WWII veterans again fill nostrils with evil of Dachau

Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 2, 2005 at midnight

Text size

More Local News

Inside the book are the details of more than 500 days of combat as the men of the Colorado regiment struggled through some of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

At the worst of it, entire companies of 200 men were wiped out. Still, the Colorado-based 157th Infantry fought on - slogging through Italy, north through France and into Germany, where they saw the end of the war at the place that looked like the end of the world.

Sixty years after he placed his old Royal typewriter on a shelf, Jack Hallowell, of Lakewood, opened the regimental history book filled with the battles he witnessed and then helped document.

He turned to the last chapter, marked with a skull and crossbones: Dachau.

"There are no words for Dachau, and even the pictures of its horrors are pale behind its realities," he read. "Veterans of six companies to whom death was commonplace sickened and vomited at Dachau. Not the sight and smell of death did this, but the decaying evidence of human cruelty that was beyond the understanding of the normal mind.

"Dachau was rot and stench and filth.

"Dachau was Hitler and the SS.

"And deny it though its people did with every breath, Dachau was Germany of 1933-45.

"Let Dachau be in our memories."

Hallowell closed the cover, surprised that his voice still quavers at the memories and words written by one of the fellow historians in his group.

"Gee," he said quietly. "That kind of chokes me up."

Six decades after his regiment found the gates of the camp - inscribed in German with the words, "Work will set you free" - Hallowell on Sunday returned to Dachau with men of the 157th, who proved the sign wrong. It was the Americans who set them free.

The enemy becomes clear

They smelled Dachau before they saw it.

On April 29, 1945, the men of the 157th arrived at the camp to find boxcars filled with bodies.

"The bodies were getting really black. I don't know how long they must have been there," Hallowell said. "One was hanging out of one of the cars, like he was trying to get out."

Cranston "Chan" Rogers, of Medway, Mass., had recently joined the 157th when he was told to head to the concentration camp.

"What's a concentration camp?" he recalled asking at the time.

For Rogers, it wasn't until Dachau that he realized what the war meant.

"I never felt real hatred for people until then," he said. "It was such an experience after seeing all those bodies in boxcars. . . . I've seen people say that it wasn't until then that we knew what we were fighting for. And that's what I felt."

Some of the soldiers were so infuriated that they rounded up SS guards and began summarily executing them until they were stopped by their commander, Lt. Col. Felix Sparks.

Sparks, who retired as a brigadier general and later served as a Colorado Supreme Court Justice, started a reunion group of the 157th, which eventually returned to Dachau to see the camp.

This time, with Sparks ailing and unable to attend the 60th anniversary, a new generation of Colorado National Guard soldiers escorted the men of the 157th back to the camp - not to meet each other but to shake hands with the people whom the World War II soldiers once described as "walking skeletons."

The 'greatest generation'

When Greg Miller first visited Dachau in 1982, he was an enlisted soldier. He never thought that when he returned to the camp it would be as the commander of the regiment that liberated it.

"In 1982 I was on a sightseeing tour while on active duty stationed in Germany," said Lt. Col. Miller, who leads the 157th. "When I saw it, I was overwhelmed. You literally can sense it on your skin, the death. It's so frightening to think of what went on."

Before leaving for the trip with the veterans, Sgt. 1st Class Dave Schmidt, historian for the Colorado National Guard, spent time interviewing them. He was constantly wide-eyed at the stories.

"It's like meeting history's greatest people," he said. "These are the greatest generation soldiers who did some amazing things back in the '40s and in most cases volunteered to represent America overseas. It was . . . I can't even think of the word. I was in awe."

Before he left for Germany with the men, he said that feeling was still tangible.

"These are the same guys you pass on the street because they're driving too slow, but if you pulled them over and talked to them, you'd say, 'Wow, you can have the entire highway.'

"It's an honor to put on the uniform, because, well, the threads of the uniform go through these men."

Now, as they serve in support of the latest war, the men of the 157th still wear the same patch, the one on the cover of that old regimental history book that Hallowell helped write:

"Eager for Duty."

Emotions come flooding back

On Sunday, Hallowell, Rogers and Carl Getzel made their way past the black gates of Dachau. There, the men of the 157th laid a wreath in remembrance of the day they'll never forget and were met with cheers from the people they set free.

"We've been talking to survivors for days," Hallowell said by phone Sunday. "I didn't think they could reach me after all these years, to make me cry. They kept saying, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.'

"The first person we saw, he said, 'Were you with the liberation?' When we said yes, he said 'You liberated my father.'

"It makes you feel good in a way, but there's also a lot of sorrow."

As they entered the ceremony marking the 60th anniversary, Hallowell said they spotted a woman holding a sign that read, "Thank you, the 157th and the Allied troops, for rescuing me."

"It's an emotional experience," Hallowell said. "I've had some of the same emotions I had when we arrived (in 1945). "These people are just so grateful. They just stun you for how grateful they are. And you think, 'Golly, I just happened to be part of it.' "

sheelerj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2561

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News