the 3rd Army, and wound up eventually joining the 7th Army. Together, we took Bonn and then Frankfurt with a few skirmishes along the way. We lost a few people, but not many. The Germans launched a few attacks with their 88s, a sort of equivalent to M-7s we had, but fortunately not much happened.
Still, we knew that the people we were fighting— these SS units— weren’ t going to give up. Or if they were ready to give up, they didn’ t show any signs to us at that point.
There was of course“ Bed Check Charlie.” This was a German plane that flew over all the Allied camps at night, mostly to bug the troops and only occasionally drop a bomb. It would also preoccupy our antiaircraft units that would go after these planes. It was usually more of a nuisance than a real threat.
There were some bigger attacks from the 88s that we were able to fire back against as we continued further south toward our objective: Munich. We assumed if we could take Munich, the Nazis would collapse.
As we continued on our path, the Russians were moving through Central Germany. During the Battle of the Bulge that Russian line created what amounted to a stalemate that allowed us to stay on our route toward Munich. Truthfully, we didn’ t know what to expect once we got there. We knew the SS headquarters were down there and we knew the Germans were still adamant at that point that they wouldn’ t give up the fight. But at our lower level, we didn’ t know too much.
I was attached to a small part of the 20 th Armored Division at this time, called Combat Command B, which consisted of our artillery battalion, a tank battalion, and a few infantry vehicles. As we moved farther east, our command came across barbed wire and a big moat surrounding a camp of some kind. We had no idea at this point what we had discovered. We did notice as we continued our approach that there was a large building housed inside this camp. It had to be the SS headquarters. There were white flags hanging from the building, so we assumed we would be given easy access to the camp. But, there were two main obstacles that got in our way. First, a series of deep ditches that formed a moat around the camp. Second was the barbed wire that provided a formidable defense for our tanks to break through. Then, as we were about to embark on that task, shots rang out from snipers on top of the building despite the fact that they had the white flag waving. Several people were killed, including our colonel who stood up in his jeep at that point to see what was going on.
That was very tragic. I know the family and, in fact, his son is a retired colonel and a good friend of mine.
At that point, we realized that the white flags were phony and we directed our artillery and fired on the building, putting an end to that resistance. We then managed to cross the moat and break the barbed wire to access the camp. We were only a small part of a larger effort to liberate this camp. At the same time, you had the 42nd and 45th divisions converging.
This created some confusion among the ranks since the 45th Division was told about the camp,“ It’ s yours, take it.” The colonel from that division was the one who was trying to establish order. Then other divisions came in headed by a general and they had a big fight as to who was in charge. Still, we got in and were able to smash the gate.
That was at on April 29, 1945.
The next day, a few of us were selected to go and get a closer look at the camp to see what had really gone on here. We were shocked by what we saw at camp Dachau. Thousands of people, deportees from other areas in Germany, had been sent in by railcar. But they died from hunger or were shot if they lagged behind. There were 37 railcars full of bodies. People had been jammed in several hundred to each one. That was a dreadful, dreadful site. The railcars were sitting inside the camp. As if that discovery was not tragic enough, we then came upon where they had been burning bodies in the crematorium. We found out this had all been handled by Polish prisoners. There were 22 barracks originally made for 200 men each, which had about
THE YOUNG SOLDIER WITH THE 20TH ARMORED DIVISION, ALAN LUKENS.
2,000 in them. Each one— I forget the math exactly— but I know they counted later and there were 35,000 prisoners in there. These barracks were overseen by people called kapos. These were German criminals who were drafted by the SS to run the camp. They were really awful individuals, and they were told if they weren’ t nasty, and didn’ t kick people around, they themselves would get shot. So the enmity of the prisoners was on the kapos, not the German people.
FALL 2015 33