Jerry Morgan – The Texas Liberators

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May 18, 2012

I went to Oklahoma University after I graduated from high school. Mother went with us down there, rented a large home, and set up a dormitory for students. That year was a good one, successful. But, in the next summer, I went back to Oklahoma, back to Enid to work. Then, on her way back one night, she and the lady that helped her in her housekeeping ran into the back of a wagon, horse-drawn, in the middle of the night. She was killed. Well, I was determined—since my dad was so insistent on my getting an education—I was so determined that I went back to school for the next year.

But during that summer, I went to Camp— Let’s see, we went from Barkeley—not Barkeley, but from Abilene to Louisiana for summer maneuvers. Those were serious maneuvers in preparation of what was to be induction into the army. On the way back home, we were told that we were going to let these guys out that didn’t want to go, but the rest of us would be inducted in November. So we went into the service on November 4, 1940. So then, we went into Camp Barkeley from there. Camp Barkeley was built as a new camp at Abilene, Texas. I was sent with an advance party to Abilene to locate housing and everything for the unit. So when we got down there, it was being filled with recruits and new enlistments. It was kind of a confused thing, but it was more physical training than anything else.

One little incident that happened was that we had what was called a flotilla of the ships, and they were in command of a com-modore. I don’t know what a commodore’s responsibility was, but he was the fleet commander. We sailed from Martha’s Vine-yard. We went out to an island to practice landing. The command came over the loudspeaker, “Now hear this.” He said, “There will be a sound, a horn sound, and the gates will open on the front, and I want these vehicles off of here immediately.” So we approached the island, the ship hit the sand, the horn sounded, the doors opened, and my first tank went off. But all that was showing after he departed from the ship was a machine gun above the water. We had hit a small reef. . . . The good part of it was that a couple of years later in Europe, I got a letter from the quartermaster—no, from ordnance—telling me that I owed eighty thousand dollars for that tank. I took the letter to my commanding officer, and I said, “Sir, what am I to do with this? I don’t have the money and don’t have the means.” He said, “Well, let me take care of it.” He tore it into small bits. That’s the last we heard from it.

We went aboard a—the vehicles were transported on LSTs [landing ship, tanks], but the troops, our troops were on a cargo ship—well, actually a luxury Swedish liner which had been converted for army use. We landed at Mers-el-Kébir, Africa. We got a little bit of training there, but then, from there, we went to—well, I’ve forgotten the name of the port where we departed—but from there, we went to Italy, Salerno. . . . [F]rom there we went on north to various places: Benevento, Caserta. We got to the Volturno River where everything quieted down across the river from Monte Cassino. We were stagnated there. They withdrew us back to Naples to load to go to Anzio, and that was a new experience. We got aboard and got ashore safely, no problems whatsoever. Then, our corps commander decided that we were going to hold the little land that we had acquired. Well, Anzio was surrounded by mountains on the north and to the northeast. It gave the Ger-mans time to set up a defense against us. So we sat there until May being shot and returned some shooting.

I spent 515 days in combat, and the worst I ever got hurt was on Anzio. I had become a company commander by that time. And I had driven one of my tanks through the back side, or the shore side, of a two-story building, a farmhouse, putting me inside the building to where he [the gunner] could shoot out the window during the day, if needed, and could come out and maneuver at nighttime. We had an aircraft that came over al-most at an appointed time every night, and he would drop what were called butterfly bombs. It was a case that contained small parachute-equipped bombs that would detonate as they hit the ground. It was an antipersonnel thing. Well, I could hear the air-craft coming, and I knew I better get into cover. Well, one of— It was nighttime and dark, and I ran for the front door to go into the building, and someone had left a gasoline can on the steps. I hit it with my shin. But that was the worst that I was ever hurt during the war.

Well, the next day I knew was going to be different. We had heard all kinds of rumors about concentration camps, about how they treated people and what they did to them. One of the rumors that I remember was that they made lampshades out of human skin. Well, that sounded kind of far-fetched. But anyway, the next day we were good to go from Nuremburg to Dachau and to come into Dachau from the northeast. And my approach unit was with the 158th Infantry. I borrowed—from my reconnaissance company, I borrowed an M8 [armored car, with a driver], got in it, and started south on that road. I got to the main east-west road that would lead me into Dachau. The objective was the camp, but there was a little community called Dachau. So I kept thinking, maybe we could get into, approach Dachau from the south. Our feeling was at this point that the German army was pretty much in disarray, and that they had decided that they were being beat-en pretty badly. We really didn’t anticipate much opposition, so I wasn’t too afraid of wandering off by myself. So we got into the city of Dachau. It was a small town, but I noticed this one beautiful mansion there, about a three-story building. And I thought, “Well, that’s the bürgermeister’s house.”

Anyway, there was a camp entry—I went on past that a little bit—and there was a railroad that was headed north-northeast. Dachau camp was just a—oh, less than a half a mile from the town of Dachau. So I told the driver to get on the railroad track and let’s see where it would take us. It took us into Dachau. As we were going in on the railroad track, here is the main road, the main entrance into the camp from the town of Dachau. A tree-lined road. I didn’t want to go in that way because I knew that if there was any resistance, it would be there, along there. So we just kept inching our way into town—or into the camp—and where it took us was to the ovens that were a part of the camp. It was well paved on both sides of the track, and the ovens were well built. And there were three gondola cars there. Well, we couldn’t see—from where we were, we couldn’t see into them. So I had the driver drive up alongside one of them. We both got out and got up on the deck of the M8 and looked in. Believe me, the Holocaust existed. They were loaded with bodies. The bodies still had their uniforms on, but they were purposely put there for putting into the ovens. The whole truth became evident at that time.

So I said, “Come on. Let’s go move into camp and see what we can see.” So we went—we drove along this well-paved street, I guess about, oh, maybe three hundred yards. We came to the first fence. It was about a ten-foot fence. Behind it were, as I re-call, about five men in [striped] uniform. But they were kind of mute. They weren’t exuberant or fearful or anything. They were just—you know, just had an indifferent feeling. There were no German soldiers in evidence anywhere. I think that because of Dachau being—I mean the previous day’s battle—I think they had all evacuated. I was surprised at the low number of people that were in the quarters behind these buildings. Or that we saw. To the left were some barracks-like buildings. This idea of skins on lamps was in my mind. And I thought, “Let’s go see what we might see.” So I went into one of the buildings and the first thing I came to was an office. It was very well furnished, neat. There was, of course, no one there. But I didn’t know—but what maybe later in the camps there might be some other people. I knew that I had no business being there. There wasn’t anything I could do for those people.

So we turned around and went back out the main gate to the city of Dachau. And it was there that I—I knew we weren’t going any farther than that because other units had liberated Munich, which was just down the road a bit. Munich would be the next objective, and we wouldn’t be a part of it. So when I went out, I stopped at this big house I was talking about. Sure enough, it was the bürgermeister’s house. His wife was there; he wasn’t there, his wife was there. I had an interpreter, and I asked her where her husband was. She didn’t know. And I said, “Well, okay. You have two hours to pack whatever you want to take with you and turn the house over to us. We’re going to use it for a command post.” It was no objection, no lamentation, no nothing. We went back about three hours later, and the house was vacant. Beautiful place. We stayed there about three days until we were given further orders.

. . . I didn’t really know what to expect in the camp. And of course, we couldn’t communicate with any of the prisoners because we couldn’t speak the language. I had an interesting meeting with a fellow here in Midland about, oh, it was back in the spring. I went to a symphony concert and behind me was a Church of Christ minister that I vaguely knew. He introduced me to his guest who was a German Church of Christ minister who lived in that area. We had a little short discussion about Dachau. I told him that I had been there. He made the com-ment that most people assumed that that was a Jewish camp. He said yes, there were some Jews there, but the main part, the main use of that camp was for crime—people that committed major crimes—and for political prisoners. They were all treated the same, which was finally execution. It wasn’t principally for Jewish people.

. . I began to think about, well, why—how long had those people been in there? They couldn’t have been in there over twenty-four hours. Otherwise, they would have begun to spoil. They were still in their clothing. So our timing there was such that, Oh my God, panic set in, and they took off. This was what they were doing at the time they took off.

But this was evidence that there was a Holocaust.

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