FRANK: The town that we were in was deserted by this time. Everybody was, the Begians were all gone out of there, and there was no one around except the American army. We moved in to this town and set up our position, and then all of the officers of the squadron were called to the center part of the town where there was a meeting – a planning meeting – going on of the officers, and they were getting orders from first army to which we were attached…and so we were on the edge of town and set up there…found a house…set up our bunks in the house. And then the sergeant in charge of our troop set up a watch for the night, and the watch was consisting of a radio operator and a gunner.
So about two o’clock in the morning was my time to go on the radio and went out and was in one of the armored cars operating the radio, but we had radio silence, which means that you’re not supposed to transmit anything, you’re just supposed to listen. And so I was listening and I could hear lots of activity in the surrounding area. There was a lot of shelling going on. There was a lot of shooting going on. But we had no idea who was shooting whom and where they were or anything.
About halfway through my watch, why, one of the operators from one of our other troops began sending out an SOS on his radio and did this for a matter of maybe 5 minutes and no one was answering him. And at that point, I made a decision that I would answer him and see what was going on. So I did – cave him my call letters and answered him and he said that they were surrounded by German troops and that they were going to get out on foot and they were leaving at that time.
So I went in and woke up the sergeant and told him what had happened, and the first thing he did was chew me out for breaking radio silence. And then he finally came outside with me, cause I told him I could hear all of the shelling, heard German burp guns which had a very distinctive sound. And we went outside and it was dead silence. You couldn’t hear a thing. So he said “Huelskoetter, you’re getting jumpy. Just relax. Now go back there and stay off the radio and if something important happens let me know.” I said “yes, sergeant.”
So the rest of my watch, nothing happened, so when I came off duty, I lay down and went to sleep. And the next thing that I remembered was a lot of activity going on in the house and I woke up and said “What’s going on?” And the fella said “look out the window!” And I looked out the window and there were five Tiger tanks a matter of maybe 300 yards from the house where we were with their guns pointing at the house. So I said “Man! When did they arrive?” And he said “just a few minutes ago!” So I said “What are we gonna do?” Well, no one knew what they were going to do, and the sergeant who was in charge of the unit – because the officers had never come back from the meeting that they had gone to the night before – which I didn’t know until that time – but the sergeant was sitting over in the corner crying and didn’t know what to do.
Two of my friends and I decided that we would try to get through to the headquarters and find out what was going on there and see what we could do since we had radio silence still in effect. So we grabbed our weapons and headed out the front of the house ‘cause the tanks were at the back of the house. We went out the front of the house and that’s where we had our armored cars parked. We headed across the road and as we did the Germans started firing with machine guns. So we went to the house across the street. We were going to work our way from house to house down there, and as we started working our… we were planning on working to the next house then there were some Germans out in front of that house and they started firing at the house where we were. Somewhere, one of the Germans got hit, and the next thing we saw was an American Corpsman coming out to pick up the German soldier. So the Germans had captured some American medics and were using them to retrieve the wounded Germans. So we had to hold up firing then. So we moved then to the next house and we got a better view of what was around and there were tanks all around the area of the town where we were. So we decided we’d better go back to the main house where our sergeant was and tell him what was going on.
As we came into the house, the last American was going out the door and the house is filled with Germans with their guns at the ready. So the sergeant had decided to surrender without having told us anything about the fact that he was surrendering.
We have no officers. The sergeant is not performing. So we came in, and we’ve got our guns, and the Germans come up with their guns, and so we dropped our guns and then they marched us out of the house and lined us up with the rest of the troops that we had. From there …
INTERVIEWER: Let me stop you right there…
FRANK: Yes…
INTERVIEWER: What’s your emotional state at that point? You’ve gotta be just…devastated.
FRANK: Well, at that time I’m thinking “this is a fine way to end a war!” Yeah. This is not what I intended to have happen here, and what’s gonna happen now with this?
INTERVIEWER: Are you scared?
FRANK: Uh…I’m nervous. (laughs) I’m probably scared too. But everything has happened so fast that I haven’t really had a chance to think about what is going on. So after the Germans get us all lined up, they march us down the road. There is a road leading out of the town. And they march us down the road maybe a quarter of a mile and then stop us and tell us to stand off to the left in the field there. And then a German truck came up and we thought “Oh well, you know, they’re gonna take us somewhere now.” But instead they unloaded machine guns and they set up the machine guns on the road facing us and as we were standing in the field there. And at this point I figured, why, they’re going to shoot us and this is the end of the war and the end of me, too. And they had us stand there, and there are German soldiers behind the machine guns. They had three machine guns set up there. And they had us stand there for about an hour. And at the end of the hour, why, they told us to march down the road. They had us all lined up and marched us back down the road farther and marched us to a bunch of railroad cars and put us in the railroad cars. What happened to changed their mind I have no idea. I don’t know whether they got different orders or whether the officer in charge decided not to shoot us or what happened, but I’m convinced that the original plan was to shoot us all, and we were just about 13 kilometers from Malmedy which is where they did massacre a number of American troops.
(Read more about the Malmedy Massacre here.)
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Today's thread is something a little different. Frank Huelskoetter is a family friend, and until last week, we had no idea about his story. Frank was a POW in World War II Germany. On a local talk radio show last week, he was interviewed about his experiences. I want to share two links where you can watch him talk about what happened with him. Below are the transcripts of the interview.
