<Begin Segment 28>

TI: So going back to Hammelburg, and what I want to talk about was while you were at Hammelburg, there was an actual rescue attempt for the prisoners. I think there were probably around five thousand or so of you at this camp. Can you describe this rescue attempt for us?

JY: One day, the Serbians came back from their march, from their work thing, and they said, "Something's going on out there. We hear gunfire in the distance." And we had heard it, too, something's going on. Everybody was hoping it was the main front who was moving toward us. And then the next morning, there were straggling German soldiers coming around the camp, and it looked like they had been in combat. And then as the day wore on, the gunfire seemed to be approaching, and everyone was getting anxious that something, so we, with the Serbians, we exchanged names and addresses, and wondering how this is all going to come out, like to get, meet each other after the war, stuff like that.

TI: Because you all thought you were going to be free.

JY: We thought something was going to happen, we didn't know what, what the encounter was going to be, we were just hoping for the best for the next thing. And then in the mid-afternoon there was, real battle fire was closer, and the tanks rolled into camp. But there wasn't a complete occupation of the camp, it seemed to retreat, but enough that just the whole camp was in an uproar, the Americans were here.

TI: Because you could actually see the tanks?

JY: Yeah, we saw tanks, and they were drawn, and the camp was being organized to leave our barracks.

TI: And who was doing the organizing?

JY: I guess somehow the word got through. And because there were field grade officers in the camp, apparently they were taking over. And then, for some unknown reason, the American flag was unfurled, and we said, how can that happen? How could they hide an American flag? And this one element was going down the company streets, and apparently the battle wasn't over. Because from the guard towers or somewhere, machine guns opened up and this guy was struck.

TI: So somehow there was an American flag hidden, it was unfurled, and you had a soldier parading that down, and he was shot by, still the Germans still there with machine guns.

JY: Or something, from somewhere he was hit.

TI: And who was this person?

JY: This happened to be Patton's son-in-law.

TI: So this was General Patton's son-in-law, he was a prisoner of war.

JY: And he was captured in Africa.

TI: And he was in this camp?

JY: Yes.

TI: Did General Patton know?

JY: Well, that's the story, we don't know the complete story. But apparently in the group was an officer who was instructed to be sure and look for the general's son-in-law.

TI: And here he was wounded, he was shot by the Germans.

JY: Right.

TI: And I guess to bring the story together, the tanks, did they come from Patton's...

JY: Yes, it's one of Patton's special units, that it's been selected to advance fifty miles from the front.

TI: Which is very unusual, you would never send a...

JY: Oh, no one would ever approve something like that, to risk a small unit right into the enemy's, you know, territory. Nobody could condone anything like that.

TI: But yet the tanks made it all the way.

JY: Yeah, it was a very, apparently it was a well-trained unit that knew how to fight tank warfare, extremely daring commander, young guy, twenty-three years old or something.

TI: So he made it all the way, fifty miles past the front, and in the gates with the tanks. And then what happened then?

JY: Well, then for the next several hours, sort of pandemonium, and we finally got all the prisoners were on a hillside, and the tank commander said, "We thought there was just five hundred men here. There's ten times as many, we could only take a few. So why don't you go back to camp? We can't do anything here. But we'll take a few with us." But they said, "We have to find our gasoline to get back."

TI: So when they could only take back because you weren't going to march out, they were actually going to ride on the tanks back to...

JY: Right, they couldn't only handle a few. But they said, "If you want to take your chance walking back, we have a little food to give you, we'll share it with you. Good luck if you want to do that."

TI: So it was almost this false hope.

JY: Yeah, here we thought we were liberated, and there was...

TI: But it just shows you in some cases the logistics needed to move large numbers of people. You just can't open the gates and send them to find themselves fifty miles away and going through enemy lines.

JY: Right.

TI: So what happened next? So what did you decide to do?

JY: Well, there's a few, it was very person-to-person kind of thing. What you gonna do, you know? And I was with a group that said, hey, let's take our chances. How do you know going back to camp is going to be any better than getting on this tank and see what our luck is going to be? You never know what the next day's going to bring. So it was almost a year before our anniversary, first anniversary, so I thought, hey, I'll take a chance. [Laughs]

TI: So you were just hoping that you could...

JY: Yeah, so I got on a tank. Tanker said to get off because I'm the point.

TI: So explain that. What do you mean? Why would get off the...

JY: The point, in the field training school, we had a column of tanks coming through. And the bullhorn, they said, "Hey, watch this carefully. This tank is the point. The enemy always looks for a point, whether it's any element, whether it's the tanks or a column of soldiers, or any kind of equipment coming through. The point element is the one they're going to hit first, so it would scatter the whole group and try to deflect the initial momentum.

TI: So this soldier was saying get off this tank, because if you're there, "We're the target."

JY: "We're the point," yeah.

TI: "And you'll be killed."

JY: No, he just said, "Get off." And he was a young kid. I was expecting a tough-looking guy, he's a young little, to me, he was a kid, anyhow.

TI: And so you jumped on another tank?

JY: Went to another armored carrier or something in the back, yeah.

TI: And so how many tanks or armored carriers, how many vehicles were part of this group?

JY: Well, when we read about it later, they said it was around 250 total. Two hundred fifty men.

TI: Okay, two hundred fifty men.

JY: And they list the number of tanks and different kind of equipment.

TI: So they, I guess, started returning, they leave?

JY: Well, they go in little... they had about two or three groups, I'm told. I wasn't aware, but I got, the column I was in took off about dawn.

TI: And then what happened?

JY: Well, we were going along and we heard tanks in the distance, and that made us apprehensive. And we saw, over ridge of a mountain, the gun barrels on the ridge, it looked like it was approaching tanks, and the kind of gun barrel wasn't ours. And the Germans had extremely accurate cannon fire, with .88 that they used. And so that really gave us a tipoff something's going to happen. and so as soon as the tanks slowed down, we got off of the carriers we were on, I jumped off into the forest, and a lot of them came with us.

TI: And so the, I guess the original 250 in the task force, they would just keep going, and they would engage in battle?

JY: Right, right, try to fight their way back. But it turned out that adjacent to this prisoner of war camp was a Panzer training unit. So we were right in the devil's lair, so to speak.

TI: So this task force was outnumbered.

JY: Overwhelmed, yeah, within hours.

TI: So they were defeated.

JY: Yeah, they were all destroyed, in fact.

TI: So it really was, I guess, in hindsight, a reckless move by General Patton to send this group there. Because, one, they would go all this way, they weren't prepared to really liberate the soldiers, and then...

JY: No. Well, of course, there was a lot of comments about it.

TI: In a tactical way, it was not a...

JY: Yeah. I think I wrote somewhere I thought it was, we had done our part to ask these young kids to risk their lives, was not, I didn't feel was justified. Even though they were trying to save us.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.