Reply #39: His story is here [View All]

[stevedeshazer]

I Was a Prisoner of Japan

by Jacob DeShazer

<snip>

I was a prisoner of war for 40 long months, 34 of them in solitary confinement.

When I flew as a member of a bombing squadron on a raid over enemy territory on April 18, 1942, my heart was filled with bitter hatred for the people of that nation. When our plane ran out of petrol and the members of the crew of my plane had to parachute down into enemy-held territory and were captured by the enemy, the bitterness of my heart against my captors seemed more than I could bear.

Taken to prison with the survivors of another of our planes, we were imprisoned and beaten, half-starved, terribly tortured, and denied by solitary confinement even the comfort of association with one another. Three of my buddies were executed by a firing squad about six months after our capture and 14 months later, another one of them died of slow starvation. My hatred for the enemy nearly drove me crazy.

It was soon after the latter's death that I began to ponder the cause of such hatred between members of the human race. I wondered what it was that made one people hate another people and what made me hate them.

http://www2.gasou.edu/facstaff/etmcmull/DESHAZER.htm

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My dad, who died last year, was a member of the 276th Combat Engineers, which was a part of the force that took the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, Germany, the first group to advance by crossing the Rhine in March 1945. A good accounting of this is here.

<snip>

Starting in December 16, 1944, as the Allied Forces approached the Rhine River, Adolph Hitler ordered all the bridges blown up to prevent a crossing of this wide river.  

The 9th Armored Division, which had been ordered not to cross the Rhine River but to turn south along the west bank in order to join up with General Patton's Third  Army, found a bridge still standing at the little town of Remagen halfway between Cologne and Koblenz.  The defending Germans had left this bridge open in order to retreat some of their tanks and big guns to save them from being captured by the Americans.

On the afternoon of March 7, 1945 a small group of the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 9th Armored Division emerged from the woods, and from the top of a high hill overlooking the Rhine River they observed the bridge still standing, with the Germans retreating across the bridge. The bridge was known as the Ludendorff Bridge after Germany's WWI general.  It had been built during WWI.  When the French occupied this section of Germany after WWI, they filled the demolition chambers underneath the bridge with cement, making it very difficult to destroy the bridge.  The German defenders set up a demolition plan which involved a circuit which could be activated from a tunnel on the east side of the bridge.  The bridge was originally designed as  a railroad bridge, but it was planked over to allow for vehicular traffic.   

When the head of Combat Command B, General William Hoge, observed that the bridge was still standing, he ordered the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion to go down the hill and attack the town of Remagen prior to possibly crossing the bridge before it was blown up.  At the same time, the 14th Tank Battalion of the 9th Armored Division was ordered to proceed to the west side of the bridge after helping to clean out the defenders in the town of Remagen.  General Hoge was actually violating his orders, which were to turn south to join up with General Patton's third Army.

Lt. Karl Timmermann led the first troops across the bridge.  Just before they set foot on the bridge, the Germans blew a 30' crater in the approach to prevent tanks from crossing.  A  young soldier from Rupert, West Virginia, Clemon Knapp, had a tank with a blade in front of it which he called "tank dozer."   Under fire, he brought the "tank dozer" forward to fill in the 30' crater. 

more: http://www.appalachianpower.com/Remagen%20Bridge%20jul14.01.htm

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Those who are younger often don't realize the brutality of war. It's easy from the comfort and hindsight that 60 years provides to second-guess those who were there and lived in that time. Sure, there were undoubtedly political signals to be sent to the Soviets in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden. But had we been around then and had to make these kinds of decisions, I'll bet we would have a different opinion, too.

We should never forget it.

I'll see Uncle Jake this summer, and thank him. Again.