## CHL - Tape 2 - Side A

FLL: ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program) lasted about four months?

CHL: Yeah.

FLL: What were your courses? English?

CHL: I think a mathematics course, a science course -- supposedly having a military reason.

It was a condensed course and what was really kind of funny was that one professor who had given the same course every year for thirty years and now had to give it twice as fast, which he did by talking twice as fast

What he's used to giving in four days, now he gave in two days.

FLL: Did you stay in barracks or dormitories?

CHL: I stayed with a number of others in the recreation building. Kind of a gym floor with army bunks taking over the gym floor.

FLL: It was all enlisted men - it was all people sort of like you, who

had been in college and were now back in college?

CHL: Yeah

FLL: How many were there?

CHL: I would guess about four or five hundred.

FLL: How many colleges were in the program?

CHL: I think a great number, quite a few. I think it was mainly state
schools. I'm not sure if the private colleges got involved in it or
not. I attended ASTP at Queens College at Flushing, in Queens, New
York City.

FLL: When they ended the program why wouldn't they just put you in OCS?

CHL: Because they needed infantry guys. We had a lot of infantry
losses. We need you in infantry. Every man from Queens College went
immediately into the infantry, that's when I was in the 69th Division.

FLL: When you left Camp Hood were you infantry then, or had there been
any determination?

CHL: No, I was just a guy who had gone through basic training.

FLL: You went through infantry school at Camp Shelby (Mississippi)?

CHL: Yeah, infantry school, which was pretty close to basic training all over again. That was the spring and summer of '44.

FLL: You were still at Shelby at D-Day?

CHL: Still at Shelby, yeah, and three more months beyond that. We kept wondering - we're just getting the same training over and over and over again. When are we going overseas? Why are we still here? The whole division was not being used. Maybe they could only use so many divisions at one time. There was no reason that we knew. We were surprised. We thought we would get into combat.

FLL: At that time your division was pretty static until you got to France. All your Shelby training and British assignment was with the 69th Division?

CHL: Yeah, I was with them from about March through December, with the same guys.

FLL: At one time you had applied for officer's training.

CHL: Oh, yeah, at the latter part of the combat experience I had. The

word came down that there was Officer Candidate's School, OCS, in
France, near Paris. One of our officers had been a college guy like me
and he said, "Lavin, are you going to apply to it?"

Well alright. Anyone who wanted to apply there were papers to fill
out, which I did

Never heard anything more about for another couple of months. All of a
sudden, just as the fighting was starting to come to an end. The orders
came down that I'm to report to officers' school in Paris - just as the
fighting was ending. Instead of a 13-week program it was a 6 week
program, so they were called "Six-week wonders" - they make you a
Lieutenant in 6 weeks.

The war is just ending and we're in occupation duty, it's just very
boring. Anything for a change. Little towns with nothing to do. So
I'm kind of looking forward to O.C.S.

I go see the Supply Sergeant and look I'm in a tattered uniform. I'm
supposed to go to Paris. Can't you get me some better clothes?

Ok well get you better clothes

That was about two days before I was to get my travel papers.

CHL: No, which is unusual. It's because I was a B.A.R. man. We need a big guy for B.A.R.

That was essentially my army career.

FLL: How long were you in Heidelberg? Is that where you were the whole occupation?

CHL: No, we moved around with occupation forces here and there.
Heidelberg was a gorgeous occupation, if you could get into Heidleberg.
Heidleberg was untouched. Unlike every German city I saw, it was not
touched. Was not bombed.

FLL: It was too far away.

CHL: I don't think so, because a year and a half later I spent a
summer at Oxford University and to Oxford, to my surprise, was also
untouched, unbombed.

FLL: Heidelberg is a university town.

CHL: Heidleberg is a university town and Oxford is a university town.
And there might have been some sort of understanding between the
British and the Germans, You don't bomb ours; we don't bomb yours.
Even though there was an automobile manufacturing factory in the

outskirts of Oxford.

So the British got the better of that deal. And I never heard anybody talk about it. I never saw anything written up like I'm the only person in the world who knows this, why Heidleberg and Oxford were both untouched.

FLL: How many months did you spend in occupation forces?

CHL: The war was over in May and I was sent back in January 1946.

FLL: That's not bad.

CHL: (with a slight tone of disagreement) It was about eight months – eight months just for in occupation. That was mostly boring.

The war in Japan ended in what month?

FLL: August.

CHL: So from May to August I was expecting to continue on. We were just waiting, waiting, waiting.

I went back by ship. I went to a place near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where I was discharged, Indiantown Gap.

FLL: What about your back pack?

CHL: Mess kit, some food, K-Rations, water, entrenching tool, water in a canteen.

FLL: Did you have a pistol?

CHL: No.

FLL: You had a bayonet. Did you have a knife?

CHL: Had a knife. Not a bayonet. The knife was just a pocketknife.

CHL: I'll tell you about shooting prisoners of war. It was shortly
after the Battle of the Bulge. January or early February probably and
the condition was that we were less than half strength.

Lots of casualties and very little sleep at night.

The deal was you and your foxhole buddy would take turns being on duty
two hours at a time. OK, I'll take 10 to 12. You take 12 to 2. I'll
take 2 to 4. You take 4 to 6.

Believe me, these are long, long, long hours. You are awake and he is
sleeping, supposedly.

Ten degrees temperature. Your head sticking up a bit above a slit in
the poncho with rocks and branches holding it down trying to keep the
cold out. Hoping that it's going to be a night with some moonlight.

After about a month on the front line, they came out with a new
invention they called artificial moonlight. Searchlights play on the
clouds, underneath the clouds, about two miles back that would shine on
the clouds and that would reflect a sort of moonlight ahead of us.
That was wonderful. We loved it loved it. Loved it.

FLL: Why was the moonlight helpful? Why would it work to the German's
disadvantage?

CHL: Because it played on the clouds behind us, so the Germans looking
at us would only see us as silhouettes. We're looking at them with the
light behind and we would get a pretty good view. It would be as much
light as a full moon would give. I remember looking and looking,
looking back and seeing that you only see silhouette.

Anyways, you really get very little sleep. You are exhausted.

We had about four prisoners. It takes men day and night to guard these
guys. That was the motivation. And our Lieutenant got orders directly
from the Captain.

And what he said was, loudly, so everyone around could hear.

It was daytime. At daytime only half the guys are in the trenches.
The rest are running around building bonfires. You don't build
bonfires at night. You build them in the day.

If you are on duty you stay in the trenches if you are not on duty you
can get out and wander around. And hang around the bonfire.

So he came up to this one bonfire for our platoon, and he says,
"Sergeant put together a detail and take these prisoners back to
battalion headquarters and be back here in twenty minutes."

Every American hearing that knew exactly what he was saying.

We knew darn well it would probably be a couple of hours to get back to
battalion headquarters and back.

We knew he was saying it loudly and clearly because a lot of the
Germans could understand English. He didn't want to alert the Germans.
They would understand the whole story.

We all knew what he was saying: Take them in the woods and shoot them.

I was appalled. Two things bothered me. One, that he would give that order and two, that no one else was bothered. I'm the only one bothered.

To me, this is something you expect Germans to do, you don't expect Americans to do.

FLL: Did it happen other times?

CHL: No I never heard of it again.

So the Sergeant obeyed his order. Actually, he wasn't surprised. I think he had been told quietly, "This is what's going to happen," ahead of the announcement.

I looked at the Lieutenant. My mouth kind of dropped. I wanted to say something. I couldn't think of what to say. He saw me. The Lieutenant gave me a real hard look, meaning, very clearly, "Shut up. Don't say a word. Do you want to endanger your own men? You're not going to stop me. Just shut up." I understood that. So I shut up.

I stepped aside. The sergeant was selecting his detail. If he selected me I wasn't going to shoot. I think he half understood that. I sort of stepped aside and he picked out four or five guys. And then off they marched.

CHL: This was after the Battle of the Bulge. We still called it the
Battle of the Bulge, the bulge being a line on the map. We hadn't yet
erased that entire bulge. We were working on that.

I remember talking to Paul Schroeder, who was my best friend in the
Army, a very religious Catholic, great guy. I remember saying to Paul,
"Americans don't do that. We don't do that." He said, "Yes, but what
can you and I do about it?"

He was a good, good person. A good person. And he says, "What can we
do?"

FLL: Was it the right decision - sixty years later?

CHL: No. It bothered me then. Still bothers me. It's not the right
thing to do. You don't shoot prisoners.

FLL: Well the argument would have been if it had endangered the unit...

CHL: That would be the argument. There was just too much pressure on
us. Sparing men to guard prisoners...that would have been the argument.

FLL: Did you know about the Malmedy massacre contemporaneously? Was
that known by the soldiers, that the Germans were executing prisoners,
or was that not known until after the fighting?

CHL: I think we did not know about it.

FLL: Did you know that during the Battle of the Bulge the Germans were using commandos fitted out as American troops?

CHL: We did not hear about it until reading the "Stars and Stripes," which we get 2-3 weeks late.

FLL: That incident sparked a response trying to determine whether you were a real U.S. soldier or not.

CHL: We did not know about this during the battle. Officially, identification was by password and counter-sign; changed daily. If you heard a noise at night, you asked for the password.

FLL: People asking questions about American sports or anything that to try to determine...

CHL: No.

CHL: I remember at the end of the fighting when the death camps were liberated by the Americans. That was in the "Stars and Stripes."

The Captain called me in. Why did he want to see me - I don't know.

Go to headquarters. When I got there in the waiting area there were
two or three other Jewish soldiers. We all knew each other. There
were three of us, four of us in the company. Why are we Jewish
soldiers here? The captain called us in. General Eisenhower has
passed the order down that any Jewish soldier who wants to see the
death camps for himself may do so. We'll arrange special
transportation and take him there. Your trip will be a few days.
You'll go through it. You'll get a tour. And then you'll be right
back here.

By this time we had read about the death camps. We had seen the
pictures of the living skeletons and so on. It was a shocking thing

The other guys said yeah, they did want to go. I said no I did not
want to, which is one regret I've always had since then.

FLL: Which camp was it?

CHL: It was in Northern Germany. Some distance away. I didn't want to see. I really regret not seeing for myself.

Break in tape.

FLL: This is June 21

CHL: This story is titled, "My most embarrassing moment in combat."

This is the third of the three battles I told you about. The first was the Battle of the Bulge. Second one was the drive from the Roer River to the Rhine River. It was hard going, slogging, a lot of casualties.

The third was across the Rhine and on to the end.

This occurred in the third battle. We're advancing rapidly and the Russians are advancing rapidly. It was a session of great movement.

The company commander called a meeting for all of us.

And told us that he had been at a regimental meeting at which one of the other companies had reported they had been thrown back from an advance.

FLL: Company commander is what, a Lieutenant?

CHL: A Captain.

The Germans showed at one village unusual resistance because more were giving up than were fighting at this time. But one of the other companies of the regiment had been thrown back.

Our Captain said to us, "I'm so proud of you guys. I volunteered our company."

I knew we could take that village that other company, whichever one it
was, couldn't take. I'm so proud of you guys.

Here's the plan. They're well dug in, in foxholes and trenches outside
the village

We've devised this plan. Were going to go at them suddenly. Were
going to run across the fields and take them by surprise before they
have a chance to really respond. That's the program.

The other company tried something quite similar but they were thrown
back but I know you guys will take it. I'm so proud of you guys."

All of us were listening thinking, "Why, you sorry son of a gun, you
are seeking glory with our guts."

But, OK, that was the plan so the next day we had to do it. It was a
level field area. Perhaps a mile away was the village. The ground was
quite level. We could see there were some cornfields. We were to make
a running attack.

Well as I told you I am carrying 40 or 50 pounds more than anyone else
and I cannot run generally as fast as the others, but I'm doing the
best I can. It's the attack and were supposed to be going quietly.

There's no response. We are moving rabidly, other guys moving more rapidly than I am

We came to a barbed wire fence as we're getting close to the village there had been not a sound from the enemy

Some of the guys were ahead of me. Some were behind me. Those who were ahead of me started to climb over the fence. It was barbed wire with metal poles. Guys were getting right near a pole and using the pole to climb over the fence.

So I'm going to do the same thing. I approach the pole. I take my heavy B.A.R. and lean over the fence and prop it up against the fence on the other side, butt down. I'm going to then climb right over the fence and pick it up.

But the second I finish putting my B.A.R. down on the ground on the other side of the fence, everything breaks lose.

The Germans knew we were coming and they saw us, obviously. They let loose suddenly with machine gun and rifle fire and some mortars.

All of a sudden, with one command, they broke lose with a tremendous amount of fire

So what do you do? Your instinct tells you that you immediately hit
the ground. You got down, level with the earth's position, the land is
your friend. The only friend you have.

So I duck down I hit the ground. So there I am on our side of the
fence and there is my weapon leaning up in front of my face on the
other side of the fence.

Our guys are shooting back. We're shooting back.

I was embarrassed because I was separated from my B.A.R. Not only was I separated from it and couldn't use it, but also it was a beacon. The B.A.R. looks distinctly different from a rifle. In essence it is a light machine gun and anyone familiar with infantry weapons would know this is a machine gun. It would attract a lot of attention and I was just embarrassed

FLL: How did the battle end?

CHL: The attention somehow drifted over to the left of us.

Some of the guys over the fence got up and started moving to our left. I couldn't tell from where I was why they were moving to the left. So guys were starting to move and so the attention was moving away and away from me, So I thought it was a good chance to get up and very

quickly get over the fence myself. It was a 3 and a half-foot high
fence. I'm sure I got over it in a second and half. Grabbed my gun
and started to move to the left as all the other guys were doing.

Running, hitting the ground, running, hitting the ground in short
spurts. Because the fire was still intense and some of our guys were
getting hit.

Moving to the left, I saw what some of the guys were going for. There
was a ditch outside this village. It was a drainage ditch along a
road. And some of our guys were in it. And I ran up to it to get into
it too and I saw that the ditch was half-filled with water. It was a
drainage ditch. This was springtime and it was cold but no choice.

And I jumped in the ditch with the other American guys from our company
guys up to my waist in this icy water, but I could get my head down.

I advanced up the ditch which a few of our guys were doing

Most of them were just standing still not trying to advance

But I wasn't going to stay there so I passed up a few guys wading
through the ditch which followed the road and went into the village.

As I got close I could see what the situation was.

The Germans were dug into mostly foxholes and trenches outside. A few of our guys were able to shoot back at them from the windows of the buildings.

To make a long story short, I was able to do that too. I was able to get into one of the houses and I was able to shoot down at the Germans.

They didn't think about that kind of defensive maneuver, and this was just slaughter, we could shoot from the windows right into the holes.

We did quite a bit of killing and after about 20 minutes of this the Germans decided to surrender. They were taking many more casualties.

This was late in the war.

FLL: March or April?

CHL: I'm going to guess it was March. The water felt like it was March water. I know that. There were still some fighting, some surrendering.

FLL: Where were you on V-E Day?

CHL: Actually the fighting had ended. There was nobody left to fight.

I was stationed near Heidelberg, in a small village near Heidelberg.

Just before V-E Day we got to the Elbe River, about fifty miles west of Berlin. Eisenhower ordered us to stop at the Elbe to avoid any chance of contact with the Russians. It is a wide river and the far side was massed with Jerries, all wanting to cross so they could surrender to us rather than to the Russians. Only a few row boats were crossing and we let them. Probably 90% of them couldn't cross so the Russians got them.

FLL: You were in a liberated zone.

CHL: Yeah, in a liberated zone. We were just being moved around, being moved around in trucks. From my very small perspective I couldn't tell what the overall situation was except that we got the Stars and Stripes newspapers, that would tell us. So all we could get was a tiny view of a few inches from our own position, and then a world view from the newspaper.

FLL: Was V-E Day a surprise?

CHL: No, we knew the war was over. The Germans were not fighting anymore. We knew the Russians were quite close to us.

And there's nobody left to keep on fighting. The war had been over

for some days before the announcement came.

FLL: Did you listen to the radio?

CHL: Didn't get the chance to hear the radio

FLL: Did the squad have a radioman?

CHL: at the platoon level, what we called walkie-talkie. Big bulky
radios.

FLL: Were these internal radios, or could you listen outside?

CHL: Just within the company, to talk to platoons.

FLL: Were you ever able to listen in a village to a radio

CHL: Interesting question. I don't think we ever did. I don't think
the electricity was working. Many of the power plants had been bombed
out. I think there was an interruption of power for the general
civilian population. Never did hear a radio.

CHL: Well I killed at least one man that I knew of. Because I fired
at him and I saw he was running across the street. I saw him fall in
an awkward position he didn't move.

It just so happened, a few patrols were sent out the next day just to check and I was on one of the patrols which went right by this man that I shot and he was still in the same awkward position. I was able to see then that the first shot I had fired at him had got him in the head.

That was the only absolute positive proof I had that I killed one person. I have no idea if I killed a half dozen or a dozen or two dozen, but that was the only single one that was proof positive that I had done it. The body still lay in the same position.

FLL: You brought home a Lugar from the war. Was that from anyone in particular or did you just find it?

CHL: I took it from one of the Jerries who crossed the Elbe in a rowboat. I had it when you children were quite little.

Your mother used to worry an awfully lot about that when you children were quite little. I finally agreed, OK, I'll get rid of it. I agreed it was dangerous with little children in the house.

FLL: You were deserted under fire.

CHL: You're talking about the picture in the photo album, where it

says "deserted me under fire."

I don't really remember the incident but it must have been a small unit
action.

FLL: You told me about that

CHL: What did I tell you?

FLL: You and this other fellow were sent ahead to a building to scout, you were sent ahead of your unit to scout. You went ahead of your unit a few hundred yards. You get to the building and there was a turret or an upper level to it and a spiral staircase. You said you would run upstairs to see from a vantage point.

While you were going upstairs, the staircase is an old enclosed stone spiral staircase, while you are going up it, the other fellow on the ground level sees a German patrol approaching and leaves. Without telling you.

A few seconds later, you get the second level you see the same thing.

You come down to tell him, but he'd already left - without telling you.

CHL: What happened?

FLL: You lived.

You were able to get back to your unit.

CHL: I had forgotten about that. I'm sure it happened. He left
without telling me. Great. Wonderful. I wrote that under the
picture.

FLL: Well, if you are only going to remember one thing about a guy
that's the thing to remember.

CHL: My assistant B.A.R. man was J.T. Moffitt from rural Mississippi.

FLL: What was an assistant B.A.R. man?

CHL: If I get hit, he is supposed to grab the B.A.R. Second he is
supposed to give me fire support with his rifle. Third he carried
extra magazines for me.

When I used up a couple of magazines I could always get extra magazines
from him and give him my empties so I would always have a full
complement of full magazines. That was his job. He was supposed to
stick close to me. He often didn't. He often wandered away and be
somewhere else.

FLL: Harry S Truman

CHL: Was it just an "S"?

FLL: Yeah, no name, just an S

CHL: Oh, where was Truman From?

FLL: Missouri

CHL: Mississippi and Missouri apparently.

FLL: Did you have a collateral duty?

CHL: I was trained on a rifle first. Trained much more on a rifle than I was on a B.A.R.

I had a brief training on the B.A.R. in the states. I was officially named a B.A.R. man before we left the states. Got some training and some experience in just shooting the thing.

FLL: How often did you get replenished with ammunition and food

CHL: Ammunition and food, when they'd bring it up mechanically, they'd bring a jeep up as close as they could which would be a half mile or a

there was not combat going on every day, but you never knew when it was
going to happen.

FLL: In the foul weather -- January and February -- what sort of cold
weather gear did you have?

CHL: We had a jacket and an overcoat and boots

Always wore two pare of socks

And we had galoshes that could go over the boots. That was it.

FLL: It would still be cold

CHL: Yes.

FLL: The cold could go through all that, after about twenty minutes.

CHL: This is true. At night, two guys huddle into a very small
foxhole. One guy sitting up. The guy on duty had to be sitting up.
We'd dig the foxhole with a step in there so a guy could sit. The
other guy could by lying down.

FLL: How could you dig in the frozen earth?

CHL: What we hated more than anything else was when we had to move position. The situation may call for us to relocate. Maybe a change happened on the flank. We had to move ahead. So we had to relocate to straighten the line. So we had to dig a new hole

All we had to dig with was this little toy shovel with a two-foot
wooden handle. Half a hoe and half a shovel.

Mechanically you could adjust it so the spade part was in line with the
handle like a shovel, or you could put it at 90 degrees and use it like
a hoe.

Using it like a hoe on the frozen earth, We would be pounding and pounding and pounding away and eventually you would just bend the point of the spade hoe.

But if you pounded long enough, eventually you would break through.

You'd break through in one spot then you could hollow out from that one spot and you would hollow out from that one spot. And you'd use your knife to help you help dig.

And get the point where it was an inch and a half thick frozen earth

Dig out underneath it and stomp on it with your foot. Break a little piece off.

CHL: Yeah, we got shelled.

I got hit once in the foot by a piece of shrapnel, the only time I ever
 got hit.

We had moved to a new position. I had just started to dig, my foxhole
buddy and I.

This was not middle of the winter, maybe a little bit later on.

There was some shelling going on. Not real close to us, maybe a
hundred yards away.

I had gotten maybe two shovel-fulls out

And my foxhole buddy is at the other end, he's digging too

All of a sudden I felt like I had been kicked as hard as possible in
the foot.

My immediate reaction was my foxhole buddy thinks he's being funny or
something and gave me a big kick in the foot and it got out of hand and
kicked me harder than he thought.

I wheeled around, angry, that's my immediate reaction, but, no, he's in

a position that he couldn't have done it. He was facing away from me.

I looked down next to my foot and there was a bright piece of shrapnel,
which was a shell casing. I noticed several breaks in the pattern of
the pieces. With razor sharp edges, this triangular piece. It was all
rusty except for the edges where the pieces had broken apart. The
shell casing was designed to break into shrapnel pieces which would fly
out.

It must have hit the boot flat side on because it didn't cut the boot.

It was a powerful blow. I took my boot off to see if any bones were
broken but no bones were broken.

That was the only time I got hit.

FLL: When you were demobilized in Pennsylvania you came directly on train home?

CHL: Yeah

FLL: Did your parents know you were coming or did you just show up?

CHL: I'm sure I called them

We landed in New York. I'm sure I must have called them in New York.

It was maybe the next day or two days later. I would have gotten to
Indiantown Gap and gone through demobilization procedure.

I did come from there to Canton by train instead of hitch hiking. I
must have had some baggage with me.

FLL: Do you remember seeing your parents.

CHL: I saw my parents

I remember my father being very interested in the stories that I would
tell, asking questions, asking questions.

And I started reliving some of the events and my hands started shaking,
which surprised me.

And my mother could see I was getting excited.

"Lee stop asking those questions. Look at Carl his hands are shaking."

And I said, "It's all right mother I want to talk about it I want to
tell."

"No, no, don't. Look at your hands. Look at your hands."

I do remember that

It was good to see my parents again. It was good to get back home.

Tuesday June 22

Did I talk about my one regret? My one regret was we were invited to go through the Nazi death camps

Oh yeah. I did tell you about that.

FLL: Well there is something you had mentioned to me home a minor episode for the return ship home. You said there was a very rough passage. You lost power in an engine or took several days longer than it should have.

CHL: I don't remember that very well. It was nothing significant

FLL: The reason I raise it was they showed the movie on board, "Sahara," the Humphrey Bogart movie.

CHL: And they showed it over and over again. I remember extra days and extra days and extra days before we got to port. They did show the same movie over and over again.

CHL: But at this point I had been overseas for about a year and a half
and I'd been in the army for about three years.

But rear echelon guys had been overseas many more months. So they got
to go home soon.

That was the point system. You had the priority to go back to the U.S.

You would go to a release location and get your final pay and you got
the GI Bill and you got points to redeem as money to pay for college
tuition based on service. So I took those kind of points and went back
to Miami University just to finish up

I already had three years out of my life so my whole attitude at Miami
was to get out as soon as I can and get my degree. So I took every
course I could possibly take. I had three years to go and I took three
years of courses in two years.

FLL: All of the guys must have been veterans.

CHL: Mostly, there were high school graduates too.

I was president of the fraternity then. The fraternity was about
two-thirds older guys and one-third younger fellows just out of high

school.

FLL: Did you have any days off any leave during five months of combat?

CHL: We did. Once or twice we got to go off line they took a
battalion at a time or maybe a company at a time. Another company
would fill in your spot.

And we'd go back. We'd have 3 or 4 days at a time and that happened
probably 2 or 3 different times.

FLL: Where - Antwerp or Paris

CHL: I think Antwerp. Don't remember very clearly. We were
surrounded by American soldiers. Going back and living in barracks
instead of living in a foxhole for three days.

FLL: Did you see movies?

CHL: I don't remember. It was about not being in a foxhole.

FLL: Change your clothes

CHL: Yeah we did get a change of clothes. I think we were
probably issued new clothes.

It wasn't very distinctive but we were able to get a night's sleep and
get a blanket and a bunk. That's mainly what it was.

Ate food in a mess hall instead of K-Rations.

FLL: How did you get paid?

CHL: That's a good question. We got $21 a month or something like
that

FLL: On leave if you wanted to go buy a beer or something...

CHL: Your right about that I just do not remember

FLL: When you were discharged did you get a lump sum

CHL: Yeah I got whatever money was coming to me. Every time you get
paid, you get paid monthly in the u.s., and you'd sign for it.

FLL: In the u.s. you'd get $21 cash every month.

CHL: I believe so.

FLL: Were you paid in U.S. dollars overseas?

CHL: I just don't remember.

FLL: Would you spend all the money thinking there's no sense saving
it.

CHL: Oh it's just cash in your pocket and just ready money to spend
but I don't remember at all what happened in the months in combat. We
must have gotten paid. Yeah I'm sure there were things to spend money
on, go to a restaurant I suppose, or a barbershop.

FLL: In your basic training what kind of political or propaganda
lectures did you receive did people talk about what the war was all
about or was it pure military proficiency?

CHL: I understand what you're saying - why we're fighting. I don't
think we had lectures like that. It was military proficiency and what
the military rules are. You disobey the rules and you get tossed in
the hoosegow.

I remember being taken on a trip through military prison. This guy
didn't come back from leave on time. This guy got in a fight with his
sergeant.

FLL: In Louisiana, when Kissinger was in the 335th, he heard a lecture

by Fritz Kraemer, the German who opposed Hitler and joined the U.S.
military, about the dangers of Nazism, when Kissinger was a private,
was a very moving lecture and Kraemer became Kissinger's intellectual
mentor. Did you hear any lectures about that, talking about what the
war was all about?

CHL: I have no memory of that.

Was it after Pearl Harbor that it was so universally accepted that we
knew why we were at war?

CHL: I think the entire attitude is: we had been attacked and we were
at war and war is all out war. There is only one thing to do and that
is to defeat the enemy. Everyone was very patriotic. Parents had
stars in their window.

My brother and I were in the service my parents had two stars in the
window

Everyone had flags and draped bunting.

Everyone you knew that you talked to was for it, Just pure patriotic.

(final story moved to subsequent transcript for clarity)

END OF TAPE

From a later (July 17, 2004) email describing all of the interviews:

It's about crossing the Atlantic under submarine threat, life in a
foxhole in midwinter, how it feels to be shelled, the Battle of the
Bulge, the Battle of the Roer Valley, Crossing the Rhine River, and why
did everyone around me get hit and I didn't? And it's about why I want
all my grandsons to stay out of the army.

supposed to do.

What you are supposed to do is say, "Halt. Who's there? Advance and be recognized."

That's the official way. Each day there would be a new password and countersign and we were serious about using them.

The term we used then was "battle fatigue." The new guy got battle fatigue after having been in combat for about two days. He was very nervous, and he actually cried. He let off a couple of shots at night at the Sergeant who was making his rounds.

He was sent back.

FLL: So he deserved it. He was not fit for duty.

CHL: "I can't stand it. I just can't take it anymore." I remember him saying that, sort of half screaming, hysterical.

"I can't stand it. I can't stand it."

He got a couple of shots off. OK. You're out of control. We agree.

He was sent back.

FLL: But in general people performed. People did their job. There was good unit cohesion, unit morale.

CHL: There was a good attitude. There was respect for people who were better performers than guys who were not performers.

By in large you considered the guys to be reliable.

You lived with them so much they were your friends. You knew them.

You thought you could count on your friends.

Not a highly intelligent group of guys in general, just ordinary Joes.

But guys were there with the attitude, "I'm going to do my duty."

FLL: Did you ever encounter German propaganda or listen to German radio?

CHL: In Great Britain?

FLL: Yeah, you didn't have a radio at the front.

CHL: Could we hear German radio? I don't recall anything like that.

I believe not. We would listen to the civilian radio and Armed Forces Radio.

But in six to eight weeks that I was in England before we went across
the channel, we would get time off for weekend leave. I remember going
to London a few times. You can imagine what it was like then in the
middle of the war. Blackout at night, of course

FLL: Did you stay at an enlisted men's hall?

CHL: I suppose something like that

FLL: Which movies at the time, contemporaneous with the war, struck you as most accurate or meaningful, and which struck you as the most ridiculous?

CHL: Movies, not then, but after having been in conflict, -- movies of combat -- generally struck me as being pretty much off the mark.
Because to do a dramatic scene you have guys exposing themselves to fire, which was absolutely the opposite of how to do it.

You lived if you knew how to be wise and quick and how to take cover in any situation very, very quickly which makes for poor theatrics. But that was the actuality.

Even today I'll see a battle scene in which a guy will stand up in full view and fire his weapon, which never, never happens.

Besides that we had battalion artillery and regimental artillery, and
mortar.

If we were making an advance they would be paving the way for our
advance. Laying down artillery and mortar rounds ahead of our advance.
We did have that.

FLL: You told me once that in Texas in your basic training there were
barracks near you that was all Black officers. – Blacks who were going
through Officer Candidate's School. Remember that?

CHL: Yes, I do.

In World War II, no Blacks were in the infantry. Blacks were mainly
transportation troops. They were truck drivers.

There was no mixing of races. It was a very, very different kind of a
situation.

I don't know if Blacks were in the artillery or not. I don't think so.

FLL: There were a few all Black units. There was an all Black tank
battalion.

There were a few. There were an all black fighter wing - the Tuskegee
Airmen.

CHL: You're right about that. The common thing that we saw regarding
Blacks were the truck drivers.

I'm trying to remember. It seems to me in the U.S., in camp in the
U.S., you would see some Black and white MPs, and I think they made it
a point to have one Black and one white go out together. As MPs

FLL: Makes sense.

CHL: There were various newspaper articles about segregation - should
there be, shouldn't there be, shouldn't blacks be integrated? There
was general written discussion. I don't remember the guys talking
about it very much.

FLL: You told me your impression of these Black fellows in Texas, that
they were elite.

CHL: They were neat looking, smart looking. Very polished. Very
accomplished. Intelligent. Self-confident.

But during basic training in Texas was the first time I had encountered
any Blacks in a professional capacity, and this was a group of

accomplished professionals.

My mother might have had black maids in the house and you would
encounter Blacks in the normal course of life and work.

FLL: But that had not been part of your childhood experience to date,
dealing with Black professionals

CHL: When I went to Miami there must have been Black students. I
don't really recall but I'm sure there were.

FLL: There would have been some, but a very small percentage

CHL: Lehman high school I think was all white. I think McKinley High
School was the only school where the black students went, so they had a
high ratio of Blacks, maybe 20-25%. They didn't go to Lehman. They
didn't go to Lincoln. They only went to McKinley.

The Texas experience was so impressive. These Black guys in the near
by barracks were sharp, polished, and crisp. One, they were impressive
by any standards. Two, it was a lesson to me that for a Black man to
make it in that kind of world, they had to be twice as good as their
white counterparts. Twice as smart. Twice as competent. And these
guys were. (from an earlier discussion with FLL)

FLL: You told me once you were cleaning your gun and there was an
accidental discharge.

CHL: This was during a rest period. We were back living in a house in
Holland. I was cleaning my B.A.R. and they blew the whistle for lunch,
that was it. I knew lunch was coming up.

I just finished up putting it together, reassembled it. Quickly. Too
quickly.

So much in the habit that after you assemble it, you cock it and pull
the trigger just to make sure you have everything reassembled
correctly. But in the rush I slammed in a magazine.

I pulled the trigger and it went off pow pow pow pow. I was holding it
in a vertical position, which was normal for a test trigger pull.

I was on the first floor and there were some guys upstairs.

And what happened was they blew the whistle for lunch, and as I was
quickly finishing putting my B.A.R. together, the guys upstairs were
just coming down the steps.

And so they were walking down the steps and pow pow pow.

CHL: I'm pretty sure. I don't think I would spend three days in
Holland without my B.A.R. I was responsible for my weapon.

FLL: Did you check it in or leave it with a supply sergeant?

CHL: Apparently not. Did I carry it around with me -- that's a good
question. I'm pretty sure we always carried our weapons. It would be
dangerous to leave a weapon and ammunition just sitting in a house when
we were out of the house. I wouldn't have done that. I kind of think
that we carried it around with us while we were on rest period. I
believe so.

FLL: You told me once about a letter to your mom and dad in which your
father asked you to signal if you were about to go into combat by
saying that you were about to see Mr. Jones, do you remember?

CHL: Now that you say it I do remember, Yeah.

FLL: How long did it take mail to get back home from the front?

CHL: V-Mail was airmailed. It was airmailed back to the U.S. and we
would receive airmail too. Going through the transportation system
until finally it would get to us. If we were back in rest period, it
would get to us in about ten days. If we were in combat It might be
2-3-4 weeks behind

I do remember my father saying that to me. He said to refer to Mr. Ginsburg as a signal I was going into combat.

I made a reference to Mr. Ginsburg. Then he forgot that he had said that to me.

He wrote back - "what are you talking about?"

It was really funny. He just forgotten he had said that.

FLL: I was wonder how long it took for you to get him the message, if it took a few weeks.

CHL: When I was back home with my parents I was kidding my dad about that.

Remember this, and that. And he forgot. I remember now.

FLL: How often would you write to your parents? Once a week?

CHL: I imagine during break periods.

I suspect we had no opportunity at the front. Transportation was food, water, and ammunition and bringing wounded people back. That was

priority one. Any other priority would be pretty far down the list.

FLL: So you could write only intermittently.

CHL: I believe so.

FLL: Did you carry reading material with you at the front? Did you
take a Book or a paperback, a Bible?

CHL: Not a Bible. I was never very religious. I would say a I'm
pretty much a non-religious Jew. I believe in Jewish people hood.

There was a saying during the war there are no atheists in foxholes. I
was an "atheist in a foxhole." I never found myself praying to God,
"God please don't let those bullets get me." I was never religious in
combat.

FLL: Did you bring reading material. They had these special editions,
these victory editions, of Charles Dickens and, Shakespeare.

CHL: You're right. You're right.

I suspect that I did. Reading was always a big thing in my life. I
was always a big reader when I was young. I just don't really
remember.

I would be surprised if I didn't..

I remember Paul Schroeder was my best friend. He had been slightly
wounded.

Guys talked about it, and the word was that since he was only very
slightly wounded he would be coming back and joining us.

He was considered somewhat a noble guy. He was very religious and
everybody looked up to him.

The story told about him was that he was wounded. A rifle bullet just
grazed his shoulder. Drew blood and he refused to tell his Sergeant
about it. Everyone was saying to him, hey you want to have that taken
care of

It's just a slight thing.

It could become infected.

Ah no, we're way short of manpower. I'm not going to tell anybody.

Finally word got to the Sergeant hey you gotta go back you gotta have
that taken care of.

He was back for three or four weeks. During that 3 or 4 weeks was when I joined the outfit.

I heard about the other guys talking about Paul and what a person of good ness he was. I thought that was kind of peculiar. But I got to meet him He and I had good chemistry and hit it off. He was very friendly. I asked him to show me the scar. And he showed me. It was just a graze. Spent a lot of time with him. Good guy. Fun to talk to.

FLL: Where was he from?

CHL: Greensburg Indiana, southeastern Indiana very close to the Ohio border. Not far from Oxford Ohio. Good guy.

I felt like I could open up to him.

A good person. Always helping other people.

Tall strong guy. When we're on a heavy march and some guys were just overloaded and couldn't quite make it, and he would carry your rifle.

If you're too tired he would carry extra stuff.

That's unusual. Not many guys did that.

He commonly did that.

If you want to help well, OK, you can carry my rifle.

You're off on a two to three hour hike.

FLL: Pretty impressive.

CHL: Pretty impressive.

FLL: How often would you see your Lieutenant in the course of combat?

CHL: His job to be with us and he pretty much was

FLL: So he was there. He was fighting with you.

CHL: Yeah, when the platoon was doing stuff, he was right with the
platoon. Didn't make any big impact on me as I recall.

FLL: Do you remember his name?

CHL: No, I don't.

I did tell you the feeling of long, long nights. I did tell you about

artificial moonlight. It was a big thing to us. The artificial
moonlight.

FLL: Did the Germans prefer to attack during the night or attack
during the day?

CHL: We hardly had any action at night. There might have been one or
two very minor occasions. It was pretty much strictly day time stuff.
At night, we were very much aware of the possibility of infiltration,
of the enemy trying to sneak in between foxholes.

FLL: We would only attack at day time? Usually the break of day?

CHL: Artillery went first. Might have an hour's worth of artillery.

So they knew we were coming and we knew we were going. This is
preparation stuff. And advancing, not really a charge, just advancing
cautiously, picking your way. Hoping the artillery did a lot of
damage.

FLL: Before V-E Day when you were going through German towns what kind
of attitude or response did you get from German civilians?

CHL: Fear. Mostly.

FLL: Did they just seek to avoid you? Did they just stay in their
homes?

CHL: Yeah. To keep quiet and keep out of the way.

FLL: Did they avoid you? Did you have all the town inhabitants to
form up?

CHL: The main thing we did was inspecting every room in every house

FLL: Where were the residents during this? Did they marshal anyplace,
the local mayor, the Nazi party leader?

CHL: Good question. I don't think I had any involvement with that
issue. Mostly it was civilians trying to keep inconspicuous.

FLL: You were just going door to door.

CHL: Yeah, looking for combat situations. Looking for the enemy.
Being suspicious of the civilians, except towards the end when most
Germans were giving up.

FLL: Did you get a hostile response?

CHL: No I'd say we didn't. We were suspicious of them. Could there

be a soldier in civilian clothes?

Never had an event. They were mostly acting cowed and wanted to keep
out of the way. They didn't want to cause trouble. We were all armed.
And they're not.

It was mostly that kind of situation. We're the conquerors; they're
the defeated ones so they're trying not to make trouble.

FLL: What was the practice with pilferage? Did people take things?

CHL: I don't think very much, maybe food. I don't think anything
else; maybe if it was cold you'd grab an article of clothing. That was
not the usual. You wouldn't really find much in the houses.

We were advancing towards the town and the civilians all know we are
advancing.

They're mostly trying to get out and leave and take what they could
carry with them.

I think it was mostly just deserted or semi-deserted towns.

FLL: What river were you on when you saw the German infantrymen rowing
across trying to avoid the Russians.

CHL: It would be the Elbe River, fairly close to Berlin, about fifty miles west of Berlin. (from earlier discussion with FLL)

We stopped about fifty miles short of Berlin

We were ordered to stop at this river that flows north to the North Sea.

FLL: How many days before the Russians?

CHL: We stopped, and I think it was five or six days. And Germans were fleeing and trying to get across

The far shore was black with Jerries as far you could see up and down river maybe three quarters of a mile across.

We probably would have seen thousands, maybe 10,000.

We were there five or six days before we were ordered off to some other location. But we never did see the Russians. All we saw were Germans.

There were more Germans trying to cross than there were boats available to them.

Desperately wanting to avoid the Russians, wanting to surrender to the

Americans. Americans would treat them more humanely than the Russians would, they figured.

They knew and everyone knew how horrible they had treated the Russians when they first went into Russia

Never did see the Russian soldiers because we just went some other areas. Eisenhower ordered us to not cross the Elbe so there would not be the chance of confrontation with the Russians.

FLL: What other foreign military units did you encounter? Did you work any with the British?

CHL: There's one funny story. Our division was the northern-most American division in the Bulge. Right next to us were the British.

And our regiment was on the northern part of our division front.

The great thing about this was that Americans wore rubber soled boots. Both the British and the Germans wore hob-nailed boots. You see the bottom of the shoe. It looks like a dozen rounded nail heads sticking through - that's a hob-nailed boot.

Walking on frozen ground or walking on pavement, there is a very distinctive difference in sound between a hob-nailed boot and a rubber

CHL: Probably did have joint operations. We were the advancing unit.

You had to have compressed compact lines. You wouldn't want your
section to get ahead of any other part, because that exposed your
flanks. You had to see to it that the lines were advancing together.

We respected the British soldiers as being professional like us.

We knew they were there. They knew we were there

FLL: Did anyone surrender to you?

CHL: To our unit, yes. I don't think to me individually.

I was just aware of our platoon. Guys surrendered to our platoon. I
did tell you the story about the German prisoners, that was earlier.
Things were still pretty rough.

Just as a unit thing we'd take over a village. There was some fighting
going on and they're surrendering.

FLL: What was your view of the Russian soldier? Even though you
didn't see any

CHL: Mostly that they were capable. The fact is that something like
80% of all German casualties took place on the Russian front.

D-Day 60 years later celebration, we were the great victors. But there
has to be truth in advertising. The truth in advertising is that The
Russians suffered much more and caused many more casualties than we
did.

I think we generally knew about this, and generally respected the
Russians for being effective. We knew that the Russians were advancing
against the Germans.

FLL: They were also Hitler's most important ally. From 39-41 His most
significant foe, but also his most important ally. So Russia gave
Germany the green light to take over Europe. The one who ended the
alliance was Hitler, not Stalin. Stalin was comfortable being an ally.

CHL Hitler attacked France, that was before the Russian rupture with
Germany.

So Hitler was busy making sure that Russia understood that he was going
to attack.

I guess you could say they were allies. Mussolini was an ally.

FLL: Hitler couldn't have done that if he had to worry about Stalin.

CHL: I'm trying to remember the North African action. It was Germany
and Italy together against the British and French colonies in North

They were in a dramatic outdoor amphitheater up on top of a high hill.
I'm sure this would have been architecture for Hitler. It was something
designed for grand glory but it was open air amphitheater.

I made it a point to get a seat right up front.

Jack Benny and Ingrid Bergman were just wonderful. They were
wonderful. They were doing a comic routine. I still remember it.

Ingrid Bergman is rather tall gal, you know. The comic scene was that
Jack Benny and Ingrid Bergman were supposedly lovers, having to
separate because of the war. Ingrid Bergman was saying to Jack Benny,
"Oh I admire your strength. You can leave me and go do your duty and
I'm just crushed by your departure. But you've got this great strength
of character." And she's saying, "You're too strong for me," and
shaking him. "You're too strong for me." He's wobbling. She's
beating him up, despite her words. Supposedly she was shaking his
shoulders so hard she was forcing him to the ground. It went on. The
audience was roaring. It was just very funny.

She's a true, real professional

Never thought of her as being a comedienne, but she was a consummate
actress. She could play any role.

It was one of the funniest things I had ever seen.

FLL: Did you have a monthly USO entertainment?

Oh, that was a big thing to do - for Hollywood types to entertain the troops. Especially after the war was over.

I remember that one because it was so visual and I was right there, of course. I really must have seen others. I'm sure we did singers, whatever. But never saw anyone else famous. No famous stars. Just those two. They were great. There must have been 6-8,000 guys. No one else made a big impression on me. I suppose song and dance.

I do remember seeing some of these kind of things, after the war after the fighting.

FLL: Were there rear echelon female soldiers?

CHL: There were the WACs - Women's Army Corps. I remember that

There were nurses And I think there were WAC truck drivers.

I never saw them in any position other than being a nurse, or maybe being a secretary in an office, or being a vehicle driver.

I don't recall them in any other capacity

I never got in a hospital either.

FLL: Did you have anything to do with the Army Air Corps. Any air
strikes coordinated with ground assaults?

CHL: We would see planes flying overhead sometime. We would enter the cities that had been bombed. You'd see them flying over sometimes, that's all. I don't remember being close to anything or seeing any sort of grand assault. We never had close-in air support.

We'd very, very rarely saw German airplanes. By this time they'd been
pretty much wiped out by the Americans and the British,

I think just very, very rarely maybe once or twice that you'd see
German airplanes,

Trying to think of any other stories.

FLL: We can pick it up after lunch.

END OF TAPE