Occupation
Our occupation duty started out in the Sudatenland an area taken over by Germans early in the War. The residents were peasant-class German farming people.
Our outfit was assigned to a place called Oxbrunn, just a wide place in the road. Our squad was billeted in a farmer's house where we occupied a large common room and the family of middle-aged parents and two young girls occupied the rest of the house. Just outside our door was a manure pile about 6 ft high and 12 ft in diameter. It was made of horse and cow manure and there was a pump set at one edge. The farmer would pump the drainage from the pile into a tank on wheels and haul it out to spread on his fields.
Next door was a shoemaker, but not the kind we know. This man made wooden shoes mostly using a hatchet and hand augur and he did a pretty neat job of it, too. I still have a very small pair that he made and I kept as a souvenir.
We had no real duties here, kept a guard but whiled away the time as best we could. The only other memory that sticks with me is that the woman of the house decided to cook dinner for us one time and served us some kind of a dumpling that was like a great round ball of sticky, half cooked oatmeal with some terrible flavoring. We tried to eat some, but couldn't handle much and she never asked us to dinner again.
From here we were sent to Austria and started training for eventual assignment to the Pacific. Fortunately plans changed again and we were reassigned to occupation duty in Czechoslovakia. Our first stop was in a place called Vodnany.
Another guy and I were sent out to set up a guard post on the border of our zone and the Russian zone of occupation. We were standing across the road from a small house for a while when suddenly a woman carrying two small chairs came out of the house and across the street with the chairs, obviously for us. We started to talk loudly, gesturing wildly trying, to thank her when in perfect English she said, "I thought you might want to sit down." She had moved to Long Island, New York years before the war and came back to visit family in Czechoslovakia. When the war broke out she couldn't get back to US. She and her husband were very good to us and we in fact slept in their house on occasion. First time I had ever seen a feather bed. We kept up some contact with Christmas Cards after I got home but this gradually waned and we lost communication.
In Czechoslovakia we learned about the Russians, and for years after I got home I worried a great deal that we would wind up fighting them one day. They would come up to our guard posts regularly and we were able to send them back and refuse them entry into our zone. They were usually full of Vodka, would try to ply us with it, but we told them we would get shot if we drank on guard duty so they insisted on putting it in our canteens for later use. I remember one time when we had a fire going at the guard location; I threw some of this on the fire after the Russians left and it went POOOOFFF, very volatile stuff.
The Russians were a very unsophisticated group. They were fascinated with our watches, a Russian who could ride a bicycle was quite unusual and one who could drive a vehicle was frequently an officer. Several were Mongols, very primitive, but great dancers. One always had an accordion and they would hang around playing the accordion and doing those Russian dances where they squat down and kick their legs out. Their boots had metal plates on the heels and made sparks on the pavement when they danced at night.