The War in Europe is Over: Setting Foot on American Soil

Here is my parents’ perspective on the end of the war and Dick’s return to the United States:

Dick: The war was over on May 8, 1945. The Germans ran off, and it wasn’t but a few days that the Russians came in. That camp was out on a kind of peninsula. When the Germans left, the (Allied) camp commander put a hard line across the peninsula to keep the native Germans from coming in over there because they wanted to get away from them damn Russians. We had a guard we called Henry, the Butcher. He had been a butcher in Brooklyn, New York. The daughter (Grete Koch) came to the states where Ol’ Red had met her.

Nita:  When they liberated them over there, Red took up with the Germans. He can speak it (German) and he knows a lot of them. He’s something else!

Dick: We were there two weeks after we heard the war was over. We hollered when we heard the news. We were all happy. Some guys just took off (Zemke said that when they flew the prisoners out of Barth, there were about 600 prisoners not accounted for). Red got mixed up with a guard duty outfit. I worked down there a couple or three days. Red got involved in it pretty good - the people who did the security for the camp. The Americans were guarding against the Germans. Of course, the camp commander and his crew were negotiating with the people to come in and get us, and it took them some time since at the time it was then Russian-held territory. So they had to make arrangements to let them come in there and get us.

Nita:  It was really a bad time for me in that I hadn’t heard from him. All the camps had been released. It was in the paper about all the people in the war were coming home, but I never heard from him. Then, one Sunday morning, I was getting ready for church. A postman knocked on the door with a letter from him. Hot Springs was small enough then, and during the war everyone knew everyone. It was a letter (from him) from Paris, France. We announced it in church.

Dick: They flew us down to a French town. All I remember was there was a big cathedral, but not the name. They trucked us into Camp Lucky Strike. It was out in the country. That camp was fairly close to La Harve. But there wasn’t nothing there. La Harve was the most devastated place I’ve ever seen. Man, it was horrible. So we got on a ship at La Harve and docked in Boston.

While we were at Camp Lucky Strike, we went up close to Belgium some place fooling around, And then we went to Paris, France. I think we went down there twice. We had to hitchhike to get there. We went to see the Follies Berge. Hell, I didn’t know what I was seeing except a bunch of half-naked women. The only time I got dysentery was in Camp Lucky Strike. Someone hadn’t washed the dishes very good. Everybody was in tents.

(Dick left LaHarve on June 14, 1945 on the liberty ship, the S.S. Mayo Brothers [named after Charles and William Mayo who went on to found the Mayo Clinic.] He arrived in Boston on June 21, 1945 and was taken to Camp Myles Standish in Taunton, Massachusetts, just south of Boston. From there he rode the train to Camp Chaffee in Fort Smith, Arkansas where Nita was waiting for him.)

Dick: From Boston where I was for two or three days, I went to Fort Chaffee in July 1945. I went on a World War I train with worn seats. Them ole’ boys in the train next to us were in nice Pullmans.  Boy, I was glad to set foot on the United States! Seemed to me we got some pay in Boston, but not much. I was able to call Nita from Boston. We had to stand in line (for the phone).

I stayed in (the Army Air Corps) until June 1947. (After I got home) I got a 90-day leave. We’re supposed to go Miami for rest and recuperation. And they changed my orders to go to San Antonio. We were eating Sunday dinner over at Mama’s (my grandmother), and the doorbell rang and that was orders to report to San Antonio (for redistribution) and that was 15 days before my 90 days were up.

Nita:  He got screwed all the way around. I went with him to San Antonio. We had a good time. It wasn’t as good as down in Florida, but put us in a nice motel. That was our R&R. (That must be where they developed their life-long love of Mexican food.)

(When Dick arrived home from Boston) We rented a house on the lake on Burchwood Bay and we stayed there about 60 days. (My Aunt Elise, my father’s sister, told me that when my father got back to Hot Springs, that my mother wisely took my father to the cottage on the lake so he could recuperate and adjust to being out of the prison camp. They kept a low profile. )

Dick:  Then (after San Antonio) we went to Albany, Georgia. I didn’t have a whole lot to do. Finally they assigned me to the post engineers. And I had signed up before that for aircraft maintenance in Illinois. I had just flat forgot that I had done that and when the orders came through, I had to go tell that colonel what the score was. He wasn’t too happy about it, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Nita:  Then we went to Chanute Field (130 miles south of Chicago) (for aircraft maintenance school).

Dick: I remember when we went there, we were driving in snow about that deep.

Nita:  I was pregnant with Dixie, about seven months pregnant. About the time Don graduated from high school, Big Daddy and Mama (her parents – my grandparents) came and got me. I was glad to leave. It had snowed and snowed there through the winter. I was so put out. Never had an Easter with snow.

Dick: I drove back to St. Louis when you started home. I remember Big Daddy and I went to a baseball game in St. Louis too. I graduated up there, and they sent me to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio. The orders got messed up. So they had to get those orders straight and to do that, it took time. Where I was really checking in everyday, the guy told me, come to the door, if I give you the “hi” sign, beat it, and that went on for about two weeks. I finally got those orders that sent me down to Eglin Air Force base (near Valparaiso, Florida) in a reserve training outfit.

The Future:

I was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on August 14, 1946. Dick was finally sent to Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, where we lived for a short time, and he was assigned to the Air Reserve Training Unit as an assistant aircraft maintenance officer. On November 8, 1945, he had been promoted to 1st Lieutenant and in May 1947 to Captain. Dick left active duty on June 30, 1947, to go into the hardware business, Oaklawn Supply Co., with his brother-in-law, W.A. “Penny” Pennington. He eventually bought Pennington out. He and my mother remained in business until May 1976 when he sold the business. My sister, Nitalynn, was born on May 8, 1950 in Hot Springs. Dick joined the Air Force Reserves in 1955. He was promoted to Major, and in 1962, to Lieutenant Colonel. He retired from the reserves in July 1976.