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Play MovieSo, in Paris were you in a hospital for the month?
And they wouldn't give us a pass, and we were mobile, a lot of us, and they wouldn't give us a pass. Finally we just put our uniforms on and walked out the front door, without a pass. Paris was unbelievable at that time. It was free. And I also didn't tell you about, as we bypassed Paris, there were three passes drawn, and I drew one of the passes back to Paris, just maybe two, three, four days after liberation. And I was so innocent, it really didn't do me a whole lot of good to be in Paris after liberation. But, I saw all the sights, I saw Napoleon's tomb, and I went up in the Eiffel Tower, and we did all that, and Sacre Coeur, and the whole bit.
What do you mean you were so innocent?
Well I didn't know about Paris, and what went on there.
What did you see? You must have one good story.
No, I saw, I saw Napoleon's tomb. And the Eiffel Tower, and different sites. I did meet one girl but all she wanted to do was eat, she was hungry. So I fed her, and that was it. That was the end of the story, believe me.
When you came back to the United States, you landed in Boston?
Well, we landed in Boston, at the Boston Harbor, but then we right away went on a hospital train to Birmingham General Hospital in Van Nuys, California.
And how long were you there?
Six months. I probably, if I'd had it done locally, I'd have been home in a week or two, at the most. But I was down there, and I gained from 150 to 170. All that good food.
Did you experience celebration in Boston when you arrived?
No. There were some signs at the "Welcome Home,” you know. But...
And how about here, in California?
No, there wasn't anything in particular. The train went right into the hospital and I had a relative that lived down there, and they came out to see me. That was about it.
And then when did you come back up to Modesto? Was it right after?
After the operation, they had a cast on my leg, and I got a pass to come home. So my family was there. You know, on the train, because I had a cast on my leg, they thought I was some kind of a hero, but I wasn't, I just repaired my knee. But, you know, you kind of dance in the limelight there.
You said there wasn't a lot of celebration when you arrived in California. When you got to see your family again, was there a lot of celebration?
Well they were at the train, the train was running then to Modesto, and they came down to the station.
Were you excited to see them? And in three years, right?
Yes, I was gone for three years, approximately.
Had much changed since you had left? Had anything changed at all?
Oh, had they changed?
The people, or the area. Yes, anything in the United States, had anything changed since you had left?
Oh, there must have been changes. They were off of rationings, so people were driving again. They were finally able to—not then. They couldn't buy a new car until about '48. I bought a brand new '49 Ford, which was a new model, in 1948, because I was a returning veteran. And I got on a list at the Ford dealership, and this 1949 Ford, I bought it in '48 before our wedding, and it cost me two thousand dollars. Money that I'd saved through the war and before the war, working in service station. And that's all we had. Two thousand, it was a new car. But, every place we went on the honeymoon, the people came to look at the car.
When you look back on your experiences throughout the whole entire war, was there things you wish you could have done, that you didn’t do?
Yes. I wish I had been more sympathetic to the people that had been incarcerated in the camps. But, as far as the American wounded, we did the best we could do for them. And I never felt that we had neglected them in any way. They'd vomit in my helmet. They'd do whatever they needed to do in Bartleby fashion. You know, we took care of them best we could on their trip back. So I don't feel bad about that. I do feel bad about not being able to be more compassionate with the people that were actually, that we didn't know about that were, and we were, we were really, they really turned us off. Do you understand what I mean? These poor folks were lying there in these rags and bones and it just really scared us. You know? Really, I should have been more thoughtful about that. But what could I have done?
I wanted to ask you this, because you've talked about this a couple times today, as well as in your SHOAH interview 10 years ago, about being scared.
Oh yes.
Can you define for us a little bit more about what that was? What do you mean by being scared?
What do I mean about being scared? Well, afraid of the situation. You know? What do we do? What can we do? They asked me that in the crematorium and I didn't have a good answer. I said, "What would you do?" I think I said in the thing. "What would you do if you were turned loose here?" It was a scary thing. There was all these people that—they weren't like our own GI's you know, healthy and vigorous. They were sad cases. Displaced, and killed, and—sorry you have to hear all this Jorgen, but it happened.
Is there any one person that was kind of by your side throughout the whole process that you feel really grateful for?
One person by my side?
Or just someone that you were glad to have, or that you were just thankful for?
My friends in the outfit. Their pictures are in here. I had about four or five friends that would be either in the ambulance—We're 33, either in 34, or 35 or 32. Those people, we were always together. And the only one left is my friend in Oregon. Rest of them are gone. We stuck together, we talked things over and tried to get through as best we could.
Did they enable you to get through it all? Or what do you think did enable you to get through it all?
Just you didn't want to fail. You didn't want to let your friends, buddies down. You know, who wanted to go home in disgrace? That's why a lot of guys would go into—the infantry guys, that's why they stayed up there and fought a lot of them because they didn't want to run away in front of their friends. So they stayed there and died, possibly. They didn't…
We were in Paris on an elder hostel trip and a young man from Turlock was with us. He was probably twenty years old. I rented a car and went out to Normandy and he’d been a happy-go-lucky guy, just having a great time, and he really got sober, and he said, “How could they order you to—these guys to come up on this beach?” I said, “You just followed the pack, and you were in the outfit, they were going there, so you had to go there. There wasn’t any particular thing that drove you, just you had to do your job, and you didn’t want to let your friends down” He couldn’t understand how they could come up on the beach, I said, “You just did it. You had to”
So I get the final question because I can. So we’ve been talking to you for about well at least three and a half hours, two and a half hours on tape, and you’re sitting here in front of all of us, and do you have any thoughts about this particular project?
Yes, I do. I would hope it would do some good if I could only reach one person, to try and make them a better person to make this better world to make this a better country. To pick up their trash, and to put it in the garbage cans, and that kind of thing. If I could just—Jorgen and I went up to speak to his grandson's class when he was on the Holocaust, up in the Bay Area. And that's all we wanted, if we could reach one person to make them a better citizen somehow. That's really, you know, if you just, you know, made a decent life and made this a better country, because it's up to you guys, it's not up to us anymore. We're on the downhill side, it's up to you guys. If you got a girlfriend, marry her! I've got three grandchildren! They said, "Oh grandpa, you're way behind! We've got to find out!" Well that's right! I said, "Oh come on! You find that out in the dating process.”
And on that note, we thank him.
Thank all of you! Thank all of you for spending your Sunday to come down to listen to an old guy repeat the war stories. But most of them are all true, I can't think of anything that wasn't true.
Thank you so much.
I got it out of my system, didn't I? You want to go out to the ambulance?
