“I guess I remember the horrible living conditions more than the actual war…” my Grandfather’s soft voice did a muffled chuckle at that. I nodded slowly as I tried to grasp at the idea of just how bad they had it. I got an image of him shaking horribly in a foxhole that is filled with tarnished white and sometimes red snow. I was talking to him over the phone as I imagined him sitting in his Lay-z boy chair looking out over the lake. My grandfather fought in the last six months of WWII… To this day he can’t stand fireworks because they remind him of artillery. Before I interviewed him I had a very sketchy idea of where he ever fought and what he saw.
“So what feelings did you have when you saw the death camp near Munich?” I heard his voice crack slightly and I knew he was reliving a painful memory. I could just see him as an 18 year old soldier with a look of horror plastered on his face as he walked around the camp of dying people. I always respected him for this… He has to live with the burden of these memories.
“Revulsion, anger, and revenge… It’s hard to imagine a man doing that to another man…” his voice trailed off and I sat there listening intently as he sniffled under his breath. “All those images you see of those camps… They are all true!” his voice cracked some at the end and I sympathized with him on how stressful this might be. I felt sad for him… For the war truly scarred him. The images I’ve seen of the death camps were horrifying even in that bad quality… I couldn’t imagine having to see it with your own eyes and have to smell the horrid and rotting flesh of the prisoners.
“What was it like being in Germany during the war?” I was expecting what he said next.
“The army had a non fraternization rule to keep the GI’s from chasing the girls… The citizens… They were real back-stabbers!” I nodded slowly envisioning GI’s running after pretty German girls all over a town. I also saw civilians lying about the Death camp just to save their own asses and seeing an angry GI punch them for lying.
“Who were the DP’s?” I could hear him smack his lips in thought.
“I was put into the Military Police after the war and I was given the duty of sorting through thousands of displaced people because I could speak German… We called them DP’s.” I mentally nodded as I saw him shifting through dozens of people from all over Europe trying to get them back home. I saw their frantic and shell-shocked face as they stood there locked with him as he stared at them and sighed wishing he could get back to his country like they were getting to do. Most soldiers from WWII would say being in Germany was interesting…
“It wasn’t fascinating… Just duty…Even the sights got to be usual.” The image of him walking through a dreary, bleak, and utterly mind numbing place filled my mind… In black and white of course. I could see this dirty young GI just staring at the Alps and getting pissed at them because they weren’t home. Most vets when asked about how they felt as they were heading into war usually did that quip about fear and anxiety.
“We were taught in basic training that we weren’t the ones to get hit but the other guy next to us… I guess that made us foolish.” I still got that image of him running through a field with other soldiers as bullets fly by hungry for blood, and there’s always that one soldier that has blonde hair, blue eyes, and is 16 or 17 that should survive. I see him getting shot as he is right beside my grandfather who dives down and shouts for a medic. The soldier dies but says he never thought it was going to be him
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