Honoring the Liberators

This week marked the commemoration of the National Days of Remembrance at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Some 120 World War II veterans in their 80s and 90s, wearing tags that said "LIBERATOR," came to be together, to be honored, and to remember.

I am familiar with the story of the liberation of Ebensee, Austria, where soldiers from the 3rd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron had done advance scouting for the 80th Infantry Division and discovered the camp while the chimneys were still smoking from the burning of bodies. It was filled with piles of the dead and emaciated, dazed prisoners.

As an officer in the 80th, my father had gone to see the newly liberated concentration camp at Ebensee. He later said that, "In a way, it was worse than combat. I saw wounded in combat, of course, who were in terrible shape, but this was really bad. The smell of it was so overpowering....I didn't know why I'd come. I was sorry I had. It was so devastating, so depressing. Frightening, really."

Annie Gowen, writing for the Washington Post last Thursday, April 15, in an article titled, Remembering the Atrocities of World War II, wrote about Army nurse Dorothy Pecora, now 90 and living in McLean, Virginia, near Washington. Ms. Pecora brought photos to the Museum that she had carefully preserved, and she spoke of the prisoners she tended at Ebensee. I immediately thought of Lieutenant Jeannie Davis, another Army nurse whom I interviewed for my book. They may well have been in the same unit, the 139th Evacuation Hospital. Here's what I wrote in my book when I interviewed Davis:

Her job, along with the doctors and medical technicians, was to get the inmates ready to evacuate to a regular hospital. The men went up to the camp first but a full week passed before they allowed the nurses to go....

When we did go to the camp, and when I think of this, it was so idiotic — we took tablecloths up there. We thought we would try to make it pleasant for them. They had old wooden tables and they were bringing up better food for them. Of course, they were starving to death. They were in bunks, and they were still lying there, many of them dead. Every five minutes somebody would die, even weeks after liberation. It was so awful and there we were, these silly little nurses, putting tablecloths around.

But it didn't shock us as much as others who were not nurses. Through our training, we'd seen everything. The fact that it was done deliberately, in such mass, was what made it different. But we were able to talk to them and stand next to the bunks. I can think of women I know who couldn't possibly have done that, but we could.

Her humility, courage and confidence come through in those comments. I think the nurses are really the unsung heroines of wartime.

As I read through Gowen's article yesterday, it struck me that Dorothy Pecora, from McLean, Virginia, may well have crossed paths with my father. Since he lived in McLean himself for nearly fifty years, perhaps they stood next to one another in the line at the grocery store or the post office. Maybe they chatted about the weather or the rising price of postage, without ever knowing they shared this awful piece of history.

The arch marks the entrance to what remains of the camp at Ebensee. Houses have been built where the camp stood.

The Old Liberators

by Robert Hedin

Of all the people in the mornings at the mall,
It’s the old liberators I like best,
Those veterans of the Bulge, Anzio, or Monte Cassino
I see lost in Automotive or back in Home Repair,
Bored among the paints and power tools.
Or the really old ones, the ones who are going fast,
Who keep dozing off in the little orchards
Of shade under the distant skylights.
All around, from one bright rack to another,
Their wives stride big as generals,
Their handbags bulging like ripe fruit.
They are almost all gone now,
And with them they are taking the flak
And fire storms, the names of the old bombing runs.
Each day a little more of their memory goes out,
Darkens the way a house darkens,
Its rooms quietly filling with evening,
Until nothing but the wind lifts the lace curtains,
The wind bearing through the empty rooms
The rich far off scent of gardens
Where just now, this morning,
Light is falling on the wild philodendrons.

Snowstorms and newspaper delivery — on horseback

Two hot topics in the news lately: first, talk of the United States Postal Service cutting back on delivery, and, second, in case you haven't heard yet —we had record snowfalls in our area. These two things bring to mind a story my father told about his days as editor and publisher of a small weekly newspaper in McLean, Virginia, the McLean Providence Journal.

It was a February 1958 snowstorm that dropped 14" of snow on Northern Virginia. The storm resulted in massive snowdrifts, whiteout conditions, and high winds. Transportation was paralyzed, and power was lost for a week.

The newspaper was printed at a country print shop near Oakton, Virginia. Even after Dad was able to reach the shop through the snow from the newspaper office in McLean, there was no electricity to turn the press. The print shop foreman, Earl Mutersbaugh, loaded the metal forms into his car and took them to the print shop at the Manassas Messenger, a distance of thirteen miles. The flat sheets were returned, having been printed, to Oakton, finally ready for folding and mailing. Then the second snowstorm descended.

Just when it looked as though some $2000 worth of advertising was going to be lost forever, two young women trotted up the road on horseback. After they were told about the delivery problem, they asked if they could help. Eagerly, the print shop people loaded the papers into their saddle bags. The two brave horsewomen headed off into the blinding snow toward the Oakton Post Office several miles away, saving the day.


My father, Bill Elvin, at his desk in the newspaper office.

February 4, 1945 — Luxembourg

I turned the page of the calendar from January to February this morning and as I did, I recalled that sixty-five years ago this Thursday my father returned to combat after nearly three months in the hospital.

It was February 4, 1945 when 1st Lt. Bill Elvin rejoined the 80th Infantry Division. The Division was exhausted from the Battle of the Bulge and was about to launch an attack across the Sauer River in Luxembourg. The war was dragging on.

On November 8, 1944, Dad had been wounded in Rouves, France. He was moved quickly to Paris and then to a hospital ship that took him to Ellesmere, England, on the Welsh border. He spent the next three months in the hospital there.

The sniper's wound made a moon-shaped crater in his forearm that was too wide for stitches. Infection was a constant problem, and when he looked down he could see the tendons in the gaping wound.

When the day came for Lt. Elvin to return to the war, what must it have been like for him? To know you had to return to the chaos of war after months in a hospital with people (nurses!) looking after you, tending to your wounds, making sure you got three squares a day — and where you'd been temporarily relieved of your awesome responsibilities. And thank heavens, your feet were warm and dry.

Clayton Warman of the 80th Infantry, had also been wounded, hospitalized for a time, and then returned to the front a few months later. Even though you knew what awaited you, he told me — the cold hard winter, the deprivation and most of all, the likelihood of being wounded again, or killed — the Army prepared you to go back, and also, you wanted to return to help out your buddies. It didn't feel right to be lying in a bed while they were fighting the war.

I said that if it were me, I would dread the very thought of going back. Clayton paused and said slowly, "Well, Jan, you woke up every single morning with that feeling. That feeling of dread was nothing new."

The badge is that of the 80th Infantry Division, also known as "The Blue Ridge Division." That's what the three blue mountains are on the badge.

Please come to my book talk in Oakton, Virginia!

I want to issue an enthusiastic invitation to you to come hear my talk this week. I'll be discussing my book as part of The Speaker's Series, sponsored by the Friends of the Oakton Library on Wednesday, January 20 at the Oakton library, 10304 Lynnhaven Place, Oakton, Virginia at 7 p.m. The phone number if you want to call to reserve a spot is 703/242-4020. But you can also just show up at 7 p.m.

I wrote this book about my father, who served as a lieutenant in Patton's Third Army and was involved in the liberation of the Ebensee Concentration Camp. His civilian life was plagued by nightmares of combat and the camps. After his death at age 86, I read the riveting WWII diary he kept of the Allied offensive in Europe and was able to incorporate it into my book. I also interviewed family members and fellow soldiers in a rewarding but sometimes painful journey to understand the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on my father and our family.

I hope you will be able to come - we'll have plenty of time for questions afterwards. There will be books available for purchase and signing also.

Here are just a few of the recent comments I've gotten about the book:

"I was so moved by your scholarship, sensitivity, persistence, insight and wisdom...it had a profound impact on me."

This was from a man whose father-in-law had suffered from dementia for many years: "Thank you so much for the investment of time, talent, and resources you committed to your recent book "The Box from Braunau." You so aptly and appropriately lifted the shadow from the experiences my wife's father had with your father in the 80th Division. Your research has filled a void, for which we are most grateful."

As a postscript to my last blog about Max Cleland, I want to make sure I report that he is doing very well now. Settling into his job as Secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, his ptsd symptoms have waned significantly. He commutes between Washington and his home in Atlanta so he can check on and care for his 96-year old father.

The above photo was taken at my talk at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC last year.

Max Cleland, Patriot

I just finished reading Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove, by former United States Senator and Veterans Administration head Max Cleland. In this moving and often heartbreaking book, Cleland chronicles his life's struggles after being left a triple amputee by a grenade explosion in Viet Nam. Over and over again, he picks up the pieces of his life and his psyche, and rises to "stand tall" among his fellow citizens. He gives his life to public service and becomes the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the Georgia State Senate, then serves as head of the Veterans Administration under Jimmy Carter. Eventually he fulfills his dream of becoming a U.S. Senator.

But during the campaign for his reelection, he was singled out by Republicans as being — incredibly — "unpatriotic." The shattering loss brought on his latent Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. As a result, Cleland returned to Walter Reed Army Medical Center for treatment and, as he says, "cried for two and a half years."

Last year President Obama appointed him Secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, which manages the 24 overseas cemeteries where American soldiers are memorialized. I imagine those soldiers would be proud to know that someone with Max Cleland's courage and depth of character is in charge.

The U.S. Supreme Court, the Death Penalty, and PTSD

The U.S. Army's "suicide crisis" has brought needed attention to the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder among soldiers.

As of November 16, 140 active duty soldiers and 71 non-active duty soldiers had killed themselves. The rise in both suicides and incidences of PTSD appear to be linked.

On November 30, the Supreme Court of the United States gave hope to a Korean war veteran sentenced to death in Florida. George Porter returned from Korea a traumatized and changed man, the Court said in its opinion. He suffered from PTSD as a result of his battle experience, yet his lawyers never brought it to the attention of the jury at trial in 1988.

As a result, the court held, the representation provided Porter fell below minimum Constitutional standards. The justices seemed to say that if members of the jury had been informed of his service in combat and resultant trauma, they might have spared his life.

The Washington Post reported that the justices of the Supreme Court were "strikingly sympathetic" to Porter, who shot his former girlfriend and her new boyfriend 13 years ago.

The justices highlighted Porter's PTSD, saying, "Our nation has a long history of according leniency to veterans in recognition of their service, especially for those who fought on the front lines as Porter did. Moreover, the relevance of Porter's extensive combat experience is not only that he served honorably under extreme hardship and gruesome conditions, but also that the jury might find mitigating the intense stress and mental and emotional toll that combat took on Porter."

TheSupreme Court cast no doubt on his guilt, but sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times said that "the most notable feature" of the opinion "was the sympathy that all nine justices displayed for a man who, in the fullness of his adulthood and after promising a friend that she would soon be reading about him in the newspaper, stole another friend's gun and shot two people to death in cold blood." Opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/linda-greenhouse/

The Court seemed to go out of its way to show that it takes PTSD seriously. What do you think?

(Porter v. McCollum)