<Begin Segment 44>

TI: So going back to the 522, so the war's now over, you're waiting, at some point, men start getting their orders to ship back to the United States.

VW: Oh, yeah. And finally the orders came that we were gonna meet in the field in Germany there, maybe a half a mile away. And so I was so happy 'cause I thought, "I'll be home in time for Christmas." This was in September. And so the sergeant yelled out the names, and they were all the names except mine wasn't on that. And I said -- Ishii was his name, he was the first sergeant. I said, "Why isn't my name on that list? You didn't call it that I heard." And he said, "Well, your name isn't on the list. And why my name wasn't on the list, to this day, I have no idea. And so as a result, I, they loaded up, and I waved goodbye to 'em, and that's the last I saw of my outfit.

TI: So all the men that you, you served with that were there about the same time, you probably had the same number of points that they did in terms of being shipped back, but your name wasn't on the list?

VW: No. I had more points than my buddy who had fifty-nine. I had sixty, and he was on and I wasn't.

TI: So you say you don't really know why you weren't on this. I mean, why do you think you might have not been on?

VW: Well, I often kind of wondered, and maybe this is not correct, but the first sergeant never liked me. Why he didn't like me, I don't know, really. But it wouldn't surprise me that maybe he made a selection that I, that he'd just leave me off the list. But that's not... that might not be true, I don't know. I did see him after the war. [Laughs] I thought he might mention it, but he didn't, and I didn't mention it to him because I wasn't sure that that happened, but it did cross my mind.

TI: You know, when you were with the 522 and the 442, did you ever feel like there might have been times when there was almost reverse discrimination against you?

VW: No, not from my buddies, and not from the rank and file, you might say, but I often wonder a little bit about maybe from the first sergeant and maybe he had one guy, and maybe that was, that didn't like me. But mainly, mainly the first sergeant. I felt that he had some reason to not particularly like me. But I had, like staff sergeant and things, they really thought I was okay. And they didn't like the first sergeant anyway as a rule. How he got that job, I don't know, but he did.

TI: Well, so going back to, so your buddies are all leaving, they're all happy and you're stuck alone...

VW: Yeah.

TI: What were you thinking at this point?

VW: Well, I went back to the hotel and evidently somebody had given my papers maybe to somebody else to take care of something, the first sergeant probably did, 'cause he knew I wasn't on the list. And so I went back to the hotel, and I didn't really know who had my papers at all, nothing. And I was there, I didn't leave until about November the 25th or something like that. And so, and I thought, and it was on the back of a truck, bigger than a weapons carrier, but the back end of it was open, it was covered, but the back end was open and it was cold, it was very cold. So we froze, but for nine hours we were driving through. And finally it was night, finally we stopped at a small town. And I don't know how they found out, but they found out that there was a warehouse where we could stop and eat our k-rations and sleep. And I went through this cold building, no heat, of course, and it was concrete floors. We were gonna sleep on concrete floors. And I said to the fellow I had sat beside, he was from Ohio, and he and I... since he was a Midwesterner, we became kind of friends over the nine hours. And so I said, "Rhinehart, would you like to go with me? I'm not gonna stay here all night, I'm going to find a place to sleep and eat, something to eat." And he said, "Yeah, I'll go with you." And so we walked out of this town, it was dark, no lights, no lights at all. And we're walking, and pretty soon I said, "Let's stop at this house." So we knocked on the door, and a guy came from around the house. And I said in German, which I spoke pretty well by then, I said, "We want a place to eat and sleep." And he said, "Well, I don't have any place for anybody to sleep, but," he said, "come." He says, "I'll show you where you can go." And so we followed him, and he said, and as we approached, he says, "This house right here." He said, "They're Nazis." And so I thought, "Nazis?" I wasn't ready for that. So he knocked on the door and then he runs, and he's gone. And so I stood there in the dark, Rhinehart right behind me, and pretty soon the door did open, and I stuck my foot in the door so it couldn't close, 'cause it's about our last chance. And I told the German, I said, "We want something to eat and a place to sleep." And so he looked out and then he, he can't close the door 'cause my boot's in the door, and so he talked to somebody in there. And everything got real quiet, and then pretty soon he opened the door and he says, "Kommen Sie." And so we went in, and there were about a dozen people in there, and they're just getting ready to sit down at this big table. And I thought, "Whoa boy," and everything is quiet. All those people were all looking at Rhinehart and me. We were the intruders if you want, uninvited. And so I didn't quite know what was gonna happen then, and so we just -- and the war had just ended, you know, maybe three or four months earlier, four, five. And they were enemies at one time, of course, being Nazis, if they were Nazis. I was a little bit concerned about it. And so pretty soon, the woman, the German lady, she grabbed two dishes and she sets 'em down at the table, pushes the guys, opened up there, and sets those plates down on the table, and she says, "Sitzen Sie bitte." And so we did sit down. I think it was still very quiet, and all those Germans are looking at us. There was one guy over there, I didn't trust him at all by looking at him. And all that whole evening, he never said one word. And I figured he probably was an SS, but I wasn't sure. I sure would have liked to look under his arm to see if he had those lightning streaks under there. And so I'm sitting there, and we started, they started asking questions, and then things warmed up a little bit. And then pretty soon we started singing "Lili Marleen," which was a song... and he was surprised, or the Germans were surprised that we knew the song, at least I did. So that loosened things up quite a bit, too. But that guy over there, he sat across from me and to the right. And I was glad he sat over there, because if he sat straight across, if he really wanted to kill me, he could shoot underneath the table and get me, it'd be no problem. But if he's over there, now, he might get this guy here next to me, you know, right outside on my right. And so it wasn't easy for him. And I'm sure if he'd have aimed, he'd have aimed at me first, because I was the instigator. [Laughs] But he didn't. He did not do that. But I sure... and to this day, I would love to have looked under his armpits to see if he was SS, and I'm pretty sure he probably was. Looked like the type, too.

And then at about eleven o'clock, the lady said, "Would you like to go to bed now?" And Rhinehart and I, "Yes," because we were so tired and cold, we were previous. So we went up, she took us upstairs, and there was a feather bed there and a feather blanket, and it was just great. The first thing I did was stick my gun underneath the pillow to make sure I had that. Then she says, "I'll call you in the morning," because right across the street was the warehouse. And so she was watching, and she said, "I'll call you when they start stirring over there." And she did. She woke us up, and, of course, I had kind of, off and on I woke up myself, just to make sure everything was all right. And then, so we got up when she called us and dressed, and we were gonna go out, but she had breakfast for us, a little bit of meat, and can't remember exactly whether she had eggs or not, just can't exactly remember, but probably she did. And then when we left, she handed us each a bag for lunch. Sandwich with a meat in it, and I thought, "How wonderful this lady is." And if I would have had the address, certainly I would have written her and thanked her for her hospitality to her uninvited guests that evening. [Laughs] So she probably talked about that for a long time, probably all of 'em did, maybe, I don't know.

TI: Wow, what an adventure. [Laughs]

VW: Yeah, it was scary a little bit, it really was.

TI: And when you went back to the warehouse and met the other guys, did you tell them what you did?

VW: Oh, yeah, and they were so, they were jealous, but they thought we were a little bit stupid, too, for taking such a chance. But you know, when you're miserable and when you're hungry and you're tired, you do things that you might not do normally. And that was how that came about. And there was no place to sleep except on that, in that cold building with the concrete floor, and I wasn't about to do that if I could help it. So that's why we did it. And they said, they questioned our judgment, but it turned out all right. But they were jealous 'cause we had bags to eat, of lunch to eat. [Laughs] It was pretty good, I thought.

<End Segment 44> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.