ON TO THE RHINE RIVER

After crossing the Roer River it became evident that the final battles would be at the Rhine. The Russians were beginning to move through Poland and into Germany. We wondered why they wouldn’t surrender, but I guess Hitler always felt the German soldiers were the most superior. But in my opinion I always felt that although they were great fighters, they didn’t have the ability to make decisions, that they could only follow orders, while the American was as good a fighter but was able to adapt himself to many occasions by thinking of ways to survive. As a result the German soldier didn’t always know what to do if things weren’t going the way they had been trained to fight.

As we approached the Rhine we were stationed in a Catholic Hospital, the Holy Trinity Hospital operated by nuns in Krefeld. Most of the patients had been taken away except those that were so serious that they couldn’t be moved. These [patients] were placed in a wing of the hospital and we used the facilities near the highway. The mother superior spoke a little English and while we were there she used to come to see me and kept asking if we were going to pay for using the hospital. I told her we had no means of paying, but suggested that she wait until occupational troops arrived and speak to them. She thanked me, although I’m sure I know what the answer would have been. But she was a charmer. I know she got our cook to give her some food for her patients during our stay there.

 

A~ Palenberg

B~ Krefeld

One day while there a couple of nurses from the MASH unit that had been with us at the Roer crossing paid us a visit; they were in another part of the city. One of them asked to use a bathroom and later she told us she was combing her hair in front of a mirror, when the chaplain came in with his hand already on the fly of his pants when he realized it was a woman. She almost fainted from shock!

Another incident that hit the Army newspaper during our stay in Krefeld- One of our company ambulance drivers got drunk one night and took off in his ambulance for the bridge that had already been blown up by the Germans. He wound up in the water practically unhurt, but the Army Times had a great headline, “Medical Battalion Spearheading the Attack on the Rhine!” Our 327th!