This is the continuation of a story begun on our July 2015 Home Page. To go to an archived version of that page, click here: July 2015 Home Page Archive. To return to this month's actual Home Page, click on the Signal Corps orange Home Page menu item in the upper left corner of this page.

continuing...

Being relatively free of war damage, it was natural that Shifferstadt became one of the destinations of choice for those people driven from their own bombed out homes, throughout Europe. When the 103rd Signal Company arrived in town, they found the place teeming with displaced persons from Poland, France, Russia, and Czechoslovakia. To assist the CIC unit in rounding up these people, as well as coaxing German troops out of hiding, the Company sent one of its sound trucks around the city… blaring messages in multiple languages.

Within a week however, it was time to move on. The Infantry was moving through Germany more quickly now, and the 103rd Signal Company’s help was needed not just to provide communication, but to provide forward occupation duty too. As the system worked, the 103rd, moving in lock step with the Infantry in order to provide them with front line communications, were Johnny on the spot when it came to filling in and providing occupation duty after each battle ended. However, since the Infantry had a duty to press forward after each battle, and they needed the 103rd Signal Company to push forward with them, in each case another unit to the rear would have to move forward to take over the occupation duty the 103rd had been providing, so that they in turn could move forward with the Infantry.

Thus it was that their short period of rest in Schifferstadt came to an end, as they pushed out toward a set of distant, purple mountains. As they moved forward, they began to see the real Germany… fertile farms, towns with church steeples, all dotting plains and hills for as far as the eye could see. 

On through Bohl, paralleling a railroad line, and then marching through orchards and vineyards, they headed for Musbach. Past mansions with towers and gables, and even modern gas stations and factories, they moved on until they reached Neustadt. In awe the men moved into the town, noting that it was almost entirely made up of rich estates and mansions. With cherry and apple trees blooming along a sparkling creek, the men bivouacked to begin their next stint at occupation duty.

On April 5th some of the men moved off again. This time headed for Darmstadt and Worms. To coordinate with other units, one squad was sent off to make a “jeep run” to the 411th, headquartered at Oggersheim, and from there on to meet with the 409th up at Worms (around 25 miles away).

What they saw looked idyllic. Fertile farms with long strips of grass alternated with some of the blackest soil ever seen… all being tendered with farmers plowing with horses and oxen. Yet that wasn’t what impressed them… for along their way the squad sent out to coordinate with the nearby units came across something they had never seen… a superhighway, the "Reichsautobahn Kaiserlautern." There before their eyes lay a four lane highway (two lanes each way) of concrete and modern overhead interchanges. 

For these American boys from the Midwest, seeing something here that they had never seen back home, the case had been made: Germany was in fact a powerful, advanced nation that needed to be taken serioiusly, despite its fascist, totalitarian dictatorship, and its peoples' prevalence towards racism, anti-Semiticism, and every other form of phobia you could imagine from hatred of gypsies and gays to people with congenital defects.

- - - - -

On Friday, April 13, 1945, the telegram machines in the 103rd Signal Company began to hum. For hour after hour they spit out messages: President Roosevelt had died. Some of the men actually cried. Others quietly walked away, head down, wondering what was to become of the war now.

With silent deference, telegrams announcing his death were posted around the unit, with their edges blackened in respect. The same was done throughout the towns they occupied, along with messages being sent to every unit the 103rd Signal Company then served. Many of the men commented that it was strange to see German civilians walking the streets, crying.

By the end of April the men were getting restless. It was clear that the war was going well, because combat engagements were now few and far between. Yet oddly, the lack of combat was having a negative effect on the men. They were letting their guard down, becoming lazy and doing less than an effective job at the work they did do. Some got drunk, others just went walkabout. Searching the town for hidden guns, the men often passed over as many as they found. Carrying messages by jeep from one place to another, the men too often sped like crazy, acted carelessly and caused accidents. On those odd occasions when Red Cross girls passed through town, it took an immense effort to keep the men in order.

It came as no surprise then when on April 21 the men were ordered to pack up and head south and east, very rapidly, into and through Bavaria. It seems that the 103rd I.D. was back on the hunt, and renewed combat was in the offing. To help move the men quickly to where they were needed, they moved out in trucks that took to the Autobahn. With smiles all around, the men spoke of how the Nazi war machine was beginning to crumble. This they were sure of, they said, as their trip down the Autobahn uncovered remnants of a formerly formidable enemy… surrendering POW's, abandoned war materials scattered everywhere, and more death and destruction than had been seen before.

Through Pfedelbach, Murrhardt, Ober Urbach and Kircheim they passed. For hundreds of miles they moved forward, through Geislingen, Lonsee and Horvelingen, until they crossed the Danube at Ulm on, April 26, 1945.

Between the 28th and 30th of April they traversed Krumbach, Ketterschwang, Bidingen and Steingaden. On and on they went… heading for Austria.

Pointedly, as they moved through Germany itself, towards Austria, the landscape changed yet again. This time except for the detritus of war, they saw less physical destruction than anywhere they had been. On a relative basis, the landscape was untouched, likely as not because the enemy was retreating so fast that combat engagements were related more towards rear guard holding actions than any actual effort to fight the U.S. Army.

Yet destruction did exist, as evidenced by the number of destroyed and abandoned German fighter planes scattered all along the Autobahn. Since the U.S. had destroyed nearly all of Germany's air fields, the Autobahn was being used for landings and takeoffs. With the pace of the war increasing, and no place to fly the planes to, the German Luftwaffe simply left them where they were, and retreated. 

Most fascinated by all of this, and as Signaleers knowledgeable of advanced technologies, the men crowded around the jet planes they ran across… something they had never seen, they were curious to understand both the science and mechanics of these things.

To add to the strangeness of the scene, the countryside was now populated with mountains dotted with high-roofed alpine homes, steep roads full of curves, and more often than not road blocks and mine fields to keep curious lookers out. 

It’s at about this time that the men of the 103rd Signal Company rolled into the town of Landsberg, Germany (in southwestern Bavaria), and discovered six concentration camps where victims had died by the thousands… from every form of atrocity one could think of, including starvation and exposure.

Strangely, Adolf Hitler had been imprisoned in Landsberg before his rise to power. Among the things he did while there was write his famous "Mein Kampf" manifesto. One wonders whether his  being imprisoned in this city had anything to do with his ordering the setting up of the concentration camps in this particular town? Even more incredibly, to add to the strangeness and morbidity of this town's history, it was in this same Landsberg prison that Hitler, Rudolph Hess and Maurice Grebel shared a suite of rooms, while they were imprisoned for mounting the abortive Munich beer hall putsch.

As to how the concentration camps were discovered, the men of the 103rd Signal Company reported that when they entered the town, while it was inhabited, all of the shutters on all of the windows of all of the houses were closed. Oddly, there were no people on the streets. Soon though, they found out why.

Reconnoitering the town and its outskirts, one group of Signaleers took a road out of town, where they found a barbed wire fenced area. When they drove to the gate they were surprised to find that it was a work camp full of Frenchmen. Breaking the gate down, they told the inmates that the area had been captured by Americans. They were told in return that there were other work camps, for other nationalities, further down the same road. Looking down the road, they saw smoke billowing up, in the distance. Hurriedly remounting their vehicles, they headed off down the road in the direction of the smoke, where they found yet another camp, except this one was different. What they saw was that the barracks were below ground, most with grass and dirt tops, but wooden sides... and worse, all had been set on fire, with the occupants in them.

Breaking down the gate and entering the compound they set about trying to rescue those they could. Later they found that this compound was known as Lager No. 2. It turned out to be a forced labor camp for Jews. Now, without their German captors, over 5,000 of them sat about in their soiled, striped uniforms, nearly starved to death and in horrible condition.

As the men moved through the camp offering rations to the people, one old man approached Corporal Fader, a Signaleer, and said in Yiddish, "I don't want food, I want a gun to go after the SS." 

He told the men that the SS troops had just left, and that if they gave him a gun he was sure he could catch them.

Corporal Fader calmed the old man, even while it instantly registered in his mind that he needed to get out of the camp as quickly as he could, get back to town, and notify HQ of both the existence of these camps and the flight of the German overlords that ran them. At the same time, he knew he needed to see to it that someone back at HQ swiftly organized relief parties to return to the camp and take on the enormous task that lay ahead... of saving those that could be, and cataloging the rest of the story both for posterity and to support future war trials. 

As he drove back into town he realized that now he knew why the houses all had closed shutters, and the streets were abandoned. “The people of Landsberg knew of these camps and were afraid of what might happen to them."

Later, as he worked as part of a team of men that searched the houses in town, he remarked again that in each house he went into the woman of the house (especially those with children in them) would immediately protest, "Nicht Nazi." Yet in the closets of all the houses he searched, he "found uniforms with swastikas on the sleeves.”[1]

In their diaries, other Signaleers wrote of their experience in Landsberg. One of the Signaleers wrote...

“Inside the electrically charged double fence were rows of huts built in the ground, with only the roofs exposed. In these huts were crammed approximately 5,000 human beings, although none could even be called beings, much less human in the condition in which we found them. 

“They were starved until there was nothing left but skeletons covered with skin. Most of them could not possibly have been nourished back to life, but the sadistic SS men who were in charge of the camp were not satisfied with that.

“They packed all of the living ones into the huts and set fire to them, after removing all their clothing of course. Very methodical these Krauts.

“Many were roasted alive. Others escaped from the huts only to be stopped by the electrically charged double fence.

“Those who were too weak to move were clubbed and beaten to death on the ground. Many more were stacked like cord wood in a long deep pit. Untold numbers lay under the charred ruins of the filthy holes they lived in.

“The next day we brought the citizens of Landsberg (the men only, because we Americans were too soft to ever think of showing the women anything like that) to the camps to bury the grisly remains of those poor creatures.

“The American guards would not let them move the bodies with their shovels. They were forced to pick them up with their hands and carry them respectfully to the mass grave that had been dug, and to lay them gently in it.

“The people of Landsberg professed to know nothing about the camps, but they knew. How could they not know?”[2]

Today we know that what this Signaleer said is true. We know that in the towns that surrounded the concentration camps in Austria and Germany up to 93% of the people who lived in the towns worked for the Nazis. Yet the day after the war ended, inquiries into these same towns indicated that not a single person... not one... zero... of the townspeople, said that they worked for the Nazis. Nicht Nazi.

And the story continues today. Asking about in these towns what one will hear from the elderly that still live in each community is "I didn't know of the things that went on inside of the camps in our town." – or – "I didn't know what the Nazi's were doing." – or worse still – "I was just a soldier. I was just following orders."

Six million Jews died in the Holocaust. It is a worthy note that seven Army Signal Corps OCS graduates from Class 42-06, and the men of they commanded, saved some of those that didn't.

- - - - -

May proved to be an important month for the men of the 103rd Signal Company, as the war ended on May 8, 1945. The Company Report from May says little about this event… in typical fashion, it speaks only of military matters.

COMPANY REPORT - MAY, 1945

The enemy for the first five days of May were still fleeing headlong for the safety of the Bavarian Alps, but the 103rd Division and attached elements gave them no opportunity to slow up for reorganization. This pursuit necessitated the extension of already abnormally long lines of communication, but contact was maintained with all spearhead elements by radio, which at times had to be relayed due to mountainous and atmospheric conditions.

Yet finality was just around the corner. On May 2 the unit's Company Commander, Captain Beck, one of the original graduates of OCS Signal Corps Class 42-06, commented in a letter home...

“So Adolph Hitler is dead! He certainly caused a great deal of trouble for one man. Perhaps by the time you get this all the Nazi big-wigs will be dead. I hear, to-night, where the Krauts in Italy have finally surrendered. But, as far as I am concerned, the Krauts still fight on. At least, here they do.

“What really gets me, though, is this "Nicht Nazi" plea that the German civilians give when we take their town. Oh! they have always hated the Nazis and how they loved the Americans! In the meantime their homes are full of swastikas on flags, belt buckles, walls, etc. After spending about 12 years "heiling" Adolph, they are now 'Nix Nazi.' "

He went on to comment on the lack of humanity and callousness of the German people.

“They live in the most beautiful homes I have ever seen, while on the outskirts of their town or possibly a few miles away is a concentration camp where Poles, Jews, Russians, Czechs, Hungarians, etc., live as cattle in emaciation and rot. Trains go through these pretty towns daily, loaded with the dead stinking corpses of the poor devils that were tortured to death, piled up like slabs of beef, while Jerry and his happy healthy family went about their life of "Kultur."

“I saw freight cars standing, on now blown tracks, loaded with garments of murdered people. In one car was shoes, thousands of them. In another was pants and so on down the line.

“The people look normal, act normal and have normal living habits. But, inside them they seem to have the heart of a beast. Gen. Eisenhower's non-fraternization policy is fairly effective. The people are given the cold shoulder.”

The next day, 3 May 1945, Captain Beck continued to pour his feelings into his letter home.

“The German system of oppression includes the utilization of the conquered people as slaves. That's right, slaves the same as the U.S.A. had prior to the Civil War.

“If you think that the people had nothing to do with it, you are wrong. Each German family had their own personal slaves, the number being determined by the wealth and prominence of the family. The slaves were either Poles, Russians, Czechs and in some cases French. These slaves lived with the family either in the attic or cellar and performed daily chores that would normally fall to the family to perform.

“If the German had a business or a factory the prisoner(s) worked there. To the German, it was something perfectly normal and to this day they claim to be anti-Nazi."

Over the next few days news of the end of the war spread its way throughout continental Europe. Slowly at first, in one town and then another, the people would hear that Hitler was dead and that Germany had surrendered. In spite of this, with so many German military units in so many places, it took time for the formality of surrender to take place.

In some cases German military units caught out in places like northern Italy tried as they could to cross over into Austria, rather than be taken prisoner in Italy. In others, not knowing for certain if the rumors of the war ending were true or not, German units fought to defend their positions. Over time however, the countryside grew silent… as units put down their arms and waited to be taken prisoner.

Stories of the men of the 103rd Signal Company taking German prisoners during this period abound. Not fully aware of whether the German soldiers they came across knew that the war had ended or not, every encounter between the two sides pulsed with danger. In one case a squad of Signaleers approached a town that seemed to be deserted. As they entered the town square they brought their vehicles to a halt… the silence was eerie. Eventually, a few children appeared from some of the nearby buildings in the town, cautiously approaching the Americans. Not knowing if this was a trap or not, the men looked to each other for support.

One of the men brought out that old American peace offering… candy, and sure as shootin’ once the kids took it they laughed and danced about. With this a few elders ventured out of their houses… out from behind the closed curtains they had been cautiously peering out of.

By the time everyone came to realize that the Americans weren’t going to shoot up the town, the town square was full. A celebration ensued, and everyone seemed pleased.

As the squad packed up and headed back to their unit, the Team Chief noticed that some wire lay along the side of the road. Following orders to police up all reuseable wire, he ordered the men to begin re-spooling it. One of the men followed along behind the truck, pulling wire from the side of the road to the middle so that another could coil it onto a spool. As he did this, he noticed that off to the side, about 200 yards ahead, a large number of German soldiers were slowly walking toward the road the men were traversing.

At first the Signaleers were concerned, opining that if the war was over, why were these German soldiers out in the field with their weapons? Slowly however it began to dawn on them, perhaps they had come to surrender?

The officer leading the German troops headed in a straight line for the tail end man pulling the wire into the middle of the road. Not knowing the U.S. ranking system, he was heading for perhaps one of the lowliest ranked men in the entire U.S. Army, to surrender.

Seeing the officer heading for him, the Private began to worry, until he realized that all of the men in the group were wearing soft caps… i.e., they had discarded their helmets. As the Germans got closer, they began to hold their arms up, and began shouting "Surrender!". 

The Private just stood there, fascinated. When he looked forward to the Signal truck, he saw his compatriots doing the same. Everyone just stood there, staring and looking at the group of Germans with amazement.

Slowly the officer came up to the Private, saluted and spoke something in German that clearly implied that he was surrendering. With that he unbuckled his sword and pistol and presented them to the Private. 

Taking charge, the Private motioned that everyone should line up and follow the Signal truck… after a quick word or two, the driver of the Signal truck headed off down the road, back towards Innsbruck. There the Signaleers turned over their prisoners to the first group of M.P.s they ran across… before turning around and heading back again, to finish the job of mopping up the wire that they had found.

This kind of event was not unusual. Days passed, and things got even quieter. So quiet that many of the men of the 103rd Signal Company commented that the silence of peace was strange to the ear. Many found it difficult to believe that no front line existed. While for others, lurking beneath the exhilaration of being part of the winning of the war, they found their souls full of dark anticipation as to what was to come… anticipation haunted by reminders that the war in the Pacific was still going forward, still going strong.

What next, they asked each other.

On May 9, a hot day, the men knew it was official… the war was indeed over. They knew this because a Victory Parade was held in Innsbruck on that day… Innsbruck, Austria, the place where they were now bivouacked.

In the parade “The 103rd Division passed in review for civilians and military on the River Road Drive. The higher brass looked military and stern. Parts of the Regiments passed after the band, then a Task Force, then attached units such as Artillery with their 105's and 155's, then the 614th T.D.'s, 781 and 761st Tank Battalions.”[3]

And so it was over. The long journey that began at Camp Howze now came to an end in Innsbruck. Starting with a long train and boat ride that took the unit through Britain to a landing at Marseilles, then on to learn the art of field combat as they pushed their way up through the French countryside to St. Diè. Then through a long, frustrating winter of fighting in Alsace and the Vosges, to be followed by a rapid paced spring campaign that touched on everything from the Battle of the Bulge, to the Siegfried Line, and then on to the Rhine and a dash down through Bavaria and the Austrian Alps… it was all finally coming to an end.

While the men did not then know what was ahead of them as far as the Pacific War was concerned, they did know that as a Signal Company the European chapter of their existence was over, and that they had not only come through it well, but performed beyond the call.

e f

Editor's Note: Having worked your way through this four part series, it would not be right for us to leave you, our readers, here, in Innsbruck, Austria, wondering what happened next.

For your pleasure, next month we will return with a short addendum to this story. In this bonus piece we will tell of the unit’s occupation time in Europe before being sent back to the U.S., their homecoming, and their glee in hearing that the war in the Pacific ended before the unit was sent out again, to do its part in Asia too.

Join us next month on our August Home Page for The Final Chapter – How Seven Signal OCS Graduates From Class 42-06 Built The 103rd Infantry Division’s Signal Company.

 

 

            

Footnotes

[1] Quotation taken from online extracts from the diary and notes of Tech Sergeant Seymour Fader, 103rd Signal Company. - To return to your place in the text, click here.

[2] Quotation taken from online extracts from the diary and notes of radioman “Andy” Pierce Evans, 103rd Signal Company. - To return to your place in the text, click here.

[3] Quotation taken from online extracts from the diary and notes of Staff Sergeant John Donlan, 103rd Signal Company.  - To return to your place in the text, click here.

Reference Sources

Various backround material taken from Fighting in the Val de Moder; Lise M. Pommois, Association Les Amis de la Libération de Pfaffenhoffen; C. Delbecq, 1989 - Alsace (France).  

Many of the comments and quotes in this series, and especially in this article, were taken from the excellent book entitled 103d Infantry Division Signal Company Remembrances; 1918 – 1945, by William F. Barclay. Some portions of the text in this article are a literal rewrite of a few parahraphs of that book. The text of the book is currently in the process of being placed online, and is available in partial form at this link. Of note, text and pictures are being added to the online version by the son of Captain Beck. We have depended heavily in our quoting the writings of Captain Beck, and in using his observations to add color to this story, on information contained in this book, which information most certainly must have come from Captain Beck's son Andy Beck. Our expressed gratitude for his having provided it for inclusion in the 103d Infantry Division Signal Company Remembrances; 1918 – 1945, and for the chance to quote from it here.

In addition to the above, generally, quotations shown, unless otherwise identified, were excerpted and extracted from 103d Infantry Division Signal Company Remembrances; 1918 – 1945, by William F. Barclay. However, because of the extensive use of what we believe was Barclay's book as source material for other deep web sources, from which we in turn extracted data for use here, we can not say with certainty that the material used here originally came from Barclay's book. Notwithstanding this, the nature of the quotations and stories appearing in such deep web sources leads us to believe that it was originally sourced from Mr. Barclay's book, and accordingly we wish to provide credit here.

Pictures from various online sources. When shown without identification, no identifying source was able to be found. 

The Patriot Files; dedicated to the preservation of military history; www.patriotfiles.com.

Generally, map graphics and references courtesy www.103rdcactus.com.

Papa's War, Evans, Pierce; Limited Publication, 1995; various online sources.

Report After Action: The Story of the 103rd Infantry Division; Mueller, Ralph; Turk, Jerry; Printing Office, Innsbruck, Austria.

Index of /Sexton/103rd; deep web sourcing.

103D Infantry Division Signal Company History, online as a Pierce-Evans.org project.

103rd Infantry Division, Wartime Press.

Miscellaneous fact checking: The Patriot Files; an online resource dedicated to the preservation of military history.

Photo of German soldiers surrendering outside of Dachau reproduced courtesy of Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. 

 

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This page originally posted 1 July 2015