The Battle of Remagen, which was an Allied offensive against Germany, itself, started on March 7, 1945. Much to the surprise of both sides, the Allies captured Ludendorf Bridge which was the only bridge over the Rhine that was still intact.
This was the beginning of the end for the Germans. They had wired the bridge with explosives, but they hadn’t gone off. For the next week and a half Germany did everything it could to destroy the bridge including firing V2 rockets at it but to no avail. The Allies now had a way into Germany, and they took it. There were less than two months left before Germany finally surrendered.
Three days after the bridge was captured, my father was in Germany with his Division, and he wrote this letter home. I had been trying to piece together what a day in his life was like and lo and behold, I find that he did it for me. The caveat, of course, is that he is writing this not only not to alarm his family but also to get through the censors. There’s more to the story than this, but this seems like a great place to start:
“Germany - March 10, 1945
I had to laugh when you asked me to describe my daily routine. There is no such thing as a routine over here. That is the best thing about being over here. However, I will attempt to tell you a little of what we do.
First of all, I will give you the setting in which thousands of GIs like myself pass our days in the E.T.O. (The European Theatre of Operations). Usually, we live in a village. A village over here is different from any village in the states. The houses are all built right on the street. Even if there are only a dozen houses, they are jammed right up next to each other. The people farm the lands around the village. Every couple of miles there is a village. You seldom see an isolated farmhouse.
The houses are made of stone covered with smooth mortar or plaster. Often, the buildings are tinted blue or pink. The roofs are sometimes thatched but usually they are wood or tile. One end of the house is the living quarters. You go in the kitchen first usually and they have a room or two off that on the first floor. They also normally have a narrow staircase where they have a few rooms, ceilings about five foot high usually.
The rest of the house is taken up by the barn. The barn part takes up more space that the living portions. In front of the barn on the street they always have a pile of manure about six feet high, twelve by twenty feet on the ground.
When the armies come through these villages, the roads gradually are churned into a muddy quagmire. The Germans leave equipment; burnt up trucks, tanks etc., dead horses and cattle lying along the street. The Americans come in, shell the place, knock a few shell holes in the houses and take the town.
After the Americans have been in the town, they lay telephone lines all over the place. They are strung up on buildings or lying along the side of the road. The whole mess adds up to a rather dreary picture. There are vehicles of all kinds parked in barns and beside the buildings. Every now and then they have a chow truck set up. The soldiers move in the houses and the artillery stay in a couple of rooms.
In a village such as this, we spend most of our time. Sometimes we live a week or ten days in the same place. Sometimes we keep moving right through them or only stay on a day or two. Whenever we stop, we park our jeep and find a room. We each carry a bedroll consisting of a pup tent or a piece of canvas with blankets and anything else we can find rolled up such. Mine is about a foot in diameter and about three feet long when rolled up. Some of the boys have rolls about twice that size and weigh about a hundred pounds. They put everything in them.
If it is time to go to bed, we usually take off all our clothes except our underwear. I use my pants and shirt for a pillow and throw my field jacket or overcoat over me. We usually manage to get a stove and a pipe and get the room pretty warm. After hanging blankets or something over the window for a blackout we light candles, lamps, or something for lighting. We nearly always go to bed soon after it gets dark though.
When morning comes, we wake up about seven. Either somebody comes around and wakes us or we hear somebody outside rattling mess kits. We get up right away, dress, and dash down the street to the building where the kitchen is set up. Of course, we always eat from mess kits. If the weather is fine, we stand around outside and set our mess gear on jeeps, trucks etc., and eat. If the weather is bad, we carry our meal back to our quarters or in some nearby building to eat. We get pretty good food most of the time. A lot better than we got in the States. We often get hot cakes, French toast, or cereal.
After breakfast, we go down and warm up our jeeps. We may or may not have some work to do. Our main duty is to maintain communication between infantry and artillery. If the situation is stable, we lay telephone wire. If the line is broken someplace, we go out and find the place and fix the wire. If the situation is fluid, we use radio communication. If we have to walk, some of us go to carry the radio and some of us stay behind to bring up the jeeps whenever the roads are clear of mines and not too dangerous.
If we have no work to do, we sit around and do nothing. We find water some place and wash up when we can. We read magazines, the Stars and Stripes, go out and chop wood, look around the town, and manage to find plenty to keep you busy. Once a day, if we can, one of us goes back to the artillery, which is back in another town, most of the time. We pick up our mail, papers, etc., then, once a week, we get our candy or cigarettes.
The situation I have given you is the ideal one. Lots of times we pick up and move at a moments notice, night or day. Sometimes we have to lay wire in the middle of the night or drive along in a convoy at a rapid pace in the pitch dark with no lights.
As a whole, we don’t have a bad deal. Of course, we don’t know any one day of the week from another, Sunday included. “
In another letter a few weeks earlier, he talks about the food he was eating,
“I don’t know if I ever told you about the different kinds of field rations or not. A C ration meal consists of two small cans about three inches tall and two inches in diameter. One can contains hash, stew, meat and beans, meat and spaghetti, etc. The food is of the best quality and cut up fairly fine. No bones, fat, etc. The other can consists chiefly of round crackers or biscuits (dry biscuits) the size of the can. It also has two or three caramels or pieces of hard candy. Also powdered coffee, cocoa, lemonade, or bullion. All you do is drop them in a cup of hot water. The rations aren’t bad, but you get tired of it.
K rations are in a little box about 1” x 4” x 8”. The have a little can of ground meat, cheese or ham and eggs. A package of hard crackers, a candy bar, or a fruit bar. They also have cigarettes, chewing gum, and a powdered drink. They are good for a snack, but it is hard to make a meal of one. We usually don’t have to bother with emergency rations, though.”
My father was a picky eater his entire life. He was culinarily totally unadventurous. The blander the food, the more he liked it. He never ate a vegetable if he could help it. Given the well-stocked garden right outside my grandparent’s back door that sent a constant stream of fresh, delicious produce into their kitchen, none of the rest of us could ever really understand it. Because of that, though, my dad may be the sole person in the entire history of human warfare who enjoyed the Army’s food.
Napoleon is reputed to have said that an army marches on its stomach. Of course, it does. Up until I started thinking about this, it never really crossed my mind what a logistical nightmare it must be to take care of millions of soldiers’ most basic needs - food, sleep, and access to a latrine (or at least a nearby unmined field).
In theatre, it is the company manager’s job to make sure that everyone involved with the show gets to where they need to go, has a place to sleep once they arrive, and has access to regular meals. I have always thought that it was the hardest and potentially the most thankless job I could ever imagine doing. It’s an almost impossible undertaking given how particular everyone is about how they feel about those most basic needs. Somebody is always miserable. I have been astonishingly lucky with the company managers that I’ve worked with. I don’t honestly know how they do it. When you get stuck with someone who isn’t on top of everything, though - forget it. Talk about unsung heroes.
Seventy million soldiers fought for one side or the other during World War II. That’s more than the total present-day population of Great Britain. History ends up being a kind of consensus about what happened. If you break it down, each person had a slightly different experience of it. Albert Hester’s path through it was unique, just like the paths of everyone he fought alongside or against.
So many of my father’s letters are not about the war at all. He’s not interested in the history that he is becoming a part of. That will come later when he looks back at it. At the moment that he’s writing, he is only interested in the beer he was drinking or the girls he got dates with, or the girls his buddies got dates with. He wonders if he will get a promotion or be assigned to a new detail. Sure, he looks up at the bigger picture occasionally, but even though he is in extraordinary circumstances he is just living day to day the best he can.
He was just a kid in the middle of an exciting adventure. Just like the rest of us.
This journey you’re on is brilliant, Richard. Having such detail from your father’s letters, retracing some of his footsteps, and piecing it altogether must be quite gratifying. Your readers are enjoying these stories for sure.
Jx
I have many, many items and documents from my grandparent's internment in Manila, many written by my grandfather. My father's parents lived in Manila and were interned in the Japanese STIC (Santo Tomas Internment Camp) for 3 years. They were in their 60s at the time. The camp was liberated on 2/3/1945, but the Japanese continued to shell the camp. Four days after liberation, a shell exploded and took my grandfather's life and my grandmother's left arm. Lola, my grandmother, kept every scrap of paper, every document and every news article she could find - and I have it all!