Soldiers & Heroes and Small Michigan Towns
Part 2
by Julie Albrecht Royce

Join in the continuation as Croswell’s Harold Nehmer reflects on his war days.

After Luxemburg Harold Nehmer moved into Belgium with the 73rd Armored Field Artillery Battalion, “We were a little group of about 10 officers and enlisted men and we set up a post in a schoolhouse in Mageret.” He begins a story he undoubtedly would rather forget. “It was about 2 a.m., the dark of night. We weren’t aware of the column of Germans that came up by the school. We had not expected them to be coming our way. The crack of a rifle was our first signal of trouble. Hearing the shot, Captain Bookstrom went outside and yelled back ‘our man’s been hit.’ Our sentry was dead. I asked about getting artillery and putting a hole in the first of the 10 or more tanks headed our way.

“I called up our artillery contact and was told ‘You’re on your own.’ I started tearing up codes and that’s when I heard something at the window. I stayed low and crawled over to check it out; I had just peered over the ledge when a German threw a live grenade into the room. A minute later Bookstrom yelled, ‘Nehmer, you still in here?’ I yelled ‘yes’ and heard him scream, ‘Get out.’ By all rights that grenade should’ve killed me.”

Good luck was measured in strange ways for the soldiers of WWII.

“I had a 75 caliber machine gun in my halftrack.” (A half-track is a military vehicle with regular wheels on the front for steering, and caterpillar tracks on the back to propel the vehicle and carry most of the load. It can go over rugged terrain but handles more like a regular vehicle.) “I went out and saw a whole column of tanks. We were close enough we could have thrown a stone and hit them. The Germans had infantry along with the tanks and the 75 caliber wouldn’t penetrate German tank armor.

“Earlier I had received a call from the colonel wanting wire strung to the firing batteries, but that wasn’t possible. They were a half mile away from us. I told him, ‘The last place we left, you told me to leave all the wire there and get out right now.’ The Germans were coming in on us. So, I told my guys to jump in their jeeps and get out of there. We couldn’t give the colonel what he wanted because we didn’t have that much wire left.”

“After I stepped outside I saw Sergeant Fazoli lying on the ground waiting to be captured. I said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ We ran along the hedge until the Germans threw a flare in our direction and the whole world lit up. It gave them the advantage of seeing us but we couldn’t see them. A German soldier jabbed a gun in my side through the hedgerow. I had no idea he was that close. I usually carried a 50-caliber pistol but it was in my bed roll. I probably wouldn’t have been able to hit anything with it anyway. It was a poor bit of equipment - more for looks than protection.

“We saw another soldier who had been run over by a half track. He was a corporal in my message center and for cover he had crawled under one of our half tracks. A German climbed into the vehicle, started it and drove forward, crushing the soldier's leg, which was bleeding and swollen. We carried the corporal to a house about a hundred yards away. I put an envelope of my sulfa into the bloody mess of his wound and gave him my other sulfa packet for later.

We were so close to the German Headquarters that we could have hit it with a sling shot. A German officer demanded to know where we kept gasoline. They were as desperately short of gasoline as we were. I didn’t know where our gasoline supplies were, but I wouldn’t have told him anyway. He asked his question in perfect English and I asked how he came to speak such fluent English and he told me he was French. I asked what he was doing fighting with the Germans and he just shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Comme ci Comme ca,’ or it more or less was just the way things turned out.”

Harold Nehmer was captured at the Battle of the Bulge on December 19, 1944; just three days after that fight began. That battle did not end until more than a month later on January 25, 1945. Three German armies, three American armies, three British divisions and contingents of Belgian, Canadian and French troops fought the battle in bitterly freezing weather as the German armies headed for the sea. When it was over, the Americans sustained 81,000 casualties, including 19,000 killed and more than 23,500 captured. First Lieutenant Harold Nehmer was among the latter.

He was first transported in a boxcar with 60 other soldiers to Stalag II-A at Neubrandenberg situated in the northeastern part of Germany. He was on that train for four days and four nights, from December 29th to January 3rd. They were given no food or water during the trip.

Nehmer was glad they did not keep him at that camp; he says it was one of the worst places to get warehoused as a POW. Guys were tiered up three high lying on boards. He was given a bag with a little straw or sawdust in it. “We could cover up with it, lay on it or use it however we wanted. My first night I tried to lay on mine. Zap, I felt a bite, then another, then another. I was chasing them all night long. Bed bugs or lice.”

The next morning he was let outside for a few minutes. He took his bag and dumped its nasty contents on the ground and sifted every bit of the stuffing. “I never saw a bug of any kind.” So he restuffed his sack and took it back inside. The next night brought more of the same thing; he again found himself slapping, and swatting, and itching all night long as bugs crawled on him.

One of his guards wanted to know why someone named Nehmer was over there fighting the Germans. Harold told him he had seen what Hitler was doing, and he knew he was there fighting for the right reason. It was not any more complicated than that. The Nehmer family had come from Stettin, Germany (today it is in Poland and called Szczecin), but he was now from Croswell, Michigan, and a United States citizen. That was where his loyalties lay. However, he wished he had learned to speak German in his home because it would have made communication easier. Still, the old songs he was taught as a child in much happier circumstances allowed him to pick out a word or two of the German conversations.

After a few days at Neubrandenburg Harold was loaded in a train boxcar to Stalag IV B, Muhlberg. Being an officer, Harold was not allowed to work as a POW and since stalags were the German POW camps for enlisted men and non-commissioned officers, he could not be kept at Neubrandenburg or Muhlberg long. On January 27, 10 days after arriving in Muhlberg, Harold was herded back into a boxcar for transport to Oflag XIII B Hammelburg where the Germans warehoused officers. He remained more than four months, until March 26, at Hammelburg.

“General Patton’s son-in-law was in Hammelburg with us and when Patton sent in a task force we figured the reason he chose our camp from all of those needing liberation was to get his son-in-law out. He didn’t pick out any of the other camps, no, no, he picked out this officers’ camp.

“The liberation troops fought their way in and suffered serious casualties. The Germans were waiting for them, having learned a group was coming in, but not sure where they were headed. “The Americans didn’t even know how to get into Hammelburg,” Harold shrugs, “their maps weren’t that good and many main roads were blocked and bridges were blown up. They needed another route into Hammelburg. They finally picked up a German farmer and put him in the head jeep and said, ‘now you take us to Hammelburg.’ And he directed them. When our troops arrived, they did some shooting, and scared off the German guards. It was late in the afternoon and the Germans just took off into the woods.

“The Americans had used up so much of their gasoline, zigzagging, trying to find us that they couldn’t drive all of the vehicles back. They transferred the gas that was available to the few that they were going to drive out and left the rest behind.”

Nehmer and the other prisoners were told, “You are free right now. You can go back into the camp and wait; more American troops are coming through here to liberate you soon. Or you can stay with us and fight your way back.”

Harold jumped onto the half-track but could only get one leg in. There were two wounded men lying down in the bottom. Hanging on as he was, he was an open target in every town they fought their way through. The alternative, he was told, was to take off on foot. He got two other officers, Lieutenant Kimmel and Lieutenant Gardarian and they set off on foot, trying to get back to the American line about 30 miles away. It was not a straight shot and they were forced to go through German lines to get there. Harold did not let himself think about the danger right then.

Be sure to look for the continuation in next month’s issue.