Germany’s surrender.
My dad was never at a loss for words until he encountered the unspeakable. He knew that words go but so far and it’s how a life is lived that really matters more.
He was always full of fun, good-natured, and an excellent father. "Never be afraid to speak up to anyone. If you don't speak up for yourself, no one else will," is a lesson he taught. My sisters and I were indoctrinated as Democrats by him from an early age.
He loved to imitate FDR's theatrical upper-crust style of oratory. He'd start out sounding just like him beginning with the words,
"The Republicans today . . . "
He'd wait long enough to know everyone was ready for him to go on. Then he'd finish, maintaining a perfect imitation of FDR's voice but with these words:
" . . . are getting away with a lot of bullshit."