Epilogue

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Photo: Aerial View of part of bombed-out Munich.

The streets were cleared quite rapidly but it took years to tear down

many of the buildings and rebuild them. Much of the rubble

was hauled to the edge of town where a small mountain was created

near what is now the site of the 1972 Olympic Games.

When I left Germany in 1947, there were still people

living in some these wrecked structures.

Now that the war was officially over and Hitler was dead we had the sudden feeling of being “all dressed up and no place to go.”

We were sent to a bivouac area near Wasserburg for a few days, then moved to Sauerlach a few miles south of Munich, and finally to a former German army barracks in Munich. These were pretty nice quarters with good beds, a good kitchen and a riding stable full of horses.

Captain Kelly and the other officers thought that they would be going home soon since they had been in the regular army for several years prior to the war and would probably be among the first to be discharged under the point system that the government was developing.

Captain Kelly was well aware of my journalism background so he suggested that I write an account of B Battery’s actions during its two year existence.

He offered to make available the Battery’s daily logs and reports to Battalion headquarters so I could get all the necessary facts. I agreed and began typing up a first draft with the help of the rest of our communications section, who offered suggestions and did research for me.

One day we had a surprise inspection by a Colonel from Third Army headquarters. At the time, I was in the barracks office working hard to type up some of the information we had developed. The Colonel looked into the office and after I jumped to attention and saluted, he complimented me on my touch-typing skill. Then he asked, “What’s your name, rank and serial number, Soldier?” Of course, I told him. Two days later the Battery received a directive transferring me to Third Army Headquarters.

I had to say good-bye to all the fellows I had served with through the combat days with Battery B, gather up my duffel bag and move to McGraw Kasern on the southeast side of Munich. This had been a major German Army base with excellent accommodations and had sustained very little damage during the war.

I spent the next several weeks typing endorsements on a variety of correspondence going to General Patton requesting approval for certain actions and then typing his approval as a directive “By Command of General Patton.”

General Patton’s forward headquarters was located at a villa at Bad Tolz about 25 miles south of Munich but most of the work was done at his rear headquarters in Munich. When I first started my job at headquarter, I reported to a captain who directed my activities. As the weeks went by, my supervisors successively received transfers back to the States and were not replaced, so I reported to their former superiors. Thus in a matter of weeks I reported to a captain, a major, a lieutenant colonel and a full colonel.

The colonel soon observed that I was qualified for things other than typing all day and decided to offer me a job running the post exchange warehouses in Munich. He also decided that one of my associates, Sgt. Winograd, should take over a new task of procuring photographic supplies for a photo processing plant that the Exchange Service was establishing.

He called us both into his office to let us know his decision. Sgt. Winograd smiled and stated that he would be very pleased to accept the assignment to travel through Germany seeking supplies of photographic chemicals and paper for the processing plant. Where, he asked, would he get his command car and driver? The colonel pointedly informed him that, yes, he would get a command car or light truck but that he would have to do the driving himself.

Winograd’s response, though hardly earth shaking, would change the rest of my life.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I don’t know how to drive!” he said.

The colonel shifted his gaze to me. “Can you drive?” he asked.

“Of course,” I replied. And so it came to pass that Winograd took the job running the PX warehouses while I became the new procurer of photo supplies.