Chapter 13 - Occupation, Then Home

When the war in Europe was over, the Eighth was in an area of Germany that was to be in the Russian Zone of Occupation. We started moving west just north of the Hartz Mountains in short steps. I can't remember the towns' names or how long we stayed in each. I do remember that on May 11, 1945, many of us had formal individual pictures taken in our woolen OD uniforms. The pictures were marked, " not for publication". I sent mine home and my Mother still had it when she died in 1984. Just before May 18th we were told we could let our friends at home know where we had been and describe some of the action. In my letter home I described the action just west of Lippstadt and I stated that I had killed and captured more Germans than I remember or have described in this autobiography. I don't know whether I was trying to exaggerate in the letter, or whether I have forgotten all that happened those two days.

During this period, where or when I can't remember, a group of us were going someplace in a six by six. We got behind a German truck powered by a wood burning gas generator that powered the truck engine. The German truck didn't have a very high top speed, and he deliberately prevented our driver from passing him. We finally got to a wide part of the road and our driver got by the German far enough to get our truck's rear axles even with the German truck's front axle. Our driver swerved sharply to the right and then straightened up. The German truck went sailing off into a field and came to a halt. Our driver stopped, pulled put his 45, and went to talk to the German. He rammed his automatic up the German's nose and warned the German to mend his ways or the next time he met him on the road he would kill him. With that off his chest our driver returned to our truck and drove on. He drove quite well, considering how mad he had been.

By June 3, 1945, the battalion was in Duderstadt and we were being billeted in a German barracks. I wrote home from Dudersadt on June 3, but we may have been there earlier. Some of my letters home have been lost during the last fifty-five years. In the intervening time we had stopped in at least two other small towns. It was just outside the barracks wall that I found Bill Patrick trying to revive a GI he had mistakenly knock out. Ever since his buddy, Parish, had been killed, Patrick would beat up any German male he could get his hands on.

In one town I collected a small puppy for a pet. She was part terrier. We called her Patsy. She grew quite rapidly on a diet of C and K rations. Some of the fellows in the platoon teased her, so she became a little mean with people outside the squad. I used to bath her frequently, but, as soon as I had her dry, she would run out under a vehicle and get grease on her back. I got drunk for the first time in my life in Duderstadt and spent the evening under a bed explaining Newton's laws of motion to Patsy. Although she was very attentive, I don't think she understood a word I was saying. In one of these small towns there was a small lake, and I took every opportunity to go swimming. I think, that being the modest young men the Army had trained us to be we wore our undershorts. While in Duderstadt, little Patsy ran out from under a vehicle, and was struck by a passing peep, and was killed. We had her for only about a month, but I had grown quit attached to her.

In another town we were in for a few days before we got to Duderstadt I saw a jewelers store on the main street. I asked the jeweler if he could clean my watch. The watch was a self-winding watch my father had given me when I graduated from high school. It had an unbreakable crystal that had become badly scratched from my climbing into the track. I had always worn in on the inside of my wrist because it had a luminescent dial. He told me to be back that afternoon. When I came back I notice he had polished all the scratches off of the crystal and remarked on it. He said, "Ja, ja". So I paid him and went back to the house we were being billeted in. That night was the first night I had slept in a bed for nearly a month. The bed was so soft that I couldn't get to sleep, so I put my mummy on the floor and went to sleep.

The next morning I looked at my watch, and the crystal had been broken. My thrashing around on the floor in my sleep had mangled the watch mechanism. The bastard had stolen my unbreakable crystal and replaced it with a glass one. I grabbed Ray's M1 and headed out the door. Our billet was on a cross street that ran down to the main street from a small hill. As I looked down at the jeweler's store he ran out the back door and up a slope behind his shop. I drew a bead on the back of his chest and started squeezing the trigger. At the last second I had second thoughts, and didn't shoot. He never came back into town for the remainder of our stay there.

While in Duderstadt I pulled guard duty on a bank where there were millions of dollars worth of German Marks stored. I used sit in the basement on a chair, in front of the vault door, with a Tommy gun on my lap. We also began training exercises just outside town. The first drill was for each GI to work his way up a hill with pop up targets. For some reason they had a sergeant following right behind. As I was going up the hill a hand grenade come out of the brush to my left with fuse smoking. I grabbed it and started to through it back from whence it came. The sergeant yelled, "No throw to the right", which I did, and the grenade went off before it hit the ground again. No one was hurt, but I think they stopped that exercise.

In another platoon strength exercise the entire platoon moved forward except the mortar squad, which was supposed to give us support fire. The machine gun squad moved out along the left flank of the attack. We had stopped about three or four hundred yards from our start line when mortar rounds started landing around us. We started yelling, and someone got up and waved. Still more mortar rounds. After a few minutes of waving and yelling, I took my gun, placed on a fallen tree, and fired a twenty round burst about five over the heads of the mortar squad. That stopped that training exercise. I can't remember going on another exercise.

I was looking out the window of the second floor of our barracks and saw a half-track backing up towards a flack tower. The tower was about three stories tall and was used to place anti-aircraft guns to protect the surrounding area from Allied strafing runs. Someone had evidently decided to bring the tower down. The GIs in the half-track rigged a fifty-foot cable and attached it to the tower about twenty five feet above ground. They attached the cable to the track and began pulling. The cable was at about a thirty-degree angle to the ground. The harder they tried to pull, the more the cable lifted on the back of the track, causing it to lose traction. The driver put the half-track in front wheel drive and tried again. The track just sat there digging into the ground. I think they must have fooled around for an hour before giving up. The tower was still there when I left to go home.

The Eighth was moved to Czechoslovakia shortly after my June 3, 1946, letter home.

The second platoon found itself billeted in the small town of Cernice, which was not far from Klatovy. We were billeted in a hall across the street from a bakery. Boy, the smell of freshly baked bread was a delight to wake up to! Our mess area was some distance from our billeting area, so we often piled about a dozen men on one peep to go to chow. On the trip south I had come down with another sinus infection and was placed in the infirmary. The fellow on the next stretcher had gonorrhea; he was treated with penicillin and, was released for duty several days before I was.

We had a number of parades including one in Pilzen on the Fourth of July. We received commendations for our appearance from the commanders of our corps, division, combat command, and battalion. Even the Chief of Staff of the Czechoslovakian Army approved of us. Some of us were chosen for an Honor Guard for General Patton when he come to Pilzen a short time later. I was given an Eisenhower jacket and told to get all my stripes and patches sewn on, my pants washed and pressed, and my boots brushed. Fortunately, a Czech women offered to do the sewing, washing, and pressing if she could keep the rest of the large bar of soap I was given for the job. I think this was the neatest I looked while in the army except when I got home. Patton inspected us, as we stood separate from the rest of the parade. I was in the front ranks, and he paused in front of me and grunted his approval. We had a divisional parade for our General, General Devine, who had just been promoted to Major General during the first week of August.

One morning while walking to breakfast I saw a Lieutenant walking towards me. The last time I had seen him, he was being loaded into an ambulance while some medics were placing his intestines into his body cavity. Though I had found him rather arrogant, and hadn't liked him, I felt sorry for his family, because I didn't expect he would survive. As he came up to me he said, "Hi Odgers, how our you getting along?" My mouth almost dropped open and I replied, "Fine sir, and how are you?" I saluted and we past. He must have looked into the face of God and decided to change his ways.

While returning to our billet in our track one day, we were on a narrow mountain road. We came around a blind curve and nearly ran into a traveling horse drawn gypsy circus. Ray couldn't stop in time, so he swerved to the right and the track went airborne. The track dropped about four feet and kept on going. Ray floored it to keep from getting stuck, passed the circus and drove on. Shortly after this, whenever I rode in a track I would get sharp pains in my abdomen. I soon couldn't ride in a half-track any more, but the company by this time parked most of the half-tracks, and we traveled in peeps or six by sixs.

We were given the job of guarding a POW camp. The German regular troops were separated from the SS by a low barbed wire fence with white chalk lines drawn parallel to and about ten feet from each side of the fence. One arrogant SS captain decide to test the rules and slowly edged his way across the white line on his side of the fence. We had machine guns aligned we the fence and the gunner gave him a short burst which killed him instantly. After that incident we didn't have any more trouble with SS.

Toward the end of July I, got a pass to the divisional rest camp. It was the first time I was away from the platoon in seven months. As I remember, I was able to go swimming and had a nice time. About this time the division was being broken up by shipping out to other outfits all the lower point men and replacing them with solders with 85 points. We got one point for each month of service in the States, two points for each month overseas, five points for dependants at home and five points for a Purple Heart or other decoration.

Some of the men who came in were really bad off mentally. One spent all day keeping a gaggle of geese from going from their farmyard to a nearby lake. Another wouldn't talk even when addressed by an officer. Some had been in the infantry that landed in Africa, Sicily, Italy, then France. I wonder to this day what happened to them when they were discharged from the Army. One of the more rational replacements wanted to box with some one. He was overly talkative and made a nuisance of himself. He finally challenged one of the fellows from the company who had been a champion of the ETO while in England. The champ agreed to box if the other fellow wouldn't hit him in the nose. He was still recovering from a wound to his nose and didn't want it damaged. The talkative one agreed, and they began to box. The first thing the challenger did was hit the champ in the nose. Champ hit the fellow on the chin three rapid blows. The first stopped him in his tracks, the second lifted him of his feet and the third knocked him about five feet backwards and flat on his back. We got a bucket of water and poured it on the challenger, who came to after several minutes. All he ever said after that was, "please pass the salt"

During July, many of the men that had served with the Eighth were sent to France to return home before going to the Pacific Theater. I asked why I wasn't going with them and was told it was my MOS number, a light machine gun gunner, and I still didn't understand. All my squad but me had been transferred by August. I later heard that some of them had been in France waiting to board transports when the war ended. They loaded them into the awaiting ships and sent them home. Many of the replacements were discharged before Christmas.

I bought a small camera for my nine-year-old sister, Barbara. It was much better than a box camera and had both aperture control and focusing capability. She was too young to use it when I got home so I kept for several years until it was stolen from my car.

We had several track meets among ourselves and with the Czechs. I was running lead off in the four by 220 half mile. The Czechs loaned us some track shoes. The day before the battalion track meet, the HQ Company issued us a liquor ration and we all got a little high. We won our race and then went behind the grandstand and threw up. We were running with in our undershorts with the fly taped up. During a meet with Czechs the GI running the hundred yard race had the tape come off and finished first with his manhood flopping in the wind. The mixed crowd gave him a roaring ovation.

During our stay in Czechoslovakia, and before the war in the Pacific was over, and we had run short of gasoline so the company set up some roadblocks. Some of the guys would make a game of running another platoons roadblock. This soon became a serious competition, and several roadblock guards fired at the retreating tracks with their rifles. Obviously they hadn't tested their half-track armor like the machine gun squad had. Capt. Malarkey finally called us together, read us the riot act, and cancelled the roadblocks before anyone got hurt.

In the first part of August I got to go to a track meet in Nuernberg as a spectator. We were there for four days and were to sleep in tents. Another GI and I decided to walk into town and soon met a woman and a 14-year-old girl. We were offered the use of a small cottage in the middle of a one-acre garden. We went back to the tent area and grabbed our belongings. It rained most of the time we were in Nuernberg, so we skipped the meet and stayed in the warm and cozy cottage. We ate at the local Red Cross. My buddy was sleeping with the older gal, but I didn't think it right to sleep with the 14 year old. We did talk a lot and when we went to load up for our trip back to Czechoslovakia both the girls came to the loading area to say goodbye. The youngest was in tears as we pulled out, and I was teased without mercy all the way back

During the trip back one of the GIs had diarrhea and he was sitting on the tailgate of the truck with his bottom exposed. I was in the truck immediately behind the sick man, and I could see his butt slowly turning redder and redder from the wind chill. He must have been very happy to get home.

A few of us went AWOL to Pilzen and I saw my first and last USO shows while I was in the army. One was Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe, and the other was the Bob Hope show. They were both a little risqué. I had lost my glasses, but during my holiday from studying my eyesight had improved. I no longer needed to wear them. I was sitting in the third or fourth row so saw all the pretty USO girls very clearly. It was during our stay in Czechoslovakia that the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, and the war was over.

The end of the war caused many of us to become more cautious. Occasionally we would get a young replacement driver who was due to go home for years. Some of them, like typical teenagers, drove like maniacs. This was acceptable in combat, but those who were waiting to go home really didn't appreciate it. The guys in the back of the truck started pounding on the truck roof when they didn't approve of the driver's technique.

By the first week of September I had been transferred to Company C of the 53rd AIB of the Fourth Armored. I reported for duty in Landshut, Germany. As I was waiting to get assigned I heard one of the non-coms say that I had a very high aptitude test and I might figure out what they were up to. The company first sergeant came into the room and asked if I would like to go to the Riviera for a couple of weeks. I said sure and off I went by train to Nice. I met a very nice family in Nice. Monsieur Eno was the Nice port captain and had many friends in Nice. They took my buddy and me to dinner several times and the café owner would always go back in the wine cellar and bring the best wine I have ever tasted. The Eno's had two daughters. The youngest was very pretty but a little flighty. The older daughter, Helen, and I corresponded for several years.

When I got back to Landshut they asked if I would like to go to school. I was sent to Freising, Germany, to the Weihenstephan Agricultural and Technical School. I took a two-month class in calculus. When I returned to the Landshut I was asked if I would like to return to school. I took a class in chemistry. One of the instructors tried to get me to take a class in physical chemistry, but I declined. He was disappointed because he couldn't find anyone to take his class. The classes weren't hard so we had plenty of time to play cards and sip beer. During my stay at the school I lost about five pounds. One night I saw the school commanding officer walking down the street with a big box of rations on his shoulder. He looked a little embarrassed, and I didn't say anything.

While at school the army had as many soldiers as possible visit a concentration camp. I went by a deuce and a half to Dachau, which was near Munich. When I jumped out of the truck my feet felt like someone had hit them with an ax. The effects of the previous winter's frostbite were still with me. I didn't completely recover until eight years latter.

I returned to Landshut, and the noncoms couldn't find another trip for me. They did offer me a trip to Garmsich-Partenkirchen but I declined because of my feet. I wasn't interest in learning how to ski with my frostbitten feet. I usually carried my P-38 in my waistband even though we had been asked to turn them into the orderly room. I was having a beer by myself one night in a beer hall. Three German men in their late teens or early twenties were sitting at a table when I came in. They were soon whispering to each other and giving me side way glances. I pulled out the P-38, chambered a round, and laid it on the table. The whispering stopped and the Germans soon got up and left. I waited about ten minutes and went back to the barracks. When I left the beer hall I had the pistol in hand and peeked out of the door and surveyed the street carefully before stepping out. GIs were still being murdered even at this late date.

I decided to turn the pistol in, and, when I left the company in February it had been stolen. The sergeant told me to grab another pistol and not make a fuss.

While walking back to the billet one night I met a girl about twenty eight years old. I told her it wasn't a good idea for a young woman to be wandering about town at that hour. She told me that she had to visit a house that had a bunch of Hungarian solders to see if she could find out any information on her family. It turned out she was a Finnish girl who had married a Hungarian fighter pilot. He had been killed during the war, and she was trying to find some of her family. I offered to escort her until she got back to her apartment and she accepted. We walked to a house with a barn with about twenty Hungarian soldiers. She asked a number of questions, which I couldn't understand because they were speaking Hungarian. I went home with her, and she asked if I would help her the next day. I agreed, and that night she invited me into the apartment to save me the walk back to my billet. I learned that she was a medical doctor and had been wandering over the southern part of Germany looking for her family for several months. Besides Hungarian she also spoke German, English, French, Greek and Latin. Within a few days we became a couple. Her name was Judy Mazarruse. We stayed together until I left for Bremerhaven to ship home.

About the first week of February I was transferred to the 197th AAA Bn. that was based in a town in the northern part of the American occupation zone. I arranged for Judy to follow me in a few days and left for my new outfit. When I got off the truck a bunch of kids gathered around hoping for some chocolate. I gave them what I had and one of them asked if I would like to live with his family. I told him to follow me while I reported to my new company. I left my gear in the orderly room and followed the ten-year-old home. There were just he and his parents living in a four-room house, and they seemed pleasant. I told them that I had a girlfriend coming in a few days, and they said fine. When Judy arrived, we were all sitting in the kitchen when the husband came back from the doctor complaining that he hadn't gotten any relief. Judy questioned him and found that his problem was a huge boil on one of his thighs. She said she wanted to exam him and told him to drop his pants. After a startled look from him, she assured him that she was a doctor. She took about two minutes to exam him. She asked if they had any antiseptic in the house. The wife said yes, and Judy grabbed the sharpest kitchen knife she could find. She sterilized it with a candle and lanced the boil. The poor man let out a screech, and was bandaged. Within two days the man was feeling great, and the family would do anything they could for us.

I came down with sore gums, so Judy looked at me and announced that I probably had trench mouth. I checked in at sick call the next day and was sent off to a hospital for penicillin shots over a two or three day period. This seemed to do the trick and when I got back, we had a celebration. A few days later I started having bladder trouble. Judy found out that I had an infected bladder a year earlier and suggested that I report into the hospital when I got home. While on duty I used to help patrol the streets in a peep. It wasn't very tough duty, because the town was very peaceful. I was only in town about two weeks when I was notified that I was to leave for Bremerhaven in about a week. The trip was to be by train and took a day and a half. When we went by Bremen, the city had been completely flattened by bombs. There was absolutely nothing left standing. I have never seen such demolition except in Le Havre.

Within two days, we were boarded on a Victory ship and headed home. This was about the middle of March 1946.About a half day out, the ship hit the rough waters of the North Sea. Many of us were sitting in the mess drinking milk when the first waves struck us. The pitcher of milk slid across the tables hit the fiddle boards, and spilled all over us. Because it was winter we took a southerly course across the Atlantic, which made it a very pleasant trip.

While we aboard ship I was given the job of checking the pay books of the fellows in my group. I soon discovered that, while I was in Germany, the company clerks hadn't been entering my pay in my pay book, and I had five hundred dollars I couldn't account for. I had given some money to Judy when I left, but when I got to New York I'd have to give the rest to the Army as possible black market profit. I arranged to give all the money to a fellow who had spent all his, with an agreement he would get half when the accounting was over. When we turned north to reach New York the seas became rougher and the ship was pitching dramatically. Several of the GIs were detailed to help the crew throw overboard some food stored in the forward part of the ship. As we picked up the boxes, if the ship pitched downward, the boxes would nearly hit the overhead, and, when the ship started pitching up, the boxes became so heavy that we could hardly move them. I wondered why, with all the hungry people in Europe, we were throwing good food overboard. I suspect that if the ship came in with food left on board they wouldn't get a full supply for the next voyage. We finally sailed in past the Statue of Liberty and soon disembarked. As soon as we arrived in the camp we were treated to a huge steak dinner. I think we went to Camp Kilmer. I got my half of my money from my buddy. We went to New York one evening and went to dinner and a dance hall.

I was soon on a troop train on my way to Camp Beale, near Marysville, California. We stopped in Lincoln, Nebraska, for about a half-hour, and I wandered on to the University of Nebraska campus. There were a lot of girls on the campus, but I had to hurry back to the train, so I didn't get to talk to any of the students. I had a top berth in the troop train, which could be left down during the day. We would fold up the bottom berth, which then formed a cushioned bench seat. I was able to crawl into my berth any time of the day and take a nap. I think we had a diesel locomotive, because I don't remember being bothered by coal smoke on the way to California.

We arrived at Camp Beale about the first of April. I went to the doctor and he sent me to the hospital where I was treated for my bladder infection. Another fellow and I would go for walks on the rolling hills of the camp. It was early spring and the weather was perfect. All the spring field flowers were blooming and it was beautiful way to spend the warm spring afternoon. The first week of May I was discharged from the hospital and reported back to the separation area.

We were supposed to check the bulletin board for our names when they were ready to process us. I didn't think I would be on the board the first day I returned from the hospital, but I was. I think this was the first time the army had ever done anything before I expected it to. I went to the clerk, and he put me on the next day's list. The next day they checked my records, found my pay book indicated that I hadn't been paid for about five months, and paid me again. When we finally reached the last meeting before being sent home, the Captain asked if there were any questions or comments. I raised my hand and told him that I had been paid for five months twice. The Captain asked me, "Do you want to stay here for a couple of weeks to straighten this out, or would you rather take the #$@&** 500 dollars and leave today." I allowed as I'd like to leave today. He replied, 'Then, soldier, I suggest you sit down and shut up." "Yes, Sir," and I was out of there.

I went into town to catch a bus home and stopped at a men's shop to by a pair of shorts that weren't olive drab. I was looking at what they had and asked if they had any of any better quality. The clerk hadn't noticed me when I came in and without looking up said, "There's been a war on, didn't you know?" He looked up at me as I was scowling at him, and he immediately apologized and came down to help me.

I bought a Greyhound ticket for Pasadena. When I boarded the bus I seated myself in the front right seat of the bus. A young woman was sitting just to my right. The trip was about 12-hour duration, and the woman became sleepy. She put her head on my shoulder and went to sleep with my right hand on her right breast. I, being the gentleman I was, didn't want to awaken her, so I left my hand there. It was a very pleasant journey for me even though the bus driver was watching like a hawk in his mirror the entire trip. When we arrived in Pasadena I bought a ticket for the local city bus system and headed up Lincoln Boulevard for home. I grabbed my duffel bag and got off the bus less than a block from home.

As I walked home, I saw my Father in the front yard and, when he looked up and saw me, he looked as happy as I felt. He yelled to my Mother that I was home and she came hurrying out the front door to me give a big welcome home hug. I was surprised to see that her hair had turned gray while I was gone. I later learned from my sister, Barbara, that my Mother had been having repeated nightmares. She saw me wounded in a foxhole and calling for her, but that she couldn't reach me. Barbara, who is ten years younger than I, had been having anxiety attacks because she was worried about me. We went into the house and I put my gear in my room and sat down to chat with my parents. I told my Father that I had joined the reserves, and he was very unhappy. He told me that my job was to go back to school and finish my education, not run around in a field playing soldier. Barbara came home from school and gave me another welcome home hug. She had grown taller while I was away but was still skinny as a rail. My brother, Ralph, was a senior at Annapolis, and I didn't see him until he graduated and came home on leave. My Father and I talked about some of my experiences overseas, but he stopped when he noticed that I would start shaking while we were talking.

It was glorious to be home again.

A Final Biographical Note: This Document is an excerpt from Irving L. Odgers' autobiography written for his grandchildren. Okey Taylor, C-58 , Ray Pastewka, C-58, and Tom Silver helped with editing. Irving, Ray, and Okey all served in Co. C., 58th Armored Infantry Bn. Irving and Ray served in the 2nd platoon, machine gun squad, where Ray was the half-track driver. Okey served in the 2nd platoon, headquarters squad as radio operator after Pfc Bernard Demcovitz was killed.

Irving Odgers - This covers his experiences in Europe during WWII. He later graduated with Honors and recieved his MS in jet propulsion from Caltech and worked as a rocket scientist at JPL and Aerojet.

Ray Pastewka -

Okey Taylor - graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in mathematics. He remained in the reserves and was working on a master's degree in 1950 when the Korean War interrupted it. He received a commission in the Navy Reserve and retired in 1967 as a Lieutenant. He worked on computer systems design at Columbia Gas from the 1950's until retiring in 1987.

Tom Silver - Irving's brother-in-law. He married Irv's younger sister. He went to USC on a Marine Corp scholarship then served for a number of years as a communication officer with a Corp air squadron. He left the Corp in about 1960 and a retired Marine General hired him at Aerojet. He worked there until 1970, part of the time running the NERVA nuclear rocket engine controls test lab, and was laid off during the great downsizing of the aerospace business. He then work as a Sacramento Deputy Sheriff until he retired about four years ago. His younger brother served with the Corp in Vietnam.

A Final Note - Irving Odgers passed away on 26 March 2006. (OET)