In
April, 1945 the Russians were west of Vienna. We could hear and see
the flashes of the guns at night down the Danube valley toward
Vienna. We were told to be ready to evacuate Stalag 17B the next
morning. A few were too ill to evacuate the camp and they stayed
behind. We gathered in the southeast compound ready to march out the
main gate. We were divided into eight groups of 500 men. We carried
everything we owned, our blankets, bowls, what little food we had and
our overcoats. I had an extra pair of shoes I had recently received
from supply. By noon, April 8, we were enroute by way of the back
roads. We did not know where the Germans were taking us. As we
approached the first small village west of 17B, I saw a lesson in
defensive strategy. As we entered the village, the street made a
right angle turn to the left. This street was about two blocks long,
both sides of which were solidly lined with the masonry buildings of
the village. Immediately around the first corner was a solidly built
tank barricade. It was so strongly built that a tank would have a
difficult time getting over it. At the far end of the street was an
open farm yard door where a manned German 88mm cannon was pointed
straight down the street. A Russian tank turning the corner
encountering the road block would be hit by the 88mm before the tank
had time to back around the corner. We did not have the opportunity
to see how this worked out. Probably just as well.
Our general route of march was by the back roads on the north side of the Danube. Escape would have been easy. I believed it would be very dangerous to walk away from our group. Some did. The country was disintegrating. If an escaped POW encountered a road block of Hitler Youth or the SS he most likely would be killed on the spot. Who would ever know what happened to him? We walked for two days and rested one, either in the open fields or in a farmer’s barn. Some of the villages enroute to Linz were St. Oswald, Grein, Naarn, Perg, the death camp at Mauthausen, and Steyregg. We were so hungry at one point we found a barrel of a farmer’s seed potatoes and ate them all. For the first few days we were fed only one meal by the Germans in an open field near Naarn. It was barley soup. While eating, a squadron of Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers flew low near us. It was the only time I saw those aircraft during the war.
At one time we were so hungry that we searched the fields for dandelion greens. I went in to a barn and found a cow eating a sugar beet. I took the beet, cut off the part the cow was eating and I ate the rest. It was a low point in my military career. This farm and field are in my 8mm film collection taken in 1956.
During one of the rest periods, with my eyes closed, I thought I heard the unmistakable whine of U.S. Army GMC 6x6 trucks. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There they were, all painted white with large red crosses on the white canvas tops and sides. How these Red Cross trucks from Switzerland happened to catch up with us was a miracle. They had Canadian Red Cross food parcels. We each got one. It was the first decent food we had since leaving Stalag 17B. In the parcel was a one pound tin can of real creamery butter. I took one taste. It was so sweet and delicious. I ate the whole pound right on the spot.
At one point we passed a German airfield. The Hungarian pilots came out to chat with us. We didn’t feel like talking with them. One afternoon a small boy was by the road and we asked him who was going to win the war. He said Germany will win. We asked him why he thought so. He replied in English with his German word order: “The Americans used to fly here over, and now you are all here.” During one of the rest breaks we decided not to get up and continue the march when the guards tried to get us moving again. One burst of a German burp gun into the air and we were on our feet moving west.
We were held up for a couple of hours near Mauthausen. The rumor was that one of those prisoners had been shot and killed in the road ahead. After a short time, we walked past the spot in the road where there was a pool of blood. We passed several small work parties of those poor miserable wretches in their skimpy blue and white stripped slave labor uniforms. They looked barely alive. They were so emaciated, with their sunken eyes, bony bodies, and listless demeanor. As we passed Mauthausen, we could see the stone quarry where most of them worked and died and where several Americans had been forced to work. When I drove by this ugly place in 1956, some of the one story barracks were still in place. I am an eyewitness to the existence of this death camp. No one can convince me the holocaust never happened.
We walked over the Danube on the main bridge at Linz. The Danube isn’t blue. It was more of a steel gray. We proceeded westward along the river for a short distance. While at rest, a group of about twenty Russian prisoners under armed escort passed us going in the same direction. They were miserable wretches. The first two of them were supporting a third man between them who could barely walk. He struggled to half walk and be half dragged along. His eyes were rolling in his head. All of them were examples of man’s gross inhumanity to man. I learned no matter how hard a situation one may find himself in, there is always someone who has it much worse. When we resumed our march, we didn’t see them. I wondered of they had been taken somewhere and executed.
On a country road a civilian informed us that “Roosevelt todo,” our President was dead. We were skeptical and told him Hitler was dead also. We just didn’t believe him.
At one small town we passed German black uniformed SS troops parked along side the road. Their uniforms bore the SS double lightning bolt insignia with the silver skull and cross bones insignia on their caps. They were leaning against 1939 Dodge trucks. These were the toughest looking soldiers we had ever seen. They all looked like unshaven Max Schmelings, the German heavyweight boxer. They looked like total, absolute thugs. Contrary to our normal light-hearted demeanor, we walked passed these guys without comment. I feared if we got mouthy with them they would halt our march, take us across the road to the fields and kill us all on the spot. I believe that was a very real probability. Perhaps the fact the American army was in Germany headed our way was a factor protecting us.
Our route west of Linz to the woods southwest of Branau, Hitler’s birthplace, was again by the back roads. Some sources report routes different than I recall. It may be that some of the groups took alternate routes. Some of the town names I remember are St. Marienkirchen, Polham, Grieskirchen, Reid and Altheim. Southeast of Branau we passed an aluminum factory not knowing it would shortly become our home after liberation. We walked through Branau and proceeded southwest for about five miles to the junction of the Inn and Salzac Rivers. We passed a gasthaus in the country with a flag pole extending out from the doorway. The flag was that hideous, ugly Nazi red banner with the white circle containing that abominable Nazi swastika. We had walked for about three weeks with little or no food, in rain and cold, sleeping in barns or on the ground. We marched about 160 miles. I don’t want to do that again.
[Route of Dad's march from a map he marked up.]
Our camp was nothing more than a place in the woods that was surrounded by a perimeter clearing about 100 feet wide cut through the tall trees. Within this two or three acre site we camped. There was no shelter of any kind. The first night, I laid down on the ground under a tree and slept. In the morning, I awoke to find an inch of snow had fallen during the night covering my overcoat and everything else. It was another low point in my military career. We stripped the trees of sheets of bark to make roofs for our lean-to’s. This made the German guards very angry. It was during a search for building materials I found a German helmet lying next to a tree. There was no sign of the soldier who had abandoned it. I brought it home with me. Our only source of water was the springs across the road that flowed from the steep banks down to the river. The latrines were slit trenches in the open area. We had no satisfactory way to wash our eating utensils. Everyone developed bloody diarrhea except me. The guards were not strict in keeping us in our compound. There were not enough of them and at that point they didin’t seem to care too much. Again, escape would have been easy, but foolhardy at the time.
On two or three occasions, I heard one of the new German jet fighters go over head. By the time I ran to a clearing for a look it was long gone. After two or three days, we began to hear the sound of heavy guns at night. We knew the Americans were coming. The village across the river had white sheets hanging out of the windows. Some said they saw American tanks in the village. The next day the rumor was the Germans had gone down the road toward Branau to meet the Americans. That afternoon, May 2, 1945, a clean shaven American Captain appeared in camp in his immaculate uniform. We were wild with the excitement at seeing him. I remember his exact words: “You men are no longer prisoners of war, you are members of the United States Army!” You can imagine the cheering this announcement produced. The next day, American GIs of the 13th Armored Division arrived and rounded up our guards. They were lined up, searched and stripped of valuables. The GIs told us to go over and kick or beat them. They were surprised when we refused. The guards were old men, not fit for front line duty. They had really done nothing cruel to us.
Some GIs arrived in a jeep and I asked them if they had anything to eat. The driver searched under his seat and came up with a few boxes of K rations. They were very dusty having been under the seat for sometime. The driver asked me if we were really going to eat those things. He was startled by an emphatic “hell yes”. Some Red Cross parcels arrived and were distributed to us. Things were looking up.
The next day trucks arrived to take us through Branau to the aluminum factory. We passed the Gasthaus that a few days before had displayed that ugly Nazi flag. Now it was flying the Stars and Stripes! Here was our country’s flag deep in the heart of the enemy’s homeland. What a beautiful sight! I shall never forget the thrill of it. I can never accept or approve burning our flag in protest. Those who do have no understanding of its real meaning or the sacrifices made for it. Burning our flag is a treasonous act. Those who burn our flag ought to be prosecuted. Burning our flag is a political act, not free speech. Odd how some refuse to recognize the difference.
We stopped in Branau and a GI took us to a small neighborhood grocery store. He kicked the door open with his boot and told us to help ourselves. There was no food or anything of value to us. We took nothing. The family in the kitchen in the back were upset but there was nothing they could do.
While off the trucks in Branau, a GI approached me to ask a question. We were both startled. It was Stan Poag, a fellow worker at the Chrysler Corporation general offices in Highland Park, Michigan. Before entering the service , Stan and I were employed as messenger/escorts in the main lobby. We escorted the various vendors to the appropriate offices. In this way, we got to know all of the secretaries in the corporate offices. I even had the pleasure of meeting Mr. K.T. Keller, the president of Chrysler and many of the vice-presidents. Stan and I had a lot to discuss. I joined him and some of his buddies in a house for coffee and conversation. It was a joy to see him again. He made the point that everywhere the ground forces went, the Air Force had been there before. I told him, of course, we had been fighting this war for almost two years before the ground forces even showed up.
We arrived at the aluminum factory a short distance southeast of Branau. There was no sign of any workers. The factory doors had instructions painted in several languages for the slave laborers. We had no idea where the workers had gone. We slept on the concrete floors next to the heavy aluminum ingots and the electric furnaces used to make them. We were fed our first real meal. It was “C” ration spaghetti and meatballs. It was so rich we could hardly eat it. All of us became nauseated and the diarrhea was aggravated to the point that going to the toilet we didn’t know which end would go first. We were given sulfa pills the size of hockey pucks. I exaggerate. Shortly, we were able to keep the concentrated rich food in our stomachs. We had the unusually odd feeling of being full but still very, very hungry at the same time. It took days before that feeling began to disappear.
We explored the factory. In one building were some steam locomotives. It looked as if it might have been a locomotive repair facility. The cab controls were totally strange. On the factory tracks was an electric locomotive. We ran it up and down the track until the batteries ran down. There was a large pile of German army rifles lying on the grass. I thought about taking one for a souvenir. We may have been advised not to or else it was too much trouble to carry. It took awhile to get used to having regular meals. Believe me, deep long-term hunger changes one’s whole outlook on life. A few days later, May 8, 1945, the war in Europe ended. Germany surrendered unconditionally. VE Day!
Our general route of march was by the back roads on the north side of the Danube. Escape would have been easy. I believed it would be very dangerous to walk away from our group. Some did. The country was disintegrating. If an escaped POW encountered a road block of Hitler Youth or the SS he most likely would be killed on the spot. Who would ever know what happened to him? We walked for two days and rested one, either in the open fields or in a farmer’s barn. Some of the villages enroute to Linz were St. Oswald, Grein, Naarn, Perg, the death camp at Mauthausen, and Steyregg. We were so hungry at one point we found a barrel of a farmer’s seed potatoes and ate them all. For the first few days we were fed only one meal by the Germans in an open field near Naarn. It was barley soup. While eating, a squadron of Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers flew low near us. It was the only time I saw those aircraft during the war.
At one time we were so hungry that we searched the fields for dandelion greens. I went in to a barn and found a cow eating a sugar beet. I took the beet, cut off the part the cow was eating and I ate the rest. It was a low point in my military career. This farm and field are in my 8mm film collection taken in 1956.
During one of the rest periods, with my eyes closed, I thought I heard the unmistakable whine of U.S. Army GMC 6x6 trucks. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There they were, all painted white with large red crosses on the white canvas tops and sides. How these Red Cross trucks from Switzerland happened to catch up with us was a miracle. They had Canadian Red Cross food parcels. We each got one. It was the first decent food we had since leaving Stalag 17B. In the parcel was a one pound tin can of real creamery butter. I took one taste. It was so sweet and delicious. I ate the whole pound right on the spot.
At one point we passed a German airfield. The Hungarian pilots came out to chat with us. We didn’t feel like talking with them. One afternoon a small boy was by the road and we asked him who was going to win the war. He said Germany will win. We asked him why he thought so. He replied in English with his German word order: “The Americans used to fly here over, and now you are all here.” During one of the rest breaks we decided not to get up and continue the march when the guards tried to get us moving again. One burst of a German burp gun into the air and we were on our feet moving west.
We were held up for a couple of hours near Mauthausen. The rumor was that one of those prisoners had been shot and killed in the road ahead. After a short time, we walked past the spot in the road where there was a pool of blood. We passed several small work parties of those poor miserable wretches in their skimpy blue and white stripped slave labor uniforms. They looked barely alive. They were so emaciated, with their sunken eyes, bony bodies, and listless demeanor. As we passed Mauthausen, we could see the stone quarry where most of them worked and died and where several Americans had been forced to work. When I drove by this ugly place in 1956, some of the one story barracks were still in place. I am an eyewitness to the existence of this death camp. No one can convince me the holocaust never happened.
We walked over the Danube on the main bridge at Linz. The Danube isn’t blue. It was more of a steel gray. We proceeded westward along the river for a short distance. While at rest, a group of about twenty Russian prisoners under armed escort passed us going in the same direction. They were miserable wretches. The first two of them were supporting a third man between them who could barely walk. He struggled to half walk and be half dragged along. His eyes were rolling in his head. All of them were examples of man’s gross inhumanity to man. I learned no matter how hard a situation one may find himself in, there is always someone who has it much worse. When we resumed our march, we didn’t see them. I wondered of they had been taken somewhere and executed.
On a country road a civilian informed us that “Roosevelt todo,” our President was dead. We were skeptical and told him Hitler was dead also. We just didn’t believe him.
At one small town we passed German black uniformed SS troops parked along side the road. Their uniforms bore the SS double lightning bolt insignia with the silver skull and cross bones insignia on their caps. They were leaning against 1939 Dodge trucks. These were the toughest looking soldiers we had ever seen. They all looked like unshaven Max Schmelings, the German heavyweight boxer. They looked like total, absolute thugs. Contrary to our normal light-hearted demeanor, we walked passed these guys without comment. I feared if we got mouthy with them they would halt our march, take us across the road to the fields and kill us all on the spot. I believe that was a very real probability. Perhaps the fact the American army was in Germany headed our way was a factor protecting us.
Our route west of Linz to the woods southwest of Branau, Hitler’s birthplace, was again by the back roads. Some sources report routes different than I recall. It may be that some of the groups took alternate routes. Some of the town names I remember are St. Marienkirchen, Polham, Grieskirchen, Reid and Altheim. Southeast of Branau we passed an aluminum factory not knowing it would shortly become our home after liberation. We walked through Branau and proceeded southwest for about five miles to the junction of the Inn and Salzac Rivers. We passed a gasthaus in the country with a flag pole extending out from the doorway. The flag was that hideous, ugly Nazi red banner with the white circle containing that abominable Nazi swastika. We had walked for about three weeks with little or no food, in rain and cold, sleeping in barns or on the ground. We marched about 160 miles. I don’t want to do that again.
[Route of Dad's march from a map he marked up.]
 |
| Route of March from West to East |
Our camp was nothing more than a place in the woods that was surrounded by a perimeter clearing about 100 feet wide cut through the tall trees. Within this two or three acre site we camped. There was no shelter of any kind. The first night, I laid down on the ground under a tree and slept. In the morning, I awoke to find an inch of snow had fallen during the night covering my overcoat and everything else. It was another low point in my military career. We stripped the trees of sheets of bark to make roofs for our lean-to’s. This made the German guards very angry. It was during a search for building materials I found a German helmet lying next to a tree. There was no sign of the soldier who had abandoned it. I brought it home with me. Our only source of water was the springs across the road that flowed from the steep banks down to the river. The latrines were slit trenches in the open area. We had no satisfactory way to wash our eating utensils. Everyone developed bloody diarrhea except me. The guards were not strict in keeping us in our compound. There were not enough of them and at that point they didin’t seem to care too much. Again, escape would have been easy, but foolhardy at the time.
On two or three occasions, I heard one of the new German jet fighters go over head. By the time I ran to a clearing for a look it was long gone. After two or three days, we began to hear the sound of heavy guns at night. We knew the Americans were coming. The village across the river had white sheets hanging out of the windows. Some said they saw American tanks in the village. The next day the rumor was the Germans had gone down the road toward Branau to meet the Americans. That afternoon, May 2, 1945, a clean shaven American Captain appeared in camp in his immaculate uniform. We were wild with the excitement at seeing him. I remember his exact words: “You men are no longer prisoners of war, you are members of the United States Army!” You can imagine the cheering this announcement produced. The next day, American GIs of the 13th Armored Division arrived and rounded up our guards. They were lined up, searched and stripped of valuables. The GIs told us to go over and kick or beat them. They were surprised when we refused. The guards were old men, not fit for front line duty. They had really done nothing cruel to us.
Some GIs arrived in a jeep and I asked them if they had anything to eat. The driver searched under his seat and came up with a few boxes of K rations. They were very dusty having been under the seat for sometime. The driver asked me if we were really going to eat those things. He was startled by an emphatic “hell yes”. Some Red Cross parcels arrived and were distributed to us. Things were looking up.
The next day trucks arrived to take us through Branau to the aluminum factory. We passed the Gasthaus that a few days before had displayed that ugly Nazi flag. Now it was flying the Stars and Stripes! Here was our country’s flag deep in the heart of the enemy’s homeland. What a beautiful sight! I shall never forget the thrill of it. I can never accept or approve burning our flag in protest. Those who do have no understanding of its real meaning or the sacrifices made for it. Burning our flag is a treasonous act. Those who burn our flag ought to be prosecuted. Burning our flag is a political act, not free speech. Odd how some refuse to recognize the difference.
We stopped in Branau and a GI took us to a small neighborhood grocery store. He kicked the door open with his boot and told us to help ourselves. There was no food or anything of value to us. We took nothing. The family in the kitchen in the back were upset but there was nothing they could do.
While off the trucks in Branau, a GI approached me to ask a question. We were both startled. It was Stan Poag, a fellow worker at the Chrysler Corporation general offices in Highland Park, Michigan. Before entering the service , Stan and I were employed as messenger/escorts in the main lobby. We escorted the various vendors to the appropriate offices. In this way, we got to know all of the secretaries in the corporate offices. I even had the pleasure of meeting Mr. K.T. Keller, the president of Chrysler and many of the vice-presidents. Stan and I had a lot to discuss. I joined him and some of his buddies in a house for coffee and conversation. It was a joy to see him again. He made the point that everywhere the ground forces went, the Air Force had been there before. I told him, of course, we had been fighting this war for almost two years before the ground forces even showed up.
We arrived at the aluminum factory a short distance southeast of Branau. There was no sign of any workers. The factory doors had instructions painted in several languages for the slave laborers. We had no idea where the workers had gone. We slept on the concrete floors next to the heavy aluminum ingots and the electric furnaces used to make them. We were fed our first real meal. It was “C” ration spaghetti and meatballs. It was so rich we could hardly eat it. All of us became nauseated and the diarrhea was aggravated to the point that going to the toilet we didn’t know which end would go first. We were given sulfa pills the size of hockey pucks. I exaggerate. Shortly, we were able to keep the concentrated rich food in our stomachs. We had the unusually odd feeling of being full but still very, very hungry at the same time. It took days before that feeling began to disappear.
We explored the factory. In one building were some steam locomotives. It looked as if it might have been a locomotive repair facility. The cab controls were totally strange. On the factory tracks was an electric locomotive. We ran it up and down the track until the batteries ran down. There was a large pile of German army rifles lying on the grass. I thought about taking one for a souvenir. We may have been advised not to or else it was too much trouble to carry. It took awhile to get used to having regular meals. Believe me, deep long-term hunger changes one’s whole outlook on life. A few days later, May 8, 1945, the war in Europe ended. Germany surrendered unconditionally. VE Day!
[The 46th Tank Battalion, part of the 13th Armored Division were the soldiers that went behind enemy lines to rescue POW's. This is from the 46th history:
"The dash into Austria was highlighted by the expedition of Captain 'Lou' Weaver, commander of Company 'B," in which he was instrumental in rescuing 15,000 Allied PWs, including 4,000 Americans, in camps southwest of Braunau. Infiltrating seven miles behind enemy lines, he arranged with the German prison commandant for the surrender of the PW camp. He then reported to higher headquarters where a formal surrender was affected. Captain Weaver and his driver, Corporal McMahan, both received the Silver Star for this action."
"The dash into Austria was highlighted by the expedition of Captain 'Lou' Weaver, commander of Company 'B," in which he was instrumental in rescuing 15,000 Allied PWs, including 4,000 Americans, in camps southwest of Braunau. Infiltrating seven miles behind enemy lines, he arranged with the German prison commandant for the surrender of the PW camp. He then reported to higher headquarters where a formal surrender was affected. Captain Weaver and his driver, Corporal McMahan, both received the Silver Star for this action."
Perhaps it was Capt. Weaver who liberated my Dad?
History of 46th Tank Battalion
The history of the 46 Tank Btn. has pictures of the men of Company B. This picture for Capt. Weaver is blank. This is the picture of Cpl. McMahan. Is this the face my Dad saw driving in the jeep?]
History of 46th Tank Battalion
The history of the 46 Tank Btn. has pictures of the men of Company B. This picture for Capt. Weaver is blank. This is the picture of Cpl. McMahan. Is this the face my Dad saw driving in the jeep?]
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| Cpl McMahan |