Harold H. Heins Library of Congress Testimony (Tape 1)

Here today, interviewing Harold 'Shorty' Hines. The date is... I'm sorry his birthday is August 5, 1915. Harold served in World War II. He was in the Third Army, the 546th anti-aircraft. He rose to the rank of Sergeant. Today's date is August 3, and we are in David City, Nebraska. My name is Donna Walter. Also present with us are Harold's daughter, Bev, her husband, Richard, and great-grandson, Caleb. This interview is being conducted for the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. Harold, can you begin by telling us a little bit about where you were born, your family, what you did before you entered the service?

Yes, I was born just two miles from where I'm living right now, and we moved back to this territory just when I was about two. And I was raised there, went to school in Garrison Public School until the 11th grade. And then the 12th grade, I went to David City Public School. And from there, I came back to the farm and helped my father farm. And while I was farming, why, the dairy in David City wanted another extra man, so my dad said, as dry as it is, maybe you should go try out for that. So I helped at the dairy for six months. So I was the dairy, dairy boy in David City for all that time. I had the privilege of meeting all the people in David City. That's a beautiful community. After that, why, my mother had cancer. And the reason I quit there is because she was getting so ill that she had to have constant care. So my father and I took care of her til August 8th of 1940. When she passed away. And after that, I helped my dad farm. And of course, I had a girlfriend at that time. So on December 10th of 1940, my wife Ruby and I were married. And we lived on the same, in the same house with my dad. And then it was during the dry years, and it was so dry, that I had an opportunity to get a job with the taking down of railroads. Each state was required to give so much metal for the war effort, which is already in progress. And so I got a job with that. Started at Harvard, Nebraska. And the railroad went to Linwood, Nebraska. So I followed that all the way to Linwood, Nebraska. And then while we were doing that, why, here I got my draft notice. Well, it was supposed to have been an occupation that you were exempt. Well, that wasn't the case in my case. So I was inducted into the service on January of 1942. My wife moved back to her home place, and we had one son at that time. And we were expecting Beverly at that time also. So really, it was quite an excruciating thing to leave, honestly. I was inducted in Fort Dodge, Iowa. From Fort Dodge, Iowa, we got on a train and went to Bernadine. Yes, I'm not certain of the town, but it was at Camp Haan, California, where we went. And there we went through basic training. And then we were told there that we were going to be in the anti-aircraft. We were at Camp Haan for about three months going through physical training. And then we moved to Camp Irwin that's out in the desert. And we were there until July of 42. And then we loaded on to a train again from Indio, California, and drove, and rode across country. And these wonderful steam engine trains with the smoke flying, and then the windows opened. No air conditioning. The food kept us alive, anyway. We got to Camp Haan, Camp Shanks, New York. And there we went through our physicals. And shortly thereafter we got on to the Queen Elizabeth, 30,000, 30,000 troops on that boat. And no, no support. We were the only boat going across the ocean because the Queen Elizabeth at that time was, was one of the faster boats at sea. So the Germans, we zigzagged. Every three minutes we'd change directions so the Germans couldn't get a shot at us, or get us in their sights. And we went into Glasgow Harbor when we docked out in the, into the Glasgow, and then they ferried us up to the shoreline. They put us into a schoolhouse with 300 and some of us boys in one schoolhouse, and you can imagine would have 350 boys in the schoolhouse. And we weren't allowed any passage. We were not allowed to go out of the building because the government didn't want to give away how many peop-, how many soldiers there were in Britain. We stayed there until we got our anti-aircraft guns, and then they assigned us to Stafford, England, where the paratroopers were practicing. And our gun crew was gun crew number one, and I was the Chief of Section. We were chosen, and I'm certain of this, to be put at the end of the runway. It doesn't seem possible, it doesn't seem right, and we questioned why they would set us right at the end of the runway. Well, they said there's not enough room anyplace else, and this way we want you here in case we have any strafing. And so there's what we sat until June. We knew in May already that they restricted us. No letters, no communications of any kind. So for two weeks, there was no communication going out or coming in. And a day or two before the invasion started, they came around and warned us that no one leaves this gun pit. If you're caught away from the gun pit, you can face the court marshal. So we were on 24-hour duty there. That's with all men manning their guns. That's not somebody napping and just having one or two guards. All men were on duty on June 6th. It's about five o'clock in the afternoon, and the C-47 started driving up... Up the runway. And we thought they never would stop. They were getting closer and closer. But they just kept piling men, one right behind them. Just they're offset just a little bit, just so the wings could get up to the next plane. When they took off...

Just take your time, it's fine.

'Til the day I die, I'll never forget, I felt that I couldn't, we couldn't raise that gun barrel because that's how low they were. We weren't over 50 feet from the end of the runway. We weren't even that far from the end of the runway. And no one was allowed to leave that gun pit. Now I say the gun pit, we had to dig our gun down so that it was fortified by the sand, dirt banks around the outer edge. It seemed like those planes never would stop coming off that runway. And they took that complete end of that runway. And all you did is just glance up like this, and there they were. This was in the afternoon. Well, I say afternoon. It was about 10:30 in the evening. The time was 10:30 p.m. But then it's broad daylight there yet. But the planes that were in the air were just like if you're familiar with the geese flying, where they go in formation. These planes just kept flying around and building a larger formation all the time. They'd get a formation and just move on farther, a little farther, and pretty soon all the planes were in the air. And it seemed like, well, and I'm sure it was, a given command that everybody take off. That formation just kept coming and coming. And we sat there and sat there, waited. You know, we never heard anything. About 3:30, 4 o'clock in the afternoon, evening, well, the next morning, the planes started coming back, and there was not a good report. Mostly every one of the pilots says we didn't put them in the right place. We didn't put them in the right place. Well, we were, we were in doubt for the whole next day and the day after that. Then they said that we had a foothold there. And we were going to be able to make it. So we continually stayed there. And I never went overseas to Omaha Beach until the 22nd day of July.

That was when they took General Patton's headquarters over. Now, General Patton commanded a big group of people. And the Germans knew that General Patton was leaving because the armada that we had was, it had to be just like the invasion. There were a few days in invasion because we had balloons from all the major gunboats. We had balloons extended up 100 feet, maybe 75 feet, maybe 150 feet, just at random so that the Germans couldn't come down and strafe us. And we lived on Omaha Beach, the same as all the other boys did. We crawled over the side into our boats where the man lives in Columbus. I think it's the Hawkins boat.1 And then they drove us up to the beach. Well, they dropped the end gate and out you'd go. At that time there was, they, we had enough control, there was no firepower. But we'd get out of the water and walk over, up to the end of the you know onto dry land. And from there, we walked, I would say, two to three miles where they conveyed us or hauled us another 20 or 30 miles to a staging area. When the evening came, why the Germans came over and bombed us. And we were very fortunate because one of the bulbs lit close enough to the shrapnel lit on our trailer. But outside of that, you have to experience an air raid at night because they first dropped the lights, that lights up the country. You just feel really naked. And they can see so well from the sky. You can see their planes. It's it's unreal. But fortunately, we got by that. And they, we sat in this staging area for just two days. And they moved us, I can't say the town. I don't know what the town was. But they moved us into our areas where we were manning our anti-aircraft guns. And there we saw the fields that were, well, for an American farm boy. It's just a little bitty pasture. I would say maybe three, four acres and a lot of them with hedgerows around the outer edges. So they were actually a gift to any German or, that wanted to come in and take a shot at us because they had good protection. And we sat there until we took Saint Lo and we had tried. Saint. Lo wasn't too far from where we were stationed because we had tried for two, three weeks to take St. Lo. And we couldn't do that. And they finally called in the aircraft. And that was a sight to behold. Honestly, just wave after wave after wave of planes just demolished that place. We were close enough to feel that ground tremble and we could see the bombs flash. The lights, you know, the explosion of the bomb. And that's when the American troops got through Saint. Lo.

It was nothing to see human bodies when we went through there. And that was yet, had to be had to be a week yet after that. So that's, they were not prepared to take care of the disabled or anything like that. I, from Saint. Lo, we went to Metz, Austria. No, not Metz, not Austria, but Metz. And we sat there for a while before we took Metz. And I'm looking at the ring to prompt myself because this is probably one of the only rings that I know of that was ever made in France with all the war battles we were in. I started with Omaha Beach because our outfit was credited with Omaha Beach because we were on guard in Britain. But that was considered in on the Omaha Beach because we were protecting the aircraft there. Then there was Saint. Lo and now Metz, and now we go to Saarlautern. After Saarlautern, we go to the Rhineland. And then, now this, I'm saying this rather fast, but this took us quite a while to go all these places. We had the Rhineland and now Linz, Austria. That's where the war ended for our group. And even after, there was a day yet after the war was over, there was still strafing. We never could understand that, but there was still strafing. We figured that all the German planes would have been done with, but we can verify that. But after Linz, Austria, well, you know, everyone was relieved. But after Linz, Austria, well, you know, everyone was relieved. Really relieved.

I'm going to interrupt you for just a second, what were some of your experiences between St. Lo and Linz? Can you remember any?

Oh, I hope to tell ya. I have a record of all the places we were. And at every place that we were, we had to set our gun down, dig it down 18 inches with all the dirt on the banks that give us protection. We had to bury our ammunition and set our computer up. Now, the computer is separate from the air, from the gun. By, let's see, four feet. And that's dug down lower than what the gun base is. So, the computer stood up about six, seven feet. So, we had to dig that dirt out so that would protect the computer and the guys that were watching the computer. This computer had to have a power unit, and we had to lift that power unit off of that truck every time. That weighed 897 pounds. So, it took at least four boys to take that off. Needless to say, I never was really one of the guys that's taking it off. There's always bigger guys than I was. But, it was quite an operation. So, it took a while to dig that pit. Now, that pit is about, I would say, 10 by, 10 by 9. It might be 12 by 9, because I laid a lot of them out. I should be able to remember that, but oh man, I don't know. Needless to say, when we left that position, we never really did cover it up. We weren't that good a customer. But, we'd move on to other ones, and I want to be sure to give you a record of where all we were. It's, it's amazing how much digging we did. When it froze up, we, I had nitro coil that we'd lay around the rim of the gun pit and shoot it off, and that would break this frozen ground up so that we could dig that out enough. You can't understand how you have to be in a hurry to get it done, because you're allowing yourself to be open. You don't have the gun down. You're not ready for any attack of any kind. And so, it's always a rush thing. So, you're relieved when you can set your gun down in that pit and feel a little more comfortable. We were generally set rather prime in a place where we could see over the countryside or near power lines. Because the Germans had, and I'm sure it was a good one, a habit of centering a plane along them power lines just to check if everything was all right, because they were coming so fast. You could hear them, but you never knew exactly where they were from, and they'd be by you before you'd even get a gun aimed at them. But, even then yet, that was, that was a little nerve-wracking. It bothered you quite a lot. And we, on a lot of these places, we would see dogfights between Americans and the German planes, the British planes and the German planes, and probably the closest I came to it was where I could see the pilot's hand on his joystick. That's how close they were. You never wanted to see them, because, you know, somebody was going to lose their life. And that happened. That happened. I saw bombers coming back from the run. They'd be all shot up. Honestly, the wings, you could see big holes in. It was not unusual to see a bomber going back with just two motors, stopped. And that brings them back to England. We were set close enough to the bombers that we could even protect their inruns, their runway, too. And we saw pilots with the bombers coming in after they'd been on a run. One pilot came in with just one plane, one motor running yet on his plane. And after they got that plane stopped, we could hear those boys in that plane just holler and holler and holler. We felt for them, we knew they felt they were never going to make that, because, as I understood it, it was very unusual for a plane to come in with just one motor. And two motors, yes. But one motor, that's that's a rare thing. I might say about, I might say about the times when they had to send just wave after wave of airplanes, bombers, that is. I've seen that, not a lot of times, but several times, where they would just continually keep coming for a whole day. You can't believe, now that doesn't sound right, but it is. They could just continually, a wave of bombers coming in to bomb someplace. And this Saarlautern, that was one of them places that was just bombed to nothing, pretty near.

I want to mention something about Saarlautern. After they had bombed that, it was just really down to nothing. They sent us up up to another mission, and we drove down the streets. And after we got through Saarlautern, they had cleaned the streets off enough so that we could drive down the center of the street. After we got through Saarlautern, the engineers stopped us and said, that whole street's been mined, and it hasn't been taken care of yet. So we just luckily drove in the right place. Well, they didn't leave anybody. They cut the town off after that, because to our understanding, we weren't supposed to be driving down that street. But we did. That's the way it was. And can you imagine what the medics are, the cooks? They'd always bring food to us. How they brought us food, you know it wasn't regular all the time. But we made it. Them boys were good boys. They, they'd done their very best, so help me. While we were at one of these places, we weren't too far from the chicken house, and so we ransacked chicken house for eggs. So help me, we did. And we ended up, the General Patton was, he was the one that was always out, well ahead of everyone, really. And I don't recall a bridge that we got to before they blew it up. But I know that we were called to set up fortification for that. They wouldn't allow anybody to go across the bridge, but the engineers laid a pontoon bridge across, and we were the fourth gun crew, the fourth vehicle, not a gun crew. We were the first gun crew anti-aircraft gun crew that was assigned to protect that bridge. So we went across that at four o'clock in the afternoon. We were the second one across that bridge. And General Patton had us set up right above that bridge to protect that bridge. And as far as I know, they never did get that. It was good to the, I may be standing yet today, but it was good all through the war. We know that. So I try to recall that town, or that bridge, but I, but we, that was one of the bridges that we saved. Otherwise, they dropped all their, on the Autobahn's, they dropped a lot of their overpasses down onto the road so you couldn't go through there. But that's what really hurt the Germans more than anything at the German Army, more than anything else, is that we had so much more speed than they did. We got on that Autobahn, and we were just all over that place in no time. I saw a lot of horses, horse-drawn equipment, and it was not a bit unusual to see horses have their flanks or their hips all cut open and the meat taken out of there because the people were so hungry. I had a lot of young kids, little boys, littler than Caleb, come, shoot us Hasen, shoot us Hasen. That means shoot us some rabbits. They weren't allowed to shoot rabbits, and we weren't, we didn't have a count for any of our ammunition. So I shot a lot of rabbits, I shot a lot of rabbits, and I had a lot of little friends, really a lot of little friends. So they were, I saw them boys fight, for food. You can't believe how desperate people can get. You can't believe it. You can't.

After the war, I saw Jewish people, probably eight abreast, carrying their older people, and I saw them lay one down alongside the road, and they lay there. You think, what do you think of that for years? That just wasn't once or twice. That was numerous times, numerous times.

After the war, I was assigned as chief of police at, I don't recall the town, and they had people in there, and we'd ask them where they got food. got food. They didn't know. No restrooms. Can you imagine the filth and that? I want to touch on us liberating Ohrdruf concentration camp. I can't exactly say which towns we were going through and gone through, but Sergeant Hassen, he came back and told us, there's a prison camp up front, up ahead of us here, that we're going to relieve. And he said, they, they already know that we are here in the area. So when we got there, and I imagine it took us, I'm guessing, maybe two, three hours to get there, but when we got there, the prisoners attacked the guards and killed the guards. Right there is a picture, and I was standing right beside that when they took that picture. This, this was the, this was the first concentration camp that was released.

Do you remember the date or approximate date?

Yes, I think I got a date here. I have April 11th of '45 that can't be. Maybe it is, I don't know. Germany, April, I don't think that's right. Well, maybe it is, because the war never entered until, what was it, June? Yeah, June, June something, June 6th, I think. I bet this is right. April 11th of 1945. The Germany, I have it written down there. They hung the people here, on the gallows, one at a time, and I saw this. I have a picture of it here. And I saw the prisoners' emaciated bodies that they just stacked up like cordwood. They had a cement building just off to the side. And, uh . . . Oh, it was larger than this room. Oh, much larger. I'll bet it's as large as this house. That's about a 30 by 38, about a 40 maybe. That was a third full of dead bodies just set in just like you would cordwood. The picture is there. Now, the importance shows it because President Eisenhower.

We can pan the pictures later.

General Bradley, General Eisenhower and General Bradley, and George, General Patton were all there later after to observe that place. And there it shows the ghetto. That's the form that they used to hang the people on. I never saw them. I may have seen that, but I don't recall it.

When you say they, you mean the Germans were hanging the prisoners?

Yes. Yes. People don't know what an emaciated body looks like unless they see something like that. The people you meet, that look will never go away. They're so lost. They don't know where they're going. They don't know... they're helpless. I've seen it. I've seen so many people on the street, its just a mass of humanity. You go to like University of Nebraska football game, and that's how people are amassed on the road going down there, going just to flee the war. They're pushing baby buggies, little wagons, and it's mostly women, not men. Everybody was in service. Women carrying bags on their back get... gruesome, gruesome. If people could just witness so that they'd, they'd understand what can really happen to humanity, what one person can do to humanity, that our country was blessed. And I have to say something about the people and the equipment our country sent to Britain and France or Belgium. It was a big miracle to think that we could, the logistics of that, just moving all that stuff and bringing all them people together. What a mastermind to really put that together and have it all so coordinated. You just concentrate on that a little bit to have 6, 8 million, up to 10-14 million people concentrated on that, and the people back here supplying that. Think how they ran this country to support the war effort. It's unbelievable. Today it couldn't be done. It just couldn't be done. Our country doesn't have the power to do that. It doesn't have the will to do anything like that. And this is 2009. I really don't have a lot else to say on the other.

Well, I went back after the war. I had the privilege of going back to England. And this reminds me that I went to Southampton. That's where we left from, and that's where I went on what they called R and R. While we were getting ready to cross, we came to this very Southampton place. There was a building where were we used to sleep-in. We were laid out in there for the night, and all of a sudden several of the officers come in and hollered march order. And we thought somebody was out of their mind. But nobody started to move, and pretty soon they came and got pretty rough with us. And we're under an attack. So we left this Southampton place and went out to a staging area where we had fox holes, and we were buzz bombed. They, that's how much importance the Germans put on General Patton moving. They wanted to get him before he even got to, well, to France or Belgium. And that's why they gave us that welcome when we got into Belgium or Omaha Beach. They bombed us again there. So there's where I verified that they actually hit the building that we were in, because it was all reconstructed. So I felt very lucky that somebody knew that we were going to be bombed. How they, how they guessed how to hit that, because as I understood it, it was kind of a guess measurement that they put in their motors on these bombs. Now, we, to us guys ourselves, that was just a Maytag motor, that's a washing machine motor that they had. And it sounded just that way. And you'd hear that coming, and everybody'd go to for the gun pits, I mean, for their foxholes. And pretty soon them motors would spit a couple of times, and you didn't know where it was coming. But you heard it. And that was, we was under attack for, I'd say, three hours there. Oh, oh, more than that. But anyway, so there I verified that they hit that building that we were in. Of course, I saw a lot of the other, like the Queen, you know, Big Ben of all things, the clock,we were . . . We had radios in our trucks, and we always listened to Big Ben, that while we got the news from England that way, or Britain. And so it was rather nice. One thing I got to see, the music, Albert Music Hall in, in London which, I enjoyed that. And I got to see the changing of the guard at, at the palace. And a lot of other, oh historical things. It was very neat. But I . . . The lessons you learn are pretty hard, but they understand, they make you understand how precious life is. And freedom isn't just given. You win it. You win it. You fight for, you can see what happened when Germany lost its freedom. Just one man changed history. It's a bitter lesson. I don't want to go into politics.

Do you want to tell us, show the ring, perhaps, here in the camera, and tell us, you started to tell a little bit about your ring. Do you want to tell a little bit more about that?

Oh yes. This ring was given to me by First Sergeant Hassen. He was the one that was in charge of our battery when we took Ohrdruf. He was the one that came back to us and said that there was a prison camp up there, and they knew about it, and we were, that's what we were headed for. When we got to the camp, the prisoners had already attacked those guards and killed them, and that's why I have this picture here, because that's one of the first things we did when we got there, is took that picture. How I happened to get hold of these pictures, I worked in the photography office, and I saw this little bitty photo go through, and so I had it blown up. Because it's something you don't forget. You can't forget.

How many days were you at Ohrdruf?

We were just there one day.

Just one day.

Just one day. We didn't stay there very long. There was really nothing for us to do that was already done, and I can't answer how, where the prisoners went. That I can't answer. We walked through the buildings. These buildings, that you see here, we walked through all of them. There were some there, but I can't say where they went. These prisoners that, this was after that I mentioned, that 8 abreast and carrying their. . . Now, they were confined someplace because they were carrying their older people, but we never did know where they were confined at. Apparently, they were in a prison camp somewhere, but to know exactly where I did not know. If you want anything to touch your heart, there it is.

What was the prisoner's response to you when they...

Well, they all come up, thank us. You can't describe that. Just can't. Just can't.

Take your time.

When the war was over, the Germans, they came up and gave up, and we wanted to be sure they didn't have any guns, and so they came to me, and he begged me. He says, in German, he says, don't take my pictures. Don't take my pictures. He just pleaded with me not to take his pictures. Anything else, but don't take my pictures. And you know, I knew a few words in German, and I tried to console him, but he was very grateful when I gave him back his billfold of pictures, so you can understand that. They're just like we are, only on a different side. That was, well, my ancestor was German, and you wonder how one person can sway so many people, and they not know what was going on. The people around that area, we understood, did not know that was a prison. They did not know it was a prison because they well, they hung the people, so there was no smoke or anything like that. How they got their food and things, I can't answer that. That I don't know. I'm sure that they had it because those prisoners had to be fed, and I imagine it was mostly potatoes. That's what they sub- well that's what they subsided on. It's a horrible thing to contemplate. Horrible.

Can you describe how the prisoners were clothed when you got there?

Very, very few clothing, and ragged. I can't say much about the clothing because I really never paid much attention to that. They had heavy coats, yeah, see, they had their heavy coats on, and you could tell that was a, yes, now I recall. They would have their, like a Sunday overcoat, a long coat. A lot of people had that. A lot of people had that, so they took their best coat if they had to leave their house, and that's what they did to try to keep warm in that. Let's pray that never happens in this country. I wonder if the people understand. I really wonder. Unless you see something like that, you can't understand how low humanity can get. Humanity can get very low. They have no regard for you. None. That means N-O, none. N-E, N-O-N-E, none. They don't care if you get fed or not, or watered or anything, whether you're warm or not. How could, how can people leave, a free country go, and not up rise? I'll never understand that. Never understand that.

Do you know the ages, could you tell the ages of the people that were at the camp?

Oh, yeah. Well, there was, but they were all mostly, I would say, around the 60s. Mostly of them in the 60s. I didn't see too many young guys. Not, oh no, not too many young people. It was more, I would say, in the 59, 58, 70s. I'll bet there were a lot of them in the 70s. But I always go back to the people that were hung. You can't believe how emaciated a body can get and still survive. It's horrible, horrible to contemplate. Horrible. You think of our country right now and just take electricity away from us. Think what can happen to the people in David or any place else, any city, any city. Just take the water away from them. You can take electricity, but take the water away from them. What happens? There's no way of getting water. Nothing. Here in our country, out in the country, we at least still go to a well if there's a pump well. And that tells my age. A hand well, they can still pump water. But there is places likely yet. There's one right here in Garrison. We have one down on our South 80 that could be fixed up until you could pump water from it. But most of everybody's on electricity. How do you pump water? It'd be better out in the western part of the state, you had windmills there yet. There you'd have to go here or you'd have to go to a river or someplace and boil the water. It's the only choice. Is there anything else I can help you with?

You touched on some lessons and I wonder maybe if you, since your great grandson is here, message for him from all of this.

Well, I would say always question your leaders and know for sure if they're taking you down the right road or giving you the right justice. Don't just follow them blindly. You can't do that. They always look out for themselves. They don't look out for you. They do not. You make your wishes known. And don't be afraid to stand up. That's, that's where the problem is. They're afraid, the people are afraid to stand up. They feel too embarrassed to make their wishes known. You've got to talk up. You've got to speak up. You've got to defend your freedom. It just doesn't come free. You have to see that it stays free. It's . . .