Posted on 03/13/2015 2:02:20 PM PDT by daniel1212
His story as told by Lowell Thomas is that he
was blown up by a shell that landed in his trench,
His arm was partially severed and caught in the
revetting of the trench wall. When the germans came
along he shot one and took the others prisoner,
He then made them cut his arm off, and put it in
his backpack and then they went back to the American
lines, some were killed on the way I believe.
The story was that he brought his arm back to
prove it wasn’t a self inflicted wound.
When he was a boy, he knew a one armed veteran of
the civil war and was so impressed by the fact that
he didn’t let one arm keep him from doing anything,
that he practiced using either arm to do just about
anything.
His story is called, This Side of Hell.
He received 55 wounds and lost an arm and a leg.
He received 83 medals.
I hope to be, but 'as brave' as York is a tall order.
Bump later read.
Shoot the ones in back first so the ones in front don’t get spooked — smart turkey hunting.
Key words being “Lowell Thomas.” As I recall, there was nothing in the MoH citation about losing an arm. There was a great deal of exaggeration, including a lot by Edwards, later in life. Why he thought he needed to embellish an already exceptional story is a mystery. The MoH facts stand on their own.
Not anything like Alvin York, but my dad’s cousin (RD) had some interesting stories from near the end of the war. And like you said, the Germans by this time were nothing like the Japs. The following is an excerpt from an oral history of his I found on the web:
MH: After you see Buchenwald, does it change in any way the way you feel about dealing with the Germans?
RD: Well, there were two kinds of Germans: There were those that had been indoctrinated from birth by the Nazi regime; and there were those who, when we took ’em prisoner, their first question was, “Do you know my uncle in Milwaukee?” In other words, they had relatives here in the United States.
They were usually older Germans; by older, they were probably in their forties. They were home guards, largely. The older ones would be left behind to protect a town when the Germans left the town, hoping that they would delay us long enough for them to reestablish the line they set up.
And I had those people come to me and surrender and actually
—[I’d ask] “Why are you doing this?” you know, they’d come hand me their gun. And they’d say, “Well, I’m not a damn fool.” There are those Germans.
And one time, and I suppose it was about the time of Buchenwald, my Jeep driver — we were patrolling through a town, a small village, and the Jeep driver said to me, “That guy —that guy is a German, standing in that doorway over there at the Gasthaus.” And sure enough, there was this German soldier standing in the doorway, looking at us going by. I said, “I’ll go get him,” and I jumped out with my rifle and ran over, take him prisoner.
He asked me if I would come with him into the Gasthaus
before he became a prisoner. I went in there. There were fifteen German soldiers sitting at a long table, eating.
Now, what do you do when you find yourself in a situation like this? Well, I start giving commands in phonetic German in a loud voice: “Alles come mit mere—hands en copp.”
All that stuff. And they all jumped up, and I’m telling them they’re prisoners. They all had guns, and I told them, “Over there,” and I pointed to the corner, and they piled all the guns in a corner. And now, I’m coming out of the Gasthaus with fifteen prisoners, okay?
I disarmed them, collected fifteen pistols, and got out in the street. Now these people, they knew the war was over. They knew it was hopeless at this point, and they were
looking for an opportunity to quit, see.
And there was those Germans, who would — I put them in a different category. They were reasonable people that you could deal with. And then there were those, of course, who were not. I would find them mostly younger, and then knowing only as growing up as a Nazi.
And another experience I had: We came into a small village, and the people in the village told me there were Hitler Youths, three Hitler Youths—S.S. Hitler Youths or something like that—hiding in the basement of a house, and that they had put mines in the ditch leading out of the village.
They’d mined the ditch. So, I don’t know how many of us, two or three of us, went into the house and took them prisoner. But now we were in a situation, I mean—let me get back to those fifteen in a minute.
We were in a situation where we couldn’t take prisoners. But what we had been told, that they’d buried mines, what we did was took ’em to the areas that the people said the mines were and gave them our entrenching tools and said, “Dig up the mines.”
Well, they could not understand us. They thought that we were telling them to dig your own graves. And one fellow suddenly came running up to me, fell on his knees, put his hands in the position of prayer, and said to me in understandable English, “Don’t kill us! We’ll come
to America and be your slaves forever, but don’t kill us.” Can you imagine that?
MH: (laughs)
RD: And so, we finally come to the conclusion—we couldn’t take them prisoner, couldn’t take them with us. So, what we did was we found some white cloth, put cloth on a stick,
gave each one a stick with white cloth, and said, “Walk down this road in that direction and someone will take you prisoner.” And that’s the last we saw of them. That’s how we
dealt with it, yeah.
Now, the same thing, going back to those fifteen.
MH: Right.
RD: My lieutenant, thankfully, wasn’t a very aggressive soldier. He came to me, and he says, “We can’t take prisoners on this mission. We’re out here, we can’t take prisoners. What in the world are you thinking about, taking these guys prisoner?”
Well, it so happened that a mile down, prior to the town, we picked up two British soldiers who’d been prisoners of the Germans for five years, and they were working on a German farm.
When we came through, they came out and asked to stay with us. They wanted to get out of Germany. So, they were riding, if it was — the Jeep was rigged for us to live in.
They were riding in the back of the Jeep, and I remember one of them saying to the other “Imagine this: here we are, after being prisoners for five years, we’re riding in an
American Jeep eating cake.” Well, we’d given ’em some C ration cookies or crackers, and they thought it was cake, and they were so happy.
Now they’re overhearing my lieutenant giving me hell for taking fifteen guys prisoner, and they said, “There’s no need to worry about it. Give us a gun; give us some of those
German guns. We’ll take them down to this schoolhouse, which is empty, and we’ll hold ’em there until you radio back and get the (inaudible) registration or somebody to come and pick ’em up.”
So, here we have two ex-prisoners of war, Englishmen, telling our lieutenant how to do his job. And, I might add, I found out later none of the guys in the platoon had any more respect for him that I did, and I never did have much respect for him.
Thanks for the ping to this excellent story of heroism.
Thanks for the ping!
thanks
And who promoted her? And the one who promoted him?
She is the Secretary of the Air Force. She wasn’t “promoted”, she is a political appointee, appointed by President Obama.
I am sure the German prisoners would rather have the Americans holding them than ex POWS!
Am I bad for finding this bit mildly funny?
No, as he likely could write it better as well.
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