Chapter 16. Melsungen.and occupation

Click on a picture to see a full screen picture

In all the time I was in headquarters I never saw the General. I don't remember his name now. By then he was spending as little time in Germany and making trips elsewhere as much as possible. Like England as an example. He had the biggest and best car. But the Divarty general did OK too. He had a Mercedes that had belonged to Ribbentrop one of the Nazi Big Wigs. It weighed 9,000 pounds. I had a picture taken in Paris and the car was in the picture. The two star Commanding general outranked the one star Divarty general and he got the best car.
When the Division general was away playing or on business the officers of Divarty would take the Mercedes out partying. I was the driver but of course I could not participate in the festivities. Looking back on it I was the designated driver. I would drive the officers to the party then either wait outside until they were ready to come back home to HQ. You can see a picture of this car when I was in Paris coming back from Le Harve. I wish I could remember the person I took to Le Harve because they would not send it with just a lieutenant I am pretty sure. But in any case this car didin't really purr until it got up to over 40 mph. The gas tank also was a 40 gallon tank. One night I took some officers out on a party and coming back I ran out of gas about a mile from HQ. I cant remember any problems making officers walk back home so I might have had it out driving after they were delivered back to HQ and as I remember I was alone if I remember right. Well I got back somehow and returned next morning with a jeep with the idea of towing it back. Like I said it wasn't very far. However it was much too far for a jeep to pull it. After a hundred yards or so the Jeep was steaming and I had to get something bigger to get it home with. Now I remember they brought out some gas and I drove it home. It had a primer to get it started. Of course a jeep doen't need priming so I wasn't aware of this car needing priming.

Another time I drove Lt. Col. Hatch S2 out on a date with his girlfriend Driving the 42 Buick the next best car to the Mercedes. She lived in an isolated house in the country. I was to take him there and then wait outside until he got finished. I waited and waited until I got tired of waiting about 4 am and just drove off and left him there. I ofter wondered how I got away with leaving a Col. afoot. Anyway nothing was heard about it. I don't remember if the regulations about non-fraternization were still in effect or not. That may have been why I wasn't busted to private. When peace was restored the army thought it could overrule human nature and said it was against regulations to fraternize with the Germans. Two things were going against this. First an army of young men associating with women who are hungry and the rule is a waste of time. Many years later at a meeting of the Society of the Third Infantry Division I saw Hatch was still around. Of course I didn't mention this and he had been through another war (Korea)and perhaps others and this was just a small incident in a full life he had so had no doubt forgotten all about it. I don't remember when fraterinazation ended but not too many months after it began.


I cant remember who I drove to Le Harve in the Mercedes for transport home but I think the rank of the officer determined how good a car I took, I drove to Le Harve several times from Germany. There were military gas stations on the way for fuel. Of course I managed to get lost in Paris coming back a day or two and seeing the sights while lost. I'll expand on this later. But we moved north to the Kassel area. A totally demolished town. The artillery battalions were spread out over the area in small towns to occupy it. I was kept busy driving the Ex. Off. around to the various battalions doing the occupation. He also oversaw managing the huge problem of displaced persons cast adrift at the end of the war with no means of sustenance. This was a real problem. There were POW camps renamed for Disarmed Enemy Forces. Renaming prisoners to Enemy Combatants is not the first time words have been used justify certain actions. But there were also freed concentration camp inmates or even workers hired from other countries to work in war industries in Germany. Not all workers were forced labor although there were certainly that. Then there were the homeless Germans because of the bombing. These people had to be taken care of. Except for the German civilians. They were on their own. Millions were killed by the advancing Russians. 12,000,000 either were killed or forced out and their homes and property taken by the Poles if not killed by the Russians. Then on top of that there were the Germans from eastern Europe who escaped ahead of the advancing Russians. There were millions of these although it is claimed that several million didn't make it ahead of the Russians. I met several who had walked 400 miles to escape. This only applies to the Germans in Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania not the ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia. They were pretty much surrounded and had to pay the consequences of being on the losing side with no chance of escape. Up at the top is a picture of the PW camp at Marburg.

James Bache wrote a book titled Other Losses. In it he claimed that the Allies at the end of the war kept German captives. Instead of calling them POW's they were renamed Disarmed Enemy Forces. He recounted some stories about the horrific captivity they endured. Starved, worked to death and so on. The captivities at Stalingrad endured such treatment that only a few thousand out of over 200,000 never came back from Soviet captivity. We expect this from the Russians. But to get this accusation is not expected from American, British and French captives. As you can see Patton didn't treat his captives that way. They seemed housed well. I did not look into what they were eating. But assume eating ok. Anyway, one time I returned from Paris to Melsungen and decided that I could return by another route. Not a smart idea. However I didn't think that the French might not like American soldiers getting into Grmany by any but an approved route. But I wanted to see more of France and Germany so I took off. On the way I saw many German prisoners doing mine removal. So the French didn't send the captives home right away. When I got to the border the French stopped me and didn't want to let me through. However I talked them into letting me go because I didn't have enough gas to go back to Paris. I surely lucked out in this instance. But when I read the book Other Losses much later I was reminded that it would have been good to know what was actually going on. Anyway not a smart move to just take off unauthroized. But Pattom seemed to treat his prisoners ok as indicated by the picture I took of the prison camp at Marburg.


Keep checking the blog on Bills war. A real hero and combat veteran