Posted on 10/17/2020 4:37:21 PM PDT by lowbridge
World War II hero Jim Feezel from Alabama, who drove a tank through the front gate of Dachau in Nazi Germany to liberate prisoners at the infamous concentration camp, has died.
James Martin Feezel died on Thursday, Oct. 15, according to Roselawn Funeral Home in Decatur. He was 95.
In a video interview project by Gary Cosby Jr. with The Decatur Daily in 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, Feezel recalled the moment his commanding officer told him to break through the gate at Dachau on April 29, 1945.
“We were facing the front gate at Dachau prison,” Feezel said. “He said, ‘Jim, put the tank through that gate.’ So, I have the dubious honor of doing that. And, immediately glancing over at the bodies stacked like cord wood, this young 19-year-old just about lost it.”
Feezel, a technical sergeant for the 23rd tank battalion of the 12th Armored Division, drove a Sherman tank during the war.
An emaciated inmate approached the tank after he drove into the camp, he said.
“Looked like a skeleton was walking towards me,” Feezel said. “He was finally too exhausted and he just sat down.”
Feezel emphasized that he was one of many soldiers who played a role in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
“I often reckon with the very fact that I was such a small pebble in a large stream of thousands and thousands of men who went to fight this war,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
Perhaps the worst crime of all the Nazis committed was to make many of those who fought them lose a bit of their humanity. How many men returned from the war, broken, having seen and experienced things no human should ever have to, to do what had to be done?
Enter into Eternal Rest with our Savior faithful soldier.
Minutes after we (Allies) were allowed into the "former" East Germany the night of reunification, I got off work and drove straight down the autobahn from West Berlin to Potsdam. Middle of the night. Wanted to do it and had to see it.
It was stuck in time. It was as if the 1940s had never ended. Sure the buildings had been rebuilt but it was like all out of a movie set! NOTHING HAD CHANGED!!
There were even coal piles setup outside the apartment buildings.
Surreal.
We do that now.
For some reason we force our rescue cand military to get pieces of people after disasters. WTC airplane crashes etc.
Many people on disability after working those sites.
Some times we just need to bury the dead and not dig up every shard.
I was stationed in Baumholder Germany, (1989 - 1992), and one weekend after a binge-drinking weekend at the real Hofbrau Haus in Munich during Oktoberfest, we piled into a taxi to head back to our military base.
Our path back lead us directly past Dachau, as our cabbie pointed and said, “Das ist das Konzentrationslager Dachau.”
STOP!!! We asked the cabbie to wait with our stuff and we’d pay him for the hour, while we toured the camp.
As we piled out, still feeling Germany’s fine brew as we lightheartedly made our way to the main gate with the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Will Set You free)staring us in the face, a large tour bus pulled up, full of older Americans.
Keeping to ourselves, but within ear shot of the group we learned that many of the men on that bus had been with the units that had liberated Dachau.
Suffice it to say, the giddy beer drinking soldiers that we were moments before were gone and immediately humbled at the greatness of the soldiers behind us.
They hugged each other and sobbed at the pictures on display from the era and what the camp used to be in its horror-days, as they shared with their spouses what they saw when they opened doors and saw the faces of death. What they did. Who they killed, and the passion and fury at the dispatch of that enemy.
The smell of the pile of shoes alone, much less the ovens and the ashen remains was more than they, or we, could bear to see. Real men in tears.
My buddies and I realized, just then and more than ever, what the true purpose of the U.S. military is and should be; to wipe evil off of the face of the Earth.
That was the longest, soberest drive back to Baumholder that I can ever recall.
I thank God for getting to be there at that moment, to hear the words those men spoke and to have a glimpse into the horrors they faced and eliminated.
God bless them all.
There’s a classic Twilight Zone episode written by Rod Serling where a sadistic Nazi guard revisits Dachau some years after the war and finally receives justice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths-Head_Revisited
That ... is an awesome story.
Wow! I’ll have to watch the whole thing!
Pure coincidence that my dad also passed at age 95 but 7 years ago. Career Army, WW2, Korea & Vietnam. Four Purple Hearts and lived through it but like many/most he seldom talked about it!
One thing that hit him and many was that the National Guard outfits like the 45th & 42nd were started as neighborhood units going into the war. Entire towns could lose a whole generation in a single battle but then the replacements came from all over. My dad had friends and neighbors that are buried in Sicily, Italy and France. They don't do that anymore, a good thing.
It’s a great episode. The actors in the main cast were all European born, and most of them had a personal connection with the Holocaust. Serling was a tremendous writer too.
My late sister-in-law's Dad saw combat during WWII. She said he *never* talked about it.Ditto my late brother-in-law's Dad.
Not to downplay modern conflicts, but the great wars were awful, awful wars. My dad was in the navy in WWII and was present for some of the sea-to-land assault battles. Rarely, he would speak of them, and it was unfathomable. He was an LST driver, and during every assault, he was was only able to make one beach landing, and never made it back to the ship for another load of troops. His boat went down every time. He used to always say that he never understood how he survived while so many around him died. He died at age 51 from a service-connected disability.
Surreal...indeed. August of 1968 I was on an Air France flight, Paris to Tegel in West Berlin. Clear summer day, on the approach the view from the air was as you said, surreal. Height of summer every was green in the West, red tile roofs dominated the landscape, even flowered window boxes could be seen...and then the view into the East became apparent. The demarcation line couldn’t be more clear. It was as if the entire East portion was covered in ash, fully gray without any color, a dead city. Can’t recall seeing specific bombed out ruins, just endless gray. Five days later the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia.
I spent the day today with my Father, a WWII Vet, who will be 95 later this month.
He served in Belgium, Germany and CZ. Served in Patch’s 7th Army and Patton’s 3rd Army.
One of his classmates, Lt. Jack Westbrook, was also involved in taking Dachau. Dad was not there for it’s liberation but saw it not long after, his company spent that Winter near Munich as guards for work crews of captured German soldiers who were used to cut firewood so the inhabitants of Munich did not freeze.
They forced the inhabitants of Munich to go to Dachau and view what really happened. So there was no possibility of denying it.
He showed us a picture of his beautiful family home in beautiful downtown Dresden. However, as the Soviets closed in in 1945, they had to skedaddle and leave their home behind. Its next occupant was probably a Communist apparatchik.
Salute.
“Never again” was always virtue signaling by the anti-Semitic left to justify blaming conservatives for what the Nazis did. The left NEVER meant it.
My grandfather was also in the Navy during WWII, commanding a tugboat in Pearl Harbor after the bombing. He spent weeks clearing vessels so other vessels could navigate the waters.
He never talked about any of the horrors that he saw to me, though my uncles did.
He also never referred to the Japanese as ‘Japanese’ my whole life, and trust me when I say, he had a thousand other names that he called them.
My mother would get so angry, but she would never say a word to him, she knew better.
My father told me that the GIs fed the liberated prisoners, who weren’t able to tolerate the rich diet and “died like flies”.
When Eurorailing with my Swedish mate in the ‘80s we had one day in the area. He wanted to visit Neuschwanstein Castle but I MADE him to go Dachau. He pouted about for a while that morning, then told me afterward that he was very grateful I made him visit the camp.
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