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Part Six
Just as General Roosevelt
had stated, about two weeks after meeting him on Utah Beach I was told to
report to the 4th Infantry Headquarters, where I received my next
assignment. I know the soldiers in C Company must have wondered what was
going on with me, especially since one of their sergeants was ordered to
drive me to 4th Infantry Headquarters in a command car.
All this time, it was my
choice to wear the stripe of a private first class. When I arrived at
Headquarters, I was given my assignment and told that I had been given a
field commission with the rank of major. I told them I didn’t want the
commission, but finally agreed to the rank of staff sergeant, my reason
being that, were I to be captured, my interrogation would be less severe if
I were a sergeant than if I were a major.
While I was given my staff
sergeant stripes at that meeting, I did not sew them on to my uniform until
several months later, and I still had a very hard time explaining this
sudden promotion in rank to the other men in C Company. Although most of
them knew I was doing something connected with G2, they thought it better
not to question me about it—and of course they knew I wouldn’t tell them
anything, anyway.
There was another reason,
though, why they more or less accepted my promotion, as well as the special
attention given to me by the officers (who only guessed what I might be
doing, but who also really did not know). Several months earlier, a soldier
who was about five inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than me thought he
was entitled to know exactly what was going on and why I was gone so much of
the time. When I told him it was really none of his damn business, he
decided he was going to beat the information out of me. He directed several
punches in my direction and found himself flat on his back each time. He
finally decided maybe it wasn’t really necessary that he know what was going
on.
I did form some close
friends with the men in the C Company motor pool, with whom I usually rode
when I was not on assignment. When I didn’t show up when C Company moved
out, they figured I had bummed a ride on one of the tanks or in one of the
company’s jeeps or, as usual, had just disappeared.
During the period from D-Day
to the end of my first mission after landing on the continent, I lived
partly on C-rations, which consisted of canned meats and vegetables packed
in preservatives, along with hard biscuits. But mostly I lived on D-rations,
a chocolate camouflaged candy bar. It was supposed to have all the nutrients
needed to live, and it took up very little space. I did manage to shoot a
deer and a squirrel during that time, and I cooked both over an open fire
until they were done well enough to eat. I also managed to catch some fish
by throwing a hand grenade into a stream and grabbing the fish, stunned by
the concussion, as they floated to the top. This method of survival lasted
for a period of about six weeks, initially because the 42nd’s kitchen had
not caught up with us as fast as they thought it would, but primarily
because I left to go on my mission. When I finally got back to an area where
they had an army kitchen serving real food, the first bite of army bread
tasted so good it was like eating a piece of delicious cake.
For the most part, my
missions consisted of the elimination of SS Officers, Gestapo agents and
other targets. While I was in France or Belgium, this was to be accomplished
in a manner that would not put blame on the population. While in Germany or
with German troops, I was to try, if at all possible, to make it look as if
the targets had been killed by one of their own men. In some instances I
managed this by patiently waiting until the targeted officer or agent
“dressed down” one of their underlings. This most always seemed to happen,
and when it didn’t I would try to find a way to make it happen. I would then
play up the incident by saying, “Did you see that?” or “Did you hear that?”
to others who were in the area and under the command of the target. When the
target was eliminated, these men, who hoped their cooperation would advance
their military careers, would relate what they had heard or seen to those
investigating the killing, implicating the individual I had set up. In order
to make their accusations even more believable, I would sometimes switch the
gun of the scolded soldier with mine, use his gun to eliminate the target,
and then switch the guns back again. I would evacuate the area as soon as
possible after eliminating the target, so I was usually not around to see
the repercussions of my actions. Of course, the above did not always work
out, and in those cases I eliminated my target and managed to escape in the
confusion.
While on most of my
missions, I would try to arrange for one or two changes of either civilian
clothing or German uniforms. I would keep these in my contact’s home or some
other place where they would not raise suspicion, should German soldiers or
the Gestapo accidentally find them. Sometimes a change in clothing and
appearance would work to my advantage when I was trying to leave an area.
When I eliminated a target,
it wasn’t like the shoot-outs in the movie, High Noon or on the TV
show, Gunsmoke. I did my very best not to attract any attention, and
to make certain that women—and especially children—were not around. In many
instances, my target never even knew what hit him.
I was lucky enough to be
with the 4th when they made their way into Paris on August 25, 1944. I was
told we could have arrived earlier, but that we had to wait so that Charles
DeGaulle and his “Fighting Free French Forces” could be the first Allied
armed forces to enter Paris. At first we were all looking for German
snipers, who we thought would be hiding out in various buildings, but I
didn’t encounter a single one. And the Parisians must have known that the
Germans had all fled, as thousands of them lined the streets cheering,
waving and trying to grab and hug any American soldier they could reach. It
was a great feeling.
I was invited by a lovely
young lady, whose name was Yvonne, to come to the home of her parents and
have supper with them. Her dad dug out some dust-covered bottles of
champagne that he had been hiding just for that occasion. I brought some
canned Spam, beans and other food I was able to talk the mess sergeant out
of, and all in all, we had a very enjoyable and happy meal. I know that they
lived across from a park named the Bois de Vincennes, but when my wife and I
returned to Paris in 1953, I was unable to locate them.
After leaving Paris, I
received orders for another mission in Germany. I was in a German uniform
and, having just eliminated my target, thought everything had gone well,
when four uniformed German officers surrounded me. I was certain this was
going to be my final mission, and that the four officers would try to take
me alive for questioning, and then have me hung or shot.
I made up my mind to make a
break for freedom, and in the fight that followed I was stabbed in the meaty
part of my left palm. I knew I had been stabbed, but I felt no pain. I
remember blinding one of my assailants by squirting blood from my hand into
his eyes. Somehow, after what seemed like an eternity but was, in all
probability, only a minute or two, I was the only one left standing. I made
certain they were all dead and, after hastily stopping the bleeding from my
hand and putting myself in as presentable a condition as possible so as not
to attract any more attention, I grabbed the hunting knife with which I had
been stabbed and left the area as fast as my bruised body would take me. I
still have a scar on the palm of my left hand to remind me of this incident,
as well as the hunting knife.
After I was debriefed on
this mission, it was reviewed by General Smith—something that did not always
happen—and I was called into his office. The General complemented me on a
“great mission,” and then added, “Hammerman, you never know when to give up,
and in your case that’s an exceptional quality.” I replied, “General, that’s
the way your people trained me.”
After all these years, I
still find it difficult to talk or write about some of the missions. This is
partly due to the fact that in each of my missions, whether or not I was
successful in the elimination of my assigned target, I did eliminate a
number of other people, almost all of whom were either Gestapo or SS
officers, and, yes, a few civilians. In early October of 1944, for instance,
I was assigned to eliminate the SS officer in charge of an SS Panzer
division defending Aachen. I was flown in a captured German transport plane
to an airfield near Dortmund. Exactly how that was accomplished, I don’t
know. I do know that the pilot spoke better German than I did, and seemed to
say all the correct things to get permission to land and permission to take
off again after I deplaned.
I had papers identifying me
as an SS officer who had sufficiently recuperated from wounds received on
the Russian front, and who was being reassigned to the SS Panzer division. I
knew these papers would only be good until I got to Aachen, and I was
fortunate to run into an SS officer who was also being transferred to the
Panzer division there. He was about my height and weight, and we struck up a
conversation while sitting next to each other on the transport vehicle
taking us there. I inquired as to why he was being transferred and whether
or not he knew anyone at Aachen. He told me he knew no one in the unit, and
this is what I had hoped for.
At a stop along the way, I
eliminated him and took his identification papers. I reported to the SS
Panzer division and was lucky enough to be temporally assigned to the
headquarter company where my target was in charge. I had been there eight
days when I was told to report to headquarters, which was in a bunker or
pillbox that was part of the Siegfried Line. I wondered why my presence was
being requested and worried that I had been discovered.
The division was under heavy
attack by American artillery and air power, which was providing cover for
the approaching Allied infantry. The infantry was going to try to knock out
the pillboxes, since neither the artillery shells nor the bombs being
dropped seemed to have any effect on them. While the artillery and machine
gun fire did help to conceal what I was about to do, it also scared the
living daylights out of me. It was as if all hell had broken loose, and I
thought every shell that whistled in was aimed right at me.
I made my way to the bunker
and used two hand grenades to eliminate everyone inside. The Germans thought
this was the work of the American infantry unit, who they assumed had
managed to infiltrate the area. The American artillery fire did indeed
injure me, and though the injury was minor, it was very bloody. This gave me
an excuse to leave the area to seek medical attention.
I know that what I did
during these missions makes me look like a cold-blooded killer, and I guess
I was at the time. But the fact is that I was one person during the war, and
a completely different person when I came back home. If I had the slightest
inkling that someone suspected me, I got rid of him or her. One time I
thought an SS officer’s aid suspected me because he was looking in my
direction as he was pulling his P38 automatic. I shot the aid before he
could fire or say anything. I then told the SS officer that it looked like
his aid had pulled his gun and was going to kill him, but that I was able to
shoot him before he could fire his weapon. The SS officer was grateful, but
still suspicious. I got out of there at the first opportunity, and never did
eliminate my original target.
I caught up with the 4th
Infantry Division in early December of 1944, when they were dug in and
fighting in the Hurtgen Forest, located on the German/Belgium border just
south of Aachen. I first stopped by Division Headquarters to see if any new
orders had been sent for me, and to let them know that I would again be
temporarily joining the 42nd Field Artillery. I also picked up my mail, and
a package which had taken eleven weeks to catch up with me. In the package
there were two bottles of Coke. They were only six-ounce bottles in those
days—Pepsi didn’t introduce the twelve-ounce bottle until sometime after the
war. There was also a two-pound kosher salami that was covered with mold.
I was standing by a
maintenance truck when I opened the package, and the five soldiers who
manned the truck were watching me and drooling. One of them offered to pay
me $5.00 for one bottle of Coke. I refused his offer, but immediately peeled
the skin and mold off the salami and cut it into six pieces, and poured out
six equal portions of Coke into each of our canteens—all of which we quickly
consumed.
The Hurtgen Forest was a
dense forest of pine trees, and the German artillery had zeroed in on the
American troops dug in there. Their artillery shells would hit the trees,
explode, and rain shrapnel down on the American troops below. Foxholes
initially offered no protection, so the GIs cut down trees, being very
careful to camouflage the exposed trunks to avoid having their position
detected by spotter planes. They covered each foxhole with cut sections of
tree, piled dirt on top of the logs, and used tree branches to camouflage
the dirt and to cover the floor of the foxhole.
The tank and vehicle
maintenance group with whom I had shared the salami and Coke dug a hole six
feet wide by six feet long by five feet deep, which the six of us shared—two
men doing a two hour guard duty while the other four tried to sleep. I spent
a week in that foxhole undergoing some of the heaviest artillery fire of the
war. I later learned that a German officer who had previously been on the
Russian front indicated that the fighting in Hurtgen Forest was fiercer than
any he had been involved in.
After achieving their
objectives, the 4th received orders to transfer from the Hurtgen Forest to
the Battle of the Bulge. We left at once to relieve the surrounded troops
there, and made an overnight march under blackout orders. The next morning
we passed Malmedy, where eighty-four captured American soldiers had been
shot to death because the enemy officers didn’t want to take the time to
process them as prisoners. Their helmets were all stacked on the side of the
road, and all of the men from the 4th gripped their guns and just looked at
the helmets without saying a word. They didn’t have to; I knew what they
were thinking, and I was having the same thoughts.
We left Malmedy and headed
for Luxembourg, where we ran into heavy artillery and tank fire. Our company
took refuge in an old castle with very thick walls, which made it a good
buffer against the heavy German artillery fire. Some of our soldiers found a
storage vault in the lower part of the castle and were able to break it
open. The vault was loaded with artwork, old gold coins, precious jewelry
and other valuables, which the soldiers looted.
One of the men saw me and
showed me a box of very old, gold Spanish coins. I told him that taking the
coins, or any of the other valuables, would be considered a war crime, and
that if he were caught he would be court-martialed. He gave me the box of
coins and I immediately took it to the company commander and explained what
had happened.
The commander called an
assembly of the entire company, which seldom happened in combat. He
explained to the men that we were guests of the very lovely, sophisticated
woman at his side, as she was the current owner of the castle. He said that
all the valuables belonged to her, and asked that they be returned to a
specified room in the castle. He also told them if they didn’t return
everything by sunrise the next morning and were later found with any of the
valuables in their possession, they would be court-martialed and sent to
prison.
The next day he introduced
me to the woman, who thanked me for telling the commander about the looting.
She said that, to the best of her knowledge, everything had been returned.
She also gave me a few coins as a souvenir. I wondered at the time why the
Germans had not taken any of her possessions, and I suspected she may have
been a German collaborator.
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I Received Coins as a Souvenir |
One of my missions took me
to Hamburg, Germany, a port from which my father had caught a ship to the
United States after fleeing from Russia in 1914. My target for this mission
was a high-ranking Gestapo officer.
In some of my missions I
would have been at risk to use anything that made noise while eliminating
the target. In situations like those, I used the hand-to-hand methods I had
been taught. I was more comfortable with some of these methods than others,
but I did whatever it took to get the mission completed successfully.
In this case I found my
target in the men’s room of a beer hall. I had followed him in and,
fortunately, we were the only two in the room. I was standing at the urinal,
which was the old floor style, when the officer came up behind me. He made
the mistake of tapping my shoulder. Perhaps he just wanted a cigarette, or
to know what outfit I was with, since I had no identifying patches on my
arm. But I wasn’t taking any chances, and besides, I figured it was as good
a time as any to carry out my orders. I grabbed his arm and threw him over
my shoulder, crushing his head against the urinal wall. And then, to be
certain, I broke his neck.
As I was dragging him into
one of the stalls, I heard the door to the men’s room opening and saw a
soldier entering. I immediately yelled at him to please help me, and said
that Herr Schultz (not his real name) had passed out. As soon as he got
close enough, he too ended up with a broken neck. He was a clean-cut,
good-looking young man, and I really hated to eliminate him. I can, at
times, still see his face. I put each man into a stall, dropping his
trousers and sitting him on a toilet. I locked each stall and slid out under
the door. I was thankful no one else had come in, since there were only two
stalls.
While trying to make my way
back to American lines, I found myself marching along with German
infantrymen. We were strafed by three American P47s, which the Germans
called Jabos. Of course, at this time I was still wearing the uniform of an
SS Panzer unit infantryman. This was one of the most terrifying things that
happened to me, including being shot at by German 88s on Utah beach. There
was no place I could hide, and the 50 caliber bullets were tearing into the
ground and into the German soldiers on all sides. My luck held and I wasn’t
hit, but there were dead bodies and soldiers yelling for help all around me.
I helped bandage as many of the wounded Germans as I could, and then took
advantage of the situation to lose the outfit.
I had walked around four
hours when I came across a field that had received heavy American shelling.
There were forty dead German soldiers, two dead American soldiers, who must
have been prisoners, and a number of dead horses. All had been killed by the
concentrated artillery fire. The stench of death was almost suffocating.
After inspecting the bodies of the American soldiers to make certain they
weren't booby-trapped, I took some of the extra clothing they carried in
their backpacks, along with the jacket of the man closest to my size, and
changed uniforms.
As I continued on through
another field, I thought I heard someone approaching. In trying to conceal
myself, I found a plane which had been cleverly camouflaged. Upon further
investigation, I found thirteen more planes, also well camouflaged. They
were German jet planes, although until I saw their cockpits, I thought they
were German buzz bombs.
I went back to the field
with the dead German bodies and collected eighteen “potato mashers,” or
German hand grenades. I then went back to the field where the planes were
located and blew them up.
Because I happened to be in
the right area at the right time, I was asked to rescue someone from
Buchenwald, a concentration camp in Germany. I was to make my way to a point
on the outer perimeter of the camp, making certain to eliminate the camp
guards patrolling the area without alerting the other guards.
When I arrived, the man I
was supposed to meet had already made his way, with the help of prisoners
within the camp and a German camp guard, to a designated spot outside the
camp walls. The escapee was in a German uniform that had evidently been
supplied to him by the camp guard. I learned at my debriefing that the camp
guard had been paid off with American dollars and promised some type of
position, along with immunity, once the war ended.
The escapee and I were
together for four days before I got him to the pick-up point on the coast
where I had been instructed to take him. I had been told not to ask him his
name or occupation, why he had been put into a Nazi concentration camp, or
how he’d broken out of the camp. And during the four days we were together,
he never offered to tell me.
I was near the city of
Remagen, Germany in early March of 1945, trying to get back to American
lines, when I received an order that was relayed to me by someone in the
German underground. I was to try to prevent the Germans from blowing up the
bridge over the Rhine at Remagen so that our tanks could cross. I managed to
join a conscripted Polish unit that was fighting and working under German
military supervision. They had been assigned to guard the bridge and, if
necessary, to blow it up to prevent the American forces from crossing over
it. I spoke no Polish and I wasn’t sure how the Poles would react to my
being there. But I didn’t speak to them and they didn’t speak to me, and we
got along fine.
The American artillery and
tanks were shelling the German side of the bridge, attempting to eliminate
their fire-power, so they could cross over and move on to Berlin. Because
their limited manpower was taking a heavy toll from the American shelling,
the Germans were ordered to destroy the bridge. They ordered the Poles to
move into an encampment built under the end of the bridge, and I went with
them. We were all huddled in a group near the batteries that were supposed
to detonate the explosives. The Germans had done a good job of protecting
the wiring and the terminals to which they were connected by running the
wiring in metal conduit. I hadn’t received much training with regard to
explosives, but I did everything I could do to loosen the conduit
connections and to separate the wires from the terminals, and then I got the
hell out of there.
Whether what I did helped
keep the bridge from being blown up, or whether it was something someone
else had done, I’ll probably never know. But I do know the bridge was there
the next day, and our tanks and trucks were able to cross over to the German
side.
On April 16th, 1945, I was
slightly wounded in my left leg by American artillery fire while making my
way back to our lines. Believing that I was in a fairly safe area, and so
not taking the precautions I normally did, I was captured by a German
headquarters field artillery unit. It was near the end of the war, and they
knew it. I had little trouble convincing them that they would all be better
off surrendering and allowing me to bring them back to the American side.
They abandoned their artillery, dropped their guns by the side of the road,
and with a white flag of truce, we all proceeded to walk back toward
American lines. When we got there I told an infantryman to get his
lieutenant and tell him that there were 180 prisoners there in need of
someone to take charge of them.
When the lieutenant arrived
and saw all those German prisoners, he immediately left to get his captain.
When the two officers came back, I told them that I didn’t like the idea of
being captured, so I had talked the officers in command of the German
soldiers into letting me capture them. The captain just shook his head, and
the only thing he said was, “Good work!” I had taken a Luger from the German
officer in charge of that unit, and I still have that gun. After the war
ended, I received a Purple Heart for the wound I received on April 16th,
even though it was from American fire.
In late April or early May
of 1945, I was sent to a town in the foothills of the Alps just in time to
see the liberation of the Dachau work camp. I saw Germans of all ages, men
and women, cleaning up the camp and burying the dead. The sight of the
prisoners, so thin you could see the outline of their bones, dressed in
their striped pajamas, and looking like dogs that had been continuously
beaten into submission, was enough to make anyone sick. I later learned that
General Taylor had been so incensed at what he found in the camp that he
ordered all Germans between the ages of 14 and 80 in the nearby town to
clean up the camp and bury the dead. They all claimed they had not known the
camp existed, even though the town was only three-quarters of a mile from
the camp.
Part Seven
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