Combat Medic Ted Klapperich Talks About His Experiences in Combat

what is your full name sir Theodore James clapper rich where I was born in a small town of Mission Texas in 1923 so how are you right now I'm 93 years old right now no feel like maybe 83 I do get tired quickly you know more than before but I don't really feel old well you have lived an awful lot and experienced an awful lot and you have a want to always give people advice because at 93 I've experienced so much that I want to give people advice but that's one of the nice things about being an old person is that you people have respect for your knowledge and your experience I was in the Army the 86th Blackhawk Division I was 320 First Regiment the 320 first medical battalion as to serve that regiment there were forty five of us medics that would serve two thousand men in six different companies I had was assigned to a company of two hundred men that I was the the medic for taking care of any injuries or of any kind M company company M to go with them in during training I trained with them and then when we finally were in combat I would be with them you know and we go into combat and every day when we would be ready to move out against the enemy you would hear members of the M company asking where's the medic because they wanted me to be near them in case they needed me what was the one highest rank you achieved oh I was Staff Sergeant yeah I was a staff sergeant now you said you were born in Texas did you grow up in Texas no my family moved to Michigan when I was 4 years old why my father his father wanted him to be a farmer in Texas he my father wanted to be an engineer and Detroit was hiring in the automobile industry for engineer so my father moved to Detroit and got a job and then the rest of the family moved up to medium ok was we lived in a normal neighborhood of families I had two sisters that were older than me and I had a brother that was older than me and I had a brother that was younger than me and we live in a normal life you know having an awful lot of fun with each other and with them kids on the block and going to school my younger brother did my older brother was killed in a car accident when he was about seven or eight years old he ran across the street and was hit by a car then my younger brother it was two years younger than me during World War two he served in the 110th mountain on mountain entry parachute infantry and he was a paratrooper and he was not he did not get involved in the combat but he did participate in the occupation of Germany when the war was over with depression well surprisingly I can't remember being poor my parents of course could you know relate things where they would be difficult to purchase items and so on but we had happy times we had wonderful Christmases as kids and we we didn't get all the stuff that a lot of kids did we never all of us kids none of us ever had a bicycle couldn't afford one we would make up games make up our own toys and so on and as when we were young going to school I in in high school I played sports and sorted my brother and we loved that I was the captain and quarterback of the football team when I was a senior and we were successful and we enjoyed that having you know fun together st. Mary's High School in Royal Oak Michigan it was a Catholic school about 250 students in the four grades I graduated in 1942 I was working in a bowling alley on a Sunday afternoon setting pins which in those days they the pins would be set by a pin boy back in the pits for the bowlers and during a break in a game I went up to the front of the bowling alley to buy a candy bar and the manager said that he was listening to the radio and he heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed by Japan and my question was where is Pearl Harbor and he didn't even know where it was so I kind of thought I said the manager's name was Tom I said Tom what does this mean he said it means you'll be going into the service like everybody all the young men of the your age no except the news talk about you know the lack of jobs that that were available for workers and business and stores who was poor because people didn't have money to pay for items and but that it didn't it didn't seem to affect me the depression I wanted to be athletic coach in a school I wanted to coach a sports team and that's what my aim was and when I graduated from high school I applied at Michigan State University to their physical education school to become a athletic coach number one I was a pin boy in a bowling alley setting pins for them ikat eed at a golf course that was about the only jobs that I had or those two they were there were good beginning jobs you know learning how to be a faithful employee to get to work on time the dress properly treat to customers properly recognize that you have a boss and those kinds of things what we learned in the first jobs of the Year life and that's what I learned well there was a everybody had every point young man had to register for the army or military and so i registered once you turned 18 you had to register so i registered and that was drafted into the Army in February of 1943 I got my notice in December of 1942 that I would be entering the Army in February so I reported to Fort Custer at Battle Creek Michigan in February of 1943 for basic training and etc and that's how I got into the service every young man had registered for the service and was just waiting to be drafted or they would volunteer if they wanted to choose a particular branch of the military so after you got into the service take me through where they sent you okay I originally had to report to Fort Custer in Battle Creek Michigan where we've received uniforms and equipment and so on and then got all of our shots for immunizations and then one day they've read him a bunch of names and said these following men will get on this train head for Camp House Texas which was a area in northern Texas where we were going to get basic training in military and army and when I was in freshman at Michigan State University right out of high school every able-bodied male student had to take a course called military science which was introduction into military we had uniformed to word or in class learned discipline learned the nomenclature of army and so on and then when they read the names of the guys that we're gonna get on a train to go to camp House Texas we were all standing outside this train car an officer asked if anybody had been in the Army before nobody had any of you been in the CCC's which was a military half military outfit no had anybody have military science and college ice I did sir he said you're in charge of the Train and I said what does that entail he says when it's meal time make sure everybody gets fed and when we stop for exercises get their asses out and start jumping jacks until we get to Texas so when I got to Texas I lost my authority and I turned over all the men that I was with two sergeants and corporals and so on and we started basic training in at Camp House Texas we learned discipline the nomenclature the language how to handle a weapon how to aim it how to fire it you know whatever we were going to be doing and of course I was assigned to the medical detachment so we immediately got into training for treatment of wounds and so on okay typical day a basic training get up 5:00 a.m. stand for the morning report to the First Sergeant then go to breakfast and then after breakfast go to class for training and you have a break at lunch of course time and then have another true training session in the afternoon [Music] always be a variety of wounds that we would take care of and so on and then in the evening it was just relax maybe have a beer or two with the guys or there might be a guys playing poker or reading or just gabbing basic training took eight weeks and at the end of the eight weeks and they were given ranks increased that's when I became a staff sergeant at the end of eight weeks and I was assigned to em company which was an infantry company and so from then on I trained with them when they would go out into the field for training I would go with them in the case of the need for a medic and that lasted for another ten weeks we went to Louisiana for war games where we would be three ten war actually and there would be officers Colonels and generals and so on that would be refereeing and indicate at the end of the three weeks of or training they would have a critique and tell us what we did right and what we did wrong no there would be blanks and there was one of the major concerns was crowding a large number of soldiers together which may became a target you know maybe five or six guys too close together and they had airplanes flying overhead and dropping bags of flour and if the bag of flour when it hit the ground and burst if some of the flour got on you you were considered to be a wounded but that was how they practiced that and they kept score and and then they at the end of the that particular training they'd have a big meeting and tell us what we did right what we did wrong and so on then we were transferred to California for amphibious training that's landing on a beach because our unit the 86th division was scheduled to be the first unit to invade the island of Japan and we were training landing on the beaches when the Battle of the Bulge occurred in Europe and we were told to load all of our men and our equipment and vehicles and get to Boston as quickly as possible to get over a Europe to help in the European theater so it took about three weeks for that to happen however because it took seven days to get across the ocean you know in those days so we went to Europe instead of going to Japan and invading Japan and we were in Europe in well in January of 1945 is when we arrived in France and immediately went into combat and then when the war ended in Europe we are immediately the entire eighty-six division was sent home everyone was given a 30 day vacation or leave and told a report to San Francisco and we did that and they headed out for Japan now it didn't include me because I had mall ready I've been welded on the 29th of April in 1945 so I was excused from going to Japan aboard the ships well it was crowded I was sick all the way seasick all the way I didn't want to get out of I was way down below decks and I just wanted to stay in that bunk and I didn't want to go to meals or anything and it took us seven days to cross the ocean once in a while we'd I'd go up on the open deck to get some fresh air and I'd watch destroyers traveling in and out of our combo convoy protecting us from German submarines and so on and it then we we landed in lahar France and it took us a week to unload the ship with all of our vehicles and our armament and artillery pieces and Men and we were put in at first into what is called a quiet front it was a area where we were close to the German soldiers actually they were across a river from us the river wasn't too wide maybe a half a mile wide we were on one side of the river and they were on the other and it was rather quiet not a lot of shooting back and forth and the very first night this was surprising the first night there we heard in the evening some beautiful male singing like a Glee Club singing the song lili marleen and so we joined in and sang with them and it was the Germans actually who were singing the German soldiers so we joined in and sang along with them the next day we're shooting each other was it pretty it was quite intensified because we had captured some Germans and they told us that they knew the war was loose they were losing the war and so they would like for example and their artillery they said we're losing the war let's use up all of our Tillery shells fire it at the Americans and then we'll give up so that we don't get killed and you know no were wounded and so on and so that's that's the way they did it so they were firing quite a bit of artillery shells into our units as a final display of war and but this was April 29th was the day that I was wounded and the war ended main I made scared when you get shot at it's frightening and especially if our Tillery shells are being exploding you know because you don't know where the next one's gonna be and every five to seven seconds another artillery shell explodes someplace an area and you're is it gonna be it was going to hit me or so on and it's very frightening I'm thinking I hope it doesn't hit me you know I hope I don't get wounded and however I was being called hollered for when a man gets wounded that he hollers medic medic you know and so I would go over and I would stop the bleeding make sure he's breathing and go to the next guy that's yelling for me and hope that I don't get hit you know also and there was but I have to say I extremely extremely frightening you don't know if you're going to be wounded and if you are going to be wounded what part of your body is it going to be your an arm or a leg or your face or and a lot of many times there was a an American Jeep that was in this area a wooded area where we were stopped and the Germans were in the wooded area too but there was a railroad track that went through the across this wooded area and they were on one side of the railroad track we were on the other the track was about five feet higher than their area and they started firing artillery at us and guys were being wounded and callin for me and so this Jeep however the captain of M company yelled to the jeep driver to get that damn Jeep out of here I don't want to hit so I in order for the Jeep team get out of there there's a narrow road through the woods and there was a wounded soldier in the middle of the road so I had to go and get him so he wouldn't block the Jeep so I watched the Jeep driver move the gear shift lever to to move the Jeep and I took two steps towards this soldier that was wounded and the I watched the jeep driver get hit from a direct hit landed right in his lap the artillery shell and he was blown to bits the Jeep was destroyed and I was hit by that same shell that hit him hit me in the hand and in the back and knocked me down and then there were many many more wounded so I like I had a good right hand was okay so I treated soldiers with my good hand and my teeth managed to stop the bleeding of guys and then when the the Germans stopped the artillery shelled our infantry then went into attack to get him and so I I was able to walk so I was gonna walk back behind the lines where there would be an aid station with a doctor he probably bought a mile behind the reaction so I started to walk back there towards that an aid station where there'd be a doctor and big truck stopped and said you would you like a ride to the aid station I said yes I got in and he drove me to this aid station and said here's the aid station so I got out and thanked him and the doctor there bandaged my hand and my back and then I was put on an airplane and flown to England to a hospital but it was two days prior to that we had liberated the Dachau concentration camp that the Germans used to kill the Jews and our unit liberated that camp and I was a fifth American through the gate and I got inside and I was sitting on top of a cistern which is a like a sewer cover and I felt something around my feet and I looked up and it was a German woman prisoner kissing my shoes I couldn't help it but cry I helped her get up gave her a hug and she walked away but that was my experience with German prisoners in this concentration camp skinny skinny hungry people that were just skin and bone and stacks of like cordwood of bodies dead bodies just stacked up in the camp of waiting to be put into the furnaces the smell was terrible it was unbelievable that anyone could do such a thing to another human being just a half a day we spent and then we had we moved out and they we understand that the next day General Eisenhower made the civilians in the town of Dachau he forced them to go into the camp this to see because they didn't believe that the Nazis were actually doing what they were doing I couldn't understand why they couldn't know that the smell of the burning bodies and you know so they didn't want to believe it so but that was a good idea for Eisenhower to make the civilians to see what was happening for sure to be ashamed of them were you taking on more small arms or artillery fire artillery more so than the small arms oh yes we there would be firefights with rifles and some you know hand grenades and so on with like with machine guns capturing machine gun mess of Germans and so on where they would all be done with small arms frightening frightening you don't know what to do you know you don't know we're gonna hide where there isn't any place to hide and you just totally frightened and hope you just hope that these he's pray a lot I prayed an awful lot I had a prayer that I would say be with me Lord cuz I'm in trouble I would say that frequently you do you make an effort to squirm move your body or do you just try to put it on your mind that people are shooting you at you oh no no you you you squirm and you try to make yourself as small as possible you know or if there's any things solid at all you can get between the therefore fire firearms and you you know if you get something solid between you and a rifle you're you're pretty safe but we're not with artillery artillery that shell explodes and particles of it travel over 300 miles an hour and if they hit flesh you know they take it with them what were the most common type of wounds that you would be treating would be wounds to the body the torso itself would be in in the guts and more so than say legs or arms and there would be so many of them at once that you wanted a treat and you do the best you could by stopping the bleeding make sure they're breathing and go to the next guy - who's yelling for you you're gonna be okay I'd say - you're gonna be okay I got the bleeding stopped you're gonna be okay everything's gonna be okay they wouldn't just yeah yeah you know they didn't know if they should believe me or not but they were glad to see me yes in fact years later say 20 years later we have army reunion there would be at the reunion there was like a bulletin board for if you wanted to see a particular soldier that you hadn't seen since you were in a service you'd read your name on there or something I would read my name on there that somebody was looking for me and it was a guy that I had taken care of and he wanted to thank me and so then that happened 1215 times guys thanking me for saving them stopping the bleeding and so on one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is in the wooded area when there's artillery if the artillery shell hits a tree it shatters the tree and pieces of wood become missiles and if they are in flew into the skin it can be a worse wound than from the metal because the slivers it's difficult for the doctor to get almost slivers out of the end of the wounds on so they call that a tree burst where the artillery shell hits the tree and burst it into a bunch of slivers well that you just bandage but you pull it out no because you could make it worse by pulling it out it takes a little some no it makes it worse there would be intestines hanging out and you put them back in in the body try to put a bandage over the hole stop the bleeding tell them that they we're gonna be okay and you know that's not true yes and you actually with your bare hand I mean is it usually like that exposed I know Hollywood movies you know gore it up often time you know but in reality yeah yeah but the the intestines would be out you know though of the wound but it the intestine is all ripped up too because the artillery shells also tore that and so you hoping that you can get the thing I'm all bandaged up so that when it gets to a doctor the doctor then can do you know some suture Amiens so slowly so he did no no no we were targeted he's out here so you know that for a fact I know that for a fact I was sitting on the ground taking care of a wounded man and I had the medics wore a helmet with a red cross on the sides of the helmet someone had a white cross that was to show the Germans that we were non-combat and the guy was shooting at me so I laid down alongside this fellow that I was treating until the guy stopped then I sat up and took care of him the be there were other things that medic had to do it for example anytime that the unit the company would break for a rest or for whatever the important thing in an infantry man is his feet so anytime we would have a break I would go around check and guys feet for blisters so that was part of my job and I would go around to up to 200 guys say how's your feet today I got a couple blisters okay and I'll take care of take your shoes off I'll take her that's what I would do during a break and they baby just resting having a smoke how often did you go to the aid station I would go to the aid station like every other every other day for supplies well I need of course bandages morphine that's about all tape that's about all I couldn't didn't take the only medicine I took had with me would be morphine if I gave a murdered man morphine I put the letter M write it on his forehead so that when he saw a doctor the doctor would know that and wouldn't overdose him with morphine and if I used a tourniquet I put the letter T in the forehead so they would look for a tourniquet on an army or leg or something because that has to be released every 20 seconds every 20 minutes what are you writing pardon iodine we didn't have magic markers then so there had I had dined a little what do they call him they were a glass tube that was wrapped in a gauze and you break them and it causes the identical osa market em with the iodine or the tea when there when the riflemen are taking artillery and small arms fire and it's just how out there what motivates you to stick your neck out and actually go into the hell and try to help people despite knowing very well that you could get killed just like that what what motivates you to actually go do that motivated me is to be a good soldier like I was trained do the job that I was trained to do I just wanted to be a good soldier and one of the you see the pleading look on the guy's eyes that are wounded you know they're they're bleeding and they're afraid that they're gonna die and they're just there with their eyes they're pleading for you to help them you know save them so just loyalty to them to the team you know my job was to take care of their wounded the guy that got wounded his job was to kill an enemy yes you know there was a German officer and a German army truck and the army truck had the hood up and two soldiers were like working on the engine while trying to get this truck moving and this officer was standing guard alongside an American Rifleman saw that and he he said I'm gonna get that bastard and he got down on one knee there I mean American army soldier did and he aimed and he shot that officer in the penis and I got over to him and he was bleeding I mean because there's a lot of blood in that area anyway and he's laying on his back and he kind of looked up and he says kaput I said yeah I was kaput you're not gonna be a daddy because he had his penis shot off by this American on purpose bleeding bull telling you know that difficulty stopping the bleeding and but yet I said he had it coming to him he started the war you know the Germans did now by war rules a medic treats both enemy and you know done that I mean you treat everybody regardless a rare was it rare for someone you were treating to die or was it pretty common no it was some of them that were I knew were dying we're gonna die but I I just had hope you know that I would be able to save them usually if if a soldier was dying besides medics there were chaplains and they would come to the chaplains would to pray over the ones that were badly wounded and dying and so on and so frequently I would say bandage up the wounded soldier and go over to another one and the chaplain would come and say a prayer over the you knew that he died yeah they were in the same situation as the medics they weren't allowed to have any weapons and neither were we by the rules of war yeah I knew the small-arms knife brassknuckles once in a while if we were moving across territory to go to another area and there wasn't any action but we were walking to maybe we were gonna walk 1012 miles I'd be walking along and there was a soldier with his rifle in his own and I'd say to him hey you want me to carry a rifle for you for a while you know because they're heavy so I would take it and I'd carry it when it was in a safe area pretty much and maybe I carry his rifle for him for 20 minutes to half our and give it back to him yeah tell me was it was it common for the men ready to be dead by the time you got to them for Buddha beaten was it common for some of the soldiers to already be dead by the time you get to them to treat oh yeah yeah yeah it's surprising the number that get killed you know in safe there's about 200 men in a company and if they get attacked in artillery you're gonna end up with probably 12 15 guys dead out of the 200 and so you you dream and hope that they aren't no one of the 15 you know regardless if you think they're dead or not you still treat them yeah hoping that they were just unconscious you know whatever that was like completely torn apart you would still oh yeah yeah look I never view the the manager I've talked to in the past they would always my understanding is that you would just go up to a soldier see if they have a pulse and then if they don't you move on no I didn't I didn't test for a pulse I would test otherwise pokum maybe in the rib to see if they you know jump or something like that or or talk to him but uh I never felt for a pulse I hope that they almost decapitate you wouldn't go do that but the guys who you just couldn't tell you still treat right it's better be safe than sorry yes um being a medic is a stressful job do you how are you able to mentally how are you able to stay healthy mentally when it's always life and death when men die that you treat do you take that upon yourself no I never did but uh I never felt that there was anything that I did or did not do that caused the death it was just what I did saved the life did you get this feeling more recently or even during the war during the war yeah well the first first time we were in a combat area situation I realized hey this is serious you know there's guys being wounded shot this isn't pretend anymore like it was in Louisiana or Texas where we did some training were you buddies with any of these men did you get close yeah pretty close to several of them because you were in a medical battalion and I know that you were assigned to M company but did you try to keep your distance or some of the men no I became a member of the M company even though I was the medic I was um company yeah but I was the medic and company would be like the machine gunner of M company you know M company M company was considered a heavy weapons company which meant 50 caliber machine guns and or water-cooled machine guns 81 millimeter mortars which are this big around on this tall you know the that was a em company heavy weapons well probably 50 to 1200 yards no what are certain strategies that you adopted quickly when it comes to quickly treating someone and effectively doing it due to what were there any strategies that you quickly adopt oh no each person was each one was different you know treat it differently the only key was really stop the bleeding and hope that when I would see guys that hadn't been wounded yet or anything been running across the field or something during our Tillery attack hope they didn't get hit in the face that was one thing that frightened infantrymen who was being wounded in the face so that when they went home after the war they didn't want to frighten children that wasn't really a concern that that they had you know you felt they shared this they Sheridan had guys that had their chins blown off I did a tracheotomy laying on my stomach this soldier had been hit in the jaw with a piece of artillery and took his jaw off and he couldn't it blocked his throat so he couldn't breathe so I I was being shot at too so I was laying on my stomach and cutting a hole in his throat and then I had a fountain pen I don't know if you you're too young to know what a fountain pen is but a father's okay it has a hollow body on the outside and you can I cut the one end off that head and stuck that into the throat into the hole that I made for the tracheotomy and and taped it to his neck so that he could breathe through that and while I'm lying on my stomach because I didn't if i sat up I'd be too big a target but I wasn't the only one that did that there were several guys that did that same thing from I guess you could say he's like the mid the western part of Germany in mmm-hmm you know so what's the terrain like over there there was the when we were up near the roar Valley where there was a town I can't think of the town it's like Detroit was our Pittsburg they had steel mills and so on they they they built heavy equipment and so on and we captured that tongue that was flat because it was in a valley kind of the river valley then when we were near the end of it we were going towards Munich coming into the mountain there area mountainous area there and we would walk over hills up and a mech down again geez walk walk walk when I was in a truck and we were being convoyed from one area to another and the leader of the convoy all right sir what does a combat medic do when the outfit that you're supporting goes into a town are you up with them or are you at the back no I I'm with them usually they're ahead of me you know like I bring up the rear kind of so that I can see all of them would go into a town and capture a town or we would one time we captured a towel and we were given orders to stay overnight then another unit was gonna come and take our place so we confiscated private homes we took the toll to civilians they had to get out of their homes and so we would sleep in the house overnight and something is kind of a humorous story is that the house that I was going to stay in had running water and a hot water heater so we're here we'll take baths but what good is a bath if you don't have clean underwear to put on well up the street by the block was a store dry goods store so that some of the guys went up there to get clean underwear in the store so I decided to go and get some so at that time I had a 32 inch waist and the only underwear I could find would be 48 inch 50-54 Sun so I that wouldn't do so I'll go over to the ladies department and I found a pair of lady's Underpants they were like the sweatshirt material and I triumphantly brought them back to that house I took my bath and put those clean panties on two days later I got wounded and I'm on this in this hospital and this private is cutting my uniform off for me and I said why are you cutting my uniform off he's I'm looking for more wounds I thought geez he's gonna find out what I'm wearing so anyway everything's taken care of the next morning I'm in this tent laying on a couch on a cot and three nurses came in and I heard one of them say where's the guy that was wearing women's panties well you mean to be sure I did Here I am over here I didn't say that I hid myself I pulled the blanket up over my head little embarrassed she'd be caught wearing women's underwear he said no no I didn't explain it to anybody snipers I didn't have any problem with snipers we our unit didn't know I can't remember yeah yeah usually the tank against tank American tanks against the their tanks yes they had probably better tanks than we did but the reason that we were able to beat them was we had more tanks for every one that they got destroyed of theirs they had to to replace it every tank that of ours that was destroyed we had five to replace it so it was the numbers that we were able to you know win tank Wars yeah it was used as artillery they would fire a howitzer or like well another at another time though this is a true story there were three of us guys in this house in Germany and a tank German tank came up down the street and stopped right in front of the house and one of the guys inside American stupid infantryman he said he saw the captain or the captain of the tank stick his head up out of the turret he says I'll pick them off they said come on don't you got a big artillery piece on that tank so sure enough here this gun to come around aiming right at the house and so we're all running to the back of the house I don't through a window to the back boom they fired this tank that fired this gun blew a hole in the house and my one of the guys yelling I'm hit im hit I'm in uh you didn't get it in the ass with a brick you know you're okay but that if we had stayed near the front of the house we probably would at least two of us would have been killed from that tank firing into the house and then had moved on detective who was satisfied with one fire what firing one round yes almost every night around ten o'clock we call him ten o'clock Charlie he would come and strafe us was single plane come come in and strength flyer on you know almost every night the same time bed check Charlie it's what we called him and one time we were being convoy in trucks to another area and here comes a strafing plane behind us just strafe the convoy so the truck stopped and everybody piled out on the trucks into ditches and so on and there were some houses there some of the guys went into the houses to hide will them the planes that were strafing didn't do much damage didn't kill anybody and some of the guys that had run into the houses for protection when they came out they had blankets and the German civilians were yelling at I'm stealing the blankets from them but yeah there would be scheduled strafing almost every night did your unit have any interaction with German minds yes yep they would be placed in front of machine-gun nests or even buildings in a town that might be in the front yard you know some of them they were the guys that with the mine detectors would go in ahead of time you know with the detectors to find out where they were no I never did so they had a special mind they called it a pop-up virgin yeah he would bounce up about thirty inches high and then explode and it wasn't intended to kill it was intended to wound to so you'd be you you you'd lose the want to fight you know and so on because you might be castrated by it and that was the purpose of that we went by rowboat we had captured some Germans and we had about five row boats and they would roll the boat across the Daniell with maybe eight or nine guys in the boat and then they'd have to row it back to pick up another group and that's how we cross the danube by row boats no remember anything about it Cologne Germany cologne that where that church was destroyed I think we drove through it on a truck and saw the damage to the building I didn't get there at her door no ansbach nope I stopped if we've been there you remember we we were walking over a hill high hill had to get up over the hill to get into it and there was a soldier ahead of me about two guys ahead of me and he had on an apron that held our Tillery shells in pockets two in the front two in the back and all he did was complain about how heavy those shells were they were mortar shells actually and he said boy have I have to continue carrying these I'm gonna throw him away well he did he took one and he threw it because he said it was too heavy well two men behind me was a battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel and he saw that happen and he said to Sergeant Rutgers sergeant when we have an opportunity arrest that man he just threw a shell away that could save 200 men's lives we heard later on that the guy who threw that shell away got ten years at Leavenworth I don't know this was the story well I'm that he probably got some prison time because it was a treachery you know the guys talked about it at the reunion but I don't remember it do you remember anything about crossing the eysie River no what do you remember about the mental aisel canal I don't know anything about those do you know anything about the ampère canal no do you remember anything about water Berg nope Salzburg no Salzburg yeah I mean the Music City why have a division history here and it's just telling me that the 86th went to Salzburg on May 2nd no I was I wasn't there on May 2nd 29 um typically as a combat medic after you patch up a man are you part of the litter bearer team that's pranking him back or whoever the litter bearers no that's a different crew that comes up there called the graves registration they were called they come up to pick up the wounded and the dead after the battle is over with you on they come up with ambulances and and so on pick up the dead bodies and then also the wounded and put him in ambulances driving forth as a doctor when men were hurt in combat you know movies portrayed them as crying for their mothers but in reality the men who are seriously wounded what are they saying they didn't say much at all you think if they couldn't see the wound you know too well they might ask how bad is it you know that's do I still have a leg or you know something like that no I never heard anybody call for their mother that was funny Oh No okay the experience I have I was wounded and I was at a field hospital waiting my turn to see the doctor too you know sew up my hand or whatever he was going to do and I'm laying there on this litter or stretcher and a nurse came over to me and she said how you doing soldier and I said I'm okay she says your face is dirty let me wash it for you it'll make you feel better that was the most wonderful thing that anybody could do for me she washed my face for me my mom would have done that Wow is that wonderful you know well about five years ago I know this nurse that works at the hospital down the street and I told her that story she says and she's a nurse season but she said that can't be taught that comes from the heart with that nurse that did you know washing my face to make me feel better and she said that's what nursing is all about is to make the patient feel better but I thought wow she's gonna wash my face what's that wonderful my mom would have done that I was 19 at the time we're in the combat zone are you guys getting into actual firefights and taking on apartments and not everyday Aria or is it like a couple times instead of like oh I'm just trying to get a better understanding how often would you would actually get in these intense combat situations oh maybe once ever three or four days and what are you doing no there would be so many times when we're you're digging a hole to get into you know be they haven't started firing at you yet you dig an awful lot of holes when your infantry you know to get into know how are you deciding who to go to first when guys are getting hit everywhere closest yeah unless you could see which was serious you know more serious than others and one that you can actually do something to save or could be either I've been in both open that I've been in wooded area know right out in the open dress someone's wounds out in the open no without feeling like someone's gonna kill you you did it yeah I was afraid that I was gonna get hit you know every time it's well you witnessed fireworks these explosions are extremely loud and the artillery shell breaks into pieces and the pieces flying the 300 miles an hour for crying out through the air and then they hit something boy they do some damage you know and usually the more common ones that you yeah I don't know why that was a bigger target or something but I guess the guys who I've spoken to that we're in the earlier part of the war mm-hmm they always mentioned that arms and legs could be Hillary what's the difference between an artillery show that hits the ground and an air burst well the one that hits the ground not only sends up artillery pieces but stones and gravel and stuff from the you know at high speed too and they do some damage whatever was on the ground for example when I got hit they got they cleaned stuff out of my hand you know because that's what I got where I got hit and then they cleaned gravel out of my hand and the shell that hit me hit that jeep driver alone and I don't know where it got the gravel piece you know but there was pieces of gravel and also there was the @v doctors asked me if I was wearing wool knit clothes at the time I said no I wasn't why well we found some wool net material in your and then the next year the jeep driver was wearing a sweater and that's probably where that came from well you can't see the shelf-life you can hear it you can hear it go through the air but you can't see it it's traveling too fast really quick yeah almost instantly was artillery he's blown to nothing right and that don't hit you yeah how bad was the hand injury Oh what how bad how severe was your hair well all the bones here were blown out and and then the tendons were cut and a lot of flesh was gone and when I went to the hospital in England they looked at and they said we're thinking of cutting it off at the wrist but then they were there there was a doctor that wrote the book on hand plastic surgery and they called him into for his opinion and he said well there's nothing wrong with the thumb if you can fix the rest of the hand and he can grasp things with the thumb so they rebuilt my hand by harvesting bone from my hip to replace the metacarpals and in here they harvested tendons from my right leg but they didn't work properly there's skin from my thigh for two skin grafts here so 28 months I was in the hospital as a patient yeah I had 15 operations on my hand and 11 on my leg and one on my back where the I get hit by a piece of the base of my neck - a piece of artillery and that's still there they didn't take that out because they said it was too close to the spine and the doctor said I'm not getting in there with anything sharp he said I'll leave it there and he said it won't bother you and it hasn't bothered me in 75 years a combat medic when you're dealing with someone and they're all bloody from the wound your hands get bloody no do you do anything with your hands between one soldier and the next no no no no rubber gloves no nothing just bloody hands on another one in a wounded - yeah no we didn't have that anything to disinfect our hands find some water in our canteen you know spill it up that's about all yeah well they had a fellow that in basic training he was one of the better soldiers with it you know he got promoted rapidly the very first artillery attack by the Germans he laid in the ground in the fetal position and just cried he was so frightened that he couldn't handle it he was a combat medic - he just he couldn't handle the the artillery and he wasn't hit but it was that the possibility of being you know it wounded him but he just couldn't handle it well the the morphine that we had was a measured dose they were in a little like a toothpaste tube but maybe about this long with the needle on the end with the cap and you just take the cap off and jab them and squeeze and that gives them the morphine but it's already measured an amount you know so that you don't you don't give them too much or not enough anybody with a head injury you didn't give him one you can give him morphine oh yeah there were wolves in the head oh maybe just as a bullet or maybe the chin was almost knocked off you know by artillery piece no ya know if it was deep no but there would be wounds in the face you know chin no no didn't have any any method of carrying that all that stuff I don't even think about it know what I'm saying like your experiences probably some of them none serious infection you know serious wound well we would be able to get them aspirin some medicines of penicillin we had we had access to sulfa as a German fighter you know stuff like that and when you feat you told me yeah yeah they're totally yeah yeah the circulation there no they'd have a blister on their foot you know we'd break the blister too because it was full of fluid and that's what was sore we'd break it then we bandage it and and they is it true that they become the first priority like my understanding was well you're out in the field with other medics and other right no but if a medic gets hurt you stop what you're doing and you go help the medic in combat No I didn't put a priority on that were you yeah there was only one up for 200 guys yeah I was the only medic with em company yeah because anytime that say we would be in assembly of the field and the officers say all right men let's let's head out you'd hear guys where's the medic where's the medic I want him next to me you know they want me close by in case they needed me how I just followed through the whole game they were 19 20 21 there was there was some some sergeants would be older in their 30s maybe you know or late 20s no no I didn't think it was I was ready for yeah I'm married while I was in the service I had a year to go after he got married and so when I got discharged we were we had a child her she was you know born when I got discharged and I had to find a job so I got a job in a factory and I said after about a year or so to my wife there's got to be a better way of earning a living than working in a factory I'm gonna go to school on the GI Bill so I went to college on the GI Bill and got a degree in education and in the meantime when I got my degree we had three children so I started the family you know I know fired no my wife said that I did some dreaming and that I would be threshing you know in bed and she'd try to wake me up and say you're hitting me you know future generations love one another don't try to be better than another fight for equality so that everybody is the same you know don't we have too much people protesting you know and even in foreign countries are trying to outdo each other and why is that so important to be better than someone else I can't just fight for equality we're all you know equal we all deserve the same thing regardless of our background or our race our religion or ethnicity I think that's you know what like what happened at Charlottesville for crying out loud people they're carrying Nazi flags you know what protesting that blacks my skin color is just the only difference you know there's no difference between me and a black guy except our skin color we're equal I don't know does it make you sad today yes it does in that idiot with the weird haircut over in North Korea he doesn't realize that what he's doing could bring on Armageddon to the nation you know he keeps threatening it could be the end of North Korea you know if you agitate us enough we can destroy them with what we have and I don't want that to happen those people that live there don't deserve that love one another find what is good from other people you will be able to find something in everybody that is good look for that rather than for what is bad and some you know what's wrong with that person know what's good about that person and prays that we it's it's a shame well we have a black man that's a one of the chefs here that could cook extremely intelligent man very intelligent and he comes in in the morning to that breakfast and moved carry on a conversation about something and he's he's fascinating to listen to you know and other people don't like him because of his skin color what does that have to do with him as a person what would you want all the men who were killed overseas in World War two if you could say something to them what would you want them to know or what would you want to say to them I wish what you did was not in vain that it resulted in good for your sacrifice and I thank you for your sacrifice do you feel the men who were killed overseas died in vain I think so of them did yes some of them who there were some there that didn't know even why they were there you know you're just a number because we had to have numbers are you yes I was I'm not now I was I don't know if I was afraid of death so much during the whenever there would be a it was artillery attacks more than firefights that bothered me but I think I was more frightened of being disabled rather than killed you know then dependent upon someone and if I'm disabled I'm now dependent upon someone else helping me which I didn't want I wanted to be able to take care of myself so I had a fear I have to say that I did I had a fear no no just think I'm ready for death I try to live by the rules and hopefully pleased my master what do you believe happens when someone dies well when someone dies well I think that they they go I don't know exactly where somewhere for a judgement and and they're judged according to the way they lived you know and they either will be rewarded or condemned or something you know but that has to be pretty serious to be condemned I believe somebody like Hitler or Stalin those kind of people the ordinary guy who cheats on his income tax I don't think it's good go to hell but I don't know what I would say you are I don't want to die because you like what you're living right you like you're living here you're and you don't know what it's gonna be like when you do when you're dead I don't know yeah I don't want there to be nothing it doesn't bother me I know it's all gonna come to an end someday you know oh yeah I do that there's a there's a reward [Music] what kind of person do you want to be remember does honest generous loving that's good enough I can guarantee just for my limited I can guarantee with my limited interaction of knowing you that there's no doubt people would remember you like that you come across in all those ways I want to you seem like a very good man who's helped a lot of people yeah and that's why here if you talk to somebody that knows me here you know you say do you know Ted Claridge yeah he's the guy who whenever I asked him how is he's always happy he's the guy yeah how are you today happy I'm happy so he's the happy guy because I want you to be happy that's why I'm happy to make you happy I'm not trying to dispute that but I do want you to see that you've given a lot of people a chance at life and I would not be sitting here and I'm not trying to be all high and mighty but I mean this very literally that seventy five years after World War two you've given this 19 year old kid from California an opportunity to live his life and no matter what happens I'm never gonna forget you you'll know your sacrifices yeah okay thank you for giving me these were you in Detroit during the 1943 riots I was in the Army see you Marty at Detroit no okay when you were wounded where did they keep you in the hospital where after you were wounded where did they send you they sent me to England too and I was in a hospital in England for a month then they shipped me back to United States huh hospital ship and I was put in a hospital in Cleveland Ohio and I spent a year there then they closed that Hospital and moved us all over to Battle Creek Michigan and I spent a year and a half there as patient never bothered me played golf played baseball yes David I smoked for 20 years from age 20 to age 40 and when I was 40 my middle daughter was about 10 or 11 and I lit up a cigarette at home and she said to me daddy I can hardly wait till I'm old enough to smoke that was it I should quit I didn't want her to smoke so what she never smoked always take prisoners did you ever witness that yeah yeah when one night we had captured three Germans and we were walking along this road on either side of the road and along this shoulder like and like five yards apart and these I think there were three German soldiers down the middle of the road that was captured they went to the back of our gang and we heard some shooting in fact there and the word came the soldier the prisoners were trying to escape so we shot him then the word the next day was that the soldiers that were supposed to be guarding them said it was too much problem to helmet I'll kill him as they were prisoners now I don't know how true that is or not yeah a colonel a woman a man I mean not a woman a man high high up laying in the field would shot do you remember what part of the body was in the chest god he didn't deserve this why him he was hit in the in the chest by a bullet and he was a nice guy yeah so you didn't see like a dead American on the side of the road before you guys go in and combat your first dead soldier with someone you knew yeah what's that like knowing someone one day and the next day then being killed oh yeah it's wonder who's who's next you know somebody's gonna be next but who what would happen to the bodies when they stayed out I never saw a human float but I saw a horse one time had been dead for I don't know how long it was bloated and it was that night we were walking into this town and I like jumped off the street into like a ditch and I hit something and my foot went through the hide of the horse right in like it because it was bloated and my foot come on took my foot on head all that crap my shoe burning the flesh so the ovens just the how they looked like they were used so often you know they had there were about eight of them and they just had like assembly line you know and then they had over in one part of the the building in the room was these bodies stacked up like cordwood waiting their turn to be burned you know cremated no we were told before we got to the to Dachau that the prisoners would beg us for food but we were not to give them food because their stomachs couldn't handle this kind of food that we had it would be too rich for them and that the u.s. army would be providing nutrition experts to feed them food that their stomachs could handle instance it would be nutritious for them you know because it had to be a gradual new growth in their stomachs and so on the toughest thing to do in combat it would be had to leave a leg over to one side and I don't know why I didn't think that the doctors could sew it back on but it was smashed the bone was in splinters you know and I had to get to some other guys I was in a hurry and then sometimes two there would be a series of wounded guys and they would be pleading for help you know they want to be treated first I didn't blame them you know but I wasn't the only one just me there's about 11 guys that needed help yeah during Anna Taylor attack within six or seven minutes there'd be at least four guys yelling for me I don't know I never knew well the stump you wrap up that stump see every every soldier had on his belt they called it a pistol belt and on the back every soldier had a large bandage that was about this big and about that thick with the long stream you could could to use to bandage the wound and every soldier had one instead of the medic carrying all of them you understand what I mean so that's what I use to stop the flow of the blood and the stump of the leg and then uh just put the severed part of the leg alongside of the one that was still the stump strangely that German officer that was shot in the penis he was laying on his back and he said kaput yeah all this kaput what's the next thing I haven't his chin blowing off that they look like kids you know I'm sure that their age changed you know there were no longer a child hoping that I don't run into whatever is needed I had two full supplies okay can you tell me about some of your combat experiences well there was a American soldier that was wounded by a artillery fragment from a Tillery shell that hit him in the chin and blocked the passage of air through his nose and mouth into his lungs so I had to build a tracheotomy he's laying out in the field and I'm laying on my stomach making this tracheotomy so that he can breathe while being shot at if i sat up or knelt next to him I would have been a target so I laying on my stomach and I was able to insert a tube into a hole in his throat so that he could breathe that way and so I used a a fountain pen as a tracheotomy tube so that he could breathe and stay alive and then maybe 20-some years later at a reunion I met him and he thanked me and he had to when he would speak to me he had to put his finger over the hole for so that he could speak and then he did take his finger away he'd breathe and that's how he would speak but he thanked me for at least letting him breathe and stayed alive pardon that fountain pen was given to me by my mother when I went into the service to write letters home with it you know and it's it was just happy to be convenient that I had in my pocket his jaw it was about half of it was gone you know bloody so I had to put a hole in here the tracheotomy and insert that tube and tape it to his neck so it wouldn't be swallowed them and he could breathe through there usually until a lot more blood than one would expect yes yeah that would expect from you know training and practice and stuff like that oh yeah yeah the bleeding is really something else and and frequently in the arms and legs you get an awful lot of blood because they're the the blood vessels are running the length of the legs no no and it's about that thick - it's about that thick and it's quite wide and you you put it on and you put it with pressure to stop the flow of blood with pressure or with a tourniquet if I needed I very seldom did I use a tourniquet though I didn't like them because he were dangerous because they had to be released every at least every 20 minutes or a gangrene would set in and so you had if you use a tourniquet you don't want to make sure that a doctor or a medical person would see it to release it so there'd be a flow of blood again and then read read tighten it again but it was it was it was terrible thank you show me your hand please this one yeah that's from your warwood yeah

Channel: Remember WWII

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Keywords: world war II, veterans, world war II veterans, world war 2, combat veterans, heros of world war, heros of war

Id: _SoitwQy5vE

Length: 112min 14sec (6734 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 04 2017