Victor Mashbein Veterans History Project Testimony

For the record, this is?

Vic Mashbein.

Okay.

Want to start? Let's let her rip.

Okay. I'd like to start off with, you could kind of set the scene of the pre-war, before World War II, like what it was like living, you know, living in this country and before you went off to fight. Where were you from?

I was in St. Louis, Missouri at that time. That was my home, St. Louis, Missouri.

What was likable?

And the war had started a couple of years earlier. And just all the neighborhoods were thinning out. You didn't see the young men and the middle-aged men were disappearing from the neighborhood. People used to see at the show or a ball game or something. They just disappeared one by one into service. The women went in to work in the war plants in St. Louis. And that was the time of the war. It just changed everybody's life completely.

So it was really drastic. Everyone was out there.

Yes. There was a draft. And you got the lucky number or unlucky number, whatever you chose to do. But it was a thing to do, to go to service. As a matter of fact, my sister also went to service. They considered us a military family because she was an Army nurse. And I was in the Army. And I think any family that had over two was considered a military family.

Okay.

So it sounds like you can go back to General Grant or something.

Yeah.

But anyway, we were considered a military family.

All right. And then how did you end up going to service? From what you said before, it sounds like you weren't drafted.

It was about- would be drafted that year. But there were three or four of us, boyfriends, that were all in the same boat. And we all decided that we would volunteer to go earlier so we could leave together hoping to stay together. It didn't wind up that way.

Okay.

We were drafted, but we went ahead of being called.

All right. And you said you went with friends?

Um, hum, with three or four other friends.

And in the beginning of your service, where did you go?

Fort McClellan, Alabama.

And that's where you trained?

At Fort McClellan, Alabama, which was an infantry replacement training school.

And was that in 1942?

That was probably in 43.

43. Okay.

Yeah, I would say it was 43.

Were you there for long or...?

Either 13 or 17 weeks. I don't remember which. In the beginning, they used to train you, you know, like six months. And then it got down to three months before it was over with. They literally put a uniform on you and told you you were trained. You were now a soldier, you know.

Yeah. So then after you were in Alabama, did you go to Europe then? Right after that?

From Alabama, well, we were called infantry replacement. And we went home for a short furlough. I went home for a short furlough. And then went to Fort Meade, Maryland. And that was like in the winter of 43, I believe. Went to Fort Meade, Maryland. And from there, we left for Europe. And I went to Europe on the Normandy, which was the largest ship afloat before the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. The Normandy. And we crossed the ocean alone in the winter because the speed of the Normandy was supposed to be faster than that of the German U-boats. In theory, we could outrun a U-boat unless there was one ahead of us. And if there was anything behind us, we were okay. If there was one ahead of us waiting, we weren't okay. But anyway, we arrived in Scotland. And I don't remember if it was the end of 43 or early in 44.

It was around that time, though.

Yeah. Whether it was December or January, I have no inkling.

So you arrived in Scotland?

Arrived in Scotland.

And then did you go off to?

And went by... I don't remember. It was truck or train to Wales in England. And this was a huge replacement training center. And literally every day, they came and selected men out of the pool there for various divisions that had been in Africa, Sicily or Italy, and needed replacements. And that's how I joined the 82nd Airborne Division.

They picked you from in Wales?

This replacement training pool in Wales.

And then you went off to see combat. Did you go see combat then or go into combat after that?

Well, my unit, the 82nd Airborne, was just back from... Where were they back from? They were back from Sicily. And they went to Ireland and then to England, where they got ready for the invasion of France. And that's where I joined them, training to go to France, to Europe.

Okay. And let's see. If you'll talk again about where you went in Europe, and more specifically, like what locations you went and where you fought at?

Well, we trained in England, in the Midlands of England. For, I guess, a period of three, four months. Five, perhaps. Three, four, certainly. And then we went to, well, I don't know, an airport. I'll say in the southeast part of England. We didn't know where we were, where we left from. They didn't tell us. There were no signs on the roads, no nothing. So we didn't know where we left from. And the invasion was June the 6th, 1944, and our groups start leaving the evening of June the 5th and early in the morning of June the 6th, by parachute and glider into Normandy for the invasion. I guess our job was to disrupt German communications and road crossings and bridges and anything that the Germans needed. We were trying to keep them from using them. And I guess our primary mission was cut the peninsula in two to divide the German army there.

Yeah.

And make it easier for those landing by ship.

And then from Normandy, where did you go?

From Normandy, our next, went back to England, from Normandy, went back to England to regroup, to regroup and get replacements again for the wounded, killed. And it was September the 17th, 1944, I believe. A daylight drop into Holland. There had been a movie made, I don't know, you probably don't know, it's called A Bridge Too Far. There were several bridges across rivers in Holland and Germany. And it was meant to be an end run around German fortifications along the coast up to northern Germany. It was very successful and yet it failed. It didn't accomplish its mission. Our job was, there were three divisions. The 101st Airborne invaded at the south, capturing several bridges over rivers, canals. Our division was further north. A city called Nijmegen on the Waal River. In Holland it was called the Waal. It was the Rhine in Germany, capturing bridges over the canals and the Waal River for ground troops to cross our bridges. They did that finally successfully but they were late reaching... Oh boy what was the name of the... They had to go about 60 miles further to reach British troops and they never got there in time.The British Airborne was pretty well chopped up there. It was an invasion that was very daring, very successful and yet still failed because they didn't get there in time. It was A Bridge Too Far. It was like almost scoring the final touchdown. It didn't make it. After that we went back to a town called Soissons in France, northern France, with the idea, and again reinforcing ourselves with new troops. To . . . For the final push into Germany. While we were in Soissons, France, the Germans had started what turned out, we gave it the name of the Battle of the Bulge as they were trying to drive the Allied armies back into the sea and it was winter, it was right around Christmas. It was right around Christmas and New Years of 1944. And I was wounded for the second time over there, the first time being in France, and the second time was in Belgium. And when I came out of the hospital again, now was the push into Germany through the Siegfried Line and into northern Germany. And the war ended in was it April or May maybe of 1945, I believe.

Yeah, I think it was.

April or May of 1945.

Sounds like you were on the front lines . . .

And we had met the Russian troops there. So that was pretty much our war.

Yeah, you fought the big push at the end.

Yeah, it was the beginning of the end. When the invasion started in June, that was the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning or how everyone wanted to say it.

Did you have . . . in this . . . in your campaign in Europe, did you have any extremely memorable moments that you'd like to go into more detail about?

No, it was just a daily affair. It was almost ridiculous. It was like a football game, a run to the right that failed and then a run to the left that failed and then you run through the center and you made a few hundred yards into a woods and you wondered what the hell we'd do this for. We're 300 yards away from where it was yesterday. And we had two men killed and four wounded. A few hundred yards, nowhere to nowhere. Half the time we didn't know what country we were in or why. And some days you couldn't even stick your head out of a hole in the ground and the next day you could have a dance out there. It was just that safe. As they retreated, it became easier for us. It was just boredom, really. And artillery battles and shrapnel, that's pieces of the artillery shell, was falling like rain. It was almost impossible not to get wounded.

Yeah.

It was almost impossible.

What was your specific job on the battlefield? Were you a gunman or watching out for people?

No, we were... It was just like a football game. There was the linemen in the backfield and it was a matter of pushing from one river to another river, from one river to a woods, from one woods to a hill.

Just reclaiming territory.

And just moving forward. Some days you couldn't move an inch and the next day someone on our right or left broke a hole through the line and it was easy for us the next day or two. But it was just plowing along day after day after day.

Were you constantly fighting in warfare or did you take breaks at night or whatever?

Never stopped. Some nights we were on one side of the road, the Germans were on the other side of the road, and we couldn't raise our head up and they couldn't raise their head up and all you could do is lob grenades over the road like that. And there were miserable nights. And I can say it was almost ridiculous from hill to hill and woods to woods and woods to a river and a river to a hill.

You were constantly at it.

And the hill to the church over there and the church to a school building over here and it was just crazy.

How about the food provisions during the war, your war time?

Well, we had rations, field rations that were like, you're familiar with the crackerjack box?

Yeah.

They were in boxes put up about like crackerjacks and there was A ration, B ration, C ration, K ration type of thing. And we lived off of those for days and days and days. And once in a blue moon we had some hot food brought up at night to us. When we went back to rest, it was sometimes 200 yards to the rear, not miles or not countries. And occasionally you got a shower, very damn few, but we got a shower occasionally and change of clothes or something.

So were the local people helpful or were all these things from the United States?

Well, we were considered liberators and we were greeted as liberators wherever we went. Even in Germany, believe it or not, we didn't have no enemies in Germany. Everybody loved us. They say being a Nazi was like being a Democrat or being a Republican. They were just members of a party. We love Americans. As a matter of fact, everybody in Germany had relatives in the United States. They'd ask, where are you from? My brother lives there. My uncle lives there. My cousin lives there. It was ridiculous.

That is kind of ridiculous. What did you do and did you stay in touch with people at home? I know you said your sister was a nurse.

Well, we wrote, we wrote home every so often. Our parents wrote, yes, we had a very good mail system.

So you did get communication from home as well?

Yeah, there was none of this stuff like today, but phone calls and phone calls and computers and all that type of stuff. They're on vacation over there. Compared to us, we know where we were. We had hot and cold; you'd freeze or melt, one of the two.

It sounds like you were at it all the time. Did you have any time for recreation or anything of that sort?

No, there wasn't much of that at all. Occasionally, you were supposed to have a pass somewhere for two or three days. Sometimes you did, but not often. Most of the time, they didn't come about.

It sounds like you were serving during Christmas. What was it like to – what did you do for the holidays? What did you do around here?

They didn't know there was such thing. It was Christmas yesterday or tomorrow. Did it come yet? No one knew.

Did you celebrate any of the Jewish holidays?

No. No one knew what day it was or anything. There were different things in the Army. You could be in the Army and be – say you had a big artillery piece, a cannon, and you were shooting from Fremont to Omaha. Well, the thing is, I was outside of Omaha. The one shooting in Fremont was on vacation. That was someone being on furlough. Some people never got within 35 miles of an enemy, never saw a live enemy. So it made a difference. The Air Force in England, flew from England to Germany. They dropped their bombs and they came back. So they actually put in a two-hour day, you know, 22 hours back in England. And that night, they were eating and drinking in the bars and taverns and dancing with the British girls. And with us, it was 24 hours a day when you were 100 yards away from them.

Yeah.

Or 200 yards or 300 yards or closer.

And what skills would you learn from after the war? What did you learn from the war and your experience in combat?

Well, there was nothing to really learn. You certainly didn't come home with a trade when you joined the Army and learn a trade, you know, jumping out of airplanes or flying in gliders or shooting a submachine gun. You didn't come home with any trade to look for a job.

How did it change your life, now that you look back upon that, your service?

I don't know. Not really. You really didn't have much of a life at 17, 18 years old when you go to service. And you came home, you were 20 or 21. So you didn't miss too much. It was like being in the Boy Scouts.

So it was more of a, you know, everyone did it. You just go, you served, and you came back kind of thing.

Yes, it was just the luck of the draw on how bad a war you had. A friend of mine here in Omaha, he asked, you know, like, you're asking, what did I do when I told him our story. And he says, boy, then you had it easy. He says, I was stationed in Florida. And he said, boy, it's hotter than hell. It's the most humid place, and they got the biggest mosquitoes. And he thought he fought the worst war in the world, being in Florida. And he said to me, you had it easy. So everybody has a different degree of what they did in the service. I have another friend. He had worked in Hinky Dinky here in Omaha, which was like Baker's stores today, Hinky Dinky stores, in their warehouse. And when he was in the Army, he was in a supply warehouse in the Philippines. Well, he did the same thing in the Philippines that he did here in Omaha, you know, in the supply warehouse.

So just depending where you went and that kind of thing?

Well, you kept the machine on, so it don't mean anything with a book. I can show some pictures.

Well, we can get to that if you want to show us some of your artifacts and things like that.

Here, I'll get this. You want to take these?

Okay.

Here's some loads that we carried getting into airplanes. Here's hooking up, getting ready to parachute. And I don't know if this was in a glider or this one was in a parachute.

And this is your division?

Yeah.

Okay.

Here's parachutes coming down.

Who took all these pictures?

I don't know. This is out of the book. Oh, here's a glider sitting facing each other in a glider. They would cut loose and glide into hoping to make a nice landing. Most of the time they crashed. Here's an artillery shell going off very close to somebody.

Did you see things like this?

Oh, yeah. This was a daily routine.

Were you scared?

Yeah, sure. Here's like a combat photographer. Oh, here. How do you like to spend a winter in one of these things? This was in Belgium.

Yeah.

Oh, there's getting ready to get on the airplanes.

Oh, that's neat.

And what else might be in here that would be of interest to you... Well, you can put it this way. There were 14 million men in the service in World War II. Here's concentration camps that you've heard of.

Yeah.

I'm certain, even Jewish, you know what concentration camps were.

Studied that quite a bit.

Yes, we ran across them.

You did? When in Germany or...

Yeah, here's... What's this, Berlin?

Berlin, yeah.

This is Berlin after the Air Force finished bombing out Berlin. Maybe a year and a half or two. There were 14 million men in service, of which there was probably a million of them that fought the war, and the other 13 million were backup troops to support us in the war.

Right.

So, I would say one million or so fought the war, actually shooting at somebody, and the others were just there. I ran a mail room, you know. Yeah. Somebody had to get the mail and deliver the mail. Someone has to do that, yeah. So, somebody worked in the post office. Other guys cooked, you know. They cooked like you would do in Fremont, Nebraska.

Okay. I'd like to ask you a few questions about how you maintained your Judaism throughout the war. Before the war, were you extremely observant, or what was your role?

No, I wasn't observant. We went to synagogue on a high holidays, but we were not fanatics about religion, and we seldom had time for religion there. Even down to Christmas, it depended where you were. Some people had Christmas dances, you know. And other fellas were eating a can of pork and beans, in a little can and a hole in the ground.

So, it wasn't a big focus to you, or it wasn't extremely prominent in your military experience, religion?

No, no, not a bit. Didn't have time for it. I guess, to be honest with you, there weren't too many Jews where I was.

And so, did they, going to, did other people treat you any differently? Because you were Jewish, or?

Oh, possibly in the beginning, but after a while you became brothers, so to speak.

Yeah.

You became brothers.

Right. Okay. Well, anything else about the war that we didn't cover? I mean, it sounds like you're just kind of at it all the time.

It was just like playing a football game seven days a week.

Right, all the time.

Not Saturday, seven days a week.

Yeah. There was no break.

There was no break. There was no beginning, no end. The only thing we had a break for is to get replacement soldiers like they do in the football game. Someone's hurt. They put a bandage on them and carry them off the field and send in some more raw meat, you know.

Okay. Well, then I want to talk about after the war. How did you end up back home? Did you come back to Missouri?

Yes, I came back to St. Louis and got a job in the liquor department in the supermarket. And then met my wife, Mary, and moved here. My wife was from Council Bluffs. Okay. So that's how I wound up in Omaha.

More towards the end of the war, where were you when the war ended? Like, where did you hear about it?

When the war ended? I think there's a picture of it here. It was 69 kilometers from Berlin. The Russians had already captured Berlin. Over here, there was a homecoming in New York in the 82nd Airborne Division. Paraded in New York.

Were you there?

No, I was already wounded at that time, and I didn't get to come home with them. They paraded in New York. When the war ended, there's a picture in here someplace. I think this, I think the sign says 69 miles or 69 kilometers from Berlin. Here it is. A hundred and sixty-nine. Oh, wait, that's Los Angeles? No, Berlin. I was right in this area right here when the war ended. We met the Russian troops at the Elbe River, E-L-B-E, Elbe River.

And who had told you that the war ended? Did everyone just stop fighting all of a sudden?

Oh, the rumors were going out every day that it's getting close to an armistice. Different people were contacting each other. Finally, it's over, I don't know. Someone just said it's over.

Alright, and did you just leave... How did you, you were in the hospital, weren't you?

No, not at this time. By then I was back, and from there we occupied Berlin. After that, we, as a reward, I guess, for our part of the war, we became the occupation army in Berlin. Here's a German surrender, an entire army giving up when the war ended, an entire army giving up there. Surrendering, and they were tickled pink to retire and end the war.

How specifically did you end up back in Missouri?

I don't understand.

So you occupied Berlin, and then you...

Well, from there they started what they called a point system for discharging you. We went to service what they called... I can't think of the word. From now until the end, I can't think of the word. Today you go for six months, nine months, tour of duty. Twelve months tour of duty. I can't think of the words they said. Duration. Duration, okay. Once you sign your name, you're in for the duration. And then they started a system of taking the units back home. Well, I take it back. First of all, Japan was still active, and they were bringing armies home and divisions back to the U.S. to send to Japan. And that was going to be our next place from Berlin. We were supposed to come back to the U.S. to go to the Pacific Theater of War when the atomic bomb was dropped. It all ended immediately.

So you came back to the U.S. at that point then?

So they start bringing us back, according to points, how many, how long you'd been overseas, how long you'd been in the Army, decorations, I don't know what all... A point system. I think you'd need 81 points to come home. So it was like a lottery type of thing almost.

And how did you end up in the hospital?

What's that?

You said you weren't there in New York for the parade.

No, I wasn't there. I got home before the parade. I'd been wounded, so I'd get back to this country before the final parade.

Okay. But you were in Europe at the end of the war, though?

When they called the end, you know, said it's over.

Right.

But now it went on for months and months, you know, longer. Yeah. I mean, there's still troops in Europe today from World War II. They're still there 60 years later.

Well, peacekeeping. Okay, so as you got back here and you...

Resumed our life. We all resumed our life. The married men came home to their families. They left. Maybe they had a one-year-old baby when they came home. They had a four-year-old.

Yeah. So I think people returned to their normal lives. They weren't like, you know... It was a huge impact on the way normal lives were kept.

Well, at my age, there wasn't. I guess there was on a married man that came home and found out that his three little children are now three middle aged children and his wife was possibly working while he was gone, or many homes broke up, marriages, with the separation of war, someone gone three, four years. So everybody had a different story when they came home. Some happy, some not so happy. Unemployment. Some were rushing back to finish their education.

So your family was all together again when you came back? Did your sister, who was a nurse, come back at the same time?

Yeah, my sister was okay. She never got overseas. All of her nursing was here in this country. And she never got overseas. Ours was an easy transmission compared to, like I say, those who had been married and bought a home or lost a home or lost a job, had to have a job immediately.

Was there a shortage of jobs? There were obviously plenty of positions that needed to be filled because everyone was gone. Did you see any of that problem happening around you?

This is where the working started, where the women went out. Women hardly ever worked before the war. And the women went out and worked in the munition plants, and they became nurses, and they went on to school and became doctors and lawyers. That was really the making of the modern woman today.

Okay. So what's the other [unclear]? Have you kept in contact with anyone from the war that you met or ?

For a number of years, and little by little, the friendships grew colder and colder and lost track of each other while we moved and that type of thing. No, I haven't contacted anybody, or anybody contacted me I'll bet in the last 15 years.

Okay. Well, I'd like to... See, you've got a couple more artifacts. Take a look at that. If you want to re-explain that or your Purple Heart, we can look at those things.

Well, there's Purple Hearts. I had this over at the community center when I went there, and they thought it was nice. You know, might want to put it up and keep it here at Omaha and return it. But then she said maybe we couldn't return it. Renee, you know her?

Yeah, I know who that is.

Renee said that. So I think my grandson would probably like to have it.

Yeah, that'd be a neat...

Like I said, these various different decorations and things that I was no longer there to get then.

Uh-huh. Okay, well...

Well, here's... There's been... Oh, here it turns out there's a book. This one's an Army book that you got there, but here's just a book that is out on the market in the bookstores now about the exploits of the 82nd Airborne Division.

So how many people were in your division? Was it... I don't think you understand the whole infrastructure of the Army very well. Is the division like a...

Well, a lot of people, obviously. Well, I would say around 12,000. I believe... [phone rings]

It's basically made up of everything is in threes, like a football game, a football team, is your line, your ends, your tackles, your guards, your center, and everything there is in threes. So to simplify it, a company, an infantry company, was made up of three platoons, which was made up of three squads. A squad being, say, 12 men. So you would have 12 men. So everything was in threes. Two squads in front and one squad right in back of them in reserve. Everything was sort of in a combination of threes. Rifle companies shooting bullets. Heavier people shooting bigger guns. And it was made up of, like I say, post office groups, cooks, bakers, clothing people, people that trucked. They had to bring the food from somewhere to the front. They had to bring the ammunition from the front, from the rear to the front, and everything was in groups of threes. And you put it all together, but there were, like, about 14, 15 million people in service at that time.

That's a lot of people. Okay, well...

The ground forces bear the brunt of the war, like, I don't know how far, how close you stayed with the war in Iraq now. You know anything about it?

I was, in the beginning, I paid more attention to it.

Well, we've got a marvelous navy. What do you do with a navy in a desert? So basically, there's been two and a half sailors killed in this war. I don't mean literally, but, you know, 12, 15, whatever that may be. We got an Air Force. Well, you can't drop bombs on shacks.

Yeah.

So there aren't too many Air Force people. So we got atomic submarines do us a hell of a lot of good, don't they? Yeah. Not there in the desert. So you could be in the navy. Peace time, war time, you wouldn't know the difference. Right. You know, peace time or war time. The only one that knows the difference, the guy in the army. Right. In the sand. He's the only one that knows he's at war. The others, it's a joke, you know. Yeah. They're trying to pay the sailors to give up being a sailor, and go into the army give you the extra pay.

Okay. Anything else you'd like to show me or explain?

No that's pretty much it, I guess, you know, simplifying it. It was just a day-to-day war, like I say, a football game that never ended. It played seven days a week.

Just like any other job?

Hmm?

Just like a job, just a job or?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Football, it was seven days. Every day was another battle. Sometimes you didn't know what country you were in. You know, you were along the border. You didn't know if you were in France or you were in Belgium.

Yeah. Were you in Belgium or were you in Holland?

The people over there, the countries are small, and the people along the fringes, the borders of the countries, they intermarried. Someone, just because there was a line there, don't mean a French girl didn't fall in love with a German man. So they spoke many, many languages in Europe. Hmm. And they weren't mad at anybody. It's the governments made the war, not the people. People were the same all over.

Did you, I mean, was it hard to communicate with the locals because they, did they speak English or?

They speak a lot of English over there. Just about anybody you talked to had relatives here in America.

Yeah, okay. Well, nothing else?

No, that's pretty much it, I guess.

All right, thank you very much for your time.

Well, I enjoyed it.

Okay.

I enjoyed it.

So yeah.