CHAPTER 22
bST. GOAR, GERMANY
On March 29, we packed up and moved down into the town of St.
Goar. The engineers had
completed the pontoon bridge (see picture below), and we were to guard it against attack. There
were a lot of trucks and equipment moving across the bridge. The 
engineers had
sharpshooters stationed at each end of the bridge. They were there to shoot at anything
floating down the river, in case the Germans would send down explosives. The only noise we
heard was from these sharpshooters occasionally firing.
We dug our gun in right next to the river on a little bluff that sat about ten feet above the water level. We started to look around for some place to bed down. I don’t remember who found it, but we stumbled on a real jewel. It was a four-story home (one of the few in the town) with a white stucco exterior. It was about 200 feet directly inland from our gun, on a slope, so, from the house, we could look right down on the gun pit. Located about 500 feet directly downstream from the house was another castle. (See picture below for location of the house, our gun position and the castle.) Many years later, in 1994, my wife and I traveled to St. Goar and we stayed in this castle. Part of it had been converted into a hotel. At that time, I found out that it was built in the year 1245 and it is called Burg Rheinfels.
The house that we took over had been owned by a very high-ranking German Admiral. He and his family had retreated with the German army when the Americans advanced on the town. All of the furniture, and everything that went with it, was still in place. There were beautiful pictures on the walls, oriental rugs on the floors, and linens on the beds. The dining room table was set for six people, and there was food in the pantry. We found the Admiral’s picture albums, and many of the pictures were of high-ranking Nazi officers and officials including Admiral Doernitz, although we did not recognize him until we looked at pictures, that a crew member had taken from the house, at a reunion after the war. We realized from other photographs in the house that the owners of this house were a very wealthy family. There were pictures of them and their friends at costume parties that rivaled any of the Hollywood scenes of that era.
The upper two floors of the house were made up of bedrooms and baths (not working). The second floor was a living room, dining room, kitchen, and a library. The first floor was for servants, and it had a large storage area. In the storage room, there were hundreds of jars of canned fruit and vegetables; and many bags of potatoes and onions. We settled in for an extended stay.
While we were at this location, we slept in the beds and ate at the dining room table.
There was a large verandah off of the second floor. The weather was beautiful so we sat
out on it when we were not on duty. The scenery was magnificent as we looked up and down
the Rhine River. It was Spring, and all the flowers were in bloom. We were all starting to
look quite shaggy from not having haircuts so we made Le Claire the barber. It was his
first experience at this trade and the results showed it. (see picture) While at this
location, it was difficult to concentrate on why we were there.
We took turns on gun duty, so there was a lot of leisure time. Ordinarily, we would use this time to roam around the area and "sight see", but here the officers were watching us too closely. It was the only drawback to that location. A safe environment brought out the brass. So we just lounged around the house on the plush leather furniture, talking, reading, and writing letters home.
The library had an extensive number of books. We could not read any of them, because they were all written in German, but we could look at the pictures. A good number of them were pornographic. These were not the usual cheap publications that this kind of "literature" was known for at this period in history. The pages were all high gloss paper, and most of the covers were ornate leather. One of our crew mentioned on the phone that we had found these kinds of publications. The same day, the First Sergeant showed up and hauled them all away. We had not yet learned to keep information from him. He wasn’t as bad as Monteleon, but he had his moments. I can’t remember his name.
Sleeping in the beds was the most fun. With some men manning the gun at all times, there were enough beds for all of those who were off duty. We were getting some fresh food about three times a week and we ate C-rations on the other days. We opened some of the jars of fruit from the cellar to supplement the Army chow. We had been warned not to eat any civilian food because it might be poisoned. The first jars we opened were cherries, and we had planned to eat just one. If the fruit was poisoned, we would not get too sick from just one; or at least that’s how the reasoning went. About 30 seconds after the first one, we consumed the whole jar. They were so delicious, we could not wait. Fortunately, they were not poisoned. We moved a lot of our favorites (cherries, pears, peaches, and apricots) up into the kitchen, and we ate some every day we were there at the location.
One evening when I had just come in from gun duty, I saw that the dining room table had been set. There was a linen tablecloth, fine china, silverware, and lit candelabra on the table. One of our crew members named Bob Armbruster, had set it up. Bob was one of the few older men in our crew. He had been drafted at the age of 38 (the oldest they took them), and he was about 40 years old now. Most of us were in our late teens or early 20’s, so we looked on him as a father figure. Also, he was much more sophisticated than the rest of us. We were always horsing around with each other, while he was very serious.
That evening the men who were off duty sat down at this magnificent table to eat our meal. It was one of the times when we got some fresh food. We thought that the presentation was a great idea, and we all complimented Bob on doing such a great job of setting the table and preparing the meal. He asked if we wanted to continue this while we were in that house. We all said yes. Bob then informed us that he would need two men for K.P. duty, one in the morning and another in the evening. That was a different story. It was the last formal dinner we had. We all went back to eating out of mess kits and tin cans. We all liked the good life, but not at the expense of being on K.P. duty again.
One afternoon, when I was off duty, we heard the sound of people speaking German down by the cellar door at ground level. Bapst and I grabbed our guns and put on our helmets (we never went outside without them) and headed down the stairs. There were about 20 civilians, mostly women and children there, going in and out of "our" basement. (It was rare to see a man between the ages of 17 and 70 in Germany. By this time in the war, they were either in uniform, dead, or prisoners of war.) The two men with this crowd were well over 70 years old.
The civilians were going in and out of the cellar, filling up little wagons that they had brought with them. Bapst and I started to yell, "Raus mit du"! Raus! Raus! They all left in a hurry except for one boy, who was about nine years old. He stood by his wagon and kept looking at the door to the cellar. We knew that there was someone still in there. The boy kept staring at our rifles and he was very scared. I was about to go into the cellar when an old woman came out carrying a bag of potatoes. I figured that she was the boy’s grandmother or possibly a great-grandmother. She was about 5’-2" tall and she weighed about 110 pounds. She had a babushka on her head, and she wore a peasant type dress that hung down to her ankles and she wore beat up shoes that laced up over her ankles. Bapst and I yelled, "Raus, Raus," as we pointed our guns at her. The guns did not have rounds in the chambers, but she didn’t know that. I thought that Bapst and I looked quite menacing. I had my gun about three feet from her, while Bapst was back a little. The woman walked right up to me and pushed my gun to the side as she chastised me in German. She was yelling very loud but the only word I understood was "Buergermeister" (Mayor). I kept yelling at her in English, and neither one of us understood what the other was saying. She put the sack of potatoes into the wagon and then proceeded to go back into the cellar. I looked at Bapst, and he hunched his shoulders as much as to say, "What do we do now"? Finally he said, "Why don’t you shoot her"; and then he laughed. He was a big easy going guy and he would not have shot her if she was running at him with a knife. The woman came back out with another bag of potatoes and put it in the wagon. She and the young boy started down the walk to the street. We each gave the other a parting oath with neither one understanding the other.
Bapst and I turned and went back into the building. Several of the crew asked us what all the commotion was about. We just told them that we had scared off some civilians who were looting food from the basement. We purposely neglected to mention that an old woman had called our bluff. It wasn’t our finest moment, so we left out the details.
We saw no enemy planes while we were in the valley. We were enjoying this location, but we were also getting bored with nothing to do. We cleaned our equipment and bathed ourselves out of our helmets. We considered scaling the wall of the nearby castle, but it looked too formidable, so we abandoned the idea. (I guess that’s the impression that castle walls are suppose to convey.) We were getting at least one visit a day down at the gun from the officers. They had to find something to justify their visit, so they usually complained about something trivial. They even suggested that we paint the 40mm gun. We finally convinced them that it looked more like camouflage the way it was. Things were getting to be more like training in the States than a field condition. Fortunately, they left us alone in "our" house. On April 10, after being at that location for 13 days, we got orders to move out.
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