"NEW" Because History Matters- web log
the interviews
"I have one picture of several girls, specter-thin, hollow-cheeked, with enormous eyes that had seen much evil and terror, and yet with smiles to break one's heart. Little children came around with shy smiles, and mothers with proud smiles happily pushed them forward to get their pictures taken. I walked up and down the train, seeing some lying in pain or lack of energy, and some sitting and making hopeful plans for a future that suddenly seemed possible again." - George C. Gross, tank driver, on encountering a train filled with Jewish families near Magdeburg, Germany LISTEN to Carrol Walsh and George Gross share their recollections of the liberation of "A Train Near Magdeburg" (9:32)
"My very first memories are of my mother, father and maternal grandmother living together. I believe this was in the Krakow Ghetto. I remember that my grandmother was hidden almost continuously from the Germans. The method was simple: she lay on a bed completely covered in doonas to make it appear that the bed was empty. At this time, my grandmother was not only quite elderly, but also frail and blind. I don't know how long she was with us. I do not remember her being taken away – I only know that from one day to the next, she was no longer with us. The Nazis found her, took her away, and eliminated her. I never saw her again." Lexie Keston, little girl, child survivor of the Holocaust (who was on the train liberated in the story above.)
"To go through 9 months of combat without being killed and you think it will never end...I was just a fugitive from the law of averages- but living in the tank during the Battle of the Bulge in below zero weather- the cold just got into your bones- to this day I just can't stand the cold..." Carrol Walsh, tank driver, Battle of the Bulge
"We never did find the Japanese fleet and I am awfully glad that we didn’t, because they had attacked us there with 6 carriers, 3 battleships, 10 or 15 cruisers, and about 20 destroyers. The planes alone would have taken care of us, so I was grateful that we never found them. We were out there searching for 36 hours... When we came back into Pearl it was pitch dark, and we could see the fires from the Arizona and the other ships still burning in the harbor..." Barney Ross, U.S. Navy, Pearl Harbor
"Bullets were hitting the water all around us. They were fired by Japs standing in a lifeboat on the freighter. Just as they cast off their lifeboat, it capsized and the Japs joined us in the water. Among them was the sadistic lieutenant who had been in charge of us... I remembered the pleasure he seemed to get out of meting out punishment for minor infractions of rules... Robert Blakeslee, 'Hell Ship' survivor, Japanese prisoner of war
"The reason why we got our reputation was because when we first got over there [to Italy], we used to take the bombers from ... the Initial Point to the target and pick them up when they came off the target. We wouldn’t go [all the way to the target]…-but then Colonel Davis said 'from now on, you’ll go with the bombers through the whole mission" because the Germans were sending their fighters up in their own flak- they were getting desperate. Our mission was to keep the fighters off the bombers, not to disrupt the formation... we kept the Germans off the bombers and that’s why we never lost a bomber to enemy fighters in 200 missions. At first, they didn’t want us…but toward the end, they started asking for us as an escort, because we protected them to and from the missions. Of course, we couldn’t do anything about the flak, though. In fact, we lost some of our own guys getting hit by flak." Clarence Dart, Tuskegee Airman
"About five of us were playing cards in the prison camp when an air raid sounded. All the guards were looking up at the sky and watching our Air Force bombing nearby. One of the men who was in the yard came in and said two men had ripped the fence and escaped. He asked if anyone else wanted to try and get out. I said, “I'll go." and an Englishmen said, "I'll go,” but no one else would try. So, we went out in the yard. The fence was ripped open. A large group stood around to block the guards' view and the Englishmen and I went through. Little did we know, we were still inside the prison camp..." Floyd Dumas, escaped POW on the run in occupied Italy, 1944
"I took one look (into the abandoned pillbox) and I broke into a cold sweat. They had two machine guns set up. They were set up so that they could move them in either direction by the numbers. By each machine gun was a framed picture with every stump in the clearing and every stump had a number. And if they took the machine gun and went by that number, you were dead on that stump. So if you were behind that stump or even near it, you were dead." Richard Marowitz, somewhere in Germany, 1945
"It’s rather difficult to fly when you have a rosary in each hand. I took more fellas in that morning than I brought home. So the score wasn’t 'twelve to nothing'. " Commander John Leary, torpedo bomber pilot, Pacific
"Each time we went through, we lost 50, 60, 70 bombers at a time. Each carrying 10 men, and at the end of 1943 and three raids, if we had two more raids like that, we would have had no more air force. We would have been completely wiped out. So they just stood down. When we were in the air … we never turned back. They would put up so much flak and we would never go around it before we hit another target. We went through the flak, straight for that target, we never dodged it." Jerry Silverman, B-17 lead navigator
" I can remember the small children would come up to us carefully and just stand there; they did not put their hands out for food. We offered them food but they would refuse to eat it until we ate some first. We found out later that the Japanese told them the Americans would kill them if they asked for anything." Dan Lawler, US Marine, Okinawa, 1945
"We waited for the fires to subside. The flames went down and we went out. We hated to see what was out there-things were still hot, fires were still burning, everything was gone-it was just bones sitting there, grinning skeletons." Anthony Leone, D-Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy
"I remember this one time, we were under heavy German fire, and we jumped into a foxhole. The officer in charge said to me, “ Are they still firing, Dashnaw?” I replied to him, “ Go stick your head up there and see, sir!” Alfred Dashnaw, US Army, French Interpreter
"My co-pilot was sitting in the escape path, so I put my foot in his back and shoved him out. I immediately followed. Just as I cleared the plane, she blew. All I saw was a huge flash and felt some of the concussion. I was in the clouds and got scared and knew that if I opened my chute, it would be damaged by air currents. I decided to delay opening until I broke out into the clear..." Earl Morrow, B17 pilot, shot down over Germany, POW
"I said to one of my buddies “ Do you think we could hit one of those slots" [in the beachhead pillbox bunker]. He said, “let’s give it a try,” so we did. And that’s against the orders, you're not supposed to fire anti-aircraft guns down low, but this was war . So we cranked the gun down and aimed it at one of the slots- remember, the Germans were pouring .88 shells out of them and hitting our landing craft before the men could even hit the beach. We saw a couple tracers went in the pillbox slot and all we know is the box didn’t work anymore. So we tried it on another one, we got into three of them and apparently I guess something was started because the rest of the guns along our line were doing the same thing. And I feel kind of proud of that fact... Ashley Harrington, US Army, Anti-Aircraft Vertical Gun Pointer, D-Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy
"They came over to talk to you and dropped a grenade in your lap, you know, they’d want to bum a cigarette, and their job was to get rid of us..." James Butterfield, US Marine, Okinawa, 1945
"I went to Buchenwald, that was a concentration camp. I have pictures of bodies stacked up about [10-12] feet high. The people were no bigger than just plain bone; there was nothing to them. And that’s what you would want to see to change everyone’s thinking about war, about dictatorship, and all that stuff...." Chester Ross, on the road into Germany
"When we went on liberty the girls in Clinton were very cute and very friendly. They used to tease us a bit. And they would say, “What are you doing here?” And we would say, “We were studying radio.” And they said “you mean, radar, don’t you” and we thought they were not supposed to know that word. They said, “Don’t worry, we know that word and we know what it can do.” Gene Fellers, radio technician, USN, Okinawa
"...the
Japs had been fortifying that island for 40 years. But we did not know it would
be that bad a deal, we were told it would be a 4-day deal.
"We were told at briefing, that the plant was manufacturing rocket fuel. London was still being bombed by V-1 and V-2 missiles. Now, it appears that the plant was working with heavy water, taken from the Norwegians, and was into atomic energy research. Anyway, our group put 95% of its bombs within 125 feet of the aim-point. I never aimed better, but could never lose the reputation, and was asked to lead on every mission thereafter." Charles Webster, B17 bombardier, 29 combat missions
"We were going to try to eliminate obstacles. We were given all kinds of information carefully laid out to us. Our mission was to remove obstacles and mines and to mark lanes, but like so many things in war, things didn’t go the way they are supposed to. There were a lot of instances at Omaha Beach where missions couldn’t be carried out any where near successfully like they were supposed to and our mission was one of them..."John Webster, combat engineer, Omaha Beach, D-Day
"My memory of what happened was of total destruction and death. Every day was the same. That damned island was all coral rock. Our movement was slow, sometimes only a few yards each day…it’s hazy now because it was 51 years ago. It all was very vivid for so long…sleepless nights that were so long-filled with emptiness, sadness, fear and total anger-constant yelling, flares in the sky all the time, spurts from our machine guns. I know I prayed a lot-held my rosary around my neck..."John Murray, Marine, Peleliu Island
"And the smell was not a farm; it was Dachau that we had smelled miles before we got there. And yet, people in the village who were right next to the camps said they didn’t know what was going on. People in Munich, which was actually only nine miles from Dachau, didn’t know what was going on. Now if you want to believe that, the Brooklyn Bridge is still for sale. " Richard Marowitz on the liberation of Dachau, 1945
"There was one window in the back of the cell. All these criminals, mostly Germans, were fresh air [fanatics]. In the spring and the summer it wasn’t too bad, but in the winter it was hot in the cell block where we were standing. It was freezing outside, the windows were wide open because they were fresh air fans, and you had to stare at them continuously to make sure they didn’t try and commit suicide." Alvin Cohen on the Nuremberg Tribunals
"I was on Warren Street in front of Lenny Boldhock’s newsroom...and the headlines were, “Japs bomb Pearl Harbor!” So I looked at Ted Toomey and he looked at me and I beat him to it. I said, “Where the hell is Pearl Harbor?” Well, not quite a year later I knew where Pearl Harbor was because we came in on a ship, and when we entered the harbor, I’ll never forget this, you couldn’t hear a thing. The only thing you heard was the slush of the water as the boat was going in. And we saw all these ships leaning over on their sides...." Joe Fiore, Marine in the Pacific
"Imagine, there were 30,000 Jews who had lived in this small area before the war. Eighty people came back. I was the only child to survive." Rena Bernstein, Holocaust survivor
Editor's note- interviews average several single spaced typewritten pages. Feel free to print out and read at your own leisure, or read on the browser , clicking on links to view related photos, video/audio feeds, other sites, or explanations. (Above is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, and we hope to have more time to add additional interviews in the future.)
B-17 crew-shot down 11/4/1944, reunited 57 yrs. later...
Copyright © 2001,2007 by Matthew A Rozell and Hudson Falls CSD. All rights reserved.