Chapter 2
Three days later….
The Allies were preparing to land on various beaches in Normandy, France, for the massive invasion the Allies planned against Germany. The weather was awful, mostly foggy, but Eisenhower and his command staff thought now would be the perfect time to stage the invasion.
Charles Atwood found himself in one of the lead landing crafts, in the turbulent sea, and thought about how he found himself here after joining the Army on December 8, 1941.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, it shocked the then twenty-one year old Charles. He, like everyone else, had assumed they would attack only the Philippines, not Hawaii. He came from a family with a long line of service in the military; ever since the French and Indian War when one of Charles’ ancestors fought in the same outfit as George Washington. During the Revolution, other family members fought under Lightfoot Harry Lee. During the War Between the States, the Atwood’s served under General Robert E. Lee - until that day at Appomattox Courthouse. For the Atwood’s, the war was about states’ rights and not letting a central government bully people, since the Atwood’s never owned slaves, they were pretty much poor dirt farmers ever since the first Atwood arrived on Virginia soil back in the 1620’s.
The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, like many other men across the United States, Charles joined the Army, expecting to fight both the Germans and the Japanese. Now he found himself with thousands of others, on the way to bringing down Germany and Hitler.
Charles’ buddy, Billy, who he met in basic training and had been in the same unit ever since, was saying something while Charles was in his fog of thought. Billy punched Charles in the arm, bringing him back to the present. “What? What did you say?”
“I was saying that I’m looking forward to plugging some Krauts. How about you?”
“That’s why we’re here.” Charles thought that maybe he should talk to Billy once again about accepting Jesus into his heart and getting saved before it was too late. “Billy, have you asked Christ into your heart yet?”
Billy’s mood darkened slightly. He sighed and replied, “No, but like I said before, I want to get my life straightened out before I do. I got plenty of time,”
“You don’t know that. You could die at any moment. Jesus says….”
“Look man,” Billy interrupted in a surprising flash of anger, “leave me alone about it for now. When we get through this battle, then you should ask me again. Ok?”
“Fine….” Charles had tried again and failed. He had asked Billy the question every two or three months, but he was immovable. Charles prayed inwardly, “Heavenly Father, please protect us from harm. I know that Billy isn’t saved and I’ve tried to lead him to you, but he won’t budge. Please guide the Allies to victory and bring us home safely. In your name, amen.”
“Ok, men,” their sergeant interrupted, “get ready. It’s almost time to get off of this tub to fight. Remember to keep your heads down and rifles above your heads so they won’t get soaked by the water.” then the sergeant received a signal just as the landing craft’s gate was lowering. “Out! Out! Out!” shouted the sergeant.
“Come on, let’s get this party started!” shouted Billy as he rushed out.
Charles followed him, hearing the whizzing of bullets, the sounds of guns pounding away on the battleships a few miles behind them, distant explosions, and the general sounds of battle. Within seconds, he heard a “THWACK,” followed by a grunt, and a splash. He looked over to where Billy had been standing seconds before. He looked down and saw his friend floating in the water, a bullet to the heart, and blood pooling around him. If he were anywhere else besides the biggest battle in world history, Charles would’ve broken down and cried for this lost soul, but he had a job to do, so he dragged Billy’s body to the beach in spite of the chaos around him, and then shouted for a Medic.
As he waited for the Medic, Charles prayed, not for Billy, since that would be pointless, but for his family and for protection in this battle, “Dear Heavenly Father, I come to you this day in regret that I wasn’t able to lead Billy to you. If possible, please send someone back home to lead his family to you so that they may know you as their Savior. Please guide me and protect me as I fight in this battle and upcoming battles. Please protect and guide my family back home, and please help my leaders make wise decisions as they guide us through this war. Thank you. Thy will be done, in Jesus name, amen.”
The Medic arrived, and asked, “Is he dead?”
“Yeah. Can you make sure his body gets back to his family?”
“Not a problem. He’ll have to be gathered up with the hundreds of others who have already died, later on when the battle’s over with. I suggest you get back into the battle, Corporal.”
“Right.” Charles picked up his rifle and ran towards where the Germans were ensconced in their pill boxes, shooting at the Allied forces, while he began shooting back in spite of explosions around him, bullets whizzing past him, and his fellow soldiers being shot down.
Over a day later, after getting through German defenses on the beaches, the military units that landed at various spots finally linked up, and they went inland to clear the French countryside of German soldiers. Charles was thankful that he hadn’t been harmed, but knew many who had died during the battle, and he had no idea if they had accepted Christ. He hoped they had sometime in the past. Charles had accepted Christ when he was eight years old, one afternoon when he asked his Mom about how to get saved. She led him to the Lord and he got baptized two weeks later at the church their family had been going to since it was built back in the 1700’s.
Charles and his unit were now going from town to town clearing Germans as they made their way to Berlin. Sometimes, the German soldiers surrendered fairly easily, mostly because they were regular Army and had no Gestapo with them. Unfortunately, at other times, when a Gestapo agent was with a group of German soldiers, they fought to the death. Charles thought this was a shame, especially since dying for a lost cause was pointless, and more than likely, most of those men would probably never come to know Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.
In one of the many towns they found resistance, Charles’ unit fought hard like they always did. They were almost through, when they discovered a sniper held up in the local church. Sergeant Jackson ordered Charles, “Corporal Atwood, you and Corporals Feretti, Jones, and Snyder go take that guy out so we can move on,”
“But, he’s in a church….” Charles helpfully tried to point out.
“Yeah, so?” interrupted Jackson.
“Isn’t it a bad idea to kill someone in a church?”
“This is war, so suck it up and do what I say. If you don’t, I’ll shoot you where you stand. Got it?”
“Yes, Sergeant. Ok guys, let’s go.” Charles and the three headed, slowly, into the church to root out the German.
It took the four men more than thirty minutes to get into the church, because of the sniper raining bullets down on them, but they did manage to do it. Charles was thinking about the fact that he’d never actually been face to face with anyone he had killed in battle and began to wonder what he would do if and when he had to do it. The bell tower part of the church seemed to be where the German sniper was hiding. Charles’ heart began to race and his hands to sweat as he nervously made his way up the staircase.The German soldier, who was dressed as Waffen-SS, was perched near the window, taking potshots at the American troops. Charles quietly aimed his gun, which was equipped with a bayonet at the end, and ordered in German the only words he knew since coming to Europe, “Aufgeben! Übergabe! (Give up! Surrender!)”
The German turned around with an amused look on his face as he rose from his seat. It looked to Chatles like the enemy soldier was the size of a linebacker on an NFL team back in the States, and about a foot taller than Charles, who was fairly skinny and not very athletic. The German replied back with some contempt in his voice, “Nein wie über Sie statt kapitulieren? (No, how about you surren
der instead?)”
Charles understood the “No,” but the rest he didn’t grasp. The German kept talking while slowly approaching, giving Charles pause since he really didn’t want to kill the guy. His pounding heart and clammy palms weren’t helping. While he kept his his eyes squarely focused on the German, he began to pray inwardly, “Dear Heavenly Father, I do not want to kill this man. I need help!” Charles ordered the German to surrender one more time, suggesting that he was serious by showing that he was ready to fire his weapon.
The German came within five feet of him when he saw Feretti, Jones, and Snyder appear, making him stop in his tracks. Snyder, whose ancestry was German, and had taken German in high school, told the Waffen-SS soldier to surrender. The two began talking back and forth in German, when Snyder finally said, “He’ll surrender. He doesn’t want to die either, being surrounded by four Americans and all. He claims Germany will still win and that the four of us will soon be caught and executed. I told him to shove that idea where the sun don’t shine.” The four laughed as they escorted the German outside and into the custody of American military police.
Charles was relieved that he didn’t have to kill a man face-to-face, and prayed, “Heavenly Father, thank you for helping me out. I really didn’t want to kill a man that I was facing eye to eye. I pray that someone leads him to you if that’s in your will. Thank you for everything, please guide me on the right path, and please help me lead others to you. In your name I pray, amen.”
A few months later, the United States Third Army, which Charles was now assigned to, after being transferred to the 80th Infantry Division, came to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and began to liberate it. The 80th was sent by Headquarters to take control of the camp a few days later.
As the 80th was about to head out to the camp, Charles overheard soldiers from the 83rd talking about what they had seen. “It was awful. The people there were basically living skeletons with skin on them. The smell of death was overwhelming, there were hundreds of dead bodies stacked in mounds, and the stupid Krauts didn’t even care. I’ll never forget it in my life,”
“I have a hard time believing that. Who can be that cruel?” asked Charles.
“The Krauts, that’s who,”
“But, what about the regular German population, didn’t they try to stop it?” asked a still unbelieving Charles.
“Nope. They’re a bunch of sheep if you ask me, letting Hitler do whatever he wanted, and killing hundreds, if not thousands, of people without any consequences. Well, Hitler will get his, I can guarantee that. Just you wait and see, you won’t ever forget it when you see it.”
Charles didn’t want to believe humans could be so cruel and unfeeling to each other. He thought the soldier he was talking to was exaggerating. Surely it couldn’t be that bad, he thought as he and his Division began to make their way towards Buchenwald.
He smelled the Camp long before he ever saw it with his own eyes. He also saw emaciated people walking past the Division going in the opposite direction, with distant looks in their eyes, in a sort of haunted manner, and practically dead to the goings-on of the world. It gave him a chill up his spine, but Charles still thought that what he heard about Buchenwald was exaggerated.
As they entered the Camp, Charles saw what he’d heard was no exaggeration. It horrified him and made him physically ill. He swallowed the bile and told himself to suck it up, because he had a job to do.
He saw the mounds of dead bodies everywhere and the overwhelming stink of death and decomposing bodies. There was sickly looking, emaciated people in tattered striped blue and gray clothing, some were even naked, aimlessly walking around, having no idea what to do with themselves now that they were free. Some, still having the presence of mind to know that Americans were now in the Camp to be liberators, descended on the soldiers, asking for cigarettes or something to eat that would be easy on their stomachs. The 80th Infantry did their best to give what they could.
Charles also saw what everyone else tends to see wherever there’s human suffering — the American media, descending on the suffering like vultures.
There was Edward R. Murrow, over by one of the stack of bodies, reporting for CBS News about what he saw. Over near the barracks, there were the Life magazine photographers taking pictures of the dead and dying, and even posing them for pictures to make it look more “dramatic.”
Charles was disgusted and began wondering why this happened to innocent people. Why on Earth would God allow this to happen? Why would a human do this to another human? He had no answers, even though he did read the Bible as often as he could, but if he could find a chaplain in the near future, he’d ask him. The answer had to be more than there was just evil in the world. Charles didn’t think there was much more that would shock him. He hoped there would be nothing worse than this.
Sergeant Jackson brought Charles out of his gloomy thoughts when he started giving orders once they were out of the trucks, “Ok, everyone listen up. We’re going to have rotating four hour shifts, mostly doing guard duty. You’ll also help where you can, like helping the nurses get these people cleaned up, for example. Feel free to tour this wretched place, get it solidly in your mind to see that nothing like this ever happens again. If you get overwhelmed, you can go out into the woods to clear your head or your stomach. We’ll be here until General Patton orders otherwise. Ok, get to work.”
The orders given to Charles had him doing his stint on guard duty later in the day, so he and the others decided to take a tour of the concentration camp.
The conditions were awful everywhere, and as they were walking through buildings, a Corporal from another division walked past them, with a tinge of green on his face.
“You okay?” Charles asked
His Adam’s apple bobbed and he looked Charles in the eyes. “You guys oughta see what I just saw. Them Krauts were burning bodies right on up ‘til we showed up and we finally managed to get the durned thing turned off. I hear tell that General Patton, his very own self, is going to tour this place. Once he sees what’s here, he’ll blow his top. It’s plum awful what I just saw….” then he threw up. “I need some fresh air.” then the Corporal staggered towards the woods.
Charles and the other men walked into the building where the Corporal had told them about the burned bodies. They found six ovens, with at least six very charred bodies still inside the ovens. One of the Sergeants in charge was saying, “We haven’t the slightest idea how long they were doing this, but if I had to guess, the Germans were burning more than one hundred bodies a day. It would make more than three thousand bodies burned a month, which would be more than thirty-five thousand bodies burned a year, just for this one camp. I wonder how many of those were burned alive? To be honest, the whole thought is staggering and beyond awful. The German higher-ups are going to pay, that’s for sure. Eisenhower and Patton will make sure of it.”
Charles searched for and found the chaplain for their unit assisting the nurses helping get the former prisoners cleaned up and attempting to get food into them. The chaplain in civilian life was the assistant pastor at Charles’ church, so they knew each other in civilian life. Charles felt confident that this man would have the answers for him for why God would allow this cruelty to happen to his Chosen People - or to anyone for that matter.
“David, I need to talk to you, if you have a minute,”
“What do you need to talk about, Charles?”
“I don’t understand how God could allow such evil to happen, especially to his own Chosen People. How can people be such monsters to each other?”
“Charles, you’re not alone in your questions, others have asked me the same thing recently, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. Come, let’s sit and talk about this, and then I can show you verses in the Bible that says why such things happen.”
The two men went over to a table that had two chairs and sat down. David had a pocket Bible on him, so he began looking through it for the appropriate verses so he
could answer Charles’ questions.
David, shocked when he arrived at Buchenwald, knew God always has a plan for everything, even when evil men seemed to be winning, since no one could know God’s thoughts,, saw that Charles was ready to begin the lesson.
“OK, first of all, in Isaiah 55:8-9, it says: ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ Now I know that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter in regards to your question, Charles, but God has a purpose for everything, and his purposes are higher than anything we can imagine. Do you understand so far?”
“I think so. Go on,”
“Because of Adam’s fall in the Garden of Eden, we’re cursed with a sin nature. Some people, like Adolf Hitler and his friends, have turned themselves over to a reprobate mind because they don’t want to know Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. I’m sure someone tried to explain to them that they were sinners, but they rejected it over and over, so in Romans 1:28 it says: ‘And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.’ This means that these people are filled with thoughts of fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, and become haters of God. When they’re like this, they hate all things of and by God, including His people, Christian and Jew alike. Do you understand so far?”
“Yes,”
“As a Christian, God has given you the ability to discern good from evil and He helps you find out what His will is when it comes to your walk with Christ. When God turns a man over to a reprobate mind, He has no more hope for them, so He lets their heart go, and they become hardened to anything related to God and Christ. Say I was to put my hand into a fire, what do you think would happen Charles?”
“Your hand would burn and you’d learn not to do it again. So, you’re saying that some people are allowed to commit horrible acts so others will not do it again, like what the Germans did to the Jews? Have I got it right?”
“Yes, but that’s probably an easier explanation for the whole idea. Did you get your questions answered?”
“Yeah, I think so. Thanks for taking the time to explain it all to me, I appreciate it,”
“You’re welcome. Do you have time to join me in a short prayer?”
“Yes,”
“Then let’s begin: Dear Heavenly Father, please forgive us of our sins and please help the Germans to see that what they did was a sin against you and all of mankind. Please help the two of us get through the rest of this war. We ask that you help our leaders in the upcoming weeks, months, and years to make the correct decisions. Thank you and thy will be done. In Jesus name, amen.”
A couple days later, after he was assigned to manage the city of Weimar, General Patton toured Buchenwald. He was apparently sickened by the atrocities, and headed back to Weimar. A day or so later, the townsfolk and the Mayor were force marched into Buchenwald to show them what had been happening there for the past few years. Nothing had been cleaned up, so the townsfolk saw the bodies that were stacked and the partially burned bodies in the crematorium. The next day, it was reported that the Mayor and his wife committed suicide. A couple of weeks later, the Soviets took over administration of Buchenwald and the Third Army went elsewhere.
The end of the war came a month later, when the Germans surrendered. Charles and the 80th Division would have to stay in Germany to help keep the peace.
******