Surviving the Reich

by Ivan L. Goldstein

  We left a village, heading for the open road toward Lavaselle, following the company commander’s tank. We then realized that our two tanks had become separated from the rest of the company. It was around 3:00 p.m. when a voice shouted over the radio, “We’ve been hit!”

  Urda yelled, “They got the captain’s tank!”

  Sergeant Andrew Urda, driver.

  Alone behind a barn, we suddenly felt a jolt at the back of our tank and heard a loud explosion. We had been hit too, but we could still move, and Urda drove around the barn, headed toward the snow-covered valley below. We were surrounded. Shells exploded all around us. Urda headed for what he thought was a patch of open ground, but it turned out to be a snow-covered lake, and the Barracuda quickly came to a stop. The harder he tried to maneuver and free the vehicle, the deeper it became mired in the mud and water.

  We were sitting ducks. Almost immediately, the Barracuda’s left side was struck with a powerful German 88mm shell. The tank was on fire. Behind my seat, there was an escape hatch leading out through the bottom of the tank. A square wooden ammunition box filled with candy bars and chewing gum was on top of the hatch. These were rations that I had saved up after hearing that there would be no candy rations in battle. My sweet-tooth stash would soon go up in flames, and the ammunition in the tank would soon catch fire as well. In a flash, I decided it was better to take my chances getting out of the tank than to be inside when the ammo exploded.

  We rolled through some small towns, defeating any resistance we met and liberating the citizens. Official U.S. Army photo

  But the candy box blocked my reach to the release lever. Water was coming in through the bottom of the tank anyway, so escape below the tank was impossible. I did the only thing I could: I raised the hatch above my head and jumped out through the top. Running across the top of the tank toward the rear, I could hear a nonstop stream of machine-gun fire striking the metal below me.

  I leaped off the tank into the icy water and tried to tread as far way from the tank as possible. Under the water, I held out for as long as I could, hoping the Germans would be satisfied with the burning tank and leave. After what seemed like a long time—but actually could only have been only a few minutes—I raised my head for air. My heart sank as I saw that half a dozen smirking German soldiers were right there, their weapons pointed at me. I climbed out of the pond with my hands raised. A gun was rammed into my back, guiding me away from the Barracuda, which was now a raging pyre.

  Corporal Cecil Peterman, gunner.

  A few yards away, I spotted one of our crew face-down in the snow, with blood oozing from a large, open wound in his back. I knew immediately it was Peterman. Seeing the hunting knife attached to his belt, a German soldier turned him over to open his belt and remove the knife, and then I could see poor Peterman’s grotesque facial wound. Blood was pouring out of his cheek, and I figured he must be dead. About fifteen yards in front of the tank, Andy Urda was standing with his hands raised, and near him, Wally Alexander was lying in the snow, writhing in pain from massive leg wounds. Hebert was nowhere to be seen.

  A German brought a large blanket and ordered Andy and me to lift Alexander on it and carry him up the hill to a large farmhouse on the other side of the valley. About twenty-five yards from the farmhouse, we were told to put him down and wait. Wally was in great pain and crying that his legs were freezing and that he was losing the feeling in them. The water on my clothes had frozen, and I was chilled to the bone. I felt pain in my leg too: pain I hadn’t noticed before. Looking down at my thigh, I saw a rip in my pants with blood around it. Apparently, the Germans were not the poor marksmen I thought they were. While I was running along the tank, a bullet must have ripped my pant leg, causing a flesh wound in my thigh. I immediately applied a field pack bandage to my wound. (Every soldier is equipped with basic bandaging supplies before battle. We carried these on us but optimistically thought that we’d never need them.)

  Private Ivan Goldstein, assistant driver and bow gunner.

  Wally was in bad shape and screaming for help. Andy and I applied field-pack bandages to his wounds, and we took turns massaging his legs to bring back the circulation. But his pathetic cries and pleas continued. In my earlier army life, I had been confidently forward with people, never fearing rank or authority. Now was no different. I went to the guard standing a short distance from us, and asked for medical aid for Wally.

  Annoyed at my boldness, he merely pointed to the ground and told me to sit back down. They must have left the three of us sitting in the frozen snow for almost two hours; it was getting dark. We did our best to encourage each other and comfort Wally, but deep down we seriously questioned whether any of us would live to tell about this. Finally, some soldiers came and carried Wally Alexander away. We wondered if Peterman was just badly wounded or actually dead, and where on this miserable planet was Hebert?

  Private Dage Hebert, loader.

  In any case, it was just Andy and me now. A guard led us to a small shed and put us inside. To our surprise, there were three American soldiers sitting on the ground in there. One was from our company: Technician 4th Class Ed Mattson, the driver of the captain’s tank. He told us that when their tank was hit, the other four in his crew were killed immediately and never got out of the tank. He was the lone survivor. His hand was covered with a blood-soaked rag, and he was in agonizing pain.

  It was strange to think that my captain—the man who had despised me throughout training—had died that day. I don’t recall feeling any kind of elation at the news. My mind was preoccupied with my own problem. But awareness that someone I had known so well had been killed made death seem that much closer. It could happen to anyone of any rank, any disposition, any background. Death doesn’t care who you are.

  The other two Americans in the shed were paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division. They had been in a foxhole on the outskirts of Bastogne, posted to keep watch for German infiltrators, when Germans sneaked up from behind and captured them. They introduced themselves as Ed Lozano and Ed Kessler. None of us had eaten all day. In the thick of battle, you don’t notice hunger, but now that we were sitting around, waiting for something to happen, we began to count the hours since we had last eaten.

  The outfits we wore were a flimsy match for the frigid weather. I was particularly chilled because of my dip in the lake. We noticed that the Germans were wearing fleece-lined jackets. Hitler had learned his lesson in the battle for Moscow in 1941. His victorious advance in Russia had brought him within nineteen miles of Moscow when the arctic Russian winter stopped his elite troops in their tracks. The embattled Soviet forces were saved by fresh Siberian troops, well outfitted for winter warfare. Hitler now knew only too well that to win this war, his army must be able to withstand extreme weather conditions. Knowing that the Americans were badly equipped to handle frigid weather, he had waited for brutal December conditions to launch his offensive in the Ardennes region. We were now victims of his strategy: it would only be a matter of time before the sub-zero winds would take our lives, if a bullet didn’t do the job first.

  A guard opened the door of the shed, ordered Urda and Lozano to follow him, and relocked the door as they left. About forty minutes later, they returned, and the guard took Kessler and me. The farmhouse had been turned into the German headquarters. We entered through the front door, went up a few steps to the left, and then I was ordered to sit at the desk of the German major. Kessler sat in a chair against the wall, waiting next in line. The officer ordered me to stand and had his assistant remove the contents of my pockets. Speaking in a chummy manner in perfect English, with hardly an accent, he said that he had been living in Forest Hills, New York, before the war. “I hear that Al Smith died,” he began jovially, referring to the one-time presidential candidate. I stood stiffly at attention and answered that I hadn’t read a newspaper lately. From the contents of my pockets that were sitting on his desk, he picked up a letter from my mother that I had received some days before.
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  Like a flashing red light, I suddenly recalled a deadly sentence in that letter. It was “Ivan, I hope that you received the package I sent you for Chanukah.” Moreover, my dog tags had the letter H on them, for “Hebrew.” The stories that I had heard about the German concentration camps and what Hitler was doing to the Jews of Europe raced through my mind, and a quiet panic gripped me. The major looked at me, and his countenance turned somber as he clenched his jaw. He spoke.

  “Private Goldstein, I see that you are Jewish.” I didn’t answer.

  “Your tank partner, Urda, is also Jewish,” he added menacingly.

  “No, sir, Sergeant Urda is Catholic!”

  “He looks Jewish!”

  “OK, I’m Jewish,” I said earnestly, “but Andy’s not! He’s really not.”

  In truth, Andy appeared more Jewish than I did. His parents were Slovaks, and he was devoutly Catholic, yet somehow he had a Jewish look. The major assumed he had switched dog tags with someone else.

  I don’t know if my assertion changed the major’s mind about Andy, but at least it introduced enough of a doubt for him to let it go. He turned to his assistant and spoke in German, not realizing that the paratrooper Ed Kessler came from a German family background and understood his instructions: “In the morning, take the Jew out and shoot him.”

  To the major’s surprise, Kessler spoke up: “You can’t do that! You can’t shoot an American prisoner! It’s against the Geneva Conventions.” The treaties signed in Geneva formulated rules of international war, particularly regarding the treatment of prisoners of war and captured noncombatants.

  Unimpressed with Kessler’s truly brave outburst, the major’s icy reply was, “Be quiet, or I’ll add you to the list.”

  After Kessler’s interrogation, we were taken back to the shed and locked in. Mattson was no longer there. I feared for his life, but Andy said he was taken away for treatment of his hand wound. We had no way of knowing the truth.

  My fate, however, was clear. I was to be executed in the morning, despite the official “rules” of war. There seemed to be no escape from our tiny jail, but everyone urged me to try to get out. My head ached. I looked at the walls, studied the ground, and considered breaking down the door. But nothing even remotely possible came to mind. Finally, we decided that if the door opened again, I should make a break for it and run toward the nearest forest. I had always been a pretty fast runner, and though I was starved and cold, I figured that if they were caught off guard for a few seconds, I might be able to outrun them. It wasn’t much of a plan, but at least it was better than the certain death awaiting me.

  I didn’t think about hunger and cold the rest of the night; I was waiting—poised to run if that door would open. But in the middle of the night, the sound of exploding artillery shells, distant at first, became louder and louder. What was happening?

  Just outside our shed, we could hear the sputter of motors starting up and then the sounds of vehicles moving in every direction, German commands, shouts, and running feet. The commotion lasted for the next hour; then, suddenly the noise, motors, and voices stopped. The artillery barrage continued, ever nearer, in salvos. Another fifteen minutes passed and our door was opened.

  Two guards hurried in. “Get up! Get up! We must leave!” they commanded. We figured it out in an instant. The Americans, our good ol’ Yanks, had started an offensive during the night, God bless them. They were advancing rapidly toward our position, Hubermont and the Rechrival Valley. The German command had evacuated earlier, anticipating the American attack.

  The guard brought out a large, heavy backpack of supplies. “This is for the Jew to carry,” he announced. “He must carry it himself. Do not try to help him!” He strapped it to my back and marched us out. My execution had been cancelled, or at least postponed. I trudged along carrying the backpack, but in my heart, I was giving thanks for the miracle that had saved me.

  The end of my first and only day in battle had come and gone.

  CHAPTER 6

  Captivity

  WE WERE WALKING EASTWARD, toward Germany, marching continuously till daybreak. I wondered if I would ever see my family again. What would happen if I collapsed in the snow, unable to go on? What if that guard decided to pull the trigger? Would my mother ever find out what happened to me? Poor Mom! She’s such a worrier. How will she react when she doesn’t hear from me?

  I had no way of knowing that, in fact, my mother was somewhat aware of my situation. Her deep empathy with people she loved gave her sort of a psychic hotline of information—dreams that were uncannily true. Throughout my life, I would be skeptical of some awful dream she had, only to find out that it had been eerily prophetic. There was the time she dreamt about Mrs. Finley, an Irish lady who worked near the store. Long conversations and shared confidences had bound them as friends. One night, Mother dreamt that she was visiting Mrs. Finley in the hospital and that her friend’s leg was black and swollen. In the morning, we told her not to trouble herself about it; after all, everyone has bad dreams once in a while. But Mother was deeply concerned. The next day, the phone call came. It was from Mrs. Finley, calling from the hospital. She had fallen off a ladder and badly injured her leg.

  At just about the time that I was captured, Mother had another one of her dreams, the kind that seemed so real that she would awake with her heart pounding. She confided the dream to my brothers.

  “I saw Ivan,” she told them tearfully. “I saw Ivan jumping through flames!”

  “Mom, it was only a dream. Don’t worry about it,” they told her.

  “But I saw it—he was leaping through a fire. I couldn’t tell if it was from a burning building, but it was some kind of structure. He was trying to escape. He was jumping, running through flames. . . .”

  They could say nothing to console her. Mother had last heard from me when I wrote her a letter from France, around December 26. On January 18, at about 8:00 p.m., Max had just begun a session with Mr. Herzel, a tutor Mother had hired to supplement his Jewish studies. Mother was cooking in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. She opened the front door and was handed a Western Union telegram. She opened it with shaking hands.

  A horrible shriek coming from the living room brought Max and Mr. Herzel rushing in. Mother had collapsed into her rocking chair, crying and screaming, with the telegram clutched in her hand. It was from the adjutant general in Washington, D.C., notifying her that Pfc. Ivan Goldstein was listed as missing in action as of December 30.

  Mr. Herzel tried to console her, reassuring her over and over that I was probably alive. Jerry (who was married by now) was called, and he hurried to our house to calm his hysterical mother.

  After I shipped out, I had made it a point to send my letters to the store, for I knew Mother would see them earlier in the day than if I sent them home. Jerry was at Murph’s before her every morning, and he would sift through the day’s mail.

  As weeks dragged into months, the first question she always asked as she walked through the door was, “Any news about Ivan? Any letters?”

  “No.”

  “No telegrams?”

  “No. Nothing at all.”

  “I guess only God knows where he is. We’ll just have to wait a little longer.”

  She never gave up hope, even when the war seemed practically over and there was still no word, even when everyone around her began to whisper that Ivan would probably never come home. Mother continued to pray, trusting that somehow she would hear good news someday.

  On January 18, 1945, more than two weeks after I was captured, Mother received this telegram.

  The telegram was soon followed by a more personal letter.

  She pinned her hopes on a thin strand of encouragement extended to her from an unexpected source. My ex-roommate from ASTP, Richard Grossman, wound up as a medic in the 11th Armored Division. While I was in Camp Cooke, he was training as a medic at Fitzsimons Army Hospital near Denver, and he enjoyed many a meal with my family.

  By the time Ric
hard heard that my tank crew was missing, the Americans had recaptured the area where the tank sat in that frozen bog. He made a special trip to the vicinity and found the Barracuda; it bore clear marks of the shells that had pierced it and the fire that had ravaged the interior. He examined the tank carefully, looking for bodies, searching for anything that would reveal my fate. He could picture my mother and knew what she must be going through. Richard’s innate kindness and gratitude to our family made him determined to send her some optimistic news, something that might cheer her.

  So Richard wrote to Mother from Belgium. “I found Ivan’s tank,” he told her, “and the good news is that there are no bodies. The crew was probably taken alive. I’m sure you’ll hear from the Red Cross very soon.” For that simple, caring act, Richard became a hero to Mother and my family forever. He had sent her a tiny glimmer of light, when all around her was dark and foreboding. She had “seen” me jumping from my burning tank, and bolstered by Richard’s note, she persistently held onto the belief that she would see me again, alive and well.

  Fortunately, she couldn’t see her Ivan now, a prisoner of war—a Jewish prisoner of war—being led into the German version of Hell. The four of us—Kessler, Lozano, Urda, and me—and our German guard marched for hours through the blistering cold. The pack was very heavy, but my rigorous training and exercise in England had made me hardy enough to endure it. At least the physical activity helped reduce the pain from my leg wound and the freezing weather.

  Finally, we stopped for a rest at a village farmhouse, where the guard was replaced and the backpack removed. Our new guards had an additional twelve American prisoners with them, and I searched their faces to see if any of them were from my division. No, it was nobody I knew. We continued our march, still with no food.