Remembrances: Darrel Carnell

Our visit to Ohrdruf was memorable for the bestiality it revealed about our enemy. Starved corpses, mostly naked, lying in rows. Most bore bullet wounds. One skeleton-like cadaver's penis had been severed years before, leaving him with only a healed stump. Other bodies stacked in a shed like cordwood sprinkled with lime. Very efficient, the Germans, because the bodies were stacked head to toe, thus allowing the shed to accommodate the maximum number of bodies. And I remember the body near the gate dressed in civilian clothes who was reported to be a prison guard bludgeoned to death by the freed inmates. I also remember the circumstances leading to our visit to Ohrdruf. I had somehow borrowed a Coleman stove, had dug my hole (soft dirt, as I recall) and was heating a can of the then new "C" ration chicken and vegetable stew when word came for us to load up and move out to see evidence of Nazi inhumanity. At that particular moment I was more interested in sampling that stew than seeing a concentration camp but my appointment with history came first and the stew had to wait until the next time I could borrow a stove.

It was near Ebersbrunn that the European war ended. In my letter to Ed Quick and Ralph Cole I gave the following account: "Your observation about the date of Germany's surrender sent me scurrying to the web where I found the document of surrender that was signed by Germany on May 4 and by the allies on May 7. At one place the Germans are to cease operations on May 5 at 0800 hours and at another place operations are to cease on May 8 at 2301 hours. Ralph, you have far more expertise than I on military gobbledygook so I ask you to point your browser to the above URL and give me the precise date when we got the happy news. I guess it must have been on May 6 for Dorigan to have entered it into his daybook. "I remember exactly what I was doing when Dorigan came loping up, helmet bobbing on his head like the head of one of those toy dogs in the rear window of automobiles, shouting "Hold everything! The War's over!" I had just finished digging my hole in the softest (and easily diggable) soil I encountered during the entire conflict. Just when the digging got easy they had to stop the war. It wasn't fair!"

Jack Dorigan had a distinctive manner of ambulating. He never strolled, he never ambled, and he never ran. He loped. And with his loping his helmet had a way of bobbing up and down. Very distinctive. And unmistakable. It was also in Ebersbrunn that I was on sentry duty one night in front of the house where Freddie and I did our barbering. I saw a figure approaching from the general direction of the area in which Van Loton's fraulein lived. It was very dark and the figure was still over 100 or more feet away when I challenged him (or it.) The figure didn't stop so I challenged him again with the same (non) results. He ignored me and just kept coming. Although I had by this time guessed that it was Van Loton I nevertheless chambered a round in my carbine (KLANK! KLANK!) and again bellowed "Halt! Who's there?" to which he replied, "It's me, Carnell" and didn't once break stride. It's really more of a non-story than a story but only reinforces earlier observations by others concerning his fraternization with the fraulein. A few days later when I was driving the lead jeep in the May 11 convoy headed for Carbarz it sputtered to a stop. I had, as usual, screwed up and neglected to either check the gas tank (did those jeeps have gas gauges?) or to fill it with enough gas because while we were leading the battery on the highway I had to pull over to fill the tank. Van Loton waved the rest of the vehicles by as I got the gas can from its carrier on the rear of the jeep. Our gas cans had a flexible spout that was screwed onto the can. Van Loton was too impatient to fool around with such niceties so he used his hand instead of the spout to divert the flow of the gas from the can into the tank. I mean he just tipped that can up and let the gas gush into the tank, using his hand to keep most of it from sloshing onto the floor. Most of it got into the tank, but a goodly portion slopped onto the floor of the jeep and soaked everything stowed there, including some edibles that his fraulein had lovingly prepared for him. Well, Paolicelli looked at me with that shit-eating grin of his and I looked at Paolicelli with a grin of my own but we could scarcely laugh in the captain's face. So instead we told each other dumb stories just to have an excuse to laugh. And laugh we did, for days afterwards. The spilled gasoline was even funnier to Polly and me because Van Loton was notoriously ungenerous with his food parcels. When either Polly or I received goodies from home we shared it with the captain and with each other. There was never any question as to whether we would share it, it was a given that we would. Van Loton, on the other hand, kept his goodies to himself.

While on Task Force Crater our column was stalled on a narrow road with a wooded rise to our left, a stream and woods to our right and miles of stalled vehicles in front of, and behind us. While we were sitting there somebody on the radio announced the presence of one or more Tiger tanks at map coordinates so-and-so. Van Loton always had his map open and because we weren't moving at the time I found the Tiger coordinates on the map and then discovered to my horror that we were not more than five or six hundred yards away. A specific portion of my anatomy started puckering up and I was wondering whether we'd get out of there alive. We couldn't advance, we couldn't retreat, and trees hemmed us in on our left flank and by that stream on our right flank. We were trapped! Van Loton had just received a parcel from home in which there was a whole carton of LifeSavers. He had never before shared anything with either Polly or me but I guess the seriousness of the situation dictated that he be a nice guy for a change. He said, "Carnell, would you like a Lifesaver?" I, in my innocence, thought that he was going to give me a whole package of Lifesavers from his large carton and allowed as to how I sure would like a Lifesaver. So he took out a package of Lifesavers, opened it, thumbed one loose and offered it to me. He gave Polly one, too. And that's all he ever shared with us, one lousy Lifesaver. And that is why Polly and I thought it was so hilarious when his fraulein's goodies were saturated with gasoline. Served him right!

In Carbarz the detail section was billeted in a house owned by an industrialist whose Frau spoke very good English. She lived in a garage apartment in the rear and was worried about her Wermacht son who was on the eastern front and from whom she had not heard for some time. The room that Paolicelli and I shared was close to her apartment and we frequently talked. I'll never forget her joy when her son showed up safe and sound. He was overcome with joy on seeing his mutti and I was filled with joy that mother and son were together again. We were all laughing. He was a pretty nice guy and played a musical instrument, an accordion, I believe. I then had my flugelhorn with me and I finally taught him how to play Stardust. I think he taught me how to play Jealousie. His English was also passable and we decided there wasn't a whole lot of difference between the German and the American armies. Each had its share of nice guys and also its share of jerks as well as the usual army hurry up and wait and senseless regulations. I really enjoyed my conversations with him.

I think there was a maternity hospital in that town and although I knew the guys were trying to strike up friendships with the nurses I never heard of any widespread fraternization. But then I led a sheltered life! Captain Van Loton was not one of my favorite people. Because I was his driver I had to be within hailing range of his voice at all times. Ditto for Paolicelli, who was his radio operator. So that should have made the three of us pretty close. But we weren't. Despite his efforts to kill me if the Germans didn't, Polly and I were good friends. But the Captain never talked to or with us, nor did he share anything with us. To him, we were mere servants and were treated as such.

After we got back to Twenty Grand Van Loton had a date one evening with one of the transient nurses and had me drive him and another officer and his date to the Officer's Club in Rouen. When we got there he told me to wait with the jeep. Other officers arrived and without exception told their drivers to meet them back at the OC at such and such time. But not Van Loton. I was told to wait, period. So wait I did and got more pissed off with each passing hour. As I remember it the weather was quite chilly, too. So after a few hours of sitting in my jeep I finally summoned the courage to go inside the OC to look for him. He was there, all right, having the time of his life. I can't remember whether he offered me a drink (unlikely) or whether I just damn' well helped myself to some of the drinks on his table while he was dancing. But after the first drink I downed two or three more without anybody's permission. Those were the first drinks of hard liquor I ever had in my life and by the time I drove him and the rest of his entourage back to Twenty Grand I had quite a buzz on. I still remember just pointing my jeep between the trees that lined each side of that narrow high crowned roadway and hoping for the best. When I shifted gears the clutch pedal bounced my foot back as though it were on springs. When we finally got back to camp I parked my jeep behind the kitchen tent as usual but when I tried to get out I fell flat on my ass. One of the POW cooks saw me, picked me up, took me inside and placed me on a cot. He was also kind enough to retrieve my carbine and hang it up for me, all the while calling me "Booby" which I understood to mean "baby" and laughing with the other POW's at my incapacitation. I guess the POW's understood how well off they were and how terrible things were back in Germany because they never offered to turn my carbine on me. The cook that was so kind to me had suffered an awful wound to his forehead and wore the bullet, which caused it along with his dog tags. He pointed to the bullet and then to the scar and said "Talisman," which I guess meant the same thing in German as in English.

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