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TI: So after three days, Dachau, then what happened?

VW: Then we left and we headed toward, toward the Austrian border, Austria border. And that's where we ran into the Eagle's Nest, which was Hitler's hideaway. Huge house. And I remember when we went in there and looked at it, it was pretty well stripped completely. And the SS had probably taken all the furniture and stuff and everything that way when they left. And then the other soldiers probably were there and they picked up doorknobs and things like that. When I got there and I looked, I went upstairs, and there was a number of bedrooms upstairs, and I saw the bathroom and I went in the bathroom, looked around, and there were no... I thought it'd be nice to take a souvenir from this house, Hitler's house. And so I took the lid off the, the water tank, and I looked in there, and there was no water in there. But I looked and there was a brass fitting in there, and I thought, "Well, maybe I can just take that brass fitting." It was angle iron, kind of. And so I tried to get it off, and I had no tools with me except my gun and I wasn't gonna use that. And then I worked very hard, because the sergeant yelled, "Come on, we're leaving." Oh, man, and I hurried, and I hurt my hands and stuff, but I finally got that off. And I got it as a souvenir, and I got it at home along with that round cake that I got. And I have two iron crosses, too.

TI: Okay. So after Hitler's, sort of, house, then what happened?

VW: Then we went down, I looked at the streams and stuff, and that would have been a beautiful area to take a vacation and go trout fishing or something like that, you know, because the water was really nice and white and blue as it came gushing down the river there. Actually, it wasn't a river. It was larger than a creek but smaller than a river. But we, but I never got back, no. And then we, after that, we, I think we eventually went back to near Augsburg and ended up at Donauworth, Germany, and that's where we stayed for quite a while, being in the occupation, 'cause the war ended. Now, when the war ended, I didn't even remember when we were told the war ended. Because when you're in the, when you're in... you know, you're moving fast and things like that, and the war's still on, you don't know, you don't get these words that, "Hey, the war ended, yay." We didn't celebrate at all, but we were happy when we heard that the war had been declared unconditional surrender. So that was fine, we thought. And then we went back, went all the way back into Donauworth, Germany, and that's where we stayed, at the hotel there.

TI: Now, did they, did they reconnect the 522 with the 442?

VW: Never.

TI: So you always stayed separate from the 442?

VW: Yeah, yeah. They were in Italy there, yeah. And so we were two countries apart now, we were in Germany and they were in Italy, which is quite far away. And when we went into, into Italy, that was a very quiet, one of these secret type maneuvers. They didn't want the Germans to know that the 442nd had come back to Italy. And then they assaulted this hill that they couldn't take, and the 442nd had to go up there. I read about that.

TI: Yeah, so I've, I've interviewed men about, that's called the breaking of the Gothic Line, so we have that.

<End Segment 43> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.