Automatic fire
splashed onto the road like the first heavy drops of a spring rain as Kenny and Sundown dove for the ditch
beside their Jeep. The heavy fire coming from the nearby woods stopped as
quickly as it had begun. They were in the Bavarian countryside, once again
scrounging for parts. The country appeared quiet and peaceful once again. The
rolling hills were green and lush and dotted with darker forested patches, a
seductively pastoral scene.
The memories of that
ambush came flooding back as he listened to the caller remind him of the
incident for the first time in twenty five years.
It was April 19, 1945
and his name was John Oberstar. He was a Tech 5 attached to HQ Co., Combat
Command B (CCB), 11th Armored Division. He and his unit were doing their best
to keep up with Patton as he roared across Germany. He was called Sundown by
his buddies and was a scrounger and a mechanic charged with keeping the rolling
stock running. From Jeeps (called Peeps in those days) to tanks and everything
in between. So he became a scrounger by necessity. He often said that they were
very happy to take two damaged trucks and finish with one running, the other in
pieces.
His scrounging for parts to keep the 11th
Armored running, took him and his buddies far and wide. That's how he came to
be in Zella-Mehlis at the Walther factory, when his unit had just captured
Oberhof, a few miles away.
The Phone Call
One day in 1970,
twenty five years after the wars end, John received a call. The caller identified himself and asked
if his name rang a bell. John said that it did not and he would need a little
more information.
So the story was retold by the caller. Turns out he was with 41st
cavalry, attached to the 11th Armored Division which was laid up
near Grafenwohr, just South of Bayreuth, in April, 1945. John was there as well
and was mounting one of his scrounging forays to look for parts. He was in need
of a back seat gunner to man the .30 cal. Browning mounted behind the seats in
his Peep, named "Towhead". This young GI volunteered, I suppose to
see more of the country in this area of Thuringia/Bavaria. So off they went.
John, his driver and the new back seat gunner. John said that the back seat
gunner would often sit up on the back rest of the back seat, putting him up
higher than the windshield and giving him a better field of fire. Turns out
that was not a good choice on that day.
Trouble
As
the 11th moved further Southeast from Thuringia, into Bavaria, the larger the
pockets of retreating Wehrmacht became. When encountered, at this point in the
war, they were not eager to fight any longer. They just wanted to go home as
did the GI's. The problem was, the hills were also sprinkled with pockets of
SS, who had no intention of surrendering at this point. Several concentration
camps had been liberated by this time, plus the roads leading South in the Cham
area were littered with the bodies of camp prisoners who had died during forced
marches. The SS camp guards knew that they would not be well treated if they
surrendered. And so, they hid and often popped up in rear areas ambushing
support units at will.
Not
a good situation for a lightly armed Jeep, alone, out looking for parts or
recoverable vehicles.
As
they were passing through a narrow valley, with heavy forests on both sides,
they suddenly began to receive automatic fire. The windshield exploded, but
both front seat passengers were not hit. The back seat gunner, sitting up high,
was another matter, he was knocked right out the back of the Jeep. The driver
slammed on the brakes and both he and Sundown bailed out, taking cover in the
ditch.
The fire stopped as quickly as it had started, but they both remained where
they were for some time, expecting to be picked off if they moved. They assumed
that the gunner had taken cover on the opposite side of the road, since he was
not with them.
As
it began to get dark, they realized that any remaining nearby SS, would be
likely to over-run them if they stayed where they were. The Jeep still appeared
to be in running condition, sitting and waiting in the middle of the road. No
sign of the gunner. Not a sound anywhere, but the breeze through the trees.
It
was time to move
Pinned Down
Lying in the ditch, a
quick inventory showed that they had little to fight with. Kenny had his Colt Mod
1911 .45 and John had his Navy 6" Luger which he had carried in a cut down
Mod. 1911 holster. Their carbines were still in the Jeep Without any other
options, they both crawled up onto the road and took shelter behind Towhead.
Still no gunner. The opposite side ditch was empty and the light was fading.
Searching the area, while staying under cover took some time, but finally they
found him.
He was lying in the middle of the road, 40 feet behind the jeep. They crawled
over to him without drawing more fire. Apparently and to their relief, the
enemy was gone. They likely had withdrawn shortly after the ambush.
From the blood trail, they could see that he had been shot from the backseat
and had then attempted to crawl back to the rear of the Jeep for cover. He had
not gotten far and was now unconscious and still bleeding.
But that was not the worst of his problems. It appeared that the rounds that he
had taken, had sliced him open across the stomach as cleanly as if done with a
surgeon's scalpel. A closer look at the blood trail from where he had fallen,
to where he now lay in the waning light, revealed not blood as it first
appeared, but a trail of intestines. As he crawled, he had pulled them out in a
trail behind him. Their problems were now multiplied.
Clockwise or Counterclockwise
A hushed conversation
now ensued. What do we do? Neither had any medical knowledge. Kenny wanted to
leave immediately as he eyed the woods and the quickly increasing gloom around
them. They might be attacked again at any moment. This man is dead or nearly
so. He cannot last more than a few minutes. We need to leave.....Now.
.
John was older than the others in his unit. He was nearly 24 and so, was often
referred to as "the old man". It was a term of respect and they
usually deferred to him. He was a hunter and an outdoorsman. He had dressed out
many deer (more about that later), and he had a pretty good idea of what they
were facing. He knew the copper smell of blood and the smell of perforated
intestines. He had no idea of what other internal organs might have been
damaged, but he knew that the young gunner was suffering from shock and blood
loss, which could not go on much longer. But he was still breathing and so
still alive. In John's opinion, as long as he was still breathing, he had a
chance. He had only known this young gunner for an hour, but he refused to
leave him where he lay.
Kenny finally agreed...They sat there in the middle of the road, trying to
decide what to do next. John administered a shot of morphine and sent Kenny to
the jeep to fetch a canteen. Next a debate arose as to how to replace his
intestines. Should they be put back into place in a clockwise or a counter
clockwise direction? No idea....They had
water to cleanse the intestines of dirt and contaminants and they had their
personal field dressings which they each carried to cover the wound and perhaps
stem the flow of blood and that was it. Not much to work with. As they prepared
to attempt to put the gunner back together, John remembered one more piece of
ever present equipment which might help. He once again sent Kenny back to
Towhead to retrieve a bottle of Brandy. Now they had disinfectant.
Once their task began, the clockwise/counterclockwise debate was quickly
forgotten. Wash the intestines as they were piled back into their place... keep
an eye out for the enemy... look for perforations...they found several and
doused them in brandy. It didn't take long and they had done all that they
could at that time and place. Everything was back where it belonged, their
field dressings were tied around the large wound. (There were others).
Now it really was time to move.
The military jeeps of
that era, had a rear seat bottom which flipped up and locked in a vertical
position under the backrest. This provided a flat back floor to carry cargo.
The passenger's front seat, similarly, flipped forward and stayed there,
allowing access to the rear.
The gunner was dragged/carried to Towhead and laid flat diagonally across the
rear cargo area, with his feet protruding out of the jeep's right side. John
kneeled in back keeping pressure on the dressing
Towhead
The MASH
Kenny drove...slowly at first with blackout lights as dictated by combat zone rules.
These are nothing more than slots which allowed a very small amount of light to
be cast on the road ahead. Once they had cleared the ambush zone they discussed
speeding up...not something that would be possible with the blackout lights.
They knew the closest help was a MASH unit nearly five miles from their
position. The MASH units moved forward along with supply, ordnance,
maintenance, fuel etc. in order to stay in contact as best they could with
Patton's Armored and Infantry, which waited for no one.
The tip of the spear, medically speaking, were the front line medics. I believe
that there is a special place reserved in Heaven for men who go into the thick
of combat, unarmed with their only intention being to save others. Casualties
were quickly brought to aid stations, picked up by ambulances and rushed
further to the rear where surgeons waited.
Titled "Ambulances waiting for casualties. Heavy firefight going on nearby. Oberhof."
Their progress was
slow, visibility was nil and the gunner was fading fast. They decided to set caution
aside to give him every chance they could. They turned on the headlights and
pushed Towhead to her limits. Now they were in danger of drawing fire from both
sides, but there was nothing to be done about that and they pushed on. It
seemed to take forever, but was more like 15 minutes and they were at the MASH
unit. Horn blaring and sliding to a stop, orderlies with a stretcher seemed to
appear as if by magic. The gunner was off loaded and whisked away without
questions.
John and Kenny wearily
returned to their unit and turned in...They had done their best. But did he
make it? John went back the next day to see how his gunner was doing, only to
find him gone. Casualties were coming in and no one could give him any
information. He only knew his last name and that he was with the 41st Cav.
The War Goes On
Time went by, they
moved on...life went on for some, and the war went on for all. But John never
forgot the gunner and his unknown fate. Towhead's windshield was repaired and
she was brought back to her former glory.
During the course of
the war, John took lives, saved lives and nearly had his own life taken away in
return. He was at Bastogne and at the end.....the liberation of Mauthausen.
But to the end of the
war, the unknown fate of "the gunner" as he became known to them all
stayed with him.
His stories went in
many directions....the Schweinfurt Ball Bearing Factory, the Bank Job, the
Museum, many more. All stories for another time.
But that’s not the end
of this story.
Sundays with Sundown
It was 1970, and I had
been living in Chicago for years, but when home in Northern Minnesota, I would
always drive my mother to visit the Oberstar’s.
Often, when John was working on a Sunday, I would while away a part of the day,
cleaning and oiling his gun collection, which he appreciated and going through
the War Albums which contained more than five hundred photos taken during that
drive across Europe.
On this day, he was there and he was exuberant. He called out to me when we
arrived, with the proclamation. "My Gunner called!!" From the look on
my face, I'm sure he quickly realized that I had no idea what he was talking
about. This was one story which he had not shared with me as a young boy. But
now I was twenty-six and so we retired to his study for the telling. After
relating it all to me, just as I have related here to you, he went on to tell
of the call received just that day.
The Gunner, (whose name I no longer recall), was alive and well. He had been
shipped out of the MASH unit as soon as the Army surgeon had patched him up. He
needed more care than they could give him and it was touch and go for him for a
long time. After regaining consciousness, he had recalled being told how lucky
he was to be in the living world. That whoever had given him his first care and
administered antiseptic, easily identified by odor, had staved off sepsis, the
normal killer in his situation. He filled John in on his slow but steady
recovery, back in the States. His war was over. John filled in the parts which
he had been missing all these years, the immediate minutes following The
Ambush. (Leaving out the debate as to whether he was better left where he lay.)
Now they were both in
possession of the missing pieces....Closure for both of them. John was very
happy to learn that The Gunner had not only survived, but had gone on to lead a
good and productive life. He had married, been well employed, had several
children and was awaiting the arrival of his first grandchild.
The reason for his call soon became apparent. As with many returning Vets, in
their middle years, war injuries began to give them trouble and that was the
case with The Gunner. The VA, as is also often the case, had lost his wartime
medical records and could not document his injuries. They did not dispute that
they had happened or even that they had been the result of his military
service. But without records to confirm that, there was nothing they could do
to go forward with a medical disability for him. The best that they could offer
was the opinion that, lacking paperwork, a disability claim might be possible
with first hand eyewitness accounts of the incident which resulted in his
injuries. And so, he needed John's help once again. This was a request with
which John was happy and eager to comply. He agreed to provide a written
account of everything that had happened that day, have it sworn and notarized
and sent off immediately. He also provided the name and address of the Driver,
so that he could make the same call to him. He and Kenny and the rest of his
unit had stayed in close contact and he assured The Gunner that Kenny would be
happy to comply as well. When I arrived that day, he was already in the midst
of his written recollection.
A happy day and the
closure that had been on hold for years.
THE LAST CHAPTER
Sundown died on September 19, 1974. He was only 57. I had been living in
Chicago for ten years and we had had few chances to visit in the last few
years. I was in Los Angeles in a business meeting when I got the call. I
contacted the airlines and by late that evening, I was in Minnesota.
I was honored to be asked to be a pallbearer along with one of my older
brothers and other nephews. One was James Oberstar, who was running for office
at the time and went on to serve as a Congressman for more than 30 years.
Chairman of the House Transportation Committee’
I was amazed, but I should not have been surprised. A town of 5,000 closed down
nearly completely to attend the funeral. He would have smiled at that. He did
not believe in stopping to smell the roses. He thought of life as a swiftly
flowing river. We could stand safely on the bank and watch it flow by, or we
could leap in with both feet, feel the current and paddle for all we are worth.
I can't help but think that his philosophy was greatly influenced by his
wartime experiences.
Many of us have talked to GI's who could not wait for the war to end, so that
they might get home to loved ones and a quieter more peaceful life, only to
acknowledge that they had never felt more alive than during those years when
they did not know if they would survive.
I am posting his words in his own hand, written on the back of a photo. He said there were many stories to tell later on. I think he would be
pleased to know that now, seventy years later, his prophetic words were coming true.
