Young Officer, Sombre Duty

A YOUNG SOLDIER SECURES THE CITY OF DACHAU DURING WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS

Dick Gray, who celebrated his 83rd birthday in January 2010, is iR’s bookkeeper. He has been in the employ of inRESONANCE since the very early days of our company, in 1999; and today we keep him busy enough that we are his sole client.

Dick’s story is a departure for us. Our usual iR profiles center on our unique clients and resourceful Advisory Board. In this case, we want to introduce you to a fascinating moment in U.S. history—during the months immediately following the surrender of the Germans, at the end of WWII in Europe—in which Dick played a role, as a young officer in the U.S. Army of Occupation of Germany.

Less than two years after first serving in the Army with the rank of Private, Dick had risen to the rank of a Second Lieutenant in command of a company of MPs. Among other duties, their assignment was to provide security for a group of German military prisoners accused of—and later convicted of—war crimes against U.S. soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. This was one of several War Crimes Tribunals taking place in the city of Dachau. There were so many trials, in fact, that a special building was erected to house them all.

There are many accounts of the Malmedy Massacre to be found on the Internet, including personal remembrances and scrapbook entries. Most accounts agree with this description, from Wikipedia:

While some disputes exist about details, most agree that the Malmedy Massacre was a war crime in which about 90 American prisoners of war were murdered by their German captors on December 17, 1944, by Kampfgruppe Peiper (part of the 1st SS Panzer Division), a German combat unit, during the Battle of the Bulge. This massacre, as well as others committed by the same unit the same day and on the following days, was the subject of a trial during the Dachau Trials of 1946.

Hitler had ordered that the battle be carried out with the brutality that was more common on the Eastern Front, in order to scare the enemy. Sepp Dietrich confirmed the order during the trial related to this case. According to certain sources, during the briefings preceding the operation, Peiper stated that no quarter was to be granted, no prisoners to be taken, and no pity to be shown towards the Belgian civilians.²

The Fourth Geneva Convention, which would be enacted after this period, in 1949–1950, defines appropriate treatment of Prisoners of War as:

Dick’s account of this time period is vibrant with the sense of small villages teeming with groups of people—soldiers from the many Allied countries, survivors of concentration camps, prisoners of war, accused war criminals in custody, active military, and townspeople—all in transition. Dick’s company was in charge of providing security for the area.

“Security was not my specialty, although I went into Dachau having recently been trained as a security officer. The U.S. soldiers were trying to get out as soon as they could; they wanted to get home. And we were just coming in as they were going out. When we arrived at the train station, we met a train of soldiers who were leaving. ‘We have a lot to sell you!’ they announced. They sold us their German marks and souvenirs at bargain rates, in order to change their German money for U.S. I bought a 45 calibre pistol, which I used then and still have today. That weapon is beautiful. I still polish it up.

“The war crimes trials were held in a building that was built especially for the trials. The Dachau concentration camp had been closed, but we had the opportunity to visit it. It really struck me in the gut, what those people had done. I remember going over to Dachau and seeing the gas rooms and the ovens....To this day, I cannot understand how anyone could do that. It doesn’t set with me.”

The 72 Germans accused of the Malmedy Massacre were charged with murdering as many as 90 U.S. POWs in one afternoon, rather than send the prisoners back to a staging area for confinement.

“Our primary duty was to provide security for the trial. We erected a secure prison compound adjacent to the courthouse, and we provided security throughout the trial. And we were responsible for security of the general area. Most of the U.S. soldiers had left. We had no security guards. Soldiers from other countries in the Allied Forces were leaving for home, but there were thousands of Polish soldiers who did not want to return home. So we took care of them.

“That was an unusual assignment. Our small town held a full infantry rifle company, I remember, and in our area there were Army Air Force companies. These men were waiting to be sent home. We were responsible for protecting that area, too.

“And there was another group. There were a tremendous number of Jewish people who remained there. They may have been called in for other trials and stayed there, or perhaps they did not have the means to leave. Ours was not the first, or the only trial. These people were given food and clothing, whatever they needed.

“There was a lot of sorting things out after the war ended. I am not sure how it was all organized.

“It’s difficult,” he remembers, “because you are young and you have a lot of command responsibility.” Dick was 20 years old. “I was the commanding officer of a company. What the Army had done after the war was put units into these small towns. We had a full complement of soldiers and we had two POW camps in Bobingen. The war was over and these camps were filled with captured German soldiers.

“War is tough. Anybody who has been out in combat knows. I am sure the German soldiers had problems and concerns, too. A soldier is a soldier. Most of the people we had in these cages were just regular G.I.s. They were not like the men who were on trial for war crimes.

“These prisoners ran the camps themselves. Each camp had its own officers. They lived in fenced enclosures, and they built whatever they needed. They were very skilled. We took them out once a day for a hike.”

Dick remembers well the beautiful dog who helped him police his prisoners.

“I have always been a dog person. While I was there I got a wonderful German shepherd, who had been a pet of the German military. I retrained him and he was the one to take these prisoners out for their daily walk. The dog kept them in line. He was a beautifully trained animal. The dog unfortunately got distemper; there was no medicine available for him. I wired my father in the U.S. for the medicine, but it arrived one day too late.

“I had wanted to be a vet. After high school, I went to UCONN, got one semester in there, then transferred to Penn State and put in another half year. But the country was at war, and there was an expectation that you would go into military service when you reached a certain age. I entered the military at 18. After separation from the Army, I joined the Army Reserves in New York City.

Dick’s transition back to the U.S. was eased by another dog with its own story.

“I had acquired a tri-colored collie in Germany, which I shipped back to the States when I returned to New York. The dog arrived on a Russian ship. When I arrived at the port to pick up my dog, the Russian captain tried to tell me they didn’t have her; but I saw her on deck, playing with some of the sailors.” Dick laughed at the memory. “I displayed that 45 I had acquired in Germany to convince the captain to release my property to me. ‘Oh, THAT dog,’ he said.”

Dick’s stateside experience after the war included service in the Military Police Reserves in New York City; later, Dick applied his training to community police work, serving as an on-call constable in Westport, Connecticut for many years. Eventually, Dick built a successful business as a manufacturer’s representative working with giant utility companies, all the while raising two children as a single dad. Their time in Connecticut was—still is—filled with dogs and horses.

“I eventually got tired of traveling, so I closed the company down. After that, I did bookkeeping for a few companies. That’s when I started working for inRESONANCE.

“inRESONANCE took a lot of time, so I scaled back until I was working just for this one client. It has been a pleasure to watch inRESONANCE grow the way it has. Doing the books, I get to see the way that things go. It is a perfect organization: very, very good management, upright values. Everybody is very competent. This is unusual. They just don’t go out and sell just anything to a school. It is my pleasure to work with inRESONANCE.”

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1. Earl F. Ziemke, M.A. Ph.D., article “The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944–1946” Published by the Center of Military History, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C. http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/Occ-GY/   back
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre   back
3. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Geneva_Convention/Fourth_Geneva_Convention   back