A Soldier's Story (truthout editorial by DUer matcom)

[WilliamPitt]

A Soldier's Story
By Matt Condon
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 11 November 2003

http://truthout.org/docs_03/111103G.shtml

I am a veteran of the United States Army. For three years, I served as an armored crewman in the third armored division, stationed in Germany. It is arguable that I served my country to protect her. That is what I was taught to believe and I shall believe it to this day. I am proud of my service and would like to think it was a benefit to the citizens of this country.

You see, I trained to protect the Fulda Gap. This was before the Berlin Wall came down. There were “Western” ideals and “Eastern” pressures. There was, or at least there was perceived, a true “Communist Threat” to Western civilization. Arguably, that same threat was a threat to the “American Way of Life.”

(snip)

A soldier’s responsibility is to “defend America,” at all costs and with his or her life if necessary. It is an oath. It is a creed. However, on this Veteran’s Day, this Veteran has to wonder exactly how our troops in Iraq are “defending” this nation, “defending” our way of life, or are “defending” our shores. This is not a “defensive” war. There were no Iraqi citizens on those planes that fateful day in September. There were no Iraqi citizens “infiltrating” our shores. This war didn’t have to happen and we are no safer as American citizens because of it. Our soldiers are being forced to kill rather than protect. Yes, there is a huge difference. As a veteran, that does not make me proud at all. In fact, I feel used.

...more...

[Screaming Lord Byron]

1. Nice one, Matt. Very eloquent and very true.

[StopTheMorans]

2. Matt, great article, and Will, I pointed my Mom to truthout a few

days ago, she likes it, and she's going to buy your 2nd book this weekend. Keep up the good work!

[Jivenwail]

3. Thanks for posting this, Will

Extremely moving and so inspiring.

I will definitely keep this one and share it with as many of our friends, both active and retired, as I possibly can.

[MuseRider]

4. I had not been to

Truthout yet to read. Thanks for posting this Will. Matcom, outstanding article.

[G_j]

5. great editorial

very fitting, thanks!

[kimchi]

6. Thank you, Matcom!

n/t

[WilliamPitt]

7. Kick

[curse10]

8. Excellent editorial Matt!

:-)

[THUNDER HANDS]

9. excellent job

:thumbsup:

[Avalux]

10. Wonderful

Thanks for this. I've sent it/link to everyone I know; even those who don't understand.

[MaineDem]

11. Excellent!

Thanks so much for your service and your contributions here.

[scottcsmith]

12. Thanks from a fellow vet

I agree with you 100%. I served in the U.S. Navy from 1986-1992 and participated in Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Like you I am proud of my military service. And, like you, I wonder why it's necessary to send young men and women far away to die in a war that cannot be justified, a war that was sold on false information to the world.

Thank you, Matt, for your service.

[RogueTrooper]

13. Excellent work Matcom

:yourock:

[supernova]

14. Way to go Matcom!!!!

:toast: :toast:

This is exactly what we need. We need for the chorus of military to speak up, active and retired.

:thumbsup:

[Plaid Adder]

15. Go Matcom!

Happy Veterans' Day. I hope that after we get our regime change, our government will do better by its vets.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[Kat45]

16. Good job, Matt.

A very powerful editorial.

[WilliamPitt]

17. No way this falls to page 4 yet

[GOPisEvil]

18. Nice job Matt!

Fulda gap, huh? I lived at Fulda in the early '70s when I was just a little evil one. Dad worked at Wasserkuppe up in the hills.

That's a well written article, and makes a great point! :thumbsup:

[matcom]

19. Thanks Will and THANK YOU all

don't know that it was particularly "well written" as i have produced better in the past but it had to be said and well, i said it.

:loveya:

[Bossy Monkey]

20. You're a Condon? Hey, cuz!

Yes, there are Irish folk in South Carolina, though we try to keep it quiet. Charleston is awash in Condons, including cousins of ours (not that there's anybody in Charleston who aren't cousins). Unfortunately, the most prominent of them (Charlie) jumped to the Republicans to become a very repugnant two-term State AG. In the last cycle, he was trounced in a run for governor, but sadly by an even more repugnant yahoo. So anyway, welcome to the family. You're a much better Condon than Charlie anyway. :P

PS: Good job on the article, and happy Veteran's Day.

[matcom]

22. North Carolina too

my folks are SURROUNDED by "us" :D

thanks pal

[goobergunch]

21. Great job, Matcom!

:kick: :yourock: :toast:

[LeahMira]

23. Another Veteran ...

A soldier’s responsibility is to “defend America,” at all costs and with his or her life if necessary. It is an oath. It is a creed. However, on this Veteran’s Day, this Veteran has to wonder exactly how our troops in Iraq are “defending” this nation, “defending” our way of life, or are “defending” our shores.

Matt, you are not alone. This is from a WWII veteran's testimony. Observe what happened (and maybe what always happens) and remember, please.


:/\:/\:/\:/\:/\:

“I was taken prisoner on January 6th, 1945, near a
place called Phillipsburg. I was with the 275
Regiment, Company B. I was the Scout.

“We had not completed our basic training when the
Bulge hit. The Allies were taking a lot of casualties
and we were sent overseas as replacements. We were
not sent over as a whole division, but as individual
regiments. Our artillery, for instance, was not taken
over with us. They made it a month later. We were
constituted as a task force. We were task force
Hermon. That was the name of our general. We were
attached to 45th Infantry Division. They had taken
terrible casualties. They’d fought all the way from
the tip of the boot of Italy.

“We actually faced the German counter attack at the
end of the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans called it
Operation Nord Wind … when the Germans tried to get
the pressure taken off themselves in the southern part
of the Bulge.

“They threw troops from Russia and Finland and any
place else they could quickly round them up against
the northern perimeter of where the Battle of the
Bulge was fought. We actually faced against the 6th SS
Mountain Division. They knew that American troops in
that sector were largely green … just as green as we
were.

“We lost radio communication with the people on either
side of us. We were out of food, out of water and were
not getting supplied from the rear. Our Officers were
wounded or killed. The Germans on the mountain were
using flame-throwers against us. We had just expended
everything and they had not. We had not eaten for
five days and we were melting snow for water. One of
our surviving officers said for us to surrender.

“They marched us for a few days I don't know where… we
got to a railhead. They had these 40x8s. Those are
boxcars that allegedly hold 40 men or eight horses.
They put 60 - 90 of us into each boxcar. They nailed
the door shut. There was no provision for anything in
the cars. Nothing going in and nothing coming out. We
were in those cars for either four days or five. I
don't really remember. It all blurred together.

“We got strafed a couple of times by our own air force
and we sat for large amounts of time in rail yards.
The troop trains only moved during the night. We took
casualties from strafing all the way to the camp. The
Allies had no idea what was in those cars. Finally
we arrived at a place called Stalag IX-B, Bad Orb. It
was a prisoner of war camp for privates and lower
non-coms. I was registered as Protestant. That's
because there were Americans doing the clerk jobs in
the camp. It turns out that the Germans there did not
like Catholics either. We were in the camp about a
week when each barrack leader was called for a meeting
with the German commander.

“The camp commander told the barracks leaders that he
knew the percentages and some troops in the camp were
Jewish. They were given a deadline as to how soon it
would be or how long it would be until all the Jewish
troops in the camp had to step forward and be
identified. Otherwise retribution would be given to
the whole camp. I was given the opportunity not to
identify myself. My friends said they would cover for
me. I did not want to screw up my buddies for any
kind of punishment or retribution. There is
anti-Semitism wherever you go. And I am proud of what
I am.

“Anyway, I stepped forward and was sent to a
restricted barrack. All the guys in there were
Jewish. Then an order came through for about 352 men
for slave labor. Bad Orb didn't have enough Jews to
fill the order. There are only about 100 or so Jews in
the camp. So the Germans filled out the slave labor
roster with what they called other undesirables.
These were men whom they perceived as troublemakers.
Some of the other fellows had Jewish family names or
names that the Germans said were Jewish.

“We were locked into boxcars again for another trip.
I did not know how long that trip was either. We were
packed in like sardines. We were finally transported
to a place called Berga am Elster.”

(Author’s note: Berga was a sub-camp of Buchenwald
concentration and death camp. For over 50 years the
American government has denied that Berga was a
concentration camp.

The German archives list Berga as a sub-camp of
Buchenwald and the International Red Cross designated
Berga a concentration camp. The American
rationalization is simple: If Berga wasn’t a
concentration camp no Americans, even if they were in
Berga, were in concentration camps.)

“Our guards were SS. They were not Wehrmacht as they
had been at Stalag IX-B. They were SS and there is a
big difference.

“There was a part of the camp that was civilian. They
all wore ‘striped pajamas.’ They were Jews from all
over Europe. The Americans were just one small
contingent of the total camp. There may have been
thousands there. I have no idea. But there were just
352 of us GIs.

“The Germans made us dig tunnels into the side of the
mountain. That was our job. They were trying to
hollow out the mountain, so there would be a large
underground chamber. They intended this for a factory
of some sort. There are all kinds of rumors about
what they intended to do there.

“The object was to get the most work for the least
amount of food. At Berga, this was to cause us to
die.

“Inside the mine no one got through a shift without a
beating. They would beat us for any reason . You just
looked at them wrong, or if they were in a bad mood,
they would beat you. They killed a lot of guys with
those beatings.

“What they were doing was drill some holes and blast
out the slate and the rock. Our job was to load wagons
with the slate and then wheel them out and dump
them into a tip on the Elster River. That was our
workday. We did that for 12-hour shifts.

“They had something that they euphemistically called
bread. It depended on the size of the loaf how much
you got and how many men had to share a single loaf.
It had a lot of sawdust in it. It made us sick unless
somehow we could toast it and burn out the sawdust.
But mostly we got sick. There would be a cup of
something else that they called soup. Sometimes there
would be something floating in it that we could chew
on ... sometimes there would not be. Occasionally,
there was something that they called marmalade. It
was a kind of a sweet paste.

“We were just slave labor. The only thing that we had
that identified us was a lot of the guys legs got
infected because of the lice. We slept on straw
ticking, and it was infested. We could never get rid
of the damn lice. A couple of the guys actually died
of blood poisoning problems as a result of scratching
and infecting the lice bites. My legs were in very
bad shape.

“We wore the same clothes the day we were captured to
the day we were liberated. They never issued us new
clothes. The never issued us clean clothing. The
never allowed us to clean our clothes.

“We were concentration campers. They made no effort
to alleviate our situation. At Bad Orb there were men
in the regular German army who had a sense of honor.
They conducted themselves with some dignity. They
allowed their prisoners some dignity. At Berga, we
were not allowed any of that. We were in a
concentration camp.

“I was in Berga 100 days. I weighed 176 lbs. when I
went in. And I weighed 86 lbs. when I was liberated.
I had gangrene in my legs or the beginning stages of
it, when we were liberated. If the war had lasted
another 24 to 48 hours I probably would not be here.

“There were just three of us from my company in Berga.
One was Jewish like me. The other was a
Mexican-American medic. He was a hero. He tried to
help as
many guys as he could with the little that he had. I
guess the Germans considered him an undesirable too.
His name is Tony Acevedo and he's a real hero. He was
a hero in combat and he was a hero in Berga.

“When I was liberated I ended up in a hospital. I just
didn’t care. I didn’t really want to live. I heard
them talking about amputating my leg. And I just
didn’t care. I was in the hospital six to eight weeks
after I was liberated. I am not sure. I had to sign a
gag order pledging not to discuss being in Berga
before they would release me from the army. Otherwise
they would not let me out.

“I think the government suppressed the fact that we
were in because they were bringing over so many
Germans after the war. The government didn’t want the
public to know what happened to us so the people
wouldn’t have bad feeling towards the Nazis they
brought in. I mean they were the space program.
Werner Von Braun was a leading Nazi Party member. He
was a member of the SS. And he headed the US post war
space program … a big American hero who learned his
trade bombing London with V-1 and V-2 Rockets.

“Our government played a supporting role to the
Germans in hiding things and perpetuating myths. It
did not want to call attention to the Nazis it was
bringing into this country. Von Braun was a member
of the SS and no one mentions it. There were many others.”

[matcom]

24. Awe SHIT Leah

thanks for that.

[frank frankly]

25. great read, great writing

thanks and wonderfully done, matcom!

:hi:

[shirlden]

26. A big kick

for two of our soldiers.

:kick:

[matcom]

27. thanks shirlden n/t

[Zomby Woof]

28. a ZombyKick for my great friend!

Thank you Matt. I hope one day we can sit down with a beer or three.

Great piece.

[matcom]

29. you gots it brother

its a "date"

and maybe we'll :smoke: a little too

:hi:

[Zomby Woof]

30. hehe

Pink Floyd on the stereo?? You got it!

(I put in a similar kick in the Lounge thread, just in case - glad you saw this!) :smoke: