Steven Karras Read online

  “But if the war had lasted eight more days,” I said, “Your son would’ve been a second lieutenant in the American army, can you imagine that? I would’ve stayed then.”

  Then he looked at me and said, “If the war had lasted eight more days, my son, the second lieutenant in the American army, wouldn’t have had a father.” But it was a dream I had. For years and years, I still had dreams during the night that I had gotten the commission.

  So, those were my war years. I got married to a beautiful woman and had three beautiful children. Sixty some odd years later, I’m very grateful that I’m here, and I’m extremely grateful that I made it out of Germany and survived the war.

  My army experience was in a way a dream that came true. When I left Germany, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I tried to go into the English army, but it wouldn’t take me because I was an Enemy Alien. I wanted to prove myself. I was a small kid, however, I was always the kid that dared and tried everything. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t afraid to die. The camaraderie, the fellows cannot be matched by anything, but I was damn good American GI who had a score to settle and was lucky to accomplish some form of revenge—or should I say my way of wiedergut machung (repayment).

  Memories of combat were hard for me for years. I had dreams where I woke up screaming about somebody getting hit, or somebody getting killed, or having no protection during a battle, until I realized that I was in bed.

  Eric Hamberg owned and operated a beauty salon in New Jersey until his retirement. He and his wife, Sunny, live in Union, New Jersey.

  Chapter 5

  BERNARD FRIDBERG

  HANOVER, GERMANY

  Eighth Air Force, Twenty-Five Bombing Missions European Theater of Operations

  Bernard Fridberg was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1922 and lived there until he was thirteen years old. His great uncle, Emil Berliner, who had invented the gramophone and had immigrated to the United States in the 1800s, kept close ties with his German relatives. Inevitably, Berliner’s family was instrumental in providing affidavits and vouching for Fridberg and five of his cousins who came to the United States without their parents in 1936. He is pictured above in 1944.

  I had had firsthand experiences with the Germans, so I was anxious to get even with them a little bit; as I started to fly missions, I did feel that way. After I volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps, I was sent to gunnery training and then to Salt Lake City, where the bomber crews were put together, and that’s where we met our pilot, co-pilot, radio operator, and gunners. There were ten men to a crew. From that point on, we were essentially together day and night—the enlisted men especially. Everybody knew where I had come from and that I was Jewish, but I never experienced any anti-Semitism at all. We all would become very close knit.

  After six weeks of training they took us to Kearney, Nebraska, where all of the B-17 crews met and received their assignments, whether they were going to the Pacific or Europe. B-17s by their nature were earmarked for Europe, whereas B-24s were normally used in the Pacific Theater. To our chagrin, they gave us machete knives and mosquito netting; we were going to the Pacific. But at the end of the day, they recalled that gear and gave us equipment for Europe. Bangor, Maine, was the last place we would be stationed in the United States. From there, we went to Newfoundland and then to Europe. We took off for Belfast one night, and it was a bad night; the weather started to turn real bad. Unfortunately, out of fifty-two planes, more than ten didn’t make it because of the weather and some had inexperienced pilots. We were very fortunate that our navigator had training with Pan Am—the only airline that made transcontinental flights—before the war. We were lucky to have his experience. We flew on radio silence.

  We got to Ridgewell, England (outside Cambridge), where the 381st Bombardment Group was located. We were replacements. I had cousins from Germany who had escaped to London, so I would visit them from time to time.

  The missions that we flew were long, usually seven or eight hours, on oxygen over ten thousand feet. By the time we were done with the missions, we were debriefed, then went off to bed. The days started by being awakened from a deep sleep—all of our energy was spent each day—and told that we were on again for another mission. That’s how it went. There wasn’t much talking; the enlisted men, like me, would head to the plane, while the officers would go to a tent to be briefed on our mission for the day. Even without being told, we could gather where we were going by the bombs that were already in the bomb bays. If we were going to bomb bridges or factories, we would have detonation bombs. If we were off to bomb Munich or Berlin, the firebombs (smaller than the others) were in the bomb bay and as many of them as possible. The ammunition was already there for me, and I would make sure that everything was in place and ready to go.

  There would be about three hundred planes going over together; once we gained a certain altitude, we would go around in circles until other bomb groups, stationed all over England, joined us at a certain point over England. Then the lead group would start flying over the North Sea, and we would get in formation.

  The first mission for me was over Berlin, the toughest one of all, on May 19, 1944. The one thing I remember is the flak. The German gunners already had a pretty good idea of what altitude our bombers flew when releasing their bombs, which was around twenty thousand feet. All of this would happen very fast; being a gunner I would fire at the German Messerschmitt planes as soon as they came into sight. I would see the swastikas on them. There were lots of narrow escapes. We had a plane shot up to such a point the hydraulic system wasn’t working, and we had to take our parachutes and attach them to the side of the plane to slow it down for landing.

  The second mission that I was involved in was one of the toughest missions in the war. We lost a large number of planes. One crew that lived with us in our Quonset hut (there were two crews per hut) was gone the next morning. These are things I don’t like talking about, because I almost feel guilty for having lived through it.

  Obviously, I never knew the details of what things the Nazis were doing to the Jews below, as far as death camps were concerned—we found that out much later. However, I felt a great deal of hate toward the Germans at that time when I was twenty-one; what I did know was that my family had lived in Hanover for centuries, and then all of the sudden I wasn’t a German anymore. I wasn’t allowed to swim in public pools or go into parks or enjoy things that non-Jewish children did. Essentially, they took our country away from us. So, I felt good about what I was doing in the air force.

  Between May 19 and July 18 we had flown twenty-five missions. The last mission we flew was to bomb Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea where Wernher von Braun did the research on the V-2. Before we got there, however, we had engine failure. We were able to drop our bomb load and then made it to a small airbase in southern Sweden, which was neutral.

  When we landed, we were under the supervision of the Swedish Army. Since we only had flight clothing on us, the army was nice enough to outfit us with civilian clothes and put us in boarding houses, where we stayed for four months until November. It wasn’t internment, but we couldn’t go anywhere we wanted. We were able to go into town and some of us had Swedish girlfriends, but we still had to sign in whenever we came back. Eventually, we were flown out of the Stockholm airport before the end of the war. Ironically, there were German planes with swastikas beside ours on the runways, but we were put in an unmarked C-47 and flown over German-occupied Norway to Scotland.

  After twenty-five missions, I received the Distinguished Flying Cross. These memories do still seem vivid to me; the best part about it is that I feel that I did my part, even though I never think I am a big hero. The big heroes are the ones who didn’t come back. The experience never leaves you. You’re never the same and are a different person for having lived through it.

  Bernard Fridberg was the president of a large typesetting company in Falls Church, Virginia.

  Chapter 6

  FRITZ WEINSCHENK

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  293rd Joint Signal Assault Company European and Pacific Theaters of Operation

  After his induction and basic training, Fritz Weinschenk trained as a radio operator and volunteered for the 293rd Joint Signal Assault Company. He is pictured above in England, 1944, where he received further training. He landed in the second wave on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, and remained in Normandy until August, when his unit was reorganized and sent to the Pacific Theater for the invasion of the Philippines. In 1946, he returned to Germany, where he served in the American Military Government and was involved in the Nuremberg Trials.

  The first time I saw New York was from the ship Aquatania, which had just docked in New York Harbor. The city was in a muggy haze; there were skyscrapers and traffic, and I was terrified to leave the boat. That was my first impression. My family lived in Brooklyn and we were very poor. My father never made any money here, for he had no skills other than the wine business with which he did so well in Germany, and my mother knitted dresses. We had to be supported by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which gave us rent money and food. I will never forget that as long as I live.

  However, we were very happy and became much closer knit as a family than we were in Mainz, and we survived. I went to school during the day and worked at night. When I entered Manual Training High School, I didn’t speak one word of English. The only words I could say were “I go to America.” Two years later, I was an exemplary student and graduated with honors.

  In 1938, I went to City College and became a history major. I was very interested in what was happening in Germany and read up on everything. I worked at the New York Public Library, so I had access to all of these German newspapers. I didn’t necessarily hate the Germans, but I certainly didn’t have any love for them either. My attitude toward them was always one of intense curiosity, because I knew not everybody was a Nazi and that there was another Germany. That was my firsthand experience. A lot of Germans went along with Hitler because of job needs and having to follow the crowd. If they didn’t join the party, people were relegated to miserable existences—people with families to support. So, I knew they were not all murderers. I found out later what happened to teachers of mine who refused to join the party.

  In 1939, my father got a job in California, and he, my mother, and my little brother left. Consequently, I didn’t have enough money to eat sufficiently. I had no source of income except for what I was making at night and weekends at the library. I had a dime for lunch, and as a special treat on weekends I got a Chinese dinner at a restaurant for thirty cents. I was actually starving.

  After Pearl Harbor, I tried enlisting in the navy but was denied because I was an Enemy Alien. When I ultimately went down to Whitehall Street for my army physical (I received a draft notice), I was frightened that the authorities would refuse me because I was a Jew or maybe too small. I still had this acute paranoia left over from Germany. But the army took me.

  When I was inducted, I had my first solid meal at Camp Upton, and it was the first time I ate well in years; I loved the army right away. I fit right in with all of the guys and worked hard to become a good soldier. The world had opened up to me and I felt like I was born again.

  After my basic training in Camp Croft, South Carolina, I trained as a radio operator and then was sent to the 309th Infantry Regiment of the 78th Division, where I became a sergeant and chief of a radio platoon. I was proud as hell. Then in December 1943, I was sitting in the orderly room, where I was in charge of quarters during the weekends, and a teletype came in: “We need eight radio operators for a special mission.” It didn’t say what mission it was, but I knew this was for me and I’d get out of there. So I shipped out with seven other radio operators from the division to an unknown destination. We had our papers to report to a camp near West Point and I was happy as a lark. I arrived at the outfit, the 293rd Joint Signal Assault Company, which was just about to go on the ships to go overseas. You cannot imagine my excitement and the thrill I felt when I heard that. I thought, “At last I’m going to go overseas; I’m going to see action and get into this war.” Before I knew it, I was on a ship in the Atlantic in a big convoy. Eight days later we landed in England.

  The outfit was composed of U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Corps platoons. Their mission was shore fire control; they had the radio operators communicate between the shore and the ships to direct naval gunfire, and between the ground and aircraft to direct air strikes. My platoon was to be the communications center for the beach master, who coordinated troop and equipment movement and commanded a beach during an invasion. We were taken to Torque in Devonshire, England, and were quartered in private homes.

  During the day, we drilled pretty hard; we practiced with radio nets, waterproofed our equipment, had bayonet drills and hand grenade practice, and did the usual army stuff. In March and April, we were taken in trucks and jeeps—a company convoy—to Exeter, and then to Slapton Sands, which was an area similar to Omaha Beach. Then we were put on LSTs, taken out to sea, and were to make a combat landing for training purposes. This was a training ground for all of the units that were going to take part on D-Day and was under the direction of Brig. Gen. Norman Cota, one of the leading lights of the planning and the attack itself. We went through the entire training process with the communications platoon of the 116th Infantry, 29th Division. We got to know a lot of those guys, including their commanding officer.

  Still we didn’t know what was going to happen. Sure, we knew there was going to be an invasion, but we didn’t know when or where. In the middle of May, we were taken to a camp on the south of England. This camp was gigantic; it had forty thousand troops concentrated in it and was surrounded by barbed wire and British Army Home Guards. That’s when it got exciting because we felt that something was going to happen. There were artillery units, mortuary units, chemical units, amphibious and infantry units. Every morning, we were taken to one of the buildings where officers had posted aerial photos of the beach where we were going to land, and then we were given operational orders. Our lieutenant read us the field order: Omaha Beach, Easy Green sector, on the right flank of the beach near the Vierville exit—establish communication with the beach master and various command posts.

  On June 1, we boarded an LCI (landing craft infantry). LCI 94 was one of a huge flotilla of LCIs, which were one-hundred-foot-long ships with three holds for troops. There was a tower in the center, and a bridge with ramps on both sides of the bow that would lower to discharge personnel. We were then briefed; we checked our equipment and were assigned to one of the holds. The mood was pure excitement, but this big event was overshadowed by concern of my fatigues and equipment and the job at hand.

  We all had battery-operated radios and I listened to Radio Berlin propaganda, as well as different news stations; I listened to the German news discussing victories in the East with great interest. As a GI, I was not immune to the general tenor of American propaganda of that period. Like everyone else, I hated Hitler and called the Germans “Krauts.” At any rate, the others relied on me to translate whatever we heard on the radio.

  On the night of June 5, the boat finally starting vibrating, the engines started to hum, and we left at sunset with no fanfare from the harbor. This was no fishing trip! We were out in the English Channel in a fleet that included barrage balloons that prevented the Luftwaffe from attacking us, and the boat was rocking like hell. We latched down all of our equipment on deck, and I didn’t get too much sleep that last night.

  I remember thinking that since we were in the second wave, the first wave would be so far inland by the time I landed that I was going to miss out on everything and not see any action. I also figured that this was going to be a mop-up operation. I had the impression that the Germans were beaten. They had no air force to speak of, so I thought the first wave was going to be in Paris by the time I hit the beach. I was a stupid kid.

  Just after dawn, we all went up on deck, and the LCI started moving toward the shore. We
didn’t really see the shore though; we saw a fog in the distance, and the coast was one big puff of smoke. The armada was overwhelming, with hundreds of ships. There were British E-boats speeding by us, with British skippers standing on the bows with bullhorns directing traffic and communicating with our captain as we went toward the shore. The scene was incredible. A battleship was firing inland, belching yellow smoke, and then we were told to go down in the hold.

  Within minutes, I started to hear a pinging sound: “Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!” It was almost like we were scraping something. Then there was a blinding flash in our hold. That flash changed my life. The ship had been hit and things started breaking from the wall—pipes and equipment—and the ship started listing. Our lieutenant shouted, “Line up, bayonet out! Cut the pack of the man in front of you and get out!”

  One after another we made it out of the ship’s hold. The ship was drifting, the conning tower was smoking, and there was a fire. As I got on deck, I saw sailors lying around as if they were sleeping. I said to the guy next to me, “What are these guys doing? These guys are sleeping!” I didn’t realize they had been killed.

  I climbed down the ladder and I started toward the shore, swimming on my back, doing backstrokes. As I got closer, I saw what looked like pebbles hitting the water around me, like someone was throwing little stones. They were machine-gun bursts.

  I was carrying my rifle, helmet, and hand grenades. I just got to the beach with the last of my strength, half drowned and in horrible shape. When I crawled up the beach I saw nobody alive, just dead Americans. I crawled past the bodies of the communications platoon of the 116th, the same guys with whom I had trained the month before at Slapton Sands. They had landed completely unprotected and were wiped out. It was then when I started to have the greatest fear for my life.